Back to Eden

“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.