In many ways, however, he still felt frozen.
Phillips came running with the sleeping bag.
Mac untied it, then handed it to Emma.
“I’m going to unbuckle her and brace her fall,” she said.
“Try and move her onto the bag. We’ll ease her out and put her as gently as we can on the backboard.”
She seemed practiced as she braced her back against the victim and loosed the buckle. Sarah’s weight eased onto Emma. With a grim look she crawled toward Mac. He rolled Sarah as carefully as he could onto the bag. Her face looked gut-wrenchingly pale.
Phillips helped Mac as they pulled Sarah out as smoothly as possible and lowered her onto the bracings of the backpack.
Emma climbed out. Other than her rapid breathing, no one would suspect her stress. She knelt beside her friend. “I need a cloth to press against her wound.”
Mac looked to Phillips, who scrounged up a couple of wool socks in less then ten seconds.
Emma pressed them to Sarah’s head wound, then wrapped that with tape. “I need a few towels or something to secure her head.” Exhaling hard, she leaned back and pushed bloody hair from Sarah’s eyes while Phillips went in search of towels. He returned and handed Emma a pair of pants and a fleece sweatshirt. She rolled them into tubes, braced them on each side of Sarah’s head, then rolled out more tape and secured the woman’s forehead to the makeshift stretcher.
Emma closed her eyes. In the silence, the wind lifted her collar, blew her dark hair from her face. Mac saw her swallow hard. “She’s my best friend. She only came to Alaska to celebrate my birthday.”
Mac didn’t know how to respond to that.
Emma looked up abruptly, away from him, moistened her lips, and took a deep breath. “We’re going to get out of this.”
He wasn’t sure her words were meant for him. Aye, she is a tough one, this lassie.
“What now, Captain?” Ishbane approached, making no attempt to conceal his anger—or maybe fear. “I have an important meeting in Prudhoe Bay that I can’t miss.”
“Let me call you a cab,” snapped Flint. “I think we should be thanking her for keeping us alive. We could’ve been killed!”
Ishbane glared at Emma.
She didn’t flinch, simply regarded him with emotionless eyes.
“Or still in the air if she hadn’t tried to fly through that storm,” Ishbane responded.
“Speaking of storm,” Nina spoke from her perch behind them. “I think it’s moving in.” She looked beyond them.
Mac didn’t miss the tremor in her voice. He glanced overhead. Sure enough, the ceiling had darkened, and thunder rolled in. “We need shelter.”
“We need to get out of here!” Ishbane said. “How far are we from the highway?”
Emma shook her head. “Twenty, maybe thirty miles. I have a map in my gear. I’ll try and chart our path, but once we went into that spin . . .”
They’d all been thinking about hitting the ground. Preferably in one piece.
Thunder growled again. Mac looked to the sky as did Phillips.
“We need to quickly get as much as we can out of the plane.” Emma’s voice cut through the gathering panic. “Mr. McRae, will you and Mr. Phillips carry Sarah away from the plane? Keep an eye on her breathing. If she starts to labor at all, get me immediately. I’ll dig out my emergency kits.”
Mac felt a gust of relief at the words emergency kits. Okay, he’d give her points for preparation.
He moved with Phillips to lift the injured woman while Emma moved toward the wreckage. The smell of gas hung heavily in the air, and the sounds of sparks made his stomach clench.
Spark plus leaking fuel . . . the thought clung to him as he watched the pilot wriggle her way back inside.
Chapter 3
THE SMELL OF fuel leaking from the severed wings nearly knocked Andee back as she unlatched the door in the back of the plane. Sparks spit out from the instrument panel. Ignoring them, she focused her attention on retrieving her emergency supplies. Alaska flight rules dictated that she carry enough emergency provisions for each passenger. She had packed that, including her personal bag of provisions. With Sarah’s sudden arrival, however, they were one kit short.
Please, Lord, let Sarah be okay. She let that prayer fill her soul as she tugged out the duffel bag of supplies, fighting her shaking hands. Being a pilot demanded that she be prepared to land and spend the night in the bush at any time. She’d overnighted near Koyukuk River twice over the summer after rain had forced her down on mail runs from Bettles. But during those overnights, she’d never had to look after passengers— a job she steered away from. She’d been on too many high-altitude rescues and experienced the whims of Alaskan weather too often to enjoy watching out for passengers.
Please, Lord, don’t let anyone die!
She heard a grunt behind her and looked over her shoulder. McRae had wedged himself inside. “Get out! This plane could explode,” she ordered.
“Hand me the duffel.”
Andee waged a half-second debate with herself, then shoved the bag toward him. She yanked another one out. Prying herself through the door, she gritted her teeth as she tugged. The canvas caught on the sharp edges.
Phillips came up behind her and lent his strength to the handles. She heard the material rip but didn’t care as they carried it away.
“Get away from the plane,” Andee said as she saw Nina approaching.
“My camera!”
“No, Nina. There are still sparks. It’s not safe.”
“It’s an entire month of work!” Nina started for the cabin, panic in her movements.
Andee dropped the pack and grabbed at Nina. “I said no!” She pulled Nina away from the plane.
Nina clawed at Andee’s hand on her arm. “Get away from me!”
A spray of sparks spit from the instrument panel. Andee tackled her, bracing herself for the explosion as she threw an arm over the woman.
Nothing.
Andee’s heartbeat filled her ears as she waited.
Nina squirmed beneath her, finally untangling herself from Andee’s grip. “You’re crazy!” She stood, shaking, tears in her eyes. “I’m getting my camera.” She strode to the plane.
Okay, so maybe she’d overreacted. Except Nina wouldn’t have thought that if the plane had exploded in a fireball, would she?
“You did a brave thing,” said Phillips from a few feet away.
“I ducked.”
He smiled at her, but Andee didn’t reply. Instead she stood and surveyed her passengers. “Listen, I know we’re all rattled, but the first thing in survival is to not panic. God gave us brains, and that’s our most important asset. Right now most of us are unhurt. Those who are hurt need the rest of us to be careful, to use our heads.” She looked pointedly at Nina, now climbing from the plane with her camera bag. “I’m still the pilot, and I’m still going to get us home safely.” She tried to steel her voice, but her words stalled on the thought of Sarah lying so quietly, almost peaceful in her slumber, save for the bloody socks wrapped around her head. Help me get Sarah home safely.
Andee noticed that McRae had opened the duffel and had begun pawing through the supplies. She knelt next to him. She’d seen panic before, and the way he followed her into the plane told her he might be starting to lose it. Keeping him focused would keep him calm. “We need to treat the injuries first,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.
He looked at her, then at Phillips and Flint.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then help me with Flint. We need to move him away from the plane. And Sarah needs to be covered with one of the sleeping bags to keep her from going into shock.” She mentally ticked off the steps in warding off shock, then glanced at her other passengers for shallow breathing or signs of dizziness as she moved to help Flint.
McRae tucked a hand under Flint’s arm, opposite Andee.
“Hey, I can move my own backside. I�
�m not helpless,” Flint said, jerking his arm from McRae’s grip.
Andee noticed, however, that he leaned on her as she moved him farther from the plane. Once Flint sat, Andee knelt before him to examine his knee.
McRae paced behind her. “What about the ELT? Is it working?”
“Mr. McRae, can you get me the first-aid kit?” Andee asked before she turned to Flint. “It looks like your knee is swollen. I’m going to have to cut your pants to get a better look at it.”
McRae handed Andee the first-aid kit, and she used the scissors to open Flint’s pants. A blue green bruise started at his patella, the knee swollen to nearly double its size.
“I hope it’s not broken,” she said as she prodded gently. The kneecap felt dislocated, but it could be broken, along with the proximal tibia or distal femur. Flint grunted as she probed. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how bad it is.” She moved down the leg, felt for a distal pulse.
“I feel like I’ve been dragged ten miles behind a pickup.”
“Can you straighten it?”
Flint gave her a look.
“I’m going to try just once. If you can’t, we’ll have to splint it as it is.” As gently as she could, she tried to straighten the limb. His howl could probably be heard in Juneau. “Okay, we’ll splint it bent.”
Flint leaned back, sweat beading along the rim of his renegade-label cap. At least he’d rescued that from the plane.
“I’m going to check on Nina’s head wound; then I’ll come back and splint your leg, Flint.”
Nina had her camera case open, scrutinizing her equipment. She shoved it back into the case when Andee approached her. “Thanks for trying to . . . uh, save me. I’m sorry I . . .” She sighed and closed her eyes. “Do you think they’ll find us?”
“We’re going to be okay, Nina,” Andee said, putting compassion into her voice. If she had children at home depending on her, she might also be a wreck. “Let me look at that gash.” Andee moved Nina’s hair, matted now with blood, and dabbed a gauze pad to clean it. “If we were in Fairbanks, I’d suggest a couple of stitches.”
“But we’re not in Fairbanks, are we?” Ishbane muttered.
“I’ll have to dress the wound and hope someone picks up the ELT transmission and flies us out of here by tonight,” Andee said, ignoring Ishbane.
“So the ELT is working,” McRae said.
Andee glanced at him, saw his eyes fixed on her, and said, “Can you find me another cloth to dress Nina’s wound, please?” She turned back to Ishbane. “How is your nose?”
“How do you think?” he snarled.
She sized up his wounds. He’d sustained a gash along the bridge of his nose. “The bone may be broken, but it looks like the bleeding has stopped.” She noticed his leather jacket drenched with blood. Taking a gauze pad, she attempted to clean the wound.
He jerked away from her, glaring.
“We should probably bandage it, if not apply an antibiotic. Do you hurt anywhere else? Your neck?”
He snatched the gauze pad from her hand. “No. Not that it matters. We’ll probably die out here.”
She wondered if perhaps he might be going into shock. Feelings of impending doom preceded weakness, nausea, and clammy skin. She reached over to touch his forehead, but again he jerked away and glared at her. Apparently she’d assess from a distance. “Try to keep warm, Mr. Ishbane.”
McRae stepped into her path as she returned to Flint. “Did you get a response from the Mayday?”
She stepped around him. “Please, Mr. McRae, I know we need to address our location and situation, but I’m serious about treating injuries first.”
Despite her words, even she could admit that her busyness kept her from facing the reality of Sarah’s injuries. She looked at Sarah, watched her chest rise and fall. Rise. Fall. Please, please wake up, Sarah.
She felt McRae’s eyes on her while she searched for something to splint Flint’s leg. Stubborn Scot. He needed to get out of the way and let her do her job.
At this altitude and surrounded by tundra, sticks to splint Flint’s leg were scarce. She stood, studying the plane. In the tail section, where she stored extra cargo, she’d rigged two PVC pipes to hold the fishing gear of the early summer clients. Andee hiked around the plane, found the tail section, then climbed inside. Mounted to the bulkhead with nylon straps, the PVC pipe would make a decent splint, despite its cumbersome length. At least for now.
She took it back to Flint. McRae stood not far away, watching, his gaze cool. Rolling up a sweater, she shoved it under Flint’s bent knee, then secured the pipe to his leg so he couldn’t move it. Much. “I’m sorry, Flint. That’s the best I can do. You’ll just have to stay off it.”
She knew the others stared at her as she worked, psychological shock settling into their systems. As long as the shock didn’t turn into a medical emergency, the injuries—save Sarah’s—weren’t life threatening.
Keeping warm seemed priority number two.
Although secluded in a bowl rimmed by peaks, the arctic wind sliding off the northern slope seeped through her clothing, lifting her hair on her neck, snaking down her spine. She guessed the temperature at a tame thirty-five degrees. But by nightfall, if they weren’t rescued, it could drop to zero or below.
Finding shelter fell into the category of keeping warm.
McRae hovered just outside her line of vision, and when she moved over to her duffel bag to open her supplies, he crouched beside her. “Listen, I don’t know if you realized it or not, but we’ve crashed in the middle of nowhere. Do we or do we not have a hope of rescue?”
Andee tried to control her rising emotions. “You listen. Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing, and I promise we’ll figure everything out after I take care of our basic needs.”
McRae raised one cocky eyebrow.
She stood and brushed past him.
“Our basic needs are to get out of here,” Ishbane growled.
“I don’t know if anyone heard my Mayday,” Andee continued. “But the ELT should be working, and any plane flying nearby should hear it. When we don’t show up in Prudhoe Bay by nightfall, they’ll come looking for us.”
“Nightfall?” Flint’s voice seemed strained. He needed pain medication. “We might need to spend the night here?”
“Aye. Maybe a few nights,” said a voice behind her.
Andee whirled and met McRae’s grim expression. “If you’ll just trust me, I promise I’ll do my best to get us out of here. But we need to work together. And you need to listen to me. One thing at a time.”
Something flickered in McRae’s eyes as he dragged his gaze over her, a look that told her just what he thought of her ordering him around. Well, get used to it, laddie, because as far as I know, there is no one else driving this ship. She alone was responsible for keeping them alive.
Andee shook her head and crouched to open the bag. “At best, we’ll spend the night here. Worst-case scenario has us hiking out.” She glanced at Sarah. “Then again, depending on where we are, I could start now for Wiseman or Disaster and maybe bring back help. It might be faster than waiting on the ELT.”
McRae knelt in front of her. “Are you talking to me? Because you’re mumbling.”
A blush burned her face. She did that—thought out loud in a low mumble. Sometimes even answered herself. It helped to get a couple different perspectives sometimes. She raised her voice. “I have two bags, enough provisions for six, plus tarps and blankets. We need to gather as many supplies as we can—”
“But there are seven of us!” Ishbane said. “There isn’t enough food—”
“Well, the girl isn’t eating, is she? She’ll probably die—” Nina looked at Andee. “I’m sorry.” She put a hand over her mouth. “I’m really sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
“Sarah’s not going to die. No one is going to die,” Andee said tightly.
She didn’t know how to read the silence of the passengers as they watched her. She returned to the du
ffel bag and noticed her hands shook, just enough to betray the adrenaline that filled her veins. More than all of them, she longed to believe her own words.
Mac noticed that Emma’s movements seemed quick, jerky, as if she was trying to hold back the emotions that he’d heard in her voice. She may be small and seem well-attuned to emergency situations, but he noticed the tremor leaking out in her hands.
He had to admire a person who pushed past her fear and took command of a situation. Only he should be the one in charge. He had survival training and had spent too many nights in the bush to remember. With her cute curly hair, her freckles, her lithe form, Emma looked like a city slicker who’d signed up for an Alaskan summer-flight internship.
And she talked to herself. He couldn’t decide if that was unnerving or attractive. For now, he’d find it intriguing. Informative. And just for the record, all he’d wanted was an assurance that she hadn’t forgotten an important aspect to their survival—namely turning on the ELT. Was a straight answer such a problem?
Lightning flashed, followed by another peal of thunder. This late in the year, he expected snow, but then again maybe it would be icy rain.
Spending the night on this mountain, soaking wet and cold, sounded like the perfect way to spend the first day of his vacation, pondering his future. Oh, joy.
He watched as Emma pulled out supplies from her emergency kits. A signal mirror, whistles, a multitool knife, a compass, waterproof matches, a flint-style fire starter, tinder, and a survival candle.
He picked up a roll of wire. “What’s this?”
“A snare wire,” she said without looking at him. “In case we have to catch our food.”
He envisioned a field mouse dangling on the other end and made a face. “Let me help you.”
She faced him, surprise in her eyes. “Okay, lay these out in piles so we can assess what we have.”
Precisely what he’d have done. Or maybe he’d already be leading them in a hike out of these mountains, heading south. With the ELT tucked under his arm. They came with batteries and a remote transmitter.
Except for the basic desire to sleep in a warm bed, exactly what did he have to hurry home to? His brother’s grave? Awaking each morning to the choking weight of failure? Maybe he should be joining Ishbane with chills and feelings of doom. He should step aside and let Ms. Pilot Extraordinaire do her thing. Especially if he wasn’t planning on being an FBI agent anymore anyway. No need for heroics.
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