Finding Jennifer Hollings

Chapter One



Jennifer Hollings parked her five-year old Honda CRV at the end of the road.  An exaggeration when called a road, the rough, gravelly, seventeen mile, two cow-path byway was intended at the end of the 19th Century for mule-drawn ore wagons.  The remnants of the old wagon road finished at the edge of a deep wash.  Surrounded by fifty-plus miles of Sonoran Desert in any direction, Jennifer loaded her backpack with three 24 ounce bottles of water, a small Mini-Maglite, two Granny Smith apples, two whole grain bread and sliced roast beef sandwiches and a package of Twinkies in the predawn darkness. She’d decided the two mile walk to the old mine site would burn enough calories to afford the sweet.  Arranging everything in the backpack to ensure the Twinkies survived undamaged, Jennifer added her camera bag and wiggled into the backpack straps.



Ready to go, she lifted her camera strap over her head, securing her prized Canon EOS 7D digital SLR camera with its 28-135mm kit lens close to her body.  Jennifer loved the 18 megapixel camera body and hated the kit lens.  She preferred a longer, faster lens but her meager salary at the local newspaper prevented the purchase.  As a beginning photographer/writer, copy person and maker of the morning coffee for anybody that wanted it, Jennifer’s skimpy paycheck barely covered her living expenses.  She skipped meals and saved loose change to buy gas for her desert photography trips.  So, the kit lens had to do, and she concentrated on composition, detail, and lighting to compensate.  Her plan this morning included using the hike to catch a desert critter or two framed in her camera lens and reach the mine site as the morning sun created long shadows on the landscape.  The old buildings would standout like lonely pillars of a past time.



Jennifer loved the desert.  She knew the silent, seemingly unoccupied setting was filled with silently struggling vegetation hiding any number of ominous creatures.  Snakes, scorpions, and an occasional tarantula lurked in the sparse grasses and green barked Palo Verdi brush while Giant Saguaro cactus stood like soldiers guarding her path, arms held out in welcome.  She loved the desert, but had also learned enough about it to respect its unseen dangers.



Taller than average at five-foot-nine with a slim build, she enjoyed hiking in the cool of the morning and a thrill of anticipation rose inside her anticipating, the coming adventure.  Tying up her crimson hair with a cotton scarf to keep it out of her eyes, she dropped into the wash and climbed up the other side, impatient to follow the remnants of old wagon road to the mine site and its abandoned structures.  The old buildings would make a dramatic backdrop for her photographical creations. It was spring and the desert bloomed in proliferate color contrasting deeply with its normal earthy tones.  Backpack laden, Jennifer hiked through the growing heat enjoying the smells and sensations of crimson Ocotillos, white and yellow flowers peeking from the tops of Saguaros and watching the antics of geckos racing through the hot sandy soil.  The desert thrilled her, its empty landscape from a distance contrasted oddly to its abundance close up.



The gravel filled trail she followed climbed upward along the rocky contour of an ancient volcano cone, one of many that dotted the desert floor.  Jennifer considered herself desert savvy, seasoned in a variety of flora and fauna that eked out an existence in sometimes severe conditions.  Summer temperatures routinely reached one-hundred-twenty in the scarcely available shade.  This day, Jennifer knew it would barely reach ninety.  Her pace was slow and steady, conserving energy as the sun peaked over the horizon and began its daily travel across a cloudless azure sky.  She also considered herself tough; once allowing a traveling sidewinder rattlesnake to slither across her booted ankles while she clicked her Canon following its movements.



By seven a.m., after an hour of walking, Jennifer reached the half-way point, a small saddle between two pillars of eroded volcanic chimneys that looked, from afar, like two stubby fingers reaching for the sky.  From the saddle, she could see the mine a mile in distance to the west and more Sonoran Desert below her extending miles to the South.  Somewhere out in the blowing dust, marked only by rusting steel posts, but at least several miles away, lay the U.S’s. southern border with Mexico.  The border was like a sieve, with a partially built fence, but mostly guarded by technology and under-manned Border Patrol Agents, a thin barrier to unrelenting illegal immigration and drug trafficking.  The area around her was barren and far from any population center on the Mexican side and she hadn’t heard of any problems in this locale.  Besides, she reasoned, the newscasters only showed activity at night.  She had made this hike numerous times without seeing a soul.



Jennifer found a convenient rock outcrop and rested.  She dragged out one of the bottles of water and surveyed the desert around her while she hydrated.  Her eyes drank in the scene until a stately mule deer buck stepped out of the coulee below and looked up the hill trying to decide if Jennifer was a danger.  Her heart skipped a beat in excitement as she slowly brought her Canon up, turned it on, dumped the lens cap and located the deer in her view finder.  The buck’s heavy antlers framed in her viewfinder, it stood for a couple of still shots before sensing peril.  Jennifer followed its stiff-legged, bouncing escape shooting until the fleeing animal disappeared.  Excited with her first shots of the day, she had reviewed the first five pictures when she saw what had made the deer bolt.  Across the canyon, somewhat higher than where she sat, the picture included a flash of light, similar to the sun bouncing off a mirror.  It startled her.  She looked up from her camera and starred at the spot, certain that in her many trips to the old mine; she’d never before seen light reflected from the boulder piles across the coulee.  She brought up the camera with its less than perfect kit lens and swept the hillside, but the naked boulders revealed nothing, no movement, no reflection; only desert rock.  Her mind was still puzzling when her head seemed to explode in pain and the ground came up and slapped her in the face.  Her face in the desert sand, she didn’t hear the reverberation of the gunshot echoing in the canyon.







Hector Fuentes had a splitting headache brought on by an excessive number of tequila shots washed down by homemade beer brewed by his amigo Alejandro.  His rotund stomach rumbled and he suffered from a first-class hangover including a case of the shakes.  Having no one else to blame but himself, he silently cursed Alejandro while pressing the barrel of his Russian made, suppressor-equipped Kalashnikov AKMS into his aching forehead.  Hector was supposed to be watching the desert for anyone who might see their illicit activities.  Instead, he sat crouched against a rough granite slab for nearly an hour, not bothering to survey the landscape until he heard Alejandro approaching.  He unfolded the butt stock, cursing silently that he’d have to be alert.  Reluctantly he rose and looked out between the rocks that concealed his lookout spot.  It was then he spotted the girl.  She was sitting on a boulder across the ravine and he’d completely missed her approach.  He studied her through his rifle scope until she suddenly looked in his direction.



“Shit!” he mumbled to himself.  She looked tall, slim and quite a pretty senorita and he hated to shoot her, which is what his orders said.



“Mi amigo!” Alejandro exclaimed behind him, “who is she?”



“How the hell should I know?  She just appeared.  She must have spotted us.  It looks like she’s taking picture of our lookout.”



“Shoot her, or the jefe will have our asses!”



“She is but a young senorita,” Hector argued.



“Shoot dammit!”



Hector could put most of a clip into a five-inch circle on any target within five hundred yards when he was rested and not hung-over.  That day he could feel the alcohol induced tremor in his hands but the girl was much closer; he estimated two hundred yards, two twenty-five at maximum.  He held his breath, centered the crosshairs in the AKMS’s telescope sight on the girl’s forehead and slowly let his breath out as he caressed the trigger.  The barrel of the rifle jumped, expelling its deadly, controlled-expansion 7.62 millimeter bullet and recoiling into his shoulder as he watched the girl drop out of sight.



“Got her!” he exclaimed.



“You better check and get rid of the body,” his comrade mumbled.  “Dump her in that old mine shaft.”



The two men bounded out of the hideout with Hector carrying the AKMS slung loosely over his shoulder and Alejandro with an ancient military version of the Model 1911 Colt .45 caliber automatic ready.  It was old and badly worn, but deadly in close quarters or for a kill shot.  Alejandro was determined to ensure the girl was very dead and the body disposed of post haste, before the jefe could find out.  When they reached the old mine road the girl was lying face down with considerable blood on the side of her head and on the ground.



“She is dead,” Hector noted.



“How can you be so sure?” Alejandro mumbled.



“See the hole in her head and all the blood, she cannot be alive.”



“Okay, grab her stuff and let’s get rid of her.  You get her arms.”



They carried the limp girl clumsily for several yards before Alejandro dropped her feet and said, “Just drag her, she won’t care.”



Together the two bandidos half carried, half dragged the girl into coulee to the edge of a large hole that dropped six feet to a steep sloping floor that disappeared into darkness. Both men mistakenly identified the hole as an old mine shaft.  They dropped the unmoving girl at the edge and Alejandro used his boot to push her over the edge.  She dropped limply onto the sloped floor, rolled once and began to slide, slowly at first then more rapidly before vanishing into the dark.  He threw the girl’s backpack and the damaged camera in also and both slid down the sandy floor and disappeared.



“Creo qué! She will never be found!” Hector exclaimed.



“You’d better hope so, for both our sakes, mi amigo!  The jefe will be very angry if the shipment gets delayed tonight.”  Alejandro felt a cold sweat creep up his back thinking about the repercussions should something deter the millions of American dollars that the night’s activity would represent.  The coyotes would guide a hundred peons from Central America each loaded with a backpack containing a brick of heroin or cocaine in groups of five or six.  The coyote would dress like the peons, each group taking a slightly different route to avoid detection.  In fact, they expected to lose one or two of the groups; it was a cost of doing business.  The Border Patrol would confiscate the drugs, hold the hikers for a couple of days and send them back, ready for another trip.  The jefe said they would get jobs in the U.S. and live the good life, but Alejandro doubted it.  Likely, after the drugs were delivered, the men were forced back into Mexico for more drugs, while the women were sold into prostitution.  He tried not to think about it.  He knew better because he’d come from Honduras at seventeen.  They’d dumped him out in Phoenix with no money, no prospects, and the inability to speak English.  He evaded the Border Patrol for a week, until they picked him up, exhausted and half-starved, searching garbage cans in an east Glendale alley and shuffled him quickly back across the border into Mexico.  That was ten years earlier, when it was easy to just walk across; before the jefe had introduced him to drugs, alcohol and a lot more.  Now you had to earn the thirty thousand peso’s the coyote’s demanded.







Hector and Alejandro were back in the lookout rocks by late afternoon when the jefe showed up.  He was a short, heavy-set man with long black hair loosely held in place by a large hoof-stomped and dust-coated straw sombrero.  His stringy long moustache drooped around a thin-lipped mouth and dark eyes gave him a rigid look that he counted on when dealing with the peons.  He stared at the two lookouts and sensed fear.



“¿Que pasa?” el jefe growled.



“Nothing, Jefe,” Hector squeaked, clearing his throat.  Despite being a killer himself, Hector feared the jefe, because behind those black eyes he could see nothing; no feeling, no conscience, nor sympathy; only coldness that brought dread to the pit of a man’s stomach.



Without taking his eyes off Hector the jefe drew his hip gun, a chrome-plated Ruger GP100 with a six inch barrel and chambered for either .357 Magnum or .38 Special ammunition.  According to rumor, he’d acquired it off a half-drunk American who thought he was tough.  The jefe shot the man cold dead in a Cindad Juarez cantina without a thought and the Ruger was his.  He pulled Hector very close, shoving the chrome barrel up under his chin hard and cocked the hammer until it clicked.



“Would you like to die today, mi amigo?” the jefe said in a low growl that nearly stopped Hector’s heart without a bullet.



“A girl...” Hector squeaked, “She came up the old mine road...” He was having trouble with his tongue with the Ruger pressed under his throat.



“And...”



“She saw us, took our picture, so I shot her, as our orders said.”



“And then!”  The jefe’s lack of patience was mirrored in his low voice.  He jerked the barrel hard against Hector’s throat threatening to cut off his wind.



Hector gagged loudly before Alejandro cried, “We threw her down the old mine shaft!”



“Show me, hombre’s.”



The two lookouts led the jefe down the hill into the rocky draw to the hole where they’d dumped the girl.



“It is here,” Hector said.  Cold sweat dribbled down the center of his back and he shivered in spite of the afternoon heat.



The jefe produced a flashlight and aimed it into the hole.  “That’s not a mine shaft.”



“It’s not?” Alejandro asked.



“It’s a volcano vent, idiot!”  The beam of the flashlight bounced off the solid rock walls and illuminated the sloping sandy floor.  The jefe peered into the hole, satisfying himself that he could see no signs of the girl.  Even the soft sand appeared undisturbed.



“I should make you two climb down in there and drag her back out.  Next time make sure no one will ever find the body and bury them across the border where the Border Patrol can’t even look.  Understand?”



“Sí, Jefe,” Both men said in unison.



“Now get back up there and keep watch.  We will start tonight an hour before midnight as soon as the moon comes up.”



Back in the lookout rocks, both men were relieved to be alone again.  The jefe had given them a scare, thinking they’d end up in the hole with the girl.”



“We are fortunate the jefe did not kill us,” Alejandro said, more to himself than to Hector.



“Sí!”Hector replied, holding the AKMS close to his chest so Alejandro could not see his shaking hands.











Chapter 2







Charlie Draper sat on his front porch drinking coffee laced with a touch of brandy and a generous dose of flavored cream, talking to himself.  He allowed exactly two cups each morning; no more, no less, while he debated whatever subject rose to the forefront that morning.  It was a habit, he conceded, a long standing one, and one he obsessed about not in the least.  It was also his custom to rise early, usually just before first light, make the coffee and be in his porch chair in time to watch the sun peek over the distant mountains and flood the desert with morning radiance.  The quiet beauty of the sunrise formed a backdrop for his solitary debates.  His house, a stucco-covered box with a flat scuppered roof surrounded by a low parapet, sat in the middle of a twenty acre plot of mostly desert sand.  Sparsely vegetated by devil cholla, desert hackberry, salt brush, mesquite, plus an occasional palo verde mixed with a few stately saguaro cacti, this piece of the Sonora Desert, sat corralled by sharply rugged mountains nearly devoid of vegetation.  His favorite multi-armed monster saguaro, one Draper estimated to be at least a couple centuries old, served as home to a family of cactus wrens.  His porch faced north, shaded from the southern sun and enabling him to watch both sunrises and sunsets by simply repositioning his chair.  Best of all, cloudless skies prevailed three hundred and twenty days a year, a climate monotony broken only by an occasional brief winter rainstorm.  Draper had heard the locals proclaim that you could walk a mile between raindrops before getting wet.



The sun had been heating the desert for over an hour when his cell phone rang.  Barely hearing the sound since he’d left it in the house somewhere, he debated ignoring it for a moment before moving, stretching his lanky frame to stand.  It took several rings for him to locate the noisy instrument, unfold it and bark a hoarse, “Hello!”



“Hello, yourself, grumpy,” a familiar female voice replied.



“Hi, Molly, are you on duty or just calling to harass me?”



Molly Sorenson, County Sheriff for just under five years, a record for a job nobody wanted, and one that had noticeably aged her beyond her pushing fortieth birthday.  Her office in Ajo was responsible for all of Ajo County, which, at sixty-four-hundred square miles, was one of the largest counties in Arizona and included ninety-three miles of common border with Sonora, Mexico.  Still, Draper had to admit she fit into her law enforcement uniform quite nicely and when he’d first met her, he’d looked more than twice.  They’d been working on a relationship for most of a year which hadn’t progressed much due to her job dedication, long hours and his quirky living arrangements.  Draper had to concede that a forty-mile drive after a fourteen hour shift dealing with scum-bags, drunks, small-time crooks and a variety of genuine assholes, didn’t afford much time or energy for extra-curricular activities.  Worst yet, crooks, deviates, and genuine assholes didn’t take weekends off.



“I suppose you were sitting on the porch watching the sunrise?”



“Yup,” Draper responded, “It would be better if you were here watching it with me.”



“So, what’s in it for me?”



“How about the best cup of coffee this side of Phoenix and the company of a worn out spook?”



“Best offer I’ve had in days, but this is a business call not a pleasure one.  I’m sending a lady out to see you and I want you listen to her.”



“Okay.  What’s the deal?”



“Her daughter went missing Sunday.  We’ve had deputies out for a couple of days.  Found her car up in the Dry Mountains.  We’ve notified the Border Patrol to keep a lookout, but they’ve got their hands full and we’re short staffed.  I’m also swamped with a backlog of cases and budget cuts.



“Three days in the desert, you know she’s probably dead.”



“I know, but the mother says the girl is desert savvy and goes out a lot taking pictures.  Just listen to her and do what you can; for me.  I’ll make it up to you.”



“Sure, promises, promises.”



“Just listen, okay?”



“I will.  When will she be here?”



“She left here just a bit ago; say an hour, maybe an hour and a half.”



“You know, this is going to cost you.  You’ll have to come out here for dinner and suffer my company for hours.”



“I know, put it on my tab.”



“It’s already posted.”



“Thanks, Charlie.”







Draper was still nursing the cup of coffee, sitting on his front porch waiting for his company forty-five minutes later.  He was pretty sure Molly had told the girl’s mother about his airplane and how he flew Molly around when she needed it.  In fact, that was how he met the Sheriff.  He wasn’t the only pilot around with commercial ticket, but he was the only one with time on his hands.  His gaze moved left to his WWII Quonset hut-style hanger protecting his twenty-five-year-old Cessna 182N from the drifting sand and scorching sun.  Maybe he’d get to fly today.  That wouldn’t make it all bad.



When Draper looked back to the west he could see dust boiling up on the county road which turned and continued on a quarter-mile long stretch to his house.  From the speed indicated by the dust volume, his visitor was in a hurry.  The car that slid to a stop within feet of his front railing was a relatively new black Mercedes four-door with California plates.  California plates in this part of Arizona were common, but Mercedes cars, especially black ones, were an uncommon choice in the desert, unless, of course, you were a drug dealer.  Draper stood, held his coffee cup left-handed and watched a woman with recently coiffured locks of mixed grey, blond highlights, and remnants of her original dark auburn hair.  In her early fifties, Draper guessed, monied, but not displaying it, wearing light blue dress, open in front exposing a modest hint of cleavage.  Tall and slender with just a touch of middle-age weight, she mounted the three steps to the porch smartly; her eyes hard with determination when she held out her hand.



Her voice, low and melodic, flowed out of a mouth that probably sank a few male hearts when she was younger and likely had not suffered much with age. “Mister Draper,” she said, “My name is Victoria Hollings; I believe the local Sheriff called you?”



Draper took her hand gently, releasing it immediately.  “Yes, she did.  Please have a seat.  I understand your daughter is missing.”



Victoria Hollings sat, dropping into the chair Draper indicated and exhaling as if she’d been kicked in the gut.  Her eyes concentrated on the porch floor, but not before Draper could see tears welling in the corners.  She was fighting for control so he waited silently.



“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Draper,” she said, after a long moment.



“No problem.  Why don’t you tell me about your daughter?  What are her likes and dislikes and what was she doing in Ajo?”



“I need to know what you charge.  Sheriff Sorenson said you are a retired policeman.”



“Sort of, but not local, Federal.  I have a law degree, a commercial pilot’s license and spent too many long years in Federal service.”  He didn’t mention the alphabet agency, nor the years in foreign counties that consumed his life for nearly twenty years.  “The first day is free, that’s today.  After that it’s five hundred a day plus expenses and you can fire me at anytime.”



“She’s tall, about five-nine, I think, twenty-six, independent, stubborn, intelligent, nuts about photography and works for the local newspaper in Ajo.  And she hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said since she was sixteen.”



“I suspect she’s a lot like her mother.”



Victoria Hollings looked directly at Draper for the first time.  “You are very direct, Mr. Draper.”



“I have a lot of other faults also, so why don’t you call me Charlie?  Most people do, although I’ve been called worse.”



“All right, Charlie,” she emphasized his name slightly, as if she had trouble with informality, and didn’t ask him to call her by her first name.



“I talked to her last on Saturday night.  She indicated she was going to walk a couple of miles into some old mine and take pictures.



“When did she talk to her father last?” Draper asked.  He wanted to bet there wasn’t a father in the picture and decided to clarify that aspect.



“Jennifer’s father passed away when she was five of a heart attack.  He left us in good shape financially and I was able to raise her alone.”



“Any other family where she might go?”



“No, there’s just the two of us.”



“Mrs. Hollings, I know this is difficult, but I can’t help you unless I have as much information as possible.



“I know,” she said.



Draper could see she was teetering on the edge, but battling hard against it.  “Listen,” he said, “I was about to eat breakfast.  How about you join me and we’ll plan what we’re going to do.”



“You’ll help me?”



“I’m going to try. But, you have to suffer through my cooking first.  Then we’ll take my plane and see what we can see.”



“I’m not very hungry.”







While Draper cooked breakfast, Victoria Hollings sat at the oil cloth covered kitchen table with her hands folded in her lap.  It took continual prodding to keep her talking, which Draper conceded told him more about the mother than the daughter.  He suspected that, because the two were likely similar personalities, the mother-daughter relationship might be fraught with conflict.



For someone who claimed a lack of appetite, Draper watched her inhale two fried eggs, two strips of bacon and a piece of half-burned toast.  He studied her while she ate.  She held her fork daintily as if she been to a fancy finishing school, carefully taking small bites, and chewing properly and never touching food with her fingers.  Even the toast she cut into small pieces and forked into her mouth.  At the same time, she ate like she hadn’t had a meal in days.  Finally, she said, “What are we going to do?”



“First, I have to call the FAA and let them know we will be flying at low levels and where.  We are very close to the Mexican border and there are a lot of eyes watching.”



“Eyes?  What kind of eyes?”



“The Feds have a tethered balloon that looks like a dirigible that can see hundreds of miles and it’s full of camera and video equipment.  They’re looking for low flying aircraft coming across the border along with everything else illegal.”



He left her in the kitchen while he called the FAA and when he returned she’d cleared the table.  The dishes were neatly piled in the sink.



“Come on, let’s take a plane ride.”  Draper didn’t want to make a big deal out of her effort to keep busy.



As part of his construction of the airplane hanger, Draper had included a fifty foot square slab of concrete in front of the sliding doors as a run-up area.  This prevented sand from being sucked up into the propeller and the cooling ports, thus saving on maintenance.  The fifteen-hundred-foot packed sand runway had required most of his first summer to construct using a borrowed road grader, water truck and a sixteen-foot drum roller.  He pushed the sliding doors open and dragged the 182 out with a nose wheel hook.  When he had it situated and the hanger doors closed, he held open the passenger side door and said, “Hop in.”



He held her arm as she climbed aboard and settled in the co-pilot seat.  “Fasten your seat belt just like in a car.”



Draper walked around the airplane doing his pre-flight check, wiggling control surfaces and visually inspecting everything.  Satisfied, he climbed in on the left side and buckled in.



“Ever flown before?” he asked.



“Some, though not in anything this small.”



“We will be flying at about one thousand feet once we get in the vicinity of where your daughter’s car was found.  There will be some turning and it might be a little bumpy, so if you feel sick let me know.  There are barf bags in the leather pouch on your door if you need one.  Ready?”



Victoria Hollings nodded in agreement and Draper started the engine, did his run up and magneto check convinced his passenger would have rather stayed behind.  She sat rod stiff in her seat trying to embed her fingerprints into the door armrest.



“Here we go.”  Draper glanced at the windsock on the Quonset hanger roof and it still indicated a gentle breeze from the west.  He pushed the throttle forward to taxi to the end of his sand runway.  When he was lined up, he shoved the throttle to the firewall.  Six hundred feet later the plane reached takeoff speed and Draper lifted it off the runway, climbed to two thousand feet, leveled off and banked right into a gentle turn to the South.  When he was lined up on the approximate direction he wanted, he trimmed the plane for straight and level flight.  He figured this trip was not going to be very productive, other than giving Jennifer Hollings’ mother the feeling that they were doing something.  Draper was more interested in getting a feel for the terrain, an exploratory flight while he formulated how he was going to approach a search on foot.  Time wasn’t on their side.  If he didn’t find her or her body in the next several days, and he considered the later most likely, the desert would dispose of the remains and he’d be lucky to find scattered bones.



Draper lingered in his thoughts, concentrating on flying and almost forgetting he had a passenger; until she reminded him.  “What are we looking for, Mr. Draper?”



“Do you see that line in the desert there, along the edge of those rocky ridges?”



“Yes...?”



“That’s the old wagon road to the Dry Mountain Mine.  The mine closed in 1917, although it didn’t produce much after 1910.  There’s still an old head rig and a couple dilapidated buildings standing, but not much else.  Your daughter’s car was found just below us - you see where the wash cuts through the old road.  It’s about a two mile hike from there.”



“I’m going to fly along the road to the mine and see if we can see anything.”



“You don’t think we’ll find her, do you?”



Draper stared straight ahead and didn’t immediately answer.  He weighed what he was going to say carefully.  “Mrs. Hollings, I’m going to give it my best shot.  When we get back to my place I’m going to send you back to Ajo and I’m going to search every damn inch of this desert until I either find her or I know that it’s likely she won’t ever be found.  That’s all I can do.”



“I want to go with you.”  She looked at him with watery eyes, but the hard determination in her voice echoed above the plane’s engine noise.



“No you don’t.  It’s late April.  The temperature during the day down there will start reaching over a hundred degrees in the afternoon shade and there is damned little of it.  The heat will make you feel like your blood is boiling and at night you’ll think you’re in a freezer.  There are sidewinders, scorpions, tarantulas, biting flies, mosquitoes, gila monsters, lizards, Sonoran whip snakes, and a host of other creatures that debate over eating you there or taking you home.  Besides, if you want me to find your daughter, I can’t be worrying about keeping you alive and safe.”



“I have to do something.”



“Go back to Ajo and wait in case your daughter calls.  I’ll call you if I find anything.  Besides, you have done something.”



“What?”



“You hired me.”



Draper had the 182 in a slow-flight turn, staring down at the mine site.  After two circles without seeing anything, he leveled out following the old wagon road back the way they’d come, staying a half mile or so south.  The expansive Sonoran Desert lay below them; sandy rolling terrain, broken only by the remains of volcanic activity from eons past.  In the distance, Draper could see the fence that marked the geographical boundary between the U.S. and Mexico.



“The desert looks so desolate.  How can anything survive?” Victoria Hollings asked.



“The desert is surprisingly full of life,” Draper responded.  “Most of it is well adapted to surviving in harsh conditions.”



It looked innocent and deserted by day, but he knew nighttime saw the continuation of the battle between the Border Patrol and the drug trade which tended to hindered both flora and fauna survival.  At about the halfway point, he saw movement in the rocks below.  It was fleeting and only momentary, but definitely movement.  He made a mental note of the plane’s GPS coordinates and decided on a plan.  It wasn’t a brilliant plan, or even a half-assed one, but it was the only plan he had.  He passed without indication to anyone down there that he’d seen anything.  He also didn’t mention it to Victoria Hollings since he didn’t want her worrying about whether or not hiring him was a good idea.



Forty minutes later he made a straight in-approach, set the 182 down on his sand runway, and taxied to the run-up pad.  “You should go back to Ajo and wait in case your daughter calls.  I’m going to go back into the desert and start from where she was known to be last.  I will call you every night after dark with a progress report,” he said while shutting down the engine.



Draper sat on his front porch until the dust from Victoria Hollings’ car faded away in the distance.  He felt sorry for her since intuition told him the outcome for her might not be good.  After locking the house, since he didn’t know for sure when he’d return, Draper fired up the 182, taxied out to the runway and took off again, this time heading toward Ajo’s general aviation airport for fuel.  His fuel stop took less than a half hour and when he took off again he headed northeast  An hour and a half later he circled an asphalt runway carved out of a pine covered plateau just south of a group of buildings, and sighting a limp windsock, elected a another straight-in approach.  When he taxied up the buildings, a short, stocky, dark-skinned man with long black hair waved.  The approaching man wore a blue bandana holding his hair out of his eyes.  Draper shut down the engine and opened the door.



“You lost, White boy?



“Yah, I’m looking for a grouchy Apache asshole that owns a helicopter.  Know anyone like that?



“Might.  Suppose you want this asshole to fly it, too?”



“Be nice.”



The old Indian grinned at Draper, “You son-of-bitch, you only come around when you want something.”



“Not true.  Last year I flew up here because you’d pulled a silly dumb-ass stunt and broke your leg.”  Draper stepped out of the 182 and the old man grabbed his hand and hugged him.



“Okay, so there was that.  Damn, it’s good to see you, boy.  Come to the house, we’ll have a cup.  If yer stayin’ I might be able to find some whiskey to put in it.”  DeCollado always slipped into calling Draper ‘boy” or ‘kid’ even though there was just under fifteen years difference in their ages.  He’d started it in Cambodia and never got over the habit.



“Can’t stay, Bill, have sort of a problem and I need your help.”



“You got it, boy.  What can I do?”



Draper wasn’t surprised when the old man accepted readily.  William Alan DeCollado was half White Mountain Apache and half Spanish and without a doubt the best helicopter pilot Draper knew.  He’d won a Silver Star in 1972 Vietnam for riding down a Huey rescue cable to find a downed F-14 pilot and dragging his ass back to where the Gunnery Sergeant could winch them both up all while Vietcong snipers tried to pick them off.  Draper had met him years later in 1988 on a flight into Cambodia that both of them remembered but couldn’t talk about.  By then DeCollado was a bit of a legend among fly-boys, especially the younger ones. They’d been friends ever since.  DeCollado had a vintage Bell 205A-1 which he’d had totally rebuilt from rotor to skids by a company in Montana and made his living flying Phoenix company executives around.



“I need you and your chopper for at least a couple of days, maybe up to a week.”



“I’m pretty expensive, especially to you.”



“When I tell you what I need, you might get pricier.”



“So tell me.”



Draper told him about Jennifer Hollings and her mother, finishing with what he had planned.  Something few people knew and Draper was counting on, was the fact that DeCollado, in addition to his flying skills, could track a rattlesnake through a herd of buffalo.



“How long has she been missing?”



“Since sometime Sunday, so make it just at seventy-five hours.”



“Well then, I guess we’d better saddle up and ride.  We’ll stuff that sissy 182 in my hanger if you’ll help me drag my old Bell out.”



They did the pre-flight on the Bell and were ready to takeoff in under a half hour.  It was just passed noon and the temperature was crowding the century mark.  Draper knew if Jennifer Hollings was still alive she was in for a rough afternoon.







 



This the first two chapters of my newest novel.  Comments, ratings, and reviews always appreciated