Into the Abyss (10 page)

Dale’s airline had also garnered robust support from the influential community and political leaders in northern Alberta who frequently had to travel to Edmonton—the seat of the provincial government—for business. Among his staunchest supporters were two prominent provincial politicians: Grant Notley and Larry Shaben. Notley, the fiery leader of the Alberta New Democratic Party, chaired a meeting on March 2, 1982, to discuss Wapiti’s proposal to begin flights to the smaller communities of Fairview, High Prairie and Slave Lake. By the end of that meeting the eighteen business and government leaders who attended unanimously agreed:

So enthusiastic were Wapiti’s supporters about not having to rely solely on Highway 2—a long and often treacherous two-lane artery connecting Edmonton with communities to the north—that they sent unsolicited letters to Canada’s Air Transport Commission supporting Wapiti’s proposal. One such letter came from Larry Shaben, Alberta’s Minister of Telephones and Utilities, who lived in High Prairie and travelled to the capital every week.

Shaben wrote: “I feel that the schedule fee structure and service points as outlined by Wapiti Aviation Ltd. are very appropriate to the needs of Northern Albertans … 
I am in complete support of the entire concept.”

Two months later, in May 1982, Wapiti received the go-ahead for scheduled air service between Grande Prairie and Edmonton’s municipal airport, and a year after that, to make stops in Fairview, Peace River, High Prairie and Slave Lake. Then, in August 1983, Transport Canada granted Wapiti approval to introduce daily passenger service between Edmonton and the booming oil town of Fort McMurray. When the service started up in September 1983, Wapiti featured one-way midday flights for $57—significantly less than the $70 being charged by its competitors, Pacific Western Airlines and Time Air. Wapiti Aviation had become a competitive force in Alberta’s airline industry.

According to Dale, that’s when the trouble started. Recently Transport Canada had been singling out Wapiti for closer scrutiny, accusing the carrier of safety violations such as pushing the weather. How else was Dale supposed to get his planes into these rinky-dink airports when they didn’t have proper navigation aids? More than a year ago he had applied to get upgraded facilities and a controlled approach for the High Prairie airport, but Transport Canada was still dragging its heels. What was he supposed to do? If he encouraged his pilots to make the stop, Dale would get his knuckles rapped for pushing the weather. If he cancelled flights, he risked losing business.

A few months ago, the situation had gone from bad to worse. Transport Canada had begun sending inspectors to secretly monitor several Wapiti flights as they came into Edmonton. Transport Canada was on the lookout for Wapiti pushing the weather and using one pilot instead of two. On top of that,
the RCMP had written Dale a letter alleging violations of regulations according to “a licenced air carrier” or “a reliable confidential source.” Dale believed his
competitors were behind these complaints and recently he had called Transport Canada and told them, “
This nonsense has got to stop.”

Instead, the situation had intensified. Three weeks earlier Transport Canada had grounded more than half of the company’s fleet, charging that Wapiti hadn’t done its 500- and 1000-hour service inspections. If you asked Dale, all of his aircraft were serviceable. Why should he take them out of commission if he didn’t have to? The move would cost him money and business and, as far as he was concerned, ultimately play into what his competitors and their friends at Transport Canada wanted: his company’s demise.

Dale shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk. He knew influential politicians who’d advocated for Wapiti in the past and he was prepared to call on them if he had to. Dale looked through that night’s passenger log and nodded. Larry Shaben, a prominent Alberta Cabinet minister and one of his staunchest supporters, was a passenger on the flight from Edmonton to High Prairie.

S
econds after Larry cupped his face to the cabin window to try and see the lights of High Prairie, the plane’s wings hit the trees.
There was a long, ear-splitting
grrrrrrrr
, a monstrous rending of metal. Then, nothing.

When Larry regained consciousness, the first thing he heard was the sound of a man yelling, swearing a blue streak of obscenities at the pilot. A searing sensation tore at his shins and a spike of pain pierced his tailbone. He was disoriented and upside down in total blackness.

Larry’s mother had died at forty-nine, the same age he was now, and his father, four years after her. Larry had been in his twenties at the time and the loss of his parents had been devastating. He had since harboured the unspoken fear that he, too, would die young. It seemed this was clearly the moment.

Frantically, he tried to move. Pain gripped his ribcage and he felt a band of material cutting into his thighs. He dimly realized that he was still strapped into his seat, suspended upside down. He fumbled for the buckle with his right hand, and pain lanced through
his index finger. He switched hands, and after a moment of grappling, released the clip and tumbled downward. He landed on all fours. His shins burned as if on fire, and he could feel the warm ooze of blood soaking his dress pants. His mouth tasted metallic and when he ran his tongue over his front teeth, he felt a large gap where two were missing. Pain rippled along the left side of his face. Tentatively, he felt his swollen cheek and then, with a sickening sense of loss, his eyes. His glasses were gone. Without them, he was almost blind.

Like a child, he began crawling along the cabin’s inverted ceiling, groping desperately for his glasses. Physical injury he could endure, but the thought of being sightless was unbearable. He clawed his way over stinging snow and sharp debris, advancing slowly through the blurry space in front of him. His hands pressed into the nap of something soft and he closed his fingers around it, trying to identify the familiar texture—his ultra-suede coat. He grabbed it and struggled awkwardly to his feet. Larry swept a hand over his left shoulder and felt the smooth fine fabric of his cotton dress shirt where the top of his suit jacket had been ripped away. Shaking, he wrestled unsteadily in the close confines of the cabin to pull on his overcoat. Then, holding out his arms, he advanced toward the flush of cool air in front of him. His eyes darted from side to side through the blackness as if, by some miracle, the ability to see without the thick glasses he had worn since he was a child would return. Instead he detected only dark, shapeless masses; whether seats, wreckage or bodies, he wasn’t sure. The moans of the injured surrounded him as he scuffled forward until his outstretched hands connected with the cabin wall. He skimmed them along it until they passed through an opening—a way out. Larry nearly fell through it, and lurching forward, his legs sank like stakes into the deep snow. It filled his rubber overshoes and he felt the icy bite of it against his ankles.
Standing blindly in the inky blackness Larry felt—for the first time in his adult life—utterly helpless.

When Erik saw the trees in front of his cockpit window, he screamed and threw his arms in front of his face. Without the restraining hold of his shoulder strap, his hands were the first part of his body to slam into the instrument panel, followed by his face. His chest was next; it struck the control column hard and a scorching heat ripped through his insides. He felt something smash into the back of his skull.

When he tried to draw a breath, pain knifed through the right side of his chest. Panic swept over him. He lay unmoving, unable to comprehend what had happened. Numbly, he grasped that he was still strapped in his seat and fumbled for his lap belt. When it finally opened, he fell head first onto the ceiling of the cockpit. His shoulder hit hard and his chest exploded in pain. He lay curled in a fetal position, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps. Time stopped. A warm pillow of blood began to pool beneath his head and he tasted the bitter, metallic tang of it in his mouth. One of his eyes was throbbing and filled with blood. But his ears told him everything. The soul-ripping cries of his passengers engulfed him—a suffocating cacophony reverberating in the close confines of the cabin.

Erik coughed and a vise closed around his chest. He could smell the pungent stench of airplane fuel. He could feel it on his clothes. Finally, his brain began to function.

I’ve got to shut the power down. If there’s a spark there will be a fire and the plane will explode
.

He raised his head and scanned for the instrument panel. There were no lights above or around him. No instruments. Nothing. The entire nose had been ripped from the plane.

Erik laid his head back down once more and the world around him spun crazily. A choking rush of emotion washed over him. He tried to slow his breathing. A fresh wave of pain skewered the right side of his chest and he felt light-headed. Finally, he willed his shock-ridden senses to settle. Somewhere beyond the hot haze of panic, he felt fresh, cool air. He dragged himself painfully to his feet, peering into the darkness. His fingers, smashed and swelling like sausages, groped tentatively in front of him and one shot through a hole—the broken side window of the cockpit. Erik grabbed the window frame and, with a groan, wriggled through it, collapsing into the deep snow. He lay back, trying to make sense of what had happened.

His tentatively touched the area around his right eye. It was grossly swollen. He tried to ball his hands into fists, but couldn’t. They, too, seemed foreign and not his own.

The moans of the passengers trapped inside the plane were excruciating to endure and from somewhere beyond him in the darkness he could hear a passenger yelling: “What a fucking stupid idiot!”

Erik felt tears welling. The passenger was talking about him.

Oh God! What have I done?
He wanted to curl into a ball and disappear, but a movement above him drew his attention. Though Erik’s right eye was practically swollen shut, through his left he saw an older, well-dressed man stagger from the wreckage. Erik struggled slowly to his feet and the two men stood side by side, stupefied and rooted in place. Snow fell heavy and wet on the shocked men, and the groans of passengers and the nauseating odour of airplane fuel filled the air.

Standing on the margin of a small clearing, Paul Archambault stepped toward the snarl of dense brush. He’d smoked his last rolled cigarette down to a roach and when the heat began to burn his fingers, tossed it into the snow. He swiped at the cut on his forehead, still oozing
blood, and tried to clear the fierce humming pressure in his ears. Paul opened his jaw wide and the final wisps of smoke drifted out in a thin, gossamer cloud. His ears cleared. Pitiful, haunting cries of pain floated toward him across the clearing.

Jesus Christ
, Paul thought. All he’d wanted to do was to get away from the fuel-drenched wreckage. As he absently rubbed the tender skin of his wrist where the handcuff had chafed it, a horrifying realization struck him. There were a lot of people who weren’t coming out of that plane alive and if the cop hadn’t taken the handcuffs off before the flight, he could have been one of them.

Paul turned and began wading back along his trail toward the wreckage. Struggling through thigh-high snow, he closed the distance between himself and two figures standing outside the dark hulk of smashed aircraft.

S
cott Deschamps couldn’t move. His head, arms and torso felt like they were encased in cement. He could feel blood running into his eyes, flowing down from a gash in his lip.

I’m upside down
.

He tried to wipe the blood from his eyes, but his arms wouldn’t respond. Cold seared his bare hands and his fingers curled into what he quickly realized was packed snow. He tried to draw a breath and pain mushroomed through his chest.

I need to stand
.

It dimly occurred to him that he had to get his head free or he would suffocate. He tried to reach for some kind of support, but his left shoulder felt dislocated from his body, unhinged and free-floating.

Shaking violently, Scott slowly became conscious of a loud rhythmic roar and realized it was the sound of his own breathing. He stared straight ahead, trying to clear the throbbing that reverberated in his ears, grasping to understand why he couldn’t move. Couldn’t draw air into his lungs.
The world around him was a mixture of muted
white and dim shadow. The stench of aircraft fuel and freshly plowed earth assaulted his nostrils.