Radon & The Telltale Trilobite

By Rand B. Schaal

This second book of the Radon Trilogy finds Radon Schneider, pilot and geologist, flying a sortie above the Colorado River to do aerial photography. He witnesses a horrific explosion on the interstate bridge near Yuma. Working with the FBI he finds a clue to identifying and locating the culprits—a telltale trilobite, an image of a fossil on a bumper sticker. He survives treachery and gun fights, but will his scientific sleuthing prevent another bombing?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rand B. Schaal
• Release date: Jul 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311951892

Rand B. Schaal

Rand B. Schaal, PhD, taught geology at the University of California, Davis from 1986 to 1998. He was also employed at NASA Johnson Space Center, researching shock metamorphism in Moon rocks and in meteorites in the late 1970s.He assimilated science and math on three campuses of the University of California: Davis, Berkeley, and Los Angeles. Later in life he also took courses in fiction writing and in popular science writing at UC Santa Cruz. Many years later, he also audited classes for two years at the UC Davis School of Medicine.Dr. Schaal learned the most about the human frailty after suffering a major stroke on Memorial Day in 1998. Initially, while in the intensive care unit, he flatlined for thirty-six seconds and saw the proverbial white light. After his brush with death he was temporarily paralyzed on the right side. He recovered in the hospital for six weeks. Suffering from dain bramage and impeech spediments (spoonerisms were an amusing side effect), he was forced to give up lecturing at UC Davis and piloting regular airplanes. He became a hermit who typed with all five fingers on his left hand and pecked with only the index finger on his right hand. He wrote his first two novels that way.In the year 2000 he bought Elsa, the motorglider. Then, in his garage at Davis, California, he completed the four-hundred-day project of assembling Sheila, a light sport airplane, from a kit. He finished her in 2007 and flew her to Arizona. Since then Sheila has been based at Safford Municipal Airport, SAD, in Arizona.The unthinkable happened on 9 December 2013: another stroke. This time it affected the opposite hemisphere of his brain as the first. Afterward, his whole brain was damaged! No paralysis this time. He was in the hospital for only one week, but he was forced to take a seven-month hiatus from writing to renew his desire to write again and to regain sufficient motor skills to type words on a computer keyboard—two-fingered. As he took on the task of finishing The Radon Trilogy he could type only three-letter words without a typo—mots of teh tmie. A lot more time was required to write each new paragraph.Sense of place shines as a principal aspect of Dr. Schaal's writing. Detailed factual descriptions of disparate geographical locations bring these stories to life: the taste of the salty seawater off the coast of San Diego in California to the silent snowfall on Moses Rock Dike in Utah; the comforting dry desert air at the Algodones Dunes in southern California to the huge pink boulders at the Texas Canyon Rest Stop on Interstate-10 in Arizona; and the spectacular cliffs of the Mogollon Rim north of Payson in Arizona to the majestic snowcapped Inyo mountains visible in alpenglow from the hot springs at Saline Valley in California. He has invested a lot of intimate time at each of these places, if not doing actual geological fieldwork there. These places become their own sort of ancillary characters in the stories. Safford, Arizona, in particular, becomes a well fleshed-out character with references to its streets, motel, restaurant, hospital, cemetery, airport, Walmart, and Dodge dealership. Some of the other non-speaking characters are the Gila Valley, Monument Valley, Saline Valley, Chaco Canyon, Grand Canyon, Colorado River, and Superstition Mountains. Their descriptions fulfill in him the accomplishment of travel, to peer at any distant horizon and to know what lies beyond, with the certainty of having seen it with his own eyes. Being an airplane pilot for nearly forty years has allowed him to explore beyond many distant horizons and to bring a sense of place to all his stories.Dr. Schaal has begun outlining the next trilogy—a lunar geologist's adventures living on the Moon in a futuristic colony.

Book preview

Chapter 1: Spy Plane & Pregnant Guppy

Radon is my name—aerial photography is my game, I thought to myself. My task was to fly my motorglider, Elsa, and, simultaneously, make digital photographs with two Nikon D70 cameras resting on the seat to my right. My target was the Colorado River between the Mexican Border and Hoover Dam.

This sortie was not a mission from God, like in the movie The Blues Brothers, but pretty close. Instead, it was a quest at the behest of Professor Geoff Blount, the River Guru from the University of California, Davis. An expert on all things fluvial, he was a certified white-water river guide in rubber boats, an authority on fluvial geomorphology and geology, and an advocate for conserving and restoring natural floodplains and riparian vegetation. Further, he ventured into piranha-infested geopolitical waters by mediating water wars, assessing flood-control levees, evaluating redistribution of water via canals, and fighting construction of new dams. His viewpoints were highlighted in his textbook California Rivers: The Conflict between Fluvial Process and Land Use. This book featured several of my aerial images.

The Colorado River remained a keystone example of all these issues, because Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles all had claims to its precious water. His next treatise will concentrate on the Colorado River, but he needed current photos.

Professor Blount asked me to document everything from meanders to dams from diversionary canals to freeway bridges. In other words—everything that grabbed my attention as a fellow geologist.

I was tickled to oblige, for the sake of faithfulness to science and to my former colleague. It was a case of Semper Fidelis, not for the U.S. Marine Corps, but for geology and for UC Davis. Besides, he said he would help pay for avgas. No profit to me. I was just a retired Professor of Geology who loved to fly and make photographs. I didn't do it for gas money alone.

‡

Elsa resembles a spy plane in many ways. She has huge wings that allow her to fly at slow speeds and linger over a target, making lazy circles, like a vulture over carrion. She's a perfect platform from which to make aerial photos. Elsa whispers in flight, making sounds like a VW Beetle up in the sky with its small, air-cooled, four-banger, Volkswagen engine. People on the ground can barely hear us, even when we're just a couple hundred feet overhead. And, like a U2 spy plane, Elsa's glide-ratio is almost thirty-to-one: for each mile of altitude, she can glide—with her engine off and propellers feathered—a distance of thirty miles. For the Lockheed U2 Blackbird, the authentic spy plane during the Cold War with the Soviets, the units for glide-ratio are different: for every ten miles up, she can glide three hundred miles out.

‡

An hour before sunrise on a Thursday morning, September 8, 2016, I departed Safford Municipal Airport—designated as SAD, the Federal Aviation Administration's three-letter identifier. I started early because I wanted to traverse the whole of Arizona, from its far southeastern edge—where I live—to its far southwestern corner, early enough to photograph the Colorado River in the morning light. Three hundred miles due west at ninety miles an hour, with helping tailwinds, would get Elsa and me to Yuma in three and a half hours: 3:30 to Yuma.

That's not the same as the movie, 3:10 to Yuma. I wasn't going to catch a westbound train.

We reached our westbound cruise altitude of six thousand five hundred feet as we overflew the city of Casa Grande. That means Big House in Spanish.

When flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) in any westbound direction, between 181˚ and 360˚ magnetic, the designated altitudes are even thousands plus five hundred feet. Eastbound altitudes are odd thousands plus five hundred feet. That's the FAA's way to prevent head-on midair collisions. I remember those altitudes with a little saying: East is ODD, West is EVEN odder.

Gila Bend was next to come into view. The town was named after a curve in a river.

The town of Gila Bend was founded in 1872 near the tip of a big southward meander of the Gila River. The bend in the river makes a ninety-degree turn there.

Twenty-four years earlier, in 1848, the Gila River was the southern border of the United States, following the Mexican-American War and its peace treaty—the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. If the border had remained that way, Gila Bend would have been a border town—on the Mexican side.

And, if that were the case, Arizona would have looked much different than it does today. With the Colorado River on its western border and the Gila River on its southern border, Arizona would have had the shape of a slice of bread with two sides bitten jagged by rats. The two opposite borders of Arizona, on the north and east sides, in contrast are nice and straight and meet at right angles at Four Corners.

But, in 1853, James Gadsden changed the shape of that slice of bread for good. Gadsden, the American Ambassador to Mexico at that time, was a slave-owner from South Carolina who wanted to spread the southern style of business—using slave labor—out west by steam trains. He wanted the southwestern states to join the Confederacy.

Django would not have approved. He's the title-character from the Tarantino film: a former slave turned bounty hunter.

Gadsden argued that the terrain north of the Gila River was too mountainous for railroads, especially in the vicinity of the Gila Valley, where Safford is situated. Land far to the south was much flatter and better suited for laying iron rails. In the end, Gadsden's oratories swayed Congress. The United States bought nearly thirty thousand square miles from Mexico for ten million dollars. Called the Gadsden Purchase, this annexed land moved the southern border of Arizona—and the United States—as much as one hundred and thirty miles south. Consequently, the border with Mexico is linear.

However, construction of the Southern Pacific Railroad through the Gadsden Purchase was put on hold during the Civil War. The Confederate States of America controlled the Arizona Territory—which included present-day New Mexico in addition to Arizona—following the Battle of Mesilla. California remained in the Union.

Postbellum the railroad was finally completed, linking El Paso to Los Angeles via Las Cruces, Tucson, and Yuma. Henceforth, you could catch a westbound train to Yuma.

Django would have likely approved of the outcome. Gadsden was dead. Slavery was abolished. California, Arizona, and New Mexico were connected to the Southern Pacific transcontinental railroad. And, the United States, having paid fifty-three cents per acre for the Gadsden Purchase, had acquired hundreds of millions of dollars worth of copper and silver that would eventually be mined at Bisbee and Tombstone, by and by.

‡

Enough daydreaming. Serious flying now. I had to concentrate on accurate navigation with help from the onboard GPS—Global Positioning System. Between Gila Bend and Yuma, Elsa and I had to fly along a narrow corridor, ten miles wide, above Interstate 8, between the restricted military airspaces to the north and south of us.

Bad things would happen if we strayed outside this invisible slot canyon in the sky. F-16 fighters jets might intercept us and force us to land. Then, I'd be arrested, fined, and my flying privileges would be revoked. Elsa would get off scot-free.

No sweat. We just stayed over the freeway. Some fast cars were keeping up with us.

The Sonoran Desert scrolled slowly underneath Elsa and me. Tan surfaces below were speckled with creosote and cactus. Mountains on the horizon appeared as silhouettes at first and became ever more detailed until they passed under a wing. New mountains appeared on the horizon. Elsa was a track runner, clearing the high hurdles without breaking stride.

Yuma—dead ahead. The lowest city in Arizona, at 138 feet, Yuma has the distinction of being the sunniest city on Earth. That doesn't mean happiest though. It's also one of Arizona's hottest, with a record high of 124˚.

I began our descent by toggling off the ignition switch and then grasping, pulling, and rotating the handle that feathers the propellers. The blades turned sideways into the slipstream. Silence followed. The quiet glide.

From this high up I could see beyond Yuma to the Algodones Dunes and the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley of California.

I recalled that the Salton Sea was created by accident after farmers, long ago, diverted a portion of the Colorado River into irrigation canals. Heavy rainfall and snowmelt in 1905 swelled the Colorado River until it overwhelmed the irrigation canals and redirected the whole river northward, instead of flowing southward to the Sea of Cortez. For two years it flooded into the low-lying trough. Today the lake stands at 226 feet below sea level in a closed drainage basin. As a result of evaporation, it's twenty-five percent saltier than the Pacific, and it gets one percent saltier every year.

After three hours of flying I unzipped and urinated into the relief tube.

A relief tube is a funnel attached to a clear rubbery tube that passes through the fiberglass floor. It's clamped to a venturi tube attached to the belly of the motorglider. The slipstream passes through the venturi tube and creates suction. Piss gets sucked out, creating an atomized mist that evaporates before it reaches the ground—like virga. Virga pee!

After sinking slowly for nearly twenty minutes with the engine off, I unfeathered the prop, toggled up the ignition switch, put Elsa into a shallow dive, and touched the starter button. Elsa's props turned, the engine revved, and we leveled off just at one thousand five hundred feet, just north of Yuma.

The lighting was favorable for photography at a zero nine sixteen hours. The low, morning sun in mid-September cast long shadows that added depth and contrast to my photographs.

Camera ready, I took wide-angle oblique photographs first, with a sliver of horizon and sky in each frame. As we circled over the river like a vulture, I made high magnification images with a second camera with a long lens.

This close to sea level the Colorado is a slow, broad river—more than a thousand feet across. And at this time of year, the water was shallow and confined mainly to the middle of the channel. I made photos of its confluence with the Gila River—just a trickle.

Then, I shot the freeway bridge. Long and tall, it's built on concrete supports, sixty feet high. The early morning rush hour was nearly over. Eastbound traffic over the bridge—inbound for Yuma—was heavier than the westward, outbound traffic. Inbound cars, pickups, and SUVs were going to work. Delivery trucks and eighteen-wheelers were already at work.

As I circled the bridge at one thousand four hundred feet, taking digital photos with different angles of lighting, I noticed the eastbound traffic stopping on the bridge just before reaching the east bank—the Yuma side.

Yes. A white pickup had stopped in the left-hand lane, right in front of a big rig. The pickup had a crew cab, a camper shell, and wide fender flares over four rear wheels. It was huge for a pickup, called a Heavy Duty or Super Duty—made by Chevy, Ford, or Dodge. From the sky it looked like a pregnant guppy.

The tractor-trailer that was stopped behind the pregnant guppy had two shiny, polished stainless steel trailers—the kind that reflect an image of your own car when you are passing it. It was a gasoline tanker.

Wait. The tanker driver got out of his cab, jogged to the passenger side of the pregnant guppy, and got in. The white pickup sped away, leaving the driverless tanker abandoned in the fast lane of the busy interstate. That's curious.

I kept taking photographs with my long lens. With my right eye fixed to the viewfinder, I witnessed something I will never forget. The tanker exploded in a humongous fireball of orange flames. I clicked the shutter in rapid succession. I couldn't believe my right eye.

Chapter 2: Double Whammy & DFC

The sonic boom—a shock wave in air—reached Elsa and me more than one second later. The motorglider lurched in midair, being blasted upward by the supersonic pressure wave. Then Elsa was sucked back downward by the rarefaction wave—the decompression that follows compression. To me it felt like hitting a horizontal rotor wave—sudden high G-forces squashing me down in my seat, followed by low Gs making me float off my seat.

My head jerked down, hitting my face on the heavy camera. I heard the rush of vertical wind and felt the heat from the explosion. Then camera, charts, and my tool kit began to float around me, weightless. When normal gravity returned everything crashed down around me, making a racket. Warm blood trickled over my right eye.

I focused on flying the airplane first. I regained control—straight and level flight—heading north. Checked the controls: left and right ailerons, up and down elevator with my stick, and right and left yawl with my rudder pedals. Instruments: all in the green. Engine running smoothly. Whew! No damage.

Then I mopped up the blood with a towel. I put pressure on the cut on my forehead to stop the bleeding.

After the blood had clotted, I referred to my aeronautical chart, entered 119.3 on my radio and keyed the tiny black push-to-talk microphone button on top of my joystick and said, Yuma tower; motorglider November four-seven golf; over.

Motorglider four-seven golf; Yuma tower; go ahead, a male voice answered quickly but calmly.

Yuma tower; four-seven golf; one thousand feet over the interstate bridge across the river; outside of your class delta airspace; reporting an explosion of a gasoline tanker; possible injuries on the ground; over.

Motorglider four-seven golf; Yuma tower; roger that; I see smoke; I'll call 911; say condition of your aircraft.

Yuma tower; four-seven golf; no damage; I want to continue to orbit the bridge to do aerial photography.

Motorglider four-seven golf; Yuma tower; roger that; I'll direct all traffic away from your area; good hunting; and thanks for the Pirep.

Four-seven golf; thank you, Sir, I said. It was nice courtesy that he thanked me for the pilot report.

I banked Elsa left toward the west, south, and east, back over the bridge. I orbited there at an altitude of one thousand four hundred feet. By this time the tanker and the concrete surrounding it were spewing black smoke. I made dozens more photographs in rapid succession.

I put the Nikon on the seat beside me and dug in my pocket for my iPhone. I pressed the camera icon. I continued to circle Elsa left, anticlockwise. I slid the air vent open on its tract, leaving a small rectangular opening in the plexiglass canopy. I engaged the video option, and pointed it through the opening with my right hand.

Cars and trucks near the tanker were burning. Those farther back were reversing away from the smoke and heat. People were scurrying around, caring for the injured.

Then, I saw the blackened hulk of the tanker leap into the air. Dust and debris shot out from underneath the bridge to the left and right. Oh no. It's happening again. I kept the video running.

Within one second a shock wave jolted Elsa again. Stronger this time. I was pressed down in my seat with twice my weight. Then, I launched off my seat, crashing my head into the canopy.

The next time I was aware of my surroundings I was in a shallow turning glide toward the port wing. Elsa made a shallow dive to seventy knots, the nose came up, and then went down again at fifty-five knots. She was out of control in an oscillating descent. Slowly down, then slowly up.

I guessed that bumping my head had turned out my lights. I regripped the stick with my left hand and turned to starboard. My right foot pushed the rudder peddle. I leveled the wings with the horizon and headed westbound. My altimeter indicated eleven hundred feet. I had lost just three hundred feet while I was unconscious.

The engine sputtered and coughed. Interrupted fuel flow. I turned on the auxiliary fuel pump. The engine resumed running smoothly. Electric fuel pump off. Controls: check. Needles in the green: check. I stopped the video recording on my iPhone resting in my lap.

The loop of the headphones on top of my head cut my scalp and cracked the canopy at the same time. My head hurt and my neck was sore. Blood started flowing from my scalp and dripping off my brow onto my cheeks. I pressed the towel to my forehead.

Whew. I couldn't believe it happened twice—a double whammy.

Yuma tower; motorglider four-seven golf; reporting a second explosion, probably high explosives underneath the bridge this time; more injuries on the ground probable, I said in a hurry.

Motorglider four-seven golf; Yuma tower; roger; we heard that one; emergency vehicles and law enforcement are en route; are you injured or your aircraft damaged? he said, more excited this time.

Yuma tower; four-seven golf; minor damage; I busted my canopy with my head in the severe turbulence; I stopped the bleeding; everything back to normal now; I'm going to make one more flyby and depart the area to the north; landing at Parker—identifier Pappa-Two-Zero.

Motorglider four-seven golf; Yuma tower; roger; did you get photos of both blasts?

Yuma tower; four-seven golf; affirmative; stills and video.

Motorglider four-seven golf; Yuma tower; good job; you deserve the DFC for that, the air traffic controller volunteered.

Thanks, tower; out, I said, humbled by his suggestion that I deserved the Distinguished Flying Cross.

I banked Elsa to the south, east, and north for my last flyby of the Interstate 8 Bridge. I used my big lens, shooting from a mile south so that I could see under the bridge. One of the support columns had collapsed from the second explosion. The heat from the burning gasoline had weakened the concrete roadbed so much that it collapsed to the dry riverbed after the second explosion. The entire width of the freeway, all six lanes, was missing. The hole was a hundred feet long. There would be no commuter traffic across the bridge for a long time.

I clicked photographs in a steady rhythm as Elsa and I flew over the carnage one last time. Burned out cars and charred bodies were scattered like ejecta around an impact crater. It looked like a war zone. It smelled like death—even from a thousand feet above.

As I departed the area my heart was not into making images of the Colorado River after what I had just witnessed. But I persevered. Flying northward, I shot the Laguna Dam, Imperial Dam, Martinez Lake, and all the other lakes and meanders.

After seventy minutes I reached the Interstate 10 Bridge across the Colorado River at Blythe. My heart suddenly became heavy. Black smoke lingered in the air. The concrete freeway had fallen into a scorched black crater to the river below. The Yuma carnage had been repeated at Blythe.

I orbited this second scene of terror, taking wide-angle shots and high-mag shots, documenting the destruction that had apparently occurred simultaneously with the Yuma attack. Undoubtedly another gas tanker exploded on the roadway, followed by another explosion on a pillar beneath it. This attack was coordinated with the other one—well planned.

Northward bound, I took more river pics. Elsa and I had only a thirty-minute flight along the river to reach Parker's Avi Suquilla Airport, P20—elevation 449 feet. We overflew the town. The small Parker Bridge was intact. A tanker had not exploded here—the roadway was not an interstate.

As I circled back and entered the pattern from the southeast I noticed the big P that was whitewashed on a black hill off my starboard wingtip. The slope of the hill was facing the town and was nearly vertical, creating an ideal natural billboard to promote, most likely, the town-folk's pride in Parker High School's football team.

I changed the radio frequency back to 122.8 and depressed the transmit button on the joystick between my knees. Parker traffic; motorglider four-seven golf; entering the pattern on a forty-five for left downwind runway one-niner; Parker. I would be landing toward the south.

I refueled Elsa with thirteen gallons of 100 octane low-lead avgas at the self-service pump. After Elsa was locked and tied down, I strapped on my backpack, containing a clean shirt, my iPad, water bottle, and toilet kit, and began the hike to Parker. One mile. My stiff back would benefit from the exercise. My sore neck would not. My head throbbed.

My face was festooned with dried blood. My white T-shirt was ruined with bloodstains. I needed a motel room, a hot shower, a clean shirt, a good meal, a few aspirin, and a good night's rest. And it wasn't even noon yet.

I wondered if my photography during the double whammy today really deserved a DFC. After all, it's awarded for heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight. I was just in the right place at the right time. Besides, it's a military decoration, and I'm just a civilian. My dad, a Colonel in the Air Force, would have been amused by my ordeal—he had earned a real DFC. He flew into the sunset thirty-five years ago now.

Chapter 3: Certificate & Detour

Above Parker I had seen that Arizona Route 95 led to Quartzite to the south and to Lake Havasu City and Needles to the north, making a ninety-degree corner in the middle of town. From that intersection the road from Quartzite continued straight to a two-lane bridge over the Colorado River only a half-mile away.

Leaving on foot, I saw a new Walmart across the street from the airport. Sidewalks hugged both sides of the highway there. Walking was easy and safe on the sidewalks. Route 95 inside Parker had five lanes of blacktop, two in each direction plus a turning lane in the center. Outside the town the road narrowed to two lanes.

As