{The Wai T ing}
were the bodies of Dana Tindall, an executive with the communications company that owned the plane and lodge, and her teenage daughter, Corey, who had sat with them at the lunch table just an hour ago. “Be strong now so that we can get out of this
mess,” the others told him. Willy made the search. Nothing. No phone, no radio, no medical kit. Willy, dragging his leg, crawled outside to see
whether something might been thrown free of the plane. Other than the overwhelming smell of jet fuel, there was nothing out there but rain and the thickening clouds. “Is my dad alive?” he asked. Willy was back in the plane, staring at O’Keefe
in the pale light from the porthole. “No. He’s in a much better place.” Most kids, O’Keefe thought, would withdraw
to a corner after hearing that and not be heard from again. As Willy struggled to hold it togeth- er, O’Keefe realized this kid wasn’t one of them. He had his dad’s guts.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Four voices, as strong as this moment of
pain would allow, worked in unison through the prayers of the Rosary. Fifty-four years old, 53 years old, 19 years old,
13 years old. Two generations of Catholic altar boys praying for deliverance from the wilderness. “I can do it in the Latin if you want to hear it,”
Morhard said from the back of the plane. “Well, if you can conjure it up, why not?”
O’Keefe said. The fight to stay alive was merging with the
fight to stay awake, to battle off the shock and un- consciousness that could kill them. O’Keefe wondered about what he could not
see: On every mountain slope, the tree line thins as the altitude climbs. He’d heard lots of wood splintering as the plane crunched to a halt, so they weren’t in the clear. But were they deep in the woods, hidden beneath the underbrush? And what color was the plane? They’d flown
in it for three days, but in the haze of semi-con- sciousness, he couldn’t recall. “Listen for planes, listen for helicopters,” he
said as spirits ebbed. “Listen for them to come overhead, go distant and then return. That’s when you know they’ve spotted us. The first flight over- head won’t tell you a lot. When it returns, it does.” All the while, he thought: We may be on this mountain forever. The temperature was drop-
14 THe WasHiNgTON POsT MagaziNe | November 28, 2010
in a photo taken on the day before the aug. 9 plane crash, former senator Ted stevens, right, poses with Byron Orth of Beaverton, Ore., at a fishing camp along the Nushagak river in alaska.
ping into the 40s, the rain wouldn’t let up, clouds were wrapping around the top of the mountain. A dozen ways to kill you. Pick your poison, he thought.
THe firsT call to Dillingham Flight Service Station came from the GCI Lodge shortly after 6:30 p.m., about four hours after the de Havilland Otter had taken off for its 52-mile trip. The plane was overdue, and no one had heard from the pilot. The station alerted the bush pilots to be on the lookout. Within a half-hour, the lodge called the station again, now requesting an official search. “The controller asked if I saw the Big Red
Otter,” John Bouker said. He had been operating an air taxi service since 1994. His brother had been killed in a plane crash in 1985. Bouker was flying back from the village of Ma-
nokotak and raised the alarm to two other local pilots in the air. “I think the GCI Otter might be in trouble. Why don’t you go toward the lodge and start there, and I’ll fly out toward the river,” Bouker told Newt Ball. Ball’s brother had been killed in a plane crash in 1977. Not two weeks ago, the son-in- law of the Otter’s pilot was killed in a crash. Dinnertime was approaching when the alarm was sounded that a plane carrying former sena-
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY BYRON ORTH VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
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