Drama, drama, drama

Sunday afternoon I was scheduled to pick up a speaker for the college at our tiny airport. Flying on prop planes into small airports is always dicey and usually leads to a story for dinner parties, but even my frequent-flyer speaker said he'd never been through anything like this before.

We arrived on time to find two Bureau of Indian Affairs officials in the waiting area along with a man with his small children and mother in law waiting for his wife, flowers in hand. The kids gave us regular updates:

"There it is! There's the plane! Momma's home!"
and then,
"Dad, why is the plane going around and around?"
"Here it comes again. Yay!"
"Wait, why did it go by again? Is that her plane?"

Pretty soon, even they bored of monitoring the hour of circling the plane did overhead. Clearly something was wrong. About 40 minutes later, we were evacuated from the airport.

"Sorry, folks; would you all please head over to that white building? We will notify you when you may return."

No explanation, just directions to spend our afternoon out in the frigid wind.

Jack and I headed for the car and drove to the white building. Pretty soon, emergency vehicles began to arrive.

The poor travelers scheduled to depart on this plane were left standing around catching cold.

We watched and waited. Rumors began to arrive as fast as the six ambulances, eight fire trucks and dozen BIA police cars (plus two mobile police stations and an incident command center): Ken Salazar, Secretary for the Interior, was on the plane. It had no brakes. They were circling to run out of fuel. Crews were preparing to foam the runway to lubricate the landing and prevent sparks.

Suddenly I was driven to call everyone I know. Jack was calmly assessing the situation and making informed judgments (he used to be a pilot). I was riding the drama wave and determined to spread it out like frosting on a cake. Finally, I reasoned that I had to at least call my friend the editor of a local newspaper. She was enjoying her clawfoot tub time. Oops. She said she'd call me back from the office where she could hear scanner traffic.

"It's true; they have no brakes and are waiting to run out of fuel."

We stayed on the line and made the occasional relevant comment in between all the "Ohmygawds".

"They're coming down. They're ready to come down!"

I craned my neck, but could see nothing in the sky. All I could think about were those two little kids watching for their Mom. Suddenly a small plane cruised by on the runway like a Cadillac on Main Street. Fire trucks followed it, but soon came back, unnecessary. Can trucks look dejected? They seemed to say, "I got all dressed up for this?"

The rest of us were exhausted with relief. No ball of flames. Prayers answered. A safe landing. What could have been a front-page splash across national newspapers would barely make a story now. Phew.

As quickly as the fire trucks retreated, out scooted your standard black Suburban on to the tarmac, up to the stairs descending from the side of the baby plane. Maybe it wasn't Salazar (my trusty phone dialed in his schedule. There was no way he was on that plane and would still make a lunch meeting in Mexico City the next day.), but someone was on that flight.Well, about a dozen someones, but you get the point.

I saw the BIA official who had been waiting when we arrived put his arm around the last man off the plane and put him into the Suburban.

And now for ... the rest of the story. We went our merry way. I found my speaker. The pilot told them first that it was too windy to land so they needed to circle for a while, then that an emergency landing gear gauge was not working properly and that is why they might see some precautionary emergency vehicles on the ground. Nothing to worry about. A smooth landing was expected.

"And we did. I couldn't even tell when we touched the ground."

Jack returned to the ranch and the speaker and I went to dinner. I left him at his hotel and headed back again on the highway, only to encounter this:

I called Jack: "You are not going to believe this! I'm stuck in a traffic stop. One of those mobile police stations that was at the airport is in the middle of the road and there's cop cars on both sides. They're stopping everyone in both directions and here comes a dog!"

The dog sniffed every car; I kept waiting for him to sit by one and cops to swarm in from every direction. Of course I know there is nothing untoward in my car but still. My heart stopped a second when the German Shepherd walked on by.

When I got to the front of the line and rolled down my window a nice police officer informed me they were just checking to make sure everyone was wearing their seatbelts.

Uh -huh. Right. Since when do dogs verify seat belt usage?

And lookie here - a big black Suburban parked just off the highway, two officials standing nearby in neon vests observing the proceedings. How many official black Suburbans can there be in the middle of Wyoming?

The following day the rumor was now that the Suburbanite was Larry EchoHawk, Assistant Secretary of the Interior. Based on fervent Googling and my glimpse from half a mile away I was betting on Michael Black, Director of the BIA. When the paper came out Wednesday they revealed the law enforcement big wig was Darren Cruzan, EchoHawk's recent appointee as the new Director of the BIA Office of Justice Services.

Clearly, Cruzan was here for some kind of special sting operation. Since it is the BIA, however, we'll probably never know the details. They're pretty closed mouthed about their operations. I'm betting, however, that it is related to the public safety initiative in Indian Country.