“That’s not good,” Lovita muttered, half to herself as a spider of black oil began to crawl up the windscreen. There was a loud pop and an instant later oil covered the screen completely, robbing her of any forward visibility. She checked her console, then looked at Quinn.
“I was hoping we’d make Ambler or at least Needle, but that’s not going to happen.” She banked the plane slowly to angle farther north, away from the river — into the storm. “There’s a little mine about three miles up.” Lovita’s teeth were beginning to chatter from nerves, but she continued to fly the airplane.
Quinn found the airstrip on the chart noted by a single line in a circle — which told him it was at least 1500 feet long. “How much room do you need to put us on the ground?”
“About a thousand feet,” Lovita said without looking at him.
Quinn looked over his shoulder at Beaudine who’d buckled herself in and sat on both hands staring out her window. “See if you can get a call out on the sat phone,” she said. “We need to report our position.” He gave her a weak thumbs-up in an effort to let her know everything would be okay — which was a bald-faced lie. Things were completely and hopelessly out of his control. He could not remember a time when things had been much further from okay.
“Quinn!” Lovita said, drawing his attention back to the front. She nodded toward a trail of thick gray smoke pouring out of the engine compartment, streaming down both sides of the plane. A terrific clattering noise rose from the engine. Quinn stifled a cough as the entire cabin filled with the acrid smell of burning metal.
“We’re not even going to make it to the mine,” Lovita said, banking slowly to the left, nose against the side window. “Looks like a wide spot in the gravel by that stream below us. I’m gonna get set up for a crash while I still got an engine.”
Chapter 27
Quinn knew how to do a lot of things, but flying an airplane was not one of them, so he left it to the twenty-two-year-old expert. The way Lovita managed the airplane — and herself — during the middle of a life-and-death crisis made him hope his daughter Mattie would be able to keep her cool in such a way. Mattie. Of course he would think of her at a time like this. She was the one and only constant in his life.
The airplane went suddenly quiet as the engine locked up, starved for oil and pouring smoke but yet to catch fire. Absent the roaring noise of engine and propeller, the whir of wind and spatter of rain seemed deafening against the thin metal fuselage. Quinn’s stomach rose in his chest as the bottom of the plane seemed to fall away and they dropped toward the hills three thousand feet below.
“Make sure you know how to get out of your seat-belts,” Lovita said through clenched teeth. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the yoke. “Good chance we’ll have a fire with this much fuel. Get out quick.”
The Inupiaq girl moved like a machine, making minor adjustments to her aircraft. With her windscreen completely obscured by thick black oil, she slipped the plane sideways every few seconds, crablike. The maneuver sacrificed altitude and airspeed but gave her tiny increments of forward visibility.
Quinn caught the glimpse of a silver ribbon of gravel out the side window during one of her slips. The tundra was rising up quickly to meet them. Green hills and now treetops loomed out the windows, shooting by at an alarming rate.
To her credit, Agent Beaudine kept trying to get through on the satellite phone through the entire process.
“Everybody hang on,” Lovita said raising her chin and looking out the side window as she slipped the Cherokee sideways one last time. She straightened out the nose a moment before touchdown.
The last clear picture Quinn had before impact was the bright orange of the Eskimo girl’s hair resting on the dingy collar of her pink fleece. It brought back memories of the year before, when she’d saved his life flying a Piper Super Cub.
The plane hit hard, slamming Quinn forward against his shoulder harness, before bouncing and driving him back into his seat. Behind him, Beaudine gasped but didn’t scream. Quinn reflexively gripped the narrow leather grab strap on the door. Lovita continued to fly the plane without a word.
A loud bang split the frenetic air followed immediately by the groan of protesting metal as the nose gear snapped off, and the airplane’s belly gouged into the earth. Quinn was vaguely aware of being thrown sideways, then up, and then sideways again. Smoke choked his lungs and seared his eyes, making it impossible to see. Everything was a blur — the console, the trees whipping by outside the window, even Lovita beside him. Yanked back and forth, he felt as if he was caught up in the jaws of a great bear that was shaking him to death. The pressure of the harness against his chest combined with the thick smoke to choke the life from him. His head bounced off the window post as metal screamed and groaned.
And then they were still.
Quinn wasn’t certain if he’d been unconscious for minutes or moments. He could hear the static chatter of electrical circuits arcing somewhere in front of him. His head felt oddly heavy and it took him a few precious seconds to realize he was upside down, trapped in his seat harness. Through the smoke he could see Lovita hanging beside him, the arms of her pink fleece trailing above her head, hands in the rising water. The creek outside didn’t look deep, but the plane must have dug a trench as it slid to a stop in the gravel bed, a trench that was now filling rapidly with water.
Quinn braced himself against the dash so he didn’t break his neck, and then popped the release on his harness. His ribs lit up with pain as he slammed against the ceiling, shocked into full consciousness now by the incoming hiss of freezing water. Floundering in the overturned airplane, jammed between the dash and the backrest of what had once been his seat, Quinn peered into the back passenger compartment to find Agent Beaudine also hanging upside down in her harness, arms trailing above her head as if she were riding a roller coaster. Blood covered her face like she’d been scalped.
“Hey!” Quinn shouted. “We have to get out of here!” Beaudine moaned but didn’t move.
It was often necessary to triage medical patients during an emergency, prioritizing the nature of their wound or illness by urgency of treatment. Quinn had no idea which of the two women had the most severe injuries. The dead often moaned, and for all he knew they were both gone already. But if they weren’t dead yet, they certainly would be in moments if the water covered their faces before Quinn did something about it.
Lovita was the shorter of the two, which gave her marginally another few seconds over Beaudine, who hung lower in the water. Quinn left Lovita were she was and went for Beaudine first. Ducking his head underwater, he wriggled along the ceiling between the headrests. The release on her harness gave way as soon as he touched it, and he did his best to break her fall. Her head went under but he brought her up before she could suck in any water. A quick dunk in the river water momentarily exposed a deep gash across her forehead and nose. Typical of a head wound, a curtain of blood washed down her face a moment later. She stirred, blinking and sputtering.
Quinn gave her a pinch on the back of her upper arm to get her attention. She winced, opening her eyes long enough to look at him.
“Wait here!” he said, propping her against the side window of the airplane. The water was to her waist, and still rising, but she could breath. In another ten seconds, Lovita would not have that luxury.