Into the Abyss (15 page)

Albert’s oldest son, Edward, joined the family business when he finished high school, but Albert had other plans for Larry. He wanted his second son, a bright and capable student, to earn a university degree. The opportunity was rare and came at some sacrifice to the family, but Larry had squandered it. He’d goofed off and, after his first year had flunked out of the University of Alberta. Larry remembered the moment he told his father of this failure as one of the worst of his life. Bitterly disappointed, Albert had died before his son could prove himself.

After his father’s death, Larry had floundered for a time, scraping by as a travelling salesman and a department store manager. But as his family grew, he found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Alma recalls complaining that a package of four rubber pants she pulled over her babies’ cloth diapers cost the same as a pack of cigarettes—a quarter—and there was seldom enough money to afford both. She would silently seethe as she mended ripped rubber pants with Scotch tape while Larry puffed madly on his cigarettes trying to figure out how on God’s good earth he was going to feed his family.

In 1967, Larry moved his family from Edmonton to High Prairie. His sole connection to the remote northern community was the Houssians, a Muslim family who ran the local menswear store. He and Alma had paid their friends a visit several years earlier, and during that
trip Larry had a chance meeting with the woman who owned the town’s general goods business next door. He and Alma had five children under the age of six at the time, and he’d been running a bowling alley in Edmonton. Though they had no money, he secured a promise from the store’s owner to call him if she ever decided to sell.

True to her word, the owner eventually called and, seizing the opportunity for a better life, Larry sold their only asset—a lumbering old house overlooking Edmonton’s river valley—and moved north to the tiny farming town of 2500 people. But the few thousand dollars left over from the sale of the house wasn’t enough to buy the store. Larry’s plan had been to secure a bank loan to cover the shortfall, but the managers of the local chartered banks didn’t share his vision. None of them would take a chance on an untested outsider with neither collateral nor a track record. In the weeks that followed, Larry’s hair began to fall out and he developed a severe case of shingles, but he didn’t give up.

Finally the manager of the Alberta Treasury Branch, a small financial institution owned by the provincial government, agreed to loan him the money he needed to buy the business. Over the next decade, the store would not only support and clothe his family, but also allow the son of an immigrant Arab peddler to establish himself as a community leader.

It seemed nothing short of miraculous that Larry was now one of the most powerful politicians in the province. He had a personal staff of four and a government department of hundreds to help him get his job done. But standing cold, blind and battered in the dark wilderness waiting for someone to rescue him, none of it made a difference.

Just before midnight, the crew aboard the Hercules circling several thousand feet above the ground picked up the plane’s ELT signal and began working to pinpoint it. That meant first establishing their own
position vis-à-vis the nearby navigation beacon at Swan Hills, and then plotting a reverse bearing to the downed plane’s signal. To determine the ELT’s exact location, the giant aircraft would have to sweep the area, monitoring the signal’s strength. The stronger it was, the closer they were to the crash site. The navigator, keeping a close eye on the directional needle, watched for the second it swung 180 degrees indicating they’d flown directly over the ELT, and then plotted the point electronically. The Herc would need to make numerous passes before the navigator could triangulate the ELT’s exact location, but it was only a matter of time before they nailed it down. Unfortunately,
the signal was weak and distorted, often fading in and out as if obscured by something unseen below.

After overflying the area for an hour, the navigator aboard the Hercules was zeroing in. The pilot radioed the Rescue Coordination Centre to update the searchmaster of the operation on their progress and to request permission to deploy search-and-rescue jumpers once they’d pinpointed the ELT. The searchmaster refused. Poor weather, rugged terrain and heavy snow made it too dangerous. Instead, he made a crew callout for a Chinook—an intimidating twin-engine, tandem rotor helicopter with a wide loading ramp at the rear of the fuselage. Agile and versatile, it was the only aircraft capable of safely getting within reach of the crash site that night.

Some time around midnight, the survivors heard another sound in the distance, this one from a much larger aircraft. The men held their breaths as the plane approached. Though darkness, heavy snow and clouds obscured it and they were bone cold, the sound filled them with hope. As the plane circled far above, Erik assured the others that it was a search-and-rescue aircraft and that it wouldn’t be long before they were found.

The promise of imminent rescue compelled Paul to return to the plane and check on the trapped passenger. Maybe, just maybe, he would make it. As he crawled inside the cockpit’s portside window, he heard the disturbing rhythm of the injured passenger’s exhalations. His breathing had slowed considerably since Paul had last visited and his moans were reduced to barely audible sighs. The hand that had been stuffed in Erik’s flight bag hung limply in the air. Paul reached out and took it in his own. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there. All he knew was that at some point during that time, the sounds stopped. Paul listened intently for a while longer, but there was nothing. Not a whisper of life.

Witnessing the man’s death pinned Paul in place. As he held his hand he sensed something ephemeral, otherworldly, rise and float up into the night. Later he would tell his brother Daniel that
he was sure it had been the man’s soul leaving his body.

Paul left the plane and wandered aimlessly for a time, chain smoking.

For the previous five days he’d been pacing the floor of a maximum-security cell in Kamloops awaiting pickup by a Grande Prairie sheriff. On Sunday, October 14, Paul had hitched a ride into Kamloops and found a bed at a men’s hostel. He’d planned to leave the next morning for Penticton, where he’d heard his younger brother Michael might be living. Around four in the morning a hostel attendant had led two RCMP officers to Paul’s bed. They had a warrant for his arrest. The scrappy drifter had laughed in their faces. The charge they’d picked him up on
was
laughable—a misdemeanor, a misunderstanding, even—but the cops hadn’t shared the joke. They’d cuffed him and taken him into custody.

At 8:30 on the morning of October 15, Paul had argued his case in front of a judge. He’d offered to plead guilty on the charge of public mischief, hoping to get off, but the judge had refused, ordering him
remanded into custody until the Grande Prairie RCMP could fly someone down to bring him in. Paul was pissed. He’d already spent four years of his young life in prison for one thing or another and had only fled Grande Prairie because he couldn’t bear the idea of being cooped up in jail again. Now he was in a stinking holding cell waiting for some cop to haul his ass back there.

Jail was exactly as he remembered it: boring as shit. He’d been allowed only an hour of exercise and a little TV each day he’d been there, and he’d already read the only book he could get his hands on. Called
Airport ’77
, it was about a plane crash and had filled him with dread. Paul was scared to death of small planes, and the prison keeper had already told him that when the sheriff did show up, that was how the two of them would be travelling back to Grande Prairie.

The only good thing about the day had been the cop who’d arrived to escort him: Scott Deschamps. He’d treated Paul like a human being, and the two had had plenty of time to talk—even share a few laughs. It didn’t escape him that he and Scott were practically the same age, yet their lives were completely different.

“What do you think of me compared to what you’ve read in my record?” Paul had asked at one point.

Scott’s response was flippant: “You’re one and the same.”

Paul didn’t know what to make of the comment and had asked more pointedly, “
What kind of chance would I have to become a cop?”

Scott had laughed. “Not a good one.”

Paul had laughed then too, but deep down the comment stung. As a teenager, he’d taken a naval cadet survival training course and then applied to the military. But
they’d turned him down because he had only one kidney. He had lost the other when he was just a child. At the age of five while playing in the front yard, his younger brother Michael had thrown one of his shoes onto the road. As Paul ran to
retrieve it, a car had plowed into his small body, throwing him high into the air. The impact had pinballed him onto the roof of an oncoming car and then onto the road. He’d spent a year in the hospital, much of it in a body cast.

As Paul stood alone in the darkness listening to the sound of the search plane approaching then receding, he reflected on the irony of his fucked-up life. Two days earlier—October 17—had been his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d spent it behind bars thinking his life couldn’t possibly get any worse.

It was after midnight on Saturday, October 20, when Brian Dunham’s phone rang. The military officer on the other end told him that someone with helicopter experience was urgently needed on a search and rescue mission. The request surprised Dunham as he wasn’t on standby that night and his squadron flew only Twin Otters, small, fixed wing aircraft. When he arrived at the Rescue Command Centre, he learned that he was to be Team Leader on a Chinook CH-47 helicopter borrowed from the tactical helicopter squadron to respond to a major air disaster.

Standing 5′11″ and 180 pounds with close-clipped brown hair, green eyes and a gap-tooth smile, the former navy sonar man and diver was a seasoned Search and Rescue Technician or SAR Tech, and had a job description that read like an adventure novel. SAR Techs are highly trained experts in leading search teams, performing rescue operations, and providing on-site medical care to casualties. They are air, land and sea survival specialists—trained mountaineers, rapellers, scuba divers, spotters, parachuters and advanced trauma medics. Their work requires them to take risks and survive the most strenuous of Canadian weather and terrain conditions.

At 12:51 a.m. the Chinook helicopter carrying Dunham, as well as
Major Peter Dewar, who would oversee search-and-rescue operations from Slave Lake, two doctors, two nurses, six medics and another SAR Tech, lifted off. Within half an hour, the chopper was mushing through heavy cloud and freezing rain, and icing was rapidly becoming a problem.

Subzero precipitation is a hazard for all aircraft, reducing lift and increasing drag and weight. But helicopters are especially susceptible. Spanwise elements of their rotor blades, unlike the leading edges of fixed airplane wings, move through the air at different speeds, and even a small buildup of ice—as little as a quarter inch—can jeopardize the aircraft’s ability to stay aloft. The pilot of the Chinook couldn’t see ice on the massive twin blades whirling above him, but he could feel the warning signs as the chopper strained to maintain speed and altitude. He was just 42 nautical miles northwest of Edmonton when he radioed the Rescue Coordination Centre to say the Chinook might have to return to Edmonton.

It was 2:00 a.m. and the searchmaster had just received a copy of the passenger list from Wapiti Aviation, confirming that there were high-profile politicians on board. He suggested the pilot try a more westerly approach, but it proved just as perilous. Finally, he advised the pilot to try routing east of Swan Hills and attempt a landing in Slave Lake. Though the conditions were only marginally better, the chopper made it in. Once on the ground, Major Dewar and half the medical team deplaned so that the chopper could return directly to Edmonton with survivors if it could make it into the crash site
and
if anyone was found alive.

After just five minutes on the ground, the Chinook was airborne once more. But with the poor weather and the threat of icing, team leader Brian Dunham knew there were no guarantees they’d be able to reach survivors. He alerted Major Dewar, who called Sergeant Hopkins in High Prairie and told him to get his RCMP ground search party ready to roll.

Hopkins had beaten him to it. His officers were already stationed along the highway east of High Prairie awaiting exact crash site coordinates. But with news of the adverse conditions in the air, they didn’t want to wait any longer. Their plan was to head south into the wilderness, advancing in the general direction of the crash area so they could be on hand when the military pinpointed the site. The search party had also commandeered a Bombardier from a local farmer. The truck-sized utility vehicle was equipped with caterpillar tracks that could move easily over the snow, soft muskeg and gnarly underbrush, blazing a trail ahead of the snowmobiles. Carrying two-way radios and a handheld ELT homing device, the RCMP ground search party left the road’s hardpacked snow and nosed their snowmobiles into the bush, headlights dipping then rising, light tunnelling deep into the pitch-black forest ahead.

L
ess than a mile into the bush, things began to go wrong for the ground search party. RCMP officers, riding two up on the snowmobiles, became bogged down in waist-deep snow and the Bombardier was unable to squeeze through the dense trees to lay down a track. When the officers radioed Hoppy, he cursed loudly, lighting one cigarette from the glowing butt of another. There was a lot of heavy equipment on the surrounding farms and in the town, and he put out an urgent request for it. The response came quickly. Cox Contracting, a local business run by two young brothers who knew and respected Larry Shaben, offered every available man and every piece of heavy machinery they owned. That included a wide-pad utility vehicle, a swamp cat and a bulldozer. They would clear a road through the wilderness if that’s what it took.