Flight of the Serpent

by R. R. Irvine writing as Val Davis

  “The feet belong to Vic Campbell, our bombardier,” Roberts said.

  The feet dropped onto the hangar’s cement floor. The man who went with them ducked under the fuselage and limped over to shake Nick’s hand. He moved stiffly, as if suffering arthritis. One side of his face was bruised and swollen. Stitches showed along his upper lip.

  “Don’t ask him what happened,” Roberts said. “You’ll only embarrass him.”

  “Every crew needs a colorful character,” Campbell shot back.

  Roberts snorted.

  “How’s the Norden coming?” Gault asked.

  Nick blinked in surprise. “Why would you need a bombsight?”

  “I picked one up after the war,” Campbell answered. “By then they were declassified and out-of-date like the rest of us.”

  “And?” Nick prompted.

  The bombardier smiled sheepishly. “The Lady-A deserves to be whole again, one last time.”

  Nick eyed the empty turrets. “You’ll need machine guns, then.”

  “We’re going to bomb the Great Salt Lake,” Gault said. “With Matt’s ashes.”

  Nick didn’t know what to say. Neither did anyone else. Finally Christensen broke the silence. “Don’t encourage them, Nick. I have enough to worry about with the engines.”

  Nick gazed up at the bomber, imagining what it must have been like to fly her into combat. “I’d like to go with you when you take her up.” The words were out of her mouth before she’d thought them through. Elliot would have a fit. She could hear him now. I won’t have you flying in an airplane that’s older than you are.

  Gault raised an eyebrow. The look he got back from his copilot was crystal clear, no women allowed.

  Nick glared. “I’ve seen the commercials. A bunch of guys drinking beer together and saying, ’It doesn’t get any better than this.’ ”

  “Hell,” Christensen said, “chances are she’ll never get off the ground anyway. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

  “Me, too,” Roberts said.

  The two of them went back to the port outboard, while Campbell disappeared into the bomb bay again.

  “My wife would have wanted to come along, too,” Gault said.

  He and Nick circled the B-24, keeping well clear of the tarps. When they reached the bomb bay, Campbell was in the bombardier’s seat in the forward turret.

  “Let me give you the guided tour,” Gault said. He climbed in first and led the way to the cockpit. There, clean sheets covered both the pilot’s and copilot’s seats. Every instrument gleamed, as did the windshield.

  “I’m impressed,” Nick said. “And I see that she was made by Consolidated.” She leaned over and lovingly touched the small plaque by the pilot’s yoke that identified the manufacturer. “The plane I found in New Guinea was built by Ford. That one was in pieces. The Lady-A looks in mint condition to me.”

  “I don’t know how Theron does it. That man leaves nothing to chance. Order and precision, that’s him. I wish he’d leave this kind of grunt work to the rest of us.”

  Sighing, he offered her the left-hand pilot’s seat. Instead, she slid into the right-hand chair and took a deep breath. The clean smell of oil pervaded.

  Tentatively, she touched the copilot’s control yoke. “Do you really think she’ll fly again?”

  “What do you say to that, Annie?” Gault cocked his head to one side as if listening for an answer.

  “You’ll have to translate for me,” Nick said.

  “She’s never let me down before. Hell, the first time I saw her, I knew I could trust her. She was waiting for me on the tarmac at Sioux City, Iowa. My group had just completed advanced flight training. Until then, we’d been cadets, outranked by everything and everybody. Now we had wings. We were second lieutenants. We were officers and gentlemen.”

  With a snort, he wrapped his fingers around the pilot’s yoke. “You had to be an officer to sign for an expensive piece of equipment like a B-24 Liberator. Anyway, I took one look at her and it was love at first sight. Can you understand that?”

  “Any archaeologist could. Each time we dig, each time we make a discovery, we fall in love.” She caressed the yoke in front of her. “To touch something that’s been hidden away, whether for centuries or just decades, is indescribable.”

  Gault released his grip to stare at her. “On our missions, Brad Roberts sat where you’re sitting. We flew twenty-five of them together, more than half over Germany. After the disaster at Ploesti, they rotated us back to England.”

  My God, she thought. He was at Ploesti. She looked at him in awe. To have survived the Ploesti raid was a miracle in itself. It had been planned as a low-level surprise attack on the Nazi oil fields in Rumania. Poor intelligence and navigational screw-ups had ended all possibility of surprise and turned the raid into a massacre.

  “In those days,” Gault went on, “it was too early in the war for fighter cover all the way into Germany. That meant the Krauts had a lot of time to kill us on the longer runs. No one else in our squadron made it. They weren’t all killed, you understand. A few managed to bail out and spend the war in prison camps. We were the only lucky ones. We had the Lady-A.”

  “How did you manage to bring her here to Salt Lake?”

  “They sent us back home for war bond rallies. After the war I found her mothballed in the desert.”

  “It’s no wonder you’ve kept her all these years. I think I’m jealous.”

  “In some ways, you remind me of her. You have her guts.”

  “Somehow, I get the feeling you’re not comparing me to this airplane,” Nick said.

  “My wife actually. She sent me off to war and said, ’Women are stronger than you think, John. So don’t worry about me. Just take care of yourself.’ ”

  Before either could speak, someone called from the bomb bay. “John, are you there?”

  “That’s Paula, my grandson’s fiancée,” he explained to Nick. “She was his fiancée, I should say. Come on up, Paula,” he called. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Paula Latham looked young in her Air Force uniform, barely out of her teens, Nick thought. But the captain’s bars on her shoulders and pilot’s wings over her breast pocket meant she had to be a good deal older.

  Paula reached between the seats to shake Nick’s hand. “John tells me you found Mart’s airplane.”

  “Yes, I’m so sorry. I wish there had been something I could have done.”

  Paula looked at her clear-eyed, and replied, “John’s told me how you went out to the mesa with him. You’ve done more than you had to.”

  Nick thought about mentioning her midnight trek and decided against it. There was no use causing more grief when she had so few answers.

  “I understand there was a landslide that destroyed the area where you were working,” Paula continued.

  “Yes. Both my father and I were very lucky. In fact . . .” She stopped and thought about what she was going to say and the realization came to her. “In fact, we’re only alive because the helicopter blew us off the cliff before it collapsed.”

  She heard a sharp intake of air from Paula, and Gault grabbed her arm.

  “Do you think this could tie in with whatever Matt was after?” he asked.

  “Do you know what that was?” Nick turned to Paula.

  “Not exactly. John and I have tried to figure it out, but Matt never talked about his stories until they were in print.”

  Nick groaned inwardly. She hated the thought that she might never know what happened in Sulphur Canyon, or on the mesa either. “Did he say anything that might help? Anything at all?”

  Paula shook her head regretfully. “I’ve been through all his things. John has gone through them too. There’s nothing. But I’m not ready to give up, and I can tell by the look in your eyes, Nick, that you aren’t, either.” Paula checked her watch. “Sorry, guys. I can’t stay. I’ve got a crew briefing in ten minutes, but I’ll call you later after I’ve had the chan
ce to go through Matt’s things one more time.”

  “Paula’s regular Air Force assigned to the National Guard,” Gault explained for Nick’s benefit. “She flies a Hercules transport.”

  “But I’m on the waiting list for fighters,” Paula said as she left the cockpit.

  Gault slumped in his seat. “She would have been a great wife for Matt. Now . . .”

  Nick could read his mind. Now there’d be no children, no one to carry on the family business. She started to reach out to him, then held back. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who’d welcome any kind of pity. She suddenly felt ill at ease. The copilot’s seat was set up for someone with longer legs and the temperature of the cockpit seemed to have dropped by ten degrees.

  She was relieved when Gault got up from his seat without a word and showed her the rest of the plane. Ten minutes later, they were standing in the hangar doorway, admiring the Lady-A from a distance. Seen under Christensen’s portable work lights, standing in the middle of an otherwise empty hangar, the Liberator seemed to Nick like some pagan idol that men worshiped with blood sacrifices. She shook off her disquiet. She loved old planes and this one was a honey.

  “I just thought of something,” Gault said. “You were the first civilian woman to go on board the Lady-A.”

  “Well, now that she’s been initiated,” Nick said, “maybe she’ll let me fly with her, if your crew doesn’t object.”

  Gault winked. “Now that they’ve all met you, how could they say no?”

  Nick let out the breath she’d been holding. As far as she was concerned, flying in a B-24 was every bit the equal of finding the missing Benson sister, or even discovering an untouched Anasazi cliff dwelling. Whether such a moment was better than sex, as her father claimed, was yet to be determined.

  “Let’s get some dinner,” Gault said, “then well drive over to Paula’s and see if we can help jog her memory.”

  Chapter 25

  After a dinner at the airport restaurant, Nick accompanied Gault on the short drive to Paula’s apartment. She lived in a two-story, pale green stucco that looked as if it had originally been designed as a chain motel. But as soon as Paula opened the door, the impersonal facade disappeared. The walls inside were bright mustard and covered with cheerful Matisse prints. Paula herself was wearing a sleeveless white blouse, flowered skirt, and open-toed sandals—a far cry from her Air Force uniform. Behind her the smell of baking cookies wafted into the night.

  Nick smiled, realizing that she’d been expecting austere military quarters decorated with technical manuals.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Paula said. “I’ve been trying to call you. I’ve found something.”

  She led them across the room to a dining nook, where a glass-topped table-for-two was covered with greeting cards. “It’s the strangest thing. All the time I’ve been going through Matt’s stuff I’ve found nothing. Tonight I decided to go through my things, little things he’s given me in the past. I was going to make up a scrapbook with them.”

  Her use of was struck Nick immediately. It implied so many things lost forever. It had the same effect on Gault, judging by the way he clenched his teeth.

  Paula selected a card featuring a sappy-looking hound dog on the front. When she held it out to Gault, he rubbed his eyes and said, “You’d better let Nick do the honors. My eyes are really tired.”

  Paula raised an eyebrow. No doubt she was thinking the same thing Nick was, that he had to have 20-20 vision or he wouldn’t be flying.

  Nick read the inscription. “I will love you always no matter how old you are.”

  “Sorry.” For a moment Paula turned away. “There’s another message on the back. Kind of a P.S.”

  “If anything ever happens to me,” Nick read, “be sure to toss my cookies.” She looked at Paula, then Gault. “Does that mean anything to either of you?”

  Gault shook his head. Paula said, “Matt loved chocolate-chip cookies. That’s what I’m baking right now. I thought . . .” She sighed deeply. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  “Was it some kind of joke between you?” Nick asked, wondering if it might have had a private connotation.

  “No,” Paula said, not looking the least bit self-conscious.

  “You’re both missing the point,” Gault said impatiently. “Why would Matt write ’if anything ever happens to me?’ ”

  That did get a reaction out of Paula, who blinked hard enough to squeeze out tears. “Dad . . .” She reached out to touch Gault’s arm. “You’ve had enough to worry about without me adding to your troubles. Besides, you know how Matt was. I got a few hints that he was onto something important, but never anything specific.”

  “If it concerns Matt, I have to know,” Gault said.

  Paula moved back to the living area, sat heavily on the sofa, and hugged herself. “He told me that he was onto something monstrous—and don’t bother asking what. He didn’t say, except that he’d been working on the story for a long time and wanted to make one last try at confirmation before getting out of the journalism business forever. Then he was going to fly as long as you’d have him.”

  Gault took her hand.

  “You know something, Dad, it’s funny when you think about it. Matt and I both thought flying was a lot more dangerous than writing for a newspaper.”

  “There is something we know,” Nick blurted. “That mesa has to be involved. Otherwise, why chase us off with helicopters.”

  “You’re probably right,” Gault answered. “But what can we do?”

  “There’s something more,” Nick stammered. “I couldn’t make up my mind whether to tell you or not. That day we flew over the mesa. I went back that night.”

  “You what?” Gault demanded. He let go of Paula’s hand and crossed the room to grab Nick. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her.

  “Do you know how crazy that was?” he continued. “You could have been shot, you might have broken a leg in the dark.”

  “I know you’re concerned,” Nick said levelly, “but I took the responsibility on my own. I can take care of myself.”

  “Of course you can,” he replied. “I’ve no right . . .” His voice trailed off and he let go of her.

  “I talked to an old man. He said it was some kind of prison. He also said that the helicopters flew people to the mesa and that those people never came back.”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Paula asked.

  For the next few minutes, Nick recounted her nighttime journey into the desert, and the interview with an old man who was being held prisoner behind a security fence in the middle of nowhere.

  “It gives me the willies,” Paula responded. “But we still don’t know anything concrete. For all you know, Nick, that old man was crazy.”

  “In his situation, I think I would be. But I believed him. You would have too if you’d spoken with him face-to-face.”

  “How the hell did he and the others get there in the first place?” Gault asked.

  “He said they were all illegals. So maybe the Border Patrol grabbed them, or the INS. One thing’s for sure, nobody’s going to do anything about it unless it’s us.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “We could go to Matt’s paper and raise a stink. Publicity might flush out something.”

  “Don’t you think going to the police would be better?” Paula asked.

  Nick shook her head. “Judging by the way the NTSB treated us, I don’t think the police would take us seriously.”

  Gault smiled for the first time since entering the apartment. “I know someone who will. His name’s Bob Hanlan. He’s a congressman, and he’s in town to make a speech. Since I taught the man to fly, he owes me.”

  Chapter 26

  Nick was impressed. Here it was eight o’clock in the morning and Congressman Hanlan was greeting Gault like a long-lost brother. One late-night phone call was all it had taken to set up the meeting at his office on State Street in downtown Sal
t Lake City.

  While the two of them pounded one another on the back, she shook her head in amazement.

  “I owe this man my life,” Hanlan said as soon as he’d been introduced to Nick. “ ’Never trust your gauges,’ he kept telling me. ’Always eyeball your fuel level.’ I’m standing here because I took his advice.”

  “Some fool said Bob’s gas tank had been topped off when it hadn’t,” Gault explained.

  Hanlan nodded. “I would have been somewhere over the Great Salt Lake when the engine conked out.”

  Hanlan looked to be in his fifties. He was bald except for a fringe around the ears, jogger-thin, and immaculately dressed in knife-creased tan trousers and a short-sleeve blue shirt, freshly laundered with light starch by the looks of it. His smile saved him from looking too perfect. It was slightly lopsided, and he should have seen an orthodontist when he was young. It made her want to trust him, which meant it had probably gotten him elected.

  He was also shrewd enough to assess Gault’s mood. “All right, John. Out with it. A man like you doesn’t call for help unless there’s a damn serious reason.”

  “It’s about my grandson, Matt.”

  “I thought it might be.”

  For the next few minutes, Gault and Nick took turns explaining the situation to the congressman. Even as she spoke, Nick couldn’t help wondering if they both didn’t sound crazy. When they finished, Hanlan didn’t say anything for a while. He just paced. Finally, he started asking them questions, short and to the point. He kept at it, rephrasing them until she felt wrung dry. Only then did he nod, check his watch, and say, “It’s not quite noon in Washington, so somebody ought to be on the job.”

  He called his secretary in from the outer office. “Liz, get me Dick Stone on the phone, would you?”

  When she left, he said, “Dick’s my executive assistant in my Washington office. He does all the hard work. He researches everything for me, and boils down each piece of legislation into understandable English. No mean task, I can assure you.”

  The phone rang.

  “Dick,” Hanlan said, “I have an old friend of mine here in the office, John Gault. With him is Dr. Nicolette Scott, an archaeologist who’s working for the University of New Mexico at the moment. I’m going to switch to the speakerphone, so they can listen in.”