Chapter 49
Chapter 49
W e landed at Iliamna airfield. The plane came to a stop and Clay, Camp, Gunner, and I exited into a world covered in ice. It was possibly the most brutal, cutting landscape I’d ever seen. We walked to a hangar where a young guy huddled beside a wood-burning stove. Any closer and he’d have been inside it. He spoke over his shoulder. “Morning, fellas. Great day for a flight.”
“Morning.” I pointed to the screen of my phone. “Can you get us here?”
He shook his head. “Sir”—he held out greasy hands—“I just work on ’em. Don’t fly ’em. Least not yet.” He was young, midtwenties. “This time of year, there’s nothing there but a few hungry wolves and a lot of cold.” He studied my clothes with a doubtful look on his face. “You ever been out there?”
I pointed again to my phone and to the lake next to the cabin. “Is that frozen?”
He nodded. “Solid. Two feet or better.”
“If someone were inside that cabin, would they hear that plane land?”
“Chances are about a hundred percent.” Another nod. “That’s a Beaver. The best bush plane to ever fly Alaska, and given a 450-horse, nine-cylinder, air-cooled, radial Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine, the loudest.”
I pointed to another lake, one mountain pass away. “How about here?”
He shook his head. “Maybe, maybe not. But are you trying to get to that cabin? ”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I traced a path across the screen of my phone. “Walk.”
Another shake. “Never happen.” Then he paused and added, “No disrespect. Snow is above your head. And the forest you’re walking through is not flat. It’s up and down, and any path you choose is blocked by a thousand downed trees. You’d die in the trying. Bears would feed on you the next day or so.” He paused. “I take it this is important?”
I nodded.
“And you’re trying to get in there quiet like?”
“Undetected.”
“I guess you could parachute, but you’d be a Popsicle by the time you touched down.” He stared at the fire, then back at me. “Sir, forgive me for asking, and you look like a man not to be trifled with, but is this on the up-and-up?”
“Some bad men are holding three young girls against their will. We think they’re in this cabin. Time is short.”
He nodded toward the plane. “The pilot is currently three days drunk down at the pub. He does that come winter. Don’t touch it during the season, but come cold he falls off the wagon.” He paused. “Sir, again no disrespect, but this time of year, nobody flies. So if this plane is within three to five miles of that cabin, they’ll hear it and they’ll know you’re coming. Might as well blow a trumpet.” He pointed to several pairs of earmuffs hanging on the seat back. “There’s a reason we give ’em to the passengers.”
“Snowmobiles?”
“Even if you could get ’em in there, which you can’t, you’ve still got the same problem.”
I looked to George and Mike, the two pilots who’d just flown us in here. “Either of you fly this thing?”
George, early sixties with ten thousand hours in the air, said, “An hour with the manual and I can get you in there, but you’ve still got the noise problem.”
Frustrated, I pointed again to the Beaver. “Any way to quiet this thing? Put a muffler on it?”
He was about to answer when a voice sounded over my shoulder. “I can.”
A team of twelve Secret Service agents, led by Stackhouse and wielding automatic weapons and earpieces, entered the hangar, followed by the vice president. Ashley was wearing a weathered lambskin flight jacket and insulated pants. He walked up to the kid, extended his hand, and said, “Aaron Ashley. I can fly anything with a stick.”
The young man swallowed and turned back to me. “Um, sir, am I in trouble?”
“No. But we need to land on that lake, and we needed to do it an hour ago.”
The young man zipped up his down coat, pulled on his gloves, and snugged a beanie down over his ears. “Sirs... follow me.”
Gunner looked up at me and whined. “Come on, boy.”
Bill Stackhouse whispered, “Murph.”
“Bill.” I nodded to the vice president. “Sir.”
Aaron nodded but said nothing.
We walked to a van, loaded our gear, and climbed in, most of the Secret Service following in a second van save Bill, who rode shotgun alongside Aaron.
We drove six minutes down gravel roads to Pike Lake, which, like everything else around here, was frozen solid. We exited next to the lake and a plane sitting on what looked like huge skis. The plane looked old, or at least older. The large, wide wing sat on top of the cockpit and the fuselage looked large enough to carry six to eight people and some gear, provided they didn’t mind sitting on top of one another.
The young man gestured to the plane. “Sir, this is a—”
Aaron spoke over him. “De Havilland DHC-2 Beaver. Single engine, high wing, propeller driven, short takeoff and landing aircraft. The best bush plane ever built.”
The young man nodded. “Yes, sir.” He admired his plane. “History books will tell you they started making ’em in ’47, but this one served in World War 2, although we’ve never been able to find out exactly what she did. The records are classified.”
Aaron looked at him. “I can help you with those records.”
We still had not addressed the problem of noise, so I turned to Aaron. “Sir, if they hear us...”
He shook his head confidently. “They won’t.” He pointed to the young man. “Crank her up. In this temp, it’ll take thirty minutes to bring the oil temp up for takeoff.”
In the meantime, Camp and I rummaged through the hangar for anything that would help keep us warm during the flight, where the outside temperature was twenty-five or thirty below. We were also thinking about the girls and how to cover them up. We found a few blankets, a greasy sleeping bag, and one insulated snowmobile suit. Ashley ordered Bill to put it on, which he did, making him look like the Michelin Man. Once he got zipped up, he said, “I can’t move in this thing.”
To which Aaron responded, “Bill, you’re no good to my girls if you’re dead.”
Clay stood by the fire and raised his cane. “I’ll keep the fire stoked.”
“Good call.”