Page 66 of No Hope of Rescue

Now, I’m tasking it to keep me safe. The Bell dips for a moment, drooping with an airstream. Look at her, I tell myself. Look at her face. The sound of the blades is deafening, and there’s a tug in my memory, dark, deep. Look at her face.

She’s grinning, tired, embarrassed.

A bad day for her, but a lucky day for me. Don’t turn on the heater. The frigid air is bracing and will keep me awake. Keep me on my toes. Keep me from thinking too hard about a past I can’t change.

It takes forever, but then the plane fuselage is below, the cabin not ten minutes away.

The Bell crests the mountain. I hover.

The fucking phone vibrates in my pocket. Those assholes. They’ve heard the chopper.

Land in front.

Because of the gorge and the air drift off the mountains, there’s a microclimate, and the winds are powerful. Even on a sunny day like this, it can be tough. Fighting backdrafts from the northern sides of the mountains, heavy with snow, makes for some tricky negotiation. There’s a pinhole in the trees in front of the cabin I’ll have to drop through.

It’ll be tricky.

Despite all this, landing will be easy compared to taking off again, loaded down with smuggled goods, men, and the possibility of . . . can’t go there. The Bell catches on a thermal and rises.

Pulling the lever back, I straighten her out. Circle again. Get in position. Start to go into a tight descent. And again, another draft comes up and pitches me forward. My body responds automatically. I don’t have to think.

Riley’s face swims in my mind—from memory or from the picture, I can’t tell.

The Bell noses down sharply, hit from behind again, and suddenly I’m back there. I’m upside down, the helicopter’s crushing my side. There are flames. I’m looking out at the spill of bodies, like Tinker Toys littered on broken ground.

Look at her picture.

My body is still working, grabbing the throttle. The Bell levels out and then I drop down.

Focus. I’m a top-tier pilot, first in my class.

This is the present. Now.

The ground comes up fast. The Bell touches down without even a bounce.

I cut the motor. The phone vibrates again, but the front door opens and two men spill from the opening, handguns drawn, black ski masks across their faces. I pull up my collar, tug the cap down, and keep the headphones around my neck. I don’t know how good of a look they got of me at the gorge, but I don’t want to be recognized.

I’m still not a hundred percent sure they need me, the copter, or both. They might shoot me on the spot.

The blades slow as they approach.

The taller one starts yelling, waving me to exit, hands up. “Get out. Step away.”

I unglue myself from the seat. And he waves the gun, pointing to the ground. “On your knees, hands behind your head.”

He orders the other one to tell the guy inside to start loading. They’ve prepped and are moving quickly even in heavy snow. Crate after crate comes out and I follow them like breadcrumbs to a set of maybe a dozen.

I remind them of something. “There’s a weight limit to this thing, you know.”

“That’s not our problem,” says the tall guy coming around from behind.

I can’t see what he’s doing and try not to imagine the gun at the base of my skull.

He suddenly wraps an oily smelling rag around my head, an improvised blindfold—maybe a strip of sheet. Can’t tell. All is dark.

“Stand up,” he says.

I measure the distance from his voice to me and remember he has the gun. Not worth it. He leads me roughly by the arm, turns me once, and then I’m forced to sit on something. Feels like a hard rock—sounds like it’s covered with a tarp. There’s a wooden support behind me probably from the front porch. He takes another tie, wide as well, and straps it to my head, securing it to the post.