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“Hold together, baby,” Rachel murmured, praying for a clear windshield, even if it was only a view of the smoke-filled sky.
“Steady,” Danny cautioned. “You’re doing great.” He’d undoubtedly be crowing when they made it out of here. It was just the kind of adrenaline-pumping last run he’d wanted.
The smoke thinned as the plane climbed, shuddering from the effort.
Then they were bursting out of the smoke into a blinding dose of sunlight toward a thick spire of green. Too close. It was too close!
“The tree! The damn tree!” Danny shouted, as they raced toward the lone pine. It was fifty feet ahead of them and they were flying nearly one hundred miles an hour.
But it was too late to turn. Fire Angel One took the pine head-on about thirty feet from its top. The crack of the tree and the rip of metal was all Rachel heard as the windshield shattered into the cockpit, bringing a barrage of glass, branches, wood and pine cones onto them.
Rachel’s face stung and the air whooshed out of her lungs as something struck her in the rib cage. Impossibly, the plane seemed to float there, as if deciding whether to continue or give up. And then it bucked forward.
“We’re still flying!” Danny cried, as if that were the best news ever. “Three engines running. Hot damn!”
Danny didn’t know how hard Rachel was fighting to keep the plane going or to keep her shit together. Or maybe Danny did know and was just trying to keep her spirits up.
Her ribs were on fire. Something must have hit her when the windshield shattered, because breathing had become agony. But she didn’t dare spare a glance down at herself, because she could barely control the steering yoke, much less reach the other controls hidden beneath piles of green.
The Privateer bobbed and dipped dangerously above the canopy. Rachel didn’t think they could stay in the air much longer. They’d lost an engine on the right side, possibly damaged by debris. The landing strip was too far away, and the only thing between them and the airport was miles and miles of trees.
Something sputtered to her left.
“More thrust!” Danny reached for the thrusters. “Crap,” he yelled as he realized what Rachel already knew. Even if she could reach the control panel, it wouldn’t matter. The thrusters and gauges were covered with chunks of tree, barricaded in as if the old pine, in death, wanted to make sure it didn’t go down alone. Danny tugged at the wood, but a good portion of the trunk lay across the controls.
And pinned Rachel to her seat.
Double crap. Now that Rachel had looked, her hands started to shake.
The noise level decreased as one of the engines on the left died. Something an awful lot like doom swirled in Rachel’s gut. She couldn’t leave Jenna and Matt like this. The corner of their picture peeked out from behind pine needles.
“Fuel?” Rachel shouted as they shot out over the ridge and a new crop of trees waiting to shish kebab them.
Danny tugged frantically at the wood covering the thrusters. “Fuel’s fine, but we need more power. I’ll try restarting the engines.”
“We’re losing altitude,” she said, unsure if Danny heard her.
Danny released a string of curses and dug for the controls Rachel was sure wouldn’t work, her eye momentarily caught again by a corner of the photo still visible on the dash.
What had Rachel done?
Now Cole would never know the truth.
CHAPTER TWO
“DID YOU HEAR THAT?” Cole craned his neck to look up into the smoke-strewn sky.
“It’s just a plane,” Logan answered, busy packing his bags.
Cole shook his head. “It was a crack or a boom or something.”
A small two-seater plane was circling low over a point to the northeast.
“Look at that.” Jackson pointed at the Incident Command tents pitched on the rise above them. “Something’s happening.”
Sure enough, members of the IC team were running out of their individual tents that served as mini-offices tracking fire behavior, weather, personnel and the like, and were heading for the main tent. Just as a pair were about to yank open the door to the IC tent, the camp helicopter pilot burst out and ran toward the makeshift chopper pad at the end of the parking lot.
Something cold and unpleasant gripped Cole, momentarily freezing him in place. He didn’t need to possess Jackson’s near-psychic abilities to guess what had happened. The observation plane, which coordinated air attacks, was circling, flying too low. A plane had gone down.
“Come on.” With one hand, Cole dragged Doc to his feet. The kid had finished medical school in the spring and was about to start his internship. “You and I are getting on that chopper.” They’d be asking for volunteers to go on the rescue, crew members with medical training or rappelling experience, not that Cole had a lot of either.
Hearing Doc’s protests, Jackson moved closer. “Cole, what are you doing?”
“You’ll need your medical kit, Doc.” Cole swung the red bag emblazoned with a big white cross from the ground into Doc’s chest and started towing the slighter man in the direction of the chopper.
“Cole?” Jackson trotted beside him. “Where are you going?”
“A plane went down.” Cole didn’t slow up. He was getting on that bird.
The helicopter pilot was hurrying around the chopper, checking out rotors or flaps or whatever pilots did before they took off. A younger man in coveralls ran to the helicopter. The two men exchanged words and then the younger man hopped into the cockpit. Cole assumed he was the copilot. They wouldn’t allow the rescue team in the cockpit.
Jackson wasn’t giving up. “You think the plane that went down was Missy’s sister’s?”
Cole didn’t think; he knew. Yet it sounded stupid to say it out loud.
“Let me find out what’s going on first.” Jackson had spent the past few days of the fire working with the IC team. “There may not have been a crash. It might not be Missy’s sister.”
“No. By the time you do that, this bird will be gone.”
Jackson ran a few steps ahead and stopped in Cole’s path. “Don’t go running off based on a feeling.”
“Why not? You do it all the time.” Cole gave Jackson his fiercest glare.
Jackson shook his head.
“Look, I wasn’t there for Missy when she died. I’ll be damned if I’m not there for Rachel when she needs me,” Cole said through gritted teeth. “Now, step aside. Me and Doc are getting on that chopper.”
Jackson swore and did step aside. “Let me talk to the pilot. I know him.”
“Just get me on that chopper.”
“THERE!” Cole shouted above the whine of the helicopter rotors. The fuselage of the plane rested precariously on a canopy of trees fifty feet above the ground to their left.
“Holy crap. Will you look at that,” Doc said beside him. “What lucky SOBs.”
Cole could only hope Rachel had been lucky. The nose of the plane was smashed in and the windshield shattered. From this angle, he couldn’t see inside the cockpit. Branches thrust through the windshield. No one flagged them down as they approached.
Not dead. Rachel couldn’t be dead.
The copilot came back to the area where Cole and Doc sat. He snapped a hook attached to his harness to a safety line, then opened the side door.
Wind and the smell of smoke—both wood and fuel—rushed into the cabin as the copilot began prepping the equipment needed to drop someone out of the airplane.
Cole unbuckled his seat belt and stood, grabbing a hand loop for balance and stepping toward the door.
“Sit down,” the copilot commanded with a stern look, yelling over the din.
“I’m going down there.” There was no way anybody was going to keep him from being a part of Rachel’s rescue.
“Of course, you are,” the copilot agreed, still shouting. “But you’ll fall out if you aren’t strapped in. The air up here is choppy. Ever see a man fall eighty feet to the ground?”
Doc looked up at Cole and swore.
“Now, sit back down so you’ll get your chance at being a hero.”
As if emphasizing his point, the helicopter pitched Cole in the direction of the open door.
“I think I’m gonna puke,” Doc moaned as he yanked Cole back.
The copilot laughed. “I always knew you Hot Shots were a bunch of wusses.”
Buckling in next to Doc, Cole glared at his friend. “Hang in there. I need you.”
“You could have taken the camp medic.” Doc closed his eyes. His skin had become a sickly shade of white.
“I chose a doctor instead. Now, quit your griping.”
“Have you rappelled out of a helicopter before?” The copilot shouted at Cole. Who didn’t even blink as he nodded.
Despite his nausea, Doc managed to raise his eyebrows at Cole.
Cole scowled back at him. So what if he’d only rappelled once? So what if he’d rappelled onto solid ground? Rachel was down there hurt, perhaps dying.
Cole recoiled at the thought, leaning back into his seat. The little girl he’d once rescued from a flash flood couldn’t die. She was too stubborn, too full of life.
“Get into this.” The copilot tossed a four-point body harness at Cole’s feet.
When Cole had the harness strapped on tight around him, the copilot hooked a nylon rope to it, fit him with a helmet containing a built-in headset and positioned Cole near the door.
“I’m going to let you down slowly until you get to the wreck. Try not to put your weight on the plane because we don’t know how stable it is. You will not be going inside, copy?”
Cole nodded.
“Once you’re there, let us know if the pilots are salvageable or not.”
“Salvageable?” Damn him. “There will be survivors,” Cole growled.
The copilot looked down on the fuselage. “I hope so, although we’ll have a hell of a time extracting them in anything more than a basic harness. We won’t be able to get a cage down there.”
Cole nodded. He knew what the copilot was saying. If Rachel or her copilot had neck or spine injuries, it would be next to impossible to get them out without increasing their injuries or killing them.
Cole glanced down at the crumpled metal shell that had flown through the sky less than an hour ago. No matter what, he was getting Rachel out of there.
“Ready?” the copilot asked.
Cole gave a tight nod and went to rescue Rachel.
When Cole neared the plane, he found purchase on the roof as he sought to steady his descent. Mistake. The branches beneath the fuselage cracked in protest, the sound nearly stopping Cole’s heart. The plane swayed in the trees, and Cole looked to the forest floor with a start.
It was a long way down. No one would survive that kind of fall.
Cole worked up enough saliva to swallow. He would not send the plane plummeting to the forest floor. He would not be the cause of Rachel’s death.
“Don’t put your weight on it until you absolutely have to,” the copilot chastised him through the radio.
Sweating, Cole tucked his legs in and continued down. With the help of the helicopter, Cole pulled himself forward until he was straddling the nose of the plane, hating to look inside, knowing that he had to look inside. Bearing Cole’s weight, the plane swayed as if it were a playground swing.
Not dead. Not dead. He couldn’t lose both Rachel and Missy.
Cole stared past the debris and shattered remains of the windshield and saw Rachel’s face, looking fragile and white as a sheet. Her sunglasses hung awkwardly off one ear. Blood oozed from her temple, and little cuts crisscrossed the rest of her face, probably from the windshield breaking.
“Rachel, wake up.”
Her eyelids fluttered and she gasped as if in pain.
“She’s alive.” Cole extended one arm through the windshield, but he couldn’t reach her. Too many branches were in the way, one of which—a thick, splintered shaft about eight inches in diameter—seemed to have pinned Rachel to her seat.
“There are supposed to be two,” the helicopter copilot reminded him.
“Can’t see anyone else. The cockpit is covered with branches.” Maybe the other pilot had been thrown out the window. Damn. Not the most pleasant way to go.
“We’re sending down a second harness.”
Cole inched to the edge of the cockpit, but his lifeline prevented him from reaching Rachel. He couldn’t unbuckle her safety restraints from outside the plane.
“Come on, honey. Help me out here. Can you release your harness and scoot forward?”
Rachel didn’t move a muscle. In fact, she seemed to have stopped breathing. Hell! If she needed CPR, he needed to be in there. Now!
Cole unsnapped his lifeline and slid into the cockpit headfirst. The plane groaned as Cole struggled to get his feet beneath him through a thick mess of branches.
“What the hell are you doing? That plane could drop at any moment. Is he crazy?” The helicopter copilot was as shocked as Cole was.
Cole wouldn’t be surprised if Doc did puke this time.
The plane continued to sway and something snapped beneath him. Crap, bad idea. His feet finally found something solid to stand on. He stood between the two seats, knee-high in branches.
“Rachel.” Cole put his gloved hands on her cheeks. “Don’t give up now. We’ve got to get out.”
