Under Fire

by Beth Cornelison

A flicker of hope grabbed his heart. Maybe Lauren wanted more from this night too. But she added, “About Emily? I want to know she’s all right.”

  The hope transformed to something warm and filling. Her concern for Emily burrowed into his heart, and he nodded.

  “You can reach me through the smokejumping base in Boise. They’ll see that I get the message,” she said.

  Another impatient pounding on the door.

  “I’ll call. I want to know about Boomer too.”

  She took a deep breath, put on a brave face and flashed a smile. “Of course. Now, go get your daughter.”

  He put his hand on the door knob then glanced back at the bed. “Be careful, Lauren.”

  She smiled. “Always.”

  Rick woke to a banging, and for a moment he thought the horny couple next door were at it again. He groaned and pulled a pillow over his head.

  Muffled voices filtered in from outside then a squeak as the door next to his opened. Curiosity got the better of him, and Rick tumbled from the bed to peek out the curtains. It was still dark outside, but the sodium vapor lights in the parking lot lit the scene on the sidewalk next door. A man wearing a dark windbreaker and tie stepped back as the occupant of the room next door stepped outside.

  As the two men shook hands, Rick squinted to get a better look at the man whose bedroom aerobics he’d listened to through the thin motel wall.

  Rick’s pulse jumped. McKay?

  Every muscle tensed, and he looked harder to be sure. It was definitely McKay. Somehow the sonofabitch had survived the fall into the river, the rapids, the rocks. Jackson McKay had to be the luckiest motherfucker on earth.

  Rick lurched away from the window and grabbed his pants. He had McKay now. As soon as the other man left, he’d…

  Rick clenched his teeth until his jaw hurt. The other man. Who the hell was McKay talking to? He returned to the window and parted the curtains a crack.

  He watched the man in the dark jacket nod and motion to a car idling in the parking lot. As they left, the man with McKay turned his back.

  Across the shoulders of the jacket were three fat yellow letters.

  F. B. I.

  Fuck!

  Smothering his urge to shout the obscenity, Rick let the curtain close and hissed invectives below his breath.

  McKay had already contacted the Feds. Things would be too hot to move for a while.

  Rick hoped like hell that Kenny and Cara had followed his orders, wasted the kid and disappeared. McKay had won this round. They’d have to go underground for a while, but this fight was far from over.

  Rick jammed his legs in his pants and began mulling over his options for getting out of town undetected.

  McKay had screwed him twice now. But as the saying went, payback would be hell for McKay and the people who helped him.

  The tiny sheriff’s office was buzzing with activity as Jackson and Special Agent Tarver pulled up. A couple of men whose clothing identified them as ATF and FBI huddled around the open end of a four-wheel drive marked “Idaho State Police”. On the sidewalk by the front door, three men sipped from Styrofoam cups as, stone-faced, they debated some topic of obvious importance with hand gestures and shaking heads.

  Inside, Sheriff Billows had surrendered his desk to a large topical map marked with pins. One of the men jabbing the map with a finger wore a shirt that read “Bureau of Land Management”.

  Lauren’s ride home.

  Jackson perked his ears to the discussion around the map.

  “Forest fires set up their own weather patterns. The wind alone can be fatal for a chopper,” the BLM man was saying.

  Judas Priest, how could he have forgotten they’d have to contend with the wildfire to rescue Emily? His gut pitched, and his neck prickled with a sense of doom.

  Stay positive, he heard Lauren say in his head, and with resolve he refocused his thoughts. Emily would be all right. She had to be.

  “Dr. McKay.” Agent Tarver, a husky man with intense arctic eyes and a military haircut, cut into Jackson’s thoughts. “This is Special Agent Jim Bromski.”

  Jackson shook hands with the lanky, older man Tarver introduced.

  “Bromski is with the FBI HRT, or Hostage Rescue Team,” Tarver said. “He’ll be in charge in the field during the rescue and raid today with support from his team, the ATF, and the State Police SWAT team. I’ll coordinate things from here and relay communications back to Washington as needed.”

  Bromski sized Jackson up with a subtle glance. “Dr. McKay.”

  “How soon can we go? I’m eager to get my daughter back,” Jackson said.

  “We?” Bromski frowned. “This is an FBI operation, Dr. McKay. We don’t take spectators.”

  Jackson drew himself up, lifted a hand in argument. “I want to go. I won’t get in the way. I just…need to be there. For Emily.”

  “No. It’s against policy. I can’t make exceptions.”

  “Agent Bromski, I won’t—”

  Bromski shook his head. “Dr. McKay, if you interfere, I can have Sheriff Billows lock you up. You’re staying here. Period.”

  Jackson bit back a scathing objection that would do nothing to ingratiate himself with the FBI agents. Being shoved aside, told to sit idly by and wait—again—chafed every nerve he had. He needed to do something.

  For the next several minutes, Jackson answered tedious questions for the agents, much of the information a repeat of what he’d already told Billows the day before.

  “In a few minutes,” Tarver said finally, “We’ll be moving to a small airfield just out of town where our choppers landed this morning. This will be our staging area.”

  Billows approached the huddle and handed Jackson a steaming cup of coffee. “BLM says the repeater on the mountain has been out for the past couple of days. All communication in the area’s still down. A detection plane reported to the local dispatch that they talked to someone at about 1620 hours day before yesterday during a fly over. The guy claimed to be John Whitefeather and said the smokejumpers were all fine.”

  “No,” Jackson shook his head. “That’s wrong.”

  The BLM agent turned up his palm. “Last report from that area says the fire has burned a wide swath through there. Destroyed everything.”

  What about Whitefeather and Randolf? Where were they? Jackson wondered as he listened to the other men’s exchange. “How soon can that repeater be brought back up?” Tarver asked.

  “They’re working on it now. Couldn’t get to it before now due to the fire. Should be just a couple of hours,” the BLM man replied.

  “Good. Meantime we’ll use satellite phones and GPS.” Tarver glanced at the sheriff. “Keep a channel open to relay messages though, just in case.”

  Billows nodded. Jackson had to admit the small town sheriff had come through for him. The room hummed with collective energy and lethal authority.

  He would get Emily back. He would. Stay positive.

  Jackson bit the inside of his cheek and forcibly quashed the acid churning in his gut.

  “All right, listen up, gentlemen!” Tarver gave a shrill whistle, and the room fell silent. “We need a clean op today. I want constant communication between agencies and with the command center. That’d be me. The Bureau of Land Management has a chopper in the area searching for the missing smokejumpers, but I want all eyes alert and watching for any sign of these men or suspicious activity on the mountain. Pilots,” Tarver turned his attention to two men standing around the map. “Watch for tricky winds from the fire. We’ll be close to the head of the fire but should be all right for now.”

  The men nodded their understanding and chunked coffee cups into the trash.

  Bromski gave the group the coordinates of the Smithy cabin, a quick pep talk, and his own warning about following procedure and the chain of command. “Good luck, gentlemen. Let’s move out.” Jackson scanned the assembly of men, law enforcement and rescue professionals from around the nation, all here for the purpose of bringing Emily b
ack to him, putting Rick and his cronies out of business. He should have felt better about the situation. These men were the best of the best. Yet his stomach performed a forward roll, and his heart pounded out an anxious cadence. He wouldn’t breathe easily until Emily was in his arms, safe and sound.

  “Want to head out to the airfield to see them off?” Billows asked, a set of car keys dangling from his finger.

  Jackson gave a tight nod. “Damn straight.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lauren chafed her arms, trying to chase the morning chill, the jittery unease from her bones. Her driver, Tony Giles, was an agent from the Bureau of Land Management, a medic like Birdman, who’d been selected to assist in the rescue of Boomer and Birdman based on his medical training and previous experience with search and rescue. Giles gave her a side-glance then tapped the Jeep’s heater up a notch.

  From the front seat of the BLM’s four-wheel drive, she scanned the small field where three helicopters sat idling, ready. Her gaze snagged on Jackson, standing near one of the State Police vehicles talking to Sheriff Billows and another man, and her heart gave a little ka-thump.

  As she climbed from the front seat, the main rotor of one of the FBI choppers began spinning.

  “Mike, this is Dean Young,” Giles said as a man in sunglasses and a baseball cap approached them. “He’s a volunteer with the Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue Unit.”

  Lauren greeted the athletic-looking young man with a smile. “Hi.”

  “As soon as these guys lift off, we’re outta here,” Giles called to her over the whop, whop, whop of the chopper.

  “Any word from Birdman yet?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  She grimaced and muttered a curse that the ruckus of men and aircraft drowned out then crossed the field toward the waiting rescue chopper with Giles and Young. Her stomach did a little tap dance at the prospect of going up in the helicopter. A jumpship she could handle, but helicopters were another story. They rode differently. She had a greater awareness of her distance off the ground. Puffing out a breath, she shoved her trepidation aside.

  She had a job to do.

  They stopped beside the BLM chopper, and Giles was catching her up on the status of the fire, the plan of attack for finding Whitefeather and Boomer when she felt Jackson’s gaze land on her. Or maybe she’d been keeping him in her peripheral vision intentionally, waiting for him to notice her.

  She met his even, dark stare, felt the warmth of his eyes even from her distance. And she sensed the tension in him. Like a repeater, he broadcasted his concern for everything that was unfolding. Empathy for his pain wrenched through her chest.

  “Ready?” the pilot called. The turbines of the rescue chopper cranked with a whir, the blades over her head circled faster as the whine increased. She gave the search and rescue team a nod then glanced back at Jackson.

  He raised a hand, flashed a sad smile. She waved back, held his gaze another moment, then hoisted herself into the chopper.

  From the window of the helicopter, she watched Jackson grow smaller as they lifted off. The pilot swung in a wide arc and headed toward the smoking mountain ridge in the distance.

  Heaving a sigh, tamping the ache that swelled in her chest, Lauren refocused her energy on the job at hand. Somewhere on that mountain were two men who needed rescue. Fellow smokejumpers. Her friends.

  She prayed to God the rescue team wasn’t too late.

  “Command, this is Rescue One, come in.”

  Jackson snapped his head up, his heart jumping as the first call crackled over the radio. Beside him, Billows shifted in his seat as Tarver picked up the radio mike.

  “Go ahead, Rescue One.”

  “We have a visual on the cabin. No sign of activity. There’s a small clearing about a quarter mile north where we can set down. Over.”

  “Roger that. Take her down and move in. Over.”

  “Rescue One, this is Rescue Two,” Bromski’s voice came across the line. “Divide your team and approach from the north and west. We’ll cover the southern and eastern flank. Over.”

  “Roger that, Rescue Two.”

  Jackson lurched off the folding chair where he’d been waiting to hear something and began pacing the sheriff’s office.

  “Shooter One, come in.”

  Shooter? Jackson spun toward Tarver, his breath stuck in his throat. Geez, they weren’t going to shoot while Emily was down there, were they?

  “This is Shooter One. Go ahead, Command.”

  “Do you have a visual of the target? Over.”

  “Affirmative. Cabin sighted. No tangos yet. Over.”

  “Roger that. Over and out.”

  Jackson crossed the room to Tarver in two long strides. “Shooters? You can’t shoot into that cabin! My girl’s in there!”

  “Settle down, Dr. McKay. Our sharpshooters are the best. They’re well trained. They’ll take great pains to see that your daughter isn’t hurt.”

  Feeling a hand on his arm, Jackson turned to find Billows tugging him back toward the metal folding chair. “Let them work, Dr. McKay. Or I have orders to remove you from the premises.”

  Jackson raked a hand through his hair and dropped heavily onto his seat. He tried to stay calm, stay positive, but every fuzzy blip of static on the radio jangled along his nerve endings. Today could well prove the longest day of his life.

  Lauren’s stomach pitched with the roll and yaw of the helicopter, but a mounting dread was responsible for the nausea seesawing in her gut. The chopper swung wide around the mountain peaks and dipped to skim the treetops, searching the scorched land below.

  She stared out at the charred mountainside, and her heart sank. The wildfire had ripped through the area where they’d left Boomer and Birdman. Nothing was left but smoldering embers and the skeletons of charred trees. Charred bodies.

  The chopper set down in the clearing that had been their jump spot, and Giles and the search and rescue volunteers recovered the burned corpses of Riley and the gunman Birdman had shot. After the two body bags were loaded in the back, they lifted off and continued their search.

  Before she and Jackson left them, Birdman had said Boomer was too unstable to move. Of course, Birdman would have moved Boomer when the fire encroached regardless of his condition. Assuming he had time. Assuming the fire hadn’t gotten a jump on them somehow and… Geez! She was getting as bad as Jackson, worrying, what if-ing.

  “Try the radio again,” she called to the pilot.

  He flipped a switch and spoke into his lip mike attached to his headset. “John Whitefeather, BLM Smokejump crew, come in. BLM smokejumpers, do you read me?”

  Lauren chewed her bottom lip, staring at the pilot expectantly. He tried one more time then shook his head. With a knot in her chest, Lauren turned back to the window and continued scanning the blackened earth for signs of life.

  The choppers were coming. She could hear the distant rumble, the whopping of the blades. More bloodied boys, more broken bodies were in-coming. She had to get over to the hospital tent, be ready for triage.

  Cara tried to move, to climb off her cot and get out to meet the medi-vac of wounded soldiers.

  But her body was weak, her head fuzzy.

  Blinking her surroundings into view, she spotted Kenny, rolling from the bed to peer out the cabin window.

  Kenny. Her stepson. Raymond’s boy.

  She wasn’t in ’Nam.

  But the helicopters were real, not a dream.

  “Shit!” Kenny barked. “It’s the cops!”

  He cast a panicked look at her, obviously uncertain what to do with her, how he could get away.

  “Leave me,” she rasped, making the choice for him.

  She clung to life by a thread. She’d have given up and succumbed to the pain, the weakness, the darkness that pulled at her hours ago if not for Kenny. And Emily.

  Kenny had badgered her, cussed at her, warned her not to die. To fight. He’d stayed with her when he could have run, and he�
��d expected no less of her. He demanded it, like the impertinent child he’d been. He’d stanched her blood loss, but she was still so weak.

  She’d fought death for him.

  And for Emily. Because she held out the thin hope that she’d hear some word on the girl. She needed to know Emily was safe. Prayed that before she died she’d know the child was all right.

  Emily…lost somewhere on this unforgiving mountain.

  Kenny scrambled around the cabin, grabbing weapons, loading them. He’d be killed in a shoot out if he fired on the police. Like Ruby Ridge. The Feds didn’t care.

  “Go,” she rasped, her throat raw and dry. “Don’t…shoot.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes bright with the knowledge that by staying with her, he was now trapped like an animal. Cornered. Caught.

  I’m sorry, Kenny. She tried to speak the words but had no strength left.

  The growl of engines and pulsing sound of the rotors grew louder. The windows rattled as the big birds passed overhead.

  Kenny shoved a revolver in the waist of his jeans, and hugging the wall, he inched toward the window to look out.

  She read his panic in his stiff movements, his taut face. She longed to hold him and tell him everything would be all right. Her boy. Maybe not her biological baby, but her son nonetheless. She’d tried so hard to do right by him.

  The Doppler effect of the engine noise told her when the choppers swooped by and moved off. But at least one returned, the thrum of the turbines hovering in the cabin like fog.

  “I’m going out the back,” Kenny said. “Into the woods. Lay low.” He suited words to actions, until a voice boomed through the early morning, like God announcing judgment day.

  “This is the FBI. Release Emily McKay and come out with your hands up. We have the cabin surrounded.”

  They hadn’t found Emily. Dear God. Cara died just a little more knowing that.

  Returning to the front room, Kenny dropped in one of the chairs and raked a hand through his hair. “Oh, fuck, fuck, FUCK! They want the kid. How do we convince them we don’t have her?”

  “Turn…’self in.” The words cost her, but she had to convince Kenny not to do something foolish and get himself shot.