by Hunt, Jack
“No. No, he didn’t,” her father replied, giving Frank a stern look.
10
Tensions were running high the next morning as they boarded the plane. Her father would have left the night before given the chance. He felt as if he’d been blindsided, kept out of the loop on purpose regarding who owned the lodge. It was the first time Kara had come to learn about the true animosity between her father and Hugh Callaway. There was murky history that stemmed back many years, a disagreement between Frank and Henry over rejecting Callaway’s offer to buy out the air taxi service. Why Callaway was interested now was a mystery. Back then it might have made financial sense but times had changed, it was flailing, on a downward spiral if Frank was to be believed.
Her father had retreated to his room early that evening despite Callaway’s attempts to get him to join them for a brandy and cigar after supper. Instead, he’d gotten into a heated argument with Frank out in the lobby. What that conversation was about was unclear. Kara kept her distance, took in the beauty of her surroundings, and for a brief moment tried to forget the embarrassment of watching her father’s outburst. He’d left the dining table but not before referring to Callaway as a vulture that preyed upon the poor, naïve and vulnerable all for the mighty dollar.
“Look, how many times do we have to go over this? I said I’m sorry,” Frank said as the plane vibrated on the runway with the steady rhythm of a rumbling engine. “I figured you might think differently if you heard it directly from him.”
“If I wouldn’t accept before, why would I accept it now?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because we’re in a hole,” he replied, emphasizing the word hole. She still hadn’t been told where they were heading, only that it would take roughly thirty minutes, give or take. They would then be in the backcountry for one to two days. She’d already told her father it couldn’t be longer than that as she had to get back to California.
“That’s what Callaway would have you believe.”
“Dear God, man, have you not looked at the last quarter?” Frank asked.
“So we’re in a bit of a slump, business will pick up again. It always does.”
Frank scoffed. “A bit of a slump. Please, you have no clue.”
“Besides, there are ways to go about having this discussion and that was not it,” her father replied as Frank hurried them to climb into the single-engine, high-wing propeller aircraft. The six-seater was more spacious now that they’d dropped off the tourists. Kara was positioned directly behind Frank who was piloting, her father upfront riding shotgun. Angela Stanton, a longtime friend of her father and fellow armchair treasure hunter wearing a warm yellow down jacket and tiny spectacles, had settled onto a canvas seat to the right of Kara but one row back. There was a narrow space between the seats and the gear Frank had already loaded into the cargo compartment. While cramped in comparison to an airliner, it was still designed to easily hold a fifty-gallon oil drum for transporting to a village. It was a true workhorse that was built for the ruggedness and far-flung regions of Alaska.
“So where are we heading again?” she asked her father.
“You’ll see when we get there.”
“Could you be any more mysterious?”
“Oh live a little. That’s the thrill of the adventure. This isn’t California.”
Kara turned in her seat. “Angela?”
She shrugged. “I know the same as you.”
Angela had lost her husband and according to her father, they’d connected over their love of the mystery surrounding Sir Francis Drake’s shipment of gold. While her father said it was only friendship, Kara had to wonder if that came with other benefits. Not that she would mind. He had every right to move on, in fact, she’d had that conversation with him years ago. She suggested it was healthy, something her mother would have wanted. Between Angela and his neighbor, Debbie, it wasn’t like he was hurting for options.
They’d left early that morning, long before anyone else had risen. Certainly before Callaway could wrangle them into joining him for breakfast, something she’d expected.
A few minutes later, the wind was beneath the wings, and they were once again high above a tapestry of colorful trees, a burst of fiery fall yellow, brown, and orange stretching out for miles. Traveling at over two hundred miles per hour, Kara gazed out at the blue dome that encompassed an unruly wilderness full of deep valleys and rolling hills. There were endless rivers, forests, and pristine turquoise lakes bowing before the spectacular snow-covered mountain peaks and vistas. It truly lived up to its name as the Mountain Kingdom of North America with Mount Drum, Sandford, Wrangell, and Blackburn rising from the valley like intimidating giants.
The vibration of the plane and the hum of the engine might have put her to sleep had it not been for the rancid smell of fuel that was enough to give anyone a headache.
They had been roughly fifteen minutes into the trip when Frank tapped the oil PSI gauge. There was no noticeable change in the function of the plane, the RPM appeared to be good, maybe slower than before but okay. The engine sounded fine but the confusion in Frank’s voice was noticeable.
“What’s the matter?” her father asked, leaning to take a look.
“We’re losing oil pressure.”
“But that can’t be possible, you checked it before we left.”
“Of course I did.”
Angela leaned forward, concern in her voice. “Everything okay?”
Her father being his usual self waved her off. “It’s fine. Sit back and relax.”
Maybe it was to someone who had flown as long as he had, but a loss of oil pressure wasn’t fine. She knew enough from having traveled with her father and other pilots that the PSI drop was unusual. It might have indicated a problem with the gauge but she figured that would have been caught before they took off. More than likely a component inside had worn out.
Upfront the two of them were hashing it out, neither one raising his voice to cause alarm. Calm, collected, discussing options, Frank was every bit in control. History had shown that an engine oil pressure drop would eventually lead to the engine dying, turning the whole plane into one giant glider. While unnerving for anyone who hadn’t been in that situation, the plane could still be landed safely, but that depended on where they brought it down.
A minute or two went by. Kara peered over Frank’s shoulder to get a look at the PSI indicator. No longer in the green, it was in the red.
Her father was quick to suggest a solution. “Circle and head back.”
“But we are closer than if we turn back,” Frank said.
“We’re not getting stranded out here.”
“It will run for at least fifteen, maybe seventeen minutes.”
“Yeah, and how long were we in the air before you noticed it?”
Frank glanced at his watch but said nothing.
It wasn’t like an indicator started flashing, or an alarm wailed. In a plane like this one, the first sign, if noticed, would have been seeing the PSI drop steadily in a matter of seconds. Then the RPM would fall, and the vibrations would get worse once the engine was about to shut off. “No, I say we bring it down on a gravel bar and I’ll take a look,” Frank said.
“How is that going to help us? We’ll still be stuck out here.”
“Are you flying this or am I?”
“Henry, what is going on?” Angela asked, now with real concern in her voice.
He could tell from her panicked voice that he could no longer hold her off.
While Kara’s insides were doing flips, she had flown enough times to know that they could handle this. It wasn’t like the plane would fall out of the sky, break apart or the engine would catch fire, they would simply glide into a landing before something far worse happened.
“We just have a small issue.”
“Small? Like what?”
“Nothing to worry about?”
“Henry!”
“Like with the oil pressure but don’t worry, okay?�
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“Oil pressure? What? What does that mean? Is it going to overheat and catch fire?” Angela immediately went to the worst image in her mind.
“No, the engine will just stop.”
“Just stop?” she bellowed, her eyes bulging.
“Angela, listen to me, with a total loss of oil pressure the engine will continue to run for some time, just… not very long, and not very good, so just relax and uh…” He was reaching, trying to keep her calm, and with another pilot or someone that had experienced this, that might have worked, not with her.
Kara twisted in her seat and reached back to hold her hand and reassure her. “It’ll be okay. They’ll land and we’ll have a helicopter arrive and be back at the lodge before you know it.”
Her words went over like a lead balloon.
Kara could feel her anxiety starting to build. What a person knew in theory, was worlds apart from experience, like knowing how to survive in the wild. Many knew how, few had ever been forced into a do-or-die situation that relied on that knowledge. She tightened her seat belt, said a silent prayer, and observed.
Now that they were out of oil and the temperature was rising, it didn’t take long for the vibrations of the plane to get violent as they began losing RPM and the engine showed signs of cutting out. Frank tried various ways to get the plane’s engine to keep going before realizing there was nothing more he could do.
“I’m taking it down,” Frank said.
The plane was shaking so hard that Angela began to scream so Frank cut the engine. It was only a matter of seconds before it would have cut out anyway. The plane didn’t plummet, unlike the way films portrayed. No, this was gliding like a bird on the thermals, wind whipping at the sides as Frank began going through the engine-out procedures of leveling the wings, pushing the nose down for maximum glide speed, and then searching for a place to land.
He got on the radio frequency 121.5 to place a mayday call.
They soared over a ridgeline down into what looked initially like a basin where a huge turquoise lake spread out before them, then opened up into a valley with steep slopes of black spruce on either side. While the Beaver was a plane capable of short takeoffs and landings, the amount of room around the perimeter of the lake was next to nothing, it was rocky and uneven. While landing in the water with floats would have been ideal, they had tundra wheels on, and being caught upside down in the water wasn’t a game. It was a matter of odds, a split-second decision. Land in the water and the plane would flip, maybe even break upon impact, or try to head toward the boreal forest of spruce trees. “Get in the emergency position, now!” her father bellowed.
There was no two ways about it, no matter how much skill a pilot had, their options were limited and it was going to be a rough landing and one they might not survive.
Kara bent over and wrapped her arms around her knees and braced for impact.
Part II
11
She wasn’t sure if she was dead or alive. Darkness smothered Kara’s face, making it hard to breathe. Her memory of what happened came back to her like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece slowly forming a picture of the crash. The earth rushing up to meet them, the overwhelming sense of racing to meet death, the paralyzing grip of fear as trees slapped against the bottom of the fuselage, and then a twist into darkness.
How long had she been out? Kara had only been knocked unconscious twice in her life and that wasn’t for long. As she coughed hard and her eyelids fluttered, she groaned in pain. She felt like she’d entered a ring with a prizefighter, her muscles ached badly. Raking at her face, she removed the unknown obstruction, realizing it was a jacket.
She was alive!
The plane was on its left side, and a large tree had punched through, barely missing her. A groan ahead made it clear that Frank had survived. Though from what she could see he was bleeding badly as blood was dripping onto the door from his head. “Frank?”
“Kara.”
“Is my dad…?” She couldn’t even bring herself to say it. From the little she could see he wasn’t moving, but the tree was obstructing her vision.
Frank shifted and strained to look up. The sideways positioning of how the plane came to a halt made it awkward. Frank unbuckled himself from his seat and twisted, all the while groaning in pain. He reached up and touched his head and looked at his hand gloved in red. “Henry. Hey, Henry.”
As he tried to move, the plane groaned and shifted ever so slightly.
“Whoa,” Frank said. It felt like it was going to drop at any minute. They weren’t high, maybe eighteen feet in the air but high enough that if the plane dropped to the ground they could suffer further injury.
“Dad!” Kara bellowed. “Don’t you…”
Before she managed to get the words out, he coughed hard and then let out an excruciating cry of pain as every nerve came to life and his brain registered whatever injury he had. Frank clutched his head and moved again, trying to get around the huge tree that had speared through the front of the plane, slicing between the pilot and passenger seats through to the rear. Had there been someone in the seat beside her they would have been instantly killed.
“I can’t get to him.”
By the groans and zero communication from her father, it was clear he was disoriented, and in a bad state, but at least hearing something meant he was alive if only for now.
“Frank, any broken bones?”
“Uh, I don’t think so. You?”
“My body is battered pretty bad, I have a few gashes to my legs and arm. But it’s my ribs that hurt bad. I might have broken a couple,” Kara said, feeling the sharp pain with every inhale. What worried her more was a collapsed lung. What would that feel like? Right now every breath was difficult but that could also be because she was pushed against the inside of the plane. The trees had torn through the shell like a hot knife through butter, covering them in branches. It felt like she was stuck inside a Christmas tree. Metal had twisted, plastic snapped, and a gaping hole was in the rear. Insulation was scattered everywhere from where branches had gutted the interior. One had come dangerously close to her thigh.
“Can you move?” Frank asked.
“It’s not whether I can move, it’s whether we should,” she said, registering each creak and groan as they hung above the ground. From what she could tell, Frank had directed the plane towards the least dense trees before the left wing was sheared off, turning the whole plane sideways and thrusting dead wood and branches through the windshield and up through the undercarriage.
“Henry, can you hear me?” Frank said, doing his best to speak to him around the thick branch that separated the two of them. Her father’s head was slumped to his left side. Although they’d heard him groan, and shift in his seat, he returned to not moving and was quiet. Kara felt the grip of fear that his injuries could be far worse. What if a branch had him pinned? There was so much debris covering them, it was hard to tell if he’d been impaled or was simply wedged into his seat by the tree. Frank’s head continued to drip, his hair matted, streaks of blood covering the left half of his face. It was like something out of a horror movie.
“I can’t get to him,” Frank said.
The thickest part of the tree was wedged between them like a concrete median on a highway, blocking his view, and it was too wide to go below or above. Though as it continued into the rear of the plane it got thinner. Kara unbuckled and threw caution to the wind, scrambling over her seat until she was able to cross the dividing barrier to where Angela had been in the back. She’d almost forgotten. One look at what remained of her mangled body and she knew there was no point in checking for a pulse. The branch had gone right through the upper portion of her chest, pushing back the seat into the rear and killing her instantly. There was blood everywhere, some of it trickling down onto her as she climbed.
Kara felt her gag reflex kick in and she vomited.
“Kara?”
“Yeah…”
“You okay back there?�
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Kara wiped the acid from her lips. “Angela is dead.”
She worked her way up and slid her hand around the passenger seat and touched her father’s neck. Before worrying about bleeding, broken bones, or anything else, she had to make sure he was still breathing. The pulse was steady.
“Dad.”
“Is he alive?” Frank said peering over, nothing but the top half of his face visible behind bark and leafy branches.
“For now he is. We need to get him out.” Kara climbed back toward a gaping hole, aware that each time she moved, the plane shifted ever so slightly. She turned onto her back and slid underneath the sharp, twisted metal, and made her way out onto the plane. Her heart hammered against her chest. Don’t drop, don’t drop, she thought as she carefully crawled out.
The front and left side of the plane had taken the full brunt of the impact. One wing was gone, the other a crushed stub. There was plane debris far below on the ground, and fragments in the trees as far as the eye could see. She shivered from the cold as a blustery wind kicked up spruce needles into her face. Kara paused, hoping she didn’t get blown off the top. Looking back, she noted smears of blood coming from her leg. Pushing the thought of her demise from her mind, Kara inched her way forward on her hands and knees, then grabbed hold of the passenger door handle. It wasn’t easy. To gain access, she had to use both hands and pull upward like opening a trap door. Once open, though, she was finally able to see her father’s injuries.
“Steady,” Frank said, noting that her movements were shaking the plane.
“It’s all right. It should hold.”
“Should, could. Hurry up!” he bellowed.
“I can see what’s supporting it now,” she said, referring to the multiple trees that had bent, snapped, and penetrated the front. Like an open can stuck on the end of a stick, the plane would move but unless the stick snapped it wouldn’t drop. As she lowered herself in, Kara grimaced at the sight of her father’s leg that was contorted in an ungodly way. His face was covered in blood, the tip of a branch stuck against his shoulder pinning him to the chair. His pants were stained scarlet and there was a large gash on the lower half of his other leg.
