A Soldier's Pledge

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b02b4ed7-d98c-5537-9210-525e23113635)

THE FOLLOWING MORNING she and Walt were flying the old red-and-white Beaver through a moderate rainfall back to Kawaydin Lake. Strapped to one of the Beaver’s struts was an eighteen-foot beat-up canoe they’d borrowed from one of the villagers. Behind her in the cargo compartment were provisions enough to feed an army for a week. She’d hashed out a reasonable plan for getting the Lone Ranger out to the Mackenzie River where the plane could pick him up. Walt would drop her off at the lake. Cameron would take the canoe down the Wolf River, stopping periodically to check for his tracks, and when she caught up with the wounded soldier, she’d seduce him with the idea of traveling by canoe. She figured he’d be easy to persuade after two days of bushwhacking along the river’s edge in the cold rain. By the time she found him, he’d be all over his depressing search for that long dead dog and be ready to head back to soft beds and civilization.

“They’re a critical part of my strategy,” Cameron explained when Walt questioned the amount of high end foods, including several bottles of decent red wine and three pounds of freshly ground Colombian joe.

“You must’ve shelled out a small fortune on all this fancy food and wine.”

“I only spent what I won last night at the pool hall, after shoring up that rotten section of flooring from underneath. Wish you could’ve seen those two pool sharks trying to make the floor sag and the pool table tilt without being too obvious about it. I skunked ’em in six straight games, made enough for all these groceries and then some.

“This is going to be the easiest money I ever earned,” she told Walt. “In four days, I’ll have this soldier roped, tied and delivered to his sister and that five grand will be in my bank account.”

“Better not spend it all before you earn it,” Walt advised her at the lake while helping her load the heavy cooler into the canoe in a cold dreary rain. “You might not find him, and even if you do, he might not want to come out with you.”

“Oh, I’ll find him, and I’m pretty sure he’ll jump at the chance to travel with me.” She held up two bottles of wine. “In my experience, men only care about two things. Food and sex, and wine goes good with both.”

“Did you bring handcuffs in case your strategy doesn’t work?” Walt asked.

“Duct tape,” Cameron said, stashing one bottle inside her tent bag, the other inside her sleeping bag duffel, then tucking both into the tight folds to protect them from the river’s tossing. “Duct tape works for everything. There’s a lot of money riding on this, Walt. You can count on hearing from me in four days.”

* * *

WITHIN THE HOUR the tethered canoe was loaded, and she was ready to set off. She helped Walt push the plane away from shore, waited while he taxied out onto the lake and then watched him take off and head south into a wet overcast. It was 4:00 p.m. If she started paddling now, she might overshoot the Lone Ranger before dark. Her travel time would be much faster than his, just drifting with the current down the river. The smartest thing might be to spend the night where he had first pitched his tent, then get on the river by dawn before he had a chance to break camp. He’d be easy to spot that way. His tent fly was blue and highly visible, assuming he was camped right at the river’s edge. But setting up camp right away would mean just sitting there for hours while the rain came down, waiting for the bears to find her cooler full of goodies and rip it apart.

Maybe she should just plan on deliberately overshooting the Lone Ranger and wait for him to catch up to her. If she spotted him stumbling along the shore while she was drifting effortlessly by, all the better; she’d put ashore slightly downriver of his position to give herself enough time to tidy up, get pretty and pry the cork out of one of the bottles of wine.

Then again, she’d spent a late night at the pool hall, fleecing those cheats Hank and Slouch out of all the money they’d taken from her. Hitting the sack early and drifting off to the soothing sounds of the rushing river and the rain pattering on her tent had a certain appeal. She could always haul her food up into a tree to keep it from the bears.

Whatever she decided to do, the Lone Ranger would eventually drag his bruised and battered body into her cozy comfortable camp, and she’d have him. That much was certain.

* * *

WAKING UP WAS the hardest thing; those first few moments between sleep and full consciousness, when reality came back with a sickening rush. Mornings meant remembering over and over again, on a daily basis, all the bad things that had ever happened to him. Mornings meant losing his friends all over again. Mornings meant losing his leg all over again. Mornings meant looking at that alien contraption that now substituted for his lower left leg, lying within arm’s reach on the damp tent floor. Mornings meant fitting the socket carefully over the liner and socks covering the stump of his left leg, those eight inches remaining below the knee. Mornings meant pain. The stump was raw and inflamed from yesterday’s long struggle, and even after adjusting the number of socks over the liner, the suspension socket went on hard. It was a routine he’d never once imagined would be a part of every morning for the rest of his life, but he knew he was one of the lucky ones. He’d seen plenty of soldiers less fortunate.

He could hear the river rushing past, the light drumming of rain on the tent’s fly. He could smell the damp earth and the resiny tang of spruce, the wetness of his gear. The rain would keep the insects down, but a few more days of it and his gear would be moldering. He lay back on his sleeping bag until his breathing and heart rate had steadied. Then he did sit-ups. Fifty of them. Numbering each one under his breath. He used to do one hundred effortlessly. Now he could barely manage fifty. He needed to get fit because he was going back to Afghanistan, and he was going back as a fully functioning soldier. When he was done with the sit-ups, he rolled over and did push-ups.

The pain was everywhere. There was no place he didn’t hurt, but he had learned to ignore it, to live with it. They’d given him drugs for the pain at Walter Reed, but the drugs had messed up his head. He preferred the pain. It kept him focused. He needed to stay focused on his mission.

He had to find Ky because he knew she was alive. He knew this as surely as he knew that he was alive, even though by all rights they should both be dead. He’d allotted himself eight days to find her, but he’d take twice that if he had to. He wasn’t going to leave here without her.

He rolled over, sat up, reached for his pack and dragged it toward him. Inside were his provisions, and they were minimal. Dried food, first aid and personal supplies, spare clothing, tool kit, his four-pound spare prosthesis. He pulled out a protein bar and ate it, drank the water he’d purified last night. Shifted enough to open the tent door so he could see the river. Yesterday’s progress had been slow. The water levels were high from the rain, and any shoreline he might have been able to walk on was underwater. He’d had to bushwhack inland, away from the choking tangle of alder and willow that grew along the river. Each step was a conscious effort, a struggle. He’d only recently been fitted with his prosthesis. The specialist at the rehab center had told him he’d need weeks of physical therapy to learn to use it properly.

He much preferred the physical therapy of the wilderness. If he hadn’t learned to use the damn thing after eighty miles of rough walking, they could have it back and he’d whittle himself a peg leg. He figured he’d barely made three miles yesterday, three long hard and painful miles, which left seventy-seven more ahead of him, but he wasn’t going to look that far ahead.

One step at a time was the measure of all journeys.

Breakfast over, he zipped on his left pant leg, laced the leather hiking boot on his right foot and called himself fully dressed. The cargo pants with removable legs had been a good investment. They were made of a lightweight, tough and fast-drying cloth. He could get the prosthesis off easily at day’s end, and even if he slept in the rain-wet pants, they dried quickly. Taking his kit, he crawled out of the tent and into the drizzle. He made his way to the river’s edge, crouched and splashed water on his face, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, finger combed his close-cropped hair. Didn’t bother to shave. Nobody to scare with his five o’clock shadow. Stuffing everything back into his kit, he was about to return to camp when movement on the river caught his eye.

A canoe came around the bend from upriver, a battered red canoe with one person seated in the stern, using the paddle as a rudder.

For a moment he could scarcely credit what he was seeing, because this early in the morning and in this wilderness setting he shouldn’t be seeing anything even remotely human. But as the canoe drew closer, he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the person in the stern was that same girl who’d flown him out to the lake. The girl who’d looked too young to be driving a car, let alone flying a big bush plane in the far north. There was no mistaking that Aussie hat and the slender boyish figure that not even the orange life jacket could hide.

Before he could rise to his feet she spotted him, and he caught the flash of a smile. “Good morning!” Her cheerful greeting floated loud and clear over the rush of the river and the patter of rain. “Fancy meeting you here!”

She ferried the canoe across the strong, swift current like a voyageur, paddling with short strokes from the waist and using her upper body for leverage. It was pretty obvious she knew what she was doing in a canoe. She came toward him at a good clip, and was almost to shore when the canoe fetched up hard against a hidden rock, swung broadside to the current, spun backward in a tight arc around the submerged rock, backed hard into the downstream eddy and pitched sideways, spilling her into the river with a loud, undignified squawk.

To her credit she came up swiftly, paddle in hand. She flung the paddle onto the riverbank, grabbed the nose of the canoe and began hauling it ashore. The river swept her along, but within ten yards she got her footing and lurched backward out of the water, both hands clamped to a snub line fastened to the nose of the canoe. By the time he reached her, she had things pretty much under control, but the canoe had taken on water and was heavily loaded with gear, securely lashed in place or it would have been floating down the river. She was having trouble finding a spot to haul the canoe out. She had her heels braced against the pull of the river, and tossed the slack coils of rope to him when he came near.

“Tie her off to something, anything,” she ordered. “And hurry, this current’s strong.” She struggled to keep it from ripping the canoe out of her grasp.

He plowed through the dense tangle of alder and willow with the rope, hauled himself up the bank, found a black spruce that looked up to the task and snubbed off to it. When he returned to the river, she was watching for him over her shoulder.

“Okay?” she said.

“Okay.”

She relaxed her grip on the rope, and the canoe remained obediently tethered to shore. She was soaking wet from her swim and out of breath from the struggle to hold the canoe. Her hands flew to her head, then she stood staring downriver, stricken with shock.

“You all right?” he asked from the riverbank. “Did you hit your head?”

“I lost my Snowy River hat. I loved that hat.” She stared downriver through a veil of rain, as if it might be floating just out of reach or stuck on an overhanging branch. Her shoulders slumped, she dropped her hands and looked back at him. “I didn’t see that rock. I was too busy looking at you. Stupid of me. Now I’ll have to unload the canoe and bail it out.”

“When you’re done bailing, my camp’s just a few yards upriver. Coffee’s on.”

Her expression brightened. “Thanks,” she said.

He made his way back to the camp. The coffee was boiling over. He shut off the little multi-fuel stove and poured himself a cup. A part of him felt guilty not staying to help with the job of unloading the canoe, but he was equally annoyed that she’d invaded his morning and literally crashed his party uninvited. What was she doing here? It obviously had something to do with him, and he didn’t like that one bit.

Forty minutes later she tramped into his campsite. Her hair had come loose from the ponytail and was dripping with river and rainwater. She crawled into his tiny tent on her hands and knees, and took the insulated cup he offered with a grateful smile. She sat cross-legged and inhaled the steam.

“Thanks. This smells like real cowboy coffee.”

“It’ll float a spoon,” he said.

“Just how I like it.” She took a sip. “Perfect.” Her eyes were as dark as her hair, fringed with thick lashes. Her face was slender, cheekbones high, lips curved in a smile. In the dim confines of the tent, after that plunge in the icy river and the mighty struggle with the canoe, she should have looked like a scrawny wet rat, not a sexy Abercrombie and Fitch fashion model.

“Why are you here?” he said, blunt and to the point.

She shook her head, took another swallow of coffee. “My boss dropped me off up at the lake so I could canoe downriver and deliver a message from your sister.” She ran the fingers of one hand through her wet shoulder-length hair, sweeping it back from her face, and gazed at him frankly. “She’s very worried about you. I spoke with her by phone yesterday. She told me what happened to your dog, and she feels bad about it.”

He made no comment. He had nothing to say about his dog or his sister. His life was none of her business.

“She wanted me to tell you how sorry she was that she didn’t tell you right away, when she got back from the canoe trip last summer, and she wanted me to try to make you understand that the reason she didn’t tell you when you were in Afghanistan was because she was afraid you’d be upset by the bad news, and you’d get hurt because you were distracted.”

He pulled his pack toward him and began stuffing his sleeping bag into the bottom compartment.

“I mean, I can understand how bad your sister feels,” she continued. “And I can tell you, she was genuinely upset on the phone. She wanted me to find you and bring you out by canoe. She also said to tell you that your mother is really sick, and you need to come home right away.”

“My mother’s fine. I talked to her on the phone every day while I was at Walter Reed. I talked to her the day before you flew me out here, and she was fine. She’d have come to visit me herself when I was in the hospital, but she’s afraid of flying. My sister just told you to tell me she was real sick to get me to quit looking for a dog she thinks is dead. She feels guilty about leaving Ky out here, and she should. How much did my sister’s rich banker husband of hers offer you to find me?” he asked, not pausing in his work.