Brotherhood Protectors: Soldier's Heart Part Three (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Piece of cake. He sagged back. Just worm my way out if I—

  The thought unraveled as his brain blanked in a glare-white sheet of pain. Crying out, he flinched, arching his back away from the snow. That bizarre sense of something there, that strange thumb-in-the-back feeling, returned. Planting most of his weight on his left elbow, he inched his right hand around to his back.

  His glove snagged on something sharp.

  What was that? He couldn’t twist around to see. Tugging off his glove with his teeth, he reached around again and finger-walked his way over the object, parsing it like a blind man.

  Oh, Jesus. His breath hung in his throat. His heart tightened and curled the way a frightened snail pulled into its shell. He knew what this was, now, embedded in his back.

  Wood.

  The thing was probably all that was left of a dead branch. He’d come down on a spear of wood that had punched through his parka and clothes and then his flesh the way a cobbler works the point of an awl through leather. His fingers brushed over clotting blood and shreds of something stringy and wet—muscle and skin.

  “Shit.” His voice was shocking. So weak, shaky. He knew better than to try and pull this out. The wood might be the cork in an artery. Unplug it, and he’d bleed out. The only good news: this was below his ribs, which meant it had missed his liver and, maybe, right kidney. He could be bleeding internally; that would account for the pain in his gut. Blood was an irritant, and death from a gunshot wound to the abdomen was often long and unbearably painful.

  He also didn’t see what the hell he was supposed to do about any of this. Nothing had changed. Crawl, if he had to. Slither out like a worm.

  But get the hell out of this damn hole.

  #

  It took a while. Working himself around again, he balanced his weight on the points of his knees and then pistoned his arms as hard as he could, driving forward, post-holing hand and knee holds, making himself a kind of ladder in snow. He paid a price for every slam of his fist as pain rocketed into his throat and grabbed at his groin, but even that dulled a bit over time. Not enough, and it really didn’t matter anyway. He had no choice.

  Once his chest and shoulders cleared, he wriggled and flopped the rest of the way before collapsing onto his stomach. It took all his self-control not to pant. Instead, he forced himself to sip air so as not to shred his lungs even more. Working his jaws, he spat out a gobbet of rusty saliva and dark blood. He hoped darker was better and meant he was done bleeding bleeding. His tongue was slick with blood and bile. Scooping snow into his mouth, he let it melt before swishing and spitting. He realized his mistake a fraction of a second later when his thirst roared to life. No. He stopped himself from grabbing more snow. Not yet. He couldn’t afford to lower his body temperature, and eating snow would do just that.

  The important thing: he was still alive. What were the odds? Help was also, potentially, seven, eight hours away. He would crawl if he had to. All he had to figure out was the right direction. Yeah, that was all. God, he wished he had his maps, so he could ... Stop, stop that. No good wishing for what he didn’t have. Like his mom said, if wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets. Snow was still falling, but there was more light up here. He inched up a sleeve. Nearly four-thirty. He’d left Sarah’s a little after one. Too early for her to worry. Twilight came on roundabout seven in October. He had some time to find shelter or make it if he had to. Spend the night, attack this fresh in the morning.

  Reaching a hand to his waist, he patted, careful to avoid jostling that chunk of wood in his back. Miraculously, all the items that should be on his duty belt still were: service pistol, radio, baton, zip ties, cuffs, extra ammunition, disposable gloves, pepper spray, his big Maglite, a Leatherman, a nice folder tough enough to saw through seat belts. What, if anything, would be useful in the near term? The knife, of course, and the multi-tool. His Mag, the ammo. Remembering the bear he’d spotted, the small canister of pepper spray was better than nothing. He didn’t think his Glock had enough stopping power, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. His radio might help, but only if someone was in the mountains and actually looking for him—and perhaps not even then. The Black Wolf was wonky that way.

  Patting his pockets, he found his wallet, keys, some gum. I might die, but my breath will be minty fresh. Another sheath of zip ties. Christ, he should take out stock in the company. Wait, he’d put a water bottle in an inside pocket to keep that warm, was it ... Shit. The bottle was gone. His spare was in his pack, and who knew where that was? Slipping a hand into a last pocket, he felt something give under his fingers and then he caught the smell: nuts and vinegar. Oh, Sarah. He could tell the sandwich was mostly smashed, but having it filled him with a warm, almost sunny burst of happiness. Thank you, honey.

  Lifting his head, he squinted through a curtain of fine snow to get his bearings. The cliff from which he’d tumbled was behind him, and he saw now he’d fallen in an arc instead of straight down, probably because, like an errant pinball, he’d bounced and rebounded against trees on the way down. Cold wind whisked over his left cheek, which meant the air was moving in from the northwest. That tallied. He peered in the direction of the clearing where he’d spotted the bear and girl, but the way was thick with trees. If he remembered right, that clearing was a good half mile from the ridge. For the time being, he should be relatively safe. Put another way, he hadn’t awakened to a grizzly eating his face. So, that was something.

  So, the question now: make for the cliff or those trees? He aimed a look at the cliff, his gaze bouncing from one overhang to another. All were too high, especially now, and while he would have some shelter, there was no ready access to fuel. Forest, then. Made the most sense. No climbing to do, and there were a lot of trees which translated into a greater likelihood of finding deadfall, moss, drier pith. He could even strip bark.

  He dragged himself a good twenty feet, worming through snow for a copse of ash and fir. When he reached a tree he thought would hold his weight, he stripped off his gloves and used his fingers, hooking the tips and clawing his way to a stand. By the time he was upright, pain wracked his body, every nerve ending an electric, screaming jangle. He rested, sweat dripping, arms and knees quivering, when, to his horror, he choked on a sob. Jesus, don’t cry. He gulped a lump of wet salt, tried willing his eyes to cease their streaming. God, but he wanted to cry, to let himself go and howl from the pain, his fear.

  “But, l-l-look.” His voice was wobbly and strangled, stuttering with cold. “You’re o-out of the h-hole. You’re on your f-f-feet.” He dragged an arm over his eyes, a weary and almost childlike gesture, and looked to his left in the general direction where the grizz had been. See, Ma? No bear. Chill out. Life is—

  His gaze snagged on a low mound hunched on the snow about fifty feet away.

  His heart lurched. Animal? Lightly frosted with snow, the black mound lay unmoving. What was that? How long had it been there?

  The realization was a thunderclap.

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

  His pack.

  11

  Pushing open the trap to the tower’s catwalk, Sarah was instantly rewarded with blades of wind hacking her cheeks. Screwing her eyes against the sting of icy snow, she clambered the rest of the way up, and dropped the trap back into place. In the dark and swirling snow, it would be easy to get disoriented, and the catwalk was slick, the railings coated with ice. A seventy-five-foot drop was a hell of a long one.

  Another razor-like blast of wind raked her face. How had Mark tolerated this for a half hour? Shielding her eyes with a hand, she ran her headlamp’s beam over the catwalk and picked out his tracks that led to the tower’s glassed-in lookout. Smart move.

  The silence inside was almost eerie. As she crossed to a center pedestal, snow caught in the soles of her boots squealed. The pedestal was once home to an Osborne Fire Finder, an alidade device consisting of a topographic map secured beneath a circular metal ring, marked with degrees. By aligning the ring’s
two sights, a lookout could help pinpoint a fire’s location and elevation. The device was, essentially, a sextant designed for use on land.

  To her surprise, a map was spread atop the pedestal. That wasn’t right. When she’d arrived in late spring, all that remained of the Osborne was the circular rim and sights. Someone had slipped the map beneath the Osborne’s rim, orienting to due north, and then inked in various spots to the north, northwest, several to the northeast, and due east. The latter was Dead Man Mountain. Another marked Chaney, the peak where she now stood.

  Hank had maps. All hikers carried a good topo, herself included. Had Hank brought his to pinpoint from which direction those shots might have come? Or that distant fire? Even if he had, she couldn’t imagine him leaving this behind.

  Mark had been in here, though, and recently. Wait a minute. She retrieved Mark’s radio from a pocket. A wake-up tap, and the screen lit. She hit Maps, and a small topo appeared. A quick comparison was all she needed to confirm. X marks the spot. The topo on Mark’s radio was of Chaney Peak.

  With no time or date stamp, she had no way of knowing how recently Mark had accessed this. If he had a map, why would he need to? Well, GPS was iffy in the Black Wolf. When she worked Soldier in their search grids, she used a handheld but always double-checked with a map. Her device also kept a record of where she’d been and mapped out her course in real time. She bet Mark’s did, too.

  She poked GPS. Mark’s route was dark blue against a stripped-down topo. Using two fingers, she pinched the image and zoomed out. She’d been right. Mark had come in from the north, nowhere near Lonesome. Using a finger, she carefully scrolled, following Mark’s path. If she was reading this right, Mark had dropped down from Canada, skirting the summit of a mountain straddling the border, and then tacked southeast. Interesting—she squinted—he’d detoured at one point, heading toward a fire road. Really? Fire roads were mostly that, used only for emergencies and, in these parts, rarely, though they were maintained and re-groomed in spring. The Black Wolf had been spared the wildfires plaguing more western and southern states, knock on wood. On long-haul hikes, a fire road represented a welcome break, an opportunity to work not quite so hard. Yet, Mark had studiously avoided other fire roads. But not this one. Where was that? Comparing his screen to the map spread on the Osborne, she saw the road was just east of Fortine on US-93 and before Trego and Dickey Lake.

  She knew this area. Part of her route as an itinerant vet took her that far north from her home base in Kalispell. Follow 93 north, you’re in Canada; go south, thread between Glacier to the east and the Black Wolf to the west, and, eventually, you’re in Kalispell. Otherwise, nothing much around. A scattering of houses on Dickey. A single gas station, bait shop. A hole-in-the-wall place in Fortine, not far from this fire road, actually. What was it? Something to do with fishing. Right, On the Fly. Two tables, good Wi-Fi, a little bookstore, great coffee, good burgers. She liked the potato salad, and their loaded veggie quesadillas were to die for.

  So, Mark stopped for a quick bite? Or perhaps to check email, send a message? Meet someone? Something had pulled him there. An emergency? Maybe. Otherwise, this was definitely out of his way.

  Weirdly, too, until three days ago, he’d been on a beeline for Dead Man. Only, something happened. Mark went off-trail, bushwhacking a meandering path.

  Right past the place where we found the girl.

  Oh, boy. Now she got it. Mark had been tracking the girl—right to her door.

  Had he been the one to shoot her, too? And where did Hank figure in this? He must, somehow. There were the sandwiches, after all. The zip ties.

  Get help. Extending the antennae, she poked up Channels. Get someone up here and then we sort through the rest. Or she just might have a little sit-down with Mark herself. She wouldn’t be able to leave the girl until help arrived, but she might be able to direct rescuers to wherever Mark and Hank had run into each other.

  The last band Mark had dialed into was 6. Once he had a working channel, Mark likely wouldn’t switch. Upping the volume, however, got her only pops and crackles and sizzle. Nothing like a voice seeped through. Dispatchers weren’t constantly on the horn, though. No one except ham operators and truck drivers engaged in idle chitchat. Plus, with it being night and still snowing, there might be precious little to talk about. She supposed someone might be monitoring this frequency, perhaps waiting for Mark to get back in touch.

  What should she do? Say? Maybe a simple hello. Short and sweet, nothing to give herself away. She depressed a button labeled , listened to the hash cut out, slicked her lips. “Hello?”

  She released the button. Static swelled, but nothing else. If there was as much static on the other end as this, perhaps no one heard her. She pushed again. “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  She chewed on that a second then quickly depressed the button twice. They did that in movies. Instead of speaking, they did a break-break, clicks that would signal someone was on the channel. Better than speaking, actually, because what if someone was waiting to hear Mark’s voice? If they got her, they’d know something was wrong.

  And you are being paranoid. Still didn’t mean people weren’t out to get her. She also had the girl to think about and protect. What was she going to do about her? Come morning, maybe she really would have to either see if Mark had a personnel carrier or jury-rig a carry device and get herself, the dogs, and the girl off the mountain.

  “One disaster at a time,” she murmured, switching to a different channel. Figured that couldn’t hurt because she could always go back. Did her break-break again a couple of times. Nothing. Hell. How many bands should she try? How many different channels were there? She decided to try as many as the radio might have. She developed a rhythm: switch to a channel, listen for thirty seconds, do her break-break bit twice, then move on.

  After several minutes and nothing, she was just reaching to switch channels when her ears suddenly pricked to a fuzzy, attenuated voice. She knew it was a person speaking because of the cadence—bursts of sound that seemed to be syllables making up words. Oh! Her heart gave a little kick. She thought the voice was a man’s. Closing her eyes, she listened hard, but the words bled into hash and just wouldn’t gel. Damn. She thought of times when she was a kid and her dad babied a radio station, feathering the channel selector a bit at a time.

  Would this work here? Was she really listening to the outer margins of a broadcast? How to baby this? Wait ... there was that dial marked FQ. She nudged it clockwise. On the screen, the channel shifted from 21 ... to 21.1. The static didn’t resolve into words, but the volume increased. She nudged the dial another tick and then another and another. What came from the speaker was still garbled, but she imagined the words firming and the tone losing that echoing, overlapping quality.

  When she hit 21.8, a voice suddenly rapped through a light curtain of static, “Bravo Seven ... con ... search.”

  Search. Yes! Bravo Eight sounded like part of a military call sign, too. Pete once said his changed depending on what day it was and where they were because you didn’t want the bad guys knowing exactly who you were or how many soldiers were with you. Some teams’ call signs were top secret. Was this military, then? Might be if the sheriff had alerted the National Guard. The Guard got SAR call-outs all the time. Or maybe EMTs used call signs? Didn’t matter.

  If this was active, though, why had Mark switched back to Channel 6? Made no sense.

  The voice spit, again: “Bravo ... firm ...”

  White-knuckling the radio, she brought the speaker grille to her mouth. “Hello? Hello?” She toggled the —breakbreakbreakbreak—then held her breath as static dribbled from the speaker. Crap. With the snow and as loopy as reception was up here, this might be as much as she could expect.

  Suddenly, the radio chirped with a series of clicks: breakbreakbreak.

  Someone heard her! “Hello?” Breakbreakbreak. “Can you hear me?”

  A voice: “Brah ... ayyy ...?”
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  Brah? She puzzled over that a moment then remembered. Bravo Eight. Asking if this was Bravo Eight? “Hello?” She hit twice again for good measure.

  The voice, still mushy and indistinct, came back: “Bravo Eight ... Seven Echo ... Actual ... Confirm.”

  She had no clue what “actual” meant. Confirm was self-explanatory. Did that mean the double-break again?

  Before she could respond, the speaker coughed out a huge pop and crackle, and then words filtered through, loud and clear.

  “Dr. Grant,” the voice said, “is that you?”

  12

  “Yes!” Sarah clutched the radio in both hands. “Yes, this is Dr. Grant! Listen, there’s a man here, he says he’s with search and rescue, only I don’t think he is. I think something happened to Hank ... Hank Cooper? He was headed down to get help and ...”

  “Ma’am.” She heard that quite clearly. “Dr. Grant, calm ... we know ... the girl.”

  Oh, thank God. They knew who she was and about the girl. Hank got through. Wait, Mark had been telling the truth? No, no, there were the sandwiches. She’d just mapped where he’d been, and that was nowhere near Lonesome. He’d bushwhacked from east of Dead Man.

  The guy on the other end was right. She had to calm down. But Hank is safe, he’s safe. There had to be another explanation for those sandwiches, then. If these people knew who she was and about the girl, Hank had gotten through, and the whole sandwich thing was a fluke. Maybe everyone who ate those things double-wrapped them. Or perhaps Hank really had met up with the guy, given him the food, and kept on his way. No, wouldn’t Hank simply turn around and come back? Maybe not. An unsuspecting Hank might swallow a story about a search party, one maybe looking for him. She could see Mark spinning out something like that and then letting Hank hustle down into town. By the time Hank realized he’d been bamboozled, Mark would already be here. Although if Hank figured out what was going on—and he would soon as he hit town—Hank would be the person who would try and get back up here as fast as he could.