Authors: Coleman Luck
Angel Fall (35 page)
TWO CHILDREN FROM DOWNED PLANE FOUND IN RAFT AFTER 36 DAYS IN OCEAN
(Reuters)—Two children from downed American Airlines flight 466 were found alive floating in a raft in the North Sea, 500 miles from where their plane had crashed 36 days ago. The raft, sighted by a helicopter crew on their way back from the Aileron Petroleum Platform, was drifting 7 miles off the coast of England’s Lindisfarne Island. After being extracted by a search-and-rescue team from the British Navy, the children, who had traveled alone and whose names are being withheld, were transported to a British naval hospital where they were examined and found to be in excellent condition. From there they were flown to London, where they were reunited with their parents.
That was the story that electrified the world, the miracle that splashed across every front page and babbled its way through all the talk shows from Sacramento to Jakarta. Of course, the members of the rescue team were interviewed endlessly; it was the best that could be done because the Lancaster family refused to be interviewed at all. Along with the interviews, everyone saw dramatic footage of the boy and girl being plucked from the heaving waves. But the video and the interviews didn’t tell the whole story. Because the whole story just couldn’t be told.
Something had happened during the rescue that the team members refused to talk about even among themselves, because what had happened was impossible. Even worse, it hadn’t appeared on the video. Though they had seen it with their own eyes, somehow the camera had refused to record it. So to talk about it would have made them all look crazy.
The girl was inside the helicopter and the extraction of the boy was almost complete—he was dangling in the arms of a diver ten feet under the craft. The pilots and the crew were looking down, making sure that everything was going correctly, when suddenly on the ocean they saw something that hadn’t been there before. Next to the raft was floating a rusted Cadillac limousine up to its wheel wells in sloshing water. That was bad enough, but standing on the hood, smiling and waving in the blinding spray was a crazy old man in a chauffeur’s uniform. All of them saw him. The children saw him too because they smiled and waved back. Then the whole awful vision—limousine and crazy person—simply vanished into thin air. And that was the story that could never be told.
It was Sunday when Alex and Tori Lancaster were pulled from the ocean. It was Sunday and only thirty-six days had passed. Thirty-six days and a lifetime. It was Sunday when they came back to their world.
And the Wind from Heaven was still blowing…toward the last Angel Fall.
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