Sundown Aviation had its own hangar, which also housed its business offices. He brought the P—38 around, opened the doors with his remote, and rolled inside. There were a couple of other aircraft here that the company was currently working on: a North American P—51 Mustang, which was headed for the Smithsonian, and a Republic P—47 Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt was owned by an Arizona TV executive.
He shut the Lightning down and climbed out, grinning, picturing how his mechanic would react in the morning when he walked in and saw that the Lightning was back. Moments later he was in his office. Stell had left the coffee machine on. He poured a cup and eased himself down behind his desk.
There were a couple of calls on the machine. One was from a parts supplier; the other was from Ginny Lasker.
“Max,” her recorded voice said, “please call when you can.”
Her voice had a tightness to it. He could almost think she sounded frightened. He picked up the phone but put it down when he heard the outer door open.
Ceil Braddock smiled at him from the doorway. “Hi, Max.” She looked at him curiously. “What happened? Deal fall through?”
Ceil was the owner and sole pilot of Thor Air Cargo, which was also based at Chellis. She had riveting blue eyes, lush brown hair, a wistful smile, and a TWA navigator in St. Paul. Max had tried his luck, but she’d kept him at arm’s length. They were able to joke about it occasionally. “You don’t love me,” she told him, “you love Betsy.” Betsy was a C-47 that Sundown had sold her three years earlier. It had become Thor’s flagship, hauling freight around the United States and Canada. There were two other planes in the fleet now, and she was negotiating for a fourth.
Ceil flew Betsy occasionally at air shows, and she and Max had even used it to do a joint good deed. On this past New Year’s Day a blizzard had buried the Fargo area. There had been more emergencies than there were medevac teams, and a boy who’d taken part of his hand off with an electric saw was in desperate shape on a remote farm. They had attached the skis and flown the C—47 to Pelican Rapids. They’d landed east of the town on a frozen lake, picked up the boy, and brought him back to Fargo, where doctors reattached the hand.
Max smiled. “She was too good for him,” he said.
She looked pleased. Max knew that his tendency to be protective of the planes was one of the features she most liked in him. “What happened?”
“I didn’t like him much.”
She picked up a cup and filled it. “We’re talking a lot of money here. There must have been more to it than that.”
“That’s it,” he said. “Listen, there are plenty of people out there who would kill to own that plane. I don’t have to take the first offer.”
“I doubt many of them will have Kerr’s money to throw around.”
There were times when Max almost thought he had a chance with her. He’d stopped beating himself up over her a year ago. “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “Probably not.”
She sat down across from him, tasted the coffee, and made a face. “You need some fresh brew.”
He looked at her. “You’re working late.”
“Headed for Jacksonville tomorrow.”
That would be the annual open house at Cecil Field air show. He understood she’d been inspecting the C—47. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“Five by.” She got up, put the cup down. “Gotta go.”
He nodded. “See you whenever.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then withdrew. He listened to the outer door open, heard it close.
Damn.
He punched the speed-dial button for the Laskers and listened to the phone ring on the other end. Ginny picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hi, Ginny. What’s wrong? You okay?”
“Yes. Thanks for calling, Max.” The hint of unease was still there. “I’m alright.” She hesitated. “But there’s something strange happening.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you, but Tom’s gone to Titusville and I haven’t been able to contact him.”
“Why do you need him? What’s going on?”
“Do you know about the boat we found here?”
“Boat? No. Found where?”
“Here. On the farm.”
Max visualized the big wheat farm, acres and acres of flat land. “I’m sorry, Ginny. I’m not sure I understand.”
“We found a boat, Max. Dug it up. It was buried. Hidden.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Max, I’m not talking about a rowboat here. This thing’s a yacht. It’s been on TV.”
“I guess I haven’t been paying much attention.”
“Reason I called, I looked out the window earlier this evening and saw lights in the barn. It’s the boat.”
“The boat is lit up?”
“Yes. The boat is lit up.”
“So somebody went in and turned the lights on? Is that what you’re saying?”
“The barn’s locked. I don’t think the boat’s been touched. I think the lights came on by themselves. They’re running lights, long green lamps set in the bow.”
Max still wasn’t sure he understood. “Who buried the boat?”
“We don’t know, Max. As far as we can tell, nobody. At least, nobody recently.” Her voice shook.
“You want me to come out?” She hesitated, and that was enough. “I’m on my way,” he said.
“Thanks.” She sounded better already. “I’ll have Will meet you at the airport.”
3
Here at the quiet limit of the world…
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Tithonus”
If nothing else, it was an excuse to take the Lightning out again.
Fort Moxie and the border are a hundred fifty miles north of Fargo. It was a starless night, and the landscape was dark, punctuated by occasional lights, farmhouses or lone cars on remote country roads.
When he was in a cockpit, Max felt disconnected from his own life. It was as if all the mundane events of daily existence were directed toward the single purpose of getting him off the ground. The steady roar of the twin engines filled the night, and he thought how it must have been, flying alongside the B—17’s over Germany. He imagined himself strafing an ammunition train, watching it erupt into a ball of flame as he pulled up to engage two ME—109’s.
He was grinning when he touched down at Fort Moxie International Airport. Will Lasker was waiting with a black Ford station wagon. The kid wore a jacket with a football letter, and he looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way, Max,” he said. “I mean, we aren’t really scared of a light, but you know how women are.”
Max nodded and threw his bag in the trunk.
Will was full of information, describing how they had found the boat, what it looked like, how visitors were still showing up every day. “A lot of them think we put it in the hole.”
“I can see,” said Max, “why they might think that.”
Will hunched over the wheel, and the car left the lights of Fort Moxie behind and rolled out onto the dark prairie. “You’d have to be crazy to think that,” he said, as if Max hadn’t spoken. “If we had a boat like that, we’d have put it in the lake, not in the ground.”
Max wasn’t sure what he expected to find at the farm. He’d conjured up a vague notion of a rotted-out hulk with lanterns hung on its gunwales. He was therefore not at all prepared for what he saw when Ginny led him into the barn.
“My God,” he said. “You’re kidding me.” The yacht was bright and sleek even under strings of bare light-bulbs. Will was right: It belonged on Lake Winnipeg, not stored in an old farm building outside Fort Moxie.