“Excuses, excuses,” he teased. That too was new. Claudia didn’t appear to notice, so he let it go by.
First, she jerked out a length of fishing line, wound it back onto the spool, and jerked it again. He knew from experience that the monofilament offered little resistance to the arrow’s flight. Then she pulled the first full draw, testing the bow’s flex, and he appreciated anew the way her muscles flowed and aligned on her frame.
It was as she moved about the forest floor to find the best angle that she revealed a new Claudia.
He had analyzed and could catalog each of her mannerisms: the smooth pilot, the silent observer in groups, the uninhibited lover. Last night he’d added the infuriated woman and this morning the most unexpected, the spontaneity of her humor and the accompanying complete loss of composure.
This one was different.
She was steadier, but it wasn’t just the steadiness of the pilot. A flicker of morning sunlight reached down through the trees and cloaked her in glory as she nocked an arrow and drew the bow in earnest. Every muscle shifted into the alignment she’d shown Dilya on the Chinook. But it wasn’t the alignment of practice; instead it was the way the best D-boys ran and fired their rifles, as if it was instilled in Claudia’s very soul.
Every muscle was defined through her thin T-shirt. No bra strap broke the smooth lines. She was so skilled that he could watch the balance and her aim shift, could even see her pulse beat in the tiniest shifts of the bow. Then, on an exhaled breath, she loosed the bolt skyward.
The arrow roared aloft with a sharp whistle he’d never achieved and the high whine of the fishing line spooling so fast. He didn’t have to look up to know that it had flown true over the branch. There was no discouraging plonk as the arrow bounced off branch or bark. The fishing line continued to hiss out as the arrow fell toward the underbrush on the far side of the tree. He didn’t turn from the magnificent woman to see where it fell.
No, that simply wasn’t enough.
He was going to have to find a new word to describe her.
* * *
Claudia enjoyed watching Michael flail about in the huckleberry underbrush to retrieve the arrow. Once he’d scrabbled around and dragged it back to the tree base, he tied on the thin line of accessory cord. Next, as Claudia wound the line back into the spool, he used the fishing monofilament to drag the light pulling line over the branch and back down to them. Then he lashed on a hank of nine-millimeter black tactical rope used throughout Special Ops and dragged that up and over with the pulling line.
He lashed one end to a stout tree nearby, only a half-dozen feet through, rather than the thirty-foot-diameter monster they were about to ascend. The knot looked good to her. To the other end, he attached their packs and then began fishing through them.
“Have you ever worn a harness?” He held up a knot of buckles and straps.
“I’ve put one on a horse and I’ve worn a parachute—Airborne qualified to be in SOAR, remember?” She enjoyed sassing him. “Neither tells me what to do with that thing you’re waving at me.”
With a flick of his wrist as he came over to her, it untangled and fell into place.
“Oh, that looks comfortable.” But when he held it out, she braced herself on his shoulder and stepped through the double loops—first one leg, then the other. They slid up, one to mid-thigh and the upper one to just below her crotch. Then he raised the wide belt past her hips and fastened it around her waist. He made a series of adjustments, then clipped a large carabineer ring to the front and gave it a sharp tug.
“Once you leave the ground, this ring is always attached to a line that is attached to the tree. Always!” He tugged it again for emphasis, forcing her to stagger forward as he practically lifted her clear off the ground. The man’s unconscious strength felt as if it tugged at something far deeper and far more carnal. She let her momentum take the extra step and moved into his arms.
When she finally let him move back a half step, he drew in a deep breath. “You keep doing that and we’ll never get up this tree.”
“That’s okay. Nell’s a sweet girl; she can take care of herself.”
He hauled her back against him using the harness ring as leverage. By the time he stopped, her lips were sore and her head was spinning. He climbed into his own harness before she recovered.
“Cheater!”
He grinned at her and kept pulling out gear.
“These are called Jumars.” He handed two to her. It was a metal loop about twice the size of her hand. The outer part had clearly been shaped to grab on to. The other side was a confusing cluster of gaps and adjusters. Below them dangled a strap that ended in a loop about a foot across.
He snapped them onto the main rope—that’s what the gaps and adjusters were for—and showed her that while they wouldn’t pull down, they could slip up the rope easily.
“See, you hold on and push them up the rope. Then you can’t slide back down,” he explained as he put keeper rings through holes. He then hung with both hands on one of the Jumars to prove his point.
She could feel that foreign world descending over her once again. She knew how to parachute down, but now she was being asked to climb up a rope. It was the size of her pinkie and hung a good three feet away from Nell’s trunk. When she tried to follow the rope upward with her eyes, all it did was make her head spin.
“Step into the lower loops. Hands on the handles. This is a little old school, but it’s the way my parents and I climbed when I was a kid. That was back before someone thought up boot cleats and all that.”
Greek. Greek. Greek. Why did he think he was speaking any form of a language that she understood? Though the analogy failed as she understood Greek, or as much as she’d been able to pick up during a two-month training exercise with their navy.
Urdu. Urdu. Urdu.
When she stepped into the loops lying on the ground, he tied two short lines to the harness ring at her waist and tied the other ends to the two Jumars, obviously safety lines.
He slapped a hard-shell helmet on her head and fastened it under her chin. That was actually the first comforting element of the whole episode so far; it reminded her of her pilot’s helmet. That took away a tiny bit of the mass of foreign newness that surrounded everything about Michael and this whole experience.
He’d become a different man in the woods. He still moved with that easy, sliding pace that all the D-boys had, even Billy the ex-SEAL. But he was somehow lighter here, younger—as if he’d never gone to war and seen what he must have seen and done. Perhaps here he could just be himself instead of “Colonel Gibson, the country’s most skilled soldier.”
He clipped a long line to the back of her harness. It looked complexly tied and included several more safety rings.
“Just ignore this. It’s called a split-tail lanyard, and you won’t need it until we’re up there. Now, raise your right foot as if you’re climbing a ladder.”
She did so. “I feel stupid standing here on one foot like some seagull.”
“Think heron or flamingo. You’re beautiful.” He kissed her briefly and she took absolute advantage of her raised foot by wrapping it around his waist, as much as the harness allowed.
She really was losing it about this man. How many more times could she throw herself at him? Not that he appeared to be complaining.
Maybe she too was different in the woods.
“Now slide your right-hand Jumar up about a foot.”
As she did so, the right-hand foot loop was now tight against her boot.
“Good. Stand in the loop.”
Pushing down with her right leg, as if she were climbing stairs, her left foot came off the ground and she began to swing and spin. Michael’s hands on her waist stabilized the disconcerting motion. It felt nothing at all like dangling from a parachute or sliding down a fast rope.
“Now the same on
the left.”
She raised her left foot and slid the left Jumar up against the bottom of the right one. It also raised the left loop so that she was once again standing on two feet—in two straps just over a foot above the ground.
“Again, try to do them in unison. Right hand and right foot together.”
Right and right. Left and left. Now she was two feet in the air.
“Now let go of the Jumars with both hands.”
“What? Are you nuts? I don’t—”
“Do it!”
At the sharp command her instincts from years of drill instructors cut in and she did. She fell about a foot, her harness jerked tight around her hips and thighs. Her feet, still in the Jumar loops kicked out sideways. Now she dangled from the safety lines on her belt, most of the way to upside down.
“That’s called a bat hang. You’re not a bat, so get yourself back into position.”
It took her a bit to figure out how to do it, but with a knee bend and a pull on the safety line at her waist, she was once again standing upright with her hands on the Jumars.
“I shouldn’t say this, but you’re good at this.”
“Gee, thanks, Michael.”
“Do it again.”
“Yes, sir.” She let go.
As she fell back, he gave her a sharp push. It flipped her once more into a bat hang, but also knocked her feet out of the Jumar straps, and set her to both swinging and spinning.
“Recover!” he commanded as she cursed at him.
Her shoulder swung hard enough against the tree to hurt. On the next swing, she managed to plant her feet against the tree, but she did it so stiff-leggedly that she bounced back off. It took her a lesser bang on the other shoulder to recover, but by the time she was back in the right position, she felt fairly secure on the rope despite its tiny size.
“Good. Do another jug up.”
“Jug?” She slid up the Jumars until her feet were even with his chest.
“That’s what you’re doing, jugging up a line. Now go. When you get to the top, sit on the branch. Do not detach from the line until I get there. Repeat that.”
She repeated the whole speech verbatim out of spite and jugged up once more—right, left.
Then he turned away to see to his own harness.
As silently as she could, she tipped herself over into a bat hang, until her face was even with the back of his head, except that she was upside down. She tapped him on the shoulder.
When he turned in surprise, she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a serious upside-down kiss.
He started to reach for her, but she flipped back upright and did a quick couple of jugs up.
“Gotta be faster than that if you’re gonna catch me, soldier boy.”
His laugh as she headed aloft was one of pure joy.
* * *
Michael watched Claudia jug upward. He tried to ignore the spectacular view the harness provided of her exceptional ass. And then he figured that as her lover, he had a right to admire such a fine display.
For most beginners, he’d apply tension to the bottom of the climbing line to steady it. She was moving well without it, even though this was clearly her first rope ascent. She really would make an exceptional Delta recruit.
So, with nothing to do but wait until she reached the high branch, he lay back on a bed of ferns and watched the show.
About halfway up, she stopped and looked down.
“Holy shit!”
“What did I tell you about not looking down?” Michael shouted up to her.
“Not a thing!”
“Well, don’t look down.”
“Thanks so much for the great advice, soldier boy.” And then she continued aloft.
When she reached the branch, he didn’t volunteer any information, but waited for her to puzzle it out. It didn’t take her long before she disappeared up and onto the top of the branch. Easily six feet across, it stuck sideways out of the tree a good ten or fifteen feet, then turned upward and shot into the green canopy. All by itself it would make a plenty impressive tree, except that this one was rooted a hundred and sixty feet up into the side of Nell.
He was about to shout up additional instructions when he saw the lanyard he’d clipped to the back of her harness disappear as well. It took her a few tries, but she was soon lashed to the tree rather than the ascent rope.
Maybe it was time Delta reconsidered its no-women policy. If there were more women out there like Claudia… Well, no, there weren’t. But ones with her skills. He’d have to pass on the suggestion to The Unit’s commander about it next time they met.
“I’m clear.” Her voice drifted down to him across some impossible distance.
By the time he reached her, she was eating an energy bar and admiring the little orchid that grew in the cleft where the branch left Nell’s main trunk.
With another bow shot, she managed to catch a branch another hundred feet up and probably only two feet across. It took her only two tries.
“I’m not used to shooting from a sitting position fifty yards up a tree. I’m sure you, Mr. Perfect Soldier, can do it first time every time.”
He decided it would be best to make no comment. He always went for the far closer branch behind them, and even that one occasionally eluded him for a time.
“Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants. What are you going to do about that?” She pointed to where the arrow dangled at the end of the fishing line. After passing over the branch above them, it had descended to dangle opposite their position, but almost twenty feet away.
“Easy.”
“You’re not going to do some crazy hand-jam thing in the bark to try and get over there, are you?”
Trying to keep a straight face, Michael pulled out a tiny, folding grappling hook, attached it to another bit of line, and managed to snag the arrow on his first try.
“Show-off,” she muttered. “I get to try the next one.”
He did flash her a grin at that. “But it’s my grapple.”
Claudia slid a hand up his neck and pulled him in. The kiss built and progressed until she’d guided him down to nuzzle her breasts through the thin T-shirt she wore.
It wasn’t until they had again climbed and were recovering the next arrow shot that he noticed she was the one who now had the grapple attached to her gear.
* * *
Michael’s parents had taught him proper climbing and safety techniques when he was a kid. They themselves had begun recreational tree-climbing in college. Their masters’ work was based on research done in the forest canopy. Mom was a botanist and Pop an arboreal biologist.
Michael couldn’t remember not climbing trees. Not like every other little kid—clambering aloft and scaring their parents to death—rather with ropes, helmets, and safety lines ascending the sixty-foot madrone tree that lived in their backyard.
Through high school and college he’d made his spending money teaching students how to climb the big Doug firs on the OSU campus. Oregon State hadn’t appreciated it for insurance reasons, so he’d found a couple of giants in the Coast Range and held his classes there.
In the years since, he’d trained dozens and dozens of Delta operators safe rope techniques. Though tree climbing wasn’t typically involved, he was definitely the Delta rope guy. But no one had ever taken to it the way Claudia had.
They’d lunched on a wide branch after the second jug up. She sat at ease with her feet dangling twenty-five stories above the ground. Definitely no problem with heights, but he’d keep an eye out. He’d seen acrophobia strike at the oddest of moments. And if the fear of heights slapped you even once high in the branches, it was unlikely you’d ever climb over ten feet again. She was such a wonder to watch, so at ease aloft, that he didn’t want to ever lose that.
They spent the afternoon exploring the forest at the top of
Nell. It was a maze of buttresses, suckers that had turned into their own trees, and the detours required by broken debris barely clinging to the structure. It really was another forest in the air, with hundreds of trunks, deadwood, and snags. And because they could traverse it vertically for a hundred feet up as well as horizontally, it wasn’t all that hard to become lost.
Nell’s crown was an active, messy, biological world that had nothing to do with weapons and ships and crazy pirates. He could feel all of that leaking out of him, tumbling thirty stories to splash onto the forest floor and seep into the earth, to never be seen again as long as he remained aloft.
He showed Claudia the double-ended split-tail lanyard that confused every beginner. He should have taught her on the ground, but he’d been too eager to get aloft. In under an hour, she was skywalking through the canopy, using the lanyard to move herself through space between major trunks in three dimensions.
After that, it had become a game of tag. He’d lose her in the branches, only to have her surprise him around the next vertical trunk. One time she did a long, controlled descent past him, tantalizingly a mere foot or two out of reach. Tantalizing because she had pulled off her T-shirt and tucked it into her belt. She made a gesture like a fainting damsel in distress as she passed him, then disappeared from view.
And, damn it, he couldn’t do a thing about it because she still had his grapple.
By the time he was properly tied to chase her, she was gone off in some other direction.
He took her to “the Garden.” At three hundred feet, Nell’s “leader”—that fastest growing point of the tree—had broken off the main trunk. It was typical that the sixty-foot top broke away after the first eight hundred to thousand years of growth. After that, the main tree trunk became thicker but no taller. Instead, it sent side branches aloft forming the forest of the canopy. Losing the leader also created damage in the top center of the main trunk. Rain collected there and rotted the wood. Fungi and mosses arrived, soil started to form, and the process kept going.
“Nell’s Garden,” he told the woman hanging close enough now that he could brush her skin and watch her body react, “is growing on about three feet of what is called canopy soil. It’s regular composted material that has turned to dirt three hundred feet in the air. Pop’s best estimate is that a couple thousand liters of water are trapped here as well. We’re too early for huckleberries—that’s those little bushes over there—but look, the early rhododendrons are blooming.”
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