Driver Pt 01

1. SHOWDOWN AT THE DELOS 808.

Tonight's setup, an airport somewhere. Subject, a crying young girl bidding another older woman a tearful goodbye. It's her mother. And it's Japan. Just for context.

Now, on the plane, flying first class to Tokyo, a petite Japanese flight attendant turns up with the young girl in tow. Maybe she can join in too. Maybe later. This time, though, it was the girl's very first flight and she was terrified. Could he please take care of her?

Her name was Riku. 18 years old though she looked much younger. On her way to Tokyo to try out for the movies. As an AV idol no less, a fledgeling porn star. And when they got there, the agent meant to meet was nowhere to be seen. Now she was lost, all alone, with no local knowledge and very little money.

Now cut to the chase. Bowing and crying, she gratefully accepted the offer of sharing his hotel. Setting foot in the apartment, she disappeared into the bathroom, emerging a while later dressed as a Japanese school girl. Black shoes and long white socks, pleated mini skirt, white shirt with a sailor's collar and cute blue bow. How could she ever thank him, she asked, her eyes big and sincere under adorable bangs. Walking to the bed, extending her hand, she placed a tiny pair of damp white panties on his palm. Shuffling onto the bed on her knees, she lay a delicate little hand on his thigh.

As his hand slid under her her dress, bound for a warm, wet welcome, the cell phone on the bedside bureau began to ring. Pulse-rate spiking, Mack unhanded himself, then rolled over, cursing, and turned on the light. Work calling? At this hour? They had to be kidding.

A minute into the call he realised they weren't.

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Crossing the beach at 2000 feet, SARbird-2's pilot in command, Captain Travis Mack, watched the last of the light pollution fall quickly behind. Lowering his Night Vision Goggles, he tweaked the objectives to bring the world into focus and sat back admiring the view. With no moon to speak of, the heavens above were peppered with stars, while the dark waters of the gulf below lay strewn with tiny jewels- obstacle lights of countless marine obstacles, the glare of distant platforms. 'Could be worse,' he thought, content, in spite of the hour, to be back in his element, 'could be working for a living'.

As far as Mack knew, the backup bird had rarely been scrambled, and even then only because the primary ship had been scrubbed. But here they were, both aircraft airborne. Perhaps this was a real-life mass casualty event and things were about to get serious. Or not, he thought, shooting a glance at his copilot over his goggles. Barron Shipley, callsign 'Shifty', never a man more aptly named. There he sat in the left-hand seat, miles away, endlessly swiping the phone in his lap, pausing now and then to tap out a comment. Mack gave a virtual roll of the eyes. Of all pilots to be on with tonight.

Air Traffic handed them off and Mack sat waiting for his shotgunner to make the change. Oblivious to his duties, Shipley continued contentedly tapping and scrolling, then grunted with laughter at some mindless post.

"I'll just do it, shall I?" Mack muttered, tapping in the freq and flipping channels.

A voice piped up from back in the cab. "And why don't you make us a coffee while you're at it?"

Mack allowed himself a wry smile. At least he had some decent in-flight entertainment. In the form of Wendy Stamp, a tall, blonde, beanpole Australian, their GIB for the evening's festivities. SAR duty was the only time Mack got to work with contract paramedics, who came as a breath of fresh air after the starched white-shirt and gold-epaulette wearing offshore drivers. Like old Shifty there, thumb-in-ass and mind in neutral, tapping and swiping, tapping and swiping. In a zoombag and helmet tonight, but still radiating that same feckless arrogance. The offshore aristocracy. How he, Mack, a proud and determined misfit, had fallen in with this bunch was one of life's mysteries.

Mack dimmed his flatscreen displays then peered deep into the green, pixelated night. Frowning, he dialled the map range down and rechecked the distance. "That's odd."

Unbuckling her seatbelt, Wendy leant into the cockpit, attached to the aircraft by harness and wander-lead. Arm braced on the back of his seat she knelt, breathing down his neck, and Mack caught a whiff of her perfume. Rosebuds and candy, like something edible. "What's odd, mate?"

Mack pointed. "I can see the eight-oh-eight."

Squinting through the windscreen, Wendy dialled her goggles, checked the distance on the flatscreen display. "That's nearly sixty miles."

Mack worked the radar, double-checking the distance. He knew exactly how far it was. He'd been out here only yesterday, on a dog-standard flight with a cab full of workers, to the Delos-808, a massive semi-submersible rig anchored seventy-odd miles off the beach. The radar, in its endless sweeps, dutifully painted the target at precisely the right range. Mack shot his dead-weight copilot a glance. "Hey, Shifty."

"What?" Shipley grunted, not looking up.

"Check it out. I can see the eight-oh-eight."

Shipley looked up for a token couple of seconds then went back to his labours. "No you can't."

Mack peered at the bright, wavering blob through his goggles, stricken with doubt. Maybe he was seeing things. Overhearing his thoughts, Wendy gave him a nudge. "Maybe it's a UFO?"

"Sitting right over the eight-oh-eight?"

"Frikken' awesome!" she rubbed her hands. "A close contact of the...?"

"eight-zero-eighth kind? Let's try and get 'em on Channel sixteen."

Unleashing his latest post... 'SAR-duty tonite, off to save a LIFE ', Shipley roused himself. "Don't do that."

Mack blinked. "Oh. Shifty. Fancy meeting you here."

"Seriously. We're not meant to call till thirty miles."

"No shit. How's your evening been?"

"I mean it. Baker's been up our ass about radio discipline, remember?"

Mack gestured out the windscreen with his chin. "That's the Delos eight-oh-eight. It's at fifty-eight miles and I can almost read the Health and Safety board. It might be flaring off."

"Can't be," Shipley tersely replied, "we woulda been told."

"What WERE we told?" Wendy piped up. "Just out of interest."

Shipley looked over his shoulder. "Weren't you paying attention?"

Wendy opened her mouth to reply but Mack cut her off. "Between loading the stretcher and all the SAR gear? All on her own? Wendy! How could you?"

"Well what's the use of a briefing if she can't even listen?"

"And what's the use of a copilot if he can't even change frequencies?" Mack shrugged. "Who can say? Wendy? We probably know about as much as you do. Ops just told us to backup SARbird-one. All he said was 'technical emergency', but he was still half asleep so it could be anything."

"Technical emergency?" Wendy asked.

"Something broken on the rig." Shipley said. "Happens all the time."

"So why do they need two choppers? And a paramedic? I could be home, in bed."

Mack worked his shoulders under his harness and survival vest. "Who knows, Skip? But one thing's for sure, we'll soon find out."

A voice came over the radio as SARBird-1's left-seater, Randy Sternberg, came up on area. An Agusta 139, same as Mack's mount, the primary Search And Rescue machine was on an opposite track maintaining one thousand feet above. Sure enough, the aircraft popped up on the traffic display, their lights now visible against the wall-to-wall stars. Mack waited while Sternberg checked-in with centre then keyed his radio. "SAR-one, this is SAR-two. Whisky tango actual-foxtrot?"

Heavy-breathing into his mike, Sternberg replied and there were no prizes for guessing it was trouble. "Is that you Trav? Look. Go to company."

Mack typed in the frequency while Shipley sat, hunched forward, one hand on the instrument hood, peering into the night. "Randers?" Mack piped up, "This is SAR-two. Do you read?"

"SAR-two? You outbound?"

"Affirm."

"Haven't you heard?"

Sternberg's voice sent a chill down Mack's spine. How many times had he heard that very same tone? Uttered by frightened aviators who'd just stared mortality fair in the eye. "Heard what?"

"There's been a blowout. The eight-oh-eight's on fire."

Mack floundered briefly as it all came into focus. Those weren't lights he could see, they were flames. "I... we... SAR-one? Did you... what have you... Any idea of the casualties?"

SAR-1 skipper, Dan 'Bones' Skelton replied. "We saw guys jumping off the platform, Trav! Guys were on were on fire."

"Lifeboats in the water." Sternberg cut in. "Tenders circling trying to hose that motherfucker down."

Mack hunkered down in his seat, making himself as small as possible in the shadow of the looming calamity. "How many survivors you got?"

"We're empty, man." Skelton quavered. "It's impossible to land."

"Are you guys heading back?"

"Bingo fuel, man, and there's nothing we can do. There's nothing ANYone can do. Best we can do is come back at first light to look for bodies. No one's getting off that thing. Not alive. No one. You might as well turn round."

Mack looked under his goggles at Wendy. In the near darkness, behind goggles and mike, her face looked almost ghostly. He looked at Shipley, who now sat, staring wide-eyed with his mouth open.

"Do you read, Trav? There's nothing you can do. There's nothing ANYone can do."

Centre called SAR-1 and Skelton left the not-so-private conversation. Mack's 139, meanwhile, bored through the night at one hundred forty knots as if this was just another routine transfer.

For the first time tonight about to do something decisive, Shipley reached for the flight computer. "Want me load up home plate?"

Mack glanced at his copilot's hand, already tapping letters into the scratchpad. "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?" Shipley asked.

"Change waypoints. We're pushing on."

Big, goggle eyes peered at Mack in dismay. "Pushing on? You heard Bones. There's nothing we can do."

"There's ALWAYS something we can do." Mack said testily. "Wendy?"

"Boss?"

"Stow everything you can lay your hands on and ratchet-down the rest. If there are guys in the water we may have to winch."

"Got it!"

"Winch?" Shipley cried. "We don't have a crewman. And at night? Not in my fucking aircraft."

Mack clenched his jaw. "Except it's NOT your fucking aircraft. It's my fucking aircraft. I signed for it."

"That doesn't mean you can put us all in danger."

"I'm NOT gonna put us in danger!" Mack blustered. "Jesus..."

"But you heard Bones! There's no way to land. And we're not allowed to winch, not at night. I don't wanna go out there just to watch guys burn."

Mack's viscera writhed at a sudden flash of memory 'Why not?' he thought. Someone had to do it.

"Look at those flames." Wendy breathed. "It'll be like frikken daylight out there."

"We're not going." Shipley cried, changing the destination waypoint as if the flying pilot would have no choice but to follow.

"Check your bailout bottles." Mack muttered. "And your life insurance."

"Mine's good." Wendy came back.

"Top of descent." Mack announced. "Let's do a recce. It's the least we owe those poor sons-o'-bitches."

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The scene resembled a disaster movie on steroids, special effects gone wild. The gigantic semi-submersible drilling rig was almost utterly engulfed in fire, flames reaching the top of the drill tower, coughing up orange-yellow fireballs that roiled high into the night sky. Descending to a thousand feet, still a mile or so short, Mack raised his Night Vision Goggles. Like Wendy had said, bright as day. He turned his head without taking his eyes off the spectacle. "Wenders? You might wanna stow those gogs, just in case."

"On it, Boss."

"This is insane!" Shipley protested, still peering through his image intensifiers. "I can't see a thing."

"Try it without the goggles." Mack suggested, as if reasoning with a petulant child. He'd been trying the marine radio with no success, until, in a fit of inspiration, he dialled up the emergency frequency. There he was swamped by a torrent of traffic, mostly unintelligible, with long intervals of garbled over-transmissions. He keyed the radio. "All surface stations, Delos eight-oh-eight. Chopper SARbird-two."

A voice cut through the hash almost immediately. "SARbird-two? Is that you overhead?" Dwight Kincaid, skipper of the rig tender Southern Fortitude. They'd crossed paths a few times at the airfield in the past, Kincaid outbound or passing through on leave. A mountain of a man and one-time Marine, slow talking, unflappable, deeply respected.

"Captain Kincaid?"

"Who am I talking to?"

"It's Travis Mack. We just arrived on-scene. What have we got?"

Kincaid paused to call a nearby tender. "Valiant Resolve? Move your ass upwind you idiot! You might as well just piss on it in your present location."

Water boiled at its stern as the guilty tender began to retreat. "Aye aye Skipper."

Mack rolled into a turn as the nearby tender reversed through swirl of orange luminescence. It looked like the entire gulf was on fire. "Trav?" Kincaid said, "We've got multiple deceased in the water. Right now, though, we're looking for survivors."

"Roger that. What can we do?"

"Keep an eye out for swimmers. SARbird-one did a sweep, but he was low on fuel and had to bug-out. How long can you give us on-station?"

Mack checked the contents and plucked a number. "Forty minutes to an hour."

"Whatever you can give us. And just to confirm, you're unable to land?"

Mack watched the helideck drift past, with nothing to see of the big green pad aside from a corner poking out of the inferno. "Err... no. That's affirmative."

"Yeah... well... we figured it was a long shot."

Mack eyeballed the flames. No kidding. "We'll set up in an orbit." he said, waiting while Kincaid upbraided the skipper of another dithering tender.

"Whatever you can do, Trav." he said. "And guys? Much appreciated. Semper Fi."

"Search and Rescue." Mack said, wanting nothing to do with his past. The waste, the futility, the sheer obscenity of war. As if countless lessons, penned line-by-excruciating line, with a quill dipped in the blood of innocent millions, had never even been written. "It's what we do."

Still with his goggles down, Shipley sat staring ahead, as if trying to deny the existence of the blazing catastrophe off to his right. Descending to 300 feet above the rippled, orange waters, Mack slowed back to sixty knots and called Wendy. "Below eighty, clear for the door."

Perched on the edge of her seat, Wendy sat peering at the monstrous vision, a man-made colossus, now weirdly diminished, in the process of being devoured by a ravenous force of nature. Startled by the call, she shook off the horror and reached for the door handle. "Door coming open, mate, standby caution."

A warning blinked on and 'Door Open' appeared on the display. While Mack cancelled the light, a low, muffled roar filled the aircraft over the sound of screaming engines and the pounding of rotors. Wendy breathed into her mike. "Fucking hell."

Mack lit up the 30-million candle-power searchlight, then slewed it from side to side with little effect. Like a miniature sun, the raging conflagration cast enough light of its own. Drawing a breath, Wendy launched the top half of her body into the slipstream. "I've got a body."

"Is it moving?"

Wendy watched the figure, floating face down in the burning waters pass by her door. "No. And there's another."

"Look for live ones," Mack said flatly. "Ones still moving."

"And another. No signs of life."

Mack tightened the orbit as they continued around to the port side of the burning rig. As he watched, a figure dropped from the superstructure, accelerating crazily before smacking into the water below. Mack clenched his teeth, grimacing. "That's gotta be one hundred feet. No one's gonna survive that."

"Oh my god, Travis! Look! There's another one. Look! He's on fire! Oh, those poor men!"

"Get a grip, Wendy. Focus."

Mack felt the controls move in his hands. "Taking over!" Shipley huffed, "My aircraft."

"What the-"

"We're getting out of here. This is insane."

Mack released the collective and swung his arm through an arc, back-handing Shipley in the mouth. "That's fucking hijack, asshole! Let go!"

The racket on the radio sounded like the live-coverage of a riot. A tender charged towards the rig beneath them, then heeled over turning sharply away from the flames. Rounding the corner, the helicopter crept once more past the helideck, as milling tenders spewed long arcs of water into the fire's raging heart. "Trav, pleeease..." Shipley implored, "at least pull back. We're not helping anyone down here!"

Mack continued the orbit, imagining what he'd most like to do, namely throw Shipley overboard for the tenders to deal with. Coming around the corner, tracking past the port-aft corner of the gargantuan rig, he caught a glimpse of darkness, like a cave at the foot of a mountain of flame. "Wendy! Look! The crane deck!"

Wendy leant way out the door as they passed. "Trav! Trav! I see people!"

"Where?"

"On the crane deck! They're waving!"

"Jesus Christ! Hold on, I'm gonna throw a left and come back to the hover."

"Travis, noooo!" Shipley keened. "You're gonna kill us."

"One more fucking word out of you..." Mack huffed. Rolling hard left, he hauled the Agusta's nose through three sixty degrees, briefly thrown by a windscreen full of inky dark. The chopper stood on its tail, rearing back to a high hover, its five massive blades hacking the air. "Wendy? Can you see them?"

When she didn't reply, Mack keyed his radio. "Southern Fortitude, Southern Fortitude, Dwight, do you read?"

It took 3 attempts before Kincaid came back. "SARBird-two?"

"We've got survivors on the crane deck. Wendy? How many?"

"Hard to say. Ten? Twenty?'

"Are they able to reach the lifeboats?" Kincaid calmly asked.

Mack keyed the intercom. "Wendy? Wendy? For fuck's sake, Wendy, do your job! I'm trying to fly this fucking thing."

Wendy came-to. "There are no lifeboats left. There's ten to twenty pers on the crane deck and I think they can see us."

"That goddam deck's a good one fifty off the surface." Kincaid cursed. "Trav? Is there anything you can do?"

Mack licked his lips, while Shipley sat back, goggles up, face in his hands. "Wendy? Are you prepared to give it a shot?"

"Shot? G... g... say what now, Trav?"

"The crane deck, for fuck's sake? Are you?"

Wendy looked over her shoulder at the left-seater. "Well, I am, but what about-"

"You're the only one that counts. It's you and me, Skippy."

Wendy rolled her shoulders under the harness. "I... sure... I mean it can't hurt to try."

"Can't hurt?" Shipley wailed, raising his hands to the sky. "Are you two fucking insane?"

"Wendy. One more word out of him you pull his fucking lead. I mean pull it right out of his fucking helmet." Wendy nodded and Mack keyed his radio. "Dwight? Can you get a couple of tenders in there, hose down either side of the crane deck?"

Without waiting for orders, two tenders surged around and edged in as close as they dared, jetting huge plumes of seawater.

"Wendy. I'm gonna move right, I'll need you to clear me in. You see anything... ANYthing... you call it."

"Careful Trav, we've got the wind up our cloaca."

"We need maximum clearance, Skip. I'll aim to put one wheel on. If we need more than that then we're probably screwed."

Wendy nodded. "Gotcha! You're clear in right."

With fifty feet to run, in a gentle descent to the level of the crane deck, a hammering deluge battered the aircraft. Mack rolled left and climbed away cursing as Wendy threw herself inside avoiding a soaking. "For fuck's sake you guys!" Mack called, his voice pitched an octave higher than normal, "I said hose-down the rig, not us!"