by Karen Harper
He told them, “I need to get into my dry suit ASAP. Gonna strip down to my thermal wick underwear while you lay that bundled rubber suit out for me. Also, could you uncoil that long rope?” he added, pointing.
“Oh, yes, sure,” the woman said and bent immediately to unwrap his black neoprene dry suit while he took off his down jacket and jeans. He could have done that inside the plane right now, but it would have taken longer and she wasn’t looking, though the boy was. He seemed to be studying his face, his every move. It felt familiar—Bryce used to be curious about everything his grandpa did, since the old man was his boyhood hero.
He was glad he already wore what people always thought was long underwear. He pulled on his thermal insulation outfit over that, and the woman—had his contact said her name was Peg?—assisted.
She perfectly followed his orders, helping him shove his legs and arms in, tug the chest zipper closed, then check the seals at the neck, wrists and ankles. She even handed him his rubber dive booties and fins as if she’d done this before. He hefted and secured his air tank, which seemed so heavy here but would be so light underwater.
Last, she watched him adjust his hard shell helmet with his mounted light attached, then handed him his flashlight on a cord as if he’d asked for it.
She had incredible blue eyes, darker than his. She was very nervous but seemed steady.
“You’re a big help,” he said as she handed him his mask. “I’m Bryce,” he said almost as an afterthought.
“They told me. I’m Meg—Megan Metzler, and this is my son, Chip.”
“Nice to meet you. Gotta go. I’m praying the pilot or anyone inside has an air pocket. I’m going to knot the rope around my plane’s pontoon so I don’t get lost down there. Dark under ice where it’s deep and wreckage can drift.”
“And this lake water’s murky even in the summer. Glacial runoff from the falls,” she told him. She must live near here.
He nodded. “There should be help coming from Anchorage, hopefully soon. You two just stay back from that hole where it went in. I’m leaving my plane open so you can get in for a windbreak. There’s coffee and doughnuts inside. Stay warm and safe.”
“I understand. Thanks,” she called after him as he bent to tie the guide rope on the plane, then shuffled like an old man out onto the ice toward the jagged hole. From here the ice looked over two feet thick. The hole was about as big as his living room in Juneau.
He saw no sign of the sunken plane but remembered his contact had said the woman had even described the make of the plane that crashed. His contact had also said he knew who she was, the widow of a bush pilot who’d slammed into a cliff in bad weather a couple years ago.
Damn, he had to keep his mind on this possible rescue that would, sadly, probably be a recovery. He yanked the guideline rope to be certain it was secure, then sat on the edge of the broken ice. The lake water made swirls and eddies as he put his legs in. He started breathing canned air, then let himself over the jagged edge into the dark, shifting depths.
* * *
“Mom, he said we could get in his plane. Let’s go!”
Meg didn’t want to even do that. Shouldn’t they stand out here, watching for any sign from Bryce? What if he yanked on his rope or needed help if he brought the pilot up? But her nose and face were freezing, and she was trembling from the excitement and the cold, though she’d been sweating the whole time she helped the pilot prepare for his dive. Also, she needed to call Suze so she didn’t think they were lost.
“All right,” she said even as he tugged at her arm. Reluctantly, she climbed the steps into the plane, and Chip didn’t even need a boost. She closed the door behind them to halt the cold blast of air across the expanse of lake ice. It was only the second small plane she’d been in since Ryan was lost.
The interior sat six people, but she knew that from when Ryan had talked at length about saving up for a plane like this.
“Can I sit in the pilot’s seat?” Chip asked. “I won’t touch anything, ’cept maybe put my hands on the yoke wheel.”
“You just be very careful,” she said as he sat in the pilot’s place and she in the copilot seat.
The cockpit, even the passenger area behind them, looked new—immaculate except for duffel bags from which he’d yanked his diving gear.
“You keep a watch out that window,” she told Chip, and took Bryce up on the offer of hot coffee and food just behind their seats. She opened the box of doughnuts and saw Bryce Saylor liked chocolate, just like Chip, for half of the eight left from the dozen were iced with dark brown frosting.
Keeping her gaze riveted on the crash site, she phoned Suze, told her what happened and assured her they were all right. To Meg’s surprise, Suze had already learned the basics of what happened, but she pumped her for details, then explained how she’d learned about the crash.
“I got a call from the mayor. Someone in Anchorage called him. People are coming out there from town to help. I suppose it will take the rescue guys from Anchorage a while to get there. How long has the plane been down?”
“I actually don’t know,” she admitted. “It seems eons since it happened and especially since this recovery diver went under the ice. I’m scared it’s taking him so long. I’ll call you when I can, especially if something happens. We’re just sitting in his plane right now to stay warm.”
“You are both sitting in his small plane?” Suze repeated, which made Meg mad. Her sister worried too much about the fact she was still depressed over losing Ryan, that she didn’t want to go out and about, even when a male friend had invited her. Suze tried to push her into things much too fast. Suze had never been married, never had a great love—she didn’t understand.
“Gotta go,” she told Suze. “Talk later.”
She kept her eyes riveted to the crash site, though Chip was all eyes for the plane. She didn’t mention that his father had wanted exactly this model but the cost had been prohibitive. She’d been told that this was Bryce’s personal plane, so did that mean he had money? Strange to be sitting here, worrying about him, feeling she knew him when she really didn’t. It even smelled good in here, kind of—masculine.
The man himself, best as she could tell, had military-cut blond hair and ice-blue eyes. He had chiseled features and was a head taller than her, probably a little over six feet. He was muscular—that she’d noted when he was down to his thermal wear.
She made Chip take his hands off the yoke and just sit there, so he started to read all the dials out loud. Time crawled. What if something had happened to Bryce down there? Should she get out and make sure the jagged edge of the ice hole had not cut his guide rope? No, it looked as taut as before, straight as an arrow across to the gaping hole.
“That pilot who crashed might be dead or Mr. Bryce would be back up by now with him,” Chip said.
How could this boy sound so grown-up? As young as he was, as little as he must really recall his father, sometimes he sounded just like him. And here they were sitting in a plane, when one of her goals in life after losing Ryan was to keep Chip away from planes, at least small, propeller-driven ones.
“You may be right,” she admitted. “But Bryce said there could be a pocket of air.”
“He’s a hero, isn’t he?” Chip asked, looking toward her at last.
“He risks his life to help others,” she said. “Yes, that’s one of the most important definitions of a hero.”
“I’d say as good as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, even if his diving suit and mask made him look like Darth Vader.”
Reality slammed in. This was still a mere boy, a child. Yet he knew the difference between good and evil even if in make-believe—and this tragedy and this hero risking his life were the real deal.
“Mom, look! There’s a man peeking out from the pine trees,” Chip said, pointing. “He’s watching.”
She saw who he mea
nt. The man was wrapped in a warm woolen blanket, a white one that blended with the snow, but surely he had on a coat under that. But no wonder they didn’t notice him before, partly secreted and wrapped in white.
“Maybe someone out for a walk like us,” she said. “Maybe he heard or saw the crash.”
“But it’s kind of like he’s hiding, like he didn’t want us to see him, so maybe he’s spying on us.”
Of course, it was her imagination and she was letting all this get to her, but the man did seem to be—well, lurking. Why indeed didn’t he come out to ask them what had happened, what was going on, or even volunteer to help? She’d learned Alaskans were like that, one for all and all for one.
Unless, of course, that stranger didn’t want anyone to know he was here.
“Besides,” Chip’s voice cut into her agonizing, “there are more people down that way in snowmobiles! See?”
She tore her gaze from the vigilant stranger. “It can’t just be more gawkers,” she said. “It must be townspeople. You come with me. We need to tell them what’s going on.”
They clambered down to the ground and shouted and waved at the people streaming along the shore toward them. But she also noted that the strange watcher in the white blanket had disappeared.
CHAPTER THREE
Bryce hated to dive alone. It wasn’t safe. Especially in a hostile environment, though he’d done that numerous times before. Under fire in the Middle East. In a storm. In dives a lot deeper than this. Under-ice attempted rescues that went bad.
Hell, this one was bad too. He had seen the pilot, who was definitely deceased. Plane crushed around the man like a metal pop can. The good thing: as far as Bryce could tell, there had not been any passengers. A solo flight. A fatal flight.
But the really weird thing was the fuselage had no markings, no legally mandated ID number. Maybe this was some guy who’d fixed up his own plane and took off not from an airport but his own land. In this state of loners and eccentrics, anything was possible. But Bryce knew he’d have to retrieve the body and the flight plan and manifest—if there was one—to figure all that out. The NTSB would send him a small team to help with recon and recovery if he was to remain commander of this incident—if his boss of bosses requested that—and odds were, he would. After all, this type of rescue and recovery mission wasn’t typical for Bryce these days, but the lack of markings or ID were red flags he couldn’t ignore. This was exactly the kind of plane the task force had been tracking.
It was eerie down here, not that it wasn’t always in deep water, especially under ice. The thick, frozen roof above kept things dark, and his helmet light bounced off glass and plastic to make it seem another diver was with him, hovering, shifting.
Right now he could not access the plane past the crumpled steel and snagged body of the pilot. He hoped he didn’t need the Jaws of Life or an underwater blowtorch. He played his flashlight once more over the smashed cockpit, then turned away to slowly surface, looking up for the hole in the thick ice.
Had the plane shifted while he was down here? The hole wasn’t where he thought it would be, so he’d have to look for the dangling rope. Despite its length, there had not been enough of it to keep it tethered to his dive belt. Because the lake was deeper than he thought, and he knew it wouldn’t take many more feet of depth before his thoughts got funny, he kept heading up.
Meg was right about the milky look of the water from glacial runoff and, no doubt, tiny rock fragments from the falls. For a moment, he felt as if he were falling instead of going up. Was he losing his steady thoughts from carbon dioxide retention? He’d been careful about that as always, but he kept having sideways ideas, not related to what he was doing and seeing.
He couldn’t stop wondering why people say falling in love, as if it was a downer. Why not rising in love? Flying in love? Soaring in love? And why was he thinking of this right now?
He shook his head and popped his ears. He’d heard that this whole lake was a graveyard, with the pioneers who drowned here. Now this poor pilot in an unmarked vehicle, like the other unmarked graves. Was this guy just untrained or overconfident? Smuggling something? Running from something? Surely he wasn’t blinded by the sun glare off the snow and ice and just misjudged a landing. His plane must have malfunctioned.
Bryce shifted directions toward the light above, and swam upward toward it.
* * *
Meg saw and heard the white blankness of the lake suddenly explode with people and noise. At least it was not as bad as the memory of that plane crash. Chip was waving madly as if these folks were his best friends, but she did recognize some of the people who had come out, most on snowmobiles they left on the edge of the ice, some on cross-country skis.
She hurried to meet people, to answer questions, and—she surprised herself at this—to address them in a loud, steady voice.
“Please keep off the ice and quiet down so I can explain all at once. There is a professional government rescue and recovery diver checking on the pilot and plane that went down. You can see the large hole the crash made. But we need to listen in case the diver surfaces and calls for help!”
To her amazement and satisfaction, the group of about twenty quieted and came closer to hear. She and Chip answered questions as best they could. “Yes, the National Transportation Safety Board will be sending out more help, but the diver who is here is what they call an official incident commander. I talked to NTSB in Washington, DC.”
More questions, voices quieter this time. It all reminded her of an impromptu presidential news conference on the lawn of the White House.
“No, I didn’t recognize the plane,” she responded. “Yes, my son and I know the diver’s name but little else.” She cleared her throat, picturing how businesslike Bryce was, even out here in the wilds. Yet he had been kind, even protective.
“His name is Bryce Saylor,” she told them. “That is his plane where we were waiting, his personal plane, not an NTSB official one. I don’t know why he was in this area since he’s out of Juneau, but we were glad to see him.”
She glanced out again for the hundredth time at the gaping hole in the ice now greatly shadowed by the sinking sun throwing long, dark silhouettes onto the surface. But Bryce’s head and shoulders were emerging from that horrid, jagged hole. She felt such a thrust of relief she nearly burst into tears.
“Chip, stay here,” she said. “I’m going out a ways to see if he needs help.”
She’d said that with enough authority that even the old timers and a couple of army vets she recognized in the little crowd kept quiet and followed her orders. The town had no real sheriff and the acting one was probably at a holiday meal in Anchorage. It was the mayor who had authority around here.
Walking on the ice was more treacherous than she had imagined. She took small steps, sliding along in tiny movements. Ahead of her, Bryce hauled himself completely out of the water and sat on the side of the hole, then pulled his mask off and lifted his long legs out.
Some people on the shore applauded. Meg felt so bad for the unknown pilot who had lost his life today, but she was so happy to see Bryce, stranger that he still was, emerge from the lake.
“Are you okay?” she called to him from about twenty feet away.
“Don’t come closer,” he ordered. “The pilot’s deceased, plane’s a wreck. I’ll need a team. I see we have company.”
“Just townspeople so far, not first responders,” she shouted to him.
“I can see that, but I appreciate your being a first responder for me. Is the boy all right? Are you?”
As he got to his knees, then stood carefully, as chilled as she was, a strange warmth spread through her. Just his words and the tone of his voice made her weak in the knees even as he stood and came carefully toward her. With all that was going on, all he had to do, he was thinking of her and Chip.
“You know anybody at the lodge?
” he asked to surprise her even more. “I stayed there once years ago for a couple of days but got an assignment, so I had to leave.”
He kept trudging toward her. She realized how heavy his gear must be out of the water. He seemed to know this lake—and the lodge.
“You won’t believe this,” she told him as they struggled across the ice together toward the shore. When she carried his flippers, he put his hand on her elbow to steady her. “My sister and I run the lodge now. We have room for you—and your crew, of course.”
His face looked so cold and the suction marks of his face mask were imprinted on his skin. But his eyes and smile were warm.
“Kismet,” he said.
For a moment she wasn’t sure what he had said, what he meant. Kiss what?
But any reply she had was drowned out by the muted applause of gloved and mittened hands and the storm of questions villagers began to shout at Bryce. Amid all that, Meg could pick out Chip’s high voice saying, “I liked your plane a lot, Mr. Bryce! It was really cool—no, I mean warm—inside.”
* * *
“You have to be kidding, absolutely kidding!” Suze said when a finally thawed-out Meg and Chip told her the NTSB commander and his two-man team would be staying for at least several days at the lodge.
“Thank heavens we have room,” Suze said. “So, I guess we’d better put leftover turkey and the fixings on the table tonight. We went through that great pumpkin pie you made so we may have to make do with that mince pie Chip doesn’t like and a plate of your chocolates.”
“I like pie, really, Aunt Suze,” Chip said, pulling a new warm sweatshirt over his mussed head. “But people should not put meat in pies. Maybe just tell Mr. Bryce it’s a raisin pie ’cause it’s got those in there. Just think, we’re gonna have guests who are pilots. I bet he’ll answer my questions. I was telling Mom, he looked like Darth Vader when he was in his water suit, but he’s more like Han Solo—a real cool pilot like Daddy was.”
