Lost Girls

by George D. Shuman

  Sherry had dozed on and off during the flight, listened to cable news on satellite television, and spoken with Brigham by phone several times. He told her that Captain Metcalf had contacted him and wanted to know if she might attempt, with him, to reach a body hanging from a headwall. Metcalf was convinced it was a member of his sister’s team. The man had apparently been trying to leave a message with signal dye on the side of the mountain when he died.

  It wasn’t a request and it didn’t require an answer. Brigham was only warning Sherry what to expect when she arrived in Anchorage. But there must have been a conversation between the two men about her physical capabilities. Metcalf would not have raised the possibility of descending a mountainside with a blind woman unless Brigham had assured him that she was in good physical condition. Brigham wouldn’t have told Sherry what he thought she should do—he never tried to lead her one way or the other—but he might have considered it a real option.

  One thing she knew with certainty: He wouldn’t let her do anything that might compromise her safety. She knew as surely as she knew her own name that if Brigham raised the possibility of such a thing, he had complete confidence in Metcalf’s abilities. As for the biological side of it, all Sherry needed was a body intact, with the remnants of a neurological system and an inactive brain, to see a corpse’s final seconds of memory.

  Sherry felt the helicopter getting buffeted in the wind. She knew something about the Pave Hawk: it was a modified version of the army’s Black Hawk, seventeen million dollars’ worth of technology refitted for rescue work in hostile terrain. It was used not only in the mountainous extremes of Afghanistan but also in civilian rescues like those for Typhoon Chanchu and the Indian Ocean tsunami and Katrina in New Orleans.

  There were three other men in the chopper, all navy SEALs, she’d been told, and they were strapped in harnesses on the benches to her right. Sherry’s toe struck the duffel bag between them. It would be orange or red or yellow, filled with morphine and oxygen, heat packs and adrenaline syringes, and there would be CO2-charged splints and neck braces and of course disposable body bags. Metcalf might have come to perform a rescue mission, but all rescuers knew that such undertakings often turned into a recovery. She knew Metcalf was thinking about that. Thinking about his sister.

  She couldn’t quite say how it had happened. One moment she was heading for the relative safety of basin camp to visit the bodies of three dead climbers. The next she was listening to Metcalf’s argument for reaching the dead man, and donning heavy snow gear to descend the side of a mountain.

  Metcalf was not a man of many words—he wasted none explaining their objective—but he was nonetheless convincing. She felt confident in his presence, and it was a contagious feeling that continued throughout the mission. She knew now why Brigham had let it get this far. You didn’t always need eyes to size up a man. The perception of comportment was not exclusive to people with sight, nor were qualities such as competence and self-assurance. Metcalf was a Navy SEAL and that assumed certain abilities, but there was far more to Metcalf than ability.

  The plan was extraordinarily simple, he told her. The pilot of the Pave Hawk would drop them above the headwall at 16,200 feet. Then they would belay off fixed lines—already attached to the side of the mountain—and rappel 400 feet to where the body was hanging. Recovering the dead climber’s body was not an option—there was no time for rescue baskets and Metcalf could hardly divide his attention between a blind woman and a dead man once they were down there. But if the dead man had been part of Allison Metcalf’s team, Metcalf might be able to make clear the meaning of the message the climber had been trying to write on the side of the wall. If they could decipher it, Metcalf could radio the information to his men up above and they could focus their search accordingly.

  Sherry often went into these kinds of situations feeling doubtful. What a person was thinking about in their last few seconds of life was not always what her clients wanted to hear. No one knows the precise moment they will expire and what random thoughts might occupy their short-term memory when they did. This was especially true when death is inevitable but protracted. People preparing themselves for death run the gamut of emotions, all the while searching their mind for visual references of their journey through life.

  The man hanging from his boot had surely frozen to death. He was probably thinking about loved ones in the end, most people did, but he might also have been occupied by the technical problems of his situation, how to regain the fixed line on the side of the mountain, how to right himself again.

  Even if he could still focus on the message he was trying to leave, Sherry couldn’t imagine him producing a mental image that might help them locate a team of climbers buried in a snow cave above them. In fact she could not imagine how he had hoped to find his own way back in a storm of the magnitude that had been described.

  It occurred to her that he might never have had the intention of returning. That he might have known he was not coming back, that his message on the wall was an act of extreme selflessness.

  “Kahiltna Glacier.” The pilot’s tinny voice came over the headphones. Metcalf tapped the side of her helmet and Sherry nodded to acknowledge that she’d heard. That her equipment was operating.

  She pulled the microphone away from her mouth to speak to Metcalf privately. “You know the admiral?” Brigham had never mentioned Senator Metcalf before. She was aware that Brigham had friends on Capitol Hill, had even overheard a woman at one of those rare gatherings at Brigham’s house comment on a birthday card with the presidential seal.

  “Mostly by reputation, ma’am.”

  “Reputation?” she repeated lightly. Sherry had never thought of Brigham in terms of having a reputation.

  Metcalf was silent again, even stoic. Except for the brief description of what he’d asked her to do on the side of the ridge, since leaving Anchorage he’d spoken only to his men and always in fewer than three words. He didn’t like questions, or so it seemed. He wasn’t used to them and they probably made him uncomfortable.

  “So you’ve never met?” Sherry couldn’t help herself.

  “We’ve met,” Metcalf allowed.

  Sherry had always had a nose for people’s discomfort. She knew that Metcalf had a lot going through his mind. His sister, alive or dead, was out there somewhere. One could only imagine the stress he must be under. She couldn’t help but wonder why he was putting such energy into taking her along with him. It didn’t quite fit the manner of the man. Was it Brigham’s influence over the captain that had convinced him to meet her? Men like Metcalf would not be happy chauffeuring civilians around in times of crisis. They were far more likely to put faith in training and experience rather than some paranormal exercise. Metcalf just had to be thinking this was a waste of precious time, but then why was he doing it? Was it in deference to his father or the admiral’s rank? Had the senator called Brigham or was it the other way around?

  Sherry’s ability to “see” dated back to an incident in her childhood, an inadvertent gesture of tenderness that linked Sherry to a dead girl’s mind, flooding her with images of things that she had never known and could not possibly have seen. For all the skeptics who would follow, none were more critical of her interpretations than Sherry herself, and it wasn’t until many years later that she realized she was actually seeing glimpses of memory, the final seconds of a person’s life.

  Much could be said about Sherry’s documented experiences with corpses since then. The press had labeled her paranormal, but Sherry’s ability was gaining credibility in the medical community and an impressive list of neurosurgeons and scientists around the world were beginning to draw parallels between Sherry and new research on how human memory is stored.

  Each year researchers inched closer to the possibility that Sherry’s ability to link short-term memory was based in science, not metaphysics. On paper it made sense. Millions of skin receptors and nerve cells were wired directly through the deceased’s central nervous syst
em to the cortex of the brain. If memory was but an encoding of the body’s sensory experiences, then why couldn’t the right kind of electrical stimulus tap into it? The wiring was in place. The brain was still there, and brains were computers.

  She was curious about Metcalf, but not at the expense of alienating him, so she decided to let it lie. The day was half gone. The Alaskan sun would set before midnight. She would do what she came to do and then she would be back on the jet and heading for home. All of this would be behind them.

  She heard Metcalf clear his throat. His head was near. He seemed to be leaning in toward her. He surprised her by speaking and this time it was with inflection.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  She hesitated a second. She wanted to get this right. For some unfathomable reason she wanted this man to trust her, to like her, even if he could not believe in her. She couldn’t explain why that was. She usually didn’t dwell on the misgivings of others, but Metcalf somehow mattered; she wanted to reach him on a personal level and it wasn’t going to be easy. It was a little like trying to approach a wild animal, she guessed. It would require the use of round, harmless-sounding words. Say the wrong thing, use the wrong tone, and it was over. But she really wanted to understand Metcalf’s relationship with Brigham.

  “We met in the Pentagon once and several times at my father’s home in Boston. I actually remember him from my teenage years. How about you? Have you known him long?”

  “Ten years, a little more,” she decided to say.

  “So you’re close then,” Metcalf said. “Friends?”

  Sherry smiled. “I can honestly say he has become my best friend, Captain.”

  Metcalf took a moment to digest that, seeming uncertain about the ground in front of him. When he finally decided to speak, he turned to face Sherry, covered the mike on his headphones so the pilots couldn’t hear, and spoke loudly over the din of the engines. “A lot of people would go to hell and back for that man. Myself included.”

  Sherry was surprised by the emotion in his voice. It clearly wasn’t an idle declaration. He really meant it. But what did that mean? Metcalf didn’t sound old enough to have served with Brigham; by her estimation he couldn’t possibly have been a peer, so what would he know about Brigham to qualify that statement?

  “Whatever he told you, about what we have to do up here this afternoon, I want you to know you’re in good hands. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise.”

  Sherry nodded, but she wasn’t thinking about the mission anymore.

  “He’s been retired as long as I’ve known him, Captain,” she said. “I’m forty-four, Miss Moore. I joined the navy straight out of college. I did three years under the admiral in the Gulf. He was my CO during Desert Shield.”

  Sherry pulled off her own headphones. “You served together?” she said, surprised.

  “He never talked about the Gulf?”

  She shook her head. “He never talked about the navy. I always imagined he was a bureaucrat. You know, life behind a desk.”

  Metcalf was silent again, but now Sherry wanted more.

  “He told me he was stateside at the Pentagon.” Sherry wanted to keep the conversation moving.

  Metcalf grunted.

  She was losing him. He was getting defensive again.

  “He said he pushed papers,” Sherry prodded.

  Metcalf actually snorted.

  “Well, tell me!” she blurted out, and immediately she regretted it.

  There was a moment, a crossroads moment. Sherry knew she had either lost him or broken through.

  “Did the admiral ever speak of DEVGRU?” he said at last.

  Sherry shook her head. “No. What’s it mean?”

  “It’s an acronym for development group. The admiral chaired the special warfare development group in the Pentagon. This was following the First Gulf War.”

  Sherry’s expression was blank. Chaired, she thought, trying not to be cynical. He had probably “chaired” a dozen committees at the rank of admiral, which meant he delegated assignments to rear admirals and subordinate commanders. No big deal about that.

  “What’s so special about DEVGRU?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say there was nothing trivial about the kinds of papers he pushed.”

  “Tell me about DEVGRU. What kind of development…” she began, but Metcalf put a hand on her shoulder, leaning close to keep from being heard by the pilots. “Ma’am, I don’t feel comfortable talking about Admiral Brigham behind his back. I was just trying to make conversation.”

  With that he put the headphones back on and Sherry knew it was over. He wasn’t being unpleasant, but he’d reached his limit of conversation.

  She sat quietly for a moment. Then she leaned into him, shoulder pressing against his bicep. “Thank you, Captain. I just want you to know I understand that this can’t be easy for you. I know how odd you must think it is, my being here. Maybe even a waste of your time.”

  “Miss Moore,” he said, abruptly pulling the headphones away. “I started this day with nineteen hours of daylight and a suggestion from Admiral Brigham that bringing you here was worth every hour doing it. That might not carry a lot of weight in the civilian world, but if Admiral Brigham also suggested you could fly this helicopter to Denali, I’d be strapping in next to you, so you see I do not take the admiral’s suggestions lightly. Plan on doing whatever it is you came here to do and have faith that I’ll keep you safe while you’re doing it. When we get my sister off this mountain, you will have the most grateful man on the planet at your beck and call.”

  Sherry had to smile, but then she sensed Metcalf wasn’t smiling, so she pulled her microphone back in place and shifted nervously in her seat.

  There were goose bumps on her arms. Not because she was cold, but from the sheer gravitas of the man. He was, she thought, one of the most intense human beings she had ever met.

  The obvious consequence of Metcalf’s unwavering belief in Admiral Brigham’s word was to assume an unwavering belief of his own. A belief, though he knew nothing independently about her, that she was capable of assisting them by doing something a reasonable person might think impossible. It wasn’t logical by any stretch of the imagination. Faith wasn’t a transferable entity when it came to matters of life and death. And rappelling off the face of a mountain with an inexperienced climber who was also blind was in itself a matter of life and death.

  What was she getting involved in here? she wondered. And what kind of men were these who would stake their lives on the word of a long-retired superior? Why did she suddenly feel the ponderous weight of responsibility? As if she had a stake in saving this team lost on the mountain. She was becoming one of them. No longer a one-person show, but part of a unit going on a mission. Suddenly she needed Metcalf to know that she wasn’t infallible. Any thinking person should know that, but Brigham had said something to him and now Metcalf was long past doubting her abilities, if ever he did.

  This didn’t remotely correspond to Sherry’s experiences in the civilian world. Life for Sherry was a daily quagmire of uncertainty. Every year brought some new form of attack on what she did. Lawyers everywhere seemed bent on testing her right to practice what most people would call clairvoyance. It wasn’t clairvoyance, of course, not by a long shot. But instead of science making her more credible, it seemed only to make her a more desirable target, at least in the eyes of the legal world. Suddenly there was something they could point to. A tangible concern was at stake. If she wasn’t trying to defraud the public and was actually reading dead people’s memories, then the law had better get out there and regulate dead people’s memories, too. Someone had better ensure that the rights of the dead were protected. Or at least that’s what the lawyers were trying to get on record in a courtroom. Sherry found herself having to hire lawyers to protect her from lawyers.

  This was a refreshing change, she thought, men and women who spoke plain English. A group of people who believed t
hat lies and strategies had two different meanings.

  She had learned about this phenomenon of blue or green love, whatever you called the brotherhood of arms, from her late friend Philadelphia police detective John Payne. But Metcalf took the concept of esprit de corps to a whole new level. It had only been necessary for Admiral Brigham to say it was possible for him to believe in her—that was all Metcalf needed, another man’s word. It was mind-boggling.

  The Pave Hawk began to descend into updraft turbulence. The metal floors hammered under her feet and she felt herself tense, fingers clutching the bottom of her seat.

  Metcalf was moving around the bay, organizing things for their departure, or so she imagined. She tried for the second or perhaps third time to guess what he might look like, knowing that voices could easily fool you. Usually Sherry put an approximate face on casual acquaintances and that was good enough. Sherry assigned variations of speech and manner certain physical characteristics and had no doubt they were well off their mark. Not that it mattered. Face recognition was not part of Sherry’s world. She was at liberty to imagine anything she liked about the people she came in contact with infrequently. When she did become close with someone, she cared more about his or her physical reality. When she became very close, she looked at his or her face with her hands. For some unfathomable reason she wanted to see Metcalf’s face.

  He was a big man. That much was obvious from the physical contact she’d had with him, especially in the limited constraints of the helicopter’s cargo bay. His chin, she thought, would be dimpled and square. His hair she imagined dark and buzzed across the scalp, his eyes were kind and blue, but for no other reason than…Suddenly she stopped, realizing she was fantasizing, and fantasizing was something Sherry Moore did not do.

  “How high are we?” She spoke quickly into the headset.

  “Just above sixteen thousand,” the pilot said. “We’ll be putting you down in a minute.”