by The Witness
Then she spotted Sam Rawlins, and it all came rushing back. Uttering a low moan, she put her hand over her thundering heart and slumped back against the seat.
Her relief didn't last long. The next instant Lauren realized what it was that had jerked her out of a sound sleep. The drone of one of the plane's engines had been replaced with an erratic sputtering and coughing.
Gripping the seat arms, Lauren sat forward and yelled at the three men, "What's making that noise? What's wrong?"
Agent Owens glanced back at her, but the terror in his young face did nothing to ease her mind.
Sam twisted around in his seat and shouted, "We've developed engine trouble! Sit tight and keep your seat belt on!"
Engine trouble? Lauren's chest suddenly felt as though it were being squeezed in a vise.
She pressed her face to the side window and looked out, and her stomach dropped to the vicinity of her knees. They were much lower than she had expected. The treetops and rocks seemed only a few hundred yards beneath the plane.
The scenery was spectacular. They were flying over a majestic mountain range, but there wasn't a sign of civilization anywhere, only what appeared to be hundreds of miles of jagged peaks and high, fog-shrouded valleys, buried deep in snow.
"C'mon. C'mon, baby, don't quit on me now, sweetheart!" the pilot exhorted his aircraft.
Instantly Lauren's attention switched back to the front. The men's shouts had taken on an urgent quality. Bob Halloran was furiously flipping switches and checking dials on the cockpit control panel and shouting orders at Agent Rawlins, who was working like a demon to carry them out. Neither man's efforts had any effect. The sputtering and coughing grew worse, and the plane bucked like a rodeo bronc.
Lauren held on tight to the seat arms and fought back a scream.
"We're losing it! Dammit! We're losing it!"
"Losing it? Losing what? What do you mean? What are we losing?" Lauren shouted, but a glance out the window supplied the answer. She stared in horror as the right propeller slowed and stopped. "Oh my God, no! No!"
"How about the other one. Can we hold it?" Sam shouted.
"Not for long!"
Only then did Lauren realize that the erratic noise had not stopped. The plane's other engine was making the same sickening coughs and sputters. She leaned over to look out of the window on the other side of the cabin just in time to see the second propeller come to a stop.
The sudden cessation of noise was stunning. The only sound was the eerie whistle of wind flowing over the fuselage.
"That's it! We're going down, people!"
"Oh my God!" Dave shrieked.
Sam twisted around and shouted at Lauren, "Pull your seat belt tight. And put your head down! Do it! Now!"
She didn't hear him. Paralyzed with fear, Lauren stared out the window at the snowy mountain side rushing up to meet them.
Then Sam was beside her. "Put your head down, dammit! And brace yourself!" Shoving her parka into her lap, he grasped the back of her neck and pushed her face into the down-filled coat.
"I see a clearing ahead!" the pilot shouted. "I'm gonna try for it! Come on, baby. Come on. You can make it. Just a little farther. Glide! Glide!"
Lauren wanted to scream, but her throat was so tight she couldn't make a sound. There was just the whistle of the wind and the pilot's desperate chatter.
"Here it comes! We're gonna hit! Oh, shit! We're gonna clip the trees! Hang on! Hang on!"
Something scraped the underside of the fuselage, and at once a series of jolts shook the plane. The repeated crack of splintering wood sounded like gunfire. Then the world exploded all around them.
The horrible screech of metal rending seemed to go on forever, like a banshee's wail. Lauren was thrown cruelly against her seat belt and slung from side to side, bouncing off the bulkhead, then Agent Rawlins, as struts snapped, and rocks scraped and tore at the plane's underbelly. The plane bounced and lurched and all around came the terrible sounds of grinding and crashing and shattering glass.
They slammed to an abrupt stop.
Then there was only silence.
Five
"Lauren? Lauren, are you hurt?"
She remained bent over with her face buried in the parka, clutching her ankles tight and praying.
Remotely she became aware of fingers pressing into the side of her neck. "Dammit, woman, answer me! Are you all right?"
"I...I don't know." She was afraid to move and find out. She couldn't believe they had survived, any of them.
"Sit up and let's see," Sam ordered.
Moving slowly, she obeyed and carefully rotated her head and tested her arms and legs. Though bruised and battered, everything worked. Something warm trickled down her temple and when she touched it her fingers came away covered with blood. She stared at it, shocked.
"You've got a cut on your forehead, but it doesn't look serious. Nothing seems to be broken. Put on that parka and let's get out of here. This plane isn't safe."
When Lauren continued to stare at her bloodied fingers, Sam grasped her shoulders and gave her a shake. "Snap out of it, dammit! Get a grip! We don't have time for female hysterics."
Lauren blinked at him and nodded, struggling for control. "I...yes. Yes, of course." While she fumbled into her coat Sam unbuckled his seat belt and stood up.
"Bob? How're you doing up there?"
He got no answer.
"Bob? Dave?"
Lauren paused in the act of hooking her purse shoulder strap over her head and looked toward the cockpit. Bob Halloran sat motionless, his head tipped back at a sharp angle, arms hanging limp on either side of the pilot's seat. Agent Owens lay across the seat behind Bob, his head and shoulders hanging out into the aisle. His eyes were open and vacant and he was bleeding from the nose, ears and eyes.
They had landed on an incline with the nose of the plane buried to the windshield in a snowdrift. Using the backs of the other seats, Sam pulled himself up to his friends. He touched the pilot's shoulder, and the man head lolled to one side.
Sam felt for a pulse. After a moment his jaw tightened. Turning, he bent over Dave.
"Dammit to hell."
Sam started back down the aisle. On his second step, the plane wobbled.
Lauren cried out and clutched the seat back in front of her.
"C'mon! Out! Now!"
"But what about Bob and Dave?"
"They're dead."
Lauren caught her breath. Her gaze darted forward to the two men, and she felt a rush of sadness and pity, and to her shame, gratitude that it wasn't her who had been killed.
"Will you get a move on! This baby's going over the edge any second."
She tried, but her legs were so wobbly she couldn't stand. With an oath, Sam hooked his arm around her waist and hauled her out of the seat.
The movement made the plane shift again and slide a foot or so. Lauren screamed, but Sam held her tight against his side and kept going. The exit door was stuck, and he had to release her to shoulder it open. The plane shuddered and shifted in response. Lauren shrieked and clutched the back of the last seat, certain they were going to topple down the mountainside at any second.
The door gave way, and Sam grabbed her again. The belly of the fuselage was buried up to the bottom of the door, but when they jumped out they sank in snow to their knees.
Lauren would have fallen if Sam hadn't held her. He half carried, half dragged her a few feet away from the wreck. When they were clear he dropped her as though she were a sack of potatoes, and Lauren collapsed onto her stomach, her face buried in the snow.
"Stay here," he snapped.
Sputtering and wiping snow from her face, she straggled to her knees. Looking over her shoulder, she saw him heading back toward the plane. "Where are you going?"
Bogged in the deep snow, movement was awkward. By the time she managed to scramble to her feet Sam was climbing back aboard the plane. "Wait! What are you doing?"
"I have to get some things."
> "Are you crazy? You'll be killed! Get out of there! Come back!"
He paid no attention to her. The plane, or what was left of it, rocked under his weight. Lauren made a strangled sound and put her gloved hand over her mouth. She stared in horror at the empty doorway when he disappeared inside the wreck.
She couldn't believe it. The idiot was going to be killed.
The wind whistled around her, and something wet and cold touched her face. She looked up and realized it had started to snow.
Terrified, she hugged her arms around her middle and looked at the fearsome beauty that surrounded her. Snow-covered mountains stretched away in every direction. Rugged. Stark. Unforgiving.
The jagged peaks stabbed the pewter sky, the taller ones piercing the low-hanging clouds. Everything was gray and cold and silent. Eerie fog rose from the valleys like ghosts.
To one side, a swath of broken treetops marked the path of their crash landing, the raw, splintered trunks an ugly scar on the pristine landscape.
Trembling, Lauren pressed her lips together and hugged herself tighter. If Sam went over the edge in the plane she would be alone in this frozen wilderness. She wouldn't last the night.
Sam reappeared in the door of the plane and tossed out two duffle bags. "Grab these and pull them out of the way!" he shouted.
Wading through the deep snow, Lauren hurried forward to do as he instructed. Sam disappeared again. Just as she grabbed the straps on the bags a screeching rent the air and the plane started a backward slide.
She dropped the bags and screamed. Horrified, she watched the twisted fuselage bump down the incline, hit a rocky outcropping and hang there for a few seconds, rocking, then tumble over the edge.
At the last instant a bag and another object flew out of the door and Sam leaped out after them.
The mountains echoed with the harsh sounds of the plane bumping and crashing down the slope. Then there was a horrendous explosion, and a fireball and plume of dark smoke mushroomed upward.
Crying hysterically, Lauren plowed her way through the snow to get to Sam. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"
He picked himself up and dusted the snow off his parka. "Yeah. I'm okay."
He looked over the ledge and so did Lauren. About two hundred feet below, the crumpled fuselage was enveloped in flames. "That was close, though."
Lauren didn't understand how he could be so calm. She stared down at the fiery wreck, and suddenly it was all too much. All the terror and helplessness and worry she had experienced in the last twelve hours came rushing up to the surface.
With an anguished cry, she whirled around and began to pummel Sam's chest.
"Hey! Cut that out! What the hell's the matter with you?"
"This is all your fault. You were supposed to protect me! Instead I was nearly killed! Again! Now we're going to die out here in this frozen wilderness. I should never have trusted you. You're a mean, cold, thoroughly unpleasant man. And you scared me half to death!"
Sam finally managed to grasp her flailing hands and haul her up tight against his chest. The fog of their breaths mingled as he put his face close to hers and growled. "Listen to me. Listen! We are not going to die. So shut up!"
"How can you say that? We're in the middle of nowhere with no provisions and no way to get out."
"We have provisions. We have Bob's survival pack and our gear. That's what I went back in for. And we are going to get out."
"How? Just how are we going to do that?"
"We're going to walk out."
"Have you lost your mind? You don't even know where we are."
"I know in a general sense. That's all we need."
He released her, and she stumbled back and landed on her rear. He picked up the backpack and put it on, then retrieved a rifle from a snowbank and slung the strap over his shoulder. "C'mon. Let's get the other bags. We need to get going."
"Where? There's no place to go?"
"We have to find shelter." He jerked his head toward the northwest. "There's a blizzard coming."
Only then did Lauren notice that it was snowing harder and the low clouds rolling in were a dark, angry color.
Without waiting for her, Sam strode away and scooped up the two duffle bags. He knelt in the snow and began transferring the contents of one bag into the other.
"What are you doing?" Lauren demanded, struggling to her feet.
"Consolidating. We can't carry both bags so I'm sorting out just the clothes and essentials we need and putting them into one bag."
The thought of her clothing and intimate toiletries packed in with this man's did not thrill Lauren, but she had more urgent things to worry about.
"There, that should hold us," Sam announced, rising to his feet. He dusted the snow off his pants and started walking away. "You carry the duffle," he ordered over his shoulder. "I'll carry the pack."
Lauren wanted to object to his tone, but a glance at the dark line of clouds changed her mind. Stopping just long enough to retrieve the duffle, she slung it over her shoulder—and almost toppled over from the weight. Determinedly she straightened and adjusted the bag's strap and scrambled after him.
"I still think you're a horrible man," she muttered.
"Yeah, well, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't expect me to lose any sleep over it. And keep up."
"I thought if you survived a plane crash you were supposed to stay by the wreck and wait for rescue," she said to his back. "I'm sure I read that somewhere."
"The plane is a bonfire at the bottom of a steep slope. You'd break your neck getting down there. Besides, there won't be any rescue. No one knows where we were heading."
"No one?" she panted, struggling to keep pace with him. "Didn't your pilot friend file a flight plan?"
"Sort of."
"Sort of? What does that mean?"
"Let's just say he may have made a mistake, okay?"
"He falsified a flight plan, didn't he?"
"Look at it this way—at least Carlo's thugs don't know where you are."
"That's small comfort if we end up freezing to death on this mountainside."
"We're not going to freeze to death."
"Are you kidding? I'm freezing already. My toes feel like ice cubes."
He stopped so abruptly she almost bumped into him. "Did you put on the wool socks that were in the sack I gave you?"
"Of course I put them on. I don't usually wear boots without socks." Actually she'd never worn big clunky hiking boots in her life.
"Both pair?"
"Well...no, but—"
"Dammit! I told you to put on what was in that bag."
"You didn't tell me to put on both pair of socks! How was I supposed to know to do that? You didn't bother to tell me where you were taking me, and I certainly had no idea that we were going to crash-land in this frozen wilderness, now did I?"
"What did you do with the extra pair?"
"I put them in my purse."
"Dig them out and put them on over the others." He snatched the duffle bag off her shoulder, unzipped it and pawed through the contents and pulled out another suit of wool long johns. The ones she had on were of silk and soft against her skin, but these were the thick, scratchy kind. "Here. While you're at it, put these on over the other pair," he said, tossing them to her.
"What? You mean here?" She caught the long johns reflexively, but held them clutched against her breasts. "You can't seriously expect me to strip down to my underwear right out here in the open. In front of you."
"I not only expect it, I'm ordering you to. Besides, I don't know what you're complaining about. I'm going to do the same thing. The temperature is dropping fast and I don't know how long it will be before we find shelter." He shrugged off the backpack and dug through the duffle bag again and pulled out another pair of long underwear. Shucking out of his parka, he dropped it on top of the backpack and bent over and started untying the drawstring that held the canvas tops of his knee-high moccasins snug to his legs.
; "What are you doing?"
"What does it look like? Now get busy. We don't have time to waste."
He removed one moccasin and propped his socked foot on the duffle. "Work one leg at a time so you won't get your socks wet," he cautioned.
Straightening, he took off his vest and dropped it on top of the parka and went to work on the buttons of his flannel shirt. It soon joined the parka. When he unfastened his trousers, Lauren quickly looked away, but from the corner of her eye she saw him remove one leg from the pants, shove it into the long johns, then back into the pantleg. He pulled his moccasin back on and pulled up the drawstring and tied it.
Then he shifted his weight to that foot and repeated the process.
He darted Lauren a look. "I'd get busy if I were you. If you're not out of those clothes by the time I'm done I'll strip them off you myself."
Lauren sucked in her breath. Of all the arrogant, overbearing, insufferable... He'd do it, too. She could see it in his eyes and that hard, determined face. Since he was a foot taller than she was and outweighed her by a good hundred and twenty pounds, there wasn't much doubt what the outcome would be.
She was sorely tempted to tell him to go to hell. If she didn't need him to stay alive, she would. For a moment Lauren fumed, but she had no choice.
"Oh, all right! But I'm going over there behind those trees."
"Don't bother. Trust me, I won't be overcome with lust at the sight of you in baggy drawers."
Lauren lifted her chin. "I didn't think you would be. If you must know, I have to use the...the ladies' room."
He pinned her with that dark stare and arched one eyebrow. "The ladies' room?"
Refusing to be intimidated, she stared back and tipped her chin up another notch. "Yes. Since I have to strip, I figured I may as well take care of that while I'm there."
"Okay, fine. Just don't go too far. And remember what I said about keeping your feet dry," he called after her as she plowed through the snow toward a huge blue spruce tree whose snow-laden branches were bent down to the ground.
When she returned ten minutes later Sam was fully clothed with the backpack strapped on and the rifle hanging from one shoulder. Giving her an impatient look, he tossed the duffle bag to her and nearly knocked her down.
