But Dick was an enigma. I couldn't quite figure him. Outwardly he seemed to be the model of a person at total peace with himself and the world. All his happiness seemed to require was his guitar, his dog, and his modest flying job. Yet there was a hint of turmoil in his eyes. He didn't talk much about himself, and I knew little of his past, except that he flew C-7 Caribou transports in Viet Nam.
On my normal fire patrol I'd spend more time there, but I had to leave Dick and return to the hunt. Already the base station had telephoned to alert me that more fires were breaking out elsewhere in the district. I fired up the Super Cub and waved to the airport bums.
They wanted to know how quickly I could get airborne. I swung the plane around into the wind, clearing for other air traffic as I turned. I held hard on the brakes, firewalled the throttle, and held the stick as far back as it would go, like a carrier pilot about to catapult. The asphalt runway was about a hundred yards away, but I didn't use it. I released the brakes and bounded across the small parking apron, laboring into the air over the grassy edge not much more than a good stone's throw away. I knew I couldn't have done that if a stiff headwind hadn't slipped me an extra ace, but it was a crowd pleaser. Patting the Cub for its performance and feeling refreshed, I turned eastward. But after a short cruise I saw that something strange was happening.
I was heading for a fire in the distance. It was not very big, but another fire had just started a short distance north of it. As I reached the first smoke, the second one had billowed higher, and now a third baby fire had been born still farther north. I could see that all three fires had broken out along a dirt road barely visible beneath the heavy pine timber. I dropped down as low as I dared, the tires barely clearing the treetops, banking carefully left then right, catching fleeting glimpses of the dirt road. Suddenly I saw what I had suspected.
A yellow Volkswagen bug chugged along slowly, barely moving, the driver obviously concerned about my presence overhead. I passed over and rolled into a steep 360-degree turn, cobbing the power to maintain airspeed above the stall, which at this height, would be fatal. I rolled out and crossed the road about where I had sighted him, but he was gone. Again coming about, I slowed the Cub back and followed the snaking road but to no avail. I then doubled back and caught a glimpse of the bug parked on a side road in a thicket. Again I cobbed the power and swung back around. He knew he'd been discovered, and he fled northward. I chuckled over the reflection that I was in a cat-and-mouse game, but then thought no, this was a cub-and-bug game. I felt immensely alive and totally at one with the Cub.
Certain that I had found an arsonist, I climbed for a higher altitude and radioed the discovery to the base station. I passed along the coordinates of the fires, and the route and description of the escaping bug. The answer came that the Highway Patrol was being notified as well as the large paper corporation that owned the pine tree plantation. I reflected on what one of the rangers had told me of forest arsonists: they are often discontented or terminated employees of the paper companies. I desperately wanted this guy to be caught, but I knew that the charge would never stand up in court, as I had not seen him in the act of torching the woods. But maybe they could match tire prints or something. I finally lost the bug under the heavy timber as it fled northward, and I had to abandon the chase.
The day was finally done and none too soon because I was about wasted, both physically and mentally. I was crossing the lowlands of a river bottom on a long, straight-in approach. The bayous below were clear and glassy calm, their banks laced with Spanish moss hanging in long white curtains from the thick hardwoods. I passed over a boat with two men casting lines and dropped down low, waving my arm out to them. They honored me by returning the wave, which was delightful because I knew then that they had not resented my noisy intrusion. But as I looked back up toward the airfield, the engineLycoming Model 0-320-E2A, one eachceased operation. Quit cold.
The silence was more powerful than the roar of afterburner. Immediately I felt the Cub decelerate. The nose dropped. The prop windmilled. My heart ripped away and clambered up my throat, the torn arteries gripping my clenched teeth, demanding, pleading like an imprisoned sailor, to be released from the brig before the ship went down. I was suddenly transformed into a glider at 300 feet above a heavy woodland. The airfield was still a good mile away. Tremors oscillated wildly up and down my spine as I swung my head with frantic alarm left and right, looking for a clearing or a road, but it was only instinct. I knew there was no such sanctuary out here. I realized then that I was going to have to land in the trees. I had to remember to fly the plane downto resist the urge to raise the nose and stretch the glide toward the airfield. If I hit the trees in a slight descent, at just above stall speed, I might survive, but a stall would most certainly be fatal.
I had about thirty seconds to run through the engine failure procedure, which was about standard for most light planes. Steeped in fright and foreboding, I figured that it was useless, but at least I'd be doing something rather than just sitting there waiting for the blunt trauma. I looked up at the magneto switches. Both were on. I pushed the mixture control knob in. It was there already. I rechecked the airspeed. Sixty knots. No less. Let's see, I still had oil pressure. I was conscious of a breathless, buzzing feeling. What was left? The fuel selector valve was somewhere down on the
THE FUEL!!
My hand reached down, trembling, fumbling, groping for the fuel selector; found it; switched it to the opposite tank. Instantly the engine fired up and roared back into life. I laughed wildly at the wonderful noise and yelled at the top of my voice.
"What a stupid, stupid fool you are! Run a tank dry at this altitude! Idiot. Idiot! Idiot!!"
And no one ever so severely berated himself while smiling as happily as did I.
After a restless night I silenced the alarm and rose to prepare for another day of hunting. The dry, clear weather persisted. It would be another busy one. I switched on the TV to catch the morning news while brewing up coffee. The tube came to life with a story in progress of a plane crash last night. I sat down and watched with the concerned curiosity that any pilot would have. Then I froze with shock. A Cessna Skymaster had crashed in the forest north of Evergreen. There was one fatality, cause unknown. Dick was dead.
Although I had my hunches, I never learned why it happened. But it really didn't matter. Whenever a pilot is killed, his death serves to remind ushis friends and peersof our own mortality. It makes us mindful of that stealthy, indiscriminate hunter that bides its time and waits for any of us to fly near its clutches. Sometimes we're sucked into it without warning, through no fault of our own. More often, the cause is our own carelessness. But if Dick is allowed to be forgotten, then he will have died for nothing, and I'll be closer to the hunter's grasp.
It's the hunter of which Ernest Gann wrote. It's the one Dick saw for an unearthly millisecond.
Fifteen.
Face of the Bear
For several minutes Cairo Control has played the devil, trying to establish radio contact with another aircraft. It happens sometimes; the plane is a bit too far away from the control center's antenna, or someone's transmitter or receiver is weak. I'm not paying much attention to Cairo's problem, and I'm jolted when I hear them call us.
"MAC Bravo 5523, Cairo, can you relay to Aeroflot 16214?" Relay? Me? To a Russian? Yeah.
"Roger, Cairo, what's the message?"
"Tell him to contact Athinai on frequency 125.2, please."