by Bart Paul
The paramedic hopped out and lugged his bag over to Lester and started in on him. Tony stayed in the cockpit a minute, checking his instrument panel and switches and talking on his radio. He finally got out too. He wore a yellow inflatable survival vest I’d seen Navy pilots wear.
“How is he?” he asked.
“He’ll be fine now. I’m glad as hell to see you.”
“Give me a hand with the stretcher, my friend.” I followed him around the helicopter. He opened the double doors on the side and unbuckled a light evac stretcher with collapsible legs. I could see they had an IV bag already dangling from the ceiling with tubes hanging down and heart and respiration monitors ready to hook up.
“You done this before, pal.”
Tony laughed. “Once or twice. Sarah prepped the paramedics by phone. You know Sarah.”
“She’s the best.”
“Was it those Cubans shot him?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew those bastards were trouble. What did you do to piss them off?”
“It’s a long story.”
“You tell it to me over a rib eye and a bottle of wine at the Sierra Peaks,” he said.
“My treat.”
We carried the stretcher over to Lester. The paramedic had him sitting up.
“You dress this?” he asked me. He was heavyset and wheezy from trotting in the high altitude.
“Yeah.”
“Good job. Any idea what kind of round?”
“Probably five-point-seven high-penetration. Belgian.”
He sort of whistled.
“Tommy,” Tony said, “this is Mike Mildenburg from County. Lives down at McGee Creek.”
“Hey, Mike.”
“He’s the EMT,” Lester said. His words were already slurry.
“Paramedic,” Mike said. He looked up at me. “I gave him some morphine.”
“Morphine,” Lester said. “Sweet. So what’s the difference?”
“I can give you an IV, dress a gunshot wound, stuff like that,” Mike said.
“He’s the real deal, cowboy,” Tony said. “We flown many rough miles together. He was in Desert Storm, weren’t you, Mike.”
Mike nodded at me. I nodded back.
“You got good veins,” Mike said. “I see tourists so fat down in Mammoth you can’t find a vein with a backhoe.”
We made more small talk to keep Lester’s brain occupied while Mike rooted around in the bullet hole and gave him a second shot of something. Then he slipped an IV needle into Lester’s arm and started to tape it down. He worked fast.
“That’s a cool vest.” I said it like it was just something to say.
“Flight Commander-Two,” Tony said. “These badboys don’t come cheap.”
“How’s come you don’t get one, Mike?” Lester asked.
“I’m a full-time county employee in a county full of freakin’ cutbacks,” he said. “They don’t give a shit if I drown.” He laughed. “But the Silver Fox here is a contractor.”
“It’s for the insurance,” Tony said. “When they found out about all these lakes in this country, I got caught not wearing one and the bastards raised my rates.”
“Way Tony flies,” Mike said. “I’m more worried about the rocks than the water.”
Lester tried to laugh, but he sounded nervous as hell. “When I was a kid, a contractor was the guy from Gardnerville who put in my dad’s septic tank,” he said.
“The word means something different now.”
“The contractors carry guns where Tommy comes from,” Tony said.
Mike looked up at my face where the splinters ripped it. “What happened to you?”
“I run into a door.”
“Bullshit,” Lester said. “I punched his lights out.”
“Falling out among thieves?” Tony asked.
“You sound just like Sarah.”
Tony sighed and put a hand on his chest. “Ah, my Sarah,” he said, “mi corazón.”
“Sarah with all them curves,” Lester said, “and Tony with no brakes.”
We all laughed.
“I’ll give you something for it,” Mike said. “You don’t want it to get infected.”
“I’m okay.”
“Just the same,” he said. “It hurt?”
“Like a bitch. I took some aspirin.”
Mike finished taping off the IV needle, wrapping the tape completely around the arm to keep it rigid in case Lester thrashed around once he was airborne.
“Okay,” he said. “He’s ready.”
He laid Lester down flat on his bedroll, and we set the stretcher down next to him and Mike showed us how to hoist him on without too much jostling.
“Do we set the legs down?” Tony asked.
“The ground’s too rough,” Mike said. “We’ll have to just carry him.”
“Mind you don’t drop me,” Lester said. “I’m a manly sonofabitch and I’m heavier than I look.”
We got set and picked him up, Mike at the head, me at the feet, and Tony holding a side with one hand.
“Ay. You are most definitely heavier than you look,” Tony said.
“Oh, how’d you know, you Argen-tine horn-dog?” Lester said. “You got the easy part.”
When we got to the double doors without dropping him, the stretcher slid into place riding fore and aft. Mike strapped Lester down then set to work hooking up the IV and heart and respiration monitors. I walked back to Lester’s bedroll to fetch his hat and phone. Hoisting Lester made my head throb like crazy, aspirin or not.
“He won’t be wearing that for a couple of days,” Mike said when I brought the hat.
“I ain’t leaving without it,” Lester said.
Mike handed me a tube of ointment. “It’s an antibiotic and some aloe,” he said. “It might keep your face from scarring.”
“Tommy’s scars don’t show,” Lester said. “Sarah says they’re all on the inside.”
“Bullshit.” I set the phone on his belly, and he laid his hand over it, not really paying attention to it for once.
Mike climbed into the Ranger from the opposite side so he could reach the monitors from a rear jump seat. Tony walked down to the edge of the lake and just stood there looking out at the light from the late sun on the water like he was some nature boy.
“Well?” Lester said.
“You’re on your way, bud. Clean sheets in about an hour.”
“Everybody’s going to a lot of trouble.”
“It’s no trouble.”
“You coming down to Mammoth to see me?”
“Wouldn’t miss it. But it’ll be the middle of the day tomorrow before I even get off this mountain, and I’ll have to call Sarah to have Harv meet me at Summers Lake with the stock truck.”
“And a bottle of Jim Beam,” he said.
“And a bottle of Jim Beam. You tell them to hold visiting hours till I get there.”
“He’s good to go,” Mike said.
He waved at Tony. Tony trotted up from the lake around to our side of the chopper. He kept in good shape for an old bugger. It didn’t bother him a bit to jog at ten thousand feet. It must have been the tennis.
“Are you ready, my friend?”
Lester nodded at Tony. He leaned in and tightened the straps over Lester’s chest and legs good and snug.
“Don’t want you falling out,” he said. “Think of my insurance.”
He climbed in to the pilot’s seat and put on his headphones and checked his instruments. Mike buckled himself in the jumpseat next to Lester.
Lester just stared at the ceiling. “I let you down,” he said just loud enough so I could hear. “I wouldn’t listen to you, and I screwed up and let you down. This whole mess is my doing.”
They had him strapped across the chest and legs and the right arm with the IV, but his left hand was free and I took it.
“You never let me down, Les.”
Mike nodded it was time. I tousled Lester’s head like a pup, then I pulled the double
doors closed and checked the latches and stepped away. Tony fired up the motor, and I got a blast of wind from the rotors. I stepped back in a crouch from habit, hanging on to my hat, and snuck a look at the horses on the picketline to make sure I wouldn’t be walking home in the dark. I could see Lester through the glass turning his head to watch me. Tony reached back to make sure I got the door good and tight and Lester stared up at the ceiling. Then Tony gave me a nod and a finger-point, revved up the motor, and lifted off. I took another couple of steps back and watched the Jet Ranger clear the ground and turn so it could pick up altitude over the lake away from the tall trees at the water’s edge. There was that big roar and the wind blast and the swirl of pine needles and granite dust that drifted down when the chopper got above me, and the rippling the rotor wash made on the lake. I couldn’t see Lester through the glare on the glass then, but Tony looked like he was rising out of his seat all of a sudden. I tried to see, and figured he maybe had just inflated his vest. I could sort of make out Mike leaning forward like he was saying something, then the chopper turned and rose straight up over the water, the noise from the motor reverbing off the mountainsides. When I could see sky under the chopper’s belly, there wasn’t anything left for me to do. Lester was safe now and on his way. I turned to check on the horses.
Then the noise stopped. I whipped around to look. The blades kept spinning, but there was no sound from the motor, only the cut of the blades in the thin air. The Ranger rose an instant more, then just stopped in the sky, hanging there about a hundred feet over the water with the motor dead. Then, with the rotors still whipping around slow, the helicopter fell like the bottom had been pulled out from under it. It fell for two or three seconds with the rotors slowing it down and Tony wrestling with the controls, but it seemed like forever. Then it splashed into the lake about two hundred yards out. I ran to the bank. The lake was only maybe forty feet away from me, but when I got to the water’s edge the chopper was already halfway under. It had stayed upright when it fell, but it rolled to the side as soon as it hit with one blade pointing up, a second one almost under water. A cockpit door was open, so water was pouring in, and I could see at least one of them scrambling to get out as the chopper sunk deeper. I was yelling Lester’s name. I could see a squirt of steam as the icy water hit the motor. Then the whole thing went under and was gone. Just like that. The flat water bubbled when a big pocket of air popped up, but all that meant was there was nothing left to breathe inside. It didn’t matter. The water was so cold from the snowmelt that even with air anyone inside would die of hypothermia in a few minutes, and anyone trying to swim halfway across the lake would go the same way. I stood knee-deep in the lake, just panting like I wanted to puke. I could barely see a little spot of yellow bobbing on the water moving toward the opposite shore. Tony must have got out alive.
I slogged out of the lake not even remembering throwing my hat and jacket on the ground and wading in. I picked them up and headed for our campfire. I rolled my dad’s saddle over and pulled his .270 out of the scabbard and walked back to the lake. I lay across a big slab of granite and put the scope on the little yellow spot. Through the lens I could make out Tony swimming a few strokes with an overhand crawl, then he paused like he was tiring out and treading water, and it looked like he might sink, slipping right out of the survival vest. The vest was inflated for sure now. He started swimming again, more like a breast stroke to save his strength. If he didn’t reach the opposite shore pretty soon, the cold would get him too. Even with the scope, all I could see was the back of his white head over that yellow vest. I swung the barrel of the rifle back on the spot on the water where the chopper had gone down to see if there was any movement. The orange of the sunset had gone and the surface of the lake was smooth and gray. I guessed the water was maybe forty to fifty feet deep out there. Freezing and black. If Lester was alive he’d have lost consciousness. That was about all I could hope for. Strapped down like he was, he never had a chance.
I swung the barrel back. Through the scope I picked up Tony crawling out of the water on his hands and knees through the rocks. He was close to the campsite with the dome tent. I could see him stopped on the bank on all fours like he was catching his breath, then he got up and sort of staggered to that tent. When he got there, he dropped to his knees again and looked like he was scouting around inside. When he finally got up, he had wrapped himself in something, either a blanket or a sleeping bag. It was hard to tell through the scope, and Tony was moving all the time to warm himself up. Then I saw that he was waving his arms and gesturing like he was talking, and I traced him with the crosshairs. When he stopped moving for a second, I saw he was talking on a phone. I held the rifle dead steady on the rock to get a good look. I saw him gesture some more. Then with the reticle laid right on him, he pointed across the lake nodding his head toward our camp and sort of smiled. He looked real relieved. That’s when I blew his head off.
I kept the scope on him as he dropped. He tumbled backwards, and when his upper body hit the rocks in that inflated vest he looked like he almost bounced. I walked back to my saddle and got the cartridge box and stuffed it in my pocket. If there was one more accident left to happen, then I’d be it. It took me about fifteen minutes to walk around the east edge of the lake to the south shore where I’d dropped Tony. Most of the way I was on the old packer trail, but part of the route I had to climb big rocks and push through whitebark and hemlock thickets, keeping my eye on that dome tent while looking back at my camp now and again.
I kept the .270 on the tent when I got to the campsite. There was enough flat ground next to it for a chopper to have landed. I stepped around Tony and squatted down to look inside. There was a car-camper’s sleeping bag, lots of food, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label, and an AK-47. All a tad too heavy for backpacking. Part of the dome drooped where the frame hadn’t been put together right, and the whole thing hadn’t been pegged down like it had been set up in a hurry. I walked back to Tony. He still held the satellite phone in his fist. I picked it up and listened. I could hear salsa music. I waited a bit more.
“Buenas tardes, Teófilo.”
“Tony?” the voice on the phone said. The voice was real deep and rumbly.
“Tony’s dead.”
It was quiet for a minute. Even the music got quiet.
“Did you kill him, soldier?”
“With pleasure. And I’m going to kill you too if I get the chance, Señor Pozolero.”
I could hear him laugh. “You won’t come close, asshole,” he said. “You wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“That was a smart trick, cutting off the motor for a controlled drop.”
“That Tony is a good pilot,” he said.
“Almost as good as GQ.”
“You’re too smart for your own good, soldier. I hope your night on that lonely mountain passes without incident. After grieving for your friend drowned in the freak helicopter accident, it was a shame that you ran down the trail and fell off the steep cliff. They may not find your body for such a long time.”
“Yeah. Like anybody’d believe I’d run when I could ride. And you’re forgetting about Tony’s body.”
“Bodies vanish, asshole,” he said, “remember?”
I set the phone next to Tony without punching off. Then I searched him. He had a lot of cash in his wallet but that was normal for him. He always liked flashing a roll. The wallet was soaked and I stuffed it back in his pocket. He had a Glock in a holster on his belt. That would have been to use on me if he’d needed to. I racked the slide, wiped it off and put it in his hand. I didn’t figure on spending a single night in jail for killing that prick. I took the AK-47 from the tent, popped the steel clip and threw it out into the lake, and heaved the Kalashnikov in after it with both hands. Then I walked back around the lake to our camp to hobble the horses and mules with the last of the grain before I picketed them for the night. Nora’s phone started buzzing after a while. That would be Sarah, but I didn’t know what
to say and I didn’t want her up here with me until the last shoe dropped. I didn’t think I could even talk yet anyway.
I laid the whole log across the fire and tended the stock. When I was finished, the log was blazing right along. I poured myself a drink and stared at the flames. I ate a couple of pudding cups I’d packed for Lester, just to soak up the whisky in my stomach. Besides, the sugar would jack me up. When the log had burned partway through, I lifted the end and banged it around in a big cloud of sparks until it broke at the burned place. I stacked the two chunks together and the fire really got going. By dark the flames were as tall as I was, popping with sparks shooting way up in the sky. The firelight showed high up in the tamarack circling the camp like I was inside a teepee of orange flame moving around me in the branches. It let me see everything, the horses on the picket line, Lester’s bedroll, our packs and saddles, and sent a shimmer of flame out on the water all the way across the lake.
I left Lester’s bedroll where it was and unrolled mine close by. I checked the cylinder of his Ruger and stuffed it in my jacket pocket. Then I took my rifle, the whisky bottle, and a couple of saddle blankets and climbed into the rocks above the picket line to wait. It was another half hour before they showed. The first sign was a little flashlight flicker way across the lake where I’d left Tony’s body. The flicker went dark fast, and it took them forever to circle the lake. Flatlanders. As usual there was a pair of them. When they finally showed they moved toward the bedrolls, each of them carrying a chunk of tree limb, creeping at the edge of the firelight like cavemen. When they saw nobody was in the bedrolls, they looked around at the jumping shadows in the dark. It would be another fifteen minutes before moonrise. The stock was quiet on the picket line. These were two spooked city boys on a big empty black mountain, dressed for a warm June evening, not ten thousand feet.
“Holá, scumbags. Qué tal?”
They looked around when I hollered, dropping their clubs and raising their guns, ready to shoot but not seeing a thing to shoot at. Just the dark and the fire. It would have been easy to drop them both, but I didn’t want bodies in camp that night, and I didn’t want to perturb the stock. When they figured that they wouldn’t be beating me to death and dumping my corpse down the switchbacks and couldn’t see any advantage in playing sitting duck, they backed out of the firelight and beat it. I could see the flashlight glow as they hustled back around the lake. The light disappeared in the rocks and trees heading for the Summers Lake Trail. I slipped down toward the lake outside of the firelight, keeping my eye on where I’d last seen their flash. When I got to the water, I fired half the cylinder of the Ruger across the lake in the general direction of the dome tent. I didn’t want them going back to mess with Tony’s body, and that .357 made plenty of noise. It would be those boys walking down the switchbacks in the dark tonight, not me. I waited a bit before I climbed back to my spot in the rocks.
