Bergin continued the turn and then pulled back the throttle and lowered a notch of flaps. It was like slowing an old pickup from third gear to second…not much improvement, but some.
Even if I had known exactly where Pasquale was, I doubt that I could have seen him. But Bergin did, and he dipped the wings sharply. “He’s right by that fence line.” He pointed, and I would have been more comfortable if he’d kept his hands on the yoke. I didn’t care where Pasquale was-he wasn’t the target of the search.
The radio crackled. “I think the site is about a mile or two to the northwest,” Pasquale shouted. “I’m going to make my way over there. Let me know after you take a look.”
Bergin peeled out of his tight turn and the engine sighed a few RPMs slower. He extended the flaps another few degrees. “Don’t want to go too slow,” he yelled at me.
I couldn’t have agreed more. “Or too low,” I said.
We flew west, methodically bucking the wind, until we’d passed the main residence of the Boyd ranch. It was set into the southeast-facing slope of a hill, with a fair-sized collection of outbuildings dotted around it.
“You’d think maybe the Boyds would have seen or heard something if a plane went down this close to their place.” Bergin shrugged and reached over to twist the throttle a quarter turn. “’Course, in this country, you just never know.”
He banked the plane nice and easy and we started back east, flying a mile north and parallel to our first pass. Back and forth, east and west, we tracked, moving a mile farther north each time, Bergin skillfully playing the wind.
On the fifth pass, when the Boyd ranch was hidden behind the long swell of a cattle-trail-scarred hill, Bergin suddenly stood the Cessna up on one wing, pushing in the throttle as he did so.
I had a view of ground out the left window and solid sky to the right. I braced myself and an inadvertent “Whoa!” escaped. Bergin ignored me and continued his tight spiral, throttle to the firewall and eyes glued out the side window. Finally he leveled off.
“Something down there, all right. Pretty good scatter.” He pulled the throttle back and we sank into the wind. Five hundred feet above the prairie, he added throttle, picked up some speed and turned steeply again, reversing course. “Right over the nose,” he shouted. “I’m going to make a pass with it on your side.”
The Cessna slowed and Bergin tracked a straight line, letting the aircraft gradually sink. What from on high had looked like flat prairie now took on form and threat. Ahead of us, a swell of rock and scrub rose up, and if Bergin knew what he was doing, we’d skim over the trees with about a hundred feet to spare. I concentrated on watching the ground.
The northeast side of the rise was littered with junk in a long scatter, as if a giant had dumped a load of metal trash that winked in the late-afternoon sunlight. As we passed overhead, I saw several pieces tumbling in the wind, to be grabbed eventually by stunted junipers or black sage.
“That’s it!” Bergin shouted and then added, “That looks like the aft fuselage and part of the empennage.” He pushed in the throttle and we headed east, giving ourselves room for another turn.
This time even I could see one large piece on the side of the slope, resting amid a welter of torn metal. It was white with a blue stripe running under what was left of the registration markings.
“One more,” Bergin said and turned to cross the site from north to south. “Let me see if I can make out the markings.” From a hundred feet away, it wasn’t difficult, even passing by at ninety miles an hour or more. “I can see the GVM,” Bergin shouted, and leveled out. “And that’s a Bonanza. Philip Camp was registered out of Calgary, Canada. A lot of times they don’t use numbers up there. Just letters. If my memory’s right, his registration was George Victor Michael Alpha.”
I slumped back against the seat. “Make another pass, just to be sure,” I said, making a circular path with my index finger.
He did, and this time I saw the scarring of the earth and, many yards from the initial impact, a blocky, solid piece of wreckage that could have been an engine. West of the tail section, there was a dense collection of junk that was probably whatever was left of the main cabin.
I keyed the radio. “Tom, do you see where we’ve been circling?”
“Affirmative. You’re about a mile or so northwest of me.”
“Closer to two or three,” I replied. “The wreckage is strewn across the northeast side of the rise. If you get here before dark, I don’t think you can miss it. We’ll orbit overhead until you’ve got things secured.”
“Ten-four,” Pasquale said. Bergin poured the coals to the Cessna and we spiraled upward, keeping the wreckage in the center of my field of view, off to the right.
I pulled the plane’s mike off the dash. “Posadas Unicom, four-niner Baker November Mike. Linda, pick it up.”
“Posadas, go ahead.”
“Linda, give Gayle a call and have her contact the FAA in Albuquerque and advise them that we have an aircraft confirmed down. Make sure Estelle is at the office. She needs to put together a team to reach the site. The easiest way will be from the Boyd ranch and then on some of the cattle trails into the northeast. If she can come up with a helicopter from the state police, that’s even better.”
“Ten-four, sir.”
“We intend to orbit the area until Officer Pasquale arrives and secures the site. Then we’ll be returning.”
“Ten-four, sir. Are there any other contacts I need to make?”
“Negative. We won’t have any casualty confirmation until Pasquale reaches the scene. But tell Estelle that we don’t see any sign of life down there. She’ll know what to do.”
“Ten-four, sir.”
I hung the mike up and sighed.
“Hell of a thing,” Bergin said. We hit a nasty stretch of choppy air and we remained silent until it settled down. “Sun sets, it might calm down some. Another thirty minutes or so.” He looked over at me. “I guess there isn’t much doubt about whose plane that is.”
“No,” I replied, and that’s all I could think of to say.
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun set behind the San Cristobal mountains, the wind died, and the Cessna settled down to its job of boring a smooth hole through the air. The sky mixed with the western horizon to a dark, rich purple. The terrain lost its definition, with the hilltops blending into the sky. I sat glumly and watched the transformation.
Jim Bergin had clicked on the autopilot and dialed in a sweeping, four-mile-diameter turn. A thousand feet above the brush, we droned our patient circles as Tom Pasquale did all the hard work. I couldn’t imagine stumbling across that arroyo-crossed, cholla cactus-studded landscape. One of the few consolations was that it was too early in the season for rattlesnakes.
At ten minutes after eight, the deputy reached the crash site. If I squinted hard enough, I could imagine that I saw the occasional flicker of his flashlight. A year before, Pasquale wouldn’t have remembered something so simple as a flashlight as he eagerly charged into action.
I keyed the mike of the handheld. “What have you got, Tom?”
A burst of static followed, and then a hard-breathing Pasquale said, “Registration is George Victor Michael, and I think it’s Alpha. Last letter, Alpha. It’s pretty badly torn.”
“Occupants?”
A pause followed, then, “I’m looking.”
“Try more to the northwest, as the hill rises. Over near a rock outcropping.” I closed my eyes and tried to visualize the terrain details, now replaced with the uniform charcoal wash of late evening.
“Ten-four.”
We completed another orbit before he came back on the air. His voice was strained. “Three-ten, I’ve found what looks like part of the cabin structure. I think it’s a section of the right side. One occupant is still belted into his seat.” The radio fell silent for a moment. “Apparently the left front seat was torn from the structure at some point. I don’t see it or any other occupants, if there were any. There’s…there’s a good-sized chunk of wing over to the left. Maybe over that way.”