“Bringing back memories?”
The question from Ham rocked Orion for a moment, and he looked over at him.
Ham had come out of the Base Camp Quonset to join him and Jake as they loaded up their sleds with gear. Just in case Clancy Hermon, the private chopper pilot tasked with rescues off the mountain, came back with bad news.
Orion wasn’t sitting around to wait for the grim news of Jenny’s death.
Which was exactly how he felt when he’d heard about the ambush of the SEAL team so many years ago. With every tick of the clock, people could be dying.
So, the answer to Ham’s questions was apparently yes. The entire operation—gearing up to fly up the mountain to then trek out to find the lost team—dragged up plenty of memories.
“Except I’m eating snow, not dirt. And, hopefully we won’t have anyone shooting at us.” He glanced at Ham, and meant it as a joke, but it came out flat and not funny at all and Ham’s mouth flattened. He nodded.
None of them were in a joking mood. Not after being briefed at the Talkeetna Ranger station.
Not one, but two teams were missing. And yes, they were both Kit’s teams—one of them the male team. The other, Jenny’s team.
Apparently, the women had taken his advice and not roped up with the men. Which saved them from careening off the Autobahn, the slope just below the pass that led back down to High Camp, when an avalanche hit the fixed rope and ripped the team from the mountain.
The entire group of men, plus their assistant guide, a seasoned climber named Boyd, had fallen and were now lost on the mountain. Only Kit had made it back, arresting herself as she slid down blue ice on the wall back to High Camp at seventeen. She’d made it to High Camp seven hours after her fall, frostbitten and traumatized.
A ranger team had been dispatched to find the men.
No one knew where the women might be. According to the ranger, last time Kit had seen them, they’d been helping Sasha get to the fixed ropes. Orion dearly wanted to know why Kit hadn’t been roped in with them—a question he would ask her the minute he caught up with her. But she’d opted to stay on the mountain and help with the search, and he could give her points for that.
“We’d like to do a flyover—they could be stuck on the Football Field, just above the pass, but the winds are too strong to get a chopper up there,” Clancy said when they met for a powwow shortly after they arrived, lugging their gear—freshly repacked from Mount Huntington.
In fact, back at Orion’s house, Ham had thrown the steaks on the grill while Orion and Jake checked the climbing gear, packed fresh clothing and sleeping bags, and added more rations. With the sun still high, they headed back to town.
Now, around midnight, a blood-red glow lit the gully that housed Base Camp, the sun shadowed by the High One. Higher up, a cloud blanketed the mountain.
“Can you get us to Basin Camp?” Ham had asked Clancy.
Clancy, a lean man with short dark hair, tall and all business, had stared at the mountain and given Ham a dark look.
That’s when Orion stalked out, commandeered a park-issued sled, and began to pack his gear.
He’d climbed three thousand feet in a day. More, even. He could be at Basin Camp in twenty-four hours.
“They are freezing to death up there,” he said now to Ham.
Ham wore dark, ultraviolet glasses as he stared up on the mountain.
Then, abruptly, he went back into the Quonset.
“He has that look,” Jake said, standing up from where he’d been fixing his snowshoes to his pack. “We had a twelve-year-old girl go missing this winter at a ski hill in northern Minnesota, and he refused to give up long after the ski patrol had quit. Finally found her off trail by a mile. She’d found shelter at an unused rental house. He’d skied her trail and followed her into the woods.”
Orion glanced at Jake. “You do that a lot? Look for lost kids?”
“Usually it’s someone who has gone missing, yes. Too many of them are kids.”
“And how often do you find them?”
“Depends on how soon we get involved.” Jake wore his wool cap and, like Orion, had made the mistake of shaving. He ducked his chin into his jacket farther as a gust of wind rolled down the gully and rippled the walls of the nearby tents. “I hate the ones with the kids, though.” He shook his head and looked away.
Orion didn’t have time to follow his comment because Ham emerged.
“Let’s go.”
Orion frowned but shouldered his pack and pulled the sled over to the chopper where Ham waited.
“I told him we didn’t need to be babied. Just get us near the drop site and we’re good to go,” Ham said.
Orion raised an eyebrow but okay, yeah.
He and Ham lifted the sled and shoved it into the belly of the chopper, a Eurocopter AS-350 B3. A little lighter than the Chinooks and Paves Orion was used to flying in, but at least it was a ride. He climbed into the back seat, and Jake joined him.
Ham took the front.
Clancy climbed in, wearing his snow jacket, a baseball hat, and a grim set to his mouth. “We have a tightening window, and this might not be pretty, but I’ll get you up there.”
He strapped in, and Orion looked out the window as the rotors started to spin. In a moment, they lifted off, the world dropping away.
For a second he was flying over the snowy Kunar Valley, the muddy Kunar River flowing through the barren fields, sometimes populated with goat herds.
That others might live. The PJ mantra filtered through his brain. The rumble of the machine, the roar against the wind as it slipped through the valley, ascending, it all stirred up—
They stood in the cool morning of the FOB, right outside the cinder-block hospital. In the back of the building was the TOC—Tactical Operations Center.
He was still buzzing from his late night stargazing with Jacie. Walking her home, winding his fingers through hers. The smell of her as he stopped outside her Quonset.
With everything inside him, he’d wanted to kiss her. Let his gaze roam her face, drop to her lips. “I’ll find you when I get back.”
He wanted to weave his fingers through her short, blonde bob.
“What if I’m gone?”
For some reason, her question hit him squarely in the chest. He swallowed, the strangest rush of panic filling his throat. “Then I’ll still find you.”
He spoke his words softly, with more commitment and husky desire in them than he wanted her to know, but they lingered in the night, the stars overhead blinking as if in surprise.
“What, should I send up smoke signals?” Her voice quavered a little.
He touched her face then. “Whatever it takes, I’ll find you, Jacie.”
“I’ll find you.” The last thing he’d said to her before he took off, before his life exploded.
And just like she’d suggested, she wasn’t around when he returned.
Well, he hadn’t actually returned, but she’d certainly taken a hike out of his life.
Her absence had hit him in the gut. Clearly he hadn’t thought about the fact that someday their wartime friendship might end. She’d burrowed into his life so fast it felt like she always belonged there, lodged inside. Maybe because she listened, acted like she cared about him. Cared about his life in Alaska, or even his endless list of useless facts.