43: The Mountain
Chinese Airspace, over Tibet-
Once past the Kunlun Mountains, Scott began his descent. Thunderbird 1 plunged screaming into cloud cover so dense, winds so fierce, that no local rescue effort was even contemplated. In late September the Himalayas' mood was savage and unpredictable, and even the largest helijets would have been tossed like straws.
At this point, the plane had been down for several long hours; any survivors would be battling shock and hypothermia as well as critically sparse air. If they'd reached their emergency survival gear, all might yet be well, but speed remained vital.
Following 211's emergency location transmitter, Scott reduced thrust, slowing his Bird's airspeed and losing altitude. His running lights were almost lost in heavy, swirling snow, and he could see nothing at all through the view screen. This was the sort of landing situation that Navy pilots… pardon, Naval aviators… claimed to love: total white-out. Just like they did, Scott relied on his instruments to paint a picture of the landscape's jagged profile.
Over the Tibetan Plateau, over wind-polished glacier and clawing rock he flew, Cindy's warnings still sharp in his mind. Less than nothing… a sneeze or displaced stone… might trigger a fatal avalanche. So, Scott flew with total concentration and minimal thrust, light as the shadow of a wheeling hawk.
"We'll be setting down a few hundred yards below the crash site," he told his younger brother. "Suit up, and get ready to climb. …And set out my gear, as well. We're going to need goggles, cold-weather suits, equipment packs and plenty of oxygen. Go!"
Gordon was unstrapped and out of his seat before Scott had finished talking. Bracing himself against the rocket plane's occasional wild pitch, he made his way to the gear locker and began suiting up.
A heat-generating body suit went on first, followed by a looser, Gore-Tex mid-garment, cramponed boots, gloves and his padded orange snowsuit. There were several tethering rings on this outermost garment, which was one-piece, hooded and all but rip-proof. (He could thus be secured to Thunderbird 1 by means of a spooled line, and retrieved in the event of a fall. Handy.) Powerful goggles went on next, endowed with the high-tech ability to switch vision settings. Using this eyewear, Gordon could see through walls and into vehicles, detect the heat signature of a crash survivor, or move about safely in total darkness, all at the turn of a wavelength dial. Better yet, no one would be able to make out the upper half of his face, effectively disguising the gold medalist's identity.
He fastened his supplemental oxygen mask as Thunderbird 1 began her final descent. The weather down there was almost catastrophically foul. She lurched and bounced, battered by updrafts and sudden, vicious wind shear. Ground effect and good piloting were all that saved the sleek rocket plane from augering into the mountainside like a silvery arrow; that, and her anti-gravity impellers.
In the windowless locker area, hearing gale-force winds and feeling Thunderbird 1's troubled, cautious descent, Gordon clung fast to a bulkhead brace. He was too heavily padded, at that point, to strap himself into a seat.
"Hang on!" Scott called back, "I've found a possible landing site… bringing her down."
A bit dry-mouthed, Gordon nodded and wove one arm through the nylon webbing that secured Scott's cold-weather gear. He didn't feel up to shouting.
In the next 45 seconds, Thunderbird 1 plummeted, fluttered upward again, yawed wildly to port, and then swung hard about, like a paper wad being toyed with by a giant cat. Another roller-coaster drop took place, worse than anything he'd endured in Pod 4. Then, after a bit of jigging, she settled herself; perching with a faint, reverberating crunch.
Thunderbird 1 came to rest on a fifty degree slope of wind-sculpted ice and boulder-strewn shale. She slid a bit, but Scott's strategically deployed impellers halted what might have been a fatal plunge. A slither, a sudden jerk, and then they were safely down.
"Definite survivors," Scott called over the comm unit in Gordon's hood. "I'm picking up what looks like a heating unit, and some flares. Trying radio…"
Something that had been knotted tight within both of them loosed, just a bit. There was someone alive out there; a chance to make amends.
"Bingo. Got a contact… Stewardess, not very coherent. Probable hypoxia and pulmonary edema, but still alive. And she says there are others."
Better by the moment.
"Right, then," Gordon responded, voice a bit muffled by the oxygen mask. "I'm off, Scott. I'll fix the rope from cargo hatch to crash site, and begin ferryin' victims."
"FAB," came his brother's confident reply. "Make it quick, but be careful. No telling what you'll find out there. I'll join you just as soon as I post-flight and suit up."
Gordon deplaned via the cargo hatch. An impatient button-press deployed the loading ramp, which sank to the ground with a quickly drowned hum. Awed, Gordon stared for a moment at blank, screaming whiteness. The sudden cold and pressure change made his ears pop, rather like a too-sudden dive. Wisely, he fastened one end of his tether to a recessed hull ring before stepping outside. Two, three paces down the ramp and he could no longer see Thunderbird 1. High time to plant a flare and switch on his goggles.
Bent almost double against a wind that threatened to hurl him off the mountain, Gordon inched down the ramp. At the bottom, he fumbled a magnesium flare out of his equipment pack, then positioned and lit the thing. It cast a sudden wide fish bowl of searing light, illuminating wind-blown snow and a bit of the ramp. Hopefully, any walking wounded would now be able to find the hatch… though he wasn't certain how far his light extended, or how able-bodied the victims were.
But, as fate would have it, they were granted three major strokes of good fortune:
First, a Tracy Aerospace jet fuel additive had worked spectacularly; Fireflash crashed, but did not burn.
Second, the capricious weather all at once decided to clear. What had been blizzard conditions for the last twelve days abruptly shifted to frigid, bleak, whisper-silent calm. Clouds broke and melted away to reveal the sun, sharp as a scalpel.
Third, the crash survivors had employed their emergency kits, hanging on till help arrived.
Eerie, the wind's sudden death...
Untrustworthy, too. With the flare still spattering and hissing behind him, Gordon shouldered into his heavy equipment pack and took a few hesitant steps. His boots bit into the ice and held fast. Something of a bother to walk this way, but he didn't slip.
Above him curved a bright blue vault, piercing and remote. Ahead lay the downed plane, dark against diamond-scattered snow. Marked by orange flares, it seemed broken-toy small, like something swatted aside and discarded.
Gordon toiled up the slope, trailing his tether and puffing icy mist. Further down the mountainside there were clouds, an ocean of white from which grey peaks projected like jagged islands. He'd never seen anything like it; not the Pyrenees, nor the Alps, not the Atlas Mountains, even.
He had to watch his footing more than his surroundings, able to look about only when he paused to get his bearings and correct a stubborn leftward drift… But, even so, the view beggared description. He was reminded of whipped cream with broken Oreo cookies jumbled in, except stupendously larger. Be rather nice to come back, the young aquanaut reflected, under better circumstances.
Returning to business, he testedhis steps, making sure ofeach secure foothold before venturing another. The tether unspoiled in short jerks as he panted slowly upward. Even with supplemental oxygen, climbing at altitude was no joke. Each crunching footfall, gasping breath and upward lurch was a major, head-splitting effort.
"Gordon!" Scott's voice came loud over the comm. "I'm out. I've contacted Lhasa. They're going to try dispatching a helijet to base camp. We get the victims that far, they'll handle the rest."
The swimmer turned laboriously to give his brother a tired wave. Scott (as heavily padded as Gordon, himself) stood by Thunderbird 1, waving back.
"Brilliant," Gordon replied. "Don't trust this fair-weather spell… so I'd best push on, Scott. Catch up as you can."
"Roger that. Right behind you. Great... damn place reminds me of the Pole."
Gordon then turned, pivoting by means of four separate, carefully-placed steps. Once more facing the shattered wreckage, he resumed forward progress. The wind began to pick up again, creating little dust-devils of swirling snow. It seeped through hood and boots and goggles, deadly cold and heavy with the stench of spilt jet fuel. Overhead, the clouds began gathering, as though Everest had reconsidered her earlier good will. Increasing his pace, Gordon pushed upward, setting small goals:
Reach the cracked boulder… the band of yellow rock… that bluish ice fall… the torn wing fragment…
And then he was there. The plane had broken on impact into two main parts. The nose, and about a third of the fuselage, lay a bit further upslope, partly buried in snow. The tail section and remaining fuselage were just ahead, looking like a slightly crumpled paper cup.
Trailing wires spun and swayed in the rising wind. Red seat cushions and carry-on baggage lay scattered about the slope. Someone's laptop had landed in a pitted ice hollow, its cover popped open. There was a wheeled aluminum drink cart, too, beside one of the burnt-down flares.
Gordon reached up to adjust the setting on his goggles. Switching to infrared, he had a second, closer look around. Now the flares glowed anew, though outshone by a box-like affair visible through the plane's aluminum-alloy skin; the emergency heater. Around it, barely moving, were huddled the surviving crew and passengers.
As the wind began to mumble and keen, Gordon shrugged his pack into a more comfortable position and hurried toward the broken tail section. At the dark, misshapen opening he paused.
"Goin' in, Scott," he announced.
Then, taking firm hold of a projecting seat frame, he stepped cautiously off the windy slope and into the plane.