Stubborn. That would be the entire collective description of Theo Meckle. Certainly, no man is simply one thing, but Theo’s character and way of life was so overwhelmed by his headstrong nature that it was hard to believe that he could be anything else. This did him no favors as he pushed through the deep Antarctic snow in such a long act of suffering.
He had taken the job through Raytheon Polar Services, fulfilling a need for a new helicopter pilot at McMurdo Station. Allotting thousands of hours of air time, he was no slouch in the sky. He had been in some pretty nasty soup before, and that big white wasteland wouldn’t throw anything at him he hadn’t seen before. For him, it wasn’t about the adventure or experience, it was simply the furthest B from point A. “A” was a failed marriage, an estranged son and a smattering of family that had all but written him off entirely. He wasn’t a total bastard like one might expect, the problem was he just wasn’t much of anything, a ghost that had retired from haunting, resigned to floating around the house not frightening much of anything.
He had signed on for 3 years, and he was nearing the last few months of his contract. Men like Theo don’t really keep friends, but they do keep to themselves, and he had been pretty successful at both. Most of the crew knew he wasn’t much of a talker after his first couple of weeks off the plane. This might have been a problem if he didn’t fit in so well. The neurotic, the dreamers, the sojourners, the rogues, the philosophers, the drifters, the shamed, they all trickle down south eventually.
Seasoned pilots know all too well that Mother Nature doesn’t give a damn about how many hours you’ve logged behind the controls. Theo was getting the hell beaten out of him in the worst white wash he had ever seen. What was he doing caught up in all of this? He wasn’t some rookie, taking the whirly gig up for the first time. This blizzard wasn’t a surprise either. He knew long before going up that it was a bad day to fly. But some nature photographer had slipped and broken his leg snapping photos of penguins…”those damn penguins”…and he was the only one willing to go get this guy 30 miles out, nursing his busted up knee in a tent on the edge of a bird colony.
Theo could have cared less about the man. It was in hopes of concealing a darker goal that he took to the sky with so much bravado. He couldn’t envision a better way to end it all than to go down in some overpowering storm, everyone eulogizing him as a hero. In truth it was a complete act of cowardice.
Zero visibility, gale force winds, deadly mountain peaks hidden in the blinding whiteness. Perfect conditions for the suicidal. It wasn’t long before his tail rotor clipped the edge of a sawtooth ridge and he was headed for the end. Naturally, his adrenaline kicked in and his muscles tensed, but he fought hard against his body’s will to live, keeping his hands off the controls, preventing even the possibility of a bumpy but non-fatal landing. He wanted to let fate decide.
The chopper hit the slope at just the right angle for a relatively soft landing. It was the subsequent barrel-rolling down the slope and Theo getting tossed through the cockpit bay door that did the most damage.
