Mysterious Valley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue

 

 

 

Davis, California, Sunday, The Second Week of March

 

   “We’ve just gotten a late report from the Sutter Davis Hospital that they received three patients from a government-subsidized housing camp just east of Winters,” said KCRA TV news anchor Dave Walker in Sacramento, interrupting their regular segment. “We will now go to Tana Castro in Davis.”

   Assistants were still helping Ms. Castro put on her microphone as she started talking. “We’ve spoken with the caller, a technical assistant, who said that all three victims were DOA. The word he got from the ambulance drivers is that the death toll is already up to ten or twelve and they expect many more. The doctors in Davis’s emergency room have notified the UC Davis Hospital in Sacramento, and life-flight helicopters have been dispatched to the scene as well as emergency vehicles from Vacaville, Davis, Woodland and Sacramento.”

   The reporter looked away from the camera pressing her earpiece with her hand. She looked back at the camera. “We’ve just received word that county health units from Yolo, Solano and Sacramento counties have been called to the scene and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has also been notified. At this point our source in Davis said that they think the deaths are the result of some type of powerful poison which has not as yet been identified nor has the method of administering it been found…”

 

 

   A slim muscular, middle-aged Asian man turned off the TV in his quarters to answer the phone. “Yes,” he answered curtly.

   “This is Gerard; you watching TV?” The gaunt nurse at Sutter Davis Hospital asked. He was standing outside the hospital using the cell-phone he had been given.

   “Yes.”

   “Then you know that they have diverted all the rest of the victims to UC Davis Hospital in Sacramento.”

   “I saw that. How will that affect us?”

   “Don’t worry. They will have to notify us as soon as they know what the toxin is because we received and still have the first three victims in quarantine. I’ll call you as soon as I know we’ve gotten the word.” Gerard spoke nervously with a slight quaver.

   “That’s likely to be some time. Will you still be there when they call?”

   “Absolutely. They’re shorthanded, and being single I volunteered for a double shift. I’ll be here for at least another twenty hours.”

   “Very good.”

   “When will I get my money?” Gerard asked nervously in a lower voice. “I’m beginning to get a little shaky.”

   “As soon as we hear from you, as we agreed.” He hung up without saying good-by, and turned around to face the other two men who had been watching the TV with him. “It seems our test has worked just as we had predicted. Now, we will find out how long it takes American authorities to discover what the toxin is and how it was administered.”

   “When do we take care of him, sir?” The man with a deep scar on his cheek asked, indicating the telephone.

   “As soon as he calls with the information, we will arrange for you two to meet him at his trailer that night.”

   “We were fortunate to find out he was on heroin,” the other man interjected.

   The slim Asian smiled. “Yes, that coupled with his police record from his college years for two arrests for possession makes him ideal. When you plant the evidence to indicate his dealer” —he broke into a grin― “they’ll never suspect it’s anything but an overdose.”

 

 

Belhaven, Mississippi, Tuesday, The Third Week of March

 

   “I can’t believe this,” Helen exclaimed as she and Maggie left the lawyer’s office in downtown Belhaven. “How could my mother, living on just a railroad pension, do this?” She was shaking her head in amazement.

   “I don’t know, but I’m glad you asked me along because you looked like you were going to faint when she started reading those amounts off,” Maggie responded.

   “But, two one-hundred-thousand-dollar whole-life policies with double-indemnity and all the savings…” Helen grinned. “I have almost a half-million dollars.” She looked straight at Maggie still grinning. “I’m wealthy,” she squeaked out, her voice a mixture of excitement and tears.

   Maggie smiled broadly, feeling the exhilaration in empathy with her friend. “That you are, and I’m just the person to help you spend some of it.” Maggie was struck again by how companionable she and Helen were. Here I am sixty years old and Helen barely thirty-nine, she thought. I don’t care. I need her companionship right now more than anything, so I’m not gonna question it.

   “What?” Helen exclaimed with a look of surprise.

   “I was going to talk to you about accompanying me on a trip to San Francisco. Maude and I…” Maggie suddenly got a lump in her throat making it impossible to complete her sentence. The thought of her murdered twin sister, Maude, was still a raw wound in her emotions.

   Helen’s expression crumbled when she saw Maggie chocking up, causing a tear to leak out and run down her cheek. Maggie’s sudden breakdown had triggered her own devastating memories of the murder of her mother and children. The memories of their tragic loss at the hands of the ruthless assassin were not yet a month old.

   “Sorry,” Maggie squeaked. Helen gently placed her hand on Maggie’s shoulder and patted lightly. Maggie took a deep breath, closing her eyes, and exhaled. “I’m OK now,” she said pressing her hand on top of Helen’s. “I need to get away from here for a while,” Maggie said shaking her head with her eyes closed. “There are just too many reminders, and having to live in that house across the street while my house is being restored is just too hard. I was hoping you would accompany me to San Francisco. We could find an apartment and stay there for a couple of months while my house is being finished.”

   “You’re so sweet,” Helen answered, her voice heavy with emotion. “I would love to. I need to get away from here, too. And, I happen to have a cousin by the name of John Short, who’s a professor at UC Berkeley. I’ll contact him and see if he can help us.”

   “That would be marvelous,” Maggie responded, her expression brightening. She grasped Helen’s hand. “I was praying you would say yes.” She squeezed her hand. “We’ll have so much fun.”

   Helen broke into a mischievous grin. “Why don’t we go out to the lake and have a pitcher of beer and some shrimp at the Honeysuckle Club. It’ll be my treat to celebrate my good fortune.”

   “Wonderful, I like that place. And, we can flesh out the plans for our trip.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

 

Davis, California, Mid-Morning, Monday, The Second Week of May

 

   “OK, what’s your heading?” Jeff Wilcox asked Maggie through the intercom.

   Maggie glanced at her Heading Indicator. “300 degrees, magnetic,” she responded crisply into her mike.

   “And, what is your course?”

   Maggie gave Jeff a disgusted side-glance and fumbled for her Navigation Log. He’s cute, she thought, but when he’s barking orders the cuteness fades.

   Holding the log where she could read it, she started to speak when Jeff suddenly pushed the yoke forward lowering the nose of their plane. She snapped her head around and shouted into the mike. “What’d you do that for?”

   “What is your altitude?” He asked ignoring her question.

   She looked at the altimeter. “One thousand fifty-nine feet,” she answered in a more normal voice. “Why?”

   “Where are you?” He asked sternly.

   Becoming nervous, Maggie started looking around. Catching a glimpse of 2Q3, Yolo County airport, out the right windscreen, she knew what was going on. “I’m coming up on Yolo County.”

   “And, what is pattern altitude for Yolo County?”

   She nervously picked up her flight log again quickly searching both sides. “I don’t know,” she replied nervously.

   Resuming their climb, Jeff picked up her chart and handed it to her. “What is the runway altitude?”

   Maggie quickly found 2Q3 and called out: “ninety-eight feet.” Thinking quickly, she continued, “That means that pattern altitude is about one thousand ninety-eight feet.”

   Jeff looked at her smiling. “Very good. Now, is there any traffic in the pattern?”

   “I didn’t see anything when you lowered the nose.”

   “Are you sure? What about radio traffic? What frequency is your radio tuned to?”

   Maggie glanced at the radio. “One twenty-two point eight.”

   “And what is the common traffic frequency for Yolo County? He was looking at her with that feather-in-the-mouth look he always got when he was about to show her something.

   Maggie thought a moment and then grabbed the chart. Before she could find it though, Jeff lowered the nose and dropped the right wing. “Look there.”

   Maggie looked out the right windscreen and saw “123.0” written in large white numbers in the middle of the runway. Reaching over to tune the radio, she replied, “OK, it’s one twenty-three point zero.”

   “Now, once again, is there any traffic?” Jeff asked.

   Just as the radio readout showed 123.0 she heard a pilot giving his call numbers and equipment and that he was at two-thousand five-hundred feet MSL, five miles southwest, landing at Yolo County. Maggie looked at Jeff with a half smirk. “OK, I get the picture.”

   Just before they reached the ridge of mountains on the west side of the central valley, she leveled off at 4,500 feet. In about ten minutes Lake Berryessa came into view as they passed over the first ridge of mountains. Maggie had stabilized her plane on a course of 290 magnetic toward Ukiah Municipal airport and had begun to relax when Jeff suddenly pulled the throttle to idle announcing she had engine failure.

“This is gonna be one of those days. I can just feel it,” she thought. They were just over the Blue Ridge and Rocky Ridge forming the western edge of the Central Valley with the north end of Lake Berryessa in view under her left wing.

   Maggie jerked with fright when he pulled the throttle and made his announcement, but this time she was prepared. She knew that there was a private paved runway just above the north end of Lake Berryessa with the intriguing name of Mysterious Valley. While doing her solo practice, she had cheated a bit and flown over the ridge of mountains and found the airport. This was going to be a piece of cake.

   Going through her memorized list of emergency procedures she quickly pulled the carburetor heat knob out and checked the fuel valve, mixture control, primer and fuel level. She announced: “we have engine failure.” Without hesitation she began trimming the plane for maximum glide.

   “Where’re you going to land?” Jeff asked somewhat surprised that she was confidently setting up for an emergency landing in the rugged terrain below them.

   Maggie grinned with self-satisfaction, knowing she had gotten him. Pointing out the left side of her windscreen she announced: “right there at that landing strip.”

   Jeff craned his neck to see the strip and nodded approvingly. “But, that’s a private strip and it is listed as ‘restricted.’ Can you land there?”

   Maggie’s grin broadened. She had devoured the information in her pilot’s manual and knew this answer cold. “This is an emergency. Everything’s open in an emergency.”

   She proceeded to tune the radio to 122.9, the frequency for landing at airports that have no assigned radio traffic frequency, and announced her simulated engine out emergency and that she was landing at Mysterious Valley.

   “Very good,” he announced. “You’ve adequately recouped your standing as ace student, so I’ll just let you continue on down to see how you set up.”

   Maggie judged that even though the wind was out of the northwest she didn’t have enough altitude and speed to make a down-wind approach to the south end of the field. Therefore, since she would be landing downwind, she had to use short-field landing procedures touching down as close to the north end as possible. She began a tight spiral to loose altitude. This was going to be tricky because they hadn’t practice downwind landings.

   “Why didn’t you go downwind and land into the wind?” Jeff asked.

   “Because, I didn’t think I had enough altitude to make it.”

   “In an emergency you don’t have to fly a prescribed pattern. You could have come in close and done a buttonhook turn near the end of the runway. But, this is OK.”

   After lining up with the runway for a longish final, she judged that she needed partial flaps to slow the plane down. Then suddenly at less than a quarter-mile from touchdown a painfully bright green beam flashed through the windscreen causing Maggie to close her eyes and jerk her head around. Even with her sunglasses on it was blinding.

   Jeff quickly called out: “My plane.” Familiar with the meaning of his command, Maggie pulled her feet and hands off the controls.

   Displaying his years of experience as a pilot, Jeff deftly added full power, closing carburetor heat at the same time. As soon as the altimeter began to increase, he eased off the flaps and re-trimmed for a normal climb.

   All the while Maggie kept silent, sensing that this might actually be an emergency. When the plane was in a stable climb and at a reasonable altitude above and distance past the Mysterious Valley runway, Jeff called out: “OK, your plane.” Maggie took over the controls. “Make a climbing turn to the left to get us back on course,” Jeff added.

   Her altimeter indicated just over three thousand feet, so with the Cessna 152’s meager climb rate she knew it would have to be a shallow turn to clear the mountains and reach their 4,500 feet cruising altitude. As the plane turned she strained to look back at the runway and asked, “What was that?”

   Jeff shrugged replying, “I don’t know.”

   She looked back at him. “You mean that wasn’t some sort of landing aid I haven’t been told about?”

   “No. Not that I’m aware of.”

   Looking back toward the runway, she thought she saw a faint trace of the pencil thin beam emanating from a small boxy building at the south end of the runway.

   “We may as well use it as a learning tool, though. When we get back on course, prepare to give me the radial from the Maxwell VOR to the airstrip. Do you know how to do that?”

   Maggie flashed him a confident smile as she looked at her chart and then reached to tune the omniranger. “Of course I do.” She set it to 110.0 MHz and then tuned the OBS until the “From” indicator dropped down and the needle centered. Continuing to adjust the OBS until they were aligned with the runway, she took a reading. “It looks like the runway is on the 173˚ radial from Maxwell VOR.”

   “Ver-ry good,” Jeff responded. “Now let’s get back on course for Ukiah.