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Jack and I looked at each other. He was red in the face. "Excuse me for swearing," he said, "but where do we go? What's the backup plan?"
"Shit is right!" I said. "There is no backup plan, not in civil aviation where everything is supposed to work."
"OK, what now, Paul? Really, where do we go?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"We can go to the Air Force base at Comox. It's only a hundred miles south. They can truck the people in," said Jack.
"Any place is fine," I said.
I almost cried. This wasn't supposed to happen. We couldn't even reach Fairbanks anymore. We were totally on our own now.
"Let's get out of this soup first and tell Alaska about the crash!" said Orlando. "They must halt everything until the runway is cleared."
At 28,000 feet we came into the sunshine again. Jack talked to the tower at Fairbanks and informed them about the crash and about our plan to try Comox Base, then we entered the smoky world once again.
"The Base is right on Georgia Strait," Jack explained.
Thus, a second round of searching began, with trial approaches and close encounters. It took seven passes this time, to locate the strip of concrete and the few buildings that constituted the base. An eighth pass was needed for close inspection; and a ninth pass to verify what we saw.
Initially, I felt a great relief. The runway was clear. But there were no people. The entire complex was deserted! There should have been frantic activity, vehicles, airplanes, and helicopters moving about. Instead, this place was a ghost 'city!'
"What do you make of it?" I asked Jack.
He shrugged his shoulder.
"Why don't you look at the radiation counter," yelled Orlando over the intercom. "That's probably why there is no one there!"
Without adding another word, Jack pulled us into a steep climb.
"Then the people at the highway are in great danger," he noted as we saw the sun again. "We must try the highway landing strip one more time, in case they've got the runway cleared."
I agreed. Thus, a third round of searching began.
It should have been easier, this time, to find the highway. But it wasn't. It seemed more difficult. We were getting tired. Our reactions were slower. When we finally found the highway, it became clear that nothing had changed. The plane was burning now, adding another layer of black smoke to the already dense muck.
It was hard giving up. We had come so far, risked so much. We had come so close, close enough to see the people whose lives depended on us, but we couldn't help. We couldn't even dump the food we brought. The cabin doors open to the outside against the airflow. And even if we could dump our cargo, the food would be destroyed on impact.
Jack pulled us up. It was a painful turning back. We both had tears in our eyes. We had achieved nothing. I noticed tears in Jennie's eyes too, as we reached the sunshine again and everyone was back on the flightdeck.
"We'll try again tomorrow," I told him. "Let's go back."
Jack nodded. He didn't answer. He didn't even look up. Suddenly he pointed feverishly at the fuel indicator, shaking his head as though he couldn't speak. "We won't make it back to Alaska!" he yelled. "We don't have enough fuel! Damn!"
I glanced at the indicator. He was right. We looked at each other in disbelief. "How could this happen?" I asked Orlando.
"It happened, because we didn't have the engineering station manned," said Orlando calmly. "I should have been there, but I was needed at the lookout below. If the flight control system had been active, it would have given us a warning, too. Obviously we used too much fuel during our low-level approaches. Who thinks about fuel in times of such a severe crisis when the life of so many people is at stake? These details fall be the wayside. Don't blame yourself. We've all pushed ourselves to the limits. That has its consequences."
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