Alive and Alone (5 page)

On page 108 of the manual, it suggested the inner organs (heart, liver, kidneys) and all meaty parts of the skull—brains, tongue and eyes be kept as well.  David picked up the rabbits head, glanced at it and then threw it far out into the bush.
I’m not that hungry yet,
he thought as he fought down the urge to throw-up.  But, on another page it suggested he boil the meat he got and not roast it.  The chapter explained that he’d get more nutrition out of boiled meat than he would if he roasted it.  Roasted meat allowed the oils and nutrients to drip onto the fire, where they burned up and did him no good.  

“I’ll boil all meat from now on and stay as strong as I can,” he spoke aloud as he closed the manual.

As his meat browned over the coals, Dave started remembering Boy Scouting trips when he’d been active with his troop.  A few times they had gone on weekend camping trips and once a scout master had pointed out that pine needles could be used to make tea.  They’d tried some, but the tea had tasted bitter to Dave then, but he’d not been attempting to survive at the time either.  According to the scout leader, the tea would keep a person from getting scurvy and anything that would help him stay healthy he wanted.

The young boy spent a good hour gathering up pine needles, but stayed near his camp as his rabbit cooked on the small fire.  Not once during the whole time was he ever out of sight of the flames of his fire, because he feared another fire would result in his death.  He knew he had to be responsible if he wanted to survive and return to his mother and sister alive.

David had just sat down and pulled a rear leg from the roasted rabbit when he heard the sound of an aircraft.  He quickly placed the cooked meat on the log and ran to the area of the aircraft wreckage.  He screamed, jumped up and down, and waved his arms violently to attract attention.  The aircraft passed right overhead and David knew he’d been seen  
  
or had he?

The aircraft never changed course and what concerned Dave was the simple fact the aircraft did not rock its wings or give any indication he’d been spotted.  As the sound of the airplanes engines great fainter and fainter, and then finally disappeared into clouds off in the distance, he fell to his knees in the mud from the melting snow and cried.

An hour later, as Dave sat by the fire, he realized he’d made no attempt to signal the passing search plane.  He knew, from flying with his father, it was difficult to spot things on the ground, even when you knew where they were.  He remembered his fanny pack, pulled it around, and started looking at the gear he’d saved from the fire by having it in the pack.  He pulled out a signaling mirror, the plastic whistle, and a smoke flare.  
Darn it!  If I had been prepared, I could have used this smoke flare as the plane came near me!  Stupid!  Oh, please, let them come back this way.  Please, just one more time,
he pleaded as he placed the mirror and whistle around his neck. He stuck the flare in his coat pocket for easy access.  He knew he’d just made a horrible mistake and he hoped it was his last one.

CHAPTER 4

C
OLONEL
FRANK
WILCOX
sat at his kitchen table and sipped his hot coffee slowly.  It was early morning, his eyes were rimmed in red, and his hands shook from a lack of sleep as he spoke, “We flew right over Jim’s last known route, but we saw nothing.  While there was still some snow on the ground, most of it had melted.”

Cathy, who had been staring into her cup, looked up and met the man’s eyes as she asked, “But, what about the ELT you told me about?”

Frank shook his head slowly and replied, “Cathy, I don’t know why it isn’t sending.  I talked to my experts about that and they said the severe cold we had the last few days might have caused the battery to die or the transmitter might have been damaged on impact.”

“If the airplane hit hard enough to damage the transmitter, wouldn’t that much force kill both Jim and Dave?” She asked as her eyes started to water.

“No, maybe not at all.  See, the transmitter is located in the tail section of the airplane and it’s possible, if Jim nosed up just before impact, that the tail took a lot of the impact forces.  The force of that impact might have damaged the ELT.”  Frank lowered his coffee cup to the saucer, looked at Cathy and then continued, “Cathy, there are too many things that can happen when a plane crashes.  What has my rescue teams excited is the fact we did not find any signs of a fire from the crash.  Now, there is a good chance a pilot with Jim’s experience could land a crippled airplane and maybe it is almost undamaged.  And that, my dear, means they could both be alive.”

Cathy’s eyes met his and she could see he had meant exactly what he had just said, they might both still be alive.  The woman thought about her husband and son for a minute or two then asked, “What kind of terrain did the plane go down in Frank?”

“Mostly mountains or at least the last known position of the aircraft was in the middle of a mountain range.  While the terrain is rough, it is better for survival than the tundra or in open water.  As you might guess, in the water there would be little hope of survival as cold as the ocean is right now.”

“Frank, you need a quick shower, some food, and then to get some sleep.”  Carol commanded as she walked to the table from the counter where she’d just put on a fresh pot of coffee.

“I will in a minute.  Cathy, I left Major Barnes in charge and he promised to call if they discover anything new during the search.  This search will go on now twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week until we either find them, or else the general calls the search off.”

Cathy, afraid of the answer asked, “And, Frank, how long do you think the search teams will look for the plane?”

Frank Wilcox shook his tired head, glanced down at his coffee cup, and then said, “I’d guess we’ll look for a week to two weeks.  Our experience shows if we don’t find any sign of them within that time, well, we might never find them.  The overall cost of the operation is the deciding factor Cathy.  It is very expensive to run a search and rescue effort, just in aircraft fuel alone.”

“What are the chances of the plane being found Frank?  And, I want the truth from you.”  Cathy asked, dreading the response from the crusty old Air Force colonel.

“Well,” Frank said then took a quick sip of his coffee before continuing, “pretty good actually, because we find more than we don’t find.  I’d say the odds are excellent that we’ll turn up something.  The hardest part right now, and you know this, is the waiting.”

Carol, who had not spoken much that morning suddenly said, “Frank Wilcox, colonel or not, you get in the shower.  And, you, Cathy, need some sleep too.  You were up all night and if you don’t go and try to sleep I’m goin’ to call Doctor Williams and have him give you some medications to make you sleep.  You’re both a couple of very tired people and we all have to stay strong, not only for Jim and David, but for Marie as well.”

Cathy’s eyes filled with tears, she slowly nodded in agreement, and then said, “Carol, I just don’t know how I can live if I lose both of my men.”

Carol, placed her hands on her hips and said, “Carol Wade, right now we don’t know that you have lost a blame thing, except maybe an airplane and a lot of sleep.  It’s like Frank just told you a minute ago, it’s the waitin’ that is stressful.  Now, use the guest bedroom, lie down, and try to sleep.  I promise to awaken you the minute I hear somethin’.”

Cathy stood and felt a deep fatigue in her whole body.  Her eyes felt as if they had sand in them and her legs were tired.  As she walked toward the bedroom she thought,
Please God, keep Jim and David safe for me.  I love and need them.

Frank, still sitting at the table waited until he heard the door to the guest bedroom shut then said to Carol, “We should have found something already.  Ribas flew the same flight path Jim filed and yet they saw nothing at all.  He reported the ground was rough, with mountains and deep gorges, but I can’t figure out why the ELT didn’t work.”

Sitting down beside her tired husband, Carol replied in a tired voice, “Frank, I’ve heard your search and rescue stories for years.  We both know there are strange things that happen at times when a plane goes down.  The two most obvious situations are they were both killed on impact or else one or both of them are attemptin’ to survive out in the bush.”

“Well, I hope they survived the crash.  Jim Wade has the education, training, and experience to survive out in the bush forever, or for at least a very long time.  I’ve been camping with him in the deep snows of the Arctic Circle, way above the tree line, and he did it in comfort too!  The man is an expert at staying alive in situations that would kill a normal person.”

Carol took a sip of her tea, gave Frank a worried look and asked, “But, what if Dave is alone?  How do you think he’d be able to survive by himself?”

Frank, a man who’d spent over twenty-two years in rescue and recovery, thought for a minute, gave a weak grin and said, “David has been a boy scout, he has done a lot of cross country skiing, and he’s grown up in Alaska, so he’s got good cold weather smarts. Also, he’s been camping, fishing, and going to hunting lodges or on remote hunting trips for years.  More than once over the years, I sat by a campfire at night camping with those two and listened to Jim tell David about how to survive in the bush.  But, Cathy, what worries me is the fact most survivors of an airplane crash are usually seriously injured.”

“But, Frank, Jim is a doctor.”

“What if Jim didn’t survive the crash and Dave is alone and injured on some mountain side?  How long do you think a fifteen year old boy can survive out in the Alaskan wilderness if he has been seriously hurt?”

“Can you send in dogs and men to do a ground search?”

Frank shook his head and his eyes showed his frustration as he replied, “Of course we can’t at this point Carol.  The flight path is too long and over some of the roughest country in the world.  It would take years for men on the ground to cover half the distance and there is no assurance that in the last few minutes Jim didn’t veer off course in an attempt to find a softer place to put his plane down.  He could have crashed miles from where he went off of radar.”

“I don’t understand.  Can’t you just go to where the plane went off the radar screen and find the airplane?”

The colonel gave a tired chuckle and said, “Carol, baby, I wish it was that simple.  See when an airplane drops too low it goes off the radar screen because our radar system cannot tell it from the clutter on the ground.  Now, let’s say the minimum altitude for a radar system to identify an aircraft is a five hundred feet, well, a plane in trouble could fly maybe another fifty to a hundred miles, depending on what the problem was onboard the aircraft.”

“That far?  Ain’t it dangerous to fly that low?”

“We did it all the time in Vietnam and in Desert Storm.  In combat military pilots often fly below a thousand feet and they do it very fast too, so radar cannot pick them up on their screens.  So, as you can see, the search is anything but simple.  Only, knowing Jim, I know he’d try his best to find a soft spot to crash on and he’d also try to stay as close to his original flight plan as possible.  The man was not only a very good doctor; he was also a smart pilot.”

“What do you think might have happened Frank? I mean about them survivin' the airplane crash.”

“Carol, I don’t honestly think Jim is alive, or if he is he’s severely injured.  If he had made it out of the crash, he would have had signals out for our planes when they flew over this morning.  But, we saw nothing at all and that is not a good sign to me.”

Carol gave a low moan and then asked, “And, what about Dave?”

Frank thought for a moment and then replied, “He’s a smart young kid and we both know that.  I don’t think signals would have entered his head, especially if Jim was dead or seriously hurt.  Now, one of two things happens to most survivors as soon as they realize they're all alone.  They become irrational due to stress and trauma of the situation, or they dust off their pants and start the struggle for survival.  I see Dave as the kind that would do both.”

“Both?”

“Yep, I think for the first twenty-four hours, especially if something happened to Jim, Dave would not be thinking clearly and perhaps he’d be seriously depressed.  But, and remember this, the young man has a strong mind and he knows the woods, so eventually he’d bounce back and start to do what needs to be done.”

“I really hope so Frank.  If Cathy loses both Jim and David, she’ll have a hard time of it.  As a matter of fact, I think tomorrow I’ll make appointments for her to see a doctor and to visit the pastor of her church.”

Frank lifted his cup, drained the last of the coffee, gave Carol a weak smile and then said, “I think that is a great idea.  The key right now is to keep her physical condition sound and to keep her emotionally stable as well.  Besides, I can assure you, the United States Air Force is not beyond calling on God when the situation calls for it and right now I feel it does.”