Chance leaned on the corner of the desk in the pilot’s lounge, drinking coffee and checking the sky between sips. Deep gray, storm clouds filled the sky to the south and the wind had picked up. The rest of the valley was overcast, but the clouds were high. It was nearly six o’clock.
The FBI and Solheim had returned to the police station. One of Hennessey’s guys, who had taken a statement from Chance, had just left. Suddenly aware of the silence, an unfamiliar feeling of loneliness engulfed him.
Twenty minutes before, the radio had crackled, and Chance had jumped out of his skin. It was a local freight plane out of Billings calling in its approach. But for a moment, Chance thought it was Hardy.
He couldn’t explain why, but he had this feeling they were coming back. As soon as the detective left, Chance had called Adrienne and told her everything. He could hear the worry in her voice, but she had reassured him. “Stay there,” she said. “The radio is their first line of communication. Your voice will mean a lot.” And so she had given him the go-ahead he needed to maintain the watch.
Tyler came in through the hangar. Dressed in Carhartt coveralls permeated with the smell of airplane fuel, he had been refueling one of the helicopters when the police arrived. He walked over to Chance, handing him a pair of binoculars. “Hardy may be a player most of the time, but he would never let anything happen to your sister. You know that, right?”
Chance sighed and agreed, putting the glasses to his eyes. Hardy wasn’t dumb. If anything, he had a frustrated intellect that had never found an outlet. When he felt like he was being taken advantage of, that was what usually led to his recklessness. Like stealing someone’s plane. “I know it. He’ll be there for her when she needs him.”
Then the radio began to crackle, and they both jumped a foot. “Mayday, Mayday. This is Cessna 734 Zulu Tango inbound through Gunsight.”
Chance whirled the binoculars to the north end of the valley at a spot in the mountains that resembled the vee-shaped notch on a gun barrel. Coming over Gunsight was a natural way to line up with the Butte Airport, which rested smack in the middle of Summit Valley.
“Losing altitude, running on fumes.” Hardy was talking fast. “Tyler, are you there? I’m in trouble. We may not make the airport. Rustle up the fire brigade.”
Chance reached the radio first, grabbing and almost dropping the hand mike. “Advise on passengers.”
“Just me and Mesa in good shape so far. The engine is starting to sputter. Christ, I’m gonna have to bring her down right now.”
* * *
Hardy had come due west across the East Ridge, trying to conserve fuel, crossing at Elk Park. The winds had begun to buffet them as they followed Interstate 15 back into Butte. Mesa had done her best to focus on the terrain ahead, trying not to panic. She’d said her ABC’s backwards each time her anxiety began to overwhelm her, a trick a therapist at Damascus had taught her. She began to think she was home free when she saw the lights of the city through the pass.
They had just flown over the top of the massive open mining pit, a surreal view. From the air, the giant blue and white shovels and the haul trucks filled with molybdenum ore looked like a child’s toys left in an enormous sandbox.
Then she heard Hardy radioing the airport. The sound of Chance’s voice on the other end brought a sense of relief. They would soon be on the ground safe.
And then the engine began to sputter. Another cough and then, just like that, nothing but a deafening silence. For a moment, Mesa thought the plane was standing still.
Then she realized the engine had stalled. They were going to drop from the sky. She felt her lungs turn to stone. She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to tear off her seat belt and run—run as far and as fast as she could. She began reaching around the cabin, her arms flailing until she realized there was no place to go.
Then she heard Hardy’s voice. Maybe he had been talking all the time, but in her panic, she had heard nothing. Without the roar of the engine now, the sound of his voice pulled her in.
“I’m coming in dead-stick” she heard Hardy say. He sounded amazingly calm.
“Roger that,” Chance said. “Bring her down easy.” Then to Tyler, “Call the Fire Department.”
Mesa could not bear to look at the ground. She closed her eyes and thought of Chance, tall and strong, coming to get her, even though his voice sounded like it was coming through a tin can a long way away. She could feel the plane banking to the right like the hawks she always watched at the cemetery when she went to visit her mother’s grave.
She heard Hardy’s voice again. “We’re coming down on Continental,” he said quietly.
If Hardy could be so calm, then maybe they wouldn’t die. And so she found herself bargaining for life. She closed her eyes tighter and prayed. “Dear God, please don’t let me die. If I get out of this plane alive, I swear, I swear I won’t—I’ll never leave Butte again.”
She could see the chain-linked fence of the mine’s property bordered by Continental Drive, a four-lane street that circled the east side of the city. The plane was gliding silently down, the terraced edges of the mine pit beneath.
On the north end of Continental sat a section of empty property, almost as big as a city block, opened up when houses had been demolished as part of the Anaconda Company’s pit mine operation. If they could avoid traffic, which would surely try to avoid them, maybe they had a chance, even if they missed the road.
Mesa could hear Hardy muttering to himself, “Easy baby, easy.” It sounded almost sexual. “Come on, come on,” he coaxed. “You can do—oh…shit!”
A scream stuck in Mesa’s throat, dry as trail dust, and she buried her head in her hands.