Altitude (Power Reads Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  ALTITUDE

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  XIX

  XX

  XXI

  XXII

  XXIII

  XXIV

  XXV

  XXVI

  XXVII

  XXVIII

  XXIX

  XXX

  XXXI

  XXXII

  XXXIII

  XXXIV

  XXXV

  XXXVI

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Unnamed

  ALTITUDE

  © 2017 Dean Crawford

  Published: 15th July 2017

  ASIN:

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  I

  Denmark Strait,

  15 miles west of Hafnir, Iceland

  ‘Strap down all the cages and close all the hatches!’

  The captain’s voice thundered across the plunging deck of the trawler Emiliana as she heeled over, driving her bow deep into an eight–foot swell of slate grey water that smashed across her deck in a cloud of white foam. Fengur Johannsen crouched down as the wall of fierce water crashed across the ship, then ducked his head beneath his hood and hung on for his life to a bulwark encrusted with ice as the wave broke across the leeward hull and the trawler rose up again.

  Heavily bruised grey clouds scudded across the wild ocean expanses as Fengur struggled to his feet, water streaming off his wet weather gear, and fought his way aft toward the hatches. The Emiliana was a medium size trawler, but in these wild waters she was like a leaf in a gale as she struggled against the blow to make it back to her home port of Reykjavik. Fengur’s scratched and battered watch told him it was just past noon, but the ocean around him was so dark and the sky so sullen that he could easily have believed that the sun was about to set somewhere behind a horizon that he could no longer see for the endless, towering waves and veils of sleet.

  ‘Lash those cages down and get off the damned deck!’

  The captain’s voice echoed above the howling gale assaulting the ship, broadcast through speakers that amplified his commands and allowed the four men working the vessel to hear him above the storm. There was no way that they could find their catch in these swells, let alone haul the heavy nets in and safely store their catch in the hold. The storm had swept in incredibly fast and caught them unawares, and right now their only thought was to turn for home before the unthinkable happened, and the Emiliana became just one more of the countless rusting hulks at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

  Fengur fought his way to the stern and began unlatching the hatches and closing them one at a time as wave after wave smashed into the ship and broke in explosions of foaming water down the hull. The trawler’s powerful engines and robust design could withstand the immense power of the driving ocean waves, but her pumps would be overwhelmed and her hold flooded if the hatches were not secured.

  Fengur dropped a heavy hatch down and levered the ice encrusted locks into place. The sleet and wind bit into his skin despite the protection he wore, the frigid cold numbing his fingers in his gloves so that he could barely feel them. He pulled another of the hatches down and then whirled aside as a huge wave thundered down the deck toward him. It blasted either side of the trawler’s bridge and crashed down across the stern like giant white hands reaching out to drag him overboard to his death. Fengur crouched down and ducked his head again as he held on to the hatch with both hands.

  The wave smashed across the stern and Fengur felt his grip weaken as he was submerged beneath the deluge, clutching the edge of the hatch as his safety line was pulled taut and his legs slid this way and that on the icy deck at the mercy of the turbulent flow of water. The wave roared past him, the icy water snatching his breath from his lungs as his gloved hands were yanked from the hatch and he felt himself dragged across the deck. His safety line, attached to the bulwarks, swung him around and he slammed into the trawler’s unforgiving steel hull and saw stars and whorls of light flash before his eyes.

  Fenger struggled to hold his breath as the water crashed around him, and then he felt something grip his flailing hands and the water sluiced aside as one of his fellow shipmates hauled him to his feet. Fengur staggered upright to see the man, a bearded face peering out at him from a bright yellow hood just like his own. Olaf, an older hand and experienced seaman, grinned at Fengur as though he was enjoying himself. Together, he and Olaf fought their way back to the hatches. White water was pouring in sheets into the ship as they began slamming them shut and locking them down. Olaf reached the last of the hatches and managed to close it as Fengur slammed the cold metal latches into place, and with a final glance at each other and around the deck as it heaved and rolled in the swells, they finally turned toward the bridge and the promise of shelter and warmth.

  Fengur was half way there, the wind tearing at him and the rain lashing down across the icy deck, when suddenly the bucking, rolling deck levelled out and the towering seas subsided as though some merciful god had commanded the waves to cease their motion. Fengur froze in place and peered out across the now silent sea around them.

  The wind was still howling across the ocean and the waves were still turbulent a mile away, and he could see that the rain was still falling almost horizontally, but all around the trawler the sea was almost glassy smooth. He could see webs of foam lacing a surface which was so dark as to be almost black, a perfect disc of calm amid the worsening storms.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he asked as he turned to Olaf.

  Olaf shook his head in confusion. Fengur turned to look up at the bridge and could see the captain staring out of the windows with his jaw agape.

  For a moment, it seemed as though a tiny patch of the world had stopped moving just for them, and then Fengur noticed that the Emiliana was starting to heel gently to port. The captain noticed it at the same moment and turned to the wheel to correct the motion as he threw the engines into full power and began to aim for the nearest edge of the patch of still water.

  Fengur lurched to the side of the ship and looked over into the black water, and there he saw something that chilled him to the bone even more than the icy water trickling down his neck.

  From the depths below he saw a turbulent cloud of vast shimmering bubbles rushing toward the surface, billions of glossy spheres, some the size of houses. Even as his mind registered what he was seeing so the bubbles broke the surface all around the trawler’s hull, the surface of the ocean seeming to suddenly boil. The water churned and tossed, the Emiliana rolling with the blows, and then Fengur felt the breath snatched from his lungs.

  He staggered back from the side of the ship and tried to suck in more air but there was nothing to breathe. Fengur saw Olaf tumble sideways as he too fought for air, his eyes wide with panic, and then the captain on the bridge and the other crewmen began waving their arms and wrapping jumpers and coats over their faces as though to shield them.

  Fengur tried to make it to the bridge, but his lungs were already burning and his legs felt weak. He forced himself to focus and put one foot in front of another, and he was almost at the bridge when he saw the ocean spill
over the bulwarks all around him to flood the ship with frigid black water.

  The Emiliana was plunging beneath the waves even though her hull was safely sealed, and as Fengur saw the bitter Atlantic pouring onto the decks he knew that they were all doomed. Raw fear poisoned his stomach as Fengur saw Olaf swept aside amid the turmoil of the flowing water, the old man dragged over the bulwarks and beneath the waves in an instant. The deck vanished from beneath Fengur’s boots and ice water swilled beneath his clothes, cold enough to force him to open his mouth and suck in more airless breath as the trawler plunged beneath the waves.

  Fengur’s consciousness slipped mercifully away into a cold blackness just before he was dragged beneath the icy Atlantic and into oblivion.

  ***

  II

  Phoenix Air Flight 375

  ‘Phoenix three seven five you’re leaving UK airspace, contact Iceland Radio on one two six decimal five five.’

  First Officer Jason Harper clicked a button on his control column in the cockpit of the Airbus A318, and replied to the call from the controller at the flight information region service at Shanwick, several hundred kilometres behind them.

  ‘Contact Iceland Radio on one two six decimal five five, Phoenix three seven five.’

  The cockpit of the Airbus A318 was dominated by six multi–function display screens, two each for the captain on the left and the first officer on the right, and two further screens mounted vertically in the centre of the instrument console. Each of the screens displayed data for a variety of function such as engines, navigation, artificial horizon and a plethora of others that had once been displayed as endless ranks of dials and gauges. Above Jason’s head were a mass of switches and buttons controlling electrical functions and lights, while between himself and the captain’s seat was a central console wherein resided the controls for throttles, flaps and the flight management computers.

  Jason reached out for the radio frequency controls on the centre console to his left between himself and Captain Harrison Reed, and hit a button marked “Switch”. The button switched the radio channel to the stand–by frequency that they had pre–programmed into the radios a half an hour earlier, that of Iceland Radio. The Flight Information Region covered by Iceland Radio would be their contact until they were close enough to their destination to contact Keflavik Approach.

  As was customary, Jason would wait a few moments before announcing themselves on the new frequency to avoid “stepping” on any other aircrew’s transmissions.

  ‘Quiet afternoon,’ Captain Reed observed as he looked down at a thick blanket of turbulent white cloud that stretched to the horizon in all directions.

  ‘Nobody wants to come out and play in that weather,’ Jason replied.

  Their departure from England’s Gatwick airport had been lively, to say the least. The United Kingdom had the distinction of sitting at a point on the earth’s surface where four major air masses met and fought constantly with each other, creating the highly variable weather that the islands were so famous for. Wind, rain and gusts of twenty–five knots had sent them on their way, and now the A318 was cruising at thirty–seven thousand feet above the North Atlantic Ocean. Although Jason’s view out of his window was dominated by the brilliant orb of the sun and the vast blue sky, the cloud layer below them was twisted and warped by the tremendous forces of nature at work in the atmosphere. Towering cumulonimbus thunderheads rose up into the blue sky ahead like giant white anvils, betraying the fearsome storms raging across the oceans below and forcing the Airbus to sometimes deviate from its planned flight path to avoid them.

  ‘The METAR for Keflavik is surface winds fifteen knots and two miles visibility,’ Captain Reed said as he listened to another frequency known as ATIS, which reported on the weather conditions far ahead on Iceland’s west coast. ‘QNH is falling so things are going to get worse as those weather fronts move in. We’re gonna want to make this a clean run in and pick up the ILS for landing on runway zero niner. You’ve got information Victor.’

  The Instrument Landing System, or ILS, was an automated glide path that the airliner’s autopilot could follow to bring the aircraft in to land, freeing up the pilots to monitor the aircraft’s instruments and systems during the often busy landing phase. Rather like a guided missile following a laser beam, the autopilot aligned itself with an infra–red beam projected out from the threshold of the active runway and followed it down at an airspeed set by the aircrew. Although the ILS could not be left unmonitored, in poor weather and visibility it reduced the crew’s workload sufficiently that they could be prepared for the unexpected.

  ‘Roger that,’ Jason said as he keyed his transmitter once again. ‘Iceland Radio, Phoenix three seven five with information victor, request oceanic clearance, estimate BASLU at fourteen hundred hours, request flight level three seven zero, mach decimal eight five.’

  There was a momentary pause and then he heard the voice of an air traffic controller reply to him in accented English, the broadcast crackling somewhat due to the turbulent atmospheric conditions far below.

  ‘Phoenix three seven five, cleared to Keflavik via BASLU, maintain flight level three seven zero, mach decimal eight five. Report at BASLU.’

  BASLU was one of many sectors on the flight, navigational markers that pilots reported passing over so that non–radar controllers could pin–point their location. BASLU was a marker for a continuous descent into Keflavik, located off the island’s southern coast.

  ‘Cleared Keflavik via BASLU, flight level three seven zero, mach decimal eight five, wilco, Phoenix three seven five.’

  Jason released the transmit button and glanced at the instruments. As was standard procedure on most flights, one pilot handled the flying while the other worked the radio transmissions, sharing responsibilities while monitoring each others’ performance. He made a note of Keflavik’s “QNH”, which was an acronym for the regional air pressure at sea level at their destination, and settled in to prepare for the descent into Keflavik under the captain’s control.

  Captain Harrison Reed was a long–service pilot who had previously served in the Royal Air Force. He had spent his military career flying C–130 Hercules and C–17 Globemaster aircraft before his retirement with the rank of Squadron Leader, upon which he had joined Phoenix Air. With some twelve thousand flying hours and a reputation as a steady hand, he was now one of the airline’s senior pilots and instructors. Jason always enjoyed flying with him, not least of all because Jason was a rookie who had only joined the airline six months before upon gaining his Commerical Pilots License. With only three hundred flying hours in total he had completed his type rating and line checks, and been cleared as a first officer aboard the Airbus A318 just two months earlier.

  It was hard for Jason not to feel inferior to Reed, but he had already learned that as a captain Reed was precisely the kind of guy a new pilot needed to fly with to gain confidence. It was a little–known fact that most senior captains were often paired with newly qualified pilots and required to be instructors of sorts, guiding their new charges through their first months flying in the busy European short–haul airspace. Whereas other old hands in the airline sometimes seemed to resent having junior first officers in the cockpit alongside them, Reed was patient and considerate of the occasional mistakes Jason had made early on, before he had found his feet and begun to settle into a career as a pilot. They had already flown to Germany and back that morning, and after this run to Keflavik they would head back to Gatwick and then to Paris. Their return to Gatwick would be the last flight of the day, and Jason was hoping that there would be no delays at Paris–Charles de Gaulle airport. He didn’t want to spend another night in a French hotel because the airplane developed a technical fault or tower control couldn’t get them a late slot out.

  Jason reached for his flight notes, clipped to a board beside his window, and turned the page to the approach charts for Keflavik. A simple layout, the airport had two main runways orientated roughly north–south an
d east–west, making a cross that allowed aircraft to land into the wind under most conditions. The runway currently in use was the westerly runway “two–niner” due to the prevailing winds in the region, although runway zero–two was preferred by most pilots due to the shorter taxi distance to the terminal. The approach to the runway was made initially from the west, avoiding the high ground to the east and the overlap with Reykjavik’s own airport just to the north, requiring arriving aircraft to perform a very accurate approach pattern.

  Jason pinned the approach plate to his control column so that he could pass helpful information to Reed whenever he might need it. The approach and landing phase was widely regarded to be the most dangerous part of any flight, with an aircraft typically slowing to close to its stalling speed and often approaching busy airspace around major airports. Although Keflavik was among the quieter destinations served by Phoenix Air, there would still be plenty to keep them both occupied.

  ‘We’ll start the landing brief in a couple of minutes,’ Reed informed him, as ever keeping well ahead of the flight and “ahead of the airplane”, as pilots liked to say.

  Jason was already bringing out the checklists and placing them close to hand, the two of them working in unison and preparing for what would be a fairly interesting ride back down into the turbulent weather that was draped in fast–moving fronts across the North Atlantic.

  ‘I hope the folks out back are all frequent fliers,’ Jason said as he prepared the checklists and began programming the ILS frequencies into the autopilot and GPS data into the flight management computer.

  ‘It’s our job to ensure they don’t notice anything at all,’ Reed replied as he keyed an intercom switch and spoke in clear and jovial tones as the public address system was activated. ‘Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking, we’ll shortly be making our descent into Kefalvik and preparing to land. I’m afraid that the conditions below us are every bit as delightful as the weather we left behind in the UK, with rain, snow and high winds forecast to last well into the week. The flight attendants will soon be moving through the airplane to ensure that all seatbelts are fastened and all trays secured. Please do listen to them and we’ll have you safely on the ground and Keflavik in about twenty–five minutes. On behalf of First Officer Jason Harper and your cabin crew I would like to thank you once again for flying with Phoenix Air.’