“North section of the Owl Creek Reservation,” Rude said. “Big place, not an acre of it worth shit. Maybe gas or oil underneath, nobody knows. We won’t let anybody go looking.”
“We? Are you Arapaho?”
“On my mother’s side. German on my father’s. Fifty-fifty.”
The mountains loomed ahead, great, hoary giants whose crowns touched the sky. This close they were absolutely forbidding, and Cork felt his hopes take a bitter slide.
The chopper began to bounce and to be shoved right and left.
“Lot of downdrafts and crosscurrents as we head into the mountains,” Rude said. “Can be tricky. You guys okay?”
“Yeah,” Stephen said.
Over his shoulder Rude said something to Cork, but all Cork picked up on the headgear inside his flight helmet was static. He said, “I’m not reading you, Jon.”
Rude made a sign for Cork to whack the side of his flight helmet. When Cork did, he could hear Rude again.
“Sorry,” Rude said. “I’ve been meaning to get that looked at. In the meantime, if you can’t hear, just give her a good smack.” He pointed toward a massive formation in the distance, three peaks joined by a ridge that created a wall across the wilderness. “Up there, that’s Heaven’s Keep. Found a plane in that area yesterday. We thought at first maybe it was the one your wife was on. Turned out to be an old crash site.”
Stephen said, “Why do they call it Heaven’s Keep?”
“Know what a keep is?”
“No.”
“The strongest part of a castle, the part that’s hardest for an enemy to take. Looks pretty formidable, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. But what about the heaven part?”
“I always figured it’s because it’s so high that it feels connected to heaven. That’s my explanation anyway. Now the Arapaho take a whole different approach. They call it Honoocooniinit. Basically means they consider it the devil.”
Below them the land was covered with evergreens and seemed to have become a turbulent sea full of deep plunges and sudden rises that crested in knife-edged ridges of rock. They flew over meadows too small for a plane to land safely where the snow lay drifted deep enough to bury a house. They followed canyons whose rugged walls would smash a plane into small pieces. Over it all loomed Heaven’s Keep, casting a long, dark shadow across the ice-white landscape.
“I’m heading toward the high plateaus just east of Heaven’s Keep,” Rude explained. “There are a few flat crowns up there above the tree line. It’s the most likely place for a plane with engine trouble to attempt a landing. It’s been gone over before, but I’m thinking that something buried in snow might be easy to miss. I’m taking my chopper in for a closer look.”
“What about the black box?” Stephen said.
“The flight recorder? Small charter planes aren’t required to carry them. Or a cockpit voice recorder either. And even if they had one, it wouldn’t be much help in the search, Stephen. What we’ve been trying to get is a signal from the ELT. That’s an emergency locator transmitter. In the event of a plane crash, the ELT is designed to send a signal that satellites can pick up and can be used to triangulate a position.”
“Have you got a signal?” Stephen asked eagerly.
“No. And there are two main possibilities, one good, one not so good.”
“Good news, bad news?” Cork said. “How about the bad news first.”
“That would be that the ELT was destroyed by impact forces.”
“The good news?”
“The plane landed softly enough that the ELT was never activated. That would mean there’s an excellent chance of survivors. That’s what we’re counting on, right?” He gave Stephen a thumbs-up and got one in return.
They climbed rapidly, and Cork’s stomach rolled at the chopper’s pitch. Then Rude leveled out and they were flying over a treeless snowfield.
“If the pilot had any knowledge of the area, he might’ve tried an emergency landing here,” Rude said. “It’s not ideal, but it’s better than most of the other options.”
They flew a hundred feet above the snow, crisscrossing the field, which was several hundred yards wide and nearly a mile long. There were mounds here and there that stood out above the level of the rest of the snow.
“Boulders,” Rude said. “But they’re easier to avoid than a forest full of trees.”
After half an hour, they’d found no sign of the plane and Rude banked north and east, heading toward the next plateau. He spoke over his shoulder again, and again Cork didn’t pick up a clear transmission. He thumped the side of his helmet without effect, then took the helmet off to bang it harder. The cockpit noise was deafening. He gave the helmet another whack, put it back on, and heard Rude clearly this time.
“Ham sandwiches in the basket back there, if you’re hungry,” Rude said. “My wife made them. Plenty to go around. Lemonade, too.”
Cork and Stephen hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Cork found the basket and distributed the sandwiches. There was only the one thermos cup for the lemonade, but Rude said hell, he didn’t mind drinking from the same trough.
They spent the afternoon flying over half a dozen sites, all above the tree line, all possibilities for an emergency landing though none was ideal, and all without a sign of the plane. When he realized fully the enormous difficulty of the situation, the lift of spirit Cork had felt at being involved in the search was replaced by disappointment. He saw the same dismal look gradually filling Stephen’s face.
The sun was being eaten by the western Absarokas when Rude said it was time to turn back. It would be dark soon. As the chopper curled toward Hot Springs, he said, “What I don’t understand is why the pilot, if he was having mechanical difficulty, didn’t turn north toward Cody or south toward Riverton. Both have airfields where he could easily have landed. Why try for Casper? I mean, assuming what those snowmobilers heard was your wife’s plane.”
“Maybe they were wrong,” Cork said. “Maybe the pilot did try for one of those airfields.”
Rude shrugged. “We’ve gone over both those corridors. Nothing. Hell, if he’d only been able to make radio contact, at least we’d have some idea where to concentrate our search. As it is, we’re kind of shotgunning it. Scattered, you know.” He glanced at Stephen and added heartily, “But we’re going to keep looking until we’ve covered every reasonable acre.”
The mountains became deep blue in the twilight, and the canyons between were like dark, poisoned veins. Though the sun had dropped below the rest of the range, it hadn’t yet set on Heaven’s Keep, which towered above everything else. Its walls burned with the angry red of sunset, and it looked more like the gate to hell than anything to do with heaven.
As they flew back over the reservation, the land was black and empty as far as the eye could see. Rude, who seemed to read Cork’s thoughts, said, “The rez covers thirty-four hundred square miles, an area the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The number of people who live here could just about squeeze into a double-decker bus. It’s empty, uninviting country. But to the Arapaho it’s home and it’s sacred.”
A short while later, Rude set the chopper down on the landing strip at the Hot Springs airfield.
“You two have dinner plans?” he asked. “My wife’s Italian. She makes pasta like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Thanks,” Cork said, “but we’ve got to get ourselves into a hotel.”
“Got one in mind?”
“Dewey Quinn recommended the hotel on the grounds of the hot springs.”
“A good choice. When you’re ready to eat, try the casino. Good food, good prices. Just a mile or so south on Highway 27. Can’t miss it.” He shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and looked west, where darkness had swallowed the mountains. “Look, there’s a lot of territory still to be covered. We’ll give it another go tomorrow and every day after that until we find them.”
“Can we go with you again?” Stephen asked. Cork was amazed at the hope still evident in his son’s voice.
“Absolutely. I’ll make sure Dewey knows that. Let’s rendezvous here at oh-seven hundred hours.”
