Rescue Special Operations

S03:E07 - Man in Machine

Because of his shoulder injury, Chase takes over Vince’s normal role at the station while Vince heads into the field responding to a routine man-in-a-machine run. Rodney, owner of a plastics recycling factory has his arm entrapped in a machine. The obvious strategy is to cut through the metal but Rodney and his wife, Nina, plead with the team to dismantle the machine. Its destruction will kill their business and they will lose everything. Dean isn’t keen on this course of action but Vince is very much for it. Lara is pre-occupied with thoughts of her collapsed marriage. The alacrity with which Hamish has sent divorce papers has stunned her and now the failure of the marriage is becoming all too real. At the station Chase is self-conscious about his role and diverts Heidi with a string of chores, much to her annoyance. All pretty much a normal, run-of-the-mill Rescue day until somebody starts up the machine in which Rodney is trapped, nearly killing him. Suspicions fall on the wife Nina. Lara and Vince are dispatched to make sure the factory is shut down at the mains and the plant evacuated. Vince has his suspicions that all is not right in Nina and Rodney’s marriage and he learns from Nina that she has been having an affair with the foreman, Mitch. When she saw Rodney trapped in the machine she instantly broke it off but Mitch has gone crazy. Lara unwittingly discovers Mitch preparing a homemade bomb and finds herself locked in a claustrophobic “safe-room”. She attempts to escape through the extractor fan but is dead-ended. When Vince, unaware of her plight, switches off power, the room becomes Lara’s potential coffin. Searching for Lara, Vince happens on Mitch. Mitch injured himself attempting to escape. As they question a barely conscious Mitch about Lara’s whereabouts, Vince makes a chilling discovery: Mitch has made a bomb and placed it somewhere in the factory. It is too late for the bomb squad to get there but evacuation is out of the question: they still have Rodney trapped in the machine and Lara missing. In a breathtaking climax Rescue must somehow find Lara, dismantle the bomb and extract Rodney. Chase has the mantle of leadership thrust upon him and must remain cool in a crisis while Vince, who won’t even read a computer manual, tries to defuse the bomb. Lara’s air has run out and the bomb is ticking … tick … tick … tick.