“Scott, are you absolutely sure we have the right coordinates?” April asked thirty minutes later.
“If you recall, April, you wrote them down yourself and triple-checked them.”
“Oh. Yeah. And you’re sure the GPS is working, right?”
“It checks normal. Look, let’s start running the pattern again at right angles. We were probably just lucky the first time.”
Jim worked the boat back to the middle of the targeted coordinates and was lining up for a north-south search sequence when he once again pointed to the horizon.
“We’ve got company, boys and girls.”
“Shit,” Scott muttered, following his gaze.
“I think that one is Coast Guard,” Jim replied. “Good news is, they’re not aiming for us, at least not yet.”
Scott turned his attention to the lump under the tarp. “April, you’re not asleep under there, are you?” Scott asked.
“No.”
“Just checking.”
“I’m seeing zip, but I heard what you said. They’re not coming toward us?”
“Not yet.”
It was almost an hour later when April emerged from under the tarp, blinking and shaking her head. “Could a sunken airplane just drift away?”
“Well, you saw it before on the screen, April,” Jim said. “Did it look like it was well seated in the sand on the bottom?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know of any current around here strong enough to move it.”
“Let’s try the whole grid again, starting with a wider circle,” she said, and once more Jim began piloting the wooden boat to the starting position and noting the coordinates on his log. They were crossing the precise middle of the coordinates when she yelped something inaudible from beneath the tarp.
“What?” Scott asked.
“I said, hold it! Hold your heading, stop the boat.”
THIRTY SEVEN
SATURDAY, DAY 6 OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON 11:15 A.M.
Mike Sanborn wheeled his jeep around the parking lot for the second time in an hour, looking for the man he’d spotted on the first circuit.
He’s still there. Just sitting down the slope a bit.
He parked and pulled on the government jeep’s parking brake, remembering to grab his ranger hat from the right front seat before getting out. The chief ranger was always riding him about the hat, which he more or less hated. It should be on the top shelf of his bookcase on display, he thought, not on his head. He was too barrel-chested and stocky to wear the damn thing. He had to agree with the innumerable kids who’d pointed to him and his full, black beard and turned excitedly to their parents to announce that there really was a Smokey the Bear. It was a part of the act he could do without.
Mike closed the door behind him and stuffed his hands in his pants pockets to foster a casual air.
Not that it seemed to matter. The man he was concerned about had his back to the parking area and was just staring off to the northeast, where Mount Baker could be seen rising majestically into an unusually blue sky.
Mike turned to look for Mount Rainier to the southeast, forgetting that the Pacific Northwest’s preeminent volcano couldn’t be seen from where he was standing.
The hat threatened to blow off as a twenty-knot gust of wind tugged at it from behind. We did name it Hurricane Ridge, after all, he laughed to himself.
Mike stepped over the guardrail and moved down the slope until he was standing alongside the seated figure, a man in his late fifties, he figured.
“Hello there,” Mike said, keeping his eyes on the horizon, then turning to the fellow. “You ever see it so beautiful up here?”
The visitor looked up, recognizing the uniform and smiling thinly as he nodded. “Yeah. It’s something.”
“Mind if I join you?” Mike asked, sensing a deep sadness, his training as a counselor a decade earlier coming on-line.
The man was looking over at him again. “Am I not supposed to be here?”
“Oh, no,” Mike said quickly. “You’re just fine. The park’s open.”
“Then… if you’ll forgive my being antisocial, I’d really like to be alone.”
Mike felt himself nodding thoughtfully, but unwilling to turn away as he kicked at a small rock with the toe of his highly polished shoe. “Ah, you know, I realize I’m prying, but sometimes when someone is feeling really down, or… or when something’s really wrong, it can help to talk with a complete stranger.”
“Not today. Please. I appreciate your concern, but… not now.”
Mike nodded again, his eyes on the ground. “Okay. I, ah, wish you well, sir.”
The sound of an aircraft in the distance caught Mike’s attention and he hesitated, watching the way the man instantly looked in that direction, his eyes tracking the single-engine aircraft as it approached the ridge at a slightly higher altitude. He’s a little low, the ranger noted, recalling the rule that prohibited private pilots from flying closer than two thousand feet over a national park. But being a cop was the part of the job he never liked. So what if the pilot was a bit low, as long as he didn’t scare or endanger anyone? He would be the last ranger interested in turning him in, though there were a few of his brethren who would leap at the chance.
Mike turned and began walking back up the slope toward the jeep, but the rising buzz of the private plane caused him to turn again to watch the approach.
The plane was a low-wing version, and the seated man had unfolded his arms now as he watched it approach, his interest obviously high. Mike unconsciously grabbed his hat once again as another heavy gust blew across the ridge. The little plane was bucking the strong winds as well. He could see its wings rocking, its speed diminished against the headwind, almost crawling toward them with at least a thousand feet to spare vertically. The pilot guided it to within a quarter mile and then banked sharply to the right and almost immediately turned back, as if he wanted to get a close view of the parking area and the ridge from the left seat. Mike squinted hard as he looked at the aircraft, almost imagining he could make out a face in the left window.
The man was on his feet now, shading his eyes against the sun and looking at the plane as if he might recognize it. Mike expected him to wave, but instead the man sat back down as the aircraft turned and disappeared off to the north, folding his arms around his legs again as before, his body rocking back and forth gently.
Mike made a mental note to cruise by again in an hour. There was a dangerous drop-off very close by, and suicidal visitors were not unknown to the park.
Gracie closed the Cherokee’s throttle as she flared over the Sequim Valley runway, letting the main gear of the craft kiss its home landing strip again. She could see Rachel standing by the hangar. She ran the engine shutdown check as Rachel climbed up on the wing and opened the door.
“Gracie, thank you for coming, honey!”
“I think I spotted him on Hurricane Ridge. The color of the car seemed right. Only two in the parking area, and one was a ranger’s jeep. Someone was standing down the way a bit. I think it was the captain, and we need to get up there.”
Rachel backed away from the door as Gracie followed, closing the Cherokee’s door behind her and locking it before sprinting across to the car and climbing in the passenger side, then jumping out again before Rachel could get behind the wheel.
“You mind if I drive?” Gracie asked.
Rachel hesitated in thought and looked down at the keys, before thrusting them toward Gracie.
“It would be smarter right now. I’m pretty wrought up.”