Steven Havill: Out of Season

There were no bridges-arroyos formed and filled on their own vague schedules. When one got in the way, the two-track just plunged down one side and up the other, maybe with a little touch-up from a bulldozer if the arroyo was deep enough. As they crossed, ranchers got used to glancing upstream to make sure that a wall of water wasn’t shooting down on them after a vagrant cloud had dropped its load.

Tom Pasquale had driven almost three miles west on County 9010, paralleling the smooth-sloping back of Cat Mesa. Then he had turned off the road, heading northwest across open prairie in what must have been a jouncing, kidney-bruiser of a ride.

After less than a half mile, another arroyo had blocked his path and he had tried to find his way across at what looked like a benign spot. His Bronco sat axle-deep in the sand, a target for the next rainstorm.

We flashed overhead, and Bergin initiated a sweeping turn to the east. I keyed the handheld and kept it against my lips when I spoke.

“Three-oh-three, three-ten.”

By holding the speaker against my left ear, I could hear Pasquale’s response clearly. “I’m about a mile and a half due west of where the unit’s parked,” he said. “Right off your right wing the way you’re turning now.”

Bergin continued the turn and then pulled back the throttle and lowered a notch of flaps. It was like slowing an old pickup from third gear to second…not much improvement, but some.

Even if I had known exactly where Pasquale was, I doubt that I could have seen him. But Bergin did, and he dipped the wings sharply. “He’s right by that fence line.” He pointed, and I would have been more comfortable if he’d kept his hands on the yoke. I didn’t care where Pasquale was-he wasn’t the target of the search.

The radio crackled. “I think the site is about a mile or two to the northwest,” Pasquale shouted. “I’m going to make my way over there. Let me know after you take a look.”

Bergin peeled out of his tight turn and the engine sighed a few RPMs slower. He extended the flaps another few degrees. “Don’t want to go too slow,” he yelled at me.

I couldn’t have agreed more. “Or too low,” I said.

We flew west, methodically bucking the wind, until we’d passed the main residence of the Boyd ranch. It was set into the southeast-facing slope of a hill, with a fair-sized collection of outbuildings dotted around it.

“You’d think maybe the Boyds would have seen or heard something if a plane went down this close to their place.” Bergin shrugged and reached over to twist the throttle a quarter turn. “’Course, in this country, you just never know.”

He banked the plane nice and easy and we started back east, flying a mile north and parallel to our first pass. Back and forth, east and west, we tracked, moving a mile farther north each time, Bergin skillfully playing the wind.

On the fifth pass, when the Boyd ranch was hidden behind the long swell of a cattle-trail-scarred hill, Bergin suddenly stood the Cessna up on one wing, pushing in the throttle as he did so.

I had a view of ground out the left window and solid sky to the right. I braced myself and an inadvertent “Whoa!” escaped. Bergin ignored me and continued his tight spiral, throttle to the firewall and eyes glued out the side window. Finally he leveled off.

“Something down there, all right. Pretty good scatter.” He pulled the throttle back and we sank into the wind. Five hundred feet above the prairie, he added throttle, picked up some speed and turned steeply again, reversing course. “Right over the nose,” he shouted. “I’m going to make a pass with it on your side.”

The Cessna slowed and Bergin tracked a straight line, letting the aircraft gradually sink. What from on high had looked like flat prairie now took on form and threat. Ahead of us, a swell of rock and scrub rose up, and if Bergin knew what he was doing, we’d skim over the trees with about a hundred feet to spare. I concentrated on watching the ground.

The northeast side of the rise was littered with junk in a long scatter, as if a giant had dumped a load of metal trash that winked in the late-afternoon sunlight. As we passed overhead, I saw several pieces tumbling in the wind, to be grabbed eventually by stunted junipers or black sage.

“That’s it!” Bergin shouted and then added, “That looks like the aft fuselage and part of the empennage.” He pushed in the throttle and we headed east, giving ourselves room for another turn.

This time even I could see one large piece on the side of the slope, resting amid a welter of torn metal. It was white with a blue stripe running under what was left of the registration markings.

“One more,” Bergin said and turned to cross the site from north to south. “Let me see if I can make out the markings.” From a hundred feet away, it wasn’t difficult, even passing by at ninety miles an hour or more. “I can see the GVM,” Bergin shouted, and leveled out. “And that’s a Bonanza. Philip Camp was registered out of Calgary, Canada. A lot of times they don’t use numbers up there. Just letters. If my memory’s right, his registration was George Victor Michael Alpha.”

I slumped back against the seat. “Make another pass, just to be sure,” I said, making a circular path with my index finger.

He did, and this time I saw the scarring of the earth and, many yards from the initial impact, a blocky, solid piece of wreckage that could have been an engine. West of the tail section, there was a dense collection of junk that was probably whatever was left of the main cabin.

I keyed the radio. “Tom, do you see where we’ve been circling?”

“Affirmative. You’re about a mile or so northwest of me.”

“Closer to two or three,” I replied. “The wreckage is strewn across the northeast side of the rise. If you get here before dark, I don’t think you can miss it. We’ll orbit overhead until you’ve got things secured.”

“Ten-four,” Pasquale said. Bergin poured the coals to the Cessna and we spiraled upward, keeping the wreckage in the center of my field of view, off to the right.

I pulled the plane’s mike off the dash. “Posadas Unicom, four-niner Baker November Mike. Linda, pick it up.”

“Posadas, go ahead.”

“Linda, give Gayle a call and have her contact the FAA in Albuquerque and advise them that we have an aircraft confirmed down. Make sure Estelle is at the office. She needs to put together a team to reach the site. The easiest way will be from the Boyd ranch and then on some of the cattle trails into the northeast. If she can come up with a helicopter from the state police, that’s even better.”

“Ten-four, sir.”

“We intend to orbit the area until Officer Pasquale arrives and secures the site. Then we’ll be returning.”

“Ten-four, sir. Are there any other contacts I need to make?”

“Negative. We won’t have any casualty confirmation until Pasquale reaches the scene. But tell Estelle that we don’t see any sign of life down there. She’ll know what to do.”

“Ten-four, sir.”

I hung the mike up and sighed.

“Hell of a thing,” Bergin said. We hit a nasty stretch of choppy air and we remained silent until it settled down. “Sun sets, it might calm down some. Another thirty minutes or so.” He looked over at me. “I guess there isn’t much doubt about whose plane that is.”

“No,” I replied, and that’s all I could think of to say.

The sun set behind the San Cristobal mountains, the wind died, and the Cessna settled down to its job of boring a smooth hole through the air. The sky mixed with the western horizon to a dark, rich purple. The terrain lost its definition, with the hilltops blending into the sky. I sat glumly and watched the transformation.