Page 37 of At Midnight Comes the Cry
“You don’t get motion sickness, do you, Chief?” Knox, back from the restroom, looked at him doubtfully.
“No.”
“I might have some Dramamine in my first aid kit,” Terrance offered.
“I’m fine.” He gritted his teeth.
Clare hid a smile. “Okay, everyone, load up. We’re wasting daylight.”
The float plane’s cabin was a roomy four-seater, designed for sightseeing, which was going to make their jobs easier. Clare had brought his binoculars from home, so with the ranger’s they had two pairs, one in the front with Terrance, one in the back with Russ and Knox.
“Okay, everyone, I need to pay close attention to distance and altitude, so you three will be doing the searching. If you think you see something, sing out, and I can circle back.” Clare raised her hand, displaying her battered Seiko on its olive-drab strap. “At two and a half hours we head back, no arguments.” She flipped a few switches and the propellers whirred to life. “Fasten your seat belts and keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times.” She grinned. “Let’s fly.”
They taxied along the length of the lake, the steely blue water bumping them, the pines and bare-leafed oaks flashing by faster and faster, and then they were in the air, rising swiftly and smoothly, and Clare banked away from the lake toward the white-peaked mountains and even Russ, who had never had a good day flying, could feel a little of the exultation of conquering the air.
It soon settled down to the tedium of searching. They flew low, according to Clare, but it was still high enough to make picking details out of scarcely broken forest difficult. At one point, Knox thought she saw a tent, or maybe machinery, but it turned out to be a rockfall. They spent an hour flying over nearly invisible trails and thencircling wider and wider until they broke and picked up the next impossible-to-spot trail. A few groups of hikers looked up and waved as they passed overhead, but there wasn’t much activity in the Park on a Wednesday in December.
They would have missed it entirely if the sun hadn’t finally broken through the featureless clouds. “There.” The ranger’s voice was definitive. “Can you drop us lower? That looked like the roof of a truck.”
Clare tilted the plane sharply.
“Oh, hell. Oh yeah. That’s Pierre’s truck.”
Russ leaned across to peer out Knox’s window. He could see the flash of light on a square piece of metal, and maybe—maybe—a truck bed behind. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Clare was busy writing coordinates with a grease pencil on her plastic sheet. “Okay, I’ve got it. Or close enough.”
Terrance looked like he wanted to jump out of the plane and start the ground search right then and there.
“Clare, can you circle out from here?” Her turn had brought the object into Russ’s view, and it looked a lot more like a truck from his new vantage point.
“Chances are he was going northeast, toward the higher ground.” Terrance twisted in his seat. “That’s how we’re trained to do foot patrol; take the most difficult leg first.”
“Okay, I’m going to drop altitude a bit, but I may need to haul her up quickly, so make sure you’re strapped in tight.” Clare tilted the yoke and they eased downward, heading away from the sun that, even in the early afternoon, was already sinking toward the southwest.
Russ could only see the back of her head, small movements as she shifted constantly between the horizon, the instruments, the chart, and her flight plan. She started singing “Devil in the Blue Dress” under her breath and he smiled.
“Hey! There!” Knox clunked the binoculars against her window. “Smoke. And a campground?” She turned toward Terrance. “Is there a campsite out here?”
“No.”
“Where?” Clare stayed stuck to her instruments.
“Uh.” The ranger looked at her dial. “Another fifteen degrees starboard.”
The plane banked sharply. “Anything?” she asked.
“I see it!” Russ held out his hand. Knox slapped the binos into his palm. “No vehicles. Several tents. Large, not personal. Something—I can’t tell, it’s got foliage or a camo net over it. Maybe a pop-up shed? Clare, get the coordinates.”
“I’m getting them, I’m getting them, holy crap!”
Russ heard the blast of gunfire the second before the little plane sped up and tipped sideways. His cold coffee tumbled, spilling across his chest, as everything in the cabin clattered toward his window.
“Hold on,” Clare said in an unnaturally calm voice. He heard another gunshot from below.
“Can they even hit us this high?” Knox squeaked out.
