Blood Brothers

by Charles Beagley

  Jennifer glanced at the clock on the wall but then turned her attention to the rain still falling in sheets. “I’m going to get soaked on my bike,” she said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take you.”

  “Thanks, Mum. We don’t have to leave so early then.”

  Jennifer helped Kate clear the table and they wandered into the family room. There were no bright orange rays from the sun like earlier; they had been enveloped by a grey overcast sky and she walked to the patio doors and stared out at the rain.

  Jennifer dropped into an easy chair and watched Kate pace back and forth in front of the mass of glass, looking this way and that, shaking her head.

  “What’s wrong? You’ve been on edge ever since I got up.”

  “It’s this weather.”

  “What about it? It’s the wet season. It rains most of the time in the wet season. It’s never bothered you before.”

  Kate glanced at her watch. It was seven. “It wasn’t supposed to come through for an hour, and look at it! Your dad won’t even be halfway there yet.”

  Jennifer suddenly looked concerned. “What are you talking about?”

  Kate realised Jennifer had no idea how her dad travelled to his job. She was never involved in the life he led outside the home and the recreational activities the family was involved in. He never thought it was necessary. She had her life with her friends and that was all right by him. Now if his son, Adam was here, instead of on the other side of Australia studying to be a doctor, he would have told him everything. Engineering was a male enterprise. Girls were not interested in smelly machines.

  “Your dad didn’t think you would be interested in his job. Yes, you knew he was an engineer, but that was the limit of your knowledge. He is a mining engineer and he has to travel hundreds of kilometres to isolated sites in the desert and work on massive dangerous machines.”

  “I thought he flew off to a city somewhere. I thought he was a consultant.”

  “He is, dear, but he doesn’t fly off in a large airliner like the ones we go on holiday in. That’s why he takes off from the AMINCO airstrip. If he’s lucky he’ll get a lift in a Lear Jet. If he isn’t, he has to make do with a small Cessna.”

  “And what is it today?” Jennifer asked.

  Kate looked back at the weather. “It’s the Cessna.”

  “What? In this weather?”

  “Now you know why I’m so anxious. This lot wasn’t supposed to come through for an hour yet. What must they be going through?”

  CHAPTER 4

  As soon as Joe switched Martin’s headset off he knew something was wrong. He could see by his body language that Joe was irritated about something and it was easy to guess that it was about the approaching dark mass behind them.

  Martin tried to stay calm. He was not going to give in to his habit of predicting a situation before it happened. This time he was going to wait for Joe to tell him in his own good time. He glanced in his direction. Joe’s lips were still moving, with short respites as he listened to the response, his free hand gesturing flamboyantly as the Italian temperament dictated.

  There was a loud click and Martin knew he was back in touch. He remained calm and silent, waiting for Joe to collect his thoughts. Once again Joe had both hands firmly gripping the control column. Then he turned and faced Martin.

  “It’s not good news,” was all he could say.

  Martin had to draw the information out of him.

  “Well, are you going to tell me?”

  “Have you ever seen a storm drain turn into a torrent when an inlet suddenly dumps its contents from a higher source?”

  “Of course. What does that mean?”

  “Well, that’s the situation behind us.”

  “What situation behind us?” Martin exclaimed impatiently.

  “Believe it or not, that mass heading for our tail is the storm that wasn’t supposed to arrive for another hour or so. Apparently a nasty cyclone suddenly appeared off Papua New Guinea, headed west along the Timor Sea and bumped into our storm at 200km/h. You add that to the original 100km/h and you’ve got one hell of a monster heading our way.”

  “If this cyclone is bigger and faster, why doesn’t it just push past and continue on its way?” Martin questioned reasonably.

  “It did…but I gather from our whiz-kids, that in doing so it not only altered our storm’s course, it pumped masses of energy into it as it passed.’

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Apart from being behind us, as I keep repeating, its course from the Indian Ocean was south-east towards the Durack Ranges, across the Sandy Desert and on to Alice Springs; that was if it had enough blow left. Now it’s been turned due south, straight for us and it’s travelling around 200km/h.”

  “I thought we were travelling at 230km/h. That should keep us ahead of it.”

  “You would think so…but don’t forget I’ve been climbing all the time. When you climb, you not only lose speed, you lose distance as well.”

  “So eventually this thing is going to catch up to us?”

  “By Jove, he’s got it,” Joe replied sarcastically.

  Martin didn’t like the way Joe was taking his own anxiety out on him. He was the expert in this situation, so it was up to him to get them out of it.”

  “So what do you intend doing?” Martin shouted.

  “All right…all right…I’m sorry. Everything is under control. Operations advised me to climb above the storm front if I couldn’t fly around it. And by the looks of it down there I have no option but to climb to 5000 feet.”

  Joe pulled back on the control column and the Cessna started to climb.

  Martin turned to his window and looked down below the wing. What was once a wispy collection of scattered cloud and open patches allowing a fleeting glimpse of the landscape they were flying over was now a dense mass of turbulence. It was as if the storm front had suddenly rushed into the space the small plane had vacated when it left 2000 feet for its objective of 5000.

  It was like being on a rollercoaster; bouncing off the undulating clouds. It was a boiling mass below them. The earlier 1000 feet ceiling had been surpassed and it felt as if there was no limit as Joe held the control column close to his lap.

  Joe’s earlier moderate climb over a period of time to save fuel and relieve Martin of his anxiety was now a rapid climb; one that would get them out of trouble as quickly as possible; which it did. When the Cessna reached the designated height Joe levelled out and they found themselves in a different world. Martin was astonished. They were flying just above the cloud layer with a massive blue sky above; the first clear sky since they’d taken off.

  “Isn’t that a lot better?” Joe exclaimed, sounding a little surprised.

  Martin had to agree, still looking out of the window. The monster had reached its limit. He was looking down on a miasma of swirling, bubbling froth. There seemed no break in its relentless passage across the Sandy Desert and it seemed drawn to the plane’s heading, with no sign of weakening.

  The atmosphere in the cockpit had changed dramatically. The tension had gone and a sense of normality had returned, although Martin was not completely sure they had seen the last of their nightmare. Insufficient information was always his nemesis. He needed to control the situation to feel confident, despite the expertise of the person in charge of the situation. It was important to him.

  Joe was playing with his instruments again, only this time he was more preoccupied with a pad of numbers. A calculator came to mind, but Martin was sure it was not as simple as that; it looked far more complicated.

  “What are you doing now, Joe?” Martin asked, hoping for a straight answer.

  Joe continued for a moment without replying until he stopped biting his lip and relaxed back in his seat. “I’ve been trying to sort out a little problem we have.”

  “What? Another?”

  “Afraid so…during the early part of the storm I noticed we were being blown off course. Nothing unusu
al…I just kept correcting the inaccuracy and brought us back on our heading each time. Now… with this new turbulence, I find we are seriously off course and it’s not as simple as turning into the proper heading; to do so I would lose height and you know what that would mean.”

  “I thought operations said you could change the heading when you’ve cleared the storm. What’s different?”

  “They were assuming I was going to fly around the storm; not climb above it or have to fight this side wind. I’m so far out now, the further I travel on this heading will mean I will have to make up fifty or a hundred kilometres.”

  “Oh Joe…I can’t understand this aviation lingo. I trust you’ve worked something out…just do it before anything else crops up.”

  “Sorry, Martin. I got the impression you needed to be kept in the loop. Just relax. I’m going to get us back on our heading…I just need to do it in stages.”

  Joe eased the control column to the left and the Cessna’s left wing dipped slightly putting the plane into a gentle turn. At the same time Martin watched the altimeter needle drop below 5000 feet. As it did so the plane caught the upper limits of the storm and began shaking dramatically. Joe straightened the control column again, pulled back to gain height and the shaking stopped.

  Joe turned his head. “See what I mean. That was only a one-degree change.”

  By the time Joe had carried out a further three of the manoeuvres to get the plane back on the correct heading for Site 21, each time putting the plane through an agonising shaking, Martin noticed it had gone seven-thirty.

  “I hate to distract you, Joe, but shouldn’t we be arriving at the site by now?”

  “I know…I’ve been keeping my eye on the distance we’ve travelled. By my calculations, bearing in mind we lost a lot of forward speed and distance while I was climbing and fighting this wind, we have about a fifteen-minute leeway. The trouble is, I need to see the landscape. I’ve flown this route so many times I hardly need a heading to fly by if I’m in the right area.”

  Martin glanced out of his window. It was something he had avoided for some time, but to his eye it looked a lot friendlier. “Is it wishful thinking on my part, or do the clouds look as if they’ve lost their turbulence?”

  “You’re right…I thought that the last time I side-slipped,” Joe agreed. “What do you say? Do you feel like having a go?”

  “If you have to see the landscape we have no choice.”

  “Okay. I’ll do it gently. A couple of side-slips should do. Let’s just pray the cloud base stops around 1000 feet.”

  Martin could see by the way Joe stiffened his posture in his seat that this manoeuvre was going to test his expertise and he did the same. He wasn’t sure what Joe was doing exactly, but he noticed his knees move up and down as he turned the control column left. Martin expected the plane to turn, but it did not, the wing tip dropped and the plane simply slid off to the left. As it did the control column began shuddering, but thankfully the plane maintained a smooth descent until Joe reversed the controls and they began sliding to the right.

  Martin returned his attention to the clouds they were now flying through. They seemed tame in comparison to earlier. They had lost their bite.

  Everything was going to plan and for some reason Martin felt calm and that somehow they were going to come out of this. They would break out of the clouds and Joe would miraculously know exactly where he was.

  Then suddenly there was the loudest bang imaginable. All hell let loose. Joe was struggling to stabilise the plane’s altitude as he checked what had happened. Warning lights flashed threateningly as the plane careered out of control.

  Then they saw the mass of blood and feathers pressed up against the windscreen.

  Lumps of shattered bird carcasses broke away from the windscreen as Joe frantically joggled the throttle trying to clear the dead bodies free of the propeller and the air vents into the engine. He kept his head while Martin lost his, screaming, “Oh my God…Is this it? Are we going to drop out of the sky?”

  “Quiet…for Christ’s sake,” Joe shouted. “We’re still at 3000 feet.”

  He switched on the radio as he struggled with the control column and called. “AMINCO CENTRAL. MAYDAY…MAYDAY. VICTOR HOTEL… ALPHA, TANGO, ZULU. BIRD-STRIKE…BIRD-STRIKE.”

  Suddenly the engine started to splutter. Joe pumped the throttle to clear it, but it was no good. The engine coughed and finally stalled. There was no response. Then the instruments died. There was nothing – not even a warning light.

  “What does that mean?” Martin questioned Joe.

  “I don’t know Martin…for Christ’s sake…I don’t know everything.”

  “You should know more than me…you’re the pilot.”

  “Sorry, Martin. This has never happened to me before. The battery should be enough to keep the radio active… but it’s dead. Even the emergency back-up’s dead.”

  “We’ll be dead too if you don’t do something.”

  Joe tried to start the engine again, but there was no response.

  “Think yourself lucky you’re not in the Lear Jet you like so much. It would have dropped like a stone. Not the Cessna. She can hang on the wind.”

  Martin suddenly realised they were not dropping. The Cessna was rising and falling with the wind like Joe said. It had become a bird, just like the ones that put them in this position. “You’re right,” Martin said.

  “Can you fly her?”

  “Of course I can. It was a long time ago, but I still remember when my instructor switched the engine off at 2000 feet and told me to glide the plane down to 1000 feet and start the engine again.”

  “And you did?”

  “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  Martin nodded as Joe stiffened himself for yet another series of side-slips.

  In hindsight some might think it was coincidence or even bad luck when a flock of Red Knots had left the Arctic, curved their way down towards Siberia, onward to Japan and Indonesia on their migration in time for a winter residence on the Eight Mile Beach in Western Australia. The bad luck was their path to avoid the storm coincided with the Cessna’s. It is called a ‘Bird Strike’. The impact was so sudden the birds would not have known what happened.

  Joe was still side-slipping without any indication of how high he was when suddenly the Cessna dropped out of the clouds. Surprised, he immediately levelled the plane and attempted to ascertain how high they were.

  From his experience, judging the horizon relative to the lower edge of the wings, he guessed the plane was at 1000 feet, give or take a hundred or so. The trouble was there was little wind at this height to give him lift and the landscape below was rushing up to meet them at an alarming rate.

  “We seem to be dropping a lot faster now,” Martin said.

  Joe shot Martin an angry glance.

  “In the cloud we had some density to keep us aloft. Down here the air is affected by the heat coming off the desert.”

  “I once read that birds use the hot thermals to give them lift.”

  “That’s correct…that’s what I’m looking for now.”

  Joe began a slow circular route, which, if nothing else, brought him closer to the ground. He was getting anxious until suddenly he picked up a thermal. They could feel it. It lifted the Cessna dramatically. It actually soared several hundred feet putting Joe in a better position to survey the landscape for a good landing sight.

  He traversed the thermal in an elliptical circuit to judge its capacity to give him a five- or six-hundred-metre landing site. He knew, if he was lucky, and the thermal lasted all the way to the ground, he would be able to glide down to the surface like a magnificent eagle and land safely.

  He found the site, made one more circuit and turned into the thermal.

  “Brace yourself,” he warned Martin. “Here we go.”

  “I hope you can remember how to glide this thing.”

  “No problem. It’s just like riding a bike.”

  “But you�
��re flying a plane.”

  They laughed and Joe eased the control column forward.

  Martin kept quiet as Joe surveyed the terrain within his manoeuvrable space. He was used to this country. He could read it like a book, as he often did, imagining one day he might have to land on it; not expecting for one moment he would actually have to. As he pointed out to Martin earlier, it was scrub country: a mass of spinifex clusters with the occasional acacia shrub and small trees to give shade to the varied Sandy Desert marsupials.

  On his second circuit he noticed a narrow band of clear ground with only a scant covering of spinifex. It looked like one of the many ancient riverbeds that were prolific in the northern part of the desert. He was gambling it would have a firm gravel base with a shallow layer of sand covering it. The last thing he wanted was undulating soft sand.

  By now his choices were limited. He had only a hundred metres to position the Cessna in line with the bed, take advantage of the thermal to drop into a stall attitude and gently place her down on the ground. The last thing he wanted was a fast landing.

  Everything was dropping into place. He was now down to fifty metres, turning into the narrow channel when suddenly he lost the thermal. He lost the lift he needed to glide the Cessna into a smooth landing. He was still too fast.

  Joe tried to lift the nose to put the plane into a stall. It was a risky manoeuvre that failed miserably. Instead he made a three-point landing: all three wheels at the same time; at a speed far beyond their capability.

  The nose wheel went first, buckling under the body and dipping the propeller into the riverbed. That slowed the plane down dramatically, but in doing so, it slewed the plane sideways, snapping the left wheel and digging the wing into the ground. Instead of allowing the harness to do its job, Martin instinctively braced himself with his right arm against the doorframe. His forearm took the full impact.

  The Cessna continued sliding sideways along the riverbed for another twenty metres or so until it finally stopped in a massive cloud of dust. It was so fine it seemed ages before it eventually settled and Martin could see out of his window. His head was spinning. His body was leaning in Joe’s direction, still hanging in his harness, and he could taste his own blood in his mouth.