baby girl.”
Mina smiled at him and gave him a thumbs-up before turning and rapidly walking in the direction in which she’d seen the plane go down.
Captain was the rank she’d earned while in the army. No one had called her that in two years.
After half an hour, she realized that even though she could guess in which direction the plane’s wreckage could be found, she needed more accurate information than that to go on. So she decided to climb a tree to see if she could spot the downed plane from above. It had been a while since she’d had to scale a tree, although she and her sisters had done it all the time when they were kids, and she had done it on weekends as part of endurance training while in the army.
Removing her backpack and dropping it onto the ground beneath a fifty-foot pine tree, she put on the supple leather fingerless gloves that she had in her backpack to protect her hands while rock climbing. She kept her jacket on to protect her arms and chest from the rough bark of the tree. She removed her rubber-soled hiking boots and thick socks because bare feet gave her more traction. She took hold of the tree trunk and shinnied up the tree enough to grasp an upper branch. Then she carefully climbed from branch to branch until she was about thirty feet up. Muscles she had forgotten she had burned with the effort. She looked around. There, to the south, was the plane resting on its back. She didn’t see any rising plumes of smoke, which she figured was a good thing.
Getting down out of the tree was much easier than climbing it. She put her socks and boots back on, secured her backpack and began jogging in the direction of the crash site.
She glanced down at her watch as she ran. It was a few minutes after one in the afternoon, several hours before sundown. She and Grandpa Beck had gotten an early start this morning. Hopefully their early start would bode well for any survivors of the crash. Search and rescue would have a more difficult time finding them in the dark. Plus, this being autumn in the mountains, nights could get very cold.
Leaning into her sprint, she ran on, praying all the while that when she reached the site she would find someone alive.
* * *
Jake groaned as he came to. For a moment, his vision was blurry. When his eyes did finally focus, everything still appeared screwy to him. Then he realized he was upside down. He was afraid to move in case something was broken. So he stayed still and took a mental inventory of his body. Where did it hurt? Pretty much everywhere was his answer. “John?”
His voice was barely a whisper. “John!” No reply.
“John, if you can hear me, please say something!”
No sounds issued from John Monahan. Jake sighed in despair.
His vision clearer now, he looked around. Shattered glass, pine needles, broken branches and wrapped bundles of drugs littered the floor. No, not the floor, he remembered. It was the ceiling of the plane, because they were upside down.
He took a couple of deep breaths. He couldn’t stay here like this. What if no one had seen them go down? Some parts of these mountains were very isolated. There was a possibility that the only way he was getting out of this predicament was by his own efforts.
First he had to figure out which, if any, parts of him were injured. So he started by wiggling his fingers and toes. All moved normally. Then he tried moving his arms and legs. Once again, they seemed in good shape. Next he turned his head. That was when he saw poor John slumped to the side with a tree branch stuck in his chest. Jake viciously cursed the fates. It wasn’t fair. The guy was trying to turn his life around. Now he was dead for doing the right thing.
Jake vowed that Charlie Betts would pay for this.
With new resolve, he reached over to unfasten his seat belt, realizing that as soon as he did so, he would fall to the roof of the plane. He anticipated a lot of pain when he did so, but he had no alternative.
Just as he was about to click the release button, he heard a noise. It sounded like someone was trying to force the door open. Then he could have sworn he heard a muffled voice on the other side of the door.
* * *
Mina pulled hard on the door. It seemed to be jammed. She braced one foot on the side of the plane and put her back into it. The door popped open suddenly, throwing her off balance and onto her backside. She got up and pulled the door all the way open and peered inside. “Hello, can anyone hear me?”
“Yeah, thank God, I can hear you!”
Mina gingerly stepped inside. The ceiling of the plane was covered in padded leather the same neutral tone as the interior’s six seats. She stepped around bundles of something that appeared to have been put in opaque garbage bags and then wrapped with duct tape for added security. Glass and pine needles and various-sized tree branches crunched underfoot.
“Are you alone?” she asked the man who had answered her.
“No, the pilot’s here beside me,” he said. “Please check him. He hasn’t said anything since I regained consciousness.”
“Okay, I’m getting closer,” Mina told him. Momentarily she was right beside him. As he’d asked, she checked the pilot first. She was horrified by the sight of the tree branch sticking out of his chest, but that didn’t stop her from feeling for a pulse. She’d seen worse-looking injuries in Afghanistan, and some of those soldiers had actually survived them. So she was thorough about checking for signs of life.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a couple of minutes, her tone solemn. “Your friend is gone.”
She heard a sharp intake of breath from the survivor and then a long exhale. “I was hoping I was wrong and he’d made it,” he said.
Mina moved close beside him as he hung upside down in his seat, and that was when he got a good look at her. She was twentysomething, about five-five, and slender. To him she had the face of an angel, a black angel with golden-brown skin and abundant black hair that she wore in braids down her back.
“Are you the advance person of a team of rescuers?” he joked.
Mina smiled as she began running her hand across his body, trying to ascertain the nature of his injuries. “My grandfather and I were hiking in the mountains when we saw your plane go down. We couldn’t get a cell-phone signal, so he’s on the way back down the mountain to notify the authorities. Until they get here, I’m all you’ve got.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your help,” Jake said, “but I weigh two hundred pounds. I don’t think you could carry me if I’m unable to walk.”
Mina was still running her hands over his body. “Does anything on you hurt when I touch you?”
* * *
For a moment Jake forgot about the pain. He thought that must be a good sign. That a pretty woman could make him forget he’d just been in a plane crash. “I don’t think I have any broken bones,” he told her. “If you can help me out of this seat, I believe I can walk out of here under my own steam.”
“All right,” she agreed immediately. “I’m going to get close to you and spot you. You unfasten the seat belt on a count of three.”
Their eyes met. Mina’s dark brown eyes were encouraging. His probably looked doubtful. “Whenever you’re ready,”
