Flight To Pandemonium Read online

  Pappy realized that they had to move. The frustrated standby passengers outside were loudly rapping on the glass. As the screener slowly rifled through the last bag, Pappy said, “You see what’s happening out there? If you open those doors, the crowd will pour in here. If the gate isn’t secured when that airplane taxies up, you’ll be trampled like a bug.”

  “I’ll check the door when I’m finished here,” he snarled.

  Richard arrived just in time to overhear the exchange. He whispered to Pappy, “Ted is on his way with the Otter. You meet the plane and I’ll take care of this.”

  Richard turned to the security screener and said sternly, “I need you to go over there and guard that door right now! No one gets through. No one! Got that?” The man nodded and stalked off, cursing all the arrogant authorities of the world.

  Meanwhile, the selected passengers queued up at the airside door where they received their boarding passes. Tlingit moved down the line collecting luggage on a wheeled cart. As he approached, Mac got in the middle of the line, displaying his boarding pass from the morning. The handler pushed his cart up beside Mac.

  “Follow me,” Tlingit grunted, and escorted him to the door.

  Unsure of what to do, Mac handed his boarding pass to the flight attendant. While she examined it, Tlingit said, “Martha, I’m taking this guy out to find his bag so he won’t hold us up.”

  Martha looked over Mac as if studying him. “Are you with that group just come in from the Nugget?”

  “Yea, I came from the Nugget,” Mac said.

  “Tlingit, I think you’d better talk to Richard about this. This man doesn’t have the proper pass for this flight.”

  “I was told to wait in the lounge for the next flight, and I’ve been here ever since,” Mac said anxiously. “So what now?”

  Richard, observing the confusion, moved to the door and pulled the handler aside. “Tlingit, why are you here and just what are you trying to pull?”

  “You think I’m just dumb ass Tlingit, don’t know what’s goin’ on? Right? Well, I’m gettin’ on that airplane!” he said quietly but vehemently.

  “Then you must know this is a charter flight for nurses,” said Richard. “Now take that man with you and leave.”

  “Listen white man,” Tlingit hissed, “if I leave, I’ll open the door and let that crowd in. Then, I’m walkin’ over to see the marshal and tell him how you’re blowin’ smoke up his ass ‘bout this flight. Still think I’m not gettin’ on?” Tlingit glowered intensely.

  “I believe you would, too. Who’s that guy with you?”

  “Just another white man to me, but he’s been watchin’ what’s goin’ on all afternoon, same as me. Wantta risk throwing him out, too?” Tlingit needed an excuse to enter the flight line early to retrieve his own duffels he had secretly planted in the pile.

  Richard noticed the security screener glowering in his direction. The man would welcome a chance for revenge and embarrass his boss. Furious, but unwilling to initiate a confrontation, Richard nodded to Martha. “All right, Tlingit. Help us load the Otter when it arrives. I’ll bring your cart shortly.” Richard had planned loading baggage in order to be present on the tarmac at the last moment. He would then climb aboard last. Tlingit’s presence might make his activity look less suspicious.

  Ignoring Martha, Tlingit opened the door and waved Mac outside. After a short walk, he pointed to a broad pile of baggage. “In there. Make it quick.”

  “Thanks. I owe you a big one,” said Mac.

  Picking up two duffle bags, Tlingit stalked off, leaving Mac behind.

  As Mac circled the pile of baggage looking for his own, a turboprop airplane taxied toward the terminal, swung into position nearby and stopped. Mac began frantically tossing bags aside and was considering abandoning his search when he noticed his distinctive yellow ribbon in the midst of the pile. Grabbing deeply, he pulled his kit and hurried toward the airplane.

  The port propeller spooled down and the boarding door opened. Tlingit opened a baggage compartment near the tail, tossed in his duffels, then Mac’s and those in the cart.

  The Captain and Pappy walked rapidly to the open door. Richard arrived pushing a small accommodation stair and the pilots climbed aboard. Perceiving his opportunity, Mac stood in front of the stair, unsure of whether or not to climb aboard directly.

  Ted greeted the pilots as they replaced him in the cockpit.

  “You’re late,” said the Captain. “Trouble?”

  “Waaal… batteries are in poor condition and we didn’t have spares. I had to boost them to start… twice. Keep that starboard engine runnin’ or she pro’bly won’t restart. Otherwise, she’s squared away, and no worries.”

  “Great,” said Pappy. “Man the door and warn me of trouble. Okay? Tlingit is loading baggage, but so far no one else has made us.”

  “He’s trouble enough.”

  “I think Richard didn’t want to push it with the marshal.” The pilots stooped low and entered their domain.

  At the cabin door, Ted looked down the line of passengers. Glancing at Mac, the first person in line, he said, “Step up lively, mate, and take a seat.”

  Mac was on board! He took the rear seat next to two bearded workmen in coveralls who had ridden over with the airplane. His center seat gave an unobstructed view down the cabin aisle to the cockpit. He put his head back, closed his eyes, and thanked God for his good fortune.

  When he next opened his eyes, the airplane was nearly full. He could hear a loud commotion outside as the crowd screamed to join the flight. He looked through the open cabin door and saw a man dressed in formal uniform striding purposefully toward the airplane. Oh my God, he thought, here comes trouble!

  9

  Green Gulch near Rampart, September 30th. Recent innovations, especially digital electronics and minding technology, improved the operation of El Dorado hydroelectric plant. Telemetry matched the plant with the demand of the grid. Its minding computer enabled Pug Shannon to tune the generators more effectively for optimum synchronous output. Since the Pelton wheels turned only three hundred revolutions per minute, minor adjustments to their governors made significant changes. The digital feedback from electronic monitors was far more exacting than the old analog meters. A wireless router allowed Pug to carry a hand receiver and tune performance of the plant wherever he was. He was its dedicated operator and mechanic.

  But the new radio communication changed the man’s life. Radio connected his remote location to the world of Alaska. When the plant was on standby, Pug had time to use the new multiband radio transceiver beyond its intended purpose. Other isolated operators taught him its pleasurable benefits. Thereafter, Pug became an avid ham radio buff.

  Tuned antennas constructed high on Wolverine Mountain gave his radio a remarkable range within the Alaska interior. Its thousand watt output could reach into the Pacific. Pug readily used the frequented public bands for chitchat.

  Throughout Alaska, thousands of people lived off the grid enjoying immersion in the bush. Most couldn’t give up all social contact, so they used shortwave radio to contact loved ones and enjoy gossip.

  Pug joined them enthusiastically. With his powerful transmitter, he could relay messages to the most distant receiver and regional CQ’ers came to know him well. He made regular conversation with more than a hundred fellow two-meter ham operators without having met one of them. For the first time in life, he circulated in a social world which welcomed him.

  Pug was born Killian Fionn Shannon, the only child of destitute immigrants living on welfare and handouts in Berkeley. Born of a Hispanic mother, Pug more nearly resembled her than his Irish father. Growing up on the street and thinking he was one of them, competing pachuco gangs tried to intimidate him into joining one or another. A early loner, he could refuse them only by aggressive exhibitions of strength
and brawling.

  As an adolescent, Pug was assigned to attend trendy Skyline High School where most of his fellow classmates were well-heeled middle-class boomers. He arrived at the school hard from the Avenues riding public transit. Threadbare in his pegged Levi’s, nearly white tee-shirt and dated DA greased haircut, he didn’t fit. Sweater busty bobby-soxers were paraded to school in style from Claremont by trim, crew cut lettermen driving daddy’s bitchin’ new sports car. Pug made not a single friend among them even though Skyline gave him his lifelong nickname.

  His moniker, Pug understood, was the result of his respectably pugnacious ‘rep’ against incessant ragging by his affluent classmates. He regularly ensured that they hazed him at their own peril and mostly from a safe distance.

  Pug’s social development as a loner meant he never attended a high school prom or an Elvis-style sock hop. He was far too burdened with the poverty of the Avenues to experience the high-living Skyline version of American Graffiti.

  Pug lived life as a self-sufficient working man. His proven skill with all things mechanical enabled him to be selected as replacement operator for the El Dorado Powerhouse. As a confirmed bachelor, the appointment offered splendid rural living far from any reminder of the avenues.

  Pug loved gossip just as his mother had. He took great pleasure in hearing the exploits of his far-flung chillbillies and passing them on. Pug heard of the contagious new illness sweeping families in urban areas. Like most rural listeners, he wondered why people didn’t simply avoid sick people if the bug was so infectious. Pug duly passed on the news affecting his friends, sometimes empathizing with their misfortune, but remained heedlessly indifferent to dire national warnings.

  Reality struck home only when a company grid dispatcher succumbed nearly overnight. He knew the man was a cautious individual, nearly as much as he. Pug talked to him just two days earlier but the man didn’t mention feeling ill. Reluctantly, Pug tuned to a public radio station and listened at length to their reports, astonished by what he heard.

  Apparently the disease had been raging worldwide for weeks. Despite the intervention of world governments, authorities had accomplished little…so the talking-head commentators spun confusing news. He shut off the radio.

  Pug was certain that someone would eventually find a way to cure this new disease as had always happened in the past. He considered himself ideally positioned to ride out another of life’s unpleasant urban disturbances. It should all blow over by the end of the hydro generating season without troubling him in the least.

  While he could conduct his normal duties without disruption, his relay traffic became burdensome. The airwaves were flooded with folks from the bush, some urgently seeking loved ones, and others passing tragic messages. Nearly everyone was trying to make sense of the pandemic. The simple pleasure of casual gossip evaporated. An edge of alarm was apparent behind every voice.

  After days of increasing company chatter, Pug got a surprise call from central dispatch on the rarely used secure frequency. He didn’t recognize the voice.

  “Who’s this, again?” he asked.

  “Charlie Wright, filling in for Matt.” The gravelly voice belonged to his most senior supervisor.

  “I haven’t talked to you in ages. Where’s Matt?”

  “He’s taken a leave of absence,” replied Charlie.

  “Thought all leaves were cancelled.”

  “Special case. His entire family is sick. He flew home to help them.”

  “Sounds like he might arrive home just in time to bury them.”

  “Pug… you never change, even in times like this, do you?”

  “Any doubt in your mind? Hey… I truly am sympathetic, but tell me what’s going on anyway, and no bullshit. I’ve heard all the spin I can stand on the radio. I just want it straight up.”

  “Beginning to really frighten us,” began Charlie. “Still no effective treatment and word is they’re talking about quarantines right here in Alaska… Fairbanks, Anchorage, and maybe the whole country. Canada has already closed the border.”

  “That ain’t gonna work. They’ve tried that elsewhere and it just scares people worse… then they find a way around. Too little, too late.”

  “Pug, I didn’t call to argue with you. I don’t know what’s going on any more than the next guy. I have some information and instructions for you.” Charlie’s tone stiffened and turned authoritarian. Pug listened.

  “First. We can’t find a way to get you your supply drop, yet. The police have commandeered our helicopter service. When the time comes, you’ll just have to dip into your emergency rations and make do. Second. We want you to change your production times. Shift them more to the evening hours beginning at four in the afternoon and then for seven hours if possible, cranked full up. Any problem with that?”

  “Yea, where’s my visuals… you’re ten days late already. Without them, I can’t tell what I have. The cameras failed last winter, remember?” Pug wasn’t pleased. They were letting him down.

  “Easy does it, man. Pug, you’re just going to have to climb up there and check the forebay yourself. That shouldn’t be a problem. You did it for years before the cameras were installed.’

  “That’s when you kept two of us here. One trip alone during the day isn’t going to tell me when I’m runnin’ low after dark. That’s why you installed telemetry. Otherwise, I’ll have to run ‘em ‘til they’re dry… not a good idea at all.”

  “Pug… we need those wheels spinning full boat. We’re running low on fuel for the turbines here… and that’s not for dissemination, hear me? And another thing… while you’re up there, shut off those bypasses… completely.”

  “You kiddin’ me? ‘Member the flap the last time?”

  “There won’t be any this time, I can assure you. Check your weirs first thing in the morning, then get back to me about shifting the schedule, and I want a full seven hours. It’s a wet year. Should still be plenty of runoff.”

  “I can probably crank up for a coupla weeks, I think…especially if I can use all the flows, but I hate to do it with blinders on. If gravel gets in that penstock…” Pug was unconvinced.

  Softening somewhat, Charlie interrupted, “Believe me, we need your plant. Things are going to get worse before they get better. Some of our natural gas lines are shut down. Suppliers are on sick-out. Our teamsters are just walking off and leaving our tankers alongside the road whenever there’s a blockade or a crowd of people. Soon as they step down, the trucks are gone. Some of the highjackers don’t even wait for the drivers to leave. So, I need you. Please tell me you’re still with us.”

  “Don’t sweat it” Pug smiled. “Wouldn’t leave this place for anything. I’m way better off up here than you are… wherever you are. You’ll get your juice. By the way, what’ll I do about visitors? I get hikers sometimes and I sure don’t want ‘em now.”

  “Don’t let anyone near you. Do you keep a firearm?”

  “And get fired? Gimme a break.”

  “Do you?” Charlie pressed.

  “I’ve never owned a gun in my life.”

  “Too bad. You may need one and not for the bears. What about a dog?”

  “There’s just me… and I like it that way.”

  “Then, keep your gates padlocked. Do whatever you can… and I do mean whatever. Keep everyone out, no exceptions, not even officials. Other plants are having trouble with armed intruders. We’ve closed our perimeter and we’re all holed up here tight, twenty-four seven.”

  “What would anyone expect to find way up here?”

  “Food, for one. Shelter for another and especially isolation from everyone else.”

  “Just great. Soon as they spring that quarantine...”

  “Let’s not go through that again,” Charley answered wearily. “Nothin’ I can do. Hang in there. Good
luck with your hike. I’m gone.”

  For the first time, Pug began to take the situation seriously. In all his experience with misfortune, he hadn’t heard the likes of this. A flu epidemic was understandable, even a bad one. But quarantine cities in rural Alaska of all places? Hijacking trucks… and armed intruders? Even his unflappable boss sounded alarmed.

  Was he really authorized to shoot intruders? Sounded like he was. Perhaps, he ought to turn on the national news… maybe even monitor the Fairbanks police channels.

  Pug set out at dawn ready for an arduous day. His boss hadn’t a clue about what an ordeal he’d requested because he had never visited the upper reaches himself. The variable level of the fore bay wasn’t the critical gauge of the hydro season. That first depended on flows from widely separated sources of runoff, all enhanced by a system of stone weirs and ditches diverting water into the fore bay. Water was held there until needed for turning the generators.

  The much larger penstock funneled water downhill containing the rising pressure as the pipe steeply descended. When water reached the powerhouse, a constricting nozzle trained a high pressure stream upon cupped Pelton wheels which developed the thousands of horsepower necessary to turn El Dorado’s two generators. The energy was used as peaking power to satisfy late afternoon demand.

  The level of the forebay lowered considerably as the water was put to use until it could be replenished while the generators were shut down overnight. The process was repeated until the decline of seasonal rainfall could no longer recharge the forebay. Late season use was unpredictable without benefit of telemetry or scrambling into the mountains to evaluate the meadows first hand.

  Pug was as familiar with the weirs as he was with the powerhouse. Sodden upland glades produced runoff from frequent afternoon rainsqualls. From his predecessor, Pug learned to assess the vitality of indicator plants in the glades and determine how far along the water season had advanced. That assessment meant a long walk among the high meadows of Wolverine and Elephant Peaks.