A Father Beyond Compare. Alison Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ With the wheels now turned away from the road, they were suddenly on the brink of a worse disaster than a head-on collision.

      The ground sloped away—too close to the verge of the road. The river snaked along the bottom of a very deep gully and the sides were steep. The bridge had been situated at its narrowest point, which meant there was no margin between the swiftly flowing, rain-swollen river and its banks.

      Nowhere for the van to come to rest in relative safety, having careered and then rolled on its enforced detour from the road. The bone-crunching shock of hitting hard ground suddenly changed as the van slipped into the water. But the soft rocking was far from comforting. The van was still moving.

      Picking up speed as the current teased and then clutched at a new toy. Filling with icy cold water as the river tried to claim it completely. Being dragged out into a set of boiling rapids.

      Being tipped, inexorably, upside down.

      ‘You must be out of your mind!’

      ‘It could work.’ Tom Gardiner spoke patiently, not at all surprised by his partner’s reaction to the idea.

      ‘No way. It’s far too dangerous.’

      ‘It’s a calculated risk. I’m prepared to take it.’

      ‘It’s not justified, mate. They’re probably dead, anyway.’

      The two men, both paramedics attached to SERT—Specialist Emergency Response Team—peered down from the hovering helicopter.

      It certainly appeared pointless to risk their own lives to help the victims involved in this scenario. Way below them, towards the middle of the swift and rain-swollen river, they had a clear view of the reason they’d been scrambled. A campervan had apparently missed a sign informing the driver to give way on a single-lane bridge and had careened off the road. The van had been swept far enough into the canyon to make access virtually impossible from the ground.

      The tangle of debris that had caught the van’s chassis and halted its journey included some hefty logs but it was on the edge of a strong current. At any moment it could be caught and pulled clear to tumble and roll in the deadly river on its seaward path. The distance it had already travelled made the survival of its occupants debatable but the fact that it was still afloat enough to roll if it did swivel clear of the obstruction was uppermost in Tom’s mind as he surveyed the scene.

      ‘They’ve still got a fair bit of air in there. They could be alive.’

      ‘It’s only the side door that’s accessible. If they’ve got their safety belts on they’ll be long gone. The driver must be completely under water.’

      ‘Maybe not. We don’t know how long it’s been that far under.’

      ‘The witness said it was rolling in the water.’

      ‘He also said he thought he saw a woman and a child in the front.’ Tom was getting impatient. He leaned further out the side door, blinking as enough of a blast of icy air sneaked around the edge of his helmet visor to make his eyes water. He twisted his head to keep the target in view as the helicopter did another slow circle. ‘I’m going down to check.’

      ‘And what happens if you do find someone alive?’

      ‘I’ll get them out.’

      ‘No. You’d try and get them out and probably join them in the ride downstream. We can’t attach a winch line to keep that thing stable, Tom.’

      ‘I know that.’

      ‘And there’s no way of getting a line out from shore. The fire boys haven’t arrived yet. And we’ll need some boats and divers on scene.’

      ‘It’s going to be too late by then.’ Under normal circumstances Tom was inclined to err on the cautious side himself but the fact that there could be a woman and child involved here made it seem like a copout to be cautious. ‘I can at least go down for a look. If there’s no sign of life, it’ll take the urgency out of things a bit. What do you say, Terry?’

      The pilot of the rescue chopper had worked with SERT for years now. A lot longer than Tom’s relatively new partner. Tom not only trusted the pilot’s opinion regarding any safety issues in the air, he knew he would get the encouragement he needed to go the extra mile to help someone in dire need. The middle-aged pilot had just become a grandfather. He was a soft touch.

      ‘Go for it,’ Terry said. ‘Winch conditions are good. Just don’t attach us to anything down there. I don’t fancy getting my feet wet.’

      Neither did Tom but that was exactly what happened as he neared his descent target. His boots dragged in the surface of the river and filled with icy water.

      ‘Hey, I said minus two, not ten!’ he complained to Josh via the helmet radio. ‘I’ve got wet feet!’

      ‘Sorry, mate.’

      ‘Take me up a bit and then see how close we can get. I can’t see a thing yet.’

      Except for the ominous speed that made the eddies around the pile of debris look like white-water rapids. And the deep grey-green that advertised the depth of the river channel that was running alongside the obstruction.

      The big square white van had an incongruously cheerful rainbow stripe painted along its side. It was bobbing slowly but something underneath—the front axle, maybe—had caught firmly on a thick branch. That branch belonged to a large tree that the earlier storm must have uprooted.

      ‘Looks reasonably stable,’ Tom relayed. ‘I want to stand on the side door and see if I can get a view into the front compartment.’

      From where he was hanging now, he could see the passenger’s side window and a portion of the wind-screen. The side window was shut tightly but light reflecting on the glass made it impossible to see through. The nose of the vehicle pointed down and another log was jammed against the front door. Even if there was someone trying to open that door from the inside, it would be a pointless struggle.

      The roar of the helicopter drowned out the sound of rushing water as Tom drifted slowly sideways but he could feel the cold spray of wind-whipped water on his cheeks. His feet touched the side of the van and he bounced slightly as it bobbed. He shook his head to clear droplets of water from his visor, leaning forward, trying to see into the side window at least.

      And then he saw it.

      A hand. Pressed against the glass. Small fingers that seemed to try and then fail to find something to hold onto.

      A child’s fingers.

      A child who was still alive.

      ‘Contact,’ Tom said tersely. ‘We’ve got a live one here.’

      ‘Hell!’

      Tom wasn’t sure if it was Josh or Terry who expressed the frustration they now all faced of trying to do anything more in the immediate stage of this rescue mission. What on earth could they do?

      If the van had been stable, they could have winched the victims up to the helicopter, but when the van could be swept away at any moment, it was far too dangerous to have a line that could potentially pull the chopper down.

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