For Juliette, per your request.
*
Chapter One -- Mostly set-up.
The trip was meant to be a vacation for John. He had worked tirelessly on his latest articles for New Yorker magazine and felt he was due a break. He had thrown himself full time into his work since his wife died the year before of breast cancer at the tender age of thirty-nine. Their one son was a freshman at Hofstra University and very independent. He only called his old man when he needed money or advice. John had to track him down on his cell once a week just to say hello. For this reason, John didn't think Nick would miss him if he left for a week's R & R in the Caribbean.
Being a last minute deal, he arranged everything through an on-line web-site to get the best prices. He would fly from New York to Miami and then on to Barbados. His final stop was in Saint Lucia but he needed to get there via a short plane hop from Barbados. He was headed for a Sandals Resort on Saint Lucia.
The trip down was uneventful until they landed on Barbados. The medium sized Saab plane from Miami was full of vacationers like John. As they stepped off the plane, down the stairs to the tarmac, the heat of the winter tropics bathed everyone as they were ushered into the small airport to clear customs. It had been February in New York and the heat of the Tropics felt marvelous after the depressing New York winter. John finally got inside the poorly air conditioned building and into one of the two lines for customs. He was twenty people deep because his seat had been in the back of the plane. It took another twenty minutes before he was addressing the customs agent. He handed him his passport and plane ticket.
"You're a US citizen, Mister Morrison?" the agent asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Where do you live in New York?" the agent questioned.
"In Queens, sir," John replied, wondering why the guy asked looking right at his address.
"Mets or Yankees?" the agent queried with a smile.
"Mets," John responded, smiling back.
"Have a fun vacation, Mr. Morrison."
"Thanks."
Leaving the customs area with his bags, John noticed a young girl holding a sign for Saint Lucia. Several people were already standing with her laded with luggage of their own. John observed a handsome young couple that looked like newlyweds. From all the kissing going on between them, it was pretty obvious. There were two overweight Latino guys that looked like twins. They seemed to be with another guy of roughly the same height but thinner. He was doing most of the talking as the brothers listened. At nearly six-three, John was a good five to six inches taller than the three guys but thinner than the two Latino guys.
Standing nearby but on the other side of the girl with the sign were what looked like a mother and daughter team. They were gabbing away between them and somewhat detached from the immediate group. John eyed up the daughter first. She was a knock out. Blonde, blue eyed, and curves in all the right places. She was holding her winter jacket under her arm and had been prepared for the warmer climate with a tight fitting tank top underneath. Trying not to stare too badly, John let his eyes drift to the mother. She looked to be around forty like him and he could see where the daughter got her looks. She was beautiful, even at forty, and kept herself in excellent shape, something John appreciated. 'I wouldn't mind meeting her on this trip,' John thought as another couple joined the group.
They were maybe in their sixties and probably celebrating a thirtieth anniversary or something. They were not dressed for the warm weather and complaining of the heat in the building. Otherwise they looked like a cute older couple and made John miss Kathy all of a sudden. 'That could have been us in twenty years,' John thought.
Apparently they were all there now as the young girl with the sign welcomed them and told them to follow her to the plane. They exited the building not needing to go through security again and back out onto the tarmac from a different side of the building. Standing there was a World War II vintage American made version of a plane like the British de Havilland. It was an old prop plane converted into a passenger airline for this short flight to Saint Lucia. 'My god,' John thought, 'what an old bucket of bolts this is.' The same sentiments he could hear being voiced by the older couple near him.
They all dropped their luggage as instructed by an attendant, who was loading it into the belly of the old plane. The young girl led them to the back door and up a small staircase into the fuselage of the plane. The two Latinos and the other guy followed the honeymoon couple into the plane first. John let the older couple go first before he ducked low to step inside. Inside the plane, several of the seats had apparently been removed, no doubt due to wear and tear, and only one seat remained on each side. The leather of the once nice seats was cracked and faded with age.
The honeymooners and the older couple took the seats in the front. The Latinos and their friend took the middle seats, leaving only four in back for John and the mother and daughter team. John was surprised the plane had so few seats and wondered what they did if more people wanted to go to Saint Lucia on a given day. He sat in one of the back seats giving the mother and daughter their choice of seats across from each other or one in front of the other. The young girl had headphones on so it didn't look like they planned conversation. The mother sat in front of the daughter and the daughter sat across from John.
John heard the door close behind him and the cargo hold too, and then the left engine whined as it tried to kick over. The first attempt at starting it failed and John thought, 'Oh, boy, here we go.' But the next try worked and the ancient engine kicked over and eventually drummed to a smoother purr. The right was equally stubborn but soon joined the left at a smooth idle.
The pilots got the all clear and began to taxi down the runway. The plane had no air conditioning and it was getting stiflingly hot inside with the door closed. The pilot said something over the old speaker system that John could barely make out. It sounded like it would be cooler once they got airborne for the short twenty minute flight. John decided to just lay back and close his eyes for a short nap when he heard a voice close by.
"What did he say?" the pretty mother of the daughter across the aisle was asking nervously.
"It was hard to hear," John said, yelling over the loud engines, "but I think he said it would be twenty minutes to Saint Lucia and would cool off once we get airborne."
"Oh, okay," the mother responded with a weak smile.
She was beautiful and John welcomed the chance to talk with her, even if for such a brief time. Kathy and he had a loving relationship and he had missed her terribly this past year. They had an active sex life and he missed that too. He tried to think of other things as the pilot gunned the engines.
They had apparently reached the end of the runway and the pilot had been given the all clear for takeoff. He revved the old engines and the whole plane shook. The pretty lady looked over at John for assurance and he just nodded back everything was okay despite some reservations himself. Having been in the army he had been on a few older transport planes before but not for many years now.
The pilot released the brakes when the engines reached the proper RPMs for takeoff. The plane shook even more violently now and the pretty woman once again glanced in his direction. He smiled back which seemed to lessen her fear if only marginally. The old plane roared down the runway gathering speed. It seemed to take a long time but eventually the nose came up and then the back wheels left the ground too. They were airborne and quickly banked out over the water.
The exquisite blues and teals of the Caribbean waters were fantastic to watch as they banked to align with the direction to Saint Lucia. John couldn't wait to bask in the sun, drink his first rum punch, and catch up on his reading. Despite the vacation, he already had notes and reading to do for his next article for the New Yorker and another magazine. Happy thoughts of the fishing trip he planned to charter while in Saint Lucia made him smile also. He loved fishing and already had the names of several captains of charters on the island.
The pilot had been right and as they gained altitude the atmosphere inside the plane cooled to a manageable temperature. John could feel sweat running the line of his backbone and on the back of his long sleeve shirt from the warm leather seat. He tried to relax, if for no reason other than to aid the pretty lady across the way. She glanced in his direction a couple times. He hope it was because she found him handsome, like Kathy had always said, but the truth from her expression looked more like fear being abated.
They were about ten minutes out of Barbados and somewhat settled into the flight when John heard an explosion. He glanced out the window but couldn't see anything. The others in the plane were equally alarmed. The noise and shake had been loud enough to get the beautiful girl beside him to remove her headset. He heard her mother scream and quickly looked over. She was pointing out the window to her daughter and John could now see smoke billowing back from the right wing. The engine had obviously blown.
John tried to rationalize in his own mind if these old planes could fly on one engine like many of the modern jets, but wasn't sure. The smoke seemed to be get blacker and thicker, and he knew enough to know fire, if unextinquished on a plane could be deadly, especially with fuel in the wings. His nervousness was now boardering on that of the girl's mother across the way. The older lady in front was screaming to the pilot and the young wife was crying.
The pilot came over the loudspeaker but the damn thing was so ancient they couldn't hear much over the roar of the burning engine and the strain of the other. The plane was listing to the right and it was obvious the pilots were struggling to fight off the affects of the blown engine. They seemed to be able to get it to level out somewhat and the smoke was thinning due to the onboard automatic fire extinguishers, but then a huge shudder gripped the plane.
Everyone gasped or screamed again at that and John knew enough about planes to immediately fear something going wrong with the hydraulics. An old bucket like this one didn't have the built-in back-up systems upon back-up systems of the modern planes. If the hydraulics went on this plane, they were probably going down. John looked out his window for any sign of trouble but couldn't detect any. He yelled down the aisle as best he could over the din.
"Pull your seat belts tight," John screamed.
The women were all in states of shock and fear. Most were crying or praying or both. John thought about praying too when another strong shudder rocked the plane. He immediately glanced out the window and saw the left engine sputter to a halt. 'Oh, fuck,' he thought.
The plane began to nose down and slide to the right. The cloth curtain that separated the pilots from the passengers had somehow moved to the right enough to allow the passengers to see the pilots frantically working to control the plane. The pilot was pulling back hard on the wheel while the co-pilot frantically flipped switches, looking like he was trying to get anything to work. John could not see any lights on the dashboard but wasn't sure this old plane had anything more than gauges in the first place.
John looked out the window and the blue sea was coming up fast. The pilots seemed to be gaining somehow in leveling the angle of descent but they were obviously straining to hold the plane from going into a complete nosedive. John tried hard to recall his geography. He reasoned they were half way to Saint Lucia and tried to think of any island nearby that might have a runway. He could not. He thought Grenada was somewhere nearby but not closer than Saint Lucia.
