Spyder Web

36

Michigan state trooper Jean Gordon was approaching the area where several bales of hay had stopped traffic, when she saw the fireball rise over the crest in the road ahead. She pulled onto the shoulder, to drive around the growing line of cars stopped there, and sped toward the explosion.

‘This is car forty-one-five. I have a large explosion on I-Ninety-four near mile marker one forty-nine, and I am moving to investigate. We’re going to need fire and medical teams and additional units to block off the highway in both directions. Do you copy, base? Over.’

‘We copy, forty-one-five,’ the dispatcher at the Jackson State Police post responded.’Additional units are en route to your position. Please advise when you reach the scene.’

‘Roger, base. Forty-one-five, out.’

Gordon slowed as she approached the accident. She could make out three vehicles in the cloud of swirling smoke: a battered car, a pickup truck, and an overturned tanker that was engulfed in flames.

‘Forty-one-five to base, over,’ Gordon called out on her radio.

‘Go ahead, forty-one-five.’

‘I have a multivehicle accident blocking eastbound I-Ninety-four. One vehicle is a gasoline tanker that is burning. We’re going to need a lot of help out here.’

‘Understood, forty-one-five. Additional support is on the way.’

Survival Flight lead pilot Dean Waters had just rescued the POWs from the enemy prison camp and was racing his helicopter across the desert sands of the Middle East when his pager began beeping furiously. He paused the game on his computer, grabbed his flight bag, and sprinted out of the basement-level offices housing the University of Michigan’s Survival Flight Service. Waters ran past the elevators, bounded up four flights of stairs, and quickly emerged on the rooftop lobby of the Taubman Center, next to the helipad.

‘What do we have?’ he asked as he reached the dispatcher.

‘MVA out on I-Ninety-four, a nasty one,’ the dispatcher replied. ‘Two passenger vehicles and a fuel truck. We’ve got two injured and the truck is burning. Here are your maps with possible landing zones. Your contact on the scene is a state trooper named Gordon. You can reach her on this frequency. Byrd and Landis are already on the pad.’

Waters nodded.’Our patients are in good hands today. Let’s get to it.’

Waters walked out to the Bell 230 medical helicopter, where the two flight nurses were loading supplies. ‘A lovely day to fly, don’t you think?’

‘We’re ready when you are,’ Landis replied as Byrd climbed aboard.

Waters boarded the helicopter and strapped in. Landis and Byrd took positions in the rear, linking up with the on-call physician in the emergency room. After running through the preflight check, Waters powered up the helicopter and opened the throttles on the Bell’s engines. The helicopter responded with a near-deafening roar as the rotors chopped through the air.Waters increased the angle on the main rotor blades and lifted the helicopter off the helipad.

As soon as the helicopter reached its cruising altitude, Waters saw where they were headed. A plume of black smoke smeared the horizon, creating a hazy filter over the late-day sun. The winds were light, out of the south, with visibility that was measured in miles. Waters estimated this would be a fifteen-minute trip to the accident scene. In the seat behind him, Landis made contact with the state police officer on the scene.

Five miles east of the crash, Waters flew over the start of a long traffic jam. I-94 would be closed for a while and everyone parked below would be better off finding an alternate route. He banked the helicopter into a wide circle around the smoke plume as he looked for a place to land that was free of fuel. A smooth patch of gravel, just upwind of the burning truck, met his needs nicely. Below, paramedics fed Byrd and Landis status reports on the survivors.

Once on the ground, the flight nurses bolted from the helicopter. Two firemen met them at the door to help with their medical gear. Waters kept the chopper warmed up and ready to move once the patients were on board.

‘How are they?’ Landis asked a paramedic by the car.

‘One’s unconscious, with possible internal injuries. The other one’s banged up, but not too badly. The doors on the car are a mess, so we’ll have to tear them off. Both of these people have been bounced around a lot, but the woman took the worst of it.’

The firemen were working their hydraulic cutters on the passenger-side door of the Mustang. The car’s steel skin and frame groaned as the hydraulic pressure increased inside the device, tearing away at the crumpled metal of the car. Landis quickly glanced at the black body bag on the ground, a few feet away from the Mustang, before squeezing into the narrow space beside the driver’s door. The driver was bruised and bloodied as he held the unconscious woman beneath a protective cover that the firemen had placed over her.

‘Sir,’ Landis said as she placed her hand on Kilkenny’s shoulder, ‘my name is Michelle. I’m here to help you. Can you tell me how you’re feeling?’

Kilkenny turned toward the voice and saw a woman in a dark blue flight suit. ‘To be honest, I feel like shit, but I’m alive, so I guess that’s a start. I’m Nolan Kilkenny and this is Kelsey Newton. I can’t say for sure how she’s doing, but Kelsey’s been out for a while, and she doesn’t look too good. We took a hell of a shot from that semi before it rolled.’

Byrd was now on the Mustang’s hood, assessing Newton’s condition while Landis checked Kilkenny’s vital sings and kept him talking. The metal of the car’s door groaned loudly before releasing its hold and pulling free from the car. Byrd moved over to the opened side and began treating Newton.Kilkenny eased away to give Byrd room to work, but his hand remained firmly wrapped around Newton’s.

Landis gently wiped away the blood from Kilkenny’s face to inspect the gash across his forehead. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘The fuel truck blew a tire and started jumping all over the road. A pickup rammed us from behind, and we got hit by the back end of that burning hunk of junk.’

Landis placed a dressing on his forehead.’sounds awful.’

‘It got worse,’ Kilkenny replied.

The paramedics cut Newton out of her safety belt and eased her gently onto a backboard. Her slender neck was already wrapped in a cervical collar and a breathing tube was inserted down her throat. Byrd rolled out a pair of MAST pants and zipped them up around Newton’s legs; the inflatable device acting as both a splint for any broken bones and as an antishock aid for the trip back to Ann Arbor. After setting an IV, Byrd and a paramedic hustled Newton to the waiting helicopter.

‘All things considered, you’re looking pretty good,’ Landis commented as she packed up her kit. ‘I’m going to leave you with the paramedics; they’ll get you to Ann Arbor. I’ve got a flight to catch with your lady friend.’

‘Take good care of her,’ Kilkenny asked as he squeezed Landis’s hand. ‘She means a lot to me.’

‘We’ll do our best for her,’ she assured him. ‘See you soon.’ A moment later, the helicopter bearing Newton lifted off into the sky.

Kilkenny’s condition, though more stable than Newton’s, was still considered serious. The paramedics gingerly extracted him from the driver’s seat and strapped him to a backboard. A waiting ambulance rushed Kilkenny away from the hellish scene.