Blood Brothers

by Charles Beagley

  As he jumped into his seat, buckled up his harness and slammed shut the door, he reached onto the centre console and retrieved a pair of headphones.

  “Put these on,” he said. “It’s the only way we can talk to each other.”

  Joe’s headset was already in place when Martin slipped the earphones over his head, retracting the narrow stem with a microphone on the end, just as Joe had.

  There was a sudden deathly silence that reminded Martin of the time he’d had his ears tested. He glanced in Joe’s direction as he adjusted his seat. Then the headset came alive. Someone was asking Joe if he was ready for a flight check. Joe realised Martin was listening and he pressed a button, which returned him to silence.

  The silence gave Martin the opportunity to focus on the activity around the plane. Even at this hour there were two mechanics busying themselves under the wings. Martin noticed they also had headsets on and the man on his side came out from under the wing and made a gesture with his hand in the air. Joe’s lips were moving all the time. He was checking off the instruments, flipping switches, turning the control column in his lap and jiggling his feet. Each action was followed by a gesture of acknowledgement from one of the men.

  All the time Joe had been reading from a card. He placed it somewhere beside his left leg, flipped another switch and pressed something that started the engine. Martin flinched with shock. The whole plane came alive as the propeller in front of him disappeared in a whirling fury. After a scraping sound under the plane, the two men appeared again, this time standing out of the way with large metal objects in their hands. They were the chocks, the last vestige of equipment that had been holding the small plane in place on the concrete apron. One of the men raised his hand in a circular movement and Joe let off the brakes.

  As the Cessna taxied along the short parking lane, Martin instinctively turned his head towards Kate. She was standing close to the window, waving her hand, looking as forlorn as she did when they saw their relatives off at Broome airport. At the last moment before Joe turned left onto the main runway, Martin blew her a kiss. She waved and the engine increased its power.

  Martin’s headset came alive. “I’d put your sunglasses on if I were you, Mr Dexter,” Joe said, pushing the throttle lever forward. “We’re heading east and the sun is just about to break out of the trees.”

  Martin took them out of his breast pocket and covered his eyes and instinctively clenched his hands together on his lap. Despite his earphones, his ears were popping, beads of sweat were breaking out on his brow and he had the awful feeling he was in a food blender. The sensation became more pronounced the higher the speed until suddenly the vibrations stopped. Less than halfway down the runway the Cessna lifted off and climbed into the salmon pink sky; high above the dreaded trees and east towards the rising sun.

  Even with his sunglasses Martin could hardly look into the smouldering mass poking above the distant hills. “Why are we heading east?” he asked.

  “Relax,” Joe said, amongst a jumble of aircraft jargon as he communicated with the AMINCO operations crew. “In a few minutes I shall bank right on a south-east heading of 123 degrees for Site 21. You might as well get your head down and catch up on that early start.”

  Despite the gut-wrenching anxiety of taking off in what he considered a machine hardly more powerful than a lawn mower, they were in the air and still climbing. Martin was uneasy. It brought back a distant memory he thought he had forgotten; an equally traumatic flight in a Tiger Moth that was also too close to the elements, and the near proximity of that single propeller. Even with his eyes closed and his determined concentration on the memory of Kate’s last anxious expression, Martin could not stop the flashbacks of that fateful day in the RAF.

  Kate watched the small Cessna until it mingled with the drawn-out clouds rushing across the eastern sky-line. They had started to accumulate into worrying columns, rising and falling in the same pattern she had seen from her balcony. It had started raining again, heavier now and she thought of Martin.

  As it was out of her control, she let out a sigh and turned away from the window and made her way along the corridor trying to remember if it was left – left or right – right. Either way she managed to pass the familiar windows of the operations complex, turn into the last corridor that led into the administration block where she let out a sigh of relief on seeing the main entrance.

  Suddenly she was surprised when a door on her left opened and Philip Hastings walked out. She remembered him immediately from an AMINCO party to which Martin had taken her. She stopped in her tracks.

  “Oh Kate…on your way home?” he remarked.

  “Yes, Philip. I had to see Martin off,” she replied simply, not wanting to get involved at this time in the morning about why she was there.

  “Of course you did,” he said smartly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see you both when you arrived. We’ve got a big-wig flying in this morning.” He glanced at his watch. “In fact he should be landing soon.”

  “Let’s hope he arrives before the storm.”

  “Oh…you heard about that,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “That’s not due for ages and he’s arriving from the opposite direction.”

  Kate made a move to pass him. “Well, don’t let me keep you.”

  Suddenly there was a loud bang that echoed along the corridor: a gust of wind hit the front doors, opening them slightly and clashing them together again. They both looked towards the entrance.

  Kate jumped. “Oh dear…I’d better get a move on.”

  Philip walked her to the entrance, opened one of the doors for her and watched as she hurried across to her car. Despite his assurances, he could not help glancing in the direction of the Indian Ocean. It was a good ten kilometres away, but even from that distance, he could see the sky was looking ominous.

  CHAPTER 2

  There was no need for Martin to open his eyes to know Joe was making his south-east turn. It was like being the bubble in a spirit level. Despite being strapped in, or maybe because of that, his insides responded to every movement of the plane. Then there was a profound click and Joe’s voice echoed in his headset.

  “You can open your eyes now, Mr Dexter.”

  Martin opened his eyes and stared out of the windscreen. It was a strange experience as wispy clouds formed, evaporated and reformed again in front of his eyes. He had not summoned enough nerve to look out of his window yet, but he did manage to unclench his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Joe…I didn’t mean to offend you with my anxiety.”

  Joe laughed before replying. “Oh, that’s okay, Mr Dexter. It happens to everyone when they fly in a small plane for the first time.”

  Martin tested himself and glanced to the right. The wing was directly above his window so, regardless of the narrowest of struts holding it up in front of his seat, he had an unrestricted view of the ground.

  “It’s just so different to the jet,” Martin replied.

  Joe paused for a moment before replying as if that had ticked him off. “Yeah…I wish. You should try flying in a helicopter sometime. That would make you appreciate the Cessna. They have luxury jets too. It’s just that AMINCO likes to have a wide range to choose from. You know…different tools for different jobs. Being an engineer, Mr Dexter, you can appreciate that.”

  “Oh, I can, Joe…and stop calling me Mr Dexter. It’s Martin.”

  “Okay, Martin…thanks.”

  “It feels as if I’m sitting in one of those chairs on top of the Ferris wheel looking down on the fairground with all the people moving around like little ants. God, how I hated that, but my wife Kate couldn’t get enough. And do you know what? She hated the dodgems. You know…the cars you drive around bumping into each other.”

  “I know what they are, Martin. We do have them in Australia.”

  “Sorry…I’ll get used to the Cessna.”

  Joe started his customary instrument check. All seemed well but Martin was so on edge he just had to talk. It
was a bad habit that Kate was always trying to cure him of. What he needed was some questions answered. That always worked.

  “Joe…I never got a satisfactory answer about this storm front.”

  “What’s your problem, Martin? You’re an engineer. Surely you can understand the basic formation of storm-front windows?”

  “Pass it by me again.”

  “Okay. We have a storm front coming in from the Indian Ocean. We have a window, that’s a respite of approximately two hours before it hits Broome. We’re travelling at 230km/h. We took off at about six, so by seven we shall be three-quarters of the way through our three-hundred-kilometre journey, and the storm hasn’t even hit Broome yet. It still has another hour, by which time we shall have landed.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah…that’s so. Martin…the storm is behind us. When it arrives it will be travelling at around 100km/h. Do the maths; it can’t catch up to us.”

  Joe was suddenly distracted by a smell and started sniffing the air. Unusual smells in a confined space like a plane at three thousand feet concerned him.

  “What’s that smell?”

  “Oh that,” Martin said under his breath. “That’s my Dunhill.”

  “Dunhill?”

  “Yes…you know – the people who make the cigarettes.”

  “They do scent now?”

  “It’s not scent…it’s cologne.”

  Joe shook his head and appeared to be satisfied it was not something he should be worried about. Martin forgot for the moment that he was the passenger and Joe was working. This was what he did, and going about his business of flying the plane needed his full concentration; not listening to an idiot that needed to talk to take his mind off where they were. In the jet Martin could relax, go to sleep, read his report, totally oblivious from what was happening outside the plane.

  Joe went quiet again. He seemed preoccupied with his instruments; tapping dials, checking LED figures against his card again and glancing out of his window. Joe was in the early stages of the flight, making sure everything was as it should be. Then after another check below his wing he seemed to relax.

  Martin had no need to check his watch. Suddenly a bright orange shaft of light burst out of the window behind Joe’s seat and rapidly moved along the plane’s side until it broke through his window and remained fixed there, passing across the instrument panel and onto the side of Martin’s face. He could feel its warmth as it penetrated the gap between the rim of his glasses and the bridge of his nose; then just as quickly it disappeared as the Cessna continued to climb.

  “Sunrise at last,” Martin noted.

  Joe glanced sideways at the distraction.

  “Not quite,” Joe corrected him. “Down below, sunrise was at its usual time of six-fourteen. I don’t know if you were aware, but we’ve been climbing through clouds and what you experienced just now was the plane breaking out of the clouds’ thousand-foot ceiling, and, as you can see…we’re in a blue sky.”

  Martin looked about him. “So I see. I didn’t notice.”

  “It wasn’t a thick cloud. It was more of a scattered variety; common enough towards the desert. It keeps the vegetation alive.”

  “I thought the desert was all sand dunes.”

  “Oh no,” Joe replied with a slight amusement in his voice. “They’re further south. The northern Sandy Desert is mostly scrubland: mainly spinifex and a scattering of acacia shrubs and small trees. This low cloud is barely enough to sustain them until the rains. They can be very heavy, like that storm front that’s following us. It’ll dump about a 100 mm as it passes over.”

  “As much as that?” Martin questioned.

  “Oh yes…sometimes more, right across the desert to Alice Springs and depending on what’s driving it, even into Victoria.”

  “Yes, I remember now. I remember seeing the weather forecast showing the long white trail across the country.”

  “Anyway…as the sun heats up, all this lot will evaporate and within fifteen minutes it will be gone and you’ll be able to see the ground.”

  Martin’s apprehension began to take over. “I’m not so sure about that. I was just getting used to the distance between us and those clouds down there.”

  The cockpit soon began to feel uncomfortably warm and Joe reached over to his console and adjusted the airflow. It soon settled back to its earlier temperature and Martin was happy again. He turned to Joe. It was his first opportunity to see his companion in daylight. Not that he could see much past his sunglasses and baseball cap. But his name was sufficient to guess his ancestors were Italian.

  “So, Joe,” Martin opened the discussion, “when did you arrive in Australia?”

  At first Joe looked aghast, as if the question was alien to him; then he realised it was a typical opening gambit between immigrants. “I was born here,” he replied.

  “Oh…sorry; it was your name that threw me.”

  “It was my father that emigrated from a small town on the Adriatic Coast called Rimini. It was back in 1948 when things were bad.”

  “That must have been very hard for the family.”

  “I wasn’t born then and my father seemed to avoid talking about that part of his life. For me everything started when he joined the Australian Army. Not that he talked much about fighting in Korea; not many do. He was more open about his time flying a helicopter. You know the Bell that looks like an insect with a big glass bubble in front. He got shot down in the hills and had to walk back. It took days. I certainly wouldn’t want to go through what he did.”

  “So he survived then?”

  “Oh yes. When he got back from Korea, he found it difficult to settle, so he moved from Sydney to Queensland to become a cane-cutter.”

  “That was a mammoth decision to make.”

  “At the time it was the only way he could make any money. Within a year he had made enough to buy a second-hand helicopter and he started his own crop-spraying business. Then he went into partnership with an old army buddy, flying sightseeing trips up and down the Barrier Reef. They were doing really well until the Australian Aviation Authority pounced on them, saying they couldn’t use the same helicopter they sprayed crops with to fly passengers; something about the toxic chemicals.”

  “Isn’t that just like it?” Martin sympathised.

  Joe seemed to appreciate that as he checked his altimeter.

  “For my dad it was. Then his buddy had the brilliant idea of taking out a loan to buy a plane. It was a Cessna – an earlier version than this. And that’s when I learned to fly. My mother was furious. ‘Isn’t it enough to have one madman in the family?’ she would say. But she came round when I got my licence.”

  “So why are you not flying in your dad’s business now?”

  “The plane was just too much for them. They weren’t getting enough passengers to pay its way.”

  “That’s too bad after all the bad luck your father had already had.”

  “Not really. It led to my father finding out his buddy was cheating him.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “His buddy disappeared, leaving my dad with all the bills to take care of. Almost broke he was about to sell the plane when he saw an advertisement in the paper. It was a new American mining company in Australia looking for pilots with their own planes. The deal was: they would rent the plane, pay for the expenses as well as a bonus if the pilot completed his targets. Piece of cake my dad thought until he realised he had to move to Broome and fly workers to and from mine sites in the Sandy Desert.”

  “And obviously he accepted the deal,” Martin interrupted.

  “He did. He also introduced me to the boss. Told him I had my licence and got me this job, which I’ve been doing this past eight years.”

  “I suppose your father is retired now?”

  Joe went silent again. It was as if he needed a moment to find the right words, but there were none and he just continued. “He died two years ago…cancer of the lungs. The bloody idiot
; I told him to stop smoking.”

  “Oh, I am sorry, Joe,” Martin replied. “I had no intention of opening up old wounds. How terrible for your mother.”

  “Yes, but time heals all wounds, so they say.”

  Martin nodded and the conversation ended. Or so he thought.

  “So you’re an engineer then?” Joe asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I usually only get the workers; you’re my first executive.”

  “I wouldn’t class myself as an executive…more an overseer.”

  “It’s all the same to me. I wouldn’t be flying you to the site if his lord all mighty hadn’t commandeered the Lear Jet.”

  “Yes, well that may be true, but I’m getting used to the Cessna now.”

  “I knew you would. But I bet next time you won’t say no to the comfort of the Lear Jet. I persuaded the head pilot to give me a run around the hills once. I got to sit in the padded seats, enjoy a hot beverage and even took control for a few minutes. I have to admit, I’d choose the jet any day over the Cessna.”

  “All right…I was being tactful. And yes, I would choose the jet if I was given the choice. But in this instance I wasn’t…so that’s that.”

  Suddenly, Joe became attentive to the plane’s performance. Every now and then the Cessna was buffeted with a cross wind that threw it off course. The left wing lifted and they gained height, dropped back and then began climbing again. Joe tried to look nonchalant, as if the turbulence was a common occurrence, but Martin noticed he was gripping the control column tightly.

  Just as suddenly everything returned to normal and they were back on course. Before Martin was able to ask what all that was about, Joe continued their discussion as if nothing had happened.