She paused only a moment in shock before heading back. I struggled with the controls, watching the ocean grow closer and closer still. I tried to slow us down, make it a gentle decline, but the plane kept dipping and all I could do was try to guide the descent.
“Oh God, Colt!” she screamed.
“I’ve got this, Caroline!” I yelled, hoping like hell I actually did. “I’m going to land us on the water. Don’t panic. And don’t inflate your life jacket until we’re out of the plane.” She might not fit through whatever small escape route we had if she did. But she didn’t need to worry about that. Yet.
The water rushing up to meet us, I desperately tried once again to slow our descent, maneuvering into a high wing position. With the cockpit low, I’d hit first and Caroline would remain above water. I could swim out if I had to.
“We’re going down!” I yelled into the headset, giving the air traffic controllers our exact location.
I could see a small patch of land ahead. It didn’t look inhabited, just one of the hundreds of small islands that made up the archipelago of Fiji. If I could get us close enough, if I could manage a gentle water landing, and if the plane had a life raft, we might be able to make it to that island. There were way too many ifs in that sentence for my comfort. But even in the comparatively warm South Pacific, we wouldn’t last long in open water. Hypothermia set in quick. We needed to make it to land.
I set the flaps down below 20 degrees, leveled out the wings, and prepared for landing.
“Head down! Hold on!” I yelled back to Caroline. Barely above stall speed, I slowed us down as much as I could, but it still wasn’t as slow as I wanted.
“Do you have our location?” I yelled into the headset for confirmation. The last thing I heard before impact was their answer. Yes, they had us on their radar.
First the cockpit smashed into the water. I stayed buckled but jolted violently up then down. The tail hit next. From up above, the water had looked glassy smooth and calm. Down on the surface, the swells tossed us, big and rough.
“Caroline!” I roared, unbuckling and turning to find her.
“I’m OK!” she yelled, her eyes wide, shaken and pale. A trickle of blood ran along her jaw. Contents from an overhead compartment were strewn all around us. The plane lay at a tilt and water seeped in from a broken window pane.
“We have five minutes,” I yelled, the water already lapping, sucking at us. I didn’t know how much damage the landing had caused, but I could tell we weren’t going to stay afloat for long.
“What do we do?” she screamed, grabbing onto my arm, disoriented and terrified.
“Stay calm.” I spoke loud and level. She had every reason to panic, but needed very much not to. Danger closed in all around us, the ocean waters open, wide and unforgiving. The only way we’d make it through was if we stayed focused and functioned as a team. “We’ve made a water landing. I need you to open that container and get out the life raft.”
I pointed down to a black plastic bin behind the cockpit. She looked at me for another couple seconds, stunned, but then moved toward it. Quickly, I grabbed the transponder and set it to the emergency code. It took a minute we really didn’t have, but getting a swift rescue was our best chance at survival now.
Ducking back into the cockpit, already filling with water, I grabbed the pilot’s arm. “Hey!” I yelled, trying to revive him with a shake. “Can you hear me?” He made no response. He’d turned a grayish blue color, all signs of life gone.
“Fuck!” I yelled, keeping my panic at bay but facing a moment of indecision. The plane lurched, the metal groaning as a wing dipped lower. We were getting sucked down, inevitably sinking into the watery depths. We had to act fast. I dove across his unconscious body to try to unbuckle him, struggling with the clasp.
“Is he conscious?” Caroline called from behind me.
“No!” I yelled. Unbuckled, he rolled against the side of the plane. Even on land, I wasn’t sure he could be revived. And we were about to try to escape a sinking plane into a life raft on the open ocean. Water already rushed in up to our shins.
I had a responsibility to Caroline. I needed to get her out safely and keep her alive. I wasn’t sure I could rescue them both.
Hating the call I knew I had to make, I turned swiftly away and took the compact, folded life raft from Caroline’s arms. God help us if it didn’t inflate.
Grabbing Caroline’s arm, I looked into her eyes. “You stay with me, Caroline. Do you understand? Stay with me.”
“Wait, what are you doing?” Panic and fear laced her words, and her fingers dug into my arm. “We can’t leave him!”
“He’s dead, Caroline. We have to make sure we don’t end up the same way.”
She cried out in distress as I unlatched the door, now at an angle, and kicked it open forcefully with my foot. Tilted up, the exit was above water but waves crashed against and now inside the plane. I made sure the cord attached to the life raft held tight, then fastened the other end around a metal latch inside the plane. With a hard toss I launched it out, praying it would deploy. It filled quickly with air as it landed on the waves. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“We’re going to get into this raft and reach land,” I yelled to Caroline over the chaos, looking into her panicked face. “We’re going to be fine.”
“We’re going to be fine,” she repeated, her eyes wild with terror.
Standing at the entrance, bracing ourselves, I held her hand tight. We’d have to jump into it. The raft was only a foot or two away, but the waves and wind whipped at us. The plane gave another lurch.
“Now!” I yelled, “Jump!” We threw ourselves out of the plane, landing with a roll into the raft. I grabbed her to me, pulling her into the middle of the black raft, away from the threatening waves. She was not getting away from me. I would keep her safe.
The plane gave another great, metallic groan and a lurch, the tail seeming to break completely off. Water poured into the body.
“Colt!” she screamed. I sat up and moved as quickly as I could over to the cord fastening us to the plane, working to untie it before we were sucked under. I got it unfastened, setting us free. Into the open water.
“Inflate your jacket,” I called to her, pulling on mine and looking around, trying to get our bearings. There, in the distance. Land, I could see a patch of it, with trees. We needed to get there. Fast.
“Oh, God! The pilot!” Caroline screamed as the cockpit filled with water. She covered her face.
“We have to focus, Caroline!” I didn’t want to frighten her any more than she already was, but our fate might easily become the same. Turning my attention to the raft, I did a quick search. Emergency pack secure and water tight, fastened to one end. Who knew what it contained, but it would be something. Two paddles attached to the sides in the interior. I pulled one out, lengthening the aluminum tube. Still short and not exactly powerful, but better than our hands.
“Take a paddle!” I yelled, handing her one. “We need to get there.” I pointed to the island. She followed my gaze. Fixed on our destination, she got a determined look on her face. That’s my girl.
I settled in the stern of the boat, putting all of my strength into my strokes, my focus never wavering from the patch of land
before us. That white stretch of sand could be the difference between us living or dying. We would live.
Caroline worked as hard as me, focused, driven, paddling with all her might. The water was choppy, swells tossing our raft, but we were lucky. We had daylight. And as rough as it was, the waves weren’t anything like they would be in a storm.
My arms burned, hands blistered on the paddle but I kept at it, pushing harder and then harder still until I could see us getting closer. But I could also see us drifting further to the left. And the island wasn’t that long.
“Pull right!” I yelled and Caroline began devoting all her effort to keeping us straight, forcing us to not pass by our best, maybe only chance at survival.
“Almost there!” I called out, before we were almost there. But I knew she needed to hear it. We both did. The pain, exertion and force we needed to push us forward seemed pathetic against the mighty ocean. I could feel our insignificance, lapping all around us. How quick and easy it would be to miss this one chance if we let up.
But we didn’t let up. Caroline pulled with every ounce of force she had and I pushed and propelled us forward and somehow, someway we made it into the calmer waters around the shoreline. Finally close enough, I jumped out and my feet hit the sandy bottom. Land. I strained and pulled the raft the rest of the way in, fighting the current with all my strength, saying a prayer of gratitude we’d hit a sandy inlet. A rocky one could have torn us and our life raft to pieces.
Gasping, spluttering water, I fell to the shore and it was Caroline who leapt out and pulled our raft up to safer, high land. Then she fell by my side, arms around me, panting and crying.
“We’re OK,” I used the last of my strength to drape an arm across her back. “We’re OK.” I managed again before I faded to black.
§
“Come on, Colt!” I heard Caroline’s voice pleading with me, but it sounded as if she were talking from very far away, through a thick layer of cotton. “Colt!” She sounded so sad and I didn’t want her to feel that way, not ever, but somehow my limbs felt impossibly heavy and I could barely move my lips.