It leaves me hating to return home for visits during the holidays.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my family. My parents are great, and my little sister is brilliant, if annoying in a little-sister way. Except they don’t get me.
Had I opted to become a practicing psychologist, or gone into academia, they would have been immensely proud of me.
I hate to say they’re stereotypical liberal coastal elites…except that’s exactly what they are. They always “tease” me about carrying a gun, which is something else they’re staunchly against.
I’m a federal law enforcement officer. Damn right I carry a gun. I can’t stop a would-be assassin by pointing a baton at them and blowing a fricking whistle.
My parents have been blessed with privileged lives marked by practically no chaos, financial desperation, or grotesque tragedy darkening their existence. They both came from families with money. They make the right sounds and give money to the right causes. Yes, they were amazingly supportive of me when I came out. It was a non-issue, to them.
Okay, you’re gay. That’s nice. Pass the mashed potatoes, honey.
No, that’s literally how it happened.
Washington DC is another world in so many ways. Politically, demographically—it’s definitely not California.
I’m one of those politically weird creatures, where I’m really purple. Socially I’m liberal but fiscally, and when talking about national defense, I’m conservative. Our family was staunchly agnostic growing up, so I follow a policy of strict separation of church and state in how I look at things. Keep your god out of my government, and I’ll keep my government away from your god.
Meanwhile, I’ll uphold the oath I took and do my job.
Today it’s me, Brad, Mike, and Andy on this early morning flight on a small plane barely large enough to hold all four of us. We took a commercial flight into Spokane late yesterday. This morning, we have stops to make in Bozeman, Idaho Falls, and Jackson, Wyoming. The main rally will be held in Bozeman, but the senator wants appearances in the other two towns to help fellow GOP candidates running for vulnerable congressional seats.
I’m not fond of small planes but I’ve flown on worse, and at least the scheduled flights are short.
We’re about fifteen minutes outside of Spokane and the weather over the mountains is shitty. It deteriorated overnight because of a weather front that moved in. Thick cloud cover, and the flight feels a little bumpier than I’d like.
Worse?
The pilot thinks he’s a comedian. He’s been making horrible puns and dad jokes ever since we took off, and I’m seriously considering pulling my gun on him just to shut him the fuck up.
Since I’m the lead agent, I’m wearing the other set of headphones.
Lucky me.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me over the intercom. “This is nothing. Like making your lady buck when you spank her ass.”
I suppose now is not the time to tell him that’s not only inappropriate but it’s irrelevant in my case, too. The ground isn’t visible with the cloud cover. I’m about to ask the pilot if it’d be possible to fly higher, over the clouds, even though I’m not a pilot. And inquire if he can do it silently.
Except this flight is kind of freaking me out. I’m no stranger to bad flights but my intuition is screaming at me that something bad’s about to happen, and it’s never done me wrong yet.
The turbulence grows worse.
With a death grip on my seat’s armrests, I’m literally white-knuckling this flight. “Dude, can we turn around and—” Another jolt hits us and it sounds like the engine makes a weird sound.
I don’t know if it makes me feel better or worse that the pilot’s suddenly all business now as he talks to ground control. There’s another hard jolt, and now the engine definitely doesn’t sound right. It also feels like we’re rapidly losing altitude.
I’m sitting in the row behind the pilot and to his right. I see him flip a couple of switches on the control panel.
Through my headset, I hear his conversation with ground controllers. “Flight alpha seven zero niner echo declaring an emergency. Request permission to—”
A blaring alarm screams in the cockpit, making my balls shrivel in terror. “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull up!” More alarms. “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up! Pull up!”
The pilot’s fighting with the stick. “Brace for impact!” he screams.
I have barely enough time to realize that I’m about to die, and an uncomfortably long enough time to process that I don’t even have a significant other to miss me when I’m gone, only my family.
Family I can’t even say good-bye to.
That’s when the first impact painfully jars us. I think we hit the treetops, because I hear what sounds like the screech of branches against the bottom of the fuselage. The engines are screaming, the guys are screaming, the pilot’s screaming.
I’m screaming.
The left wing rips off with yet another scream, of metal this time, and we’re still moving, still falling forward out of the sky with that horrible automated warning system blaring in the cockpit.
I close my eyes and hold on. To my left, Brad’s screaming but in a way that sounds pained, not just shitting-bricks terrified.
I wrap my hands around the armrests of my seat and we’re still.
Fucking.
Falling.
We’re slammed from side to side before the cabin cartwheels.
The world goes black.
* * * *
I come to sideways and nearly upside-down, folded over my seatbelt and still strapped in my seat, and with massive pain stabbing through my pelvis and right leg. I hear someone sobbing. After a moment, I realize the sound is coming from my right.
Where there should be a fuselage wall but isn’t.
In the damp, foggy air, I smell smoke and aviation fuel and what is definitely blood. I finally get my hand on the seat belt buckle and, too late, process that there’s about a five-foot drop to the rocky slope below me. I scream in pain as I hit the ground and black out again.
I don’t think I’m out for more than a couple of minutes that time. Breathing through my pain, I finally manage to roll myself onto my back and process how utterly fucked I am. I have no clue where we went down. My cell phone was in my carryon and I have no clue where that ended up, either.
Which is the least of my problems, because I can’t walk. I don’t even need to try to know I can’t. Just that little movement was excruciating. Since everything’s hurting, it’s difficult to tell exactly where else and how badly I’m injured.
My forehead feels wet. When I reach up and touch it, my fingertips come back bloody.
I have a feeling it’s not all my blood, because I don’t feel any lacerations on my forehead. Then again, I could be in shock and not feeling it, or maybe it’s a scalp lac. I look at the watch I wear on my left wrist just to see it’s smashed and useless.
“Hello?” I call out.
I hear the sobbing again. I’m almost certain it’s Brad. I turn my head as far as I can, trying to see him. With the rocks surrounding my position, my view of him is obstructed.
“Oh, god! Leo? Oh, god, please help me!”
My training tries to kick in but even moving to sit up is more than I can handle, and my vision greys out from the agony. I suck in a few breaths and freeze, trying not to make the pain worse. “Brad? Where are you?”
“It hurts so bad!”
I try to focus on the direction of his voice. Everything sounds distorted and his voice bounces off the surrounding rocks and the mist around us. Doesn’t help that I’m in so much pain I feel like I’m going to puke or pass out, or maybe both. I look up and spot the section of the fuselage, which still holds my seat, balanced on nearby rocks. It’s ripped open like a bear shreds a tent.
That’s when I see Andy’s still strapped in his seat, hanging upside down.
Considering most of his left leg’s missing, and he’s not moving, I think it�
��s safe to say he’s dead.
Gritting my teeth, I push myself backward along the ground with my hands and manage to wedge myself against a rock so I can sit up a little. The effort takes me several minutes and I nearly pass out again multiple times. I’m panting and sweating from my pain and exertion, which I know is bad. Because now I’m chilly, from the weather and from shock, I’m sure.
The whole time, Brad’s crying, sobbing, and sounds weaker.
“Brad, can you move toward me? I can’t walk.”
“I-I can’t. There’s stuff on me. I can’t feel my legs, Leo. God, I can’t feel my legs!”
He’s panicking while I’m struggling to hang on to my composure. “Can you see anyone else?”
“N-no. Just rocks and wreckage.”
I smell smoke and hear the crackle of flames nearby. It takes me a few minutes, a lot of screaming, and nearly passing out again before I get myself rolled onto my stomach again and pull myself over the nearest rocks so I can hopefully see more.
We’re either high enough up the mountain we’re above the tree line, or it’s a rocky section of mountainside devoid of anything other than grasses and low, scrubby bushes tucked here and there around the rocky outcroppings. I can’t see more than about fifty feet in any direction because of the low cloud cover.
Fuck.
We are utterly fucked. I can’t hear any highway or machinery sounds that might indicate a road or farm nearby. The wreckage that’s on fire is downslope from me, so it poses little to no threat right now. I’m hoping with the damp fog it’ll burn itself out and not carry embers to trigger a larger fire.
Although I still can’t see Brad, and I haven’t spotted any sign of Mike or the pilot.
That’s when I realize Brad’s gone disquietingly silent.
“Brad?”
I hear a faint whimper. “I’m sorry, Jeannie. I’m so sorry, baby. God, I just want to see you and the kids again.” He sounds dangerously weak.
Despite my pain I feel my balls wanting to crawl up inside my body. “Brad! Keep talking.” I still can’t see him. I think he’s below me, maybe twenty feet or so down the slope, but with the rocks, it’s hard to say.
“I’m so sorry, kids. I’m sorry, Jeannie. I love you all. I love you so much.”
I hear a playback and realize what he was doing—filming a message for them on his phone.
“Don’t you fucking give up on me, Brad!” I scream. “Hang on! Do you have a signal? Can you make a call?”
“No.” He sobs again. “I’m bleeding, Leo. My guts are out. I’m not going to make it.”
Shit.
Panting with pain and exertion, I scrabble around that rock and head in the direction his voice is coming from. But when I try to get my legs under me again, I black out from the pain.
I don’t know how long I’m out that time but it’s obvious I will not be much help to him. “Brad?”
He’s crying. The sound guts me. “I’m sorry, guys. I love you so much, and I’m sorry. Be good for your mom. Honey, you need to make a new life for yourself. Never forget how much I love you, but I want you to be happy. We’ve talked about this.”
“Brad! Can you take off your jacket and hold it over the wound?”
He tries to laugh and it devolves to a pained cough. I can see part of the wreckage lays in the direction of his voice and I think he might be under it. “I’m pinned, Leo. There’s a piece of metal right through me.” He starts crying again.
I feel simultaneously relieved that I’m still alive, and like shit that I’m helpless to at least go comfort him, even if there’s little I can do to actually help him.
There’s nothing I can do but lie there for the next twenty minutes or so and listen as he films himself leaving more messages for his family. I eventually give up trying to tell him to hang on. It’s obvious we’re the only two who survived, or we would have heard something from the pilot and Mike by now.
But then there’s ominous silence.
“Brad?”
Nothing but the distant, eerie sound of trees creaking together outside my field of vision somewhere downslope in the fog. I feel like I’m stuck in a horror movie. That some huge monster reached up out of the fog, grabbed us from the sky, and ripped us open like a vengeful child with a toy.
“Mike?” I yell, but there’s no answer.
I hope that, as the day progresses, the sun will burn off the cloud cover but that doesn’t happen. If anything, it gets thicker and I shiver worse. I’ve passed out a couple of times when I tried to move, so I have no idea what time it is. Without shadows to give me guidance, I don’t even know what direction is north.
We train for a lot of shit. We train for stuff that has little to no chance of possibly happening. For events that have worse odds than hitting the lottery jackpot.
And yet…
Here I am.
Alive.
For now.
* * * *
I don’t know when the fire burned itself out but with the relentless cloud cover, it’s doubtful it would’ve been helpful for rescuers to spot us, anyway. It lifts a little, giving me about a hundred and fifty feet of visibility now, yet the air remains damp and chilly. The day creeps on, with the light slowly changing, growing dim as the day wanes.
Surviving the night out here will prove iffy. Temps will likely drop into the forties, or lower, and I’m damp. I won’t make it. I’m shivering, teeth chattering, and drifting in and out of consciousness when a low droning noise starts tugging at the corner of my attention.
It finally filters in that it’s the sound of a helicopter, and it seems to be getting louder.
I start screaming and waving my left arm. Hopefully, they’re equipped with FLIR and can pick me out of the wreckage. As the sound grows louder still, I feel the air swirling around me, sending the fog eerily spinning off in lazy circles.
When I look up, I realize they’re right over the top of me and I start crying as they lower a crewman to the ground not far up the slope from me.
I’m so choked up I can barely speak but I point when he makes his way over to me. “Brad. Please, go check on him. He said he was pinned in the wreckage.”
He tries to kneel next to me to check my vitals, but I shove him away. “Go check on Brad! He’s got a wife and kids. I can wait.”
The guy looks where I’m pointing and finally gets up to check.
They drop another guy, and then a rescue basket. The second guy is checking me over when the first returns, looking grim. “Four DOA,” he tells the second guy. “This is the only survivor. Let’s get him loaded and transported.”
They start to move me, and I scream in agony. They cut my sleeve and start an IV, pump me full of morphine, and I fuzz out a little. The actual lift and flight are a morphine-clouded blur. My next cogent memory is sometime late the next morning, when I awaken in the ICU. I find my grim-faced boss, Special Agent Christopher Bruunt, sitting next to my bed, on my right side.
I’m now clothed in a hospital gown and hooked up to IVs and monitors. The pain is a lot less, but I suspect I’ve had at least one surgery while I was out, and that they’re pumping heavy levels of painkillers into me now.
“Hey,” he says when he realizes I’m awake. “Let me get the nurse—”
“Brad,” I choke out. “He was alive and talking. He was filming messages on his phone for his family.”
Chris slowly shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Leo. Even if they’d reached you right after the crash happened, he wouldn’t have made it. He was crushed and impaled by wreckage. There’s no way they could have rescued him in time.” He squeezes my right hand. “The others died on impact. There’s nothing you could’ve done for any of them.”
I don’t release his hand, even though I start crying. “I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve—”
“Leo.” His voice sounds kindly firm. “You’ve got a broken pelvis and leg, among other serious injuries. You couldn’t have helped him.”
“He wouldn�
�t have died alone.”
“He didn’t die alone. You were there.” He squeezes my hand again. “Let me get the nurse. Your parents are en route. They’re flying in right now. I talked to them last night.”
But I still don’t release him. “How long was I out there?”
“They found you a little after six last night. Plane went down at 7:16 in the morning. You were nowhere near a road, and in the middle of the wilderness. Visibility, weather, and low cloud cover impacted their ability to get searchers in there. The chopper crew who found you was from the Coast Guard. They were the last one out, because they still had fuel and they had the only FLIR on board. They were just about to return to base when they located you. You’re damned lucky. You wouldn’t have survived last night. Temps dropped into the thirties.”
I finally release him so he can get the nurse. Lying there, I try to process everything.
The sound of Brad’s sobs echo in my brain.
All three of those agents had wives, children. Well, an ex-wife and kids and a fiancée, in Mike’s case.
Why was I the only one to survive?
Me? The unmarried, childless guy?
It’s a question I suspect will haunt me, because the last thing I feel is lucky.
If anything, I feel cursed.
Especially when I can hear Brad’s sobs every time I close my eyes.
Chapter Eighteen
What are you supposed to do when everything you thought you had a handle on in your life…disappears?
My career, my aspirations, and I don’t even have a significant other to lean on for emotional support.
My family? Yeah, sure, they love me.
Except it’s like I can feel my mom’s silent “told you so” every time the subject of what I’ll do next comes up.
The last thing they want to hear is that I plan on trying to re-qualify to return to work.
Kayley, who also has a psychology degree—and went on to earn her doctorate and go into private practice—is fucking dying to analyze me. I can feel it despite her knowing that, professionally, she shouldn’t. She does this in small degrees by working in questions about my goals, and what I feel I’m trying to accomplish, and what I fear about trying something different in life.
Indiscretion (Inequitable Trilogy Book 1) Page 16