The Ides of Matt 2015

by M. L. Buchman

  He found a small patch of snow to sit on among the high rock to give his legs a moment or two to recover while he ate.

  His goal was to hit Little Tahoma Peak today, and then get off the mountain. He’d originally thought to climb Rainier as well while he was up here, but he could see the northern horizon already graying up even more in the five minutes he’d crouched here. Tonight’s storm was predicted to make last night’s look like a mere flurry. It would lock out the mountain to even the most ambitious climbers for days. And he was due back in the Congo Rainforest hunting genocidal warlords soon.

  Michael listened for a response to the radio distress call. He should have heard it if there was one. From his perch he had sweeping coverage of the entire west of the Rainier down to Camp Muir at ten thousand feet and Paradise at five thousand.

  The call repeated.

  Silence, except for the wind raging to either side of his boulder. The park rangers clearly hadn’t heard it though the call had been on the frequency that everyone on the mountain was required to monitor.

  Everyone on the mountain.

  It was the first day of the New Year, there were only five people listed in the Park Office’s register. An elderly couple in their fifties hiking to Camp Muir for an overnight. A young couple, Charlene and Fred Moore with a climbing pass for the summit. And him.

  Reluctantly, sorry to break away from the peace of his solo climb, he pulled out his radio and fitted the earpiece; partly because it used less power than the speaker, and partly his military training to not give away his position was so deeply ingrained—despite being on friendly soil.

  “To distress call on Rainier. This is Michael, go ahead.”

  “Oh thank god!” A woman’s voice crackled over the earbud. “Fred has fallen into a crevasse and I can’t get him out. He’s trapped and hurt. His radio must be broken, but we can sort of shout in between the wind gusts. At least I think so. It’s hard to tell. Please, come. Please. We need help.”

  Michael listened for a moment. The wind wasn’t gusting much. More of a steady howl.

  “Okay, I need you to remain calm,” he thought back to the register at the park office, “Charlene. We’re going to go through this by the numbers. First, are you personally safe? Solidly anchored and warm enough?”

  “Yes, we’re both snapped into an ice screw. I managed to get a piton into the rock and have a backup line anchored there. And its Charli.”

  “Good,” more together than he’d expected. “Now, where are you?”

  She wasn’t sure. The trip had been Fred’s idea, no surprise there. In Michael’s experience women were generally too sensible to do something like climb Rainier in the dead of winter. Though they weren’t sensible enough not to follow along when a likely male beckoned them into doing something stupid.

  For himself, he’d wanted to keep his snow and ice skills up. He could feel them melting away under ops conducted in the heat and humidity of the Congolese rainforest, so he’d gone for a winter tromp up Rainier.

  But if she’d known to anchor herself more securely before calling for help, she wasn’t a helpless soul traveling on her husband’s whim either.

  So, they began playing the “what can you see” game in a world of ice, rock, and sky.

  2

  Captain Mark Henderson stood outside hangar 4-C and stared up at the northern sky. He debated whether to call for a training sortie or to give his crew the night off.

  It was midday and he was supposed to be sleeping, just as they were now, but upper brass never did understand SOAR. They’d rousted him with a question that could have been asked and answered by e-mail anytime in the next week if some Colonel hadn’t had a hair up his ass.

  The U.S. Army 160th Special Aviation Regiment specialized in one thing, nighttime helicopter operations. They did it better than anyone on the planet. That’s how they earned the Night Stalkers nickname. They’d flown into hundreds of places that they could never admit to, delivering Delta, SEAL, and other U.S. Special Operations assets to places no one else could get them into…or back out of alive.

  But that meant he was supposed to be asleep right now like the rest of his crew. Not that he’d been sleeping much lately. Three months ago, the powers that be had decided that SOAR needed a fifth battalion. It was to be based in Tacoma, Washington at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The 5th was to have four companies and he’d gotten the tap to lead “D” Company.

  His goal was simple. If SOAR were the best helicopter pilots on the planet, the 5th Battalion’s D Company was going to be the best in SOAR.

  Period.

  There would be no need to brag.

  They’d earn it.

  He had argued for and, surprisingly considering the layers of brass involved, been given the go-ahead to assemble a mixed company—the only one in the entire regiment. Most of SOAR was structured with one type of helicopter per company. Hell, the entire 2nd Battalion only flew the massive twin-rotor Chinooks. If they needed a Black Hawk or a Little Bird, they had to go outside not just the company, but the battalion to borrow assets.

  It made sense to the paper pushers. This way the 2nd Battalion only needed one set of spare parts, one set of mechanics.

  Mark didn’t give one damn about logistics.

  Well, he did, but he cared far more about his ability to respond. Because the 5D was a unique experiment, they’d decided to cripple his ass by giving him fewer assets. They’d learn and change their tune soon enough. In the meantime, he was collecting the best of the best personnel he could find, anywhere. He called and they came running, whether or not he’d flown with them before. It was deeply gratifying because these guys really were good.

  At the moment he had two Little Bird helicopters good for fast attacks and tight in-and-out tight scenarios, one of the big Chinook heavy lifters, two transport Black Hawks, and his baby.

  He needed to name her, but she was so perfect that he hadn’t found the right name yet. She was one of the rarest helicopters on the planet. There were only a dozen of them and they were custom designed by SOAR for their exclusive usage. The Direct Action Penetrator DAP Hawk might look like a weaponized Sikorsky Black Hawk, but she wasn’t even close. She was the most sophisticated, bad-ass helo ever launched into the night sky. And she was all his.

  A lot of SOAR’s company commanders led from the safety of a behind-the-lines observer seat. Mark planned to lead the 5D from the right-hand pilot’s seat of the…

  Damn! He really needed to name her.

  He wouldn’t mind a bad-ass nickname himself. He’d never picked one up along the way. Guys tried them on him, but they always faded away and he always drifted back to being Mark.

  Wouldn’t it be funny if he and his Hawk had the same cool name? That would really screw with people’s minds.

  He focused back on the graying sky to the north and pulled the leather bomber jacket his mother had given him for Christmas more tightly closed against the chill air. Puget Sound didn’t hit freezing very often, even in mid-winter, but the day was struggling for twenty degrees this afternoon courtesy of a chill Canadian system sweeping down the Fraser River Valley.

  He turned his head and spoke back over his shoulder to the DAP Hawk helicopter tucked away in hangar 4-C, “We fly tonight, girl.”

  The helo seemed to sleep more soundly for knowing that.

  Yeah. SOAR was known for being able to go anywhere at any time. The U.S. Postal Service motto of rain, snow, sleet, etc. had nothing on what the 160th SOAR could do.

  And very soon now, the 160th SOAR wouldn’t have anyone able to match what Henderson’s 5th Battalion D Company Night Stalkers could deliver.

  3

  Charli had calmed down the rest of the way when she realized that she could see Michael’s position high on Little Tahoma Peak. That still hadn’t given him much information on where she was.

  They did
finally narrow it down though.

  Partly, the westerning sun had revealed the snake-track shadow that their hike up had left through last night’s thick powder, and partly Charli had kept her head.

  “Disappointment Cleaver,” she agreed when he mentioned that landmark. “Yes, my brother talked about that.”

  Not Mister and Missus.

  “He said we were nearing the jump off point for the peak.”

  Top of the Cleaver, which put them past twelve thousand feet. The low-point saddle between his eleven thousand foot position and hers past twelve was down at ten thousand feet. An easy hour stroll down and back up if it wasn’t all up in the rarefied atmosphere above ten thousand feet and the ice-bearing winds weren’t howling like a demon across the face of fifty-degree slopes.

  With his binoculars he finally pinned down their position, a dot of bright red parka against white snow. Just a mile away, as the raven flies.

  He watched the snow spume outward in white-out clouds beneath the near hurricane force winds. Mt. Rainier stuck up past halfway to the jet stream and it wreaked havoc up here near the peak. Not even a raven could fly a straight line in this weather.

  “Okay, I’m going to listen all the time, Charli. So if you have a problem, you can call me. But I want you to shut off your radio to save the battery,” he had three spares with him, but Charli’s were in the crevasse with her brother. “Each hour on the hour, you can check in with me. But I want you to have plenty of power for when I get close. Can you do that?”

  She hadn’t sounded happy, but she’d agreed and signed off.

  He needed her to save her battery, but he also needed the silence. He had a long, technically tricky traverse down the slopes of Little Tahoma, then much higher up on Rainier’s flank. It required concentration to plan and execute. Being in the quiet of the world was what he needed to—

  “This is Mt. Rainier Rescue to Michael, come back.”

  So much for peace up on the mountain. It simply wasn’t going to be that sort of day.

  “Michael here.”

  “We couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation. Please relay information and do not attempt solo rescue. We already have climbing rangers enroute.”

  He relayed the information about Charli’s location and her brother’s unknown condition. Then he waited through the long pause of silence. He knew what was coming and wanted to get moving, but once he did the wind would deafen him and he’d need both hands and his full attention on what he was doing. He was free-climbing solo. He hadn’t brought great chunks of rope or enough gear so that he could rappel down from Little Tahoma and then abandon the gear to climb up Rainier.

  “Uh, Roger that,” the rangers finally responded. They might be good guys, but they were just Parkies and this was getting uglier by the moment.

  Michael gave them another thirty seconds. Enough.

  “Please transmit location and number of rescue climbers.”

  “We have two rescue-qualified climbing rangers leaving Longmire now.”

  Michael didn’t need three minutes of silence to assess the situation. Current road conditions made that an hour drive to Paradise, then a three to five hour hike to Camp Muir. And that would place them five to six hours below Charli and Fred Moore’s location. The storm was two hours out—three if he was lucky, but it wasn’t that kind of day.

  “Helicopter support?”

  “Not in these winds. They’ll have to…”

  Ride it out, the operator didn’t need to say. One of them down in a crevasse and injured; the other exposed to the elements with night falling. It was their death warrant.

  “Roger that,” Michael considered for a moment. “Get your two park rangers to recover the couple who went up to Camp Muir. Do not send them up the mountain. I don’t want to have to rescue four people. Out.”

  He tucked away his radio, the wrapper of his energy bar, and sipped some more water. Then he dug out a balaclava that covered everything except his snow goggles, and tugged on his gloves.

  He had to keep the radio on in case Charli called.

  The park rangers stop talking to him by the time he’d descended the first five hundred feet.

  After that, he moved in peace.

  Nothing but himself, the rock and ice, and the roar of Mother Nature as she veered the storm to drive straight onto the face of the mountain.

  4

  “You are a complete bastard making us fly in this shit.” The new guy Tim Maloney came up to Mark as he waited by the DAP Hawk in the dark of the glowering afternoon sky.

  It was blowing twenty, gusting thirty down here on the field.

  Tim tapped a couple fingers to the brow of his helmet in a casual salute, “Damn but I like that in a commander.”

  Sergeants Crazy Tim Maloney and Big John Wallace had requested to come aboard as a package deal to fill the two crew-chief spots. He’d wanted Big John who had a reputation for being an ace mechanic. And after he’d seen how Tim handled a mini-gun—crazy or not he was damned good—decided to give them both a try.

  Mark’s co-pilot, a Lieutenant Richardson, also was shaking down well. He flew silent which Mark appreciated and was a steady hand on the cyclic in a tight spot.

  It had only been a month but the team was mission ready by any standard he could come up with. There were still a lot of rough edges to polish off, but they were all of the sort that were only going to happen in combat.

  Lots of combat.

  Of course with multiple wars on top of the usual list of black ops, that polish would come all too soon.

  Henderson managed not to laugh at Tim’s comment, staying cool behind his mirrored Ray Bans as the afternoon light was shifting to evening. That’s what a commander did. He wasn’t one of the guys, he was the steady rock. He made sure he was always the best man on his team to give them something to trust and to strive for.

  Under the heavy storm clouds, it was already growing dark.

  “If you’re too chicken to fly in this shit,” he informed Tim doing his best not to smile, “you just let me know and I’ll sign your ticket back to the 10th Mountain.”

  “Dude,” Big John rolled up from completing the preflight inspection on the DAP Hawk to glare down at his buddy.

  John stood at least six-four and was massively strong. It was a surprise every single time he managed to fit into the crew chief’s seat close behind Henderson’s piloting position.

  Tim was equally broad-shouldered but at five-eight looked tiny next to his friend.

  “You get us booted,” John’s voice was a low rumble, “and I am gonna sit on your head until all the stupid runs out your ass.”

  “I—”

  “Let’s saddle up,” Mark cut Tim off granting the round to Big John. He’d long since learned that if he didn’t choose a winner, these guys could go at it all night without missing a beat.

  Once they were all in position and the intercom was up, he filled them in. “This is a test of the new systems you guys laid in. I want to be able to fly within three meters of plan in zero visibility. Fog, snow, I don’t give a shit. I want to prove we can do it until we know it in our bones.”

  “Yes sir, Boss.”

  “She’ll do it,” John was very protective of his helo, just what you wanted in a chief mechanic.

  Richardson kept his usual silence.

  Mark cleared with the tower and lifted the DAP Hawk into thirty knots of nasty. The rain was trying to decide if it was sleet, and the gusts were working to tie the clouds into intricate Christmas bows. Perfect weather for a test flight.

  They’d start in the waning daylight and work the skills right into darkness. By sunrise they’d have it down. They’d own it.

  Without his needing to ask, Richardson had the terrain-following radar active and had layered it on the terrain map programmed into the computer.

/>   Mark started at fifty feet above the pines and laid down the hammer, turning southeast to get some terrain-following practice in the foothills of the Cascade Range.

  5

  Michael was down off Little Tahoma Peak in forty minutes.

  The blue was gone from the sky. He couldn’t tell if there was new snow falling from the clouds yet. Maybe it was just that he’d descended from the rocky buttress of Little Tahoma down onto the Emmons Glacier and it was last night’s snowfall blowing sideways.

  After he clipped on his crampons, he spent twenty precious minutes finding his way through the serac field. The massive blocks of ice thrown up by the glacier impacting the uphill slopes of Little Tahoma had created a near impenetrable field of house-sized chunks all looking to spill downslope at the slightest provocation.

  It was a risky route. He’d calculated that against the additional time required to descend another thousand feet to where the Ingraham Glacier trailed placidly along Little Tahoma’s lower reaches, cross safely, and only then start the much longer climb up to Disappointment Cleaver. He knew Charli Moore wasn’t in a position to wait that long.

  Also, the lengthier and safer descent would place the bastion of rock between them and block radio contact. The last thing he needed was for her to panic.

  At precisely one hour she called in, just as he cleared the serac field.

  “I’m hoping to be there before your next check-in call,” he assured her and then calculated the chances of delivering on that and didn’t like them.

  A mile away up a forty-five degree slope. Climb the stairs of the Empire State Building five times. Except the stairs were steeper than normal ones built by humans, made of ice, and filled with hidden crevasses crossed by precarious snow bridges.

  Michael checked his map for his current position and took a careful compass reading. Then he set the GPS as a backup.

  By the next check-in, if he wasn’t there, he’d be able to tell her how soon in minutes.