The Rescue Pilot Read online

  Chase felt his chest tighten in sympathy, but didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you know I used to be an alcoholic?”

  “I was probably too young to hear that rumor.”

  Yuma chuckled and looked at him. “Yeah, probably. But I was. It was a way to hide. Anyway, I got my act cleaned up before Wendy came back to town to take her second swing at my bachelorhood. Thing was, even then I kept a bottle in my desk drawer.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that.”

  “I wasn’t.” Yuma’s mouth tightened a bit. “It was my security blanket. I knew it was right there if I ever couldn’t fight off the urge for a drink. For me, anyway, it kept the craving from going over the top.”

  “I never would have thought that of you.”

  Yuma shrugged. “It wouldn’t work for most folks, I guess, but it worked for me. Never even broke the seal on the bottle. And then Wendy…well, I haven’t needed to keep a bottle around since.”

  Chase nodded, getting the message. Or at least he thought he did. “You’ve got a lot to be proud of.”

  “Actually, no, I don’t,” Yuma said flatly. “Pride doesn’t figure into it at all. What I have is a lot to be grateful for, like that woman in there.” He paused. “We gotta save Rory’s sister, man.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you do.” Yuma took a step toward the trees. “That’s why I respect you. Now let’s got get some wood and some pine needles.”

  Two hours later they had the firebox assembled and working outside. From the window of the plane, Rory watched as the fire burned within the three-sided box. It had taken some effort to make a chimney so it would draw air up and through, but it was working now.

  Dimly in the swirling snow, she could see the men looking for more wood to keep it going. It was getting darker out there now, as night closed in on them.

  She ordinarily liked the night, but not this time. The plane had gone dark to save battery power. The only light came from a lone candle sitting on the large work or dining table in the center of four of the seats.

  As business jets went, this was a comfortably sized one, capable of carrying twelve or more passengers, with room to move around. She wondered what kind of traffic Chase could carry to pay for a plane like this, then let the thought wander off. What did it matter? There were apparently enough people left in the world who could afford this kind of transportation, and given that it was a plane, being based out of some invisible town in Wyoming was hardly a hindrance to him.

  Reluctantly, she tore her gaze from the fire, experiencing a gut-deep understanding of why fire had been so important in times past. Probably since ancient times. It promised life, light, warmth. It held the night at bay.

  Nothing inside this plane did that except for a single candle.

  It was time to wake Cait and get her to take her medicine. Rory had hoped to feed her soup at the same time, but she couldn’t wait any longer. Wendy had heated enough water to make a couple of cups of tea, but no more because they had to be careful.

  “Lots of sugar in it,” she said to Rory now as she passed her a mug. “And there’s another if she wants it.”

  “Thanks.”

  She accepted the mug, testing the temperature of the tea with her upper lip. Not hot enough to burn. Good.

  Then she grabbed the small nylon bag in which she kept Cait’s meds, and headed back, aware that Wendy followed with the candle. A candle in the dark.

  Cripes. She needed more than that.

  Once in the bedroom, Wendy set the candle on the small bedside table, then slipped away to leave the sisters alone.

  “Cait. Cait?” Gently she shook her sister’s shoulder. “Cait?”

  Slowly, Cait’s eyes opened, and she sighed. “Why don’t you just let me go?”

  Rory’s heart stuttered. “Because I can’t. Not until we’ve tried everything.”

  Cait’s eyes fluttered. “I guess.”

  “Cait, just because Hal left you doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to live for. You don’t need me to tell you that. Now I’ve got a fresh cup of sweet tea for you.”

  “And medicine. Always medicine.”

  “Yeah, medicine. I’m glad I have it. Do you think I can help you sit up a bit?”

  “Sure.” Cait sounded utterly listless. Rory didn’t let that stop her. She lifted her sister carefully, propping her up on pillows.

  “Try some tea first,” she suggested. “It’ll give you energy.”

  Holding the cup to her sister’s lips, she got half of it down her, tiny sip by tiny sip. And as the sugar hit her system, Cait seemed to gain a little energy. Just a little.

  Then came the pills. This part sucked, because Cait wasn’t finding it all that easy to swallow anymore, not since the radiation treatments. But they got those down, too.

  “Great,” Rory said, with a smile she didn’t feel. Talk about a small handful of pills being an ordeal. “There’s another cup of tea for you. I’ll go get it.”

  “I already have.”

  Rory turned to see Wendy standing in the doorway with another mug in hand.

  “Hi, Cait, I’m Wendy.”

  Cait gave a little nod. “So there are other passengers on the plane?”

  “Me and my husband,” Wendy said, moving forward to exchange mugs with Rory. “When you get a little more rested, you’ll have to join us in the cabin. I’ll bet we’ve all got interesting stories to trade.”

  Rory expected Cait to decline, but instead was astonished to see her sister smile, however weakly. “Sounds like fun.”

  “It will be. All of us have had some crazy experiences. I’ll bet Rory has had more than her share. And you can keep her honest for us.” Wendy winked and slipped out again.

  “I like her,” Cait whispered.

  “Me, too. More tea?”

  The second cup went down easier than the first. Unfortunately, almost as soon as it was gone, Cait’s eyes fluttered closed and she slipped away again. A few words and a couple of cups of tea had been enough to wear her out.

  That was not good, not good at all. Rory had the awful feeling that she could almost see the darkness gathering around her sister, waiting to claim her.

  No. God, no. She jumped up, forcing the vision away. She couldn’t afford to let such thoughts even cross her mind.

  You’re not getting her, she thought between anger and despair. You’re not taking my sister away!

  The silence seemed to mock her.

  Chapter 3

  Dinner worked out quite well, given the arduous conditions outside. At least they weren’t going to starve, Rory thought. Cait even managed to swallow a cup of soup and another cup of heavily sweetened tea. This time she asked to join them in the cabin.

  Rory’s heart swelled almost to breaking. As soon as she bent to lift her sister, Chase appeared and did it for her.

  “Nice you can join us, little lady,” he said as he carried her, wrapped in her blankets, to one of the chairs near the table. “You get too tired, just let me know, okay? And if you want, the seats recline all the way so you can lie down out here.”

  “Thanks,” Cait managed.

  Rory could only look at Chase with gratitude. He had stepped in at the right moment and said exactly the right thing. Not too much, not too little.

  And Cait looked content for the first time since Rory had come home to learn how sick she was. These plane seats were wider than normal and deeply padded, so Cait seemed to have no difficulty curling up in a way that made her feel comfortable. She didn’t say much, and occasionally she seemed to doze, but she also paid more attention than usual to the conversation around her. She even accepted another cup of tea, and this time held it herself.

  There was hope, Rory thought. There was definitely hope. She glanced toward Chase and saw the same expression in his eyes that she was feeling. He, too, seemed to see something promising in Cait’s effort.

  But the wind and the cold soon reminded them that this was no so
cial occasion. The plane groaned loudly again as a particularly strong gust buffeted it, but nothing moved. They’d be buried by morning, Rory thought. Completely and totally buried in snow. Then what? Panic fluttered through her in a single quick wave.

  “Let’s get down more blankets,” Chase said. “Then I think we should bundle in for the night. I’ll take first watch.”

  “Watch?” Rory asked.

  He nodded. “We’re going to burn at least one candle all night—more if necessary. Someone has to keep an eye on it. We also need to watch the cabin temperature so we don’t turn into popsicles overnight.”

  Cait had dozed off again. “She’ll be warmer here, won’t she?”

  “Probably,” he answered. “As long as she’s comfortable, I’d leave her.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Wendy said. “Yuma and I are just going to curl up together on these seats right behind her. Why don’t you take the chance to stretch out in the back for a bit?”

  “I don’t feel sleepy,” Rory admitted. Not in the least. Her mind wouldn’t stop racing; she had too many worries.

  “Fine,” Chase said. “You can come up front and keep first watch with me. Make sure I don’t fall asleep.”

  She almost offered to stand watch in his stead, but caught herself just in time. He was the captain of this plane, after all, and she suspected that meant pretty much the same thing in the air as at sea. And while she didn’t defer to men simply because they were men, she did defer to rank unless given good reason not to. There was just no point in stepping on some toes.

  “Thanks, I think I will.”

  Maybe it would ease the terror at the back of her mind, the terror that they wouldn’t be found in time to save Cait. She’d seemed better for a while, but Rory knew how illusory that could be.

  They settled in the two cockpit chairs with the accordion door closed behind them. There was no light at all, except one small red one.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Control for the emergency lights. I can operate them manually when I need to. Thank goodness.”

  Thank goodness indeed. She suspected that if all those cabin lights had been left burning, the ones that guided the way to the emergency exits, they’d have gone dark for good by now. “Everything else is down?”

  “For now. No point wasting any resources yet.”

  “I suppose not.” Then, “So you really think a fuel line broke or something?”

  “Or something,” he agreed. In the dark, he kept his voice quiet. “We have wing tanks, but there’s a central compartment where the fuel meets and mixes so that the tanks can be balanced. Make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “We could get in trouble if one tank or the other got used up too fast. We’d not only be struggling to balance ourselves, but we might lose an engine. So everything meets in the middle and fuel is passed back and forth. Considering that we lost fuel from both tanks simultaneously and rapidly, I figure something went wrong in the central holding tank. And at the rate we were losing fuel, I suspect it was being pumped out of the plane.”

  “There’s a mechanism for that, right, to empty the fuel?”

  “Yes. We can dump fuel for an emergency landing.”

  “So that might have gotten screwed up?”

  “Maybe. Something sure as hell did, and we won’t know until the NTSB takes a look. I know I got no cockpit warning of any kind until the fuel started to get too low. I’d already noticed the gauges were falling too fast, but no indication as to why.”

  “And there should have been?”

  “The way these babies are designed, this plane shouldn’t hiccup without giving me some kind of alert. What’s more, once I noticed the fuel dropping, we were over the mountains, airports behind us were closed and I still thought for a while I’d have enough. I never cut it that close, despite the weight of excess fuel.”

  “So maybe two things went wrong.”

  “So it would seem. But it did happen awfully fast. I’m just glad I was able to get us down in one piece. For a while there, I didn’t think I was going to.”

  “I’m glad you did, too.”

  She heard him shift, and as her eyes adapted to the near absence of light, except for the tiny bit of red from dash, she could see that he looked her way as he spoke.

  “Look, I’m worried about your sister, too. Seriously worried. But if we had to crash in a blizzard, having an intact plane is about as cozy as it could possibly be.”

  “I guess. Right now it feels like a damn prison.”

  “That, too.” He didn’t argue with her, and for a moment she felt a bit embarrassed by her ingratitude. But then she let it go. Right now this plane was a prison as much as it was a shelter.

  “So what exactly do you do?” he asked her.

  “I own a consulting firm. We prospect for oil, and supervise initial drilling to ensure that our clients locate the well optimally. Most of my work these days is in Mexico.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “It’s like a great big treasure hunt, in one way. In another it’s a pain.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a man’s world, why else? More so south of the border.”

  He was silent for a minute. It was a silence so intense she could hear their breathing. Apparently, between the soundproofing of the plane and the mounding snow, nothing else could penetrate this cocoon.

  “That would be rough,” he said finally. “I watched plenty of women pilots face that stuff in the military. At least they had regulations on their side. You wouldn’t.”

  “And a whole culture against me. Well, not entirely, but you know how that goes. At one job, I had a curandera come out and promise to place a curse on anyone who gave me a hard time. It was a last resort, but it worked.”

  “Can you work anywhere else?”

  “Most of the oil in the world seems to be in the wrong places for women to go.”

  “But you get hired anyway?”

  “I’m good at what I do. It may be a boy’s game, but I play it with the best. So I charge enough to pay some bodyguards, and sometimes to get a bruja, a witch, on my side.”

  “Sounds almost like being in a war zone.”

  “Sometimes. It’s not the pros who give me trouble, it’s the local hires. Usually they settle down with time. They know where the pay is coming from.”

  “But what about that blowout you mentioned?”

  “Ah, that. Well, a couple of guys with more machismo than sense didn’t listen when I told them our seismograph readings indicated that we were about to hit a pocket of natural gas. You always hit some gas, and there are precautions to take. I mean, depending on the depth, that stuff explodes out of the well under some huge pressure and a single spark is enough to cause a conflagration. We weren’t ready to open the gas pocket, I told them to wait, but they had some kind of incentive or bet on the line and ignored me. I’m just glad I got everybody else out of the area. Then, of course, we had a messed-up rig and a roman candle to put out.”

  “And the guys?”

  “They lived. Nice burns, though. I don’t think they’ll ignore orders again.”

  She saw him shake his head, though she couldn’t read his expression. “You live an exciting life.”

  “Sometimes. Ah, I mostly like the people I meet down there. I love the little towns, the pace of life, the color, the music. Roughnecks are just a tough group anywhere. When I’m viewed as a tourist I have a great time. The problem starts when I’m the boss.”

  “I guess I can see that.”

  “And it would happen just about anywhere. It’s like anything—you take the good with the bad. So you were a military pilot?”

  “Yeah. I flew off carriers.”

  She leaned back a little and twisted, trying to see him better. “I read a story about that once. A true story.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It was in Korea, I think. Some navy and air-force pilots were arguing about wheth
er the navy pilots had a tougher landing to make, and the air-force pilots claimed they could land on a carrier no problem.”

  At that a snort escaped him. “Why do I know how this is going to end?”

  “Probably because you’ve landed on carriers. I guess they went out and drew the outline of a carrier deck and took turns landing. Needless to say…”

  “I can imagine. And the navy guys probably crowed that the deck wasn’t even moving.”

  “I believe that was part of it.”

  “There’s a part they probably left out, though.”

  “Which is?”

  “The tailhook.”

  Rory wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but she laughed out loud. “You’re right. I don’t think that was mentioned.”

  “Of course not,” he said drily. “Look, I won’t tell you it’s easier landing on a moving deck, but with the navigational aides we’ve got and the tailhook, it’s not as hard as trying to land in that amount of space on flat ground without a tailhook.”

  “I don’t need a map to get that one.” She hesitated, then asked, “Why’d you leave? You seem too young to have retired.”

  “I failed my flight physical. And before you get all upset because I’m still a pilot, let me explain. Flight physicals in the military are rigorous beyond belief. Most guys will fail before they reach thirty-five. So some little glitch shows up, one that won’t keep you from flying, won’t prevent you from getting a job with a commercial airline, but it will prevent you from flying combat missions or doing carrier landings. Those are the rules. We’re still allowed to fly, to keep our flight status, but we’re off the books for actual missions.”

  “That seems extreme.”

  “Probably not. We do pull a lot of high Gs. Anyway, once I couldn’t make carrier landings anymore, I didn’t want a desk job so I resigned.”

  “And built your own little airline.”

  “One plane and me, a long way from my own airline, but basically, yeah.”

  “And now your livelihood is lying buried in snow on the side of a mountain.”