Falls Like Lightning (20 page)

Silas ran a hand behind his neck. “People have been . . . How?”

“Caleb got GPS coordinates from Chief Shivner. Couple years ago Shivner discovered a hidden bunker with the gold by accident. But he didn’t have the means to extract the find. He saw an opportunity with the fire and enlisted Caleb to do the dirty work.”

“And Pendleton’s death?”

“Murder. After Caleb confirmed the location of the bunker, there was a ruckus with an old man with a shotgun who was trying to protect the gold. Pendleton got in the middle of it and protested. Cleese jumped the old man and the weapon fired, killing Pendleton. The old man tried to get away, and Cleese shot him as well. They dumped the bodies in the bunker and concocted a story about being burned over to cover up Pendleton’s death.”

“Sounds like their timetable to get back to that bunker has as much to do with erasing evidence as it does recovering the gold.”

“And now erasing evidence involves erasing us.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone when you got back?”

Bo stared at the ground. “Maybe I should have. But it wasn’t that easy.”

“Why?”

“Caleb threatened my sisters.” Images of Jamal on the sidewalk flashed through his mind. Bo shook his head. “They the last family I have. He knows what college they go to. Where they live.” Bo stood and dusted off his pants. “We best keep moving.”

“I know there’s little chance Elle survived. If we continue on for that lake, they might intercept us.”

“Think of it this way—if Captain Westmore is alive and they find her—”

“She’d think they came to help. She’d be captured.”

Bo cleared his throat. “Or worse.”

Silas stepped across the rocky creek bed. “About two, three miles now, you think?”

Bo brought a hand to his side and sucked air through his teeth. “Sounds about right.”

“You going to be able to make it?”

“Sure. Sure.”

“Make sure you drink enough.”

“Hold this.” Bo handed him the gun and pulled out his canteen. He shook the nearly empty bottle and tipped the last trickle of water into his mouth.

Silas offered his canteen, and Bo poured a little from it into his.

“Give yourself more.”

He did so and handed it back to Silas. “Thank you.”

Silas took a swig and slid the canteen back in its pouch. He offered the pistol back to Bo.

Bo waved a hand. “You hang on to it.”

Silas cinched it into the pouch beside the water bottle and started up the hill. “If anyone could’ve put that plane down and survived, it’s Elle.”

CHAPTER

33

E
lle fought the serotonin urge to wake with the glow outside her eyelids. But morning had come—and with it welcome warmth and the slogging feeling of little sleep. She sat up on the boulder, arching her back and stretching her shoulders, searching for a way to relieve the kinks and soreness that accompanied her evening upon exposed granite.

The sun rose, dressed in smoke, casting an otherworldly amber hue. She slid off the rock, her shoes landing atop large bear paw prints in the dust. She scanned the immediate area, reminded of her nocturnal visitors. If she hadn’t felt the urgent need to relieve herself, she likely would have remained on the rock for another hour to ensure they were gone. But nature was calling, and so she circled the boulder to find a reasonable spot.

She walked down to the lake’s edge to rinse her hands. Her head pounded when she leaned forward. She lifted her hand to her brow, returning with spotted blood on her fingers. The water rippled with a building breeze. No sight of Jumper 41 remained, leaving her nothing she could salvage. No supplies, no radios, no rations.

Elle’s stomach twisted and grumbled. She needed food. Ridges bordered the lake, giving the oversized pond a basin shape. Reasoning that the best way to get fed was to get found, she retraced her headings before putting the Twin Otter down. She’d flown in from the north and east. She oriented herself halfway between the flight path in and the rising sun.

That’s my way home.

It was one thing to backpack on an established route. Another to trail blaze through dense forest and over rocky terrain with no food in her system. She checked all her pockets, feeling in the small coin pocket of her pants something like a folded paper. Elle threaded her fingers in and felt the soft texture of a leaf. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled the scent of mint. Visions of Silas flooded her mind. She bit off a part of the leaf and sucked on it to make it last. It took her mind off of the hunger but made her heart ache.

She wiped her eyes. She needed to stay focused.

If she stuck to a northeasterly route, there was a chance she’d come across her jumper crew. The wind kicked up, swaying branches in erratic patterns. The sky overhead darkened and rumbled. Elle wove between manzanita bushes and skirted along the narrow shore of the lake. The farther she could get while she still had energy reserves, the better.

———

A piece of shale broke off in her hand. She tossed it to the side and found a better handhold, pulling herself up to the ridge crest. The strong breeze cooled her skin through the portions of her clothes that were still damp from the day before. The terrain stretched out beyond with its rocky crags and undisturbed evergreen stands.

Strange seeing the familiar landscape again, but on foot this time.

She had flown over so many square miles of the Desolation Wilderness during the three long weeks searching for her father. Taxing her child-care resources, Elle took only the minimum breaks required by the FAA for sleep, and then she was back in the cockpit the minute she was eligible to fly. Exactly twenty-one days, and the last was the worst.

Turbulent, to say the least. The ground and sky married in mixed grays. The scattered wildlife she’d seen so often during prior flights—deer, antelope, coyotes, black bears—were nowhere to be seen. As though they knew a storm was coming. The berries and nuts they’d squirreled away to that point would have to suffice.

Snow was coming.

The National Weather Service had forecasted significant amounts of snow over the next week, as much as four feet overnight. Tower had advised against the flight. The Forest Service almost forbade her from further use of the aircraft. But Weathers stood in the gap, using all his weight to give her a green light for one last mission.

One last chance to find her dad.

During the first few days after his plane went missing, she’d flown directly over what she believed were his charted flight-route options. When those efforts produced nothing, she expanded her search of the Desolation Wilderness and spiraled out in an expanding orbit. Again, when the search came up empty, she elected to begin a comprehensive search method, thoroughly covering every topographic square on her map, beginning with her best guesstimates and crossing them off, one by one.

She remembered sitting in the cockpit that last day, the aircraft still on the tarmac. Rain flicked across the windshields. Wind shook the hull. She held the Desolation map in front of her. One hundred and sixty square miles, and she’d only comprehensively covered seventy of them. The first week she had tons of help. Everything from public agencies to private aviators and friends of her dad. But as the fourteenth day came around without any sign of her father’s aircraft, the passion to search waned, much like the media coverage surrounding his disappearance. Elle soon found herself as the lone pilot left.

“It’s just a recovery effort now, Elle.”

“You can’t keep up this pace. This isn’t a rescue mission anymore.”

“It’s time to accept that he’s gone.”

As she sat in the plane, preparing to take off, she’d traced her hand along the map. Creases and indentations scattered across it from the persistent checking and marking. She followed with her fingertips the red line marking her father’s last known flight path from the South Lake Tahoe airport. The line halted a portion of the way into the Desolation, the time of his last report to the tower.

What happened, Dad?

The weather had been clear the day he flew. Crisp, autumnal. The forest floor colored with the yellows, reds, and oranges of changing aspens and oaks that traced the mountain streams winding their way through the wilderness.

No lightning. No rain or snow. Winds were calm.

Had to be mechanical failure.

Dad was as diligent as any pilot she’d ever met when it came to preflight checks and preventative maintenance. He knew that Cessna in and out. Still, an old plane was an old plane. A sudden, unexpected mechanical failure could have put him in a tight spot really fast.

Elle used to chide him. “Vintage is great for old cars, Dad. Not for things that leave the ground.”

That final day on the runway, she circled her finger on the map around the end of the red line. What options would an engine failure leave him?

Lord, show me.

She studied the topo lines and the elevation markings. The terrain lifted from the paper in her mind. She imagined herself in the cockpit of his Cessna, seeing the lay of the land from a horizontal viewpoint and at a lower altitude than she could safely fly over it. She descended into a canyon and a small clearing opened to her ten o’clock. The narrowest notch the forest could possibly allow a pilot to limp in an aircraft and still walk away.

She blinked, her vision returning to the map in front of her.

Why hadn’t she seen it before? She’d flown over the area numerous times, but this tiny clearing, surrounded by craggy cliffs, insignificant enough to be easily missed from high in the air, now became clear when perceived from an imagined lower altitude—the altitude at which a pilot with engine trouble may have been forced to fly. She tapped the spot and nodded. It was her best, last shot.

Thunder rumbled. Elle rolled up the map and switched on the plane’s batteries. Lights and indicators glowed. She fired up the engines with a striking whine that fluttered into a chopping roar. She strapped her headset on and clicked the transmit button.

“Tower, Jumper 41 requesting taxi to runway one for takeoff.”

The rain turned slushy as she left the ground in South Lake. Static littered radio transmissions, the ridgetop repeaters already feeling the beginnings of the blizzard.

Elle relied on instruments and her knowledge of the heights and shapes of surrounding peaks, adjusting course according to the magnetic compass on the dash to keep on track with her father’s route. She skimmed the Twin Otter beneath the cloud cover, threading through canyons and chancing the lower altitude to come upon the point she’d seen in her head. The fog and rain fell thick, but the terrain emerged steadily, a granite-lined corridor, just as she’d pictured it. Somewhere at her ten o’clock, behind a blanket of swirling gray, there should be the small clearing.

She angled toward it. Thunder broke, this time close and violent. Pattering rain morphed into a hailstone barrage. Ice pelted the hull like gravel. Elle dropped altitude with no improvement, canyon sides and treetops now dangerously close. The lead-colored horizon blurred the line between ground and air, moisture seeming to rise from below as much as fall from above. Hot moisture blurred her eyes.

Dad.

Lightning flashed. Thunder rattled the plane. The location of the clearing grew further enshrouded. The storm pressed in, but she held her course. Moisture rolled down her cheeks. If she didn’t pull out soon, she’d be flying blind.

She set her jaw with stiff-lipped resolve, angling the yoke hard and swinging the Twin Otter around. She dove lower, weaving between jutting granite and towering sequoias. Tears flowed from her eyes. Sobs interspersed with mechanical movements from throttle to yoke. Visibility approached zero.

This was good-bye.

She pulled back on the yoke and climbed into the cloud cover.

The Desolation swallowed him. Winter had come.

———

A rainbow stretched in a circle between her lashes. Elle blinked twice, reverting her focus to the day at hand. The smell of burning wood dominated the air, the sky filled with smoke-formed thunderheads. She trudged upslope, small dust clouds rising beside her, eager to reach the peak of the hill she was on to attain a new vantage on her progress. Perhaps she would see the crew.

She hadn’t given up on finding her father after the last search flight that fall. She’d waited for the spring snowmelt, and when the creeks and rivers swelled, and the last bulk of the snow disappeared, she flew over the location she’d sought that last day of the search.

The clearing was there, just as she suspected. It was big enough to land a plane in an emergency, just as she’d imagined. And it was also completely and serenely untouched and undisturbed, without any sign of a crash or touchdown.

She resigned herself to her friends’ admonitions. She needed to move on. Regardless of the fact that no wreckage was found, she needed to “bury” him, to push aside the razor-edged fragments of his Cessna from her mind.

Elle flew back into South Lake that day knowing she needed to close the book on the search. There weren’t any tears that time. Only a stoic and stubborn acceptance that some things in life just weren’t fair.

Her lungs burned with the present effort of her hill climb. She propped both hands on her knees. Sweat dripped from her nose, coloring the dirt. Almost to the crest. She straightened, hiked to the hilltop, and a grand view opened before her—a verdant, sequoia-filled canyon bordered by granite and a smoky ceiling.

She knew this place.

Never from the ground, but she knew it.

Along the side of the canyon, at the place that would be at the ten o’clock of an airplane flying in from the opposite side, there branched like a tributary a small clearing nestled in the woods and enclosed by rocky walls.

Dad.

Something rent inside her, like a curtain separating hurt from hope. She shuffled down the hillside, soon leaping over stones and past bushes.