The Stranger

by Anna del Mar

  “The pilot who was flying the Baron when it went down!”

  The Baron? “You mean E&E’s Eight-Romeo-Papa?”

  “It’s bad, Seth.” Jer shook his head. “A rescue is simply not possible. The darkness. Hurricane-force winds. They crashed in the Range and there’s a storm about to hit.”

  “Crashed?” Had I heard that right? “The Beechcraft Baron crashed?”

  “So you don’t know?” Jer’s eyes widened, his mouth twisted with grief. “The plane crashed. Alex was on it. And Seth? There’s something else you need to know.” He paused then forced out the words. “Summer was also on that plane.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  My head throbbed and the warm blood running down my face hued the world crimson. I wiped my eyes, groped around and released my seat belt, only to plummet headfirst a short distance, onto what had once been the roof of the aircraft. Somehow, I found my knees, righted myself on all fours, and crawled out of the wreckage.

  A white expanse tilted at a sharp angle before me. The front of the aircraft was gone, along with one of the wings, ripped off the fuselage. The back end of the plane perched precariously on a crag, shadowed by a snow ledge and overlooking a small hanging valley.

  The wind cut through me like a frozen blade. I forced my mind to work. Alaska 101. Get warm, Silva. Stay dry. I zipped up my coat, groped through my pockets and donned my gloves, scarf, and knit hat. We had crashed. Unbelievable. In the Alaskan wilderness no less. What were the odds?

  “I’m not going to die here.” My dad hadn’t fought in a revolution, defied a dictator, clung to a raft, fought off the sharks for three days in the Florida Straits and become Miami’s foremost architect for me to die in this frozen expanse.

  I ran my hands over my limbs. Arms and legs were there. Check. Fingers and toes intact. Check. Heart beating, lungs breathing, brain churning, albeit slowly. Check. A spot stung at my hairline under my beanie, but other than the pain across my chest where the seat belt had held me in place, I seemed to be okay.

  A burst of movement caught my attention. My eyes focused on the blinding whiteness. I spotted parts of the plane, crumpled metal strewn across the slope. A dark shadow trudged toward me through an ocean of deep snow. I peered into a slanting horizon. I recognized Joe Pilot as he came closer. I waved both arms in the air. I was so happy to see him.

  A groan came from somewhere behind me. Alex. Where was Alex? I crawled back into the wreck. Alex hung upside down from his seat. As I reached out to try to help him, his seat belt gave way. He crashed next to me, screaming in pain.

  I leaned over his crumpled shape. “Are you okay?”

  “My leg.” He groaned and grabbed me by my coat. “Help me!”

  “Easy now.” I extricated myself from his hold. “Let me take a look.”

  I ran my hand carefully over his right leg. The lower bones yielded like broken twigs beneath my fingers. The leg was severely fractured and any attempt to move it could result in more damage and shards breaking through the bruised flesh.

  “Is he going to make it?” It was Joe, crouching right behind me, wearing a pack on his back. A bruise darkened his face and a nasty cut slashed the side of his head from ear to chin, but otherwise, he seemed calm and focused.

  Alex, on the other hand, was about to lose it. “Am I going to die?”

  “You’re going to be all right,” I said with fake certainty. “We just need to put the leg into a splint and stabilize the injury.”

  How the hell did I know that?

  Thank God for the Discovery Channel. I took in small breaths to slow down my racing heart. And now, for the small details. “Do you perchance know how to splint a broken leg?”

  Joe shrugged. “I can try. There should be some sort of an emergency kit somewhere in the back. There should be an emergency booklet with it.”

  “Hang on,” I said to myself as much as to the other two. “I’ll be right back.”

  I crawled to the back of the plane, reached up, opened the compartment beneath the bench seat and retrieved the emergency bag. I unzipped it and examined the contents. It included several thermal blankets, water boxes, self-heating ready-to-eat meals, and a decent supply of bandages, painkillers, and disinfectants.

  I fed Alex the painkillers, then the pilot and I got to work on his leg, using the bandages from the kit and a piece of paneling we ripped from the cabin. It was difficult. Alex cried the entire time and, even with my gloves on, my fingers were stiff from the cold.

  When we were done, I wrapped Alex snug in the blankets. The pilot rummaged through the emergency supplies and selected a compass, a flashlight, and a few other things, all of which he dropped in his backpack.

  “The storm was moving at a good clip,” he said. “It will be here in no time. We need to leave now.”

  “Leave?” I squeaked. “To where?”

  “There’s a mountaineering school that keeps summer headquarters nearby.” He zipped up the backpack and clutched an axe in his hand. “Depending on the weather, we might be able to reach it in a few hours. The school is already closed for the season, but if we get lucky, we could break in and use their radio equipment to call for help.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Isn’t rescue already on the way? Don’t they know we went down? Isn’t this plane equipped with a locator beacon?”

  “Yes, the plane is equipped with an Emergency Locator Transmitter and, provided it wasn’t damaged in the crash, it should be operating right now. But...”

  “But what?”

  “It’s satellite based.” His gaze studied the sky. “We’re pretty well encased in the mountains and that’s a thick cloud cover above us. It’s only bound to get thicker as the storm arrives. There’s a good chance someone heard our mayday, but the towers won’t know our exact location, only our last coordinates before they lost track of us.”

  Crap.

  “What about these?” I held up a bright orange, radio-like object I found in the emergency bag. “Can’t we use these to communicate our position?”

  “This is a SPOT, a global beacon.” Joe took it from me and switched it on. “It’s designed to transmit our location and call for help, but it’s satellite based too. See the red light? It’s not able to hook up. But just in case, we’ll deploy it as a backup to the ELT. Pass me the strobe light as well. We should mark this location as well as we can.”

  He stepped outside the wreckage and duct-taped the tracker and the emergency strobe light to the crumpled fuselage, before he returned to crouch next to me.

  “Our best hope is to reach the mountaineering school,” he said.

  “What about me?” Alex whimpered. “I can’t walk, let alone trek through deep snow.”

  “You’ll have to stay here while we go for help.” The stone-faced pilot donned the backpack and fixed his eyes on me. “Are you ready?”

  I wished we had a different option, but Joe was right. Alex was in no condition to attempt a descent, let alone a long hike through the deep snow. We had to get out of here and soon.

  “I pay your salary,” Alex said with mind-boggling arrogance. “I forbid you to go.”

  “You can forbid me all you want,” Joe said. “But we’ll all die here if we stay put. Daylight will be gone soon. The temperatures are about to plummet. The weather will become lethal. If we’re not out of here by then...” He left the rest unsaid.

  “I swear,” Alex said. “If you leave me here, I’ll fire your ass!”

  “No need,” Joe said. “The hell with this job.”

  Alex opened his mouth to shout, but Joe lifted a gloved finger in the air.

  “My best advice is to you is to stay warm and be quiet,” he said. “You are on borrowed time. If you look outside, you’ll see a protruding lip of snow and a chute, both prone to avalanches and very sensitive to no
ise. Need I say more?”

  The wreck. The storm. The plummeting temperatures. The avalanche threat. It was too much to take in. There were too many ways to die out here, and all of them applied today.

  “You can’t leave me behind,” Alex pleaded. “You can’t leave me all alone here.”

  “It’s the only option,” the pilot said. “We’ll send help as soon as we can. Summer? We need to get going. We have to make the best use of the daylight.”

  Get going, Silva. I tightened my boot laces and rose to my feet. Time’s ticking. I wrapped my scarf around my face and followed the pilot. A stiff wind buffeted me as soon as I stepped out of the wreckage. As I took in the white desolation, the doubts pummeled me too. The odds of survival got worse with every second I hesitated. On the other hand, I was—well—me, and like it or not, Alex was Seth’s family.

  “You go.” I lowered the scarf on my face. “I’ll stay with Alex.”

  “Bad idea,” Joe said. “He’s really not worth your life.”

  Who knew whose life was valuable and why?

  I had to stay, but a new concern had me second-guessing my decision. What if Seth found out about the crash? What if in a moment of monumental stupidity, he made the wrong decision and came after us?

  My stomach clenched. Was there any danger of that happening? Seth would be really pissed at me right about now. With my actions today, I’d pretty much written myself out of his equation. God, he probably hated me.

  But I couldn’t overlook his nature. He’d consistently displayed a propensity for trouble and a habit for heroism. He was a seasoned pilot and he knew the Range, but he wasn’t crazy, was he? What if he tried and then got hurt trying to get to us?

  “Joe, listen to me very carefully,” I said. “When you get to the school and radio for help, tell them we’re okay. Tell them we’re prepared to wait out the storm. We’ve got food and supplies. Under no circumstances are they to attempt a rescue while the storm is raging. It’s too dangerous.”

  “You don’t understand,” Joe said. “The conditions will only get worse.”

  “I’ll do everything I can do keep us warm and safe,” I said. “But I don’t want anyone else hurt because of us.” Especially not Seth. “And if perchance, you have to face Seth Erickson, and if at any time he expresses even a remote wish to mount a rescue attempt, tell him to stay put. Okay? In the unlikely situation he insists, give him a message from me. Tell him that I said no. Flying a helicopter into a superstorm is even more dangerous than staying here. Don’t let him come. Send rescue only after the storm passes. Will you please make sure that Seth stays safely on the ground?”

  “You’re a brave one.” The pilot shook his head. “Foolish, but brave. Given this terrain, I can’t drag you out of here against your will. Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He started to walk away.

  “Hey, Joe?” I said. “Is Joe Pilot your real name?”

  He shrugged. “With a name like that, what else could I be but a pilot?”

  “You’re a good one.”

  “Only you would say that, considering the circumstances.”

  “The three of us are alive when we shouldn’t be.” I waved. “Good luck, Joe Pilot.”

  I watched him work his way down the face of the mountain, cringing every time the snow rushed after him in small avalanches. The sun set at about the same time he reached the valley below. I lost sight of him beyond the snowdrifts.

  Alex gawked when he saw me. “Why the hell are you here?”

  “Don’t be a knucklehead.” I crouched next to him and rummaged through the emergency bag. “I thought you and I could bond over some s’mores. In the absence of graham crackers and marshmallows, my company will have to suffice.”

  I handed him some water and food rations, before I climbed out of the wreckage and located the luggage compartment. Stored in there, I found a couple of tarps, no doubt used to protect the airplane against the weather. Using what remained of the duct tape, the tarps, the seat cushions, and anything else I could find, I created a small cocoon for us in the very back of the plane. Moving slowly, I dragged Alex as far in as I could and made him as comfortable as the circumstances allowed. It was still cold back there, but at least we were out of the wind. I studied the mountain through the back window. If the slope held, we had a chance.

  “Jackpot,” I said, when I found a few packages of chemical hand warmers in the bag.

  I opened a pack and handed them to Alex before I inserted the next pair into my gloves in an effort to defrost my fingertips. I kept Alex busy for a while with an inventory of our supplies. We found a fire starter in the kit, but the strong odor of fuel and the leaking tanks dissuaded us from using it.

  As the sun set, the storm arrived in full force. The wind pummeled the fuselage and seeped into our little shelter, chilling my bones. I turned off the flashlight to conserve the battery. In the darkness, we huddled together under the thermal blankets, listening to the wind howling outside. To bad weather, a brave face. Easier said than done when the weather turned deadly.

  “We’re going to die,” Alex muttered, shivering next to me. “If an avalanche doesn’t get us, the cold will kill us. We’re going to freeze like Popsicles.”

  “Hey, I’m trying to stay positive over here.” I rubbed my arms and legs to keep the blood flowing.

  “You are such a fool.” Alex scoffed. “You could’ve hiked your way to safety.”

  “And if the situation had been reversed,” I said. “Would you’ve left me behind?”

  “Absolutely yes.” He snickered in the darkness. “Until a couple of hours ago, I had no reason in the world to like you, none whatsoever.”

  “And here I was, suspecting you liked me from day one.”

  His snickers petered off into a coughing fit.

  “Allow me to dispel a myth,” he said after a while. “There will be no rescue for us today. Nobody in their right mind would take to the air tonight, not with this monster storm raging. The airspace will be closed. A rescue is simply not possible.”

  “Then they’ll come tomorrow,” I said. “After the storm.”

  “We’ll be a pretty pair of ice sculptures by the time they find us.”

  “Think good thoughts.” I closed my eyes. “Right now, I’m imagining Seth lying on the cowhide chaise by the fireplace.” A little flame burned inside me when I visualized him safe and sound.

  “You really do love him,” Alex said.

  “Is that really so hard to believe?”

  He exhaled a pained breath. “I guess not.”

  A little honesty from Alex. How refreshing.

  “Why do you hate Seth so much?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.” I rubbed my gloved fingers together.

  “It’d be a waste of time.”

  “Time’s something we have at the moment.”

  “True.” He hesitated. “All my life I had to prove myself against Seth. It gets tiresome after a while.”

  “Prove yourself?” I said. “How?”

  “In school, he was always the genius with the high grades,” Alex said. “In high school he was the honor student who was also the quarterback. Fishing, hunting, mushing, hiking, he excelled at everything he tried. The girls liked him and the boys respected him. Nobody ever tried to bully Seth Erickson. Alex Erickson? Maybe. Seth had to pound a few jerks on my behalf in middle school. Everybody liked Seth. Including me.”

  “So you liked Seth way back when?”

  “What was there not to like?” Alex squirmed next to me. “We had fun together. We even talked about going to MIT together. He got in on his first try. Me? I barely managed to get into a third-rate college and only because my father made a sizable donation.”

  “Please don’t
tell me you hate Seth because he got into MIT and you didn’t.”

  “Nah.”

  “What changed?”

  “Life changed,” Alex said. “Did Seth ever tell you the story of AEE?”

  “No,” I said, blowing into my cupped hands to warm my nose. “What does it stand for?”

  “Alex Erickson’s Enterprises,” he said, voice shivering. “A few years ago, I started my own business. I modeled it after E&E’s business plan. I wanted to give Seth a run for his money and show everybody else that I could do better than Seth at the helm of my own company.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went broke, of course.” A note of inevitability dulled Alex’s voice. “I was up to my eyeballs in debt. Do you know what the SOB did to me?”

  “What?”

  “He went behind my back and paid all my debts out of his own pocket before the bankruptcy became public knowledge. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Grandma. Then he offered me my old position back at E&E.”

  Yep, just like Seth.

  “Some people would’ve been deliriously happy with an outcome like that.”

  Alex scoffed. “It was humiliating. But then I saw my chance when Seth had to go to Afghanistan. I ran the company for almost a year. Sure, he supervised my decisions remotely, but I did fine. Just when I was getting the hang of things, the guy comes back, physically destroyed, but mentally? He was all there. It stunk. I had all this power and authority. As soon as Seth was back on his feet, it was all gone.”

  It was just like Alex to blame Seth for a harrowing recovery. Something was broken inside of Alex, his ability to measure reality, his capability to empathize with others, his compassion meter. What could cause someone to ignore the pain of others and focus only on themselves?

  “Seth always comes up with the winning play,” Alex said. “He helped me so he could feel morally superior to me.”

  God. If he kept talking like this, I might just take my chances with the storm and hike out of the Range just to get away from the weasel.

  “I think Seth tried to help you because you’re his family and he cares.” I refused to give Alex a pass. “Which is why I find it so strange that, instead of being grateful, you take every opportunity to harm him. You even tried to frame him for the spill at Star Lake.”