Hard Ground (6 page)

Airzilla

Conservation officers around the state called the man Buck Rogers, but his real name was Ralph Haliday, and he had flown three combat tours in Vietnam and since 1970 piloted for the Department of Natural Resources. Haliday had innovated and perfected tactical flight techniques for law enforcement that had been adopted by states all around the country, but his accomplishments and competence aside, rumors were flying around that all CO pilots would soon lose their flight duties and become full-time ground pounders. There were numerous quiet bets, some of them substantial, that Buck Rogers would retire rather than be relegated to mere truck-and-foot patrols.

Elliot Rose, twenty-seven, with less than three years on the job, had no bets or opinions on Haliday and had never met the man, but this would change today. Rose's sergeant had pressured him into flying as Haliday's airborne spotter. “Easiest job ever. Old Buck can see deer turds from five thousand feet and tell you when they got dropped. Just sit back and enjoy the ride and the scenery.”

Elliot Rose had been disturbed his entire life by the prospect of flight. He'd flown, of course, but only when there were no other options. Now,
this
was one of those times. He'd avoided spotter duty for three years, but no more. Looking at the small, single-engine plane inside the hangar at the Escanaba airport, Rose felt his stomach roll. Some smartass had painted
Airzilla
in gold script on the side of the plane.

“You Rose?” a gravelly voice asked from the shadows.

“Yessir,” Rose answered automatically.

“I ain't no goddamn sir,” a rotund, red-faced, gray-haired man snapped at him. “I'm Haliday, an officer just like you.”

“Yessir, I mean . . . I know.”

“Afraid to fly, Rose?”

“No, I just don't care much for it.”

“Fair enough,” Haliday said. “I like mitigated candor. So why'd they pick you?”

“Sergeant Brown thought I should see night ops from topside.”

Haliday grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “Cool; this will be a memorable night, Rose. First time always is. Ain't a puker, are ya?”

“Not on boats anyway.”

“Boats ain't birds. Your sarge go over the tactical plan with you?”

“Five trucks, ten officers. South and east Marquette Counties, east Delta, west Schoolcraft, finishing down in the Garden.”

Haliday chuckled. “Finishing. I like that. You know those douchebags down to the Garden, the DeRoche brothers?”

“Know
of
them. I've done some fish patrols down there.”

“Open water or ice?”

“Both.”

Haliday smiled. “I always save my A game for the Garden clowns,” the pilot said and began walking around the plane, looking at it, gently touching it in places, almost like a lover's gentle caress, like the damn thing was a living creature, a favored pet, or something. Rose found it creepy and looked away.

“Got your parachute?” Haliday mumbled over his shoulder.

“No,” Rose said. “Why?”

“Funnin' ya, Rosey,” Haliday said and handed him a webbed harness of some kind. “You don't need no damn chute with Buck Rogers and
Airzilla,
son. I always land what I take off. Go ahead and put on your harness and climb in first. You'll be right behind me. You get the big windows, which we'll leave open for the duration.”

“What's the harness for?” Rose asked.

“Egress infrastructure,” the pilot said, pushing him up. “Haul your butt up there, Rose, and remember, in the sad and improbable unlikelihood we have to get out fast, your port window pops out. Just grab the red strap on top, kick the red mark at the bottom, and out she'll pop, no sweat.”

They strapped into their seats, and Haliday started the engine and immediately taxied out of the hangar. “DNR Air One, VFR. Runway, tower?”

“Runway Three Six, DNR One, wind three three zero at six knots, clear to runway.”

Haliday raced the plane across the tarmac, and Elliot Rose felt like everything was happening too quickly.

As they neared the runway, Haliday radioed the tower, “DNR Air One approaching runway three six.”

“You are cleared for takeoff, DNR Air One. Give 'em hell out there tonight.”

“Damn betcha and roger that, tower,” Haliday said, then turned onto the runway, lowered the flaps, and slammed the throttle forward.

The power of the little plane's single engine caught Rose by surprise. The plane rolled a short distance and jumped sharply off the runway. Haliday said, “Flaps up, gear up,” and banked hard in a climbing turn as he zinged past the tower, saluting as he passed. “Off we go into the wild blue yonder,” he added over intercom. “Man, I
love
this shit! Let's rock and roll, Rosey!”

Climbing steadily northward, they leveled off at four thousand feet. The sun was sinking in the west. “Two One Oh One, DNR Air One is airborne, northbound. All you girls ready down there?”

“Air One, we're on stations, DNR Two One Zero One.”

Haliday keyed the intercom. “Hey, nav, you got all the call signs?”

No response. “Hey, Rosey, tonight you're my nav, copy?”

“Uh, roger, copy,” Rose said.
Nav?

Haliday laughed out loud, almost gleefully. “Roger? Attaboy, Rosey. Good on ya. Now, let's us go kick some badasses.”

They spent two hours over Marquette County and saw nothing suspicious. Rose was amazed by the view, but more by Haliday, who talked patrol trucks down lanes and trails only he seemed to see. It was like he had another dimension of vision from above and the omniscience of God.

Moving south, Haliday radioed Sergeant Brown. “Two One Oh One, we're moving into Delta County. Marquette sure was ugly quiet. Must have us an unprecedented outbreak of lawful behavior.”

“Roger, Air One.”

“I don't see anything quickly here, we're going to nose on down toward the Garden, copy?”

“Sounds like a plan, Air One.”

“Who we got in the Garden, nav?”

“Pedretti and Vairo, Davey and Carter.”

Haliday chuckled. “Ass-kickers one and all. This should be a hoot. Where they at now?”

“Pedretti and Vairo are supposed to be by Stable Creek, and Davey and Carter are somewhere up on the grade.”

“Okay, switch to our tac freq and tell them to put one vehicle at Hiram Point Trail and the other on County Road 436 below the double ninety-degree turn with County Road 435. No need for them to call in position.”

Rose switched to the tactical radio frequency and gave the two teams their orders. It wasn't easy, and for some reason he found himself choking on words, but when he was done, Haliday said over the intercom, “You were born to this shit, Rosey. I ain't seeing diddly squat up this way, so we're gonna press south.”

Haliday suddenly began talking in a strange tone of voice. “First time I had to put a bird down was in pilot training at Harlingen, that's down in the unshaved armpit of south Texas. Instructor had a coronary just as our hydraulics went south. Normally, we both woulda punched out, but he passed out, and I couldn't leave that sonovabitch up there alone, and I couldn't get the asshole to talk, so I declared an emergency, swung the bird toward the field, got her lined up on final, and both fucking engines flamed out. It was like flying a flagpole with graham crackers for wings, aerodynamics of a fucking brick, but I damn near got her to the hard top. I landed her in a plowed field filled with rattlesnakes and horned toads. Pilot was already dead, but I didn't know that till we were down. No fire. Mangled the bird some, but I dragged his ass out, and the meat wagons got to us quick-like. No big deal except for him, I guess, but what could be better than dying doing what you love most, next to sex, eh, Rosey?”

Elliot Rose felt his sphincter tighten. “Uh . . . I guess?”
Oh, man. I don't want to hear this shit.

“My first tour in Vietnam I drove a Misty FAC, a hot and temperamental F-100. Reliable enough, but tricky; had to stay ahead of the power curve with that little fucker. Then some fuckhead Charlie with a popgun put a lucky fricking round through my hydraulic line on final approach. Hell, I even saw the damn tracer. Had to belly that mamu in, but they fixed her up, and she flew again, no big deal.”

Just get this night over with and get us back on the ground.

“My second tour I was driving Thuds, Republic F-105s, great old iron-horse birds, well past their prime and not worth shit at high altitude, but great down on the deck. I was out of Takhli in northern Thailand. Got hit by triple A near the old Dien Bien Phu, cripped my ass over into Laos, landed on a road the goddamn NVA and Pathet Lao were building toward a hush-hush CIA station on a mountaintop. The CIA boys and their little Hmongs come to my rescue. That bird got torn up for scrap metal by the CIA and locals. Ass-end of the world, that place. Take my word for it.”

Elliot Rose did not want to hear anymore, but Haliday was on a roll. “Aren't we getting close to the Garden?” Rose asked.

“Nah. I just want you to relax, Rosey. My third tour was also in Thuds, Wild Weasel two-seater, our job to go in ahead of the strike force and try to get the bad guys to shoot their SAMs at us so the gaggle could come in when the enemy was out of ammo. Sort of like tonight. We hit us the fucking jackpot one night. Frickin' secondaries all over the frickin' landscape, it looked like the surface of planet Mercury below us, shit cooking off all over the place, flak all around us, and goddamn if a flak fragment didn't hit my GIB smack in his plastic hat, I shit you not. The bird got hit numerous times but kept flying, and I took her back to Laos, hooked up to a tanker, and we siphoned his fuel directly through us until he got us over the Fence, and I put her down hard at Naked Fanny. Two hundred or more holes in the bird, but my Guy In Back got a chunk in the head. He survived, sort of. Lost part of his brain, and now he makes sounds like a baby deer and drools like a Newfy, poor bastard.”

Jesus, what is his problem?
“Are you trying to tell me we're gonna crash?”

Haliday laughed. “Hell no, Rosey, au fricking contraire, I just want you to understand that hard flyin' and hard landings don't have to be lethal.”

“What about the men who were with you?”

“Bullshit. Crashes didn't get them boys; chance got 'em both, bad ticker and a bad-luck frag. You got to listen closer, son.”

Rose gulped, couldn't find his voice.

“Here's the deal, Rosey,” the pilot said over the intercom. “The ­DeRoche brothers have a place in the swamp near Three Humps. They run all their illegal shit out of there. Place is on a finger ridge surrounded by a black spruce swamp. I thought we'd drop down, say howdy to those boys, show them we can be real neighborly.”

Haliday's voice was calm, rational, matter-of-fact, no big deal, but beneath the chummy facade, Elliot Rose sensed hard steel and pent-up anger.

The DeRoche brothers, Rose knew, were the Garden Peninsula's worst human malfunctions—outlaws whose operations reached to Chicago, Detroit, and even Cleveland. Their specialty was fish and dope with rumors they were also wholesaling illegal venison. The four brothers kept to themselves, had seldom been pinched, and what the department knew of them was largely secondhand and hearsay, neither of much value in getting good warrants, much less making unimpeachable cases for a court.

Dark now, stars above, and the sparsely populated Garden Peninsula was largely black below them, a few lights in Garden Village visible to the west.

“Two One Twenty-one, Air One, blink your headlights once.”

Rose saw headlights flash below them.

Haliday radioed, “You know the back road into the DeRoche camp?”

“Negative,” CO Tom the Boss Davey radioed back.

“Well, drive about a hundred yards from where you're parked now, and you'll see two giant birch trees in a tag alder line. Pull up to the easternmost tree, and you'll find an old tote road directly behind it. They don't use it much and usually come into their camp off the grade. The tote will take you right into their camp. I walked it last week. Good and hard, no water hazards or sand. Get your two trucks on that road and wait for our signal.”

“Air One, what signal?”

“You'll know it when you hear it,” Haliday said, chuckling. “I'm guessing thirty minutes from now, give or take.”

“Two One Twenty-one copies.”

“Two One Thirty-two copies,” another voice said. Vairo.

“What's up?” Elliot Rose asked. “I don't remember this being briefed by Sarge.”

“This here's our deal, nav, not your damn sarge's—no offense to Brownie.”

“How can it be our deal when I don't know what we're doing?”

“Don't be no whinging nitpicker, Rosey. I'm gonna make you almost famous.”

“I don't want to be almost famous,” the backseater said on the intercom.