The Wolf Border(110)
Lawrence parks near the monument. They get out, leaving Charlie asleep in the back. The landing site is not so much a field as a slightly raised plateau of common land, covered with flocks of rush and grass. From the south, they hear it coming. The sound bends around the nearby fells, makes locating the helicopter difficult. She sees it down the valley, a dark blue insect suspended between the brown withers of the mountains, ominous-looking, dropping altitude slowly. The helicopter circles, begins its descent towards the ground. The noise of the engine and the blades fills the valley. A hundred feet from the ground, the grass begins to flutter, then to billow in the strong wash, and is crushed flat as the craft puts down. The turbulence tugs at Rachel’s clothes.
Charlie’s going to wake up and freak out, she shouts to Lawrence.
He nods.
Maybe I should go now?
I think so.
He gives her a quick hug, releases her.
Take care of him.
I will! We’ll watch you go up from down the road. Good luck! It’ll be alright.
He makes his way to the car, gets in, and drives back along the road. She cannot see her son. She suddenly feels unwilling to leave, but she has no choice now. The helicopter door opens, and Huib beckons to her. The blades have not been cut; the wind coming from the machine is extraordinary. Her clothes flap and twist as she approaches. She bends low and runs towards the helicopter. Huib takes the case and the tracker from her, and she climbs in. The door is shut and secured. Inside, the racket is only slightly milder. The body of the craft judders, seems too lightweight, too frail for the power of the rotor. Huib puts his thumb up. She takes a seat and fastens the belt. He passes her headphones with a microphone attached. She fits them and hears Thomas talking, saying, Hello, Rachel, glad you could join us, and she realises, with a feeling of dread, that he is piloting. Sylvia is sitting next to him up front. She turns, reaches back, and takes hold of Rachel’s wrist, smiles, mouths something. Why is she here? Rachel wonders. All fools together? On the headphones, Huib is talking about the signal, the last reading, but her heart is flurrying and she cannot concentrate. She is not afraid of flying. But this feels like madness, an event choreographed to put an end to it all, to conclude the entire, year-long fiasco. She’s never going to see her son again. She will never see him grow up or be able to tell him anything that matters – what he meant to her, who his father is, that he was a gift, the greatest of all gifts, and she could hardly believe he was hers.
She closes her eyes. The pitch and roar increase. There’s a swinging sensation. When she looks, the helicopter has lifted off, is nodding left and right, tilting hard to the side, and gaining altitude. The ground slides away beneath them at a sharp angle. She feels incredibly sad for a moment, almost resigned. Everything tends towards iron. They lift up, up. The monument grows smaller – the outline of the architectural site appears, a deep barrow in the earth. Down on the road, she sees her brother, holding the baby and waving. Please, she thinks, love him like I do, and then they are gone, and the Gazelle is moving swiftly across the landscape. The moorland blurs. A slow version of the blades is visible through the glass roof, an illusion created by speed. They pass along the valley, the space melting away as if it were nothing, fields and upland enclosures, three white wind turbines on a sacrificed hill, and the river like silver rope, unwinding. She looks down. Over a low summit is a hidden ghyll, running from a mountain tarn, the waterfall deeply channelled, wound-like. The upper crags of the fells draw level, weeping with grey and blue scree. And higher, they are above the peaks; there are contours that she has never seen before – that very few have or ever will – a land suddenly revealed, as if in a dream.
The geography of the northwest mountains makes it impossible to find them on the first day. The peaks veer into the sky and must be given a wide berth. The helicopter cannot pass too closely in the tight glacial valleys. Thomas obeys the regulations; he is not an unsafe pilot, in fact he is skilled, and she thinks again, It wasn’t him who crashed, though the stigma has been with him for over a decade. Occasionally, the transmitters’ signals are faintly read, then disappear. They are following the route, more or less, that Rachel predicted. The helicopter circles and tracks back, circles and tracks back, looping one valley, then the next. She scans the ground for movement, a migrating formation. The search method is efficient, but they will have to get closer to the ground if there’s any chance of tranquillising them. She has tracked in planes several times before and knows the animals are very good at evading pursuit, chicaning, doubling back, even on open ground. Space in the Gazelle is limited – they will not be able to transport the bodies back to Annerdale and it would be too dangerous to try. She imagines wolves tumbling from the sky, like some kind of Roman myth. But there is a ground unit on standby, she learns from Huib – a private company. The police and the mountain rescue centres are also ready to assist.
After an hour she gets used to the tipping and shuddering sensation of the helicopter, the intermittent rocks of turbulence. Thomas and Sylvia converse calmly, about the fast-acting protection grip Metcalfe is trying to arrange. There are problems on the English side of the border – no real precedent has been set; the law is antiquated, murky. Another sighting is called into the police, near Mungrisdale, which seems improbable – too far east. They follow the lead anyway, flying around the vast hulk of Saddleback, and over the windswept brown moors, not finding them. They pass lower, set a herd of wild fell ponies galloping, slaloming through the gorse, their ragged tails trailing behind them. Thomas communicates regularly with air-traffic control, but other than one medi-vac heading from Whitehaven to the brain-injury centre in Newcastle, the skies above the District are clear. Another hour, two. The gauge reads low, and they land at Cockermouth heliport to refuel. At the hub, several private and military helicopters are parked. The paperwork is completed; they wait for permission to take off, their business no more important than anyone else’s.