Roskov book 7, p.1
Roskov, Book 7, page 1
Ricky Roskov
Book 7
Copyright © Geoff Wolak
Written in April, 2021, from an idea first formed in 2006.
This book is a work of fiction, technically accurate in the detail of geographical locations, and the time period history.
Email the author: gwresearchb@aol.com
www.geoffwolakwriting.com
The hand of God
Suitcases packed, not that we had taken much out of them, and Carter and myself were ready for the quick two-day trip to Milan with Rolf. There we would meet an old friend of Rolf’s with money to invest, and with a keen desire to copy our successes.
That man already had a long-standing financial interest in a model agency, and a reported bevy of beauties for us to look at - and to get some work for. Olga was on her way already, and she had met some of the Italian models in question whilst working in Paris.
And Carter, he had gently enquired if the models would all be walking around naked.
I hugged the twins goodbye as they set off for “work”, otherwise known as a two-hour photoshoot followed by a two-hour lunch followed by some shopping. It sounded arduous.
With Ingrid running the office and answering the phone this week, Luc Haas set to pop in when she was alone, we jumped into a taxi minibus and headed to the airport on a fine summer’s morning, talk of old castles in Milan that might be worth a look at.
I told Carter, ‘I need a lower profile, apart from the charity work maybe, so … unless someone attacks me I say we try and find things to do that are … less noteworthy.’
‘Stop giving interviews,’ he complained.
‘If I do that then the conspiracy theories bounce around, and I look guilty of something - for not giving an interview about those conspiracy theories.’
At the SAS Check-In desk the staff all smiled politely at me, Rolf to be sat next to me, Carter a seat behind and in the aisle seat oddly enough on this 737 – there was no bunk-up to Club Class. Thinking about it, there was probably no Club Class on this small plane anyhow.
I would be in an aisle seat as well, and Carter would be close enough to touch me, and to watch my back in case any polite yet homicidal Swedish passengers tried to strangle me during the short flight.
Sat in Departures, a few people came and said hello and offered their support of my Faroe Islands advert. Well, the Swedes had some Viking blood in them and they sided with the dolphin-killing Faroe Islanders rather than the broader European Union.
A polite and sedate debate broke out about both animal rights, and the modern human misery of homeless people sleeping in shop doorways in Britain.
Boarded, I found that the seat next to Rolf was empty, the window seat, and that the plane was not full, which made me puzzle why they had put Carter behind us, maybe to balance the aircraft. We were sat on the right, one row behind the emergency exit over the wings, an old lady in front of us sat alone, some leg room for her.
Rolf took out his notes, the fiscal accounts of the model agency in Milan, and he continued to study their profit and loss. He noted, ‘They pay a terrible price for rent, because of their prestigious offices. I would buy a place or move the business, it is all for show – and a waste.’
‘Yes, but … how much business is done in those offices, face-to-face meets?’
‘It would be normal to visit the client at their offices, but if the client wanted to meet the models, then yes – having a nice office is important, and some of these modelling offices are more like hotel rooms and restaurants than offices.’
Taking off on time, we levelled-off over the Baltic, and I could soon see the coast of Germany below as we headed south.
‘Some nice beaches down there,’ I noted.
Rolf responded, ‘They are large, but not always described as “nice” by tourists, since those tourists would unfairly compare the beaches here to the Mediterranean.
‘The water here is not clear for swimming, and is cold obviously, and the beaches often come with a stiff wind. People sit inside wind shelters. But when the wind drops they are nice beaches, as with Denmark. Some of the Danish islands are great in the summer, I camped there as a boy, sailing and fishing.’
‘I was never in the Scouts or cadets,’ I told him as the hostesses checked that seatbelts were fastened due to some turbulence. ‘Always too busy with football. But that game taught me about people, and how to deal with people, and how to be a leader. When I get back I’ll organise a football tournament in my home town, for all sorts of people - not just schoolkids.
‘But teaching kids to play football is important, it helps the kids get to know each other, how to work in teams and to cooperate. I saw kids in my school go years without talking to other kids, so I made a point of talking to them when I was class president.
‘One kid, he was always very shy, and then after school he turned gay, then he moved to London and killed three people, gay men, now in prison for life. I wonder … if I could have reached him when he was young, took an interest.’
Rolf responded, ‘That is not your responsibility, that is down to the teachers and the government, who pay little attention to the social development skills of kids. If such kids had an annual assessment made … that would help, but I have never heard of a school doing that – nor the government wanting to bear the costs.’
I nodded as I considered that, and considered the costs of psychological evaluations of kids, the early evaluation of next year’s pyscho serial killers.
The quiet and pleasant forest
An hour later we peered down at the snow-covered peaks of the Alps, a beautiful scene, and visiting the Alps in summer was on my list of things to do; hill walking in the sunshine more than skiing on the snow-covered slopes.
Ten minutes later, and I glanced back at Carter. ‘You missing Olga?’
‘Who me? I have a job to do, professional I am,’ he sarcastically told me.
‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded.
Facing forwards, my left ear exploded and an involuntary scream left my lungs, that sound having been drowned out by the loud bang in the cabin and the hiss, the cabin suddenly full of mist, the air leaving my lungs as if someone had pushed down on my chest.
Disorientated, and in pain, my eyes caught the yellow oxygen mask as it smacked me in the face, people heard screaming, but they sounded oddly muffled. I glanced at Rolf, and he was in shock, both hands cupped around his mouth as if to shout a message at someone.
Grabbing his yellow dangling oxygen mask, I felt my stomach lurch up into my mouth as the aircraft nosed down, but I managed to place Rolf’s mask on his face and straighten the plastic tube as he gasped for breath.
But I found that I could still breathe, just that it felt like playing football on a frozen pitch on a January morning as a kid. Grabbing my own mask, I pulled it down and placed it on, and I started breathing deeply – wondering if it was working.
The air in the mask smelt slightly odd, and it was just as cold as the cabin air had become, so I had to wonder if it was working. A few big breaths … and it seemed to be working, the mist now gone from the cabin, the passengers calmer and not screaming any longer.
I checked Rolf. ‘You OK?’ I shouted through the mask.
He looked at me through terrified eyes, but he did manage to nod.
Turning my head over my left shoulder, I glanced at Carter as he sat with his yellow mask on, his eyes wide. I gave him the scuba diving ‘OK’ sign, and he responded with the ‘OK’ signal in return. Then he pointed at me, and at his ear.
I got a hand to my left ear, some warm blood felt, a little blood noticed now on my white shirt shoulder. I shot Carter a worried look.
Turing the opposite way, I looked past Rolf and out of the window, and we were still descending, the mountains getting closer quickly.
Levelling off, I eased off my mask and tried to breathe, finding that I could. Turning to Rolf, and with false bravado, I said, ‘It’s OK, explosive decompression, that … happens a few times a year, no big deal – we dropped to ten thousand feet so that we can breathe, and … we can’t be that far from Milan Airport now.’
Easing off his mask, he tasted the air nervously and tried to breathe normally, his eyes wild and afraid.
‘We’re OK,’ I assured him, my left ear clicking and popping, and hurting like hell, and I was anything other than reassured myself.
Then it fell silent, and I wondered if I had lost my hearing altogether. ‘Can you … hear me?’ I asked Rolf.
He nodded.
‘I can’t … hear anything.’
‘It has gone very quiet.’
I could no longer feel the engine vibration. ‘Shit.’ It came out too loud.
Rolf turned to me with an expectant look. First, I glanced back at Carter, and his look said it all. He already knew; his look gave that away as he glanced out the window at the engines.
Facing Rolf again in the eerily quiet cabin, I told him, ‘The engines have cut out, both of them, we’re … gliding down. The plane should still have enough hydraulic pressure to lower the landing gear, electrics should still work, the radio.’
He stared at me like a man that had just been read his last rites before a firing squad, and he frantically grabbed for his phone from his pocket, switching it on.
‘No … no signal up here,’ I told him as I tried to gauge our position out the window, and I wondered why my voice was quivering. All I could see were tight tree-covered valleys and rocky mountain peaks as we drifted lower.
Rolf started to shakily enter a text message. He told me, his voice giving away his fears, ‘A man once sent a message, from … from a plane going down. Before it reached the ground the message … it got through.’
I turned and stared ahead at the backs on the heads of the passengers, a few glancing around the cabin as if for help from some quarter, the oxygen masks dangling.
Was this the end?
Considering a text message for the twins, I was not sure what I might say. And what about Olesya, and Claudia, and my parents?
I found myself playing an odd game in my head. “Mister Roskov, you can send one message to one person before you die. Who will it be? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen…”
Oddly enough, I could not think of who to send it to, or why, or … what I might say that would in any way ease their pain at learning of my death.
My mother was at the top of the list, but getting a text message from beyond the grave would spook her more than learning of my death from the BBC news.
Rolf typed his message, but then he altered it, a glance out the window as the mountaintops grew ominously close, and finally – his fingers hesitating over the button – he sent it. Then he sent it a second time just to be sure.
There was a chance, I knew, that just before we hit he would get a signal, or that the phone would be thrown clear, get a signal and then send the fateful message.
‘It’s peaceful,’ I told him as I stared ahead.
‘The women are … are not screaming,’ he stated, as if very thankful for that aspect. ‘And … the twins and Ingrid are not with us.’
After a few seconds, I said, ‘They have enough money, they have each other.’ From the corner of my eye I could see him nodding as he considered that.
He told me, ‘I … I made provisions, when the Russian man was a threat, all … all sorted and updated, my will. I have that at least.’
I nodded absently in the oddly quiet cabin as we waited for the inevitable. ‘The twins are strong now, they’ll … cope,’ I told him as we glided in silence, those rocky peaks looming large out the window.
But I did not want the twins to cope, I wanted them dependent on me, wanting me, needing me, and the idea of them just carrying on with their lives horrified me.
He nodded, just before we banked hard left and then hard right, the passengers spooked, a few cries going up. I glanced out the window as we banked hard left again, and as we lined up I could remember what I saw, and it looked like a long oblong cricket pitch on the side of a hill.
I pointed ahead with a finger. ‘There’s uh … a plantation of trees, uniform and square, side of a hill but flat, and I think he’s aiming for it, the pilot.’
‘These aircraft do not fare well when landing in trees.’
‘No,’ I agreed, sighing out, my ear throbbing like hell and now a great distraction. I tightened my seatbelt.
‘Crew, prepare for emergency landing and aircraft vacation. Passengers and crew, brace, brace, brace!’
The voice came from someone that was not hopeful of a smooth landing, and screams rose up from a few women.
When I saw people looking up and around I instinctively shouted, ‘Get your heads down, tightened your seat belts, hold onto any children!’
The man to my left shot me a terrified look as he got his head down to his knees. As for me, I couldn’t have got my head down because of the seat in front – I was too tall, so I leant into the aisle, a glance back at Carter. He seemed resigned to his fate.
Staring at the feet of passengers, I had to wonder why I was not hysterical, or opening the door to jump, or saying a prayer. I had to wonder why I was calm, or relatively calm given the situation.
As the seconds were sliced off our time remaining, I had to consider that I was not accepting this as my death, that I was not hysterical because I did not believe it was the end.
I reached across and held Rolf’s hand as that hand held his shins. He turned his head to me. I told him, ‘It was great to know you, and the twins were a real blessing.’
A tear formed in his eye. ‘You handed me a year, a great year with the twins, my family together like … I had not expected it.’ He coughed, and he choked-up as we banked hard left and then hard over, my body being pulled down into the seat with the g-force.
‘He’s trying to slow the approach speed,’ I told Rolf.
Rolf lifted his head and peered out the window. ‘We are below the mountain tops, in a valley now,’ he croaked out.
The nose dipped lower then up, the g-force felt again, a bank left and then right, and “Brace for impact!” came over the tannoy, something that no passenger ever wants to hear.
‘The engines are off, and I could see him dumping fuel,’ I told Rolf. ‘The engines won’t be hot when we land, so … maybe no fire.’
Rolf glanced at me, as if he did not quite believe that.
I eased up and straightened, the only head up above the seats, and I forced a big breath. This was my death, and I would decide how I sat, I defiantly decided. A look past Rolf as he bent forwards, and I could see a small town in the distance, a road, a steep-sided green valley; it looked nice here.
Wondering about the tourist potential for this area, a tree top loudly whacked the end of the wing, soon a second, and then it appeared as if we were sinking in green liquid as the forest enveloped us, the roar building very quickly as trees whacked the leading edge of the wings.
Those slaps against the wing soon became crunches and loud bangs, a blizzard of green leaves filling the image in the window, the aircraft starting to shake violently from side to side.
The noise level grew very quickly, drowning out the screams of the passengers as my arse whacked the left armrest followed by the right armrest, and it felt like I was sat on a badly maintained washing machine as we sunk into a world of green stew.
The jolt left caused me to gasp, my hips getting pummelled, and soon I was screaming unheard within the horrendous roar of trees smashing into the wings and fuselage, an unseen giant sat behind me hitting me with metal seat rests.
Turning side on a little while holding the seat in front, I forced my head down into the aisle and I lifted the seat rest at the same time, the seatbelt now digging into me cruelly, and somehow it felt as if my hips were on fire.
The roar, of the damage being done to the trees of this plantation by our unplanned landing, drowned out all attempts at conversation, and it drowned out all coherent thought as our bodies were thrown around, violently thrown to the left and then half a second later thrown to the right.
Lifting my head, I saw a hostess near the cockpit being tossed around like a rag doll, her head smashing against the wall repeatedly, a huge spatter of blood up the wall, and I knew that she was already dead.
A violent lurch forwards, and the seat in front of me was forced down as it seemingly snapped, and I was thrown backwards in my seat as the pain from my hips and lower back registered. A gasp left my lungs involuntarily.
Silence.
Was this it, was I dead?
I shook off the stupid notion of now being a ghost, and I glanced around as someone moaned quietly. It was deathly quiet, and from the window I could see green leaves, the leaves from conifer trees, and little else.
The panic then set in with me, that of burning alive. Seatbelt clicked open, and I lifted the armrest between myself and Rolf, tearing at it before I grabbed Rolf’s seatbelt. Grabbing him by the shoulders, I lifted him, his face bruised and bleeding, and he gasped with pain – as if stabbed.
‘Come on!’ I hissed, unable to talk properly and croaking out the words.
Easing up, the pain almost knocked me out and I fell back into my seat, leaving me wondering what I had damaged. A broken back came to mind, but the hot and cold sensations coming from my hips localised the problem; pins and needles in my legs, shooting pains rushing up my back.
Grabbing at my trouser belt, and desperate now, I tightened my belt as far as it would go, immediately feeling the relief from the pain. My hips still hurt worse than any injury I had ever felt playing soccer, but less so than a moment ago.
Easing out of the seat as I forced big breaths, no other passengers stood up yet, I gasped in pain, unable to suppress that gasp as I reached across to Rolf and dragged him out.
