From Chapter 36 – Bermuda Triangle
Whoa, what was that?’ Patrick suddenly felt his stomach leap into his mouth
as the safety harness bit into his shoulders.
Tara did not reply. She bit her lip in concentration, her hands on the joystick; her knuckles white with tension. She watched the altimeter’s numbers twirling faster than she had ever seen.
‘We’re losing altitude!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s happening too fast for me to estimate our rate of descent! We’ve dropped 2,500 feet … 3,000 feet … 4,000 feet!’
Less than fifteen seconds had elapsed. The propellers were screaming. The rev counters were in the red zone. Tara pulled back on the throttle until the engines sounded normal to her. She didn’t have the luxury of time to remain focussed on the rev counters. She was too preoccupied with the fact that the artificial horizon was way off the horizontal. In simple terms, the plane’s left wing was pointing towards the ground or, in this case, towards the sea’s surface. She had flicked off the automatic pilot to assume manual control. Her focus of attention was on getting the plane to fly level again, which she managed to do. Sweat had broken out on her upper lip and on her forehead.
Patrick felt an enormous pressure on his buttocks as a giant unseen hand pushed him viciously back into his seat. He vaguely felt a reduction of tension in the harness on his shoulders followed by a sharp pain on his forehead. His hand whipped up to grab at the sore spot where he felt wetness. ‘What the …’ He looked at his fingers. Blood! How had that gotten there? He was securely strapped in. Surely he couldn’t have hit his head on the ceiling?
Tara gunned the engines again to get traction. ‘We’re going up again,’ she said. ‘Hold on.’ She managed to steal a glance at the weather radar. Nothing.
‘We’ve hit clear weather turbulence,’ she shouted.
She flicked the microphone switch. ‘Pan! Pan! Pan!’ She called. She was expecting the message to be monitored by New York flight control.
‘This is November-nine-one-nine-six-Quebec. We are encountering severe air turbulence from Bermuda to El Portillo. My co-ordinates are …’ She looked down at the GPS. Its glass had cracked. The screen was blank. ‘GPS inoperative,’ she said. ‘Estimate 110 nautical miles heading from Bermuda. ETA local time 04.40 hours.’
Again, the rev counters were in the red. Now she kept an obsessive eye on them. If the engines overheated and blew she would have to ditch. She throttled down for a second time. She checked the inlet turbine temperature. Close to red line! Her pilot instincts were reacting faster than her eyes.
The plane seemed to go into free-fall again. The altimeter showed 18,000 … 17,000 … 16,000 … 15,000 feet. She didn’t see it, but Patrick was watching it. Five seconds. ‘My God!’ It stopped revolving. Tara gunned the engines, hoping to hell that the automatic pitch would kick in so as to adjust the propellers’ revs. She needed as much bite as they could muster.
There is an energy force in the world—known to the Ancients—that has largely escaped the interest of the modern day world. Why? There are allusions to this energy in the Chinese I-Ching, in the Hebrew Torah, in the Christian Bible, in the Hindu Sanskrit Ramayana and in the Muslim Holy Qur’an. Its force is strongest within the Earth’s magnetic triangles.
Near one of these–the Bermuda Triangle–circumstances bring together four very different people. Patrick Gallagher is a mining engineer searching for a viable alternative to fossil fuels; Tara Geoffrey, an airline pilot on holidays in the Caribbean; Yehuda Rosenberg, a physicist preoccupied with ancient history; and Mehmet Kuhl, a minerals broker, a Sufi Muslim with an unusual past. Can they unravel the secrets of the Ancients that may also hold the answer to the future of civilization?
About the Author:
In 1987, Brian and his young family migrated from South Africa to Australia where he was employed in Citicorp’s Venture Capital division. He was expecting that Natural Gas would become the world’s next energy paradigm but, surprisingly, it was slow in coming. He then became conscious of the raw power of self-serving vested interests to trump what – from an ethical perspective – should have been society’s greater interests.
Eventually, in 2005, with encouragement from his long suffering wife, Denise, he decided to do something about what he was witnessing: Beyond Neanderthal was the result; The Last Finesse is the prequel.
The Last Finesse is Brian’s second factional novel. Both were written for the simultaneous entertainment and invigoration of the thinking element of society. It is a prequel to Beyond Neanderthal, which takes a visionary view of humanity’s future, provided we can sublimate our Neanderthal drive to entrench pecking orders in society. The Last Finesse is more “now” oriented. Together, these two books reflect a holistic, right brain/left brain view of the challenges faced by humanity; and how we might meet them. All our problems – including the mountain of debt that casts its shadow over the world’s wallowing economy – are soluble.
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Genre – Thriller
Rating – MA (15+)
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