“That’s right,” Frank said. “It’s supposed to be high winds, rain, sleet, maybe even some snow. They say it’s going to hit late tomorrow afternoon. If you’re flying, you should be okay. I was thinking that if you were driving from Coos Bay you might get caught in it driving home over the mountains.”
I’d rather get caught by the storm driving over the mountains then flying over them, Jake thought mildly. “Thanks for the warning, Frank,” he told him. “I’ll look into this. If I have to cancel because of weather, I’ll give you a call back. If I don’t call back, we’ll be there at zero-nine-hundred tomorrow. Sound good?”
“Sounds good, Jake,” Frank told him. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again.”
“Me as well,” Jake said. “Oh ... and Frank?”
“Yes?”
“Please keep this meeting discrete. If we show up there tomorrow and there are a bunch of people waiting for us, particularly media people, we would likely be inclined to pass on the meeting and take our business elsewhere.”
“We will be discrete, Jake,” Frank promised. “You have my word.”
“Very good,” Jake said. He said goodbye to Frank and then reset the phone. He dialed nine again and then punched in a number he had committed to memory during his last temporary residential stay in Coos Bay.
“North Bend Airport operations,” a voice answered. “This is Guy. How can I help you?”
“Hey, Guy,” Jake greeted a man he had talked to dozens of times but had never actually met in person. “Jake Kingsley here.”
“Jake!” Guy greeted warmly. “What’s the word, my man?”
“Weather is the word,” Jake told him. “I’m planning a hop to Portland in the morning but I just heard there might be some nastiness coming in. What’s the poop on that?”
“Yeah, there’s a pretty good storm rolling in out of the Gulf of Alaska,” Guy told him. “It shouldn’t hit us here in the bay area, but it’s going to pound the hell out of northern Oregon and southern Washington.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Guy confirmed. “We’re talking snow and icing conditions with high winds over the coastal mountains; rain, sleet, and likely some snow in the Portland metro area. Extremely high winds—up to eighty knots, they say—through the Columbia River Gorge.”
“That sounds a bit disconcerting,” Jake said. “What’s the timeline?”
“It’s still well offshore,” Guy said. “It’s forecast to make landfall around thirteen hundred tomorrow. Should make it over the mountains to Portland by fifteen hundred.”
“Okay,” Jake said, nodding. “I should be able to stay ahead of that, especially if I fly south through the valley before cutting back over the mountains. What’s the forecast for the coastal regions before thirteen hundred?”
“The low-pressure system might throw some decent wind at you starting around eleven hundred for the north coast,” Guy said. “South coast should be cold but calm. All in all, as long as you bust ass out of Portland by noon, you should have visibility greater than twenty and nothing but scattered clouds around twelve thousand.”
“That sounds doable,” Jake said. “Thanks, Guy.”
“No problem, Jake. Have a good flight.”
“Will do,” Jake said.
He hung up the phone and walked back over to Celia, who was still picking at her salad. “Looks like we’re in business,” he told her. “They have a Gibson model 24 listed for twenty-five hundred bucks and they’re willing to open up the shop at nine o’clock to do some business with us on it.”
She nodded. “That’s good news,” she said. “At least I’ll be able to get my hands on a new twelve-string. What time do we need to leave?”
“We need to be wheels-up by seven-thirty at the latest,” he said. “A little earlier if you want to grab a little breakfast in Portland before we hit the store.”
“Can we grab breakfast after?” she asked.
“I’d rather not,” he said. “There’s a storm moving into the Portland area tomorrow afternoon. The sooner we head back to Coos Bay, the less likely we’ll be caught by it.”
“A storm? What kind of storm?”
“The usual for this time of year in this part of the world,” he said. “It’s a typical winter storm out of the Gulf of Alaska. Maybe a little stronger than most. No big deal, as long as we’re not trying to fly through it.”
“All right then,” she said. “Breakfast before music shop. Will anything be open on a Sunday morning that early?”
“I’ll take you to that same little place I took Laura,” he promised. “They make a really good bloody Mary, I’m told.”
“Bleah,” she said sourly, sticking out her tongue. “I think I’ll pass on the bloody Mary. It would go against the vow I made this morning to never drink again.”
Jake chuckled. “I’ve made that vow a few times myself,” he said. “In any case, if we’re doing breakfast, we’ll need to be wheels-up by six-forty-five, which means we need to be out of the house and on the way to the airport by six so I can fuel up and file a flight plan.”
“That is insanely early, but I’ll be ready.”
“I know you will,” he said, and then glanced at the clock on the wall. “And now, it’s about that time.”
“Yep,” she said with a sigh. “Back to the grind.”
Celia did not talk much on the flight to Portland and Jake did not try to encourage her. It was still dark when they took off, but by the time they were at altitude and flying over the coastal mountains, the sky had lightened with the coming dawn, casting an eerie, yet beautiful red glow over the western horizon.
“It’s true what they say,” Jake told her.
“What’s true?” she asked.
“Red skies at night, sailors delight, red skies at morning, sailors take warning.” He pointed out the left-side window. “That is one red-ass sky and we know there’s a storm moving in.”
She looked at the glow for a few moments. “It is pretty,” she said. “Is there really a scientific basis for that saying?”
“There actually is,” Jake said. “At least there is in the mid-latitudes. The red sky in the morning means the rising sun is shining on moisture-bearing clouds off to the west. Since most weather in the ocean regions moves west to east, that means we’re looking at the eastern edge of a storm that is coming right towards us.”
“I see,” she said. “And the red sky at night?”
“That means the setting sun in the west is shining on those moisture bearing clouds to the east. Once again, since the weather moves west to east it means those moisture bearing clouds are moving away from us.”
“Interesting,” she said, nodding as she thought about it. “Where did you learn that? Is it something they taught you in flight school?”
“No,” he said. “Basic meteorology is a big part of ground school, but mostly focuses on cloud formations and rain patterns and winds instead of old sailor lore. It was actually Nerdly who told me about the red skies thing. I asked him about it one day and he found the answer for me in some database he got to through CompuServe.”
“Really?” she asked. “He got on the computer and found some obscure article about meteorology in a database somewhere?”
“Yeah. Kind of cool, isn’t it? He says that in a few years everyone will be connected to a big global web of computers and that basically the entire sum of human knowledge will be at anyone’s fingertips.”
“The entire sum of human knowledge?” she asked, raising her eyebrows a bit. “And all in the next few years?”
“That’s what he says,” Jake said. “And get this ... he says that it won’t be the access to the entirety of human knowledge that gets people to sign up for all this and make it work, but the availability of free porn.”
“Free porn?”
“Free porn,” Jake said. “Apparently there is already a bunch of it available through CompuServe and some of the other services they’re coming out with, but as this collection of computers grows, the porn collections will ‘proliferate exponentially’—as he puts it—and become as easy to find as typing whatever kink you happen to be into in a search box.”