by Meg Gardiner
"No. No you don't." She wasn't going to let this happen to her. Not now.
She found her cell phone and dialed a new number. When it was answered she didn't even give him time to say hello.
"Quintana. Where are you?"
"Jo." His voice had a smile in it. She killed that.
"I have to see you, and I mean right now."
Gabe was waiting for her outside St. Ignatius Church at the University of San Francisco. He had his hands in his jeans pockets and a backpack slung over one shoulder. With his shades on, he looked watchful. He didn't look like a graduate student. He looked like a Special Forces killer masquerading as a graduate student. She marched across the plaza.
He crossed the lawn to meet her. "What's wrong?"
She held up a Baggie with the letter sealed inside it. "Somebody's toying with me. They sent this ..." She waved at it. "This ..."
"You're shaking." He took the Baggie from her. He read the note and his mouth tautened.
"How did they find out about Daniel?" she said.
He glanced up sharply. "You think I told them?"
She stood rigid, staring at him. He took off his sunglasses. His gaze was as still as a sheet of black ice.
"It wasn't me."
She didn't move. He touched her arm and she didn't respond. He let his hand fall back to his side.
"I've never talked to anybody outside the unit about Daniel's death." He looked at the note again. "And I would never tell a lie like this."
She held his gaze, and the day, cold and sunny, felt blindingly hot.
He was telling the truth. And she didn't believe him.
When she spoke, her voice seemed to emanate from the far end of a tunnel. "I know you're not lying. But it's true."
"What are you talking about?" he said.
"The note, Gabe. It's the truth. I killed him."
"Are you delusional?" Gabe said.
"The Dirty Secrets Club wants people who've done the big bad thing. They found me," she said.
He took her hand and led her to a bench at the edge of the lawn. When they sat down, he held on. His face was solemn, framed by palm trees and the white spires of the church.
He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. "Why do you believe this lie?"
His hand held hers tightly. She tried to let go and couldn't make herself. She gripped him as though he was her last remaining handhold against a vertical drop into a chasm.
"Mayday. Mayday."
The copilot had shouted it into his headset. Jo's vision turned bright with adrenaline. The engine hacked, fighting against the bird it had ingested. Feathers and seagull remains had blurred across the windscreen in the rain.
The pilot swiveled his head, looking urgently for a stretch of open ground where they could set down on the rugged headlands. No matter how hard they banged the ground, hitting dirt would be better than ditching in the water.
The copilot repeated, "Mayday, mayday," giving their coordinates, hanging on to the control stick, and urging every last second of power out of the chopper. Below them Jo saw fir trees and crumbling hillsides.
Daniel groped his way back to Jo's side. He looked at Emily and his face was still calm. But Jo sensed tension pouring off him.
He took the little girl's hand. "We have to land. A bird flew into the engine and we need to get another helicopter to take us the rest of the way. Think you can hang on while we switch rides?"
"Okay," she said.
"Good."
The copilot said, "Open space, two hundred meters ahead. Hang on."
Jo couldn't see anything past the two-foot circular crack in the windshield. That meant the pilot couldn't, either. She saw him hauling on the controls, fighting for altitude. The treetops racing past below them looked almost black in the sunless day. The trees seemed only a few feet below the skids.
She and Daniel got on either side of Emily's stretcher, ready to hold her steady if the landing was rough. Painkillers were running via her IV, but if they hit hard nothing would deaden the little girl's pain. And now she was going to have to wait extra hours for medevac, when every minute counted. Jo felt a cramp in her chest.
The engine coughed and over-revved. The wind was howling, the rain actually running uphill on the windows. Treetops swept past beneath them. Come on, come on, she thought, willing the wounded chopper to clear the forest and find open ground.
Out of nothing, a grassy hillside appeared. Her heart rose. Desperately the pilots slowed the helicopter to a hover. Painfully, battling the wind, they began descending.
The copilot called out their altitude. He sounded like he was trying to talk while sprinting flat out.
"Seventy feet."
Jo looked out and cold sweat bloomed on her forehead. The hillside was steeply sloped. They were going to have to land on a thin slice of crumbling land between fifty-foot Douglas firs and an eroding cliff that dropped away to rocks and surf.
"Fifty feet."
The engine juddered. The wind caught them and shoved the chopper sideways. Jo pressed one arm tight across Emily's chest and reached for Daniel with the other. He took her hand. His palm was hot.
She squeezed. "Glad I'm spending the day moonlighting with you."
"Nothing better, mutt."
"Thirty feet."
Another gust of wind drove the chopper sideways again. The uphill skid hit the grass. Emily cried in pain. The engine shrieked. Jo let out a breath, knew she was about to break Daniel's hand, thought, Come on, come on. Just shut down the engine and let us stop moving.
The chopper tilted.
"Fuck," the copilot said.
They slammed the power as hard as they could.
Daniel said, "It's too steep."
Jo looked. The ground was slick, hard, and too precipitous to hold the chopper. If they shut off the engines, the helicopter would tilt and skid down the hill.
The pilot made a snap decision. "Out. We have to keep the rotors turning while you unload the patient. Otherwise we'll slide."
"What about you?" Jo yelled.
"We'll ditch. We can swim. The girl can't. We'll shut down the engines and autorotate down. Go, go, go."
Jo was already hauling back the door. The cold and wind slammed her in the face. The noise of the sick engine was terrifying. They were six feet off the ground.
They weren't going to be able to do this.
They had to do this.
She had to move fast. She needed to get the stretcher out the door before the wind slapped the chopper into the hillside and the rotor blades caught the dirt.
Daniel had the IV drip off the stand and lying on Emily's chest. He released the stretcher from its locked position. Jo maneuvered into the doorway. He pointed outside.
"Get out," he said.
"No, let's pull her from either side."
"No, Jo. Get out and I'll slide her out to you."
"Now," the pilot said. "Go."
The chopper was swaying in the wind, the skid brushing the ground. Jo eked her feet out onto the skid and stood on it. Holy hell. She waited and unbelievably, miraculously, the pilots steadied the chopper. They held it, poised against the wind and engine damage, steady on the hillside. She stepped down onto the blessed ground.
Daniel swung the stretcher around. "Hang on, Emily."
It all happened in a few seconds. The copilot said, "I can't hold it."
"Power," the pilot shouted.
Jo reached for the stretcher, and it wasn't there.
Her hands grabbed empty air. The engine hacked. The chopper lurched and began sliding away from her. She saw Daniel haul on the stretcher, hanging on to it with every ounce of strength to keep Emily from plummeting out the door. And horribly, the chopper sank away from her, one skid scraping the hillside. It fought for power, for altitude.
The engine abruptly went silent.
She lunged for the door. Daniel shouted, "Jo, down." She threw herself to the wet ground and felt the whir of the main rotor blade spinning
past her head. She scrambled to her knees, to her feet, falling downhill in the rain, hands out, desperate, knowing in the base of her heart that she couldn't possibly stop the chopper from sliding down the hill, that Daniel was throwing himself across little Emily, and that she wasn't going to reach him, nothing was going to stop the helicopter from skimming faster and faster down the steep slope, the blades still shrieking around and why the hell wouldn't they grab the ground and stop the fucking thing and, oh, Jesus—
The blades caught the earth. The chopper spun like an animal. Turf flew into the air in huge green clods. She stumbled after it, sliding downhill on the slick grass. She couldn't even scream as it corkscrewed, reached the edge of the cliff, and dropped out of sight toward the ocean.
The wind whipped the rain across her face, so hard she could hardly see. The cliffside was eroded and crumbling. Rocks fell away beneath her feet, roots tried to tangle her, her hands slipped in the mud. But she knew she could descend it. She forced herself to go slowly, not to leap or risk anything in the mud and slick. She was the only chance they had left.
The chopper was at the bottom of the cliff, upside down on the rocks. She could smell aviation fuel. There was debris all over the rocks, bolts and screws and metal fragments, medical equipment, bandages, syringes, everything she needed to help the people inside. She fought down the panic and felt her way down the cliff.
She reached the bottom and picked her way toward the chopper. Breakers exploded on the rocks. The spray was freezing.
"Danny," she shouted.
She felt her way around the mangled wreckage. The fuselage, so gleamingly smooth when she'd climbed aboard at UCSF, was crumpled, dirty, streaked with mud, gouged by the rocks. One of the main rotor blades was twisted along the rocks like a broken scythe. A pure white fear wheeled up and hit her. She grit her teeth, but a sob jerked from her lungs.
In the cockpit, the copilot lay crushed against the windshield, dead.
The pilot was alive. He had managed to undo his safety harness and crawl out the cockpit door. He was slumped against the fuselage, bloody but conscious.
She slid across wet rocks and scrambled to his side. "Are you all right?"
His face was wrenched with pain. "Busted leg. I can't get to the others."
Jo worked her way across slick rocks to the bay of the chopper. Her hair was stuck to her neck in long strings. Her hands were red with cold, and her fingers wouldn't work properly. The open door was facing the ocean. It was flattened to a width of two feet, and the waves were running inside.
"Daniel."
She held on to the fuselage, crouched down, and peered in. She saw nothing but debris.
She heard a whimper. In the dim interior she saw Emily Leigh, thrown like a discarded toy against the back wall of the chopper. Water rushed over Jo's feet, so bitingly cold that her breath caught.
The wave retreated, bringing the stench of jet fuel and a tide of medical supplies. The door was a mouth, the interior dark, and her brain hissed, Small spaces collapse.
She stared in, breathing hard, looking for her husband.
Small spaces will eat you.
"Daniel."
She got down on her hands and knees and crawled in. The roof gave her only eighteen inches of space. She dropped to her stomach and crawled on her elbows. Blood rushed in her ears. Her skin was goose bumped, her breath racing. She knew she had to slow it down or she'd hyperventilate.
Emily whimpered again. It wasn't a cry of discomfort or fear. It was a base animal moan. It was the sound of dying.
"I'm coming." She crawled through the mess and wet and cold and stink. "Daniel. Where are you?"
And she saw his hand. The stretcher and half the chopper's medical supplies were dumped on top of him. She began throwing debris aside, digging for him.
"Danny." She couldn't make her voice say anything else.
She dug out his arm, tossed aside some wrecked equipment, looked back and saw Emily. The girl's eyes were barely open. "Jo."
His voice was little more than a whisper, and the most thrilling sound she'd ever heard.
"I'm here," she said. "Can you move?"
"Banged up, but yeah."
He was facedown, smashed against the side of the chopper, covered with junk. He turned his head, looked at her, and squeezed her hand.
"The girl," he said.
"She's bad. I'm going."
Triage is a system that helps medics decide who to treat first in multiple-casualty situations. When the injured outnumber the doctors, triage rates patients to give medics the best chance of saving the most lives.
Jo crawled through the mess toward little Emily, repeating the triage criteria in her head.
Sort patients into three groups: immediate care, delayed care, and unsalvageable. Red tag for immediate care, those who will die if not treated now. Yellow tag for delayed care, those who will survive even without treatment—the walking wounded, those with stable vital signs, people who are conscious and aware of their surroundings. Black tag for the unsalvageable, those who will die no matter what the medics do.
Daniel was talking and moving, conscious and coherent, had no obvious head or spinal injuries. But from five feet away, Jo knew Emily was a red tag. Hell if she was going to let that become black.
"Emily, I'm coming." Her hands were throbbing from the cold. She shoved aside more debris. The stink of aviation fuel was almost enough to make her gag. "Danny, you still with me?"
"Babe. The radio."
"I got through to 911 on my cell before I came down the cliff. Rescue's on its way."
Not fast enough for the copilot. But it had now been twenty-five minutes, and somebody was outbound to help them.
Belly-crawling through the crumpled chopper, Jo edged the last couple of feet to Emily. She grabbed her hand. The girl's skin was cold, her soft hair tossed over her face. Jo found her pulse. It was weak and thready.
She saw blood in the child's mouth and cuts on her pale little legs. When kids lose blood, it's easy for them to get into trouble because they have less volume than an adult. Emily was freezing. She was undoubtedly in hypovolemic shock. She may have been bleeding internally. Jo had to stabilize her long enough for rescue to arrive.
Jo heard that awful wounded moan again.
"Hang on, honey," she said. "Hang on, Emily."
The waves rushed in again. Freezing water ran up her legs like a molesting hand. The fuselage seemed to shrink. She tried to breathe deep and felt her chest constrict.
She scrambled to grab the thermal blanket to warm Emily up. She looked for anything with which to brace her head and neck.
She heard, behind the crash of the waves, the rhythmic thud of helicopter rotors. Tears sprang back into her eyes.
"Daniel, they're coming," she said. "Can you see them?"
The jet fuel and cold briny water sloshed around her legs. She checked Emily's eyes. Her pupils were unreactive.
She wasn't breathing. Shit.
We'll take care of her, she had promised Emily's mother. She had pledged it.
This is not going to happen, she thought. I will not let you slip away. She put two fingers against the child's neck and checked for a carotid pulse.
The sound of the helicopter outside grew louder. It was close and it was big. She pulled Emily away from the wall and fought to get her into a position where she could administer CPR. In the smashed interior, she didn't have room to kneel above the girl and extend her arms to give chest compressions.
Jesus, girl, don't die. Do not die. The child's face was the color of paper, with blue veins showing underneath. Her eyes were glassy.
No. "Stay with me, Emily."
She turned her flat on her back, checked that her airway was clear, and began CPR. Breathed into her mouth. Gave chest compressions, struggling with the angle. Heard a big chopper hovering outside, its engines a drone, a brilliance, deliverance.
Another two breaths into her soft little mouth. Thirty compressions. Two more breath
s.
Again.
Come on, Emily.
Outside, the air-ambulance pilot shouted, "Here."
Jo breathed for Emily. Again and again. No response. She heard men outside. She turned her head and hollered, "In here."
Back to chest compressions. Come on, baby. Come on. She could do this for as long as it took. Stay with us, Emily.
"I'll get you a Tickle Me Elmo helicopter, Emily. Come on, honey."
Twenty-five compressions, thirty. She breathed into Emily's cold mouth. Footsteps clattered outside, somebody pounded on the fuselage, a man called, "Are you all right?"
"Get in here." She kept up compressions. "Two injured survivors. Child in cardiac arrest. Help me."
Behind her, men shouted instructions back and forth. The chopper rocked as one of the rescue crew crawled inside. She heard him sloshing his way through the debris. He appeared at her side.
"How long have you been going?" he said.
"Two minutes."
He had on a green flight suit. He reached out and took Emily's pulse while Jo continued compressions.
"Are you injured?" he asked.
"No."
"Let me take over."
Jo scooted aside. The man crawled forward to take her place. He had an Air Force insignia and chevrons on his sleeve.
"You a PJ?" she said.
He nodded and went to work on Emily. Jo's heart soared. This was the child's one, only, best chance. The man was serious, looked seriously competent, unperturbed and focused.
For a moment, tears of relief obscured her vision. She crabbed her way backward, trying not to break down, to hold her cool a while longer. The 129th being here meant they had trained professionals, medical supplies, equipment to extricate all of them from this hell, and what was undoubtedly a beautiful motherfucking Pave Hawk helicopter holding on station above them.
She turned and crawled back to Daniel. "PJs. We're getting out of here."
She took his hand and looked out the crushed door of the chopper. The surf seemed at eye level. A second pararescueman appeared, sliding down a rope from the sky.
"Jo," Daniel said.
His hand was icy. She pressed herself against him to warm him with her body heat. "We're going, ASAP. Just hang on."