Flight of the Serpent Read online

  At the canyon’s mouth, the sandstone walls were wide apart. A quarter of a mile farther on, they closed in to form claustrophobic, hundred-foot vertical barriers. At that point, Nick had the sense that the walls were leaning inward, reducing the bright blue sky overhead to a narrow slit.

  She slowly scanned the sandstone walls as she moved deeper into the canyon. At the same time, she reminded herself that a man like Moyle wasn’t above salting a ruin with fake artifacts when profits were at stake.

  After a mile, by her estimate, she hadn’t seen anything more interesting than a few small lizards and one diamondback. Moyle and his cronies at the Emporium were probably laughing at her wild-goose chase right now.

  She checked her watch. She’d been walking for half an hour, following one switchback after another. She pulled off her Cubs cap and mopped her forehead. The radio had been right. The day had been a scorcher. And like Moyle had said, the surrounding sandstone was radiating enough heat to microwave her. Besides, the shadows were deepening. In another half hour, the canyon would be blanketed in darkness.

  Sighing, she took a sip of water from her canteen and started back toward Ophir. She hadn’t gone more than a few yards when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A shadow, like that of a great bird of prey, swept quickly across the canyon’s sunlit rim and was gone. She shook her head, fearing that the heat had gotten to her and that she was seeing things. But the impression wouldn’t go away. The bird—the shadow, whatever it had been—appeared to have had something clutched in its talons.

  She rubbed her eyes. The shadow reminded her of the bedtime stories about the powakus, the Hopi sorcerers, that her father had used to scare her with. Oh Elliot, she said to herself, you thought you were telling me exciting stories about the descendants of the Anasazi and instead you were half-scaring me to death.

  Come on, Nick, she admonished herself. Drink some more water and cool off. You’re hallucinating.

  Then she heard it, a rumbling sound that reverberated down the canyon. It grew in intensity until the ground beneath her feet resonated with it. For an instant, she thought it might be the precursor to an earthquake. Then the sound changed. The roar settled into a rhythmic thumping.

  She looked up, expecting to see a helicopter. But only a sliver of bright blue sky was visible between the sheer canyon walls. There could be hundreds of helicopters hovering nearby, but she wouldn’t be able to see them unless they flew directly overhead.

  With a shrug, she gave up watching the slit of sky and picked up her pace back toward Ophir. If she didn’t hurry, her students might actually send out a search party.

  Above her, something crashed violently against the canyon wall, so close she reflexively ducked her head. The agonizing scrape of metal on rock bounced back and forth between the canyon walls. The long jarring note ended in an impact solid enough to feel through the soles of her desert boots.

  For a moment, she thought she heard rotor sounds again, distant and fading. Or was that only an echo? Then there was silence.

  One thing was certain. No rock slide had made that sound. A chopper had gone down. But where? Sound was impossible to pinpoint in a twisting canyon like this. For all she knew, the echo had traveled miles. Yet that seemed unlikely.

  Nick took a deep breath. There was no smell of smoke, but any kind of aircraft disaster was sure to include spilled gasoline. And what if the pilot was trapped inside?

  Nick knew better than to run. That kind of exercise spent too much energy and too much water. But she set a good pace as she turned back to move deeper into the canyon. She’d keep it up for another half a mile, she told herself. After that, she’d go back to Ophir for help.

  Chapter 2

  Judging from the wreckage, the aircraft had struck the lip of the gorge, then tumbled from one rocky outcrop to another, until it burst apart on the canyon floor. Several huge red-rock boulders had come down with it.

  Survival looked impossible. Even so, Nick jogged the last fifty yards, stopping just short to study the wreckage. She’d heard a helicopter, only this was a small airplane she was looking at, a single-engine Cessna. And for an instant the image of that shadow came back to her, a bird of prey with something clutched in its talons. But that didn’t make any sense. The heat is getting to you, she told herself. You’re a scientist, for heaven’s sake. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.

  But one thing was certain. Imagination had nothing to do with the Cessna’s ruptured gas tanks. Fuel was everywhere, spilling down the wings and along the crumpled fuselage, its smell so overwhelming she could taste it. One spark and there’d be nothing left but a fireball.

  Cautiously, she circled to her left to get a look inside the cockpit. The door on the passenger’s side hung on its hinges, giving her an unobstructed view of the pilot, who was held in place by his seat belt. For an instant, she thought he was alive. Then she saw his dead eyes, a clouded blue. She stepped forward and gingerly felt the carotid artery. There was no pulse and the skin was strangely cold and clammy in the desert heat. His complexion looked raw and angrily sunburned, as if he’d been the victim of exposure rather than a fatal crash.

  Behind him, red plastic fuel containers filled the back of the plane, and judging by the sound of liquid gushing into the cockpit, at least one of them had broken open.

  Something clicked, metal on metal. Startled, Nick lurched backwards.

  In the same instant, the fuel exploded. The force of its eruption sent her head over heels. After that, she kept going, scrabbling along the rocky canyon floor to escape the searing heat. By the time she was far enough away to sit up, Nick realized that all the hair had been singed from her arms, and only her Cubs cap had saved her head from the same fate. Her face felt sunburned, her cheeks tender the moment she touched them. Only then did she realize that her hands were scraped raw and bleeding, as were her knees.

  By now there was nothing to be seen of the plane but its tail, though the flames were quickly spreading that way. She made a mental note of the serial number before it was consumed by hungry flames, then scrambled to her feet and headed for Ophir.

  ******

  From Zeke Moyle’s Emporium, Nick called the county sheriff’s office. Moyle, a prospector named Dobbs, and Nick’s entire student body listened in, hanging on every word as she recounted her discovery.

  The moment she hung up she said, “They want us all to stay put and wait for help to arrive. They don’t want us disturbing the site before the NTSB investigators get here.”

  “And just who the hell are they?” Moyle demanded.

  “The National Transportation and Safety Board.”

  “Shee-yit. Feds. That’s all we need around here.” He raised an eyebrow in Dobbs’s direction. “The first thing you know, they’ll be checking our tax returns.”

  “I think we should ignore them and go look for that helicopter the lady heard,” Dobbs said.

  “It will be pitch black soon,” Nick pointed out. Besides, she added to herself, maybe all she’d heard was the Cessna’s engine going bad. Certainly, the deputy she’d just spoken with hadn’t sounded convinced that there’d been a helicopter involved. You say you heard a chopper, lady, but found a Cessna airplane. This isn’t some kind of prank, is it?

  “Sound plays tricks in these canyons,” Moyle said, looking to Dobbs for corroboration. “Who could tell one engine from another anyway?”

  Dobbs closed one eye as if taking a bead on some unseen target. “I seen one of them whirlybirds out in the desert the other day.”

  “Sure,” Zeke put in, “and giant ants too.”

  “I’m over that,” Dobbs said, looking hurt.

  “There was a helicopter,” Nick insisted. “What about the rest of you? Did any of you hear it?”

  Around the room, the students’ heads shook in the negative.

  Perfect, Nick thought. If people who knew her reacted with skepticism, the NTSB investigators would think she was a total crank. Ophir’s image d
idn’t help either. It was like one of those desolate towns you see in horror movies, the kind where UFOs invade and turn everyone into zombies. Even the Emporium looked spooky, a one-room shack, no more than twelve feet square, with its back wall carved into the cliff face. Nick suspected that the entire structure would have collapsed if it hadn’t been for the floor-to-ceiling shelving which held Zeke’s meager supply of canned goods.

  “The helicopters I seen were out near the mesa,” Dobbs clarified.

  Moyle scratched the tip of his chin. “That’s a long way off. That far, I can’t see anything but mirages.”

  “There’s a few buildings left out there from the old army base,” Dobbs insisted. “Some are on top of Mesa d’Oro, though I seem to remember more being down below it.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Moyle said. “They haven’t been used for fifty years. It’s nothing but a no-man’s-land out there.”

  “After the war, Indians used to camp in those old barracks sometimes.”

  “Squatters,” Moyle said.

  “Is there a road to the mesa?” Nick asked.

  “That’s gone along with the army.”

  Nick shrugged. “We’ll let the professionals worry about the helicopter when they get here.”

  “Suit yourself,” Moyle said. “Far be it for me to tell you what to do, but I wouldn’t mention a helicopter no one else has seen or heard.”

  “You must have seen them before?”

  “Not me, Missy.”

  She stared at the man. He’d been living in Ophir for more than a year. She’d been here only six weeks and she’d seen choppers on two separate occasions. So chances were, he’d spotted them too. But if so, why would he lie about it? Nothing plausible occurred to her. Unless he thought the existence of helicopters might hurt business.

  “From now on,” Nick said. “I’ll keep a camera with me. Maybe I can capture one of those birds on film.”

  Moyle shook his head in obvious disgust. “I hope you don’t come up with any flying saucers. Ophir doesn’t need that kind of publicity. And 1 hope that plane’s where you said it is, too.”

  “It’s there all right. I got its serial number before it went up in flames,” she assured him.

  Dobbs sighed. “I feel sorry for that pilot. It sounds like he didn’t have a chance.”

  “He was dead when I got there,” Nick said.

  “I sure as hell hope so,” Moyle answered. “Burning’s a bad way to die.”

  Chapter 3

  John Gault came awake at the first ring of the phone. The lighted numerals of the digital clock next to his bed blazed a red 3:47.

  Jesus, it had to be bad news. A call at midnight, even one A.M., could be a former lady friend, or a war buddy wanting to reminisce. Maybe even someone needing to make bail. But 3:47. That was the dead time of night.

  He switched on the light, swallowed against the growing tightness in his throat, and picked up the phone. “Gault.”

  “John, it’s Curt Parker.”

  Cold crept over Gault, causing him to grit his teeth against the spreading chill. Parker worked for the Federal Aviation Administration out of the Salt Lake office.

  They’d known one another for years, ever since Gault taught the man to fly.

  “Who went down?” Gault asked calmly. At the moment, three of his planes were out on charter, one to his grandson.

  “John, the NTSB has men on the ground, but no formal identification has been made.”

  Parker’s tone confirmed Gault’s fears. “It’s Matt’s plane, isn’t it?”

  “A witness gave us the call letters, November, two-two-four-seven, Zulu.”

  “Oh, god,” he said shakily.

  Parker was a long time responding. “I’m sorry, John. The plane burned.”

  Jesus. Fire was the worst. Better to die on impact. Gault ran a shaky hand through his already disheveled hair.

  “An archaeologist found the wreckage at the bottom of a ravine in southern Arizona,” Parker went on. “In the middle of nowhere, if you look at the map. A place called Ophir.”

  “What the hell was Matt doing there?” Gault wondered out loud.

  “That’s what the NTSB boys want to know.”

  Gault took a deep breath. It didn’t stop his hands from shaking, but his voice remained calm. “Matt was working on a story for the paper, though he didn’t say anything to me about flying to Arizona. Where’s the nearest airport to this Ophir?”

  “A flyspeck called Mescalero.”

  “The twin-engine’s due back late this morning. I’ll be flying there as soon as we service it.”

  “I’ve known you a long time, John. As a friend, I’m advising you to stay put and wait till the investigators do their job.”

  “Matt was a damned good pilot. I have to know what went wrong,” Gault insisted.

  “A day or two won’t make any difference. After that, I’ll get somebody to fly you there. Hell, I’ll do it myself if I have to. That’s a promise.”

  “Goddamit, Curt, would you wait if your grandson had crashed?”

  Parker sighed. “I know you well enough not to waste my time arguing, John, but I’d leave right away if I were you. There’s a bitch of a storm coming our way.”

  “I’ll have to wait for the twin-engine. I haven’t got anything else available at the moment, not with the 150 down for its annual overhaul. Now tell me exactly what the archaeologist found.”

  “Strictly speaking, I’m violating notification protocol by talking to you. That’s not my job.”

  “I appreciate that, Curt. So just tell me what you can. Tell me about the archaeologist,” Gault said impatiently.

  “The report I got was pretty sketchy. His name’s Nick Scott. I know that much. He’s with some university, so he can’t be a crank.”

  “Do you have a phone number for the man?”

  “I have a contact number in Ophir. As I understand it, that’s walking distance from the crash site.”

  Gault wrote down the number, hung up, and tried it immediately. There was no answer. He’d try it again when he got to the airport.

  On shaky legs, he walked to the open bedroom window to check the weather. Beds of geraniums and pansies glowed softly under a bomber’s moon.

  He shook his head. It was early summer, time for things to grow, not die. There was no sign of a storm, but life had taught him that bad luck was always out there, waiting.

  ******

  Gault Aviation showed only night-lights at five in the morning. One of them spotlighted the sign over the door. SERVING UTAH AND THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST SINCE 1946.

  Gault had hammered up that sign himself all those years ago. He’d been fresh out of the service then, a demobilized Army Air Corps captain who’d gone into hock to buy a war surplus building and the two bomber-size hangars that went with it.

  Now, staring at the twice-remodeled office, he could only shake his head. The success of his business meant nothing. What good was it without Matt?

  He took a deep breath and caught the smell of jet fuel from the nearby National Guard parking strip, where a four-engine Lockheed Hercules transport was going through a preflight check. His planes used a lower octane gasoline, which had its own distinctive smell.

  He started for the Hercules, thinking it might be his future granddaughter-in-law’s plane, but abruptly stopped in mid-stride. Now was not the time to tell her about Matt. Nothing had been confirmed, as far as he was concerned.

  Gault clenched his teeth. Stop kidding yourself, old man. You’re alone now. The last of the Gaults.

  His shoulders slumped. Whatever his future held now, it wasn’t likely to be Paula Latham. She’d be someone else’s granddaughter-in-law eventually.

  He turned away from the Hercules, searching the horizon for the dawn. But darkness continued to hide the Wasatch Mountains, Salt Lake’s ten-thousand-foot eastern barrier that had killed many a careless pilot.

  Head down, Gault returned to the office. When he looked up, he ca
ught sight of his reflection in the glass door. Jesus, what a difference a phone call made. He ran his hand over the gray stubble on his chin.

  “How old are you the moment you wake up?” he asked the reflection. Forever twenty-one. But that was before his body told him better.

  “How old are you right now?” Now wasn’t worth thinking about.

  He fished a wad of keys from his pocket and fitted one of them into the lock. But he didn’t turn it. He knew he wasn’t going into the office yet. He had to talk with the Lady-A first.

  The office building was flanked by two matching hangars. The one on the left belonged to her, to Annie—the Lady-A. The fact that she often had to share it with transient aircraft made no difference. It would always be hers.

  Gault bypassed the sliding door out front and entered through the small mechanic’s door at the side. The moment he switched on the work lights he felt calmer.

  She was as beautiful as ever. She was a B-24, the World War Two bomber known as the Liberator. In 1943, she and her sisters had flown the big raid against the Ploiesti oil fields in Rumania. They’d taken off from Benghazi, Libya, a hundred seventy-eight of them. Only eighty-eight had returned to base. Of those, only thirty-three were still fit to fly, the Lady-A among them.

  Gault stroked her aluminum skin. She still wore her original olive drab. Her twin vertical stabilizers were painted red with a diagonal white stripe. In the center of that stripe was a red letter N. It stood for Norfolk, England, the Lady-A’s last base of wartime operations. Her serial number, though faded, was still readable: 5440.

  Five-pointed stars, the insignia of the Army Air Corps, embellished her fuselage and wings. Her turrets were in place, though without their .50-caliber machine guns.

  She was faster than the more famous B-17; she could fly higher and carry a heavier bomb load, too, though she’d never gotten the press coverage of the B-17s, the Memphis Belles of this world.