Australian Secrets. Fiona McCallum
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it had been stowed under the bus. It was the only one; everyone else seemed to just have cabin luggage.
‘Now if you’ll just follow me, folks, staying within the yellow lines for safety,’ called the gentle, cheery voice of the baby-faced pilot as he led the way. His name badge read Mark.
Nicola glanced around. The little group made its way around the bus to where a number of aircraft, large and small, were parked. Pairs of yellow lines showed the way to each craft. Nicola looked along their particular set to see where they were heading.
Shit! It was one of the really small ones. Her heart began racing. Her feet stopped short and her mouth dropped open. Someone’s carry-on bumped the back of her right knee and she would have been sent toppling if a man hadn’t grabbed her by the elbow.
The other five passengers pushed past, bumping her like a buoy amongst whitecaps.
‘You okay?’ mumbled the stranger by her side.
Nicola lifted a long, lightly tanned hand and pointed a clear varnished nail. The solitaire diamond on her ring finger sent rainbow arrows across the barren pavement. She tried to speak but it was as though her jaws had locked open.
‘It’s … it’s … a Piper Chieftain.’
‘Could be, I wouldn’t know,’ was the reply.
‘Come on, folks.’
About fifteen feet away, the young, crisp-shirted pilot was efficiently ushering the other passengers up the flimsy foldout steps and into the plane.
Nicola’s four-hundred-dollar heels felt glued to the sweltering tarmac.
‘I know she looks small but, trust me, she’s solid as a rock,’ the pilot urged.
Nicola was damn sure she didn’t like the idea of a small plane being ‘solid as a rock’. The last thing she wanted was to be crossing two shark-infested gulfs strapped to a rock.
The pilot checked his watch. ‘Look, we really have to get going. You’re either coming with me or you’re not.’
Nicola pictured Bill becoming purple with rage upon hearing he’d lost an airfare from his already stretched budget.
‘You’ll be fine. I understand small planes are a lot scarier than big ones, but trust me, I haven’t lost one yet.’
Yes, but I lost both my parents in one just like this – and on the same route.
She felt like sitting down and having a good cry. ‘For Christ’s sake; it was four years ago, get a grip,’ she heard her inner voice say.
On the inside of the tiny bubble windows, the other passengers were twisting in their seats and peering out. They all had places they were trying to get to. And the poor pilot had a schedule to keep.
The coroner’s report on flight 519 had told of the enormous pressure pilot Matt Berkowitz had been under. One of the criticisms of SAR Airlines was their tight turnaround times; schedules which were at times barely possible to make without factoring in delays due to booking problems – another thing pilots were expected to deal with.
While the coroner wasn’t prepared to say these tight turnaround times contributed to the accident, it was stated that the young pilot of flight 519 took off almost eight minutes late.
Having already been raked over the coals for being late the week before, and threatened with losing his job as a result, he was under considerable pressure to make up the time.
Nicola had no desire to put that same burden onto this young man, who was probably the same age.
‘Right,’ she said, gritting her teeth and jerking her large trolley case forward.
She was sweating; soon her suit would be ruined.
‘I’ll take that – it’s too big to go inside,’ the pilot said, nodding at Nicola’s suitcase. Nicola pushed down the handle, left it where it was, and scrambled up the narrow steps. She half-expected him to pat her behind; he seemed that sort of guy.
The interior of the plane was even smaller than it looked from the ground.
‘Sorry,’ she muttered to her fellow passengers, waiting patiently to get to wherever they were going.
Sympathetic smiles followed her to her allocated seat, not the arctic stares and exasperated sighs she expected.
She sat, snapped the heavy ends of her seatbelt together and pulled the strap tight. She then checked under the seat for the life jacket the coroner had insisted be added to these flights since the tragedy. Good. She sat back again.
Outside her tiny perspex window, the first engine spluttered and sneezed and finally the propeller flicked back and forth then became a blur of spinning metal. The second engine went through the same procedure. The whole cabin vibrated as the engines were revved. Talking would be difficult; Nicola could barely hear herself think.
Fighting to ease her gasping breaths, she looked across at her neighbour. The stranger beside her offered a sympathetic smile, then the sick bag, indicating her to put it to her mouth and breathe into it slowly and deeply.
The other passengers were busily inspecting safety cards and complimentary magazines, and seemed not to notice her.
She tried to listen to the safety instructions, but could barely make them out over the sound of the engines.
If she wasn’t so terrified she might have been amused at being told to keep her belt fastened when seated; there was no toilet to visit, and no aisle to stroll.
Sitting there in the same make and model of plane, waiting to fly the same route, and – shit! – at the exact same time, Nicola wondered how Paul and Ruth must have felt. But of course they were off on holidays; would have been chattering excitedly about what they expected to do and see. They wouldn’t have had a clue about their impending demise – thank God.
If only she’d insisted on leaving the office early to take them to the airport. But they hadn’t wanted to burden her; said a taxi was a lot less hassle. They had agreed to let her pick them up on the Sunday night, but of course it wasn’t to be.
Her last words to her parents had been: ‘Have fun, love you!’ She couldn’t imagine how people lived with the guilt of their last exchange with a loved one being a fight.
When Nicola heard about the anonymous letters the ATSB had received regarding SAR Airlines, she knew there was a major story to be told. While nothing would bring back Paul and Ruth and the other six who had perished, she owed it to them to at least learn the truth. If not, what was the point of having a journalist in the family?
She’d been prepared for Bill to refuse her request to lead the investigation, on the grounds that she was too close, too emotional, and not objective enough. Instead he agreed.
Had he seen something in her as a journalist or just understood that the best thing she could do for everyone was be at the heart of the story, no matter how painful? It no longer mattered.
It had taken all of her strength to sit and listen to the pilot’s transmissions, knowing her parents had done the same for a full five minutes before the eerily calm mayday call was issued. For weeks she’d had nightmares about them frantically searching under their seats for life jackets that weren’t there; being plunged into icy, shark-infested water at over two hundred kilometres an hour; and finally, the hopeless struggle to survive while calling to searchers overhead who couldn’t see or hear them.
Four years on, it still made Nicola shudder to think about.
As the plane jerked and rolled forward, she felt her neighbour’s hand give a squeeze, or maybe it was an attempt to regain some blood flow. She offered an embarrassed grimace and released the hand. To her further dismay, Nicola realised her good Samaritan was around her age and decidedly attractive.
Even more frigging embarrassing! Without making it too obvious, she snatched another look at the biggest, brownest eyes