Protecting the Flame Page 5

  “Okay.” Mattie flicked a tongue over her lips. “Even I’m impressed. That was pretty bad.”

  “See? S’what I’m saying.” Scott’s head still hung between his knees. “Man, I should never have had those eggs.”

  “It might help if you stopped talking about all the food you wish you weren’t going to throw up,” said Mattie.

  Her mother shot her another look of warning. “Maybe we should switch places, Scott?” Rachel’s hand was on her buckle. “Facing forward might help—”

  “Mom!” Mattie shouted at the same time that a hand shot across the aisle and gripped Rachel’s wrist.

  “Bad idea in turbulence,” Will observed. He’d dragged on a watch cap, neck warmer, and pop-top mittens along with a dark blue parka. “You won’t make anything better if you get tossed, Rachel, and in this turbulence…” He paused as another blast buffeted the plane. “In this turbulence,” he continued, “you will lose your balance and you will get tossed.” Relinquishing his grip, Will cast a significant look at Rachel’s swollen belly straining against a rust-red parka. “You’ve got someone else depending on you to make the right choices. Scott’s an adult. He’ll be fine.”

  “Who the fuck asked you?” Scott flared. “What makes you such an authority, huh?”

  “On which? The fact that your wife is really pregnant or that you’re supposed to be an adult?”

  “Real smart guy, aren’t you?” The tip of Scott’s nose twitched. “We crash and then we’ll see how smart you—”

  “Hey, you mind putting a lid on it?” It was Hunter, the co-pilot, on the righthand side of the cockpit. Snatching a quick look over his left shoulder, Hunter snapped, “Look, I get the ride’s rough, but none of this jawing is making things any better. Everyone calm down.”

  “We’re calm,” Will said, mildly. “Emma, are you calm?”

  “Uh.” No. “Sure.”

  Mattie’s grandfather gave a thumbs up. “Aces.”

  “Great.” Will turned to look back at Mattie. “And I know you’re calm.”

  “Well, I’m not hysterical like some people,” Mattie said.

  “Mattie,” Rachel warned.

  “As you can see, we’re fine,” Will reported to Hunter. “So, why don’t you just concentrate on getting us there?”

  Rachel raised a timid hand. “Unless, maybe, we should turn back? It’s only been an hour and a half or so. We’d certainly get back faster than we’re getting where we want to go.”

  As far as logic went, Emma had to admit it wasn’t a bad idea. They were headed into the teeth of the storm, which was precisely why her original flight had been canceled in the first place.

  “Whoa, whoa, none of that. No one’s turning back. We’ll get there.” It was their pilot, Burke, who also happened to be Hunter’s father. The two looked nothing alike. Squat and square, Hunter was a fire plug of a man with a thick middle, beefy hands, a Jeremiah Johnson thatch of wiry red beard, and a florid complexion that suggested he’d never met a beer he didn’t want to get to know a lot better. In contrast to his son, Burke was lean and brown and tough as jerky with a voice of a longtime smoker that was as gravelly as a cement mixer. When she and Will had made their way to the plane, father and son were deep in some discussion accompanied by a lot of hand-waving on Hunter’s part and a whole lot of headshakes from Burke. They’d been out of earshot, so she never did understand what Hunter was so worked up about, although Rachel mentioned he was worried about weight. Although I don’t know why. We don’t have that much luggage, and this is a pretty big plane for a twin-prop.

  “We’re still at twenty thousand. Nothing’s going to reach up and bite us.” Gaze focused on the milky view beyond his windshield, Burke said, “I know these mountains and this route like the back of my hand.”

  Yeah, you know it so well you’ve got to be checking that map spread over your knee every five seconds. Either he didn’t trust his instruments, or it might be habit. All the rides she’d ever taken, even in helicopters, were IFR, not visual though she’d known helo pilots who spread out those maps first thing, mostly when they were headed into areas they’d never flown before. When she saw Burke unfold that midway, she’d felt a small clutch of alarm. A map didn’t suggest familiarity…unless Burke was searching for alternative routes? That made sense. Burke had mentioned having popped in new displays along with a set of new tanks. While she supposed instruments were comforting (though only to a degree because you were, after all, trusting a machine not to hiccup), they were useful only for flights into and out of airports with specific and designated flight routes. IFR still meant you were, essentially, flying blind, trusting machines to keep you on the proverbial straight and narrow.

  What he could possibly be looking at was a mystery, too, considering they were flying in the equivalent of marshmallow fluff. She wondered if the map was a topo. Could be that he was only refamiliarizing himself with the lay of the land and how high the mountains got around here. How high was that? She was afraid to ask. Or maybe he was hoping for a break in the clouds to eyeball landmarks? Wait, didn’t instruments do that? Ping a warning or something? Crap. She cast a quick look out her window, but there was precious little to see other than snow, the clouds, a tiny winking red light at the tip of the Chieftain’s left wing. How do I get myself into things like this?

  “Have you ever had to put down?” asked Will. “Our ceiling’s already getting pretty low. You’re going to be scraping the deck on the approach.”

  “You a pilot?” asked Burke.

  “I’ve flown a bit.”

  “Military?”

  “Civilian. For fun.”

  “Huh,” Hunter grunted. “Figures.”

  “Oh?” asked Will, still in that mild, unthreatening way. “How does it figure?”

  “That you’re a doctor. You guys are all alike. We see plenty of ’em because we’re flying ’em all the time in summer. Montana, Idaho, Canada, Alaska, wherever there’s game or fishing and a nice comfy lodge with a good bottle of wine at the end of the day. Half the time, they’re talking your ear off about what you’re doing wrong.” Hunter shook his head again. “You all think you know everything.”

  “Hunter,” Burke warned.

  Will held up a gloved hand. “It’s okay. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion and I know a lot of surgeons who think M.D. stands for Medical Deity. They get under your skin, Hunter?”

  Hunter made a horsey sound. “Not hardly. But you docs always think that because you know a little bit, you’re like experts or something.”

  “I can see why that would piss you off.”

  “Damn straight.”

  “I’ll try not to do that. Maybe it’s that I know enough to be both dangerous and annoying, and I like, you know…” That disarming grin, again. “I like to understand things.”

  He’s got to be a shrink, Emma thought. Only head doctors talked as if they could be everyone’s friend. Interesting that Will hadn’t said anything about being a physician before now. “What kind of doctor?”

  “The depressing kind. Oncologist for most of my career.” Will aimed a look back her way. “I finally switched specialties, though.”

  “To what?” asked Rachel.

  “Wilderness medicine. High-altitude stuff, but I’m game for almost anything.” Will shrugged. “I like the outdoors, and it was time for a change. It’s where I’m headed now, actually. Wilderness Medical Society meeting up at Big Sky.”

  “Isn’t that south?” asked Grampa.

  “Yes, but I’ve got friends I want to see beforehand, so this is fine. I was supposed to fly into Kalispell and then drive.” Will gave a good-natured shrug. “So long as I get to Big Sky eventually, this works.”

  Emma opened her mouth to ask why he’d switched specialties when, all of a sudden, the plane dropped what felt like ten thousand feet but was probably more like fifty. The seats shivered. The cargo locker behind her seat clanked, and from somewhere behind and beneath her feet, she heard an odd clinking a
nd clunking. Luggage? Why had that sounded like glass? Or was it metal? Burke said he had a belly tank, so that would be full of gas not tools. Maybe another cargo bay, then? Maybe that’s why Hunter was so worried about weight?

  Another bounce, and Mattie gave a little cry as her book bounced out of her lap and did a swan dive onto the deck where it lay in a broken-wing splay.

  “I got it.” Grateful for the distraction (she did not want to imagine the impossibly high mountain that was probably dead ahead), Emma swept up the book in one hand. “Here,” she said, stretching toward the girl. “Take—"

  The plane suddenly bucked again. Emma’s head snapped forward and then back like a heavy tulip on a spindly stalk.

  “Oh!” Mattie’s eyes went wide behind her glasses. “Gosh, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, take it easy,” Will said. “No sense getting whiplash.”

  “I’m okay.” Her neck wished to suggest otherwise. Oh, be quiet. She realized she was still hanging onto the book. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” Mattie made a face. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a wormhole.”

  “Yeah, but then we’d end up in the Delta Quadrant.” At the girl’s frown, Emma waved a hand. “It’s a long story.”

  “But a good one,” Will said. “Resistance is futile.”

  The response was immediate, the words out of her mouth before she realized because it was what she’d always tossed out when Ben came at her with the same line. “Yeah, take your best shot, Locutus.”

  “Because we are about to intervene.” Will’s grin broadened. “I always thought Frakes was a bit wooden, though I am positive my mother had a secret crush on him. What about yours?”

  “For my mom? James T. Kirk,” she said, returning his smile. “I mean, come on, the guy lost his shirt practically every episode of the first season. She once said he was considered beefcake in her day.”

  Mattie looked from one to the other. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Ancient history,” said Will.

  “An old TV show,” she said to Mattie.

  “Hey.” Will looked offended. “Watch who you’re calling old.”

  “I didn’t say you,” Emma began, but Mattie interrupted, “What’s an old TV show got to do with a wormhole?”

  “What’s Star Trek got to do with a wormhole,” Will scoffed as the plane bucked up and down. “Just everything.”

  “Jesus,” Scott moaned, holding his head in a credible imitation of Edward Munch’s The Scream. “You guys are nuts.”

  “No.” Will said. “Only lightening the mood by sharing a mutual cultural referent. But I sure wouldn’t mind a wormhole right about now. Burke, seriously, is there enough valley between us and Lone Ridge?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Burke made a piffling sound. “We got to grab more air, get through a couple saddles and notches. Nothing we can’t handle. Maybe another hour.”

  “You said that an hour ago,” Mattie pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, the wind’s picked up.” Hunter scowled. “You’re all freaking yourselves out.”

  This guy did not, Emma thought, have much in the way of people skills. “Maybe we’ve got a good reason. We’re flying blind in clouds and a snowstorm, and we can’t turn back.”

  “We got instruments,” Hunter countered.

  “Burke,” Will said in that mild way of his, “you’re not worried about fuel?”

  The pilot shook his head. “Like I said, we got plenty. Got ourselves new wing tanks and that belly tank…always keep that in reserve for the approach…and extra in the bladders in back to refuel us in the air if we have to, but it won’t come to that. Even if we had to set down, I got enough survival gear in the cargo locker, we’d be fine.”

  “Wait a minute.” Pulling out of his slouch, Scott twisted toward Burke. “What do you mean, if we have to set down?”

  “Because of the clouds,” Will said. “They get much lower, even trying for a notch or saddle on instruments won’t necessarily be safe. Landforms aren’t static.”

  “S’right,” Burke said, easily. “But this is really not that bad, folks. Fly ’Nam, now…that was bad.”

  “You in ’Nam?” Mattie’s grandfather stirred. “I was First Cav. Fought at la Drang. Didn’t ever meet Mel Gibson, though.”

  “What?” Scott looked confused. “Mel Gibson fought in Vietnam?”

  “No,” Will said. “He was in a movie that was based on a book about the battle. We Were Soldiers?”

  Yes, she remembered that film, though she was partial to Sam Elliot. A pretty good movie but a much better book. The interesting thing about deployments and bases of any kind was the many war movies they did not show, probably for reasons of morale, although there was no shortage of the really old, ra-ra kick-butt flicks like Midway, The Longest Day, Patton. Even The Bridge Over the River Kwai. Anything where America won or was incredibly noble passed muster.

  “I was based at Da Nang, mostly,” Burke said, “though I moved around a lot depending on the mission. Felt like I flew out of every base and outpost along the DMZ. Spent a fair amount of time in Camp Carroll, keeping Highway 9 clear, then flew a couple missions doing recon along the Yellow Brick Road.”

  “What does The Wizard of Oz have to do with anything?” asked Mattie.

  “It’s what we called the Ho Chi Minh Trail,” Grampa said.

  “What’d you fly, Burke?” Will asked.

  “These itty-bitty Bird Dogs.”

  Emma hadn’t heard of those. “What’s a Bird Dog?”

  “Cessna L-19,” Burke said. “Fixed-wing, all metal.”

  “That’s a pretty small plane,” Will said.

  “Like being toothpaste in a tube,” Burke said. “Listen to the Geneva Accords. We weren’t supposed to be in Laos or Cambodia at all. If Johnson hadn’t been so worried about stepping on toes, we’d have been there sooner. At least Nixon manned up to what needed to get done.”

  “In secret. And in an undeclared war.”

  “Look,” Burke said, “I’m not saying he was a prince, but it was war, you know? Besides, all those South Vietnamese guys were lining their pockets, and so were a lot of our people. Black market was big business. I knew one supply guy at a PX, took in cartons of cigarettes and bottles of Scotch and fancy perfumes by the front door and let them leave out the back door at twice the price where you’d find them on the black market for half what you’d pay at the PX. It got so you couldn’t walk down the streets without people trying to sell you American deodorant, shaving cream, Ritz crackers…even Spam, for God’s—”

  “Hey, Dad,” Hunter interrupted. “The fuel gauge’s kinda twitchy. I think we’re sucking up a little air through the pump here. Want me to switch us to the belly tank?”

  “That’d be good, Son.” To Will, “All I’m saying is, you wanted a lesson in making money on the down-low, Vietnam taught you how.”

  “Must be a hard habit to break,” Will said. “Making money on the down-low.”

  What? The sentence hung there for a beat too long, enough time for Emma to wonder if she’d missed something. She opened her mouth to say…well, what, she never exactly could recall…

  Because, all of a sudden, both engines sputtered.

  And died.

  Chapter 8

  There are many sounds one hopes never to hear. The Doppler wail of an oncoming train at the moment your car stalls on the track. That curious snap and kerSHAW that is a bullet breaking the sound barrier as it hurtles past your ear. The drip-drip-drip of blood on bathroom tile.

  Another is the hoosh of wind against a plane’s fuselage because the engines keeping you in the air only seconds before having stopped working.

  For what seemed like a very long moment, no one said anything. Then Rachel asked, “What—”

  “Hunter!” Burke barked. Without taking his eyes from the windscreen, the pilot angled the plane right in a ninety-degree turn sharp and abrupt enough Emma felt her shoulder strap catch and strain against the ball of her joint. �
�What the hell did you—”

  “What happened to the engines?” Scott sat up straight, his hair in kinks and screws as if he’d only now rolled out of bed. “Why did they stop?”

  “No fuel,” Will said softly. “Must’ve switched to an empty tank instead of a full one. Take it easy, Scott.”

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy! I got that there’s no fuel!” Scott’s skin had drawn down tight over his skull. “What I want to know is why?”

  “Might be…” Burke cursed as he made another ninety-degree turn. His feet worked a set of pedals. “Could be the new wing tanks.”

  “Or the selector.” Hunter shot a glance at his father. “Everything got yanked out and reinstalled. Could’ve been mounted backward.”

  “What does that mean?” Rachel asked.

  “It means we got to get the engines restarted is what.” Reaching forward, Burke flipped a switch and kept working pedals. “Keep this baby in the air while I do it. Everyone, stay calm,” he added as if they’d all been a hairsbreadth away from screaming. “We still got plenty of air between us and the mountains.”

  “Where did we start?” Will glanced at his watch. “How high are the mountains we’re supposed to be over?”

  “Twenty-seven thousand, and about twelve. Now, shut the fuck up. Hunter,” Burke said as he made another right-angle turn, “keep an eye on that altimeter.”

  “Altimeter? You’re saying we’re losing altitude?” Rachel’s voice was shaking. “We’re falling?”

  “Yes, but we’re not in a nosedive. We’re gliding,” Will said, though his gaze was fixed on his watch. “Small planes can glide a long time. The wind might even help us.”

  “Wanna bet?” muttered Mattie.

  As much as Emma wanted to believe Will, the girl might be right. She could feel the wind pummel and shove them farther to the east. They were still in dense clouds, though. How fast would a plane fall? That must be what Will was trying to gauge. But how could he tell? Wait a second. Something burbled up from memory. Gravity made something fall faster; gravity made you accelerate. So they were falling, all right—and, every second, they fell even faster.