Ted McBride eased his plane dubbed the Albatross out onto the bumpy skirt of asphalt, aiming it toward the heavy hose that was lying on the surface of pavement. The hose strewn across the ground was stained red at its blunt end by retardant that caused it to take on the resemblance of a snake with its head lopped off. The call to report for air duty came in the early morning as he raked leaves in his front yard in anticipation of a leisurely day with nothing to do but kick back. He’d noticed the unmistakable pale, tan haze that hung over the mountains outside of town earlier in the morning, so it was of no surprise when the call came through, although he’d half expected the Forest Service to proclaim the fire a burn-out; a fire that would be allowed to take its course while burning the undergrowth in the old growth timber in the area. It had been years since that region was last visited by fire, and the underbrush was a tangle of dry duff and rotting wood matter, ripe and waiting to be consumed.
Burning out was a new procedure adopted by the Forest Service of late, allowing the lightning strike fires to run their course and burn themselves out, as long as they didn’t get out of hand. Nature had a way of controlling her own, and her methods of maintaining the forests it seemed to him, was appropriate in this case. Why he and the Albatross would be called into action puzzled him at first, until his superiors advised him that there was a pleasure balloon downed somewhere in the vicinity and six people’s lives might be at stake.
Ted brought the Albatross, so named because of her gray color and her appearance, pretty much resembling her namesake, as near to the beheaded snake as was necessary. The ground crew quickly attached the hose and filled the retardant receptacle in the plane’s belly. He waited until he had the all clear, and then idled the plane out onto the tarmac, getting into position to take his turn on the runway.
“Lockheed, November-one-five-five-six-three-November to tower, we’re ready for takeoff,” he keyed and spoke into the mike. Moments later his instructions came from the tower.
“November-one-five-five-six-three-November, you’re cleared for takeoff on runway one-niner,” came the familiar voice from the tower.
“Roger, Steve, one-niner it is,” Ted said into the mike as he taxied the plane out onto the runway and revved the engines.
The huge relic shook and rattled like an ancient city bus as it gained momentum to lift into the air. The Albatross was a Lockheed P2V, a Cold War-era maritime patrol airplane that had been converted to an air tanker for the duty of firefighting. The airplanes two 18-cylinder, supercharged Curtiss Wright radial engines rumbled like a gang of buzz saws gnawing at the air.
As the airplane prepared to take off, the whine of two Pratt & Whitney 134 boost jets cut in, and the airplane with its 2,500-gallon load of fire retardant began lumbering with a slow swagger like Rooster Cogburn down the runway.
Ted’s instructions were to make his retardant drop on the fire’s front, hopefully slowing it until the search and rescue teams were certain of where the balloon might have gone down in the thunderstorm the day before. The information given him indicated the balloon was believed to have gone down to the north side of Munds Canyon.
When he got into the air, he noticed two plumes of smoke, one in the old growth timber to the north face of Munds Canyon, and one curling up to caress the south rim, also in old growth. Beings his instructions were to make his drop on the leading edge of the fire as it advanced the plateau above the canyon, he put the plane in a shallow bank and turned it toward the rising column of smoke on that flank, but as he banked over the center of the canyon, a stripe of brilliant color caught his attention from the corner of his eye.
He pulled the plane out of the bank and flew farther up the canyon, returning to the point where he was distracted, searching through the window for the source of color he thought he detected as he made his turn. At first he didn’t see anything, other than the bright, striking hues of autumn leaves. Surely what had garnered his attention couldn’t have been merely a stand of brilliant maple and mountain ash, could it?
He was about to make a second bank toward his assigned drop when a flash of color again caught his eye. Retreating from his bank a second time, he flew straight up the canyon and banked for a turn, and then returned down the center of the wide, open chasm. Sure enough, there perched in the top of a gigantic fir tree was a multi-colored, stripped object appearing very much out of place.
Read the book Libby’s Ashes and follow the adventures of five strangers who become unlikely friends on a hot air balloon excursion.
