by Ward, Steve
Billy just stood there; he could feel his face flush bright red.
Darkness soon engulfed the little island, and the survivors began to settle for the night. Gathered around the campfire after their exhausting ordeal, the girls started dozing. When they were all asleep, Billy was determined to be the man. Suddenly he felt as though he had been drugged. It was almost impossible to keep his eyes open. Gazing over the blackness of the ocean in a blank stare, his eyelids became quite heavy. Going over some of his survival training in his head, he batted his eyes struggling to avoid inexorable sleep. He shook his head. Out in the middle of nowhere, there was an all consuming feeling of stark solitude. Under a dark sky full of millions of bright stars, the campfire shot hot cinders straight up painting the blackness with faint, red specks of light. Surrounded by the hypnotic sounds of a crackling fire and little wavelets caressing the beach, Billy’s mind wandered across the night and sank into a dreamy abyss.
* * *
Beerriock!
A loud shriek broke the quiet morning. A large seagull had flown onto the beach to inspect the survivors, looking for something to eat. The troops started to stir. Christina stretched long arms and fought to open her eyes. She had been dreaming about her childhood. For once, it was a pleasant dream reflecting memories of her mom. She gazed around in a sleepy stupor when reality slapped her dead in the face. She got up and started poking her friends.
“Everybody, wake up. We need a plan. Obviously, I was dead wrong. Excuse the pun. I can’t understand why we haven’t been rescued, but we better start preparing for a longer stay. You guys start looking through the gear and make an inventory of what we have. I’m gonna study the manuals on the plane and try to figure out what happened. This type of GPS is supposed to record the last minute of radio conversation electronically. If I can figure out how to play it back, I should be able to hear what Hank told the controllers before he passed on.”
While Billy and the girls unpacked and inventoried the remainder of the gear, Christina climbed into the cockpit looking for the operating manual of the GPS. After searching the cockpit, she finally found it stuffed in a side pocket with other documents. She switched on the Master and turned on the GPS. Following the instructions, she found three buttons, one for each twenty second segment of audio. Pushing the last button first, she clearly recognized her own voice, “Mayday, Mayday, Saratoga Two Eight Niner Niner Kilo, five souls aboard. . .” To move back in recorded time, she pushed the first button and heard what sounded like a flight controller. “November Two Eight Niner Niner Kilo, radio check, how do you read? Over. Niner Niner Kilo this is Miami Center, how do you read? Over.”
She knew if there was any information of value, it would be in Hank’s answer. Holding her breath, she pushed the center button. Instead of the anticipated response, she was shocked to hear a very strange transmission.
“Uh. . .Miami Center, this is Niner Niner Kilo. Read you loud and clear. We’d like to cancel our IFR flight plan and go VFR. My clients want to explore some of the islands below.”
“Whatever you say, Niner Niner Kilo. IFR plan is cancelled. Squawk VFR and have a nice day.”
“God help us!” Christina cursed.
Not believing what she had just heard, she pushed the button again, but there was no mistake. Whoever gave that response was up to no good. As a matter of fact, the message was as much a killer as if someone had put a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger. Simply put, it meant there would be no rescue. Without an active flight plan, there was no reason for flight controllers to initiate a search. It might be days before anyone realized they were missing. Even worse, cleared to descend to lower altitudes meant the radar track would not be recorded and controllers would be unable to reconstruct their flight path. Even when someone finally realized they were missing, rescuers would have no idea where they were.
But it wasn’t the message so much that shocked Christina as the voice. The person responding to air traffic control with their call letters was not Hank Rogers, nor was it Billy. The voice was distinctly female, and it sounded quite familiar. There was something about the way she said “clients” instead of “passengers” that gave her away. The voice was the female pilot Christina had met in the FBO. She must have been somewhere nearby, transmitting on the same frequency. The GPS would record all radio traffic on that frequency, regardless of its origin.
“Gilmore cancelled our flight plan!” Christina spoke to herself, flabbergasted. “But, why?” Why would a stranger transmit a message from another plane with Hank’s call sign, a message that would doom them to a plane crash or a slow death at sea? How would she know Hank’s condition? The only logical explanation was the female pilot flying behind them knew Hank was dead. She must have had something to do with it. At that instant Christina recalled Lazer’s last words,
Well, you gals better watch your six. I think this guy’s capable of anything.
Lazer’s comment made Weston come to mind, along with the story of the other coeds. She remembered what he said as they prepared for the trip:
I know some people in West Palm who can give you a great deal on a charter. I insist you let me make all the arrangements.
She thought it odd when he had volunteered to pay. How strange! Lazer was no less than a prophet. It looked as though Gilmore at their six o’clock position had effectively shot them right out of the sky. Could it be? Could Weston have plotted this elaborate scheme to get rid of Heather? Christina tried to clear her head and think logically. How could he pull it off? He would’ve had to hire someone in West Palm to give Hank a slow working drug, and then be right there in the exact right airspace to deflect the inquisitive nature of flight controllers. It was unthinkable that any human could be so callused, but there was no other explanation. The only question was, how did he manage to find a pilot willing to do such a horrible thing, especially a female pilot? And how did Gilmore manage to do it?
The Coke! She had a sudden flash of insight. Shit, Hank offered it to me.
Christina shut off the GPS and the Master switch and got out of the plane. She was digesting all the information, trying to figure how to break the news to Heather. She walked back and gathered her troops.
She cleared her throat, “Hunngh. Sit down, we need to talk. I’ve got some bad news you won’t believe. Hardly believe it myself.” They gathered around in a semicircle and sat on the sand. “It looks like Hank’s death was no heart attack. He was poisoned.”
“Huuuh?” exclaimed Billy. “How could you possibly figure that out by listening to the GPS?”
“Billy, would you know if your grandfather had any enemies who might want to get rid of him?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone loved Pop. He didn’t have an enemy in the world.”
“Well then, it looks like he was just in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Whoever did this didn’t care about your granddad. They just wanted to kill Heather.”
“What?” Heather said. “Are you nuts?” She looked stupefied. “Where are you getting this stuff?”
“Heather, I don’t know how to tell you this without hurting your feelings, so I’ll just say it right out. I should have told you yesterday when I first heard it.”
“Heard what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m afraid your beloved fiancé is not a nice man. As a matter of fact, I have concluded that he tried to kill us all just to get rid of you.”
“You’re crazy! There’s no way he’d want to kill me. He loves me with all his heart. We’re getting married in four weeks. You’re just making this up, because you’re jealous, that’s all,” Heather replied with a pout.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m not making anything up. Lazer had a private investigator check out Weston, and we learned some very disturbing news.”
“A private investigator? I don’t want to hear it. How could you do such a thing without telling me?”
“I had a bad feeling, and I didn’t want you to get hu
rt. Besides, I’m afraid my intuition was right.”
“What do you mean?”
“To make a long story short, first he got some seventeen-year-old freshman pregnant when he was married, and almost lost his job. Then he promised to marry two other students, both of whom ended up dead in mysterious accidents. There’s also evidence of pedophilia. I would fill in all the grisly details, but I think you get the picture.”
“What’s pedophilia?” Billy asked.
“Trust me kid, you don’t want to know,” Christina answered.
“This is all bullshit!” screeched Heather. “If you really believe this, why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I swear, Heather, I only learned this when I called Lazer, right before we took off from West Palm,” explained Christina. “I didn’t know how to tell you, so I figured why ruin your vacation? I decided it could wait until we got back to Atlanta. God, was that a mistake! We should’ve never boarded that airplane.”
“So what makes you think someone poisoned Hank?” Jessica asked with a puzzled look.
“It’s the recording of the radio traffic on the GPS. After Hank failed to respond to air traffic controllers on the radio, some intruder called the controller with our call sign and cancelled our IFR flight plan. That just doesn’t happen. No pilot would ever cancel another’s flight plan. There’s no legitimate reason for anyone to do that.”
“So wouldn’t the controller realize the transmission was coming from the wrong plane?” Heather scrambled to shoot holes in Christina’s theory.
“No, they wouldn’t expect such a thing either, and there’s no way for them to know where a voice transmission comes from. Anyone on that frequency in the same general area could answer, and the controller would never know. The only possible explanation is that a pilot flying near us, in the same air space, knew that Hank was dead and wanted us to go down undetected. Now get this. The voice that cancelled our flight plan was definitely female.”
“You mean that bitch, Gilmore?” said Billy. “She was right behind us. I knew she didn’t like my granddad, but I didn’t think she’d kill him.”
“I don’t expect she would have without a lot of encouragement from a Dr. Steve Weston,” said Christina.
“That’s weird,” Billy responded. “I’ve heard that name before. I was in the FBO last week and heard that loudmouth bitch talking to a Dr. Weston. She saw me standing in the hallway then got up to slam the door in my face. I just thought she was talking to her doctor.”
“Now you guys are ganging up. There’s just no way Steve could do something like that.” Heather fought back. “He’s the sweetest man I’ve ever known.”
“You know, I just remembered something else,” Christina added. “Gilmore told me she majored in Psychology at the University of Georgia. When I asked if she knew Dr. Weston, she turned beet-red and changed the subject. I thought it was a strange reaction.”
“Your full of it!” Heather huffed. “Purely circumstantial.”
Christina continued to reconstruct the crime. “She gave Hank some sort of time-release drug before we left. Then she must’ve taken off just behind us, monitored the control frequencies and intercepted Hank’s radio call. All she had to do was wait until Hank couldn’t respond, then jump in and cancel our IFR flight plan. That way they wouldn’t come looking for us. I expect she figured we would crash in the ocean and never be found. It looks like we’re all victims of an elaborate plot to get rid of you, Heather. I know that sleaze-bag Weston is behind it, because nothing else fits. He insisted on making all the flight arrangements, remember?”
“But how could she drug him without suspicion?” Heather asked desperately.
“It was in the Coke,” Christina continued. “Right before we left, she gave him an open can of Coke to pay off some baseball bet. He said he wasn’t thirsty, but she stood there and insisted he drink it. As a matter of fact, he tried to give it to me.”
“Good God, Christina! You could be dead,” Jessica deduced.
“This is just too much,” Heather cried profusely. “How could anyone do such a thing? There are any number of explanations. Maybe Gilmore just wanted to get rid of her competition.”
“Well, that’s a viable motive, but she could’ve poisoned him any time right there in his office or on his way driving home. I doubt if she would take out a plane full of passengers just to improve her business. I don’t think any pilot would do that without some compelling reason. Who knows what Weston had over her?”
“Christina, your imagination is out of control. Steve could never do such a thing. I’ve been sleeping with the man for almost a year. No one knows him better than me.”
“Did he tell you about the other students he had been engaged to?”
“No, he didn’t mention them. But. . . ”
“Did he mention the fact he was run out of California for child molestation?”
“No. Of course not! But that’s a bunch of crap.”
“Heather, why would Weston be talking to Gilmore on the phone, when he told us he was contracting Hank Rogers for the charter?”
“Who knows? Maybe they were just friends,” Heather said, appearing distraught.
“Maybe they were more than friends,” Christina said with a frown.
“I know you mean well, Christina, but it can’t be the guy I’m going to marry.”
“Don’t you understand, Heather? He had no intention of marrying you. I’ll bet a million dollars if you have that ring checked, you’ll find it’s a fake.”
Heather took it as a direct insult. “I won’t listen to this shit.” Sobbing loudly, she put her hands over her ears like a child throwing a tantrum.
Christina continued speaking louder, “For the time being let’s just forget about this little melodrama. The bottom line is, our IFR plan was cancelled. We can’t expect to be rescued anytime soon. When we don’t show in the Exumas, someone will start asking questions, and eventually they should start looking for us. But the fact is, they won’t have a clue where to search. There are thousands of square miles of water and islands out here. We better look around and figure out what we have.” She didn’t like painting such a bleak picture, but it was true. Their very survival depended on a clever action plan.
“Maybe a sailboat will come by,” Jessica posed.
“Not likely, this time of year,” Billy answered. “This is hurricane season. Most of the boats in the summer are drug runners.”
“I don’t even want to think about a hurricane, or drug runners,” Jessica moaned.
“What about the plane?” asked Billy. “What if we took all the weight out of it, everything we could break loose? We could wait here while you fly back to Miami for help.”
“That’s an excellent idea, Billy. Good thinking. How many paces did you walk off when you measured the length of the beach?”
“It was about four hundred paces, but as you can see there are big rocks on both ends,” Billy responded.
“Well, for now, let’s just say that’s 1,200 feet. The manual says we need 2,200 feet of hard runway. I tell you what, Billy. Come on, let’s walk it off again, together. We’ll get a more accurate measurement,” she said grabbing his hand. Christina was anxious to get away from Heather.
Jessica joined them as they walked down the beach leaving Heather alone, sobbing.
Chapter Twelve
Billy awoke with a start. Thoughts of bacon and eggs danced between pangs of hunger. He tried not to think so much about his granddad, concentrating more on his Eagle Scout survival training. While the girls were still asleep he climbed up on the highest cliff to get a better view. He could see the landmass was less than a mile wide but long enough that the far end was out of sight. There were no obvious signs of life, the terrain typical of many such islands. It was certainly more than the strips of sand that rose just above the surface of the water, but not much. An ancient coral reef with limestone outcroppings rose ten to twenty feet on the north end where they had landed. Mostly
flat and covered by scrub brush, there were no obvious places to look for fresh water. The girls began to stir so Billy climbed down.
Teenage hormones stirred his thoughts with mixed emotions. He figured he knew a lot more than three college girls how to survive outdoors. Time to make my move.
He walked up to the girls and said, “I know you all think I’m just a kid, but I’ve had some survival training. Been working on an Advanced Survival merit badge for three months. By the end of this year, I expect to be an Eagle Scout.” Billy pulled his shoulders back, put his hands on his hips and stood up straight and tall. Jessica, Heather and Christina slowly turned his way. With all the masculine authority he could muster, he tried to lower his voice, “First thing we have to do is find clean water. Without that, we’ll be dead in a week. This island is so flat I doubt we’ll find any good surface water, so first we need to set up something to catch rain.” Looking upward at a clear morning sky, his suggestion seemed absurd, and he began to choke. “If it doesn’t rain, we have to try to purify seawater. Hopefully, that won’t be necessary, because it rains on these islands almost every day in the summer.”
