“Any sign of human life?” Mason asked.
“Got shapes. Slightly different from rocks around. No signs of life.”
“Shit,” Callie whispered.
“GPS location?” Mason asked.
Callie recorded the coordinates as the voice came through the radio against the background noise of the chopper.
“The animals scattered when the pilot first lowered the bird, but they look like they might return. We’ll go past and buzz them off a few times until you guys can get in, but we’ll need to refuel and switch out crew soon. And we can’t go too low because of the forest canopy.”
“Roger. Keep us posted, over,” Mason said.
“Affirm. Over and out,” said the SAR tech.
They heard the chopper move farther into the distance.
“Start breaking camp,” Callie said, lighting a gas lantern. “We’ll attempt the gorge crossing as soon as there is enough light. How will Trudy handle the crossing?” she asked Gregson.
“I’ll transport her across in harness.”
She nodded, clicked on her headlamp, and consulted the map against the GPS coordinates by the beam of her light. Oskar came over to join her.
“Here,” she said, tapping an area of the map where the contour lines ran far apart. “There’s a flat area behind the ridge on the other side of this gorge. That’s where the wolves or coyotes are.”
And possibly the bodies that attracted them.
The thundering sound of the nearby white water charging through the gorge reached them as they fell silent. One of the techs lit a small gas stove to put on coffee for the crew. The blue-white flames sparked to life with a faint whiff of propane.
Mason leaned over Callie’s shoulder and studied the map. “How long to reach that location?” he asked.
“Chopper can guide us in from the air if need be. Looking at this topography, once we reach the other side of the gorge, maybe an hour’s hike uphill.” She met his eyes. “If we can cross the gorge. This precip of late, and snowmelt above, is bringing the water down hard.”
“Doesn’t look good,” Oskar said quietly. He paused, then voiced what they all were thinking. “It sounds like we’ve found them. But not before the wolves did.”
“And now, there might be none,” Callie said very quietly.
Their search for the Survivor Five might just have turned into a recovery mission.
THE SEARCH
MASON
A pale and silvery light washed into the valley. At the edge of a rocky incline that plunged into the gulley below, Mason stood beside Oskar, Callie, and the other SAR techs, awed by the force of white water rumbling down the narrow funnel between two mountains. Spray boiled up toward them in a wet, white cloud, throwing little rainbows everywhere. The noise of the rushing water almost drowned out the resonating thuck, thuck, thuck of the chopper in low clouds on the opposite side of the ridge.
Mason’s heart jackhammered as, far below, Gregson worked Trudy along the gorge edge. Rain fell softly and sweat prickled over Mason’s body. His breathing was shallow. He wasn’t sure he could do this.
He also couldn’t not do this.
The helicopter had fallen quiet for a time before dawn. It had returned to the helipad in Kluhane Bay to refuel and to rest the crew. Upon return to the area at first light, the SAR tech on board the chopper had reported the wolves had come back again, and the pilot was continuing to buzz them from the air, trying to keep the pack at bay. But tree cover was making the task difficult, and the wolves were growing emboldened.
Below, Gregson suddenly raised his hand high, giving the signal that Trudy had alerted to scent near a logjam that spanned the narrowest part of the gorge. The jam consisted of a tangle of fallen trees, branches, and muddy, stone-encrusted root balls that crisscrossed in a bridge over the water.
“That logjam would have been caused by an earlier flood,” Callie said. “Looks like our subjects crossed over it. Amazing if they all made it without ropes. One slip, and they’d be gone.”
Oskar and the others began picking their way down rocks that were wet and slippery with river mist and moss.
Mason felt frozen.
Callie touched his arm gently. “You okay to do this?”
His eyes met hers. “Yeah.”
“Mason, listen to me. When you sent that de Havilland Beaver into the water—I saw that you had an issue with heights. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. But if you do attempt to cross that jam, and if you tense, or freeze, you could make a mistake. We’ll use ropes and carabiners, but a slip could put others in the team at risk.”
He inhaled deeply. He had to do this. He had to conquer this fear in himself. For reasons he couldn’t even begin to explain to himself. He felt suddenly as if this gorge cleaved his life between past and present. He’d come this far north, into this wilderness, to come upon this torrent. And either he dug deep enough to cross it, either he tried to make himself one of these people, this tribe he’d found—or he wouldn’t move on. He’d stay stuck in his head and his grief forever. Or worse. He’d just find a way to check out.
“There is no reason you can’t stay behind,” Callie said. “And wait for another team to come in, or for extrication by helicopter.”
“I’m fine.” He determinedly tightened the straps of his pack across his chest, his focus on the gorge.
She assessed him.
“Callie,” he said, looking at her, “I’m fine.”
Far below, Gregson had put Trudy in a harness. Oskar and the others had just reached them and were busy securing a length of rope to rocks.
Still, she regarded him.
“Just tell me what I need to do,” he said.
She moistened her lips, nodded slowly. “Okay. Oskar is securing rope to rocks on this end. He will attach himself to that rope and make his way to the other side, where he will secure the other end. It will create a line of support across the water. Then each of us will attach ourselves by a shorter rope and carabiner to that line across the water. And then we work our way across. If you slip, you will be attached to that line, and someone can help pull you back up.”
It sounded simple in theory. But Mason could see that, given the sheer, rushing force of the white water beneath the logjam, even if someone was secured to a line, if they fell into that torrent, that water pressure could hold and trap them under. And even if someone did try to tug the person free via his rope, there were enough places to become trapped under the tangle of branches and roots and trunks of the logjam. And if he did fall, the impact he’d create on the support line could be enough to make them all slip.
He wiped rainwater off his face. His stomach churned.
“Ready?” she said.
He nodded.
They started down. The rocks were slick from the fine spray of mist and rain, and the slime of forest detritus.
His boot heel slid, and he skidded a short way down. Blood boomed in his ears. He could barely breathe.
Focus.
You wanted to die, remember? Now you can’t take others down with you. They’re relying on you. You’re doing this for them.
Once they’d reached the bottom, Callie again placed a hand on his arm. Her eyes met his.
“Must you do this?”
He hesitated. “I need to do this.”
She regarded him, reading something in his face. Mist formed tiny droplets on her eyelashes. In this light, her eyes were moss green and lambent.
“Help me, Callie,” he said very quietly. “Show me how.”
Something in her eyes changed, darkened. And he felt an energy pass between them. An understanding. A kinship.
She swallowed, turned to watch the water where Oskar was getting ready to cross, thinking.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I want you to rope up to me as well as hook onto the line across the water.”
“No—”
“Yes.” Her gaze locked on to his. “We’re getting to the other side, together, and I’m going h
ome to Ben, understand?”
He held her gaze.
“That’s how I do the scary things,” she said, her voice low as she unhooked a coil of rope from her pack. “I tell myself Benny is waiting. Peter is waiting. If you plan on stopping me from getting home to them, pull out now.”
He inhaled.
“Because it’s not that tough, Mason. The jam looks solid. We’ll have the line. And those Survivor Five got across without ropes. At least I’m guessing some of them did before the wolves found them.”
He gave a wry smile.
“Seriously, it’s a slam dunk.”
“Don’t say dunk.”
She laughed. Unexpected. And it cracked and shifted something in him. He was ready. He would do this.
They roped up and started carefully, testing each log before transferring weight. Step by step. The focus was intense for Mason. When he and Callie had reached the middle of the logjam bridge, water booming below them, Callie stopped.
Mason saw why.
The guideline that Oskar had secured from bank to bank across the river had gotten snagged behind a branch, and Callie couldn’t keep sliding her carabiner along it. She tried to force the line free of the snag, but it was stuck fast. She tried to pull again, and Mason thought he felt logs suddenly moving under his boots. Fear sank a hatchet into his heart.
He felt his focus slipping. He stiffened, and his attention went to his boots and the logs and water gushing below. He couldn’t move.
Focus. Look up. Focus.
But he was frozen again.
It seemed that below him the water was rising up higher under the logjam, mist boiling more furiously, the noise getting louder. He heard gigantic boulders knocking and booming as they were rolled around beneath the water.
He forced himself to slowly glance up, to look across at the bank on the other side. To get his mind back on goal. As he did, the trunk on which Callie stood rolled suddenly under her boots.
In that split second, Mason also noticed she’d unhooked her carabiner in order to resecure it to the line on the other side of the snag.
Before he could yell a warning, she slid off in a blur of color. Mason grabbed hold of a branch and flexed his knees, bracing for the impact of her weight against the rope secured to him.
As she went down, she lashed out and grabbed hold of a branch, just stopping herself from jerking hard at the end of her rope and pulling Mason in. She swayed in the void, holding by one hand, her boots swinging over churning water that plunged into a waterfall below her. His heart stopped dead.
He had seconds before she could no longer hold on. And when she did fall, her rope would tug hard at him. He had no idea how long the line across the gorge would hold both of them.
He heard Oskar screaming to hold fast, he was coming.
Callie yelled for Mason to grab her other hand. She reached it out to him. Time stretched into a viscous, distorted fluid. Noise warped in his ears. And all Mason could see was Callie’s eyes boring into his—her outstretched hand. Her words echoed in his head.
“We’re getting to the other side, together, and I’m going home to Ben, understand? That’s how I do the scary things. I tell myself Benny is waiting. Peter is waiting. If you plan on stopping me from getting home to them, pull out now.”
Rivulets of rain and mist poured over his face, his jacket.
Move, move.
He thought of Jenny and Luke. Of the others on their team. This little tribe—especially Callie, he realized—had already helped him confront the abyss of grief. These people, this place, were beginning to give him reason to want to get up in the morning.
He sucked air deep into his lungs, and holding fast to his branch with one hand, forgetting his fear, he slowly, carefully, crouched lower on his log. He reached over, down. She took his hand. Clamped. Final. Connected. Like she’d helped him back on the Taheese River. On one level he’d just won something big. But right now, he also faced losing everything. If his grip failed, if his courage waned, she was gone.
He held fast, gravity and balance rendering him unable to haul her up on his own. His muscles burned. All he could do was hold on. He felt the branch in his other hand giving.
“Hold on!” the big Norwegian yelled. And suddenly Oskar was at his side, and behind Oskar a SAR tech with more ropes.
Oskar lay flat on a nearby log and managed to get another rope and harness down over Callie. She let go of Mason’s hold, and Oskar and the tech took her weight as the harness tightened around her. They began to haul her up.
Callie came up, shaking, white as a ghost. Water sheened her face.
“Keep . . . moving,” she said, her voice hoarse, almost inaudible against the roar of the water. “It’s coming down harder. Too much rain. Snow up top has been melting. Logjam is giving.”
The tech quickly hooked Mason into a new line so he could undo his carabiner and rehook it to the guide rope on the other side of the snag.
They all moved carefully. Inching along the logjam using the guideline as the tangled bridge of roots and branches began to shift and creak beneath their boots.
The tech and Callie hit solid ground first, helped up onto the bank by Gregson and the other SAR volunteer. Then Oskar landed. He reached back, and Mason grabbed the Norwegian’s hand as logs began to roll. He made it. But as he unhooked from the line, a loud boom sounded and the entire logjam imploded in a crash of spinning logs and whirling branches and dirt. It all roared down the gorge in a chocolate-brown pulverizing mass.
They all stared in silence. Wet. Breathing hard. Shivering. Disbelieving as their bridge vanished into a brown, chunky churn.
Rocks boomed below the water.
Mason turned to Callie. Her green eyes held his. Her chest rose and fell. Her hands still shook.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Ben needs you,” he said quietly. “So does Peter. I wasn’t going to not let you get home.”
Emotion gleamed suddenly in her eyes.
He bent down, picked up the coil of rope, and followed Oskar to where the others had laid down their packs under the cover of trees.
THE SEARCH
CALLIE
Oskar pointed to a canine print in the mud. “Wolf spoor.”
The indentation was as big as the palm of his large hand. Callie felt a primal shiver run through her. The claws were widely spaced. Long.
“Big one,” said Oskar. “Canis lupus, maybe—timber wolf. Largest of North American canines.”
Trudy sniffed deeply. Her body posture shifted and her hackles rose. A growl emanated from low in her throat. The mood in the group shifted. They all sensed it—the pack was near.
They climbed for another half hour. The thudding of the searching helicopter waxed and waned. A breeze moved through the trees. It sounded like water rushing softly through the forest. Steel-gray clouds billowed and rolled down the mountains, curtains of rain in their wake. It grew colder as they gained elevation.
Oskar stopped occasionally, examined the ground. He frowned.
Callie came up behind him. “What is it?” she asked quietly.
“Looks like the wolves were tracking them.”
“Hunting them?”
“Maybe waiting for a weakness. Almost from the gorge.” Oskar crouched down on his haunches and pointed the tip of his tracking pole at marks in the moss and loam. “The Survivor Five appear to have stopped at regular intervals since the gorge. Might even have overnighted here again.” He looked up into the forest. “I figure they could have spent a day or two, or more, back at that plateau before finding a way to cross that logjam. And from that point . . .” His voice faded.
“What, Oskar?”
“I can’t say there’s specific signs to prove it, but it feels like they were struggling. Slow. Very slow. Maybe dragging something. See there?” He pointed to another flattened area of moss. “The moss had time to spring back, but—”
“You think one of them might have gotten injured?”
<
br /> He worried his lip with his teeth. “Ja. Or Steven Bodine taking a turn for the worse.”
They walked awhile more. Rain hovered to sleet, then back again.
They all stilled as a howl came from the depths of the mist and forest, rising up, up, up in a crescendo, then drawn out in a long, plaintive note. Another animal answered. Then more. The sounds died with a series of yips.
She glanced at Mason. His face looked grim.
She reached for her radio in her pouch. Keyed it. “SAR one, Callie here. SAR one for rescue chopper one.”
“Come in, SAR one.”
“How far are we from the wolf pack? Can you see us?”
The helicopter noise grew louder as it came toward them in the clouds. Suddenly they glimpsed it.
“We can see you guys. You’re about a half klick out from the location and the wolves, as the crow flies.”
“Roger that, thank you. Can you buzz the pack off again as we approach? Over.”
“Affirm. Over and out.”
As they neared the GPS coordinates Callie had flagged, her radio crackled again. “Rescue chopper one for SAR one. Going low to buzz the animals off. Got heat tracing for eight animals.”
“Roger. Any sign of human life?” she asked.
“Negative.”
She signed off and saw Mason check the position of his sidearm. The others were making sure that the holsters of bear spray at their hips were easily accessible. Oskar shrugged his shotgun off his back. Mason reached for his rifle.
The chopper descended over the trees with a deafening roar. Branches whipped and swirled and thrashed as pine cones and small twigs and other debris were hurled into the air.
The chopper rose and moved northward.
“Rescue one for SAR one. Proceed, SAR one. Should be clear for a while. Pack has retreated to maybe a half klick. Can’t see through the canopy, but no additional infrared signatures.”
Slowly they entered the treed plateau area. Big, old-growth hemlocks and yellow cedars provided them cover, protection from rain. Pine needles formed a soft carpet on the ground.
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