by J. T. Cross
“Well, I know I wouldn’t pass that up,” he said with a chuckle.
“We girl pilots have to stick together,” Serena said and turned to leave.
They watched her walk back to her car.
“Can I help you polish her up?” Luc said, as he picked up a rag.
“I’d love some help. Thanks,” she said.
They spent the next few hours washing and then polishing Kate’s plane.
Chapter 19
Christie settled back in the cushioned leather seat as the jet climbed away from the Auburn airport. She had chosen the high-back seat at the rear of the plane, so she could be alone with her thoughts.
She watched Stuart and Kelly up front with Philip and Jim Lackland as they looked out the window and asked questions. She couldn’t remember the last time Philip had done something with her and the kids. It felt almost like being a family again, the way it was when they were first married.
Things were moving quickly, Christie thought. In an hour, they would reach the small airport located in Manatuk village, and then it would be on to the survey sites.
She opened her small backpack, the one she used for fieldwork, and checked once again to make sure that her recorder and camera were fully charged. At the bottom of the backpack was a new three-hundred millimeter telephoto lens. If there were previously undiscovered species at any of the sites, she wanted to make sure she could capture them on camera.
She looked out the window at the hundreds of miles of empty tundra below. An emptiness filled her chest and she felt like crying. She put the things back in her backpack and pulled out a paleontology journal. Soon, she was absorbed in her reading.
* * *
“Hey Mom, we’re landing in Manatuk,” Stuart yelled.
Surprised at how quickly the time had passed, Christie looked out the window and could see the plane’s approach to the small village below.
The plane was buffeted by a cross wind as it came in for a landing and she thought it felt a little like a roller coaster. Out the window, she caught a glimpse of the large Northern Energies helicopter. It stood out among the other aircraft at the airport.
After landing, they wasted no time in boarding the helicopter where they were introduced to their pilot, Marcus. She helped Stuart and Kelly get belted into one of the seats in the middle of the cabin, and then once again, went to the back to be alone.
This time, the rear seats were connected to form a booth that curved around the back of the cabin. In front of the curving seat was a small conference table. Four seat belts were spaced evenly around the curved seating area. She slid into the back and fastened one of them around her waist.
She laid her backpack down on the seat and examined the area around her. To her right, a console mounted to the wall contained a monitor, a duplicate of one she had noticed up front when she had first entered the helicopter. She studied the screen. It displayed a map that showed the village of Manatuk and the airport.
In the middle of the airport was a small red blinking symbol, which she assumed represented the helicopter. At the bottom of the screen was an area that showed the helicopter’s altitude, speed, and location in degrees of latitude and longitude.
Built into the conference table were a satellite phone, a small keyboard, and a mouse. She moved the mouse around and saw an arrow move across the display. It was a nice setup, she thought.
The pilot walked back to her.
“You belted in?” he asked.
“Yes. Is it okay if I use the satellite phone to make a call during the flight?” she asked.
“The helicopter’s yours for the day. You can use it any way you see fit.”
He picked up the receiver and pointed to a small display on the phone.
“Just wait for the blinking red light to go green. That means it has a satellite lock. After that, just enter your area code and number. It pretty much works like any other phone.”
The pilot walked back up to the front of the helicopter and closed the hatch. He then climbed into the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s seat.
From the back, Christie could see his hands quickly moving over the various controls, turning dials, and flipping switches. Suddenly, the console came alive as several displays lit up.
She again looked out the window to her left, gazing across the small airport. It was a bright and sunny day with white puffy clouds that dotted the sky. Her mind began to wander and she thought about the few minutes she had spent with Luc.
She felt a yearning in her soul that she was pretty sure only a certain pair of arms around her would quench. She hadn’t been able to tell him what she wanted to say. Did she even know herself? she wondered. She thought she might call him later and explain what was happening between her and Philip.
She heard the turbines starting and felt the vibrations as the main rotor began to pick up speed. It was such a different feeling from the jet they had flown in on. The whine of the engines and the vibration increased until they were rising away from the small airport as if a giant hand had just picked them up. She had never been in a helicopter before and thought it was remarkable how it just went straight up.
As she looked up at the kids, the smiles on their faces and their giggling assured her that they were having a good time.
She felt the helicopter bank as it headed to the north. She looked out the window and the village of Manatuk disappeared behind them as the helicopter climbed away from the airport. In front of them, she saw only empty tundra and a small road the pilot seemed to be following.
* * *
Victor and Serena sat in her plane and watched the Northern Energies helicopter lift off and head north, carrying the people Valenkamp referred to as the little band of imbeciles. Victor felt confident that he would soon be calling them the little band of dead imbeciles.
He pulled a small plastic box out of his backpack. He pushed a red button on the front of it and a piercing tone emanated from its small speaker.
“It’s a perfect 500-hertz sine wave,” he said to Serena.
“All we have to do is contact the helicopter on the emergency band and hold this little box up to the microphone. When we press the red button, the tone will be broadcast to the helicopter. The device on the helicopter monitors the output of their receiver. When it detects the 500-hertz tone for at least two seconds, it will detonate the explosives.”
“Very clever,” she said.
“Let’s get in the air. We don’t want to lose track of that helicopter,” Victor said, pulling a pair of binoculars out of a leather case.
Serena immediately started the plane’s engine and requested clearance to take off. There was very little runway traffic, and she was immediately granted permission. She taxied to the end of the runway, and after checking her engine and control surfaces, applied full throttle to the engine. The plane accelerated down the runway, and they slowly lifted off.
She gradually climbed to an altitude that put the sun between her and the helicopter. She stayed as far behind as possible, while still allowing Victor to track the helicopter with his binoculars.
* * *
Christie gradually began to relax behind the small conference table. She looked up at the monitor and began to watch the red mark that represented the helicopter slowly move across the map. She wondered if the pilot was still following the dirt road and scooted to the window and looked down. At a mile up it was hard to make out, but she still thought she could see a tiny line cutting through the vast space of the tundra.
She picked up the satellite phone handset, and then put it back down, wanting to call Luc, but not knowing what to say.
At the airport in Auburn she distinctly remembered wanting Philip to get on the plane and fly off without her, so that she could be alone with Luc. It had been the nicest thought, so much more comforting than her life had been recently. But there was no going back, not after what she had done to him.
Philip walked back from the front, sat down next to her and fasten
ed his seatbelt. “The pilot said I could use the keyboard and mouse back here to enter the coordinates of our areas of interest onto the map. Once they’re in the system, he can fly straight to them.”
She watched him move the mouse and sort through the menus until he found the right commands to enter latitude and longitude. He then pulled out his own map and began entering the coordinates. When he was finished, he clicked the mouse on the first location, and she saw it turn blue. He pressed the intercom button on the table.
“Can you hear me up there?” he asked.
The pilot’s voice crackled from a small speaker next to the satellite phone: “Loud and clear.”
“I entered the locations we’re interested in and selected the first one.”
“I can see that. You want me to take you there?”
“Yes, please.”
“At our current speed, we should be there in twenty minutes,” the pilot said. She felt the helicopter bank to the right then level out.
Christie needed something to take her mind off Luc. She reached into her purse and pulled out a paperback anthology of stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. She loved the process of solving a mystery; maybe that was why she had become a paleontologist. Soon, she was fully absorbed in the stories and lost track of time.
A beeping sound interrupted her reading. The sound came from above her. She looked up at the map display and saw the small red icon that represented the helicopter now positioned in the middle of a blue circle.
The pilot’s voice came over the speaker. “We’re over the first location.”
She looked out the window with Philip but saw only the tops of clouds.
“Can you take us down lower?” Philip said excitedly.
She felt her stomach drop as the helicopter began descending, as the pilot accommodated Philip’s wish.
She looked out the window and saw they were quickly approaching the tops of the clouds. Then they were descending into them and the blue sky disappeared. She felt the helicopter buffeted about as they continued their descent.
“I’m not sure we’re going to be able to get below the cloud cover. We’re down to 2,000 feet, and we haven’t broken through the bottom yet. The clouds could go all the way to the ground,” the pilot said.
Lackland came to the rear and joined them, looking out the window.
“There’s got to be a break in these damn clouds somewhere,” Philip said.
“There may not be,” Lackland said. “Remember, all our satellite imagery showed this area covered in clouds, no matter what the time of year.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Philip, with disgust.
Then they abruptly exited the bottom of the clouds, and Christie found herself gazing out over a surprisingly lush forest.
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom again, “I don’t believe what I’m seeing on the ground. We’ve gone from sparse trees and rocky mountainsides to a lush forest. None of this shows up on my map.”
“How very strange,” Philip said.
“Folks, look down and to your left, I’d swear we’re passing over a small settlement of some sort,” the pilot said.
Christie quickly looked down. Nestled between the trees she saw what looked like the tops of several log cabins. In a moment, they disappeared behind the trees as the helicopter continued across the countryside.
She pushed the intercom button. “Can you go back over those cabins?” she asked.
* * *
“I can’t see the helicopter. You’ve fallen too far behind them,” Victor said accusingly.
“I think they descended down into the clouds.”
“Then follow them down.”
“They probably have ground radar. We don’t. We shouldn’t go much lower than those clouds, or we could fly right into the side of a mountain.”
He glared at her. Serena pushed the wheel forward and they began descending into the cloud cover. He watched the altimeter drop 1000 feet.
“I won’t go any lower, Victor. It’s just too risky.”
“Fine, climb back up above the clouds and contact them on the emergency channel. It’s time to finish this.”
He watched her dial in the emergency frequency on the transceiver and heard her try to contact the helicopter.
“Mayday, mayday, this is an emergency. Can anyone read me?” She repeated the call several times.
The helicopter pilot was alert and responded after her third call. “This is Northern Energies helicopter 155. Please state the nature of your emergency.”
Victor took the microphone. ”We have an emergency situation here. We’re experiencing problems,” he said as he brought the black box up to the microphone and pressed the red button. Serena’s plane was filled with a piercing sine wave tone.
* * *
The pilot’s voice came over the intercom speaker. “We’re receiving a Mayday call from another aircraft.“
Christie heard the pilot’s voice. “Emergency caller, I read you. Do you copy?” Then his voice was replaced by an ear-piercing sound that filled the cabin and hurt her ears.
Next to the rotor control unit, two capacitors began charging then all at once released a pulse of electrical current into the blasting cap. The cap exploded, igniting the plastic explosives molded around it.
The explosion obliterated the rotor control unit and blasted a hole through the side of the helicopter fuselage. A blast wave from the explosion entered the cabin and hit Christie, momentarily dazing her. She screamed. In her confusion, she saw Philip stand and try to run to the front of the helicopter. Lackland stood, holding onto the rear of the seat in front of her.
Then it happened--the back of the helicopter rose up steeply, throwing Lackland sharply forward. The children screamed shrilly.
“What’s happening?” Stuart yelled.
The pilot’s voice came over the speaker. “Everybody fasten your seatbelts and put your heads down. We’re going to crash.”
* * *
Victor released the button. He handed the microphone back to Serena.
“Try to contact them again,” he said.
“Mayday. Mayday. This is an emergency. Can anyone read me?” She repeated the call several times. There was no response.
“Take us back to Manatuk. I think we can call it a day,” Victor said, smiling.
To be continued in
Lost Valley
Part Two: The Hunted
Kindle
Also available from J.T. Cross:
Beneath the Deep
Chapter 1
Megan O’Brien steadied herself on the deck of the forty-foot cabin cruiser, The Gypsy Queen, as she unbuckled and removed her diving tanks. She gently laid them at the side of the boat and picked up a towel.
Looking for her dive partner, she made a quick 360-degree scan around the boat. She saw only choppy water and a small flock of seabirds in the distance. Matt had been right behind her. She didn’t like it when they got separated. Finally, she spotted him twenty feet off the starboard side, swimming slowly toward the boat.
Relieved, she squeezed out her wet hair in the ocean breeze as she waited for him to bring up her archaeological finds.
Far above, the faint undulating hum of a plane caught her attention. She laid down her towel and looked up, searching for the plane. This time, she couldn’t find it as low clouds had begun moving in. Once again, she got the feeling that something odd was going on with that plane, as it was the fifth time that day it had flown over them. The thought occurred to her that the plane must be running low on fuel.
A large swell lifted the boat and she grabbed the back of a nearby seat to keep from falling. She glanced at her dive watch. It was 3:03 p.m. Thirty-five miles off the coast of Florida, it wasn’t unusual for the ocean to get rough at that time of the afternoon.
She heard splashing sounds just before Matt Turner’s head peeked over the side and he lifted a net bag to her. “Here, take your trinkets.”
She gave him a dirty look. “Where a
re the other two bags?” she asked as she took the heavy bag.
He gave her a sheepish grin. “Oh, yeah…they were too heavy for one trip.”
“You forgot them.” She shook her head in disappointment and walked to the rear of the boat. Kneeling down, she loosened the top of the bag and pulled out several pieces of broken pottery. A sense of excitement filled her as she began examining them.
“It would be a rarity to find them, especially here, but I think these could be Late Pleistocene ceramics,” she said as she turned over a small sherd in her hands.
Matt climbed up onto the boat. “Ha, I think they’re from the teapot I threw overboard when I was out here fishing a couple of years ago.”
“Very funny.” She cast him another dirty look and went back to examining the pottery sherds.
Matt took off his diving gear, grabbed her towel, and began to dry off.
She looked up at him. “Hey, that’s my towel. Use your own.”
He grinned at her. “You know, you need to relax. You also need to come up with more than some broken pottery if we’re going to make any money off this site.”
“I didn’t go into archaeology to get rich.” She turned away from him and continued picking through the pieces.
“Bits of pottery aren’t gonna put diesel in the tanks or food on the table.”
“Hey, there it is again,” she said standing and pointing up at the sky.
“There what is again?”
“The plane I told you about.”
* * *
Matt watched Megan standing there in her blue bathing suit, her long red hair whipping in the brisk ocean breeze as she gazed up at the plane with her startling green eyes. She had the most attractive and athletic body of any woman he had ever known.
Momentary frustration rose at the thought that, so far, she had flatly rejected all of his romantic advances. He ran his hands through his curly blond hair. She’d come around.