Lindsey and Marvia Plum, relaxing in the Bayliner’s half-open cabin, lowered their coffee cups and clambered onto the afterdeck to stand with Marvia’s son and his friend. Even Captain MacKenzie, keeping one hand on the Bayliner’s helm, shaded his eyes with the other as he watched the helicopter slow to a hover overhead.
The helicopter shuddered in midair, then rotated slowly on its vertical axis. It dropped toward the Bayliner.
MacKenzie yelped and shoved the tourist boat’s throttle forward. Its 350 horsepower engine responded and the boat leaped ahead. Lindsey grabbed Hakeem and Marvia Plum grabbed Jamie to keep the boys from being flung into the lake. If they were, their orange lifejackets would keep them afloat—but even a brief exposure to the frigid water could endanger their lives.
Somehow, through it all, Jamie kept the Handycam focused on the helicopter and the record button pressed.
The helicopter splashed down twenty yards behind the Bayliner, at the exact spot the boat had occupied when the ’copter began its plunge. Captain MacKenzie swung the Bayliner in a tight circle and headed back toward the foundering ’copter. He clicked the boat’s Cybernet radio into life and called through to Lake Forest, on Tahoe’s north shore.
He shoved the Bayliner’s gear lever into neutral and the boat slowed as it approached the ’copter. “Bart,” he yelled, “get on the blower—Coast Guard should be coming up. Tell ’em what happened—I have to handle this!” He barreled past the paying passengers and grabbed a downrigger. Jamie and Hakeem danced around him, trying to stay out of his path. Marvia Plum pulled the boys away from MacKenzie.
Lindsey had the Coast Guard station on the blower now. “A helicopter just crashed—it’s in the middle of the lake. We’re right next to it.”
A voice from the radio said, “We got a distress call from them. We’ve got a cutter headed out there now.”
“What do you want us to do?”
The voice said, “Don’t go under with the chopper.”
Beyond MacKenzie, Lindsey could see the helicopter foundering deeper into the lake. It looked like an old glass-bubble Bell ’copter, the kind popular with TV traffic reporters. He thought he could make out two figures inside the bubble. Only one of them was moving.
MacKenzie had swung a heavy cable out on the boat’s downrigger. He climbed onto the stern gunwale and jumped toward the ’copter. Chilly water plumed around MacKenzie. Droplets hit Lindsey’s face like icy pellets. Lindsey could see MacKenzie struggling to attach the cable to the ’copter. The aircraft’s tail was pointing toward the Bayliner, and MacKenzie managed to clip the cable to the tail rotor mounting.
With a sucking noise the helicopter disappeared into Lake Tahoe. MacKenzie disappeared, then reappeared, gasping for air, clambering hand-over-hand along the downrigger cable.
Marvia Plum shoved Jamie and Hakeem behind her, toward the Bayliner’s cabin. Lindsey had dropped the ship-to-shore mike. He scrambled to the stern of the Bayliner. With Marvia at his side he stretched his arms over the gunwale. MacKenzie had reached the Bayliner. Lindsey and Plum grabbed him by the hands, then moved their grasp to his arms. Even after his brief soaking in the icy lake he was turning blue and his skin was frigid. They managed to haul him over the stern of the boat. He crashed to the deck and crawled toward the cabin.
Marvia Plum followed him.
Lindsey stood in the Bayliner’s stern, watching the lake surface where the helicopter had disappeared. The downrigger was playing out cable slowly. The ’copter was bulky, and it displaced its volume in water, reducing its own weight by an equivalent amount. Bubbles rose from it, bursting when they reached the surface of the lake.
Then a hand appeared, then another. Lindsey shouted, “Someone’s alive!”
Marvia Plum, still in her quilted jacket, and Captain MacKenzie, wrapped in a blanket, a knitted cap pulled over his dripping hair, tumbled back out of the cabin. MacKenzie yelled at the figure who was following his example, clambering hand-over-hand along the downrigger cable. The cable continued to play out, so the ’copter pilot’s progress was slower than MacKenzie’s had been.
When he was a few feet from the Bayliner, MacKenzie shoved a boat-hook over the gunwale and the bedraggled figure released the downrigger cable and grabbed the boat-hook. Lindsey helped MacKenzie haul the boat-hook back while Marvia Plum grabbed the survivor’s arm and pulled him over the gunwale. As he came over the gunwale, Lindsey saw that one of his legs stuck out from its socket at a crooked angle.
Now Marvia Plum tried to hustle the dripping man into the cabin. He screamed and collapsed. Lindsey realized that his leg wasn’t really attached to his body wrong: it was broken, and in more places than one. Lindsey scrambled to help Marvia with the man, dragging him on his back into the cabin and wrapping him in a blanket.
Captain MacKenzie picked up the ship-to-shore microphone and shouted at the Coast Guard. Jamie pointed the Handycam at the Coast Guard cutter approaching from the north.
The injured man shook his head, shoving himself upright on his elbow. He tried to climb to his feet but fell back, screaming in pain. He yelled, “I’ve got to get him out of there! It’s Mr. Vansittart!”
MacKenzie shoved past them. Lindsey could see him peering into the lake. He studied the downrigger. The cable had paid out to its end, revealing a polished metal reel. Lindsey could feel the Bayliner tilting. MacKenzie roared. “We’re going to founder!” He pounded his fist on the Bayliner’s gunwale, then tugged the heavy downrigger from its mounting.
It whipped into the air, missing MacKenzie by fractions, then arced over the Bayliner’s stern and splashed black water higher than the boat, disappearing beneath the surface after the helicopter.
The survivor lay on his back, a picture of despair. “It was Mr. Vansittart,” he moaned. “I tried to get him out but I couldn’t get him out.”
The Coast Guard cutter hove to alongside the Bayliner. A guardsman called, “We’re going to throw you a line, Bayliner. We’ll tow you to safety.”
Captain MacKenzie shook his head. “I don’t need a tow. He does.” He pointed at the lake, where the helicopter and its passenger had disappeared. “But I’ve got a badly injured man on board. I’m heading for port. He needs to get to the hospital.”
* * * *
Hobart Lindsey, Marvia Plum, Jamie Wilkerson and Hakeem White sat on the edge of the big bed. All had showered and changed into warm clothes. They were eating Chinese food and watching CNN with the sound muted, waiting for Jamie’s fifteen seconds fame.
Hakeem was not very happy. “It was just ’cause I’m a better fisherman than you, Jamie. If you were a better fisherman you would have caught the fish and I would have had the camcorder and I’d be famous.”
“I’m going to be a TV newsman when I grow up. I’ve already got a start. And I’ve got a check coming, too.”
Marvia Plum hushed the two boys. “Look.” She hit the mute button a second time and the sound came back on. A talking head in the studio of CNN’s Reno affiliate was jabbering at the camera. The image on the screen cut to Jamie’s footage, starting with a flash of Hakeem’s grinning face, Jamie holding the camera on Hakeem’s lake salmon, then panning away to the tiny speck of the ’copter.
The studio announcer
