FIRE ON HIGH
“Fire On High” is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters and settings © Tigermark 2003-2018 unless otherwise noted. Request permission before using them, please.
The characters of Anatol Altaisokova and Melinda Altaisokova are my names for characters © Max Blackrabbit. They appear in this story with his permission. The characters of Brandy, Maxwell, Tonya and Zig Zag are also © Max Blackrabbit and appear here with his permission. Events and information relating to Tonya, Anatol, and their family are presented here, but are not to be considered canon to those characters or any other story but this one. ZZ Studios, and all characters associated with ZZ Studios, James Sheppard, and Marvin Badger © James Bruner and appear here with his permission. Although characters from and events referring to Zig Zag the Story appear here, this story is not canon to that one, and the author will disavow any knowledge of this story. Wanda Vixen © Chris Yost and appears here with his permission. Sabrina Mustidalae © Eric W. Schwartz and appears here with his permission. This story is not canon to Sabrina Online the comic, or Sabrina Online the Story, either. Matt Barstock, Angie Rockwell, Intermountain Charter, The Bitch, and her crew, and Jerry Kitt © Silver Coyote. See their story HERE. Gail Rutherford © me and is not canon to any other story involving ZZ Studios. Gabrielle Ryder and Jean LeBrun © Aslaug, from her Transitions stories. See them at her site, The Axe Shed, available from the links page. Aramis Dagaz is© his player and appears here with his permission.
Author’s Note: Lewiston, Maine’s airport, identifier KLEW, is actually uncontrolled. That is, it has no control tower. Poetic license was used for this story, so Alex and company talk with a control tower whilst aviating there.
Chapter 95
Searching, Pt. 1
It was after sixteen hundred when Alex pulled into the parking area for Old North Helicopters. Traffic had been a little hectic, so he’d decided to wait until he met up with Corrie to check in at his hotel. The parking lot was rather full, and the ramp still a bit empty. Alex had gotten a feeling earlier, and now it got worse. He hurried inside.
The room was full. Ben was at his desk, looking inscrutable as always. He was talking with a tall, slim ferret in a military flight suit. A couple of steps closer and Alex could make out the Civil Air Patrol emblems on the uniform. A volunteer auxiliary of the Air Force, CAP handled a great deal of the civilian search and rescue in the continental U.S. The organization had a well-organized cadet program for teenagers. CAP was usually called in when an aircraft was missing.
The room had gone quiet, almost like the first day he’d walked in several months ago. Alex eyed them all and walked up to Ben’s desk.
“What’s happened?” is all he said.
“Alex, this is Captain Tom Morris, Civil Aiyah Patrol. Corrie…is missing. She disappeahed off radar about twenty miles South of Seboomook Lake,” Ben stated, knowing Alex wouldn’t accept any talk arounds.
“Alex,” the ferret said, offering a paw. “Sorry you’re walking into this. Ben tells me you’re a pilot in the Reserves? It’s too late to launch a search today, but we’ll start at first light tomorrow. I’ll need a copilot and spotter, if you’re interested.”
Alex had taken all that in and processed it. He had one question first.
“ELT?”
“None received so far,” Capt. Morris stated. If there had been a crash, an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) beacon that can be picked up by special receivers and satellites was supposed to have gone off.
“Then I’m with you, Captain. Call me Ice.”
Alex shook the offered paw. Captain Morris answered with, “Mo. I have headphones you can use. We’ll be in a red, blue, and white Cessna One Seventy Two, November Papa Five One Delta. Dress warm, it’s supposed to be in the upper twenties by morning.”
Alex nodded. The ferret brought a radio up to his muzzle and called in.
“Pine State Base, Pine Air Five One.”
“Go ahead Five One,” the reply came.
“I have my spotter. We’ll launch on our grid from here at first light.”
After a short delay, the CAP search base replied. “Pine Air Five One, copy you have a spotter. Still no ELT. You are assigned to Grid Eight. Talk to you tomorrow.”
The ferret turned to Alex. “We’re all set. Grid Eight is along and left of her projected flight path.”
Alex managed a grim smile. “Good place to look, with the winds like they are. Meet at Oh six hundred?”
“Yep, I’ll see you then. Ben, call if anyone sees or hears anything,” The ferret said as he prepared to leave.
“Ayuh, thanks Tom.”
As the Captain walked away, Alex turned to Ben.
“Okay, what happened?”
Ben gave a sigh, looking down at his paws. “Corray took off this morning in ol’ Numbah Twelve, the hangah queen Huey you saw befoah. It’d just come out of repair and should have been good to go. She took a load of supplies up to the North side of Seboomook Lake and was on her way back. She was VFR and had called Portland for flight followin’ and traffic alert. They lost her transpondah, and then the secondary trace. Good thing is, we’ve heard no ELT. Bad thing is they don’t always work. Four of ouah othah choppahs have deviated to check that area and follow her course, but so fah nobody has seen anything. John Swiftclaw is flying a hunting pahty North, so he’s backtracking her route befoah going on. He won’t be back heah until tomorrow.”
Alex looked out the window. The sun was setting, peeking through the thickening clouds to the West.
“Will she be okay if she’s down in one piece? With the cold coming, I mean,” he asked.
“Shuah. I saw her take her survival bag with her.”
Alex nodded and thanked Ben. He then called his hotel and cancelled his room for tonight. He drifted over to talk with the other pilots, preparing to spend a long night.
# # #
Rex was pacing in front of his hangar. He’d returned from his afternoon activities to find Old North buzzing with activity. He’d managed to catch Steve, the bruin mechanic, outside.
“Hey Steve-O! What’s going on?”
The bruin fixed him with a hurried glance. “Miss Corrie has gone missing off radar. Ben wants all the maintenance records on his desk ASAP!”
The lion had thanked him and managed to walk over to his hangar. So apparently his little tinkering had worked all too well. If she had gone to Seboomook Lake or one of the camps even farther North, the forests there were very unforgiving of an autorotation. The lion began to feel sick. What had he done? What had he done!
# # #
Corrie was down to five hundred feet when she saw it. On her right, just where she needed to turn into the wind, a small clearing appeared. Likely a marshy area, it was just big enough for her to flare and set down…she hoped.
Down to three hundred, she was going to have to dump it in hard to keep from overshooting into the trees. One hundred feet and she was among the treetops and feeling the beginning of ground effect. She pulled back hard on the cyclic and collective and her forward speed fell to zero. She leveled the aircraft as she bounced hard on the skids and slid forward about fifteen feet. She stopped just short of a large tree that loomed over her. The rotor tips tagged some of the small branches, causing a rain of leaves and debris. That caused the blades to slow considerably, and soon she was able to put on the rotor brake and shut down the engine. Then all was still.
After getting her breathing under control, she shut off the switches and tried the main breakers. She couldn’t fly out, but if the radios worked she could at least let someone know where she was. The breakers popped back out as soon as she pushed them in. She opened the left main door and looked out. The area she’d come into was indeed marshy. There were some half-rotted downed trees she’d skidded across at the last. The low tangles looked like an invitation to a broken ankle.
She opened her survival bag and got out a multitool. She went to the battery bay and removed the cover. The smell of electrical ozone assailed her nostrils. The battery was intact, but the positive terminal stud was cooked, as was the piece of cable attached to it. The hold down clamps were askew and the nuts off the studs scattered about the compartment. In the bouncing around, the cable had gotten partially cut and shorted against the back of a support rib, burning the cable in half. Ben’d be lucky if any of the electronics survived.
As for the engine, Corrie surmised the throttle cable had either broken or come loose. With a disgusted snort, she put the cover back in place and went inside. Her survival knowledge said to stay with the aircraft. It would be easier to spot than her by herself. She decided to check the ELT. She might not have landed hard enough to activate it, and it would definitely let everyone know where she was. She’d run the circuitry test, but she’d not done the signal test, as it was only allowed around the top of the hour and she’d taken off at twenty till.
She pulled out her paw-held transceiver from her pilot’s bag. Its range was too short to call any ATC locations, but she could at least if the ELT was transmitting. Corrie sat down in the pilot’s seat and dialed in 406 Mhz. There was only static. She tried 121.5. Still nothing. She hit the activation button on the panel, but both frequencies remained silent. The ELT was battery powered, so it shouldn’t have been affected by the electrical system problem.
She got back up and went back to where the ELT was mounted. She found that it was her misfortune that the ELT was mounted and grounded to the same rib the battery cable had shorted across. The unit was fried.
“Bloody hell,” she muttered to herself. With a resigned sigh, she unpacked her survival bag.
# # #
Rex Richardson had gone home to his rambling, large house. The thought of the green and white Huey, with Corrinne aboard, in pieces among the pines and hardwoods of Central Maine kept haunting him. A half-gallon bottle of bourbon sat in front of him, with a significant amount now gone. He’d had enough to not only be buzzed, but pretty well drunk, and he showed no signs of slowing down.
“Dammit, what have I done,” he slurred to himself. The only light was from a small fluorescent light over the sink.
Just then, a brilliant flash of lightning stunned his eyes. It surprised him so much he fell over backward in his chair. Thunder crashed over him and rolled on into the distance.
Rex managed to get to his feet, grab the bottle and stagger to the front window. The rain was coming down in sheets, the wind pushing it nearly sideways. The lightning continued to flash, revealing the trees being whipped around. The lion blearily watched the storm, taking long pulls straight from the bottle. The thought ran through his whiskey-soaked brain of Corrinne wet, cold, injured, even dead.
As he wobbled on his feet, the only word that came to him was, “Shit.”
# # #
Alex had found a chair and ottoman to sleep on. It was still early evening, even though it had been dark for over an hour. Most of the Old North crew had stayed, including Ben. Several other local pilots, including another CAP crew, were going to launch at first light.
They’d pooled resources and Ben had called for dinner to be brought in. Some still sat talking around the coffee pot or the weather radar display. The pre-frontal line of storms was almost on them, with an area of rain for a couple of hours right behind. The storms were strong, with heavy rain, small hail, and winds up to forty knots forecast.
He was trying not to show it, but Alex was very concerned. Corrie was out there, down somewhere. Possibly hurt. Possibly cold, wet and scared. Or even…dead? He wasn’t sure whether it was just too much to even contemplate, or a reassurance from above, but he could still feel his connection with her.
The tiger realized that inaction was his enemy, so he thought about what needed done. The thought struck him that phone calls were needed. He got up and walked over to where Ben was watching the weather unfold. Without any preamble, he spoke.
“Hey Ben, has anyone called Corrie’s landlady? She was probably expecting her home for one last night.”
Ben looked up at him and nodded. “Ayuh, gave her a call just befoah you got heah. She’s prayin’ and that’s about all any of us can do until mornin’. You holdin’ up okay?”
Alex shrugged. “I’ve held vigil for missing pilots more times than I’d like to remember. First time I’ve ever done so when it was my girlfriend. With this weather coming in, I’m a bit…concerned.”
As if to punctuate his statement, the windows lit up with a brilliant flash of lightning, followed immediately by loud, booming, rolling thunder. Everyone in the room jumped. After a few seconds Alex continued.
“I still need to call Billy, but it’ll wait until after the storm.”
“Ayuh, don’t need a fried tigah on top of a missing lioness,” Ben replied.
Alex gave him a nod and went back to his chair to wait out the storm.
# # #
Corrie had made a bed for herself on the cargo floor of the old chopper. She’d had a foam pad and a sleeping bag in her emergency bag, Unfortunately, it was her Summer gear, as she hadn’t switched over to the Winter items yet. It would do, since the helicopter was intact, but it would be a little chilly by morning. She thought about making a fire, but with as marshy as the area was, that might prove difficult. With the storms forecast overnight, it would likely be way too wet by the time the cold air arrived anyway.
She had some trail mix and granola bars, plus a few survival meals. She had a gallon of fresh water, and a backpacker’s filter to make more, so she wasn’t under any immediate threat.
She’d heard a helicopter just before sunset. She’d grabbed a signal mirror and her paw-held radio and ran out across the logs into the clearing, but it was too far away and never came close enough for her to see it. She’d tried the radio but got no answer.
She was sitting in the dark, conserving her flashlight batteries. The dampness was slowly making her feel chilled. Then she saw the first distant flash of lightning illuminate the area. The lioness got up and made sure all the doors and windows were shut tight, then had a seat on her pad and sleeping bag. For the tenth time, she checked her cell phone. Like the other nine, it said no service.
It didn’t take long for the storm to arrive. The lightning had become more frequent and more intense. Then Corrie heard the wind in the trees around her, rising quickly from a low murmur to a howling gale. The thought crossed her mind of how many trees were around her, and how easily a wind like this could push them down on her. Then she heard the ping of small hail hitting the aluminum skin of the old helicopter. Then the rain, drumming and pounding like it would break the roof in any second. The rain was so heavy a few small leaks developed around the door and window seals.
The old Huey shuddered with the gusty winds. The sound of the rain outside was so loud Corrie covered her ears. She wrapped up in the sleeping bag and put a mylar survival blanket over her for good measure. After what seemed like an eternity, the rain began to slack off, and the thunder recede off into the distance. Now more of a gentle hiss, it would get louder as the winds shifted around and became fitful and gusty. She stayed cocooned in her bag, as she could tell the temperature was dropping. Somewhat warm and with less noise, she drifted off to sleep.
# # #
Billy was sitting at home, working on the application for an economic development grant that would finish paying for the replacement of the ramp around Helipro’s new building, as well as the driveway and other paving. He’d just finished the federal one that would pay for the new heliport pad off Taxiway Echo at Bluegrass. He had another one in mind that would get their office equipment and another that would pay the first year’s salary for three pilots. That would really help their bottom line for the startup costs. The tiger smiled as he realized it would be time to start looking for airframes soon.
Just then his cell phone buzzed on the side table. Knowing good news rarely arrived after hours, he checked the number.
Alex? Now why would he be calling, the tiger thought to himself.
Penny had just walked in the room wearing only a robe as far as he knew.
“You have to answer it to find out who it is, Cowboy,” she stated as she took a towel and began to fluff and finish drying her hair.
“Ah, yeah, answer it,” he said, more intent on her than on the buzzing phone.
She walked over, bent down, giving him a wonderful view, and then pulled his face up eye to eye with her.
“Later, Dear. Answer. Your. Phone!”
His eyes went wide. “Uh, yes, Ma’am.”
“Good answer,” she replied as she sat down on the sofa.
Billy clicked on the call, “Hey Alex! What’s up? Why the late call?”
The tiger’s eyes went even wider. “Uh, when was she due in?”
Penny’s ears perked forward, her gaze now focused on her husband. He saw the look and put the phone on speaker.
“Penny’s listening on speaker now, go ahead.”
Alex’s voice was a bit tinny, but clear. “They lost her radar trace around fourteen hundred. By the time everyone got notified, it was too late to start a search before dark. Ben had several flights still out, so they checked along her planned route as they came home, and one outbound checked it as he went. Nothing so far. No call, no aircraft, no ELT.”
Billy was in shock. Corrie missing? Penny looked horrified, too. He finally took a deep breath and responded.
“That’s…I can’t hardly believe it. How…how likely is it that she found a place to set down?”
Alex sounded certain in his response. “Corrie is exceptionally good at what she does. If anyone could find a place in all those trees, it’ll be her.”
“Okay…good. What can we do?” Billy inquired.
“What we always do when we have a missing pilot,” Alex answered. “Pray all night and search all day.”
“Always. You going to be part of the search?” Billy asked.
“Couldn’t keep me away. I’m riding with a CAP captain in a one seventy two, heading out at oh six hundred.”
Billy managed a smile. “You’ll find her, and she’ll be okay. Give us a call when you know something. I have a feeling we’ll be up for a while now.”
“Count on it,” Penny chimed in. “Be careful Alex. Good hunting.”
“Thanks, you two, talk to you soon. Bye,” Alex replied, ending the call.
Billy clicked off the phone and looked at Penny, all lascivious thoughts gone, feeling a bit lost himself. She patted the sofa beside her, and he got up and walked over. He sat down, and she pulled him close, cradling his head in her arms.
“Cowboy, she’s a tough gal. She’ll make it.”
“Oh God I hope so,” he replied. “It’d kill Alex to lose her after waiting so long to find her.”
Penny bowed her head and began to quietly pray. Billy joined in. It was all they could do for now.
# # #
Corrie was walking through dark, thick forests. This had begun just like her usual nightmare, but before the leering, hated voice could start, it had become very foggy. Now it seemed every other step brought her to a huge tree, looming out of the fog. She’d turned away so many times she had no idea where she was, or which direction was which. She’d lost track of how many times when another tree stopped her once again. She fell to her knees and began to sob.
Suddenly she felt a warm, gentle breeze on her shoulders.
“What’s wrong, Kitten?” it seemed to say.
Between sobs, she managed, “I…I’m lost, and no one knows where to find me.”
The breeze seemed to caress her, giving her comfort and strength. Then she heard another voice. Distant, but sure.
“It’s alright! I’m coming!”
It had sounded like Alex.
She awoke with a start. The rain no longer tapped on the old Huey’s fuselage. She peeked out from under the survival blanket, which she’d spread completely over the sleeping bag and her head. It was still full dark. The winds still buffeted the chopper from time to time and it was noticeably colder. She looked at the glowing dial on her watch. 0306.
With a snort, she dismissed the dream and tried to get comfortable. The situation hadn’t changed, but somehow, she felt better. Sleep then found her quickly.
End of Chapter 95