Authors: Carol Shaben
After another half-hour spiralling the area, the ELT signal again reemerged. Codner realized with a jolt that
someone below had to
be alive and cycling the switch. The crew aboard the Hercules was accustomed to jumping into crash sites and finding only dead bodies. The prospect of survivors on the ground gave them a renewed sense of urgency, and Codner redoubled his efforts to pinpoint the crash location. Staring at the intersecting lines, he was 90 percent certain that the location of the plane was on a high hill west of Slave Lake. He shared his findings with the pilot and suggested he approach the crash site from the northeast, descending low over the wide lake where there were no terrain hazards. Though the cloud deck over Slave Lake was no more than a few hundred feet, dawn was beginning to silver the night and Codner knew that if they could get under the cloud, they might be able to get a visual on the crash site. The five-member crew aboard the Hercules understood the approach was risky. West of the lake, the terrain rose sharply and the pilot would have to ascend steeply to clear the 2,900-foot hill. It was a manoeuvre no by-the-book military pilot would ever attempt, but the crew of Squadron 435 decided to go for it.
Around the guttering fire, the survivors were increasingly desperate for heat. Somewhere far above, beyond the ashen cloud cover, they could hear once again the deep growl of an aircraft circling. Scott, who’d taken part in search-and-rescue operations, knew that when a small plane crashed in an area of dense wilderness like the one they were in, some trees bend and break; others spring back to cover the crash path. Even in daylight, searchers would often see only a faint line of disturbed flora from overhead. The snow, falling heavily, would have rapidly concealed any path that might lead the rescuers to them. He realized that rescuers would
eventually
find the crash site, but would they arrive in time?
Vivid in his mind were the images of corpses lying frozen and lifeless in the car wrecks he’d
responded to during his time as an RCMP officer in northern Alberta.
“Think they see us?” Paul asked.
All night, Paul had been scheming about finding something, anything, he could use to attract the attention of the giant overflying plane. He’d desperately wanted to locate Scott’s black briefcase, knowing his gun was inside. Paul figured if he got his hands on it he could
fire off a couple of shots and bring the planes circling back. Earlier, he’d even suggested making a roman candle out of one of the fuel-laden wings, but Erik,
afraid that the fire might spread and gut the fuselage, had stopped him. Now Paul had not only run out of ideas on how to attract attention, but had given up on the campfire as well. To his left, Erik lay silent and unmoving. Paul reached over and grabbed his leg, giving it a shake.
“If we can’t see them, they can’t see us,” Erik mumbled.
Paul felt like screaming at the top of his lungs:
We’re alive! We’re here!
But he knew it was no use straining.
After a moment Erik spoke again. “
My wallet. It’s still in the plane.”
The others couldn’t understand why Erik’s wallet should suddenly be so important. They didn’t know that, at that moment, he was contemplating his death. Without his ID, the pilot worried that authorities would not be able to identify his body.
Larry stood shivering, as cold as he could ever remember being. He was effectively blind, his ribs and tailbone fractured, his front teeth missing, and his right index finger broken. His hand was buried deep in the pocket of his suit pants. Gently, he closed it around his own wallet, a gold clip that held his ID cards and money. He pulled out the clip and removed the thick fold of bills. Slowly, he let them flutter down toward the smoldering coals. The money ignited into a small flame and Larry watched it flicker for a moment until it died, the corners of the bills curling black before floating away. He surveyed the inert forms of his fellow survivors lying at his feet.
“
If you had one wish you could have fulfilled right now,” Larry asked, “what would you wish for?”
“I’d like a nice toke of good pot,” Paul replied.
Larry laughed. There were countless times during his children’s teenaged years when he’d counselled them on the evils of marijuana. He wondered what his kids would say if they could hear the conversation.
“I’d love a ginger ale,” Erik said. That response surprised Larry until he recalled that the pilot had been complaining of thirst for much of the night, incessantly consuming handfuls of snow to slake it.
“Scott?” Larry asked.
Scott had been thinking of Mary, who’d been beckoning him to follow her into the warmth and comfort of a long tunnel.
“
I’d tell my wife I’m sorry,” Scott said, “and that we can have a child and make this thing work.”
Larry let Scott’s words hang in the air a moment before he said, “I’d like a nice warm bath.”
The closer they all inched toward death, the simpler their needs had become, Larry thought.
After a moment, Scott spoke again. “I don’t think I can hang on much longer.”
Paul had been thinking the same thing—that he should just let himself go to sleep, to die where he lay. But admitting the thought made him mad as hell.
“Fuck this!” he said, clambering to his feet. “You’re not going to die,” he told Scott. “I’m walking out of this and you three are coming with me because we weren’t meant to die this way.
When this is all over we’re going to get together and have a few drinks. C’mon,” he urged Larry, “there must be something else we can burn.”
The politician wearily followed Paul away from the firepit toward the wreckage. The sky had lightened a shade and for the first time,
Larry could distinguish the blurry lines of the scene around him. As they trudged past the fuselage Larry spotted two dark forms against the snow.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Paul told him that it was the airplane seats he’d tossed out of the plane the night before. Erik had assured the men that the seats were inflammable, but they decided to haul one back to the fire and try burning it. When they did, the seat ignited like a torch and huge tongues of white-hot flame immediately shot into the air. Larry yelped as one of them singed his head. “I’ve burned my hair off.”
Paul looked at him quizzically and smiled. As far as he could see, Larry didn’t have much hair to burn.
“I’m burning up,” Scott yelled out. “It’s too hot!”
Paul rushed to his side, drawing Larry’s coat up over Scott’s head to shield him from the heat. Still Scott protested and Paul began dragging him away from the fire.
“Stop!” he cried out in pain. “Leave me where I am.”
Paul let him go. “
Scott, do you know that you’re a sniveller? You’re either too hot or too cold.”
Scott ignored the jibe and lay back, waiting for the pain to subside. For fifteen minutes the seat burned brightly, infusing the survivors with welcome warmth, and when it began to ebb, Paul shuffled back down the path for the other seat, stopping first at the plane to flip the ELT switch.
Two thousand feet above the men, the Hercules picked up the signal. By the time Paul was wearily hauling the second airplane seat back to the fire, the Hercules was circling back over Lesser Slave Lake’s 1,000-square-kilometre expanse, and heading in the direction of Codner’s high hill. Strapped in at the rear, Corporal Claude Castonguay,
the loadmaster aboard the second Hercules, prepared to open its massive airdrop ramp. As the Herc closed the distance to the distress signal, the pilot slowed the plane’s airspeed to 170 knots. Snow and wind buffeted Castonguay as he leaned out, straining to see through the cloud. The pilot eased the yoke forward, steadily descending toward the lake. Finally, at the hair-raisingly low above-ground altitude of just under 200 feet, the Herc broke below the cloud deck, so close to the lake’s ebony surface that its crew could see the rugged ridges of wind-whipped water. The plane roared across it with Castonguay hanging suspended above the open ramp. Reaching the southwestern shore of the lake, the pilot began pulling up sharply to clear the approaching hill. The enormous aircraft strained to ascend, vibrating with exertion. Cloud, a thick grey robe above them, began to engulf the Hercules as it crested the hill. The nose of the plane had already disappeared into the murk and the rest was quickly being swallowed when Castonguay yelled out, “
Campfire on the ground!”
A cheer erupted among the crew. It was echoed on the ground—at the forward command base in Slave Lake and the Rescue Coordination Centre in Edmonton, in the tiny trailer at the High Prairie airport where Dave Heggie sat monitoring the plane’s VHF transmission, and across several land and air radio receivers where others had been anxiously listening.
Within the close confines of Luella’s trailer, Heggie sagged with relief. When the Hercules had zeroed in on a high hill west of Lesser Slave Lake, he had feared the worst. If Wapiti’s plane had slammed into it nose-first, chances of anyone surviving would have been slim. Heggie was simultaneously astonished and overjoyed to hear news of the campfire. Over the radio, he could hear the crew aboard the Hercules requesting permission for jumpers to paradrop into the site.
The forward base commander refused. Major Dewar knew the visibility was too poor and the terrain too dangerous for jumpers to safely get in.
Heggie picked up the phone to call Hopkins. For the past eight hours, he had delivered nothing but bad news about the military’s air search-and-rescue efforts. Now, as he told Hoppy about the campfire, Heggie’s voice was filled with optimism.
Hoppy, too, had reason to be optimistic. According to his men on the ground, the search party was within several kilometres of the crash site. The survivors just had to hang on an hour or two more until they could get there.
I
n the early dawn gloom of Saturday, October 20, 1984, Paul Archambault stood inside the destroyed Piper Navajo airplane. Though he’d been longing for the light of day, he now wished that it was still dark.
In daylight, he saw everything in gruesome detail.
Tentatively, he touched the arm of one of the dead passengers. It was cold and clammy and felt like snakeskin. The man’s eyes were half-open, his face swollen.
An orb of ice the size of a racket ball hung from his mouth.
Paul reached into his pocket and pulled out Erik’s camera. He couldn’t say why, but somewhere deep in his subconscious, he knew he needed to record this event. He took a couple of pictures of the deceased and was backing out of the plane when something vaguely familiar caught his eye: his duffle bag. He opened it and riffled through his meagre belongings, pulling out the only things he cared about: a couple of photographs of his family and his wallet, which held his life savings: $66.35. He stuffed the wallet and photos into his pockets, threw the duffle bag over his shoulder, and was about to return to the fire when he saw a small, dark object half-hidden under the snow near
the rear of the fuselage. Moving closer, he recognized it as Scott’s briefcase. Paul yanked the briefcase free and tried to open it, but it was locked. He shook it and could hear the clunk of the heavy gun inside. Clutching the briefcase, Paul made his way back to the firepit, where he distributed articles of his clothing to Erik and Larry.
Scott was only dimly aware of the fact that Paul had been gone for a long time when someone shook him. He opened his eyes to see Paul’s face leaning close.
“I found your briefcase.”
Scott studied his prisoner uncertainly, and then watched as Paul placed the briefcase at his side. Scott focused briefly on Paul’s face, and then his gaze moved past it to the trees beyond. Everything appeared stark in the gentle light. The dense fog that had once obscured even the tops of the bare alder trees had brightened. Paul’s voice came to him as if from far away describing the gruesome scene inside the wreckage. Scott couldn’t respond, and at that point he didn’t care about the dead. He was having enough trouble keeping himself alive.
Somewhere to his right, out of his line of sight, was Erik. Scott had no idea whether he was alive or dead. Scott slid his gaze to his left and saw Larry on the ground curled into a fetal position, his clothing dusted white with snow and his eyes closed.
“Larry!” Scott’s voice came out in a cracked whisper. “
Larry, wake up!”
Larry groaned and moved a bit. His lids fluttered open and he stared blankly ahead. He’d been thinking of home, his wife, and his children. Unlike his fellow survivors, Larry knew his home was nearby, mere miles away. The frustration of being so close tore at him. As Scott regarded him, he saw the expression on Larry’s face change.
“I hear noise in the bush!”
Larry struggled painfully to his feet, his head cocked to one side.
Scott listened too, but could hear nothing save the sound of a plane’s engine far above.
“
You must be stoned or something,” Paul said.
“I’m going to walk out and get help,” Larry told the others. He was sure he’d heard the sounds of snowmobiles in the distance.
“
We’re going to be found here, so we stay together,” Paul said.
Larry was adamant. He was tottering away from the firepit when Paul pulled him back, reminding the older man he couldn’t see a foot in front of him and even if he could, if he left the crash site and got lost in the bush, no one would ever find him. Erik and Scott added their voices of opposition and Larry eventually relented.
Scott worried that Larry, like him, was so hypothermic that he was losing his ability to think clearly.
“We really need some help, Old Man,” Scott whispered aloud. “
We’re not going to last much longer.”
At 8:30 that morning, Canadian Forces Base Edmonton, expecting a break in the weather, dispatched a Twin Otter to try and get under the clouds. Just a minute later, its pilot got word that the Hercules had spotted a campfire on the ground. Hopes were now high that the small plane would be able to get a visual on the crash site. Major Dewar recalled the Chinook helicopter crew and SAR Techs, all of whom had gone to a local hotel to get some sleep.
Just after 9:00 a.m., as Scott was gazing skyward he saw a small patch of blue sky open in the dense fog above him. As he stared at it, a yellow plane suddenly soared across the opening like a bright, beautiful bird. He said a silent thank you to the Old Man for answering his prayers.