CRASHED
By Dawn Ramble
The owner of a small air transport company experiences an overload. All characters are over 18.
Chapter 1
I was so angry I was ready to explode. It would have been nice to blame somebody else but in the end the responsibility was all mine. I'm Amy Earhart, Yes Amy, not Amelia, but I do fly a plane. I'm Australian, thirty-four, single again after a brief and messy marriage, and a small business owner. I'm five foot nine and in good shape. I have some aboriginal blood in my veins, which accounts for my darker complexion. People generally find me quite attractive. Of course there are still some bigots who belong with the dinosaurs.
My plane is my business; it's a somewhat beat-up Cessna, currently configured for pilot, and up to six passengers with single suitcases and about 1800lbs of cargo, which cost my company a bit over seven hundred thousand Australian dollars and that was a deal. Even after the downpayment the bank has a lien on just about everything the company and I personally currently own. I live and work in Rockhampton City in Central Queensland and ferry cargo and passengers up and down the coasts between Port Douglas in the North and Melbourne in the South with occasional runs to Papua New Guinea or other islands in the Coral Sea within my flight range of 2,000 kilometers. With my regular clients there's just enough traffic to keep me afloat and I'm on call for various types of emergencies.
My present predicament started yesterday when a client asked me to take a load of gourmet food items to Port Moresby for onward shipment to a resort in Vanuatu. Apparently, a shipment by another carrier got spoiled so it was essential they get there today. I got a call later in the evening asking if there would be room for a passenger on the flight.
"It's Jake Thuresby's boy, Raiden. He's got his Aussie passport, so he'll be able to get tourist visa on arrival. I said that would be fine as it would nicely fill my load capacity and give me some company.
That was before the weather forecast changed. When I woke up this morning and checked, the computer screen was red. As I looked for more detailed information, I saw that the potential track of a cyclone that had been well to the north had shifted southwards. It still wasn't directly on my planned route, but it was closer than I liked and there was a potential for thunderstorms in the surrounding area. Not Good!
I headed to the office thinking, if we could get moving on time, we had a window. I really did not want to disappoint this client. Weather is a tricky excuse as things can clear up as quickly as they can get bad and then your excuse looks pretty lame.
I had only been at the office fifteen minutes when my assistant, Pam, arrived and I heard her escorting two people in with her. So, my passenger was on time. Then I heard a bit of a discussion, not quite an argument.
Pam stuck her head round my door. "Amy, we may have a problem."
"I know, I've seen the forecast. I think we have a window if we leave in the next half hour."
"No, it's with the passengers. Raiden's brother, Mike, wants to come too."
"What will that do to our payload?"
"He's a nineteen-year-old, six-four and weighs 89.4 kilos."
"What about luggage?"
"They've both got light bags. That shouldn't be a problem, but I have weighed it all."
"Okay, I'll talk to them while you get me a total loaded weight."
I talked to boys. Raiden firmly told me he was now Ray; he hated his parents' choice of name. Turned out his brother Mike was originally going to stay with a friend, but they had had a falling out and now he wanted to come. If he couldn't come, he did not want Ray to go. So, they went around the issue arguing among themselves. I could tell they were nice boys, and it seemed a shame to leave him behind. I didn't really know Jake Thuresby. I remember there used to be sniggers about him among some of the women closer to my Mum's age.
I did remember seeing him once at the beach with his two young boys. We girls were all naked as usual and I remember thinking as he passed by us, he seemed to have a one-eyed python in his boardies. We all laughed about it. Of course, he was a married man with these two boys by then and everyone said he was a devoted father.
Meanwhile Pam came back and gave me the total gross weight. I like a ten percent contingency factor but including Mike would cut into that. We would be within our limit but not by as much as I liked.
Time was wasting, so I said, "Let's go," and mentally crossed my fingers. It took us another twenty minutes to make sure everyone and everything was loaded properly and do the flight check. The radar said the cyclone hadn't shifted but a steady rain was starting to fall as we rolled down the runway to our take-off position.
We were fourteen klicks out over the ocean, when I saw the first lightning to our left. Twenty minutes later we were being buffeted by the wind and I knew we were on the edge of the cyclone. With this load I did not feel I had the range to fly around the edge not knowing how wide it might be. I told the boys the score and told them to stay in their seats with their belts buckled as I was going to have to fly at least into the edge of it.
Minutes later there was a massif glare of lightning all but blinding me followed almost immediately by an explosion of sound. When my vision cleared it was obvious that we had lost our navigational equipment. As far as I could tell the altimeter was still working but I had no clear idea of our heading. I have flown before without some or all of my instruments, but never before have I had to do this in a storm.
For almost two hours I fought the buffeting of the wind without any idea of our true heading and then I was out of the wind and driving rain but with little visibility. Flying at four thousand feet I dropped below the cloud and below us was an expanse of open ocean. In terms of time, I should be seeing Papua New Guinea, but I was not. It might be just out of sight, but I could not tell. I kept flying in the hope of seeing land. Visibility was getting worse, and I could see my fuel was getting low. I tried to reach air traffic control, but it seemed I had also lost radio contact.
Five minutes later I finally saw an island. It seemed small, but I began my descent hoping to see some signs of habitation. I had also had no communication with my passengers for some time although I had been aware of the retching sounds of the sick bags being used. I wasn't feeling so hot myself. In the lee of the island the ocean here looked relatively calm. I felt confident that with the pontoons on my floatplane I could land safely but how would I refuel? The truth was I was out of options. I shouted for everyone to make sure they were securely buckled in as we were about to land.
The landing was smooth and with an absence of rocks I was able to bring the plane close to the beach.
"Prepare to deplane via the floats," I said as calmly as I could, "I apologize for the turbulence you experienced. We've had to make an emergency landing. I am using the thrust of the engines to keep the plane close to the beach. With luck you should be able to deplane without getting seriously wet, but I would suggest you carry your shoes and roll up your pant legs if you are wearing them. Please leave your carry-ons and I will unload it once the plane is secured."
How was that for a calm I was not feeling? I turned and pointed to the door, "Exit through there. Step onto the pontoon and then drop to the beach. Please help each other. Once on shore move away from the plane."
They got ready to deplane without a barrage of questions. Then at just the wrong moment the wind caught us, and they half jumped, half fell into the water. As they scrambled to their feet, I let the plane drift back before catching a wave and moved thirty feet away. I made sure the wheels were raised before running it up on to the beach. The wheels would just have got stuck in the sand. I cut the engines and waited to see if it seemed settled and then I deplaned with only my feet getting wet. I put their lack of questions down to a mixture of unwellness, shock, and relief at the prospect of 'terra firma', but I did not expect it to last.
"How come we got wet, and you didn't?" asked Mike, indicating their soaking condition.
"With both of you on board we were close to our weight limit even with having used most of our fuel. I needed you off before I tried to beach her. Bad luck with that gust of wind though," I said reaching in and handing them each their carry-ons.
They both moved a bit higher up the beach and Ray opened his carry-on and pulled out a towel and some beach shorts. He turned his back as he stripped and toweled off his butt. He pulled on the beach shorts and turned towards me towelling his upper body. Mike had moved a little further and also pulled a towel from his bag but was less modest as he was in profile to me as he towelled his entire body.
He looked like a Greek God, six-foot-four of toned athletic young manhood, well not yet truly out of adolescence. I couldn't help but notice that he was well-endowed as it hung over his not insignificant balls. It had been a while, and I felt an unaccustomed heat spread through my loins. Sex was the one part of my failed marriage that had been good, and I missed the regularity of it. I tore my gaze away in time to see Ray approaching. Ray had a more sturdy build. At around six feet he wasn't short, two to three inches more than me and he also looked to be in good shape.