Brace For Impact (HQR Intrigue)

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  Hey, maybe.

  The time had come for him to decide whether to go back the way he’d come, the standard route along Stetattle ridge, or try a different and probably more difficult route. Will leaned toward the different route out of the backcountry. He wasn’t in any hurry. He’d brought plenty of food if he ended up taking an extra day or even two, and if he hadn’t, he could fill himself with the sweet blueberries ripe on low-growing shrubs at a certain altitude.

  Reluctantly, he heaved his pack onto his back and adjusted the weight. Ice ax in hand, he started to pick his way across a patch of snow that began the slow descent. Far below amid a subalpine area of stunted trees and a bright patch of blooming heather, movement caught his eye and he paused. Was he about to have company? Damn, he hoped not. He wanted this day, this mountain, to himself.

  Then he identified the patch of cinnamon-brown as a black bear, probably dining on blueberries, too. Not alone. He shifted his binoculars to see her cub. Smiling, he watched for a few minutes, glad his path wouldn’t lead him too near to them. Getting between mama and her cub wouldn’t be smart.

  He’d let the binoculars fall and started forward again when he heard a faint sound that had him turning his head. A growl...no, a hum? It took him a minute to spot the small plane that must have come over Ross Lake and now passed north of Sourdough Lake. In fact, it was heading pretty well directly toward him, which disturbed him on a subliminal level—made him want to sprint to take cover.

  He saw the moment the bear swung her head, too, in search of the source of that alien noise. A sudden sharp bang, although muted by distance, shot adrenaline through his body. What in hell...? Will lifted his binoculars again, this time to the plane, adjusting until he could all but see the pilot’s face. Had the guy dropped some kind of load? Not the best country for retrieval, if so.

  Frowning, he cocked his head and listened hard. No more irritating buzz. Oh, crap. The engine had shut down; the propeller no longer turned. The nose dropped. That plane was heading down. He watched in horror as it descended precipitously toward the steep, forested slopes beneath him.

  “Start the damn engine. There’s still time. Start it!” he shouted.

  Following along with his binoculars, he saw the moment the plane hit the first treetops. Cartwheeled. Tore apart.

  It might not be safe or smart, but the next thing he knew, he was running.

  * * *

  TAT-A-TAT, TAT-A-TAT, TAT-A-TAT.

  Maddy tried to understand the staccato series of rapping sounds followed by silence, then a repeat. Strangely reluctant to open her eyes, she listened hard.

  A harsh call. A trilling.

  Something brushed her face. She jerked, and pain racked her body.

  Have to see, have to see. Somehow she knew she really didn’t want to know what had happened, but...even aside from the pain, so diffused she wasn’t sure what the source of it was, her head felt weird. So she slitted her eyes.

  And let out a shocked cry. She was hanging upside down. And looking at a completely unfamiliar landscape. Ground that was tilted. Rocks, the rough boles of trees and feathery sweeps of green branches.

  Wanting to retreat into darkness again, she squeezed her eyes shut, but a stern inner voice refused to let her go back into hiding. Figure out what’s wrong. Like why I’m hanging upside down like a bat settling for a snooze. She’d have giggled if she hadn’t known instinctively how much that would hurt.

  All right, all right.

  This time when she opened her eyes, she lifted her chin to look upward. It took her way longer than it should have to comprehend. A belt across her lap and shoulder held her in a seat anchored to torn metal. Not a car seat, she thought, puzzled. Was that...? It was... A wing—an airplane wing—was attached, stabbing toward the ground amidst the greenery.

  Airplane seat belt, not car. It was all that held her from falling. A flicker of memory and she knew. That’s why I’m alive, she thought in shock, trying to imagine the force that had torn the plane into pieces.

  The Cessna. In a flood of renewed fear, she listened for voices, cries, anything to indicate one or both of the men were alive.

  “Scott!” she called. “Bill!” Her “Anyone?” trailed off weakly.

  She heard something; she just didn’t know what.

  Getting down had to come before anything else.

  She could open the seat belt, but would drop what had to be eight or ten feet onto her head. Even fuzzy-minded as she was, she knew that wouldn’t be smart.

  She tried to pull herself upward, grabbing a piece of the wreckage. Metal groaned, shifted, and Maddy froze. Her head swam, and she looked to see bright red blood running down her arm. She must have sliced her palm open. In the greater scheme of things, it didn’t seem important. Being fuzzy insulated her. She found a more solid handhold—the side of the cabin, minus the window—took a deep breath and unsnapped the belt.

  Her bloody hand slipped from the wreckage and she fell sooner than she’d planned, twisting to land hard on her butt and side. She skidded, bumping to a stop against a boulder. Pain engulfed her and she gritted her teeth against the need to scream.

  When she was finally able to move, she wasn’t sure she hadn’t lost consciousness again. From the angle of the sun through the trees, it hadn’t been long, though. Unless she’d lost an entire day? No, the blood on her hand and arm still looked fresh.

  Sitting up proved to be an agonizing effort. The left side of her body must have taken the brunt of the damage. Either her arm was broken, or dislocated. Or it could be her collarbone, she supposed. And ribs, and hip. But when she ordered her feet to waggle, they did, and when she experimentally bent her knees, doing so didn’t make her want to pass out.

  Maddy continued to evaluate her condition. She had to wipe blood away from her eyes, which suggested a gash or blow up there somewhere. Her head hurt fiercely, making it hard to think. And yes, she had definitely slashed open her palm, although she was already so bloody, she could hardly tell where this stream was coming from. None of the blood fountained, though, just trickled and left smears, so she wasn’t bleeding to death.

  Or dying at all. She didn’t think.

  With her right hand she clutched the thin bole of a wispy, small evergreen of some kind and used it to pull herself to her feet. Then she turned slowly in search of the rest of the plane. Not the tail—she didn’t care about the tail. The nose. The front seats, the two men. Logically, they had to be...somewhere in front of her.

  Tat-a-tat, tat-a-tat, tat-a-tat.

  Woodpecker, she understood. It kept tapping as she struggled forward, the sound weirdly comforting. Something else was alive, going about its business.

  She glimpsed red and white between the trees, and tried to run even on the steep sideways slope. She fell to her knees and slithered downhill until she came up against a tree solid enough to hold her. As she pushed herself up again, an involuntary whimper escaped her. Her eyes stung—whether from blood or tears, Maddy didn’t know.

  This time she moved more carefully, watching where she put her feet, grabbing branches where she could for support. The rocky side hill didn’t support huge trees. Maybe...maybe these had softened the landing.

  And torn the plane to shreds, too.

  She saw the other wing first. It had slashed raw places in tree trunks and ripped away branches. More metal lay ahead, another thirty or forty feet.

  There she found Bill Potter, still in his seat as she’d been, but the way his head lay on his shoulder—Her teeth chattered as she made herself take a closer look. And then she backed away and bent over puking, snot and tears and blood mixing until she had to use the hem of her shirt to wipe her face again.

  She called for Scott, listened. Did it again, and this time she heard a cry. I’m not alone. Whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she half crawled in that direction.

 
; When she saw him, crumpled and twisted, her teeth started to chatter again. That couldn’t be right. People didn’t bend that way.

  She had to scramble the last bit, the ground cold and sloping even more steeply here.

  His eyes were open when she reached him, but beneath his tan his face was a color she’d never seen. His lips were almost blue.

  “Scott,” she whispered, not letting herself look at his lower body.

  “Maddy.” Her name came out so quietly, she bent close to hear him. Took his hand in hers, but his chilly fingers didn’t tighten in response. Something else she didn’t want to think about.

  “I’ll go for help,” she said, unable to help crying.

  “No.” Suddenly, his fingers convulsed like claws, biting into her hand. His eyes held hers with fierce determination. “Not an accident.”

  That was something she hadn’t yet let herself think. Even though she knew, she knew, Maddy heard herself saying, “What?”

  “Bomb.”

  Chapter Two

  As Maddy clutched his hand, Scott tried to work his mouth. “Can’t trust marshals. Only people who knew.”

  “That you’d gone to get me and how we were getting back?”

  “Yes.”

  “But...”

  “Can’t stay with plane.”

  “I won’t leave you!”

  “Have to.” His voice had weakened. Blood bubbled between his lips.

  “No—”

  “They’ll need to be sure you’re dead. Someone will be coming.” He stared at her with what she sensed took everything he had left. “Take coats, first-aid kit. Food. Run, Maddy.”

  Her hot tears splattered onto his face. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Friend. Marshal. Ruzinski. Robert. Remember.”

  She had to lip-read now. “Robert Ruzinski,” she repeated.

  He made a sound that might have been confirmation. His lips moved again. “Trust him.”

  “Okay. But I can’t leave you.”

  Staring into his eyes, she saw the very second he left her. The tight clench of his fingers loosened. When she lifted her hand away, his arm flopped to his side.

  He was dead.

  She let herself cry for a few minutes before she made herself think through the cotton candy that seemed to fill her head.

  Normally, she’d try to figure out whether there was some kind of beacon and how it worked. Or...would the radio still work? But as it was...

  Run.

  She didn’t dare be found. Not yet. She had to hide. Stay alive until she could really think, evaluate her options. Right now she needed to scavenge what she could from the plane, or she wouldn’t survive. She’d seen enough snow before the plane came down to know it must still get cold this high up in the mountains. And there might be some food. Something to hold water in. Yes, a first-aid kit.

  Would she have phone reception? Maddy didn’t remember seeing her purse. It could be anywhere. She’d look, but the phone, even if it was what Scott had called a “burner,” would have GPS, wouldn’t it? That might not be good.

  Warmth, food, water, bandages—those were her needs. And also... She turned her head to the twisted part of Scott Rankin’s body. If he carried a gun, she needed to take that.

  The idea of groping his body felt like a hideous invasion. He’d want her to, though—she felt sure.

  Shivering, Maddy knelt over him.

  * * *

  HE HAD TO be insane.

  Will had had plenty of time to think about what he was doing, and how little chance there was that he’d be able to help anyone. People rarely survived that kind of crash. If anyone had miraculously lived, they might get a faster response from an activated beacon than from him. He’d known from the beginning that he’d take hours to reach the crash site.

  But what if the plane didn’t have a beacon? If the pilot hadn’t filed a flight plan?

  Straight lines in this country were rarely possible. No trail existed for him to follow. Instead, he’d reluctantly realized he had to drop from his current elevation of 7,380 feet on the summit and head southwest along the side of the ridge leading toward McMillan Spire. He had to stay above the tree line so he’d see the crash site. Then he just had to hope it would be possible to climb down to it.

  This was not a recommended descent route from Elephant Butte. In fact, from what he’d read, he’d be facing brutal conditions. Chances were good he wouldn’t have cell phone coverage once he dropped toward the Torrent Creek and Stettatle Creek drainages. Even as he jogged along a lengthy band of snow, using his ice ax to aid his balance, he debated whether he should call to report what he’d seen. Swearing under his breath, he made himself stop, lower his pack and dig for his cell phone, which of course wasn’t easily accessed. He hadn’t expected to want it.

  And then when he did find it...he had no bars. Will dropped the damn useless thing back into a pocket that he zipped, then shouldered the pack again and set off.

  The speed he tried to maintain was a lot faster than was safe.

  Even as he thought that, his feet caught crumbling rock and skidded. He slammed the serrated end of the ax into a crack between boulders and felt the wrench on his shoulders as the ax held and one of his booted feet slid over a drop-off.

  Swearing, sweating, he made slow, careful movements to get his feet back under him on a too-narrow ledge. The unwieldy pack didn’t help; even though he’d eaten some of the food he’d carried in, it probably still weighed seventy pounds or more. Nothing he wasn’t familiar with from deployments, but this was a different landscape. The weight shifted his balance, like a pregnant woman’s belly shifted hers. He made his cautious and much slower way to another strip of snow, one of many that formed ribbons between stretches of tumbled rock.

  Had to come up here alone, didn’t ya?

  Maybe this wasn’t the right plan. He was strong. He thought he could make it back to Diablo by early nightfall, even though he’d taken two days to get up here. He could call 911 or find a ranger station, get a rescue helicopter in the air.

  One that wouldn’t be able to land in this mountainous landscape, Will reminded himself.

  Still, if he ever reached the crash site, odds were he’d find a dead pilot. Given that this was Sunday, he might also find some climbers or hikers who’d been closer and had already reached the site.

  He just didn’t believe that. This was early in the season in the high mountains. A warm spring had opened the backcountry earlier than usual. A lot of people would have waited for the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. And even though people down at Ross Lake and hiking the Big Beaver Trail had probably seen the plane go overhead, if they paid any attention to it at all once it crossed the ridge, they’d have lost sight before it began to plummet. Climbers up McMillan Spire might have seen it, but they might just as well have not, too. No matter what, he was closer. Will had a bad feeling that, by sheer chance, he might be the only person who’d seen the crash.

  He could do more to help survivors than almost anyone, too, although he regretted the limited medical supplies he carried. Still, as an army medic—former army medic—he’d seen and treated more traumatic injuries than most physicians. Death was all too familiar to him, but if there was any chance...

  He groaned and kept moving.

  * * *

  IT TOOK MADDY half an hour and a panicky realization of passing time to realize the rear portion of the plane wasn’t where she thought it should be. It should have broken off first and thus been behind where she’d regained consciousness hanging upside down. Every step hurt. Even the brush of hemlock or fir needles hurt. If she hadn’t been terrified—Run, Maddy—she would have given up. But she couldn’t, in case Marshal Rankin was right.

  Holding on to a tree limb to keep from falling down the slope, she made herself remember when the plane first hit the treetops.
As their trajectory slowed, she’d felt hope. And then a wing must have caught, because the entire plane swung around and then flipped. What came after, she knew only from seeing two large pieces of what had been a shiny, well-maintained and loved small plane.

  So...other pieces could have been flung in almost any direction, couldn’t they? She’d been lucky to find the nose of the plane so quickly. What she’d considered logic wasn’t logic at all. The tail could have ended up somewhere ahead of the nose, or off to one side or the other. It wasn’t as if chunks of airplane would have been shed in a straight line.

  She paid attention to broken branches and scarred trunks. Raw scrapes in the gray rock. Her brain kept latching on to small, mostly meaningless details. What was that harsh call she kept hearing? Had the bang really been loud enough to have been a bomb going off? Could they have, oh, hit a big bird that fouled the propeller or the engine? No, Scott would have seen that; he’d been sitting in front, right beside the pilot. Of course he would. Then she started to worry about what kind of animals would be drawn by the smell of blood. Hadn’t grizzlies been reintroduced into the North Cascades? What if the two men’s bodies got eaten?

  If her stomach hadn’t already emptied itself, she’d have been down on her knees heaving again.

  Even if she had the strength, could she bury Scott and Bill? Find enough rocks to pile on them?

  Run, Maddy.

  No. She had to leave the two men, as Scott had demanded she do.

  Increasingly dazed, she came by pure chance on a duffel bag hanging above her. It took her a while to find a broken limb long enough to poke at it until it fell. She unzipped it and her heart squeezed in relief when she saw her own clothing. She wanted to hug the duffel just because it was familiar. Hers.

  Instead, she made herself toss out everything that wasn’t immediately useful. Shorts? Sandals? Gone. One pair of extra jeans she kept, because the ones she wore were so torn and bloody. Thin cotton pajama pants could be long underwear. She kept a toothbrush and toothpaste, but ditched shampoo. A shower was not in her immediate future. Socks—she’d need those. And thank goodness she’d brought her hiking boots. She’d almost left them behind, because she hadn’t been a hiker until she had to fill long, empty weekends this past year. Now she took the time to sit down, change socks and laboriously lace up the boots with one hand. She wouldn’t need her shoes.