Wildside

  “Why don’t we get out of the sun and then decide,” I said.

  I held back and entered the house last.

  “What’s this?” said Marie, the first one in.

  There were four large boxes, wrapped, with each of their names writ large upon. They looked from them to me as I came in the door, curious.

  Joey said, “That’s why you went back into the house this morning!”

  “I’m just glad none of you failed. I would’ve had to dash in here ahead of you and hide them.” I grinned. “Congratulations, guys.” They still looked at me. “Go on! Open ‘em.”

  There was a great rending of paper. I stepped into the kitchen and pulled the bottle of champagne from the refrigerator and the glasses from the cabinet.

  “Utterly cool!” said Clara.

  The boxes held flight jackets, G-I navy goatskin, with lamb fur collar made by Cooper, the company that makes them for the navy. The guys’ last names were embroidered on the left breast, and on the back was embroidered a sabertooth’s head in profile, mouth open, snarling and the words WILDSIDE INVESTMENTS below.

  I opened the champagne and the cork ricocheted off the ceiling. Clara caught foam in one of the glasses. I poured for all.

  “Don’t you get a jacket, Charlie?” asked Rick.

  I put down the now-empty bottle and opened the closet. Another flight jacket with NEWELL on the front hung there. Even though it was too warm for it, I put it on, like the others, and took my glass from Clara.

  “What do we toast?” said Rick.

  “Finishing flight school!” said Joey. “The end of all that work.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll toast the end of flight school,” I said. “And I’ll toast new pilots and techs. But it’s not the end of ‘all that work.’” I raised my glass. “To the beginning.”

  PART TWO

  EXPLORATIONS

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “THERE ARE WOLVES.”

  “Parking brake,” Clara said.

  “On.” I said.

  “Flaps at three-quarter.”

  I clicked the flap handle three notches. “Check.”

  “Elevator trim four degrees up.”

  I dialed it in. “Check.”

  “Calibrate altimeter to 370 feet.”

  I twisted the adjustment knob. “Check.”

  “Dial heading to one-eight-four.”

  I twirled the knob until the gyro-driven heading indicator matched the magnetic compass.

  “Check.”

  “Set fuel to fullest tank.”

  They were all topped off, but we’d used a bit taxiing to the end of the runway, so I switched over to the unused left tank. “Check.”

  “Set propeller control to full increase.”

  I pushed the prop control knob all the way in.

  “Mixture to rich.”

  I pushed that knob all the way into the dash. “Check.”

  “Carburetor heat to cold.”

  I tapped the switch—it was already set. “Check.”

  Clara had a good voice for the checklist. I never had trouble understanding her as I sometimes did with Joey or Rick.

  “Check engine temp.”

  The needle was clear of the cold peg, warmed up by taxiing. The outside air temperature was fifty degrees and, even if the engine was warm, we weren’t. The flight jackets were more than decorative. “Temperature good.” You didn’t want to do the engine check until the oil was warm enough to move.

  “Throttle to 2800 rpm.”

  I pressed the throttle release and edged the knob forward until we had 2800 rpm. The Maule strained against the parking brakes. “Check.”

  “Magnetos.”

  My hand was already moving. You don’t want to run high rpm while sitting still any longer than you had to. I clicked the magneto switch to “Left” then “Right.” At each position, the tachometer dropped about 50 rpm. When I returned the switch to the “Both” position, the engine returned to 2800. “Check.”

  “Engine instruments.”

  We both looked at the oil pressure, cylinder head temperature, and manifold pressure gauges.

  “Nominal,” I said.

  “Set idle.”

  I pulled the throttle back out. The engine vibration lessened and the tach settled back on 600 rpm.

  “Set ADF to two-one-six.”

  I dialed the frequency into the Automatic Direction Finder. The needle swung to thirty degrees, the relative bearing of the control tower and homing beacon from our position at the end of the runway. “Check.”

  “Check clocks.”

  I twisted in my seat. Mounted on the ceiling, between and behind the front seats, were two Sony eight-millimeter video cameras. One was focused on the instruments and the other was pointed through the windshield, focused on infinity. The LCD readouts on the side of the cameras were both within two seconds of the plane’s dashboard clock and my watch. “Check.”

  “Cameras on.”

  I hit the “Record” buttons, starting them roughly at the same time. “Check.”

  “Seat locked and restraining harness fastened.”

  We both checked our seats to make sure they were firmly locked to the adjustment rail. Nothing worse than sliding backward from the controls on takeoff. Not only could you find yourself unable to reach the rudder pedals, but you could pull the yoke back and stall. I yanked on my shoulder and belt straps. “Check.”

  “Clearance.”

  “Do it,” I said.

  She thumbed her transmit button. “Wildside Base, this is Maule one seven baker ready for takeoff.”

  Joey had the tower. “No critters on or near the runway. Wind is five knots at one-nine-three. You are cleared.”

  Clara took up the checklist again. “Doors locked.”

  “Check.”

  “And checked,” she said, twisting back from her door. “Time is eight-one-five.” She wrote it in the log. “We are ready.”

  I released the brakes and pushed the throttle smoothly forward, listening for any hesitation in the motor while I could still stop us on the ground. The prop bit air and pulled us slowly forward, bumping over the grass and shaking the plane. At twenty knots the tail wheel lifted off the ground and we gained speed at a higher rate. The ride became less bumpy as the weight of the plane was taken by the wings. I kept a little right aileron and some left rudder to counteract the slight crosswind and, when the plane came up on the ground effect, I held it there, ten feet off the ground, and pulled in the flaps while I waited for the airspeed to build up to V sub y, best rate of climb.

  When we’d achieved it, eighty-five knots, I pulled the yoke back. The ground dropped sharply away and I began a climbing turn to the left, until we were headed due north. We climbed to thirty-five hundred feet and held it there, adjusting our heading until we were tracking due north, even if our nose was pointed four degrees left of north. Our ADF needle pointed at 176, but, since it didn’t change, we knew our ground track was actually due north, into the unknown. I set the autopilot and took my hands off the controls.

  I’d flown north from the ranch—more times than I could count—but all my landmarks were gone. No Highway 6, no town of Hearne, and no cotton fields. And the invisible landmarks, the VOR and VORTAC radio beacons, the outer, middle, and inner VHF Marker Beacons, were gone, too. There was just one Non-directional Beacon out there, the one at Wildside Base, where there were dozens in range on the tame side.

  Instead, brown buffalo grass and primary growth forest covered the land. Rivers and streams, normally dependable landmarks, could not be counted on. In the absence of man-made dams and dikes, the riverbeds wandered over different ground. Also, the flat expanses of silver, brown, and green formed by man-made lakes and ponds weren’t there. We thought we identified the Navasota River, but we couldn’t be sure.

  There were dams, though, which surprised me, making me wonder if the wildside did have man.

  The binoculars showed me mud, log, and brush embankments a
nd, in one revelatory moment, small brown animals that dove into the water.

  Beavers.

  Also more buffalo, antelope, deer, and birds. I don’t know if we had the image of a bird of prey or if the noise from the motor scared them, but birds, if airborne, would head for the ground, and, if feeding in the open, would head for trees and brush. Once, a large eagle, perhaps a golden, rose from below and flew toward us, as if to challenge us, but we were moving too fast and he was left far behind before he even neared our altitude.

  We pushed on, checking and correcting wind drift as we went along, keeping our heading constant, our ground track due north.

  We spoke about the things we saw, speculating about the identity of the geographic features below and the animals, partially for ourselves, but mostly for the cameras, since the intercom was patched into their audio input jacks.

  At an hour and forty minutes, roughly two hundred miles, we turned west for fifteen minutes, then headed south, parallel to our northern course and over different territory. We were back at Wildside Base by twelve-forty and I put the Maule down as softly as possible.

  I didn’t think my bladder could take a hard landing without something giving way.

  Clara left me to do the engine shutdown, running for the tunnel and the bathrooms on the other side. Me, I stood on the ground, the Maule screening me from the tower, and relieved myself in the grass, before climbing back in and shutting down properly.

  As soon as the Maule was refueled and the video cameras reloaded, Marie and Joey were taking it out, fifteen degrees west of north for the same distance. And the next day it would be Rick and I in the morning and Marie and Clara in the afternoon, again and again, at least two flights a day, weather permitting, until we’d seen all of the land north of us within a radius of two hundred miles.

  “Better take a jar with you,” I told Joey.

  We were socked in on Friday by cold drizzle that was half-fog, half-rain. The temperature dropped to forty-five on the wildside and I wondered, if this was early August, what would January be like?

  Weather on the tame side was ninety-seven degrees, clear, and humid. Today, the air pressure on the tame side was higher than on the wildside, so there was a draft of warm air coming through the tunnel, but, since all of us were in the hangar, we kept the barn side of the tunnel shut tight, so the draft wasn’t enough to counteract the cold. We wore our jackets zipped up.

  We were seated on folding chairs at one end of a makeshift table—a sheet of plywood supported by sawhorses. At the other end of the table, two small color TVs played flight tapes back. On the table at our end were US Geologic Survey and Aviation maps of East Texas.

  “Look,” said Rick, punching numbers on a calculator. “The time/speed calculations put the plane right here.” He put his finger down on the map and then pointed at the TVs. Both videotapes were in pause mode. On the left-hand screen was a river winding through trees, framed by the out-of-focus nose and spinner of the Maule. The right-hand screen showed the instruments, most importantly, the heading, airspeed, and ADF indicators.

  Marie took the calculator from Rick. “Look, either the geography is radically different or you’ve made a mistake. Let’s see, 1.2 hours at one-four-zero knots gives us 168 nautical miles, minus a headwind component of, oh, two knots, or 2.6 nautical miles. One-six-five-point-four.” She looked at Rick’s scribbling. “That’s right. Did you get the angle right?”

  Rick glared at her, but pushed the parallel rulers across at her. She replicated the ADF angle on the compass rose and marched it across to the location of Wildside Base. “That’s right, too.”

  “Thanks ever so much,” said Rick.

  “But you used the wrong scale. You used statute miles instead of nautical miles.”

  “What? I couldn’t have.”

  She showed him, measuring out a distance two more inches along the bearing line. “See? That makes it the Trinity River…I think. It is on the wrong side of the valley.”

  “It’s the Trinity,” said Joey, looking at the Aviation map. He ran the tape slightly forward, to the other side of the valley. “See this ridge?” He pointed at the map. “It’s got the same shape as the one on the north side of the valley. You’re looking at Rochester Park. Welcome to Dallas.”

  Joey complained about the pilot/copilot arrangement we’d set up. Since Marie had more than twice the flight time than Clara, Rick, and Joey had, she and I were pilots in command on all the exploration flights. This meant that Marie and I were flying every day, but that each of the others didn’t fly every third day.

  “Your time will come,” I told him. “More hours.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  They rotated, so that Marie and I flew with them all, one after another. Rick, despite his calculation blunder with Marie, was good with navigation, though a little clumsy at the controls. Joey became a good seat-of-the-pants pilot, steady and smooth in his control handling. Clara was the best, though, showing progress far beyond her experience.

  We had another fight over the first refueling base. “Look,” I said, “we all have equal experience jumping, right?” They nodded. “We need two pilots and two jumpers. One of the pilots needs to be Marie or me.”

  “If you say so,” said Joey.

  “I do. So, it boils down to who wants to jump?”

  Everybody raised their hand but Rick.

  “Okay,” I said. “That simplifies things. I’ll jump and Marie is Pilot-In-Command. Clara and Joey, decide which of you jumps. The one who doesn’t fights it out with Rick for second pilot.”

  “What?”

  I flinched away from four angry voices. Nobody was happy with that. After heated argument we decided that a coin toss was a more acceptable way to decide the matter.

  Marie and I flipped a coin first, to decide who would be pilot in command. She lost, which is to say—she would be pilot. Then Clara, Joey, and I matched coins to decide who would jump. Clara came up with tails to my and Joey’s heads.

  “Shit!” she said.

  Last, she and Rick tossed for the remaining pilot seat. Rick lost and got stuck with the tower.

  “Figures,” he said.

  The flight was cold and noisy.

  We left at dawn, as soon as we could tell the weather was okay. The double rear doors on the right had been removed for our jump operations. Joey and I had the backseats and spent our time shifting about, trying to get comfortable despite the cold air blasting in and all the gear strapped to us.

  Besides the primary and emergency parachutes, we had our shotguns suspended from our belts and secured to our right thighs with Velcro straps. We were also carrying survival kits, handheld radio, air horns, and Cap-Stun gas, as well as orange smoke pots and flares.

  Marie’s voice in our intercom headsets said, “There it is.”

  I leaned forward, looking over her shoulder.

  We were flying at twelve hundred feet, mostly to avoid freezing, our airspeed reduced to one hundred knots by the drag of the open doors. We were 170 miles due north of Wildside Base, east of where Dallas would be on the tame side. Our target was a meadow floored with grass, wildflowers, and a few low bushes in the middle of a shallow valley. A stream at the bottom of a deep gully hugged one side of the valley, well away from the meadow. Unlike other possible sites, the chances of flooding seemed remote and the low sides of the valley were far enough away that wind shear effects were minimal.

  Clara acted as jumpmaster. “Get ready to drop the pot.”

  Marie reduced thrust and dropped down to four hundred feet above ground level. I took an orange smoke pot and waited. When we were over the edge of the meadow, I pulled the pin and dropped it through the door. It hit just off center and the orange smoke drifted up the valley, giving us a rough indication of the wind direction and speed below. Marie banked the plane in a standard turn.

  “Two minutes,” said Clara. “Prepare for the equipment drop.”

  I shifted around to reach the luggage area behind me.
There was a large duffel bag with a small cargo chute. I unclipped its restraining strap and edged it closer to the door. A static line from the chute was already snapped to the frame of my seat. I waited.

  Marie’s circle was precise, bringing us directly over the valley again. She straightened on her former course.

  Clara held up her hand. “Wait until we’re more upwind…now.” She dropped her hand and I pushed the duffel out the door. There was a jerk felt through the seat as the static line came up short and I saw the multicolored chute blossom.

  Marie pushed the throttle in to climb for our jump. Joey and I took off our headsets. My eyes were still following the cargo chute while I reached for my helmet and goggles.

  Marie suddenly said, “Shit!” and the plane’s nose lifted sharply. I twisted forward in time to see birds, hundreds of them, rising up in front of us from the low ridge we were crossing, spooked, perhaps, by the plane. One hit the left wing and another hit the frame of the windshield. Marie was trying to climb above them but the stupid things didn’t know which way to fly. She seemed almost clear when one hit the propeller and feathers and blood sprayed the windshield.

  I waited, frozen, to see if the propeller was all right. Marie was clear of the birds now, climbing at a thousand feet a minute and swearing under her breath. One thousand feet. Two thousand feet. Three thousand.

  I let out my breath. “Whew. For a moment there I thought—”

  Then the propeller came apart and the plane shuddered, unbalanced torque forces on the engine shaking us like we were in a blender.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” I said, but Marie was already running through the SLIM list, switches, leaning out the mixture, ignition, and master, as she shoved the yoke forward to keep airspeed up. The shuddering died and, when the propeller slowed to windmill, we could see that most of one side of the prop was gone, jagged metal showing where it had broken. I glanced at the altitude—thirty-two hundred feet. Marie banked the plane back toward the valley in a shallow turn, trying to save as much altitude as possible.

  With the engine off, I could hear Clara transmitting. “Mayday. Mayday. Rick do you read? We have a broken propeller. We’re trying for the Royce City target, bearing due north, one-seven-zero miles.”