Let the River Run
Copyright© 2026 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 3
Van Wyk caught us just as Wolfie and I were finishing the walk-around of the machine. The rain had eased to that fine, needling drizzle that soaks you without you noticing, and the cloud base still sat low over the tree line. The Bell 222 looked dull and grey in the flat light, beads of water streaming off the rotor blades.
He didn’t waste time on pleasantries.
“Alright, listen up,” he said, one hand resting on the helicopter left back door frame, the other gripping the strap of his medic pack. His voice had that clipped, calm tone that meant he’d already run the scenario through his head ten times.
“They’ve been out there for fifteen hours or more in this,” he continued, nodding toward the dripping bush. “Cold rain, wind during the night, probably no shelter. First thing you’re going to see when we find them is hypothermia.”
Wolfie leaned against the fuselage, arms folded. “How bad are we talking?”
“Could be anything from mild shivering to moderate — slurred speech, loss of coordination, confusion,” Van Wyk replied. “If one of them is injured and has been lying still, we must assume severe. That means gentle handling. No sudden movements. You don’t manhandle a cold patient — heart gets irritable.”
I nodded. “After-drop risk.”
“Exactly,” he said, giving me a quick look. “We rewarm the core, not the limbs. Keep them horizontal. Package them properly before we move them.”
He shifted his weight and went on. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
I gestured to the logo of the Mountain Rescue Club of South Africa prominently on the fuselage at the back of the cabin, just before the tailboom.
“Been there, done it, got the T-shirt, played in the movie ... I did about a hundred hoist lifts in the mountains around Cape Town and the George Knysna area in gale force winds ... Some patients lifted off passing oil tankers and cargo vessels as well.”
“I thought so. That logo isn’t there for show. You know about the conditions,” Van Wyk replied and then continued.
“They will be dehydrated. Even in the rain. Cold suppresses thirst, but they’ve been walking, stressed, burning energy. Expect exhaustion — maybe they won’t even be able to walk to us. You may have to hover while I package them where they are.”
Wolfie glanced at the tree line. “Mud’s going to be bad.”
“Very,” Van Wyk replied. “Which brings us to trauma. Slips, falls in the dark. Twisted ankles, possible fractures, head knocks. Nothing dramatic maybe, but enough to complicate extraction.”
“And their feet?” I asked.
“Immersion foot likely,” he said. “Fifteen hours in wet boots. Skin will be white, wrinkled, painful. Not life-threatening right now, but it means they won’t move fast.”
He paused, letting the weight of that settle.
“Shock is a real possibility,” he added. “Not just from injury — cold and exhaustion can push them there. Pale, clammy, fast pulse. We treat for it whether we see bleeding or not.”
The drizzle picked up slightly, tapping against the fuselage like static.
“They will also be confused,” he said. “Hypothermia messes with the brain. They may not respond to you. They may wander. One might be worse than the other. Don’t assume they’ll follow instructions.”
Wolfie gave a low whistle. “So basically two walking medical checklists.”
“Or two lying ones,” Van Wyk said bluntly.
He then raised a finger.
“Secondary risks. Flood conditions mean water everywhere. Near-drowning possible if they tried to cross a swollen drainage line. If they’re coughing, short of breath, we treat for aspiration.”
“Snakes?” Wolfie asked.
“Displaced by the flood, yes,” Van Wyk replied. “Low probability but not zero. Watch where you put your feet when we set down. And check them for bites if they’ve been stumbling through grass.”
I looked toward the dark line where the Sabie floodplain lay. “Dirty water exposure?”
“Open wounds will be contaminated,” he said. “Infection risk later, not our priority now — but we’ll cover and clean what we can.”
He tightened the strap on his pack.
“Psychological state — panic, or the opposite. They might be withdrawn, apathetic. That’s hypothermia talking. Talk to them constantly. Reassure them. Keep them awake if possible.”
Wolfie straightened up. “So what do you need from us?”
“Stable hover, minimal rotor wash if I’m working on the ground,” he replied. “If I signal delay, you give me time. Packaging a cold patient properly takes longer than a quick scoop.”
I ran my hand along the wet nose of the helicopter, feeling the cool metal under my fingers. “We’ll give you all the time you need. Ceiling’s marginal but workable. We’ll stay below the worst of the scud.”
Van Wyk gave a short nod.
“My priorities when we find them,” he said, ticking them off on his gloved fingers. “Stop further heat loss. Airway check. Breathing. Gentle handling. Insulate. Then extract. No short-cuts.”
The rain softened again, hanging in the air like mist.
Wolfie looked at me. “Coffee’s getting cold.”
“People out there are colder,” I replied.
Van Wyk climbed into the rear cabin, securing his kit. As I settled into the right seat and began the start sequence, the rotors slowly coming to life above us, his words stayed with me — not dramatic, not alarmist, just precise.
Two people out there somewhere in the wet bush, their body heat draining away minute by minute.
And our job was not just to find them.
It was to bring them back before the cold decided otherwise.
Van Wyk leaned forward between our seats just as I was bringing the Nr up into the green. The rain had thinned to mist, but the air still carried that damp, cold bite that had settled over the Lowveld since the first storm.
“One more thing,” he said over the rising whine of the turbines. “If they’ve been soaked for fifteen hours, lying down, breathing in cold, wet air — keep pneumonia in the back of your minds.”
Wolfie glanced over his shoulder. “Already? That fast?”
“Not full-blown,” Van Wyk replied, tightening his headset. “But the onset can start. Cold stress drops the immune response. If one of them aspirated water, vomited, or’s been breathing shallow and fast all night, the lungs get irritated. That’s when you start seeing the early signs.”
I eased the throttles forward, watching the gauges stabilise. “What should we expect on pick-up?”
“Listen for a wet cough,” he said. “Persistent, not just from cold. Fast breathing. Complaints of chest tightness. They might say they can’t get warm no matter what we do — that can be hypothermia but combined with shortness of breath it points to the lungs.”
“Crackles?” I asked.
“Yes, you’ve done this before. You know the signs ... If I can hear crackles,” he nodded. “But in this environment I’ll be looking more at rate and effort. If they’re working to breathe, using neck muscles, that’s a red flag.”
Wolfie shifted in his seat. “Does that change how we extract?”
“Only in urgency,” Van Wyk said. “They’ll still get the same hypothermia management, but I’ll prioritise airway positioning and oxygen early. Keep them upright slightly if they’re breathing okay — don’t lay them flat unless I have to. And smooth flying, please. Rough handling makes breathing harder.”
I lifted us into a hover, the ground sliding away beneath the skids in a blur of wet tar and standing water.
“Also,” he added, “if they start shivering violently and then suddenly stop — that’s not improvement. That’s worsening hypothermia. Combine that with shallow breathing and we move fast.”
Wolfie gave a quick thumbs-up. “Stable platform. No cowboy stuff.”
Van Wyk continued, voice calm and methodical.
“Remember, pneumonia is a later complication. We’re not treating it out there. What we’re doing is preventing it from getting worse — keeping them warm, giving oxygen if needed, getting them to definitive care. But if you hear me say one of them’s breathing wet or struggling, that becomes our priority for the first lift.”
I pointed the nose toward the dark, waterlogged bush beyond the airfield. “Understood. Smooth and steady.”
He tapped the back of my seat. “They’ll be cold, exhausted, and scared. If one of them’s coughing, don’t let that distract from the basics — heat, airway, gentle handling.”
The mist closed around us as we transitioned forward, the flooded Lowveld stretching out below like a dull brown mirror.
Behind me Van Wyk finished securing his oxygen bottle.
“Find them quickly,” he said quietly. “Cold lungs don’t forgive delays.”
And with that, we pushed out toward the riverine bush, carrying not just fuel and rotor wash, but a clock that had started ticking somewhere in the rain fifteen hours earlier.
“Where do we airlift them to? Nelspruit?” I asked.
“Nelspruit is the closest and well equipped. We take them there,” Van Wyk responded.
“On our way there I will stay below 6000 feet. At that altitude we will clear the hills and mountains but will keep the oxygen level in the cabin good.”
“Thanks, but I will be feeding them oxygen anyway.”
At that point we were seven minutes away from Sabi Sabi Airstrip, and I dropped the forward speed from 130 KIAS to around 60 KIAS.
I said a silent prayer for the two stranded people. I always wondered if Wolfie and I were on the same frequency and this was affirmed when he turned to me and spoke:
“I prayed to Unkulunkulu to keep them safe and injury free...”
“I did too, my brother ... I did too...”
Sabi Sabi Airstrip. Seventeen minutes later...
I came in over the runway midpoint, nose slightly down, easing the Bell 222 toward the small apron and hangar. The rain was still falling — not the violent hammering of the previous night, but a steady, soaking sheet that blurred the edges of everything and turned the windscreen into a moving mosaic of water.
Without a raincoat you’d be drenched in seconds.
Clearing the tree line on short final, I lowered us to about twenty feet above the runway, bleeding off speed until we were creeping forward at five knots. The wet tar below reflected the landing light in a dull, smeared glow. Spray lifted in a fine mist from the rotor wash and drifted back over the cabin like smoke.
The world had narrowed to a tunnel — runway markings, the faint outline of the apron, the darker shape of the hangar ahead. Flood lights from the roof of the hangar reflected up the black tar apron
To the right of the hangar a Land Rover stood angled under the shallow overhang, its canvas roof shining wet. Three figures huddled beside it, shoulders hunched against the rain, watching our approach with that mixture of urgency and relief you only see when the helicopter is the last option left.
I eased the collective down.
Zero forward speed, zero feet at the first of the two parking bays. The skids kissed the ground, light, deliberate. I held the throttles at idle — no shut-down. Not today. The engine instruments stayed in the green, rotors turning, time ticking. Fifteen hours of exposure had already stretched too long; I wasn’t going to add another ten minutes for a restart. I got the fuel. We can have two and a half hours before we need to refuel.
Wolfie slid his door open into the downwash and stepped out into the rain, head ducked. Van Wyk followed, one hand on his medic pack, moving with purpose toward the waiting group. I kept my hands on the controls, eyes outside, holding the machine steady against the shifting gusts that curled around the hangar.
Rain drummed on the canopy. The rotor beat echoed off the metal walls.
They spoke in tight circles beside the Land Rover, maps appearing, hands pointing toward the riverine bush beyond the airstrip. Even from the cockpit I could see the tension in their body language — quick gestures, heads shaking, the kind of conversation where every second matters.
Five minutes.
It felt longer.
Then both of them jogged back through the spray and climbed in, doors slamming shut against the noise.
“Okay,” Wolfie said, breath still slightly elevated, wiping rain from his headset. “They were supposed to be at the watering hole just north of here. The Sabie runs west to north-east there. They had to cross the low-water bridge about nine kilometres from here.”
I pictured it immediately — the bend in the river, the shallow crossing that wasn’t shallow anymore.
“We fly to the watering hole and backtrack along the river toward the low-water bridge,” I said. “Keep the river on our left so Doc Van Wyk and you can scan the floodplain.”
Van Wyk nodded, already pulling his harness tight. “That bridge will be under water. If they tried to cross, they either turned back and got disoriented in the bush ... or—”
He didn’t finish.
“ ... or washed away,” he said finally, quieter.
The cockpit held that sentence for a moment, heavy and unwelcome.
“Let’s be positive and assume they got stuck,” I replied, bringing the throttles back up and raising the collective. “Maybe found high ground. Maybe shelter.”
The skids lifted free of the wet apron and we slid sideways into a hover, nose turning toward the dark ribbon of the Sabie floodplain.
“Let’s get going,” I said. “Time is a-wasting.”
“By the way,” Wolfie commented, “The owner of the reserve said he has a bowser with twenty-five thousand litres of A1-jet, if we need to refuel.”
“Great!” I replied. “Free fuel...”
Below us the Land Rover and the three figures shrank quickly into the grey rain, and ahead the swollen river waited — brown, fast, and full of secrets — as we pushed north toward the watering hole and the beginning of our search.
The river looked less like water and more like a moving landscape — a heaving, mud-brown plain carrying whole trees in its grip. From two hundred feet up I could see trunks spinning slowly in the current, root balls clawing at the air before being swallowed again. It was the kind of power that made you instinctively pull your feet up off the floor, as if the flood might reach up and grab the helicopter.
“Visual on the waterhole,” I said, though the words felt unnecessary. You couldn’t miss it. It filled the windscreen from edge to edge.
Wolfie shifted in his seat, still scanning through the thermal. “Nothing hot in the water. That’s good. If they went in, we’d see something.”
“That water’s cold enough to kill in minutes,” Van Wyk replied quietly from the back. “If they’re alive, they’re out of the channel.”
I eased the chopper lower, bringing us down to one hundred and fifty feet to get a better look at the tree line and any high ground that might have stayed dry.
The air was thick and wet, the rotor wash kicking sheets of spray off the canopy tops. Every now and then the aircraft gave a soft shudder as we hit pockets of rising air from the solid ground and floodwater.
“Bridge should be another three or four kilometres south east,” I said, glancing at the GPS and then back outside. “Keep your eyes on anything that looks straight. Metal, tyre tracks, even a reflection.”
We followed the invisible line of the road by memory more than sight. The actual track was gone — erased under a smooth, brown sheet — but the pattern of the trees told its story. A faint corridor where the bush grew thinner. That’s where the low-water bridge had been.
Had been. Now it was gone and the parts that still retained some sort of foothold were submerged.
“There,” Wolfie said suddenly, tapping the glass. “Eleven o’clock. Something geometric.”