Yesterday's Flight Read online

  His left hand reached out and made contact, he recoiled it instantly, but it didn’t matter; he recognised immediately what he was seeing and what it was was the tip of the tail section of a Boeing 737.

  He fell backward from his squatting position and let out a soft long sigh, as he clasped his right hand to his mouth. All around him seemed to go quiet, everything became surreal as his mind struggled to understand how and why the top 8ft section of a new airliner could be laid on top of the skull of a dinosaur from 65 million years ago, and what’s more there were obvious impact points on the skull to indicate that this piece of aircraft had struck it, no doubt resulting in the animal’s death.

  Simon settled next to Bruce in the dirt. For once he was quiet, even with all his excitement and blind faith in believing what he had been told over the phone. He looked gaunt and washed out. Simon turned to Bruce, “You ever?” he didn’t get to finish the question, he didn’t need to, Bruce knew the answer and forced it over Simon’s words, “No!” Both men were brought back to reality by Susan.

  “We’ve got extra teams arriving tomorrow, specialist equipment to help us dig further, and we’re going to widen the dig site.”

  “How long before you can dig down or further around or whatever you’re planning on?” Bruce’s question was phrased like a child asking when its mother would buy that toy she promised on her next shopping trip.

  It didn’t sound like the question a well-educated and experienced investigator would ask.

  “A week, maybe two, your tents are set up, I figured you wouldn’t wish to leave once you saw it,” she said.

  Bruce looked up, still dazed, “Oh, ermm, yeah ok, that’s fine, thank you.”

  “I’ll show you to them.” Susan stood up and headed back towards the camp site. Bruce and Simon followed her.

  “Here you go,” Susan said, “they’re both the same so whichever one you want is fine.”

  Bruce took the right tent and Simon the left, but only because that’s how they were stood, at this point who had which tent was of absolutely no consequence and Bruce needed quiet time. He needed to get his mind around what he had just seen, and for that which tent he took wasn’t important.

  “Simon!”

  “Yes, Bruce.”

  “Give me a couple of hours before I’m disturbed.”

  “Sure, boss.”

  He knew that tone and that look, Bruce was going into investigation mode. This was what he did best, digging the answers up, getting to what had really happened. Simon long suspected that Bruce was still doing field work so long into his career because he found it hard to do the office politics, he couldn’t stand the corporate line, the ‘blue sky thinking’ brigade, they all just annoyed him, clones with no real personality, but Simon was confident, if anybody could figure this out, Bruce could.

  Bruce folded the tent door closed behind him and the searing heat was known to him again. The rest of his senses started to come back on line, like some old computer that had been asked to do too much and had just frozen and crashed. Bruce’s brain was starting to reboot, his systems coming back on line one by one, and the first one was telling him he was hot, too damn hot for his liking. He removed his baseball cap, and scratched his long thick beard. Rubbing more sweat from his brow he sat on the travel bed, leaned forward and put his face in to his hands and rested his elbows on his knees. Slowly his face emerged from his hands until they supported his chin. Bruce turned and laid down in one movement, put his hands behind his head and drifted into a restless sleep.

  William could feel the plane starting to move, the little shunt bus pushed the huge aircraft to its starting position on the runway. It always amazed him how such a small vehicle could manoeuvre such a heavy object and do it smoothly and so precisely. The engines began to rev up and the cabin lights became that little brighter then flickered, “Here we go,” said Sarah.

  William didn’t answer her. He wasn’t a rude man, in fact bad manners were the only thing that was guaranteed to get the hairs on the back of his neck up, he just didn’t want to encourage another conversation; instead he turned and gave her a listless smile, a kind of “Yeah I know I’m sat next to you, please don’t talk to me anymore,” smile, and it seemed Sarah read it just fine. She nodded and returned to her magazine.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to flight 993 Portland to Atlanta. I’m Captain David Padel and I wish you a pleasant flight. If you need any assistance, my cabin crew will only be too happy to help”.

  David had been a pilot for as long as he cared to remember. He had gained his wings in the Royal Air Force flying first Harriers and then Tornados. After leaving the service he moved to America where he joined American Air Cruises. He had never married, he had always been too busy, never been stationed long enough anywhere to meet Mrs Padel, but this didn’t bother him. Apart from his love of flying his other great passion was the gym, and between these two there was no room for meaningful relationships, and of course he loved his bachelor pad far too much to compromise on whether or not a pool table should be in the dining-room and do you really need all those Xbox games?

  No, David was very happy with his life, and of course he had the added benefit of the cabin crew, some of who were more then happy to oblige.

  One of those who were particularly happy to oblige was on this flight, Holly Danver, who had worked for the airline for 8-months but had soon made her presence felt on board by her huge character and larger-than-life personality.

  Holly was only 5ft 6’ and very slim but she had enough energy to fit into the body of someone twice her size. David and Holly had got together on their first red eye flight. It was brief as David remembered and not very romantic, but it was fun and energetic and surely that was the whole point, wasn’t it?

  David had a passion for red eyes and took them at every opportunity. It was always a quiet flight. The aircraft was always half-empty (or full, depending on your own take on that whole area), and most of the passengers on board would be asleep anyway.

  David finished his pre-flight checks with his co-pilot and got the clearance he needed to take off. Pushing the throttle for the two under-wing jet engines to full, he could feel the battle between the thrust of the engines and power of the brakes. This was the part David enjoyed, the feeling of power he got from the engines and the feeling he got that he was in control of it all. The rest of the flight - once the aircraft was airborne - was merely a babysitting exercise for the on-board computers and autopilot. He released the brakes and the huge hulk started to lumber forward.

  In the passenger compartment, William could feel himself being pushed back in his seat. The frame of the aircraft started to rumble and vibrate as it gained speed, quickly accelerating to that point of no return, where one fault, one mistake could and would spell disaster for everyone on board.

  “Stop it!” he thought to himself. The noise of the engines increased to a tuneful screaming, then he felt the nose start to lift, the whole air frame tilting back and then the rumbling and vibration stopped; just the sound of the engines as they protested at being made to run at full throttle.

  He looked out the window and saw the lights of the terminal and city falling away from him. He felt the plane tilt to the left, level out and then the engines went quiet. For a split second he daren’t breathe. He was telling his heart to beat quieter as he listened intently for the engine noise that had suddenly stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief; and released his grip of the seat’s arm rests, the engines were now humming happily rather screaming in protest.

  “We’ve reached our altitude and the captain has reduced power,” he reassured himself. The seat belt signs switched off and the LCD monitors in the back of the headrests flickered into life, giving him what seemed to be a never-ending choice of movies or lifestyle programming. “I wonder if Snakes on a Plane is on here,” he chuckled to himself as he looked through the menu.

  “Avatar, that’ll pass the hours,” he thought, and as at home he let the movie pla
y to itself while he discarded the headphones, pulled down his blind and turned to sleep.

  In the rest of the passenger compartment, most of the passengers, like William, were now asleep; the only light coming from the dimmed overhead lighting and the LCD screens that were mostly playing to themselves.

  Lynsey and Holly took care of the few passengers that wanted or needed attention and returned to their station to catch up on the latest gossip.

  The 737 700 had 8 business class seats, but they were all empty on this flight, it seemed the people who had enough money to fly business class also had enough sense not to be on an aircraft at this time of the night. David checked the readings again as the plane corrected its path; checking itself and carrying out thousands of calculations a second, to make sure that at any given time it was exactly where it should be.

  David sighed and rubbed the back of his neck as Lynsey brought him a coffee, “How are we looking, captain?” “Fine, Lyns, nothing to report here, I’m just holding her hand all the way home.”

  “Steve!” Lynsey turned to the co-pilot, “You want me to get you something?”

  “No thanks, Lynsey, as it’s all quiet in here, I’ll head to the back and make sure all is ok.”

  The co-pilot unbuckled himself and left the flight deck to do his rounds, closely followed by Lynsey.

  David turned back to face the dashboard to once again check the instrumentation; he knew everything would be ok, but partly out of routine and professionalism, but mostly boredom - he also knew it would run down another twenty-minutes or so, and as he predicted, all the instruments read exactly as they should.

  He stretched back in his seat and looked into the black void that was outside his window. The only light was coming from the stars that always looked so much brighter this far up; so bright in fact that he imagined he could slide his window open and pluck one out of the night sky.

  He smiled a little to himself and turned back to the instrument panel. It was when he looked down he noticed the VSD (Vertical Situation Display) which shows the aircraft’s current and predicted flight path was now showing the wrong course.

  David checked it and checked it again but the aircraft was off course and flying directly over Yosemite National Park.

  “Shit, how could I be so far off course?” he said out loud to himself, then a terrible thought flashed through his mind.

  This far off course could mean they would not have enough fuel. He felt his heart rate increase and his temperature rise quickly. He felt flushed and embarrassed like a child who had been caught out in class for forgetting his homework or not knowing the answer to a simple question.

  That feeling came and went quickly as his training kicked in. Instantly he checked the HUD (Head-up Display) to verify the VSD, but it agreed with it. He turned to the EVS (Enhanced Vision System) on the aircraft to look for landmarks that he knew from previous flights and all the instrumentation agreed with themselves: he was off course - way off course.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he shouted. “Piece of shit.” He felt he had to blame something or someone. How could this have happened? he was too good for this rookie mistake; it must be the plane’s fault, it had to be. All the instruments agreed with each other so it had to be. “It’s that simple,” he thought. “Ok, come on, you can do this.” He tried to calm himself down and reached to call for Steve.

  That was when he noticed the surface of his coffee rippling. Then the vibrations started, firstly through the seat, then the flight controls, then spreading rapidly to the dashboard. The screens flickered and went black, the HUD disappeared from in front of him, and the EVS went off like an old TV that slowly dies; leaving a little white spot in the middle of the screen. That was when he saw the light, just in the corner of his eye to start with, but it was there. He looked up directly out of the front window, a light starting to glow in the distance. He couldn’t make it out, it reminded him of driving on a deserted road in the dead of night and seeing a single beam of light coming directly towards him, only for it to turn out to be a motorbike.

  He snapped back to now. The light grew stronger and stronger, he turned his head and watched it grow in strength from the corner of his left eye. Shielding it with his open hand, he pulled his neck further into his shoulders. Suddenly the aircraft shuddered and pitched. It felt as though he was inside a toy aircraft while an unruly child ran around the home with it in his hand. It pitched backwards and up, the fuselage groaned and creaked under the strain, the light now all around the plane bathed it. It streamed in through all the windows blinding and hot, so very hot. David was powerless. He couldn’t stop shielding his eyes to regain control. The dashboard was now blank. In the unnatural white light that surrounded them he could make out every screw head and every scratch and mark on the black dashboard.

  Then nothing. As quickly as it had started it stopped. The light went, the pitching stopped, the flight controls and dashboard burst back into life and the master alarm sounded.

  David took his hands away from his eyes and turned his gaze back to the windows looking out at the night sky, pitch black again. “Nothing…where are the stars?” he thought, but he had no time to think of an answer to his own question. The aircraft was already reacting to its latest threat.

  The engines roared and screamed as if they knew their own fate and what would happen if they couldn’t keep themselves and the plane in the air. Every display was reading incomprehensibly; none of them made sense, but he had to get the aircraft stable and level then he would find out what had happened and why the instruments were telling him lies.

  The plane levelled out and the engines fell quiet, back to their normal even pitch. David looked around the flight deck for any signs of damage. He checked the damage control panel and all seemed to be ok. He uneasily breathed a sigh of relief, but it was a quiet one, a careful one in case whatever had caused this, whatever it was, was listening and just toying with them and his sigh would somehow enrage it and cause it to start it all over again.

  He engaged the autopilot, keeping the aircraft in a holding flight pattern. It would endlessly circle now until either he could figure out what had happened and where they were, or they ran out of fuel!

  “Fuel, shit!” the thought flashed across his mind leaving a white hot trail behind it. His adrenalin kicked in again, but by now he was almost out of it. He glanced down at the fuel gauges; they were reading 40% capacity, including the 9 auxiliary tanks, 4200 or so gallons left. “At this height and speed, that means I have…”

  David was finding it hard to concentrate, the last series of events had seemed like a lifetime and yet had passed in just seconds. Nothing could have prepared him for it, not for the speed and ferocity at which it happened, not even his RAF training, not even the time he spent in the Falkland Islands when he was a Harrier pilot engaged in seek-and-destroy missions on the enemy Migs and surface vessels.

  “C’mon, David think.” He was finding it increasingly difficult to work his fuel out. His hand shook as he tried to recall the calculations.

  “Think, ok, I have 4280 gallons remaining, that’s roughly 26700lbs at this cruising speed and altitude. I need about 5500lbs per hour; that gives…c’mon…4.86-hours, ok!”

  Knowing the aircraft could now fly in its holding pattern for a little over 4-hours; he unbuckled his belt and headed out of the flight deck.

  Bruce folded back the flap on his tent and made his way back out into the intolerable heat of Death Valley. Simon was already at the dig site with Susan. Three days had passed since they had arrived at the dig site, by now the tail section and skull had been completely removed for forensic analysis and a further three digs had been started based on their best guess of the trajectory, laying angle and speed of impact of the piece of tail section they had found.

  The dig sites fanned out in three arcs of 90` stretching as far as 500ft for the centre line and 250ft each side. The initial dig where the incomplete tail section had been found was now fondly known as ‘ground ze
ro’. Bruce had commented on how Simon had coined the phrase remarking, “Trust Simon to think he’s in the god damn X-File movie!”

  He smiled to himself as he remembered Simon trying to disguise the fact and claiming he had just thought of it. It reminded him of how a child would either deny or acknowledge an event depending on whether they would be in trouble or not and be completely unconvincing.

  Bruce made his way to the right side dig (dig alpha). The team there had found no more evidence or signs of what this could have been. “Mark!” bellowed Bruce. He had no time for small talk or making pleasantries. Mark was the team leader on dig alpha, a dinosaur fanatic, Mark did it for the love of being close to the remains of these animals that “Once ruled the earth and still would if not for the meteor.” One of Mark’s favourite comments on introducing himself.

  Mark was passionate, almost to the point of annoying, but Bruce respected that, in his own field, Bruce was as passionate about what he did, even if he didn’t show it and didn’t want Simon to realise it.

  “Yes, Bruce,” replied Mark.

  “You got anything yet? Found anything of interest? Anything that, say, oh, shouldn’t be there?”

  “Nothing, Bruce, not a bloody thing.”

  Bruce turned and headed for the central dig, (dig bravo) in charge of this dig was Andrea Sayer. Bruce despised this woman. Their first meeting did not go well. Bruce had remarked to Simon later in his tent that “If this woman cuts across me once more while I’m making my point, I swear they won’t find her for another 65 million years either!”

  Andrea was a boorish woman. She saw no place for manners or etiquette in the field. Her approach was simple and to the point, and whilst she did get the job done, she did upset a few people along the way; not that that mattered to her, but then that is why Susan had put her in charge of site bravo. It was beyond doubt the most likely to yield any results and for this it needed Andrea to drive it.

  As Bruce closed on the site wiping yet more sweat from his forehead, he could see Andrea standing on the edge of the dig barking orders at her team. She was a stocky woman, 5ft 4“, maybe 5ft 5“, long black curly matted hair and a ‘portly’ stance as Bruce had remarked to Simon. Her jeans were just a bit too long and dragged in the dirt at the back of her boots as she walked and she always wore that same damn white T- shirt and red checked lumber jack shirt.