Rocky Mountain Sabotage

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “I’d like to be the first to thank you for getting us on the ground safely.”

  Lauren’s voice drew his attention, and he lifted his head. She stood framed in the broken window of the cockpit, hugging the first-aid kit to her chest. Kent’s pulse rate skipped into overdrive. She looked vulnerable and tense, but calm and determined and...well, flat gorgeous. Wavy strands of auburn hair had come loose from her thick ponytail and framed a heart-shaped face. The strong chin and elegant, aquiline nose suggested the courage she’d already displayed, but the soft curves of her full mouth and delicately shaped eyebrows lent appealing femininity.

  “Earth to Kent.” Her small, teasing smile sent a pleasant shiver down his spine.

  He blinked and threw off the fascination. What was the matter with him, anyway? Must be the stress of the emergency landing.

  “You’re most welcome,” he said. “Life or death is a great motivator.”

  “That’s for sure.” Her gaze darkened. “I see you’re studying the plane. Any clues as to what brought us down?”

  He shook his head. “Too soon to say.”

  “So, you’re not certain it was sabotage?”

  Kent narrowed his eyes. That was all he needed to ramp up the hysteria among the passengers—the suggestion that someone was out to get them. Even if someone might be. “Who mentioned anything like that?”

  “You did.”

  “No, I—” Kent shut his jaw and hauled a crisp, pine-rich breath through his nose. Maybe he had mumbled his thoughts out loud in the heat of the moment. “Look, let’s get everyone to whatever shelter we can find before we start assigning blame.”

  “I’m not interested in blame.” Her tone had sharpened. “I’m interested in truth, and everyone on this aircraft has a right to know why we crash-landed in the Rockies instead of touching down smoothly in San Francisco.”

  “I’m as interested in those answers as you are, but first things first.”

  She offered him a cool nod. “But you’ll tell us when you know, right?”

  “I’ll tell you what I find as soon as I find it as soon as I think it’s wise for everyone to know.”

  “That’s too convoluted for me.” Her eyes shot green fire.

  He waved and tromped toward the old mining town. Jade Eyes wasn’t happy with his non-answer, but there was no use promising something he wasn’t sure he could deliver. It was possible that he might not be able to nail down the cause by simply eyeballing the damage. Professional examination with diagnostic tools might be necessary. Then again, he might know in a heartbeat as soon as he got to the source of the damage. But even then, there might be facts he’d be prudent to keep under his hat until he could talk to the proper authorities.

  Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his bomber jacket, Kent hunched his shoulders against the bite of the wind sideswiping him. The jacket did a nice job of keeping his torso warm, but his neck and ears stung with the cold.

  How was he going to transport eight people, some of them injured, the quarter mile or so from the plane to the dubious shelter of these old mining structures? But as sure as they were all still in the land of the living that was what would have to be done. Sooner, rather than later. The perforated metal tube that remained of his aircraft would turn mighty cold, mighty fast, especially when night fell, and the temps were likely to be in the forties or even the thirties. They were below the perpetual snowline here, and by the green yet showing in certain vegetation, a hard frost had not yet hit, but winter was closing in like a wolf after a rabbit.

  Kent shuddered. He didn’t want to think about being stuck here in this barren patch of the Rockies long enough for winter to pounce. At least in town, they would have the option of lighting a fire—maybe they’d even find a potbellied stove to hunker around. The plane had skimmed over the top of a sparkling stream during their landing, and the water was likely potable; what they’d eat was another question. The rations aboard the plane weren’t all that plentiful—leftover chicken salad croissants and Caesar salad from the onboard lunch Mags had served, water, soft drinks and assorted bags of snacks. Yup. They’d eat well...until tomorrow.

  At least he could be thankful for a medical practitioner among the passengers. Lauren Carter was sure a surprise—in more ways than one. Gutsy to the point of foolhardy. A bit prickly about certain things, like her proper name and direct answers when she asked a question, but if Mags survived, she’d owe Lauren big-time.

  Magdalena Haven, a flight crew member from his US Air Force days, had been Kent’s copilot for the last six months. She was energetic and skilled. Not always the most upbeat person, but life couldn’t be easy for her, coping with her medical bills from last year’s car accident, not to mention her recent bitter divorce. And now his comrade-in-arms was injured again. He shook his head and said a prayer.

  Trudging onward, Kent pushed away the image of Mags’s bloodied face. Lauren’s image sharpened in its place, and his gut twisted. Why did the woman have to be so attractive? Not just physically, but the courage and dependability she’d shown was...well, a lot more than he’d ever seen in Elspeth.

  Elspeth with a p and most definitely not Elizabeth. His almost-mother-in-law’s lofty tones slithered through his mind, and Kent shuddered with an entirely different kind of cold than atmospheric conditions could produce. No, thank you. If Lauren was under the thumb of a domineering mother, any attraction he felt for her would never be explored.

  What had Mrs. Barrington murmured to him as she boarded? Oh, yeah.

  Marlin speaks highly of you, young man. You may notice that I am traveling with a very attractive, single daughter. We’ll be staying at the Ritz-Carlton.

  Kent snorted. What a whopper! Marlin Barrington had his own personal jet that he flew around in. Only occasionally did the man’s firm charter additional transportation, and the senior executive was certainly not involved in the transaction. That sort of thing was done by an administrative assistant. Besides, Mags had taken the reservation. A Wall Street tycoon like Marlin Barrington wouldn’t know him from Adam, so how could he have an opinion about Kent’s character? If Mrs. Barrington was fishing that desperately for a catch for her daughter, there was no way he was going to rise to the bait. No matter how appealing that bait might be.

  He slowed his stride as he reached the scattering of wooden structures. The first building was set a short way out from the others and had the look of a livery stable in the barn-like structure and the broken-down remains of a corral attached to one side. Maybe, just maybe, some type of wheeled vehicle might be found inside. Even a wheelbarrow would be better than nothing.

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he muttered to himself as he pulled on the handle of one side of the stable’s double doors.

  The handle came off in his hand. No! The entire door was coming down. With a yelp, Kent dodged the falling slab of wood. The door whumped to the ground, sending a puff of dirt into the windy air.

  He coughed and shook his head. “Well, that’s one way to get a look inside.”

  Kent stepped over the threshold into twilight. The air smelled musty, and dust motes danced in shafts of light squeezing through cleaner patches in dirt-coated window panes. It was significantly warmer in here than outside.

  He moved further into the building. Rotting leather tack dangled from hooks here and there. Empty box stalls lined two sides of a wide aisle. Any hay or straw that was left behind had long since turned into piles of dust that swirled around on the residue of wind that invaded the place through the open door. A sneeze racked his body. If any of his passengers had allergies, this would not be the place for them to stay. He’d better check out some of the other buildings before he went back to the plane.

  What was the bulky object in the far corner?

  Kent hurried past the stalls. Here, a larger area must have housed buggies or wagons. Only one rem
ained—an enclosed boxy contraption, narrow, with a high seat for the driver out front, but no doors in the sides. He walked around the wagon, pulling on each iron-shod wheel as he went. They seemed solid enough. Two lines of faded lettering graced each long side, but it was too dim inside the stable to read what they said. The entrance door to the interior of the carriage was in the back. Some kind of prison wagon? If so, where were the bars?

  Shaking his head, he hefted the wooden beam to which a team of horses or oxen would have been attached and pulled. The axles let out a high screech but the wheels began to turn.

  Kent’s heart lightened. He wouldn’t be able to transport everyone in the same load. Not enough room. Besides, he was strong, but he was no horse. Still, it shouldn’t take more than a few trips to get the people, as well as blankets, pillows, food, beverages and other useful items into town. Hopefully, his battered passengers would take comfort in small mercies.

  Kent managed with little trouble to get the strange carriage out into the sunlight. He stood back to take a better look at his prize. Now he could easily read the words painted on the sides, faded as they were. His pulse stalled as their meaning slapped him in the jaw.

  Property of Undertaker.

  Trouble Creek, Nevada.

  This wagon was going to be no comfort to anyone. No comfort at all.

  THREE

  “Young lady, my head is harder than most bowling balls.” The older executive glared up at Lauren from his cushy seat, age-spotted hands folded over his modest paunch. “I don’t need to be poked and prodded.”

  “Sir, a concussion is all about the softness of your brain slamming around inside that bowling ball.” She frowned down at him. “I do need to perform some basic assessment.”

  The edges of the curmudgeon’s lips curved upward. “Deftly done, young lady. I am put in my place.” The smile grew, revealing even rows of gleaming, white teeth. Dentures, no doubt, since his speech carried the slight slur that sometimes came with that territory. “Very well, you may shine your little flashlight into my pupils and confirm that they are equal in size and reactive.”

  Lauren lifted her eyebrows. “You have medical training?”

  “No, I just watched a lot of Dr. Kildare in my younger years.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind, well before your time.” He removed thick-lensed glasses and stared up at her with shrewd, brown eyes.

  Lauren scanned his pupils with the penlight she had found in the medical kit. “At least as far as this symptom of concussion, you have a clean bill of health, Mr... Ah.”

  “Gleason. But you may call me Neil.”

  “Are you related to Jackie?”

  Neil Gleason let out a raspy chuckle. “Not at all. You may not be familiar with my favorite TV doc, but I see you’re not out of the loop on all prehistoric television personalities.”

  Lauren smiled. “My grandmother loved The Honeymooners. I watched a few reruns with her when I was little. And you may call me Lauren, rather than young lady.”

  “It’s a deal. Now feel free to assess someone needier that I. Your mother, perhaps?”

  “Thank you. I’ll do that.”

  She began packing up her kit. It was actually amazing that she wasn’t dealing with a whole gamut of major medical problems, instead of an abundance of minor ones. She’d examined every passenger except her mom, and doctored cuts and contusions from flying objects. While one of her patients had a broken finger from trying to protect his head from said objects, thankfully no one was bleeding profusely from a slice through a vein or an artery. As for more serious injuries, she suspected kneecap fracture or dislocation in Richard, the next oldest to Neil, but the best she could do in the confines of the jet was wrap the limb and apply an ice pack.

  Lauren found her mother hugging herself, frowning and staring out the window.

  “Are you in pain?” Lauren bent over her.

  “Not really.” She dredged up a faint smile. “I’m starting to feel cold, though. With the cockpit windshield gone and my jacket packed away in the stowed luggage, there’s not much between us and the great outdoors. Looks pretty barren out there. No snow yet in this valley, but it’s coming soon. I can feel it.”

  “I’ll grab one of those airplane blankets for you after I palpate your abdomen.”

  “You’re going to do what?”

  Lauren chuckled. “I’m going to press on your tummy in different spots to see if you hurt somewhere specific.”

  “Whew! At least you’re not contemplating surgery.” Mom winked up at her.

  Lauren’s heart squeezed in upon itself. What if her mother did have an internal injury that required surgery? What if some of her other patients had something like that going on, and the issue hadn’t yet been identified? For sure, Mags needed to be hospitalized immediately. There was so little Lauren could do out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a first-aid kit.

  Mom squeezed her arm. “I’m fine, dear.”

  The warm touch pumped encouragement into Lauren’s bloodstream. “Go ahead and put your seat all the way back while I check you out.”

  Her mother complied, and Lauren swiftly determined that the ache was general across the length of abdomen where the seat belt had fastened, and no point of pressure elicited a sharp pain. Good signs that the damage was muscle strain and bruising, not damage to an internal organ. Still, she’d keep her mother under close observation.

  “I think you may live,” Lauren concluded with a wink, and her mother laughed. “Now, about that blanket,” she swiveled on her heels, “I’ll—Oops!” She halted barely in time to keep from bumping into one of the executives.

  The man’s angular face sported a butterfly bandage closing a long, shallow cut on his cheek and a purple goose egg on his jaw, which Lauren believed was not broken, only bruised. The tall, raw-boned man held a small stack of blankets.

  “Take one of these,” he said. “I was just going to start passing them out. None of us brought our outdoor jackets on board. They’re all packed away with the luggage.”

  “Mr. Yancy, isn’t it?” Lauren accepted the blanket. “Thank you for thinking of this.”

  He offered a small smile. “Call me Cliff. Now that the edge is off the hysteria, I think we can start functioning like intelligent human beings who are grateful to be alive.”

  “Here he comes!” Mom called out, angling her head toward the outside.

  “Who’s coming?” a passenger demanded sharply from farther back in the plane. “Are we being rescued?”

  “It’s our hero pilot, who has already rescued us from sudden death, so let’s see what new and amazing trick he’s pulled out of his hat.” Mom pointed out the window.

  “All I want to know is when a chopper will be arriving to get us back to civilization,” a surly voice grumbled.

  Lauren identified it as coming from Dirk Dixon, the man with the broken finger and the foul mouth. She felt the same way about being rescued as soon as possible, but a male diva attitude wasn’t going to help make it happen.

  She leaned across a vacant seat toward a window and gaped at her mother’s freshly anointed hero and whatever strange vehicle he was dragging behind him. Not that everyone aboard didn’t owe Kent Garland a world of gratitude and no little admiration for his skill as a pilot, but if Mom thought she could put stars in Lauren’s eyes about this guy or any other, she was doomed to disappointment.

  The pilot brought the contraption to a stop next to the wing, and Lauren got a look at the words painted on the side. What? He’d found a hearse? She shivered. The cold must be getting to her, because she was in no way superstitious about a dusty old wagon.

  She turned and smacked her palms together. “All right, people. I believe our chariot has arrived.”

  “I’m getting out of here.” The man with th
e broken finger jumped to his feet.

  “Mr. Dixon, we will evacuate the most seriously injured first.”

  The man smirked and held up his bandaged hand.

  A pop announced the emergency exit panel turning loose, and Kent stuck his head through the opening.

  “That means my copilot, Magdalena Haven,” he said firmly, “as well as Ms. Carter to watch over her, and then the rest of you will go in whatever order her triage assessment dictates.”

  His icy stare toward Dixon brooked no argument. The executive scowled and sat down.

  “Next after Mags and me should be Richard Engle,” Lauren said. “His leg needs more attention than I can give it in here. Both of those patients will need to lie flat, so I think that’s all for the first load. Phil Blount and Dirk Dixon will be for the next load in order of triage. Then I want Neil Gleason, Cliff Yancy and my mother.” She nodded toward Kent.

  “I’ll help do the mule thing.” A tentative hand went up from Cliff.

  “And I can walk. So they won’t have to pull me,” said Phil, the bulky man who’d given way to panic in the first moments after landing. “That way, Neil and Mrs. Barrington can go in the second load, too.”

  The man had been sheepish ever since his display of terror. Lauren sent him a smile, and he drew himself up tall, dignity restored.

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Kent. “First, round up as many of the blankets and pillows as you can. Keep whatever you need for yourselves for the trip, but send the rest in the first load. We’re also going to harvest the seat cushions. Grab some of those now for the most injured to lie on.”

  Healthy activity began in the cabin of what was once a luxury aircraft. With something constructive to do, the tension in the passengers seemed to ease. If only Lauren could say the same for herself. She’d never looked after patients under such primitive conditions. The prognosis for the copilot was not good if help didn’t reach them soon. And who knew what complications might develop in her other patients?

  Shoving her jitters to the back of her mind, Lauren threw herself into aiding people and organizing supplies. Moving Mags was the most delicate operation. They formed a makeshift sling out of blankets and somehow managed to get her limp form out the egress window. Cliff and Phil had already gone outside to help Kent, and the three of them easily slid her onto a set of cushions in the back of the black ambulance. Lauren refused to think of it as a hearse.