“The wheels on the bus go round and round” until Mr Sachs walked onboard and held the passengers and driver hostage. It was later that everyone else went “wah wah wah”.
1974: A Croatian flight attendant survived a mid-air explosion in a 747 over Czechoslovakia. The plane broke apart at 33,000 ft and, trapped inside the tail section of the fuselage, she plummeted to earth with a food cart pinning her to the floor of the plane. It was this which saved her, acting like a seat belt. The fuselage struck a heavily wooded, snow covered mountain slope at just the right angle which cushioned the impact. In a later interview she stated that she felt she had been protected the whole time.
19.45. Thomas sits in the back of the bus, admiring Lynda. A distant but oh, so close yearning. All the way from Midhurst to Guildford. Building up confidence to talk to her. But there could only be a few stops before she got out. The bus was pulling into the Park And Ride. Now or never.
Mr Sachs had other ideas. He calmly waits on the pavement by the bus stop. He doesn’t even wait for the other passengers to get off. His intentions perfectly clear. And when the driver looks to the source of the disturbance he becomes face to face with an old comrade and a new threat..
“Frank… what’s up?”
“Shut the fucking doors”. Frank Sachs replies, pointing the gun at him. He looks to the frightened passengers. There are ten people on the bus. It had been a long day for most of them and all were anxious to be somewhere else. “Nobody screams or I shoot. It’s that simple.”
There were no screams. But as the first whispers became audible Frank Sachs walks down the corridor to explain the situation.
“It’s very simple.” Frank Sachs explains. “The bastards sacked me today. Apparently I’ve been ill one too many times for their liking and because I’m dispensably pale and single I have no rights. So we’re all going to sit on this bus until I get my job back. It’s very, very simple.”
Frank Sachs walks back to the driver, John Searle. “Did you do it by the book, John?”
“What do you mean, Frank?”
“Pressed the panic button, of course. It’s what I would have done in your position… if I had a job, that is.”
“Yes, Frank. I did.”
“So you’re going to remain sensible, aren’t you, John?” John nods. Frank Sachs nods with him.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I will.” Frank Sachs looks John in the eye.
“I don’t think you will, Frank. Not with that anyway.” John replies. John thinks he knows Frank. He’d worked with him for years. John knew nothing.
“Which leg do you favor, John?” John looks at Frank Sachs quixotically. “It’s ok. I know you’re a lefty.” Frank Sachs shoots John in the right knee. “Unlike the movies, John, there is no blood spatter. Neat, isn’t it?” John screams in terror and pain. The rest of the bus respond in sympathetic resonance until Frank Sachs warns them otherwise. “He’s not in any pain. It’s shock. Don’t believe all you see on television.” He turns to John. “That doesn’t look too bad. I guess I missed the artery, John.” Blood oozes from the wound, a crimson oil seepage. “Take your belt off and make a tourniquet. If you’re lucky you’ll survive the night yet!”
Lynda now sits next to Thomas. Thomas is calm, despite the situation, but he just couldn’t tell you why…..
1999: A Swedish medical student lost control skiing down a steep mountain in Norway and fell headfirst into a frozen stream. She became trapped beneath the ice but found a small pocket of air between the water and ice which kept her conscious for 40 minutes before going into cardiac arrest. The rescue team managed to cut her out 80 minutes later. Although clinically dead she was rushed to the University Hospital of North Norway where the Doctors used a heart-lung bypass machine to pump her frozen blood out, warm it up, before cycling it back into her body. The operation took nine hours, but she woke up with no brain damage. Upon waking she described the feeling of someone watching over her.
20.10. The curse of modern life: nothing is sacred; no privacy. No common sense and no facts, no informed opinion, just feelings. Things might have turned out differently had it not been for social media. The police were notified sooner than John’s panic button. One of the bus passengers already texted the police. “We are being held hostage by someone with an air pistol. Please help us.!!” This was before John had been shot.
The police arrived and surrounded the bus. They demanded Frank Sachs leave the bus. That demand was ignored, as was the demand to release the hostages. It was at this time that the cavalry turned up. The local press had been informed by another passenger; priorities and the chance of fame and notoriety trumped common sense and the desire to stay alive. At least two of the passengers were filming quite openly, cameras held high like beacons mourning self-respect and understanding. Frank Sachs seemed resigned to this and actively played up to this new found audience. His demands had not changed, he just wanted his job back.
Thomas and Lynda can only watch the morons hold their mobiles like sacrificial daggers, exacerbating the situation. Lynda has Thomas’s hand in hers. She could not tell you why except it feels right, as if she’s known him all her life.
1848: Phineas Gage was an American railroad construction foreman. He narrowly avoided a catastrophic brain injury when a 13lb, 3.5ft tamping rod was blasted through his skull after an accidental explosion. It entered his left cheekbone and exited with such force that it went through the top of his head and landed 30 yards away. Unbelievably he survived this and, despite having a radically changed personality, he lived another 12 years. When asked how he managed to survive such an accident Gage is reported to have said that moments before the explosion he felt someone push him back a couple of steps.
20.20. The police did not take Frank Sachs seriously due to the hostage account regarding the air-pistol. They knew he could do some damage with such a pistol but it was just a waiting game. A base of operations had been set up in the reception area of the Park & Ride complex, near the toilets. No one investigated Frank’s situation, or his family. So when a man was caught trying to ‘break into the bus’ it was assumed he was another hijacker. The police were quick to tackle the man to the ground and use the taser on him when he tried to get up. Frank Sachs saw all this happening in horror. This was his brother, Bryan.
Bryan Sachs had seen everything unfold on the local news and had driven to the Park and Ride as quickly as he could. He had not counted on such an oppressive police presence and hadn’t thought through the rationality of his actions until after feeling the tasers sting. Yet no matter how he tried explaining his situation no one would listen to him. Things became exacerbated when Frank Sachs personally contacted the police through his mobile phone.
“Release Bryan or there will be one less hostage to worry about.”
“Frank. You must realise there is nowhere for you to go. We know that it's not a real gun. It’s an air-pistol. We even know what make and model it is… it’s a BRK Brocock Atomic XR!”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“I’ll release one of the hostages. I’ll show you I mean business.”
Lynda wants to be the one released and almost puts her hand up as if she is back in school, waiting to be relieved. Thomas stops her with a squeeze and a knowing gaze that captures her attention and keeps her calm. Her previous anxieties and crippling fear are gone and she watches the events unfold with a cool detachment. The girl with the mobile phone put her hand up and it was as if she had one top prize on a chat show. The crowd was awed by this gesture and everyone in the bus now felt hopeful. Frank Sachs allowed the door to open and waited until the hostage had passed the threshold. He then shot her calmly in the back of the neck, shutting the doors at the same time as her body fell limp, as if its contract had been cut. No one screamed. They could barely breathe.
“It’s no longer just an air-gun… it’s amazing what one can find on YouTube these days.. Like how to convert an air-gun so it can fire real bullets.” Frank Sachs said smugly. “You have two things to do. 1) Let me brother go. 2) Give me my fucking job back!"
Lynda looked at Thomas with incredulity. It could have been her.
20.50. It had never dawned on the police that they could easily have bluffed their way out of the situation. All it would have taken is one call to the bus company. One lie told by the manager. A fake contract drawn up and then once the hostages were released Frank Sachs’s story could have ended. But that isn’t what happened.
The police did comply in releasing Frank's brother but only because they had planned something else quite spectacular. The SWAT team was ready and would go in with smoke grenades, They had already managed contact with another passenger on the bus; so the next step was to smoke him out.Unfortunately the person they had managed to contact was the driver himself and therefore everything he knew about so did Frank Sachs.
1985: A British climber tried climbing down the 634 meter Sivla Grande in the Peruvian Andes during a blizzard. He slipped on a frozen cliff edge and plummeted 20 meters into a crevasse, landing on a frail snowbridge. He managed to probe deeper and deeper into the crevasse and eventually found a small opening onto the glacier. Over the next 3 days he was without food or water and suffered from intense hallucinations before finally being rescued. One voice was constant through those hallucinatory times; it was one that told him to keep going, that everything was going to be alright…. And it was.
21.30. By using the smoke canisters, the assumption was that all the passengers would be on the floor, having been told to do so by the informant on the bus. Anyone left standing up would therefore be Frank Sachs and could be eliminated. The police shot a few windows out, threw smoke canisters inside before operating the ‘driver release’ handle on the side of the bus, next to the main door. The door popped open and they saw a silhouette of a man standing by the steering wheel. They took no chances and simply opened fire on the prone body. The body slumped onto the instrument panel. In the bus the other passengers remained deathly quiet. Two policemen walked to the body but neither of them had a chance to inspect it before they were both shot in the head by Frank Sachs.
Lynda wanted to scream and would have done it if not for Thomas. There was a serene look in his eyes. With a squeeze of his hand he motioned for her to be calm. And then he got out of his seat and walked behind Frank Sachs just as the smoke was lifting.
2001: The Canadian was used to scaling skyscrapers and was totally unprepared when he freescaled up the left wall of the Red River Gorge. It could have been, and should have been, a fatal miscalculation and he found himself stranded. The nearest handhold was completely out of his physical reach and his forearms were too full of lactic acid for him to climb back down. He felt a nudge to try something desperate; he knew he would make it: he released his grip entirely and launched himself upward into the air and caught the distant edge with his fingers and held on. Suffice to say he survived and made it back downstairs to tell the tale.
21.31. Frank Sachs heard a noise behind him. He was too preoccupied to understand what was happening; he was now operating on adrenaline. He got up and turned to see what had made the noise. He was shocked to see Thomas walking slowly towards him with a beatific smile on his face. Frank Sachs first reaction was to shoot him dead but his hand was jolted by something as he fired. It was this muzzle flash that finally gave the snipers outside the bus something to target. Three of them took the fatal shot. Frank Sachs fell dead. Thomas had already fallen on the floor just seconds before the snipers opened fire. But to everyone else it must have seemed that Thomas had been shot multiple times at the same time as Frank Sachs.
Lynda rushed to his side, sobbing with confused emotions. Her life was now inextricably bound to this stranger. Less than three hours ago they had been two disparate people and now he had sacrificed his life for hers. Thomas heard Lynda’s sobs and opened his eyes. Despite the pain he looked into her eyes and smiled. “I’m absolutely starving. When this is all over how about a kebab?”
1999 : A disgruntled bus driver takes a bus and its passengers hostage for three hours with a converted air-pistol. Through poor communications and mis-understandings at least three people are killed. Just as things seem hopeless one of the passengers distracts the hijacker and almost pays the price. By a pure fluke of fate the shot goes wild and rather than shoot him in the face the bullet goes right through the shoulder, missing all the major arteries. The passenger survives and jokes that his actions were down to a momentary lapse of reason. When pushed he states that he felt someone with him, guiding his actions. Eight months later he is married to the passenger next to him on the bus. That, he stated, was the real miracle.
