At first he thought he was all right until he tried to turn to see if Joe was conscious. Something was wrong with his arm. A sudden, excruciating pain exploded in his wrist and ran all the way up to his shoulder. He was familiar with this pain. It reminded him of the time he’d broken his leg.
“Joe…are you all right… Joe?” Martin called out.
It was Martin’s right arm that was injured, so he stretched his left arm out towards Joe’s seat. He made contact with Joe’s arm, shook it and heard a low rasping sound. Joe was alive. He coughed a few times and continued rasping.
Martin tried again. “Joe,” he shouted, shaking his arm.
“Oh God…don’t do that, for Christ’s sake!” Joe called out.
“How bad are you?”
“Heaven knows. My whole chest feels as if it’s caved in.”
“Don’t say that, Joe…how can I check you out with a broken arm?”
Joe let out a rasping laugh, coughing in the process. “Everything was going to plan. If only the thermal had stayed with us right to the ground it would have been a perfect landing. And now we’re stuck out here without a radio.”
Martin relaxed his body to ease the pain and let out a long sigh, looking down at the watch on his wrist. “We should have arrived by now. The warning bells will be ringing. They’ll be sending out a helicopter to look for us.”
“And where are they going to look? We’re off course… Remember?”
CHAPTER 5
When Joe’s channel remained silent, they presumed he had climbed out of trouble and they would not hear from him again until he had put the storm behind him. On hearing the Lear Jet had just landed, Philip left the operations room and made his way to the executive lounge adjacent to the main hanger, expecting Larry Kingston to be disembarking and waiting to be brought up to date on the current situation.
Only the pilot was there. He had poured himself a stiff whiskey from the mini-bar in the kitchen and was casually sipping it in an easy chair when Philip arrived. “If you’re looking for the boss, he made straight for the sleep-over.”
“What for?” Philip questioned the exhausted pilot.
“As you can imagine we had a hell of a flight from the top end. I was trying to outrun a cyclone. Just managed to beat it here; in the process scaring the pants off His God Almighty. He rushed off into the private room over there.”
“For how long? Did he say?” Philip asked.
The pilot finished his drink and went back to the bar, looking as if he was about to pour himself another. “I have no idea. He just rushed off.”
“Was it bad?” Philip continued. “I’ve got a plane up there at the moment.”
“Then I feel sorry for him. I hope he’s flying in the opposite direction.”
“So do I,” Philip replied; then turned on his heels and left.
After listening to the pilot’s encounter with the cyclone, instead of returning to his office to wait for his boss, Philip decided to return to the operations room to warn everyone to be ready for Larry Kingston’s grilling on the storm.
Philip’s eccentric technicians were not used to dealing with company ‘Big Wigs’ and he made every effort to separate the two. However, since Larry Kingston apparently had just experienced his first storm of this category, he was bound to head straight for the operations room as soon as he recovered.
Josh Mackenzie was waiting for Philip as soon as he came through the door, and there was a look of apprehension on his face that stopped Philip in his tracks.
“All right. What’s happened now, Josh?”
“Sorry, boss…we’ve got a Mayday.”
“What?” Philip shouted, disturbing the other two, who were busy bent over the table studying the chart of the area where Joe went down.
“Two hours was not enough of a window,” Max said in his defence.
“What did Joe say?” Philip finished his outcry.
Josh joined Philip as he walked over to the table, “It was only short. Not enough information for us to get a bearing on him.”
“What did he say, Josh?” Philip questioned a little calmer.
Josh lifted a piece of paper to read from. “After his call sign, all he had time for was: ‘BIRD-STRIKE… BIRD-STRIKE’, and then nothing but static.
“Is that all? No heading, height or status.”
“No, boss…and no more calls since. They’ll be down by now.”
“Don’t say that. They could still be in the air. Their radio could be out.”
“Philip,” Bryce interrupted. “It’s a bird-strike. What chance would they have of surviving that? They have to be on the ground. Joe’s a good pilot. If the engine stalled he would glide the Cessna down. We just have to find them.”
Philip made no comment. His mind was absorbing Bryce’s scenario as he moved closer to the table and scanned the situation. He could see they had already laid out a pattern for the search planes to follow. None had left yet without his permission and a complete agreement that their assumptions were correct.
Bryce could see the determined expression on Philip’s face and since the layout was based on his calculations, he decided to take responsibility for the search.
“I haven’t finished my calculations yet, Philip, but this is how we see it.”
In the interim since the message had come through, they had cleared the chart of the strings indicating the storm’s path and substituted a sheet of clear plastic, which they had already started drawing lines on in different colours. Bryce started to explain.
“Okay, Philip. This blue line from the AMINCO airstrip leading to Site 21 is the heading Joe was to take under normal conditions. Now I calculated by the time of Joe’s first call, about the state of the weather, he would be about here,” Bryce said, pointing to where the red line started. “That’s considering he was travelling at his nominal speed of 230km/h. So…using that point as a radius, I calculated the wind would have changed his heading by approximately four degrees up to the point when we received his Mayday call.” He placed a piece of string at the radius point and drew a curve from the last contact.
“That’s all very well, Bryce, but does it pinpoint where Joe is?”
“No, Philip. This is not where Joe is…it’s only the most likely search area.”
“I see. Okay, continue.”
“Right. Up to the end of the red line we can be pretty certain of Joe’s course. It’s this bit at the end of the red line that’s uncertain. If we imagine he added another four degrees to his heading when he climbed to 5000 feet, I reckon that would put him about here when he had the bird-strike.” Bryce pointed to the Mayday marker. “From then on I reckon you could add another two degrees.”
Philip studied the pattern Bryce had laid out on the plastic sheet. “That’s very good, Bryce. That gives us a six-degree search pattern from the original heading,” he said, still studying the area. “There’s just one thing that worries me…how far would you guess he drifted before he crashed? I mean I doubt if he just dropped out of the sky. We could be talking about another twenty kilometres from that height.”
Bryce never got the chance to answer. The door crashed open and Larry Kingston entered the room with his usual flamboyance. A Texas-born American, he came across as a self-confident individual who knew only one code: the survival of the fittest. Amongst like-minded businessmen he was a dominant personality, but put him up against intelligent characters, regardless of whether they were introvert or extrovert like himself and he buckled.
He was one of those millionaires who bragged constantly about how he dragged himself out of poverty against all odds, imagining it was that alone that marked him as an alpha male. Individuals like Philip, Bryce and Max frightened him, but he would never admit it; instead he would hide behind his position and the flamboyant facade he assumed.
Philip was always suspicious of his English name. His dark hair, sallow complexion and brown eyes pointed to a South American, Spanish heritage. But regardless of that he was a
lways immaculately dressed.
You could hear a pin drop when he walked out of the shadows into the lighted area of the chart table where all three of his nightmares stood together.
“Okay, you guys…what’s going on?”
Philip turned to face him, “I hear you had a rough journey,” he said.
“Worst I’ve had in a long time…I can tell you,” he replied strongly as he parted the group and moved closer to the table. “So… What’s going on?”
He was oblivious of what was in front of him.
“That storm you caught the edge of has brought down one of our planes,” Philip said, directing his attention to the area they were studying.
“I mean, what’s going on with Site 21…has he arrived yet?”
“Martin Dexter’s on the missing plane.”
“You mean no one’s fixing my problem. I’m losing 250,000 dollars a day.”
They just looked at the man.
“What about the two men in the plane? They could be dead for all we know,” Philip shouted, trembling with rage at the callousness of the man.
Kingston stared at him with a wild, open-eyed expression, until his glare changed to a more composed smile. “Look, Philip…yes, it’s a tragedy and I pray the men are okay, but I’ve got a company to run, while you and your guys have got to search for that plane. It’s what we do. We can’t get at cross purposes on this.”
In the wider sense Philip could understand the man’s single-mindedness. That’s how he’s got to where he is today. He is happy with the decisions he has to make, but one day it will drag him down.
“You don’t have to worry, Larry; I’ve already transferred Eddie Kent from the Northern Territory site. He was just about to return anyway.”
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it, Philip? That’s all I wanted to know. I’ve got to report to Hubbard shortly and you know what he’s like; he fires you first, and then asks questions.”
“Everything is under control, Larry.”
“That’s not good enough, Philip. When is he going to arrive?”
“In this weather he’ll arrive when he arrives.”
“God damn it, Philip. I’ll be up to a million on this job before I know it.”
“That’s how the cookie crumbles. Is that what you Americans say?”
Kingston let out a gasp. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Philip.”
He glanced at his watch. His call to the States was due about now and he needed answers. He turned back to the chart they were studying as if he knew what he was looking at.
“Do you want an overview?” Philip asked. He leaned on the table and nodded.
“Bryce…will you take Larry through your plan?” Philip said.
“Okay, Mr Kingston. The blue line represents the heading from here to Site 21, which I am using as the control.” He pointed to the first break. “This is where the pilot made his first call about the weather conditions. The red line is where I calculate he might have gained a four-degree variance when I advised him to climb to 5000 feet above the storm.” He moved on to the next marker along the red line. “This is where he had the bird-strike…”
“Bird-strike…I thought it was the storm that brought him down?” Larry interrupted, shaking his head.
“Indirectly it did,” Bryce continued. “When he felt it safe to return to his original height he ran into a flock of birds doing the same thing. They were all trying to get round the storm.”
Larry grunted his partial acceptance of Bryce’s explanation. “Very well…what happened then?”
“We received a Mayday call, which was terminated before the pilot was able to give us his heading and there’s been no response since,” Bryce continued.
“And you think he’s gone down in this area?” Larry said, pointing his finger at the small arc drawn across the red line.
“That’s my best guess for the search planes. We can send one out along the original heading as far as the arc in the off-chance he managed to get back, and another along the red line. We’ll know more when the first plane arrives.”
Philip could see Larry was looking for something else to say when the phone rang. Max picked it up, listened to the other end and then, covering the mouthpiece, he relayed the message to Larry. “That was Elsie, sir; your call from America is coming through now. You can take it in the VIP lounge.”
“Right, thanks. Er…it’s Max?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied, putting the phone down.
Larry Kingston left the room. He made no closing remarks, just nodded his head and left. Philip guessed he was about to put on his other hat. He was about to eat craw, as they say in America; but this time in private.
“That’s the last we’ll see of him for a while,” Philip said, rubbing his hands together. He checked his watch. “Good heavens…it’s eight-twenty already. That idiot has lost us valuable time. Right…by the time you get the planes away we’ve got about eight hours of daylight left…plenty of time to test your theory, Bryce. Max…you check the weather and make sure we’ve got a decent window.”
They both nodded as Philip turned to leave, “What are you going to do?” Bryce questioned as Philip reached the door.
“I’m going back to my office and will contact CASA. I’ll let them know we have things under control at the present, but if we have no luck by the end of the day, they can take over tomorrow.”
Max screwed up his face. “I don’t fancy the Aviation people taking over just yet. Surely we can give it a couple of days.”
Philip considered his point. “Okay, Max…two days. Oh, and have a word with Josh. You know how he gets upset when he’s left out of things.”
As Philip reached his office he leaned into Elsie’s room and called out to her, “Is ‘you know who’ still talking to America?”
She looked up from her desk with a smile on her face. “Yes, he is. I listened in on the first few minutes and Hubbard doesn’t seem happy.”
“Good. It’s about time Larry got some of his own medicine. Can you get me CASA on the phone?”
“All right…are you in your office?”
“I shall be in two seconds,” Philip said, as he stepped through his door.
As Elsie picked up the phone and was about to dial CASA’s number she heard a loud shriek from Philip’s office.
“Oh my God. Damn it, damn it!” he shouted.
Elsie rushed through thinking he had tripped, but he was sitting on the corner of his desk. “What’s wrong?” she cried.
“Oh Elsie…I forgot to ring Kate. I should have contacted her straightaway when she was at home.”
“Where will she be now?”
“She starts at the Education Council at eight o’clock.”
“How do you know that?”
“Oh, it was something Martin said about the strange hours the civil servants work; something about being in line with the school hours. Oh hell… that bloody Larry Kingston distracted me. Going on about losing money.”
“Wasn’t he bothered about the missing plane?”
“Not in the least…he was more concerned about who was going to take Martin’s place at Site 21. And I can’t ring her. I have to tell her face to face.”
“Look…you can’t leave now, not when he’s here and you have to talk to CASA. Why don’t I go and speak to her? It might be better coming from a woman.”
Philip’s not-so-keen expression mellowed into one of compliance. He had no choice, assessing the situation. Not with Larry Kingston about.
“Very well…thank you, Elsie. You get off to the Education complex and I’ll contact CASA. Bring her back here. She’s sure to want to know all the details and what we’re doing to find her husband.”
“Okay…leave it to me,” she replied, turning back to her office. She grabbed her coat and car keys and left, waving to him as she passed his room.
The rain had stopped and the dense clouds had broken up into patches while the offending cyclone had disappeared and was heading nort
h towards Indonesia. Elsie entered the airlock of the circular door, passed through into the spacious lobby and walked across to the receptionist sitting behind a huge desk.
“I would like to see Mrs Dexter, please,” Elsie asked.
The attractive girl looked at her, as receptionists do, saying, “Do you have an appointment?” This surprised Elsie. She had no idea Kate was that important.
“No, I don’t. This is an emergency.”
“What sort of an emergency?”
“There’s only one type of emergency,” Elsie shouted.
The girl jumped, looked flustered and picked up the phone.
“I have a woman down here who wants to speak to Mrs Dexter. She says it’s an emergency…I know…I asked that.”
Elsie snatched the phone out of the girls hand and spoke into the mouthpiece, “Who am I speaking to?” she shouted in a frustrated manner.
“I’m Mrs Dexter’s secretary. What’s this about an emergency?”
“I have to speak to Mrs Dexter. It’s about her husband, Martin Dexter. And don’t say anything to her until I see her.”
“All right…take the lift to the third floor…I’ll be waiting for you.”
“Thank you,” Elsie said politely to the girl as she handed her the phone.
Elsie followed the secretary’s directions and she was waiting for her outside the lift. “What is your name? I need to introduce you.”
Kate had arrived in a sad state. She had battled through the pouring rain to deliver Jennifer to her university and then she’d gone on to her office. The sun was shining through her east-facing window, making her feel alive again. She was less concerned with Martin’s welfare and ready to tackle the day’s workload.
There was a buzz on her intercom. “Yes, Susan?”
“I have a Mrs Danzig here. It’s urgent.”
“Danzig…I don’t recall that name.”
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