Up Close and Dangerous Read online

  He hadn’t revealed to Bailey how disturbed he was that they hadn’t been rescued yesterday. A satellite should have picked up the signal from their ELT, and even though the mountain had had cloud cover all day, a rescue team could have been dropped off at a lower, more accessible location, and made it up to them.

  The problem was that an ELT was battery-powered, and would transmit for only twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They’d passed the twenty-four-hour mark yesterday morning, and were fast coming up on the forty-eight; if the signal hadn’t been picked up by then, it wasn’t going to be picked up at all. When a rescue team hadn’t reached them yesterday, he’d started to worry that maybe the ELT’s batteries had been weak and had petered out before a search had even been started.

  He looked up as Bailey made her way through the trees back to the shelter, stopped in front of it, and gave him a determined look. “You have to stay out here a while,” she said, and her tone of voice didn’t give him any options. “I can’t stand it any longer. I stink. I don’t care how cold it is, I have to wipe myself off and put on clean clothes. And after I finish, you have to clean up.”

  “You put on clean clothes last night,” he pointed out, just to devil her. “And I don’t have any clean clothes.”

  “That’s your fault,” she shot back. “I don’t know what made you think you needed only one change of clothes for an overnight trip.”

  “Maybe the fact that one is all I ever carry.”

  “Yeah, well, you have to plan for emergencies. What if you’d spilled coffee down your clean shirt at breakfast? You’d be stuck.”

  He wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. Maybe it was the way she stood so ramrod straight, or the mulish set of her jaw, that made him think better of it. But it was funny, listening to her lecture him about clothes. Maybe if she were still wearing the sophisticated pants and jacket she’d worn when she boarded the plane the lecture wouldn’t have seemed so out of place, but her appearance now made bag ladies look fashionable.

  She wore so many clothes she had no shape, and the flannel shirt tied over her head was the crowning touch. No, maybe that would be the socks on her hands. Then again he had her shirts and pants wrapped around him, because he obviously couldn’t wear them. If she looked better than he did, that was really bad. And if he could have gotten her socks on over his hands, he’d be wearing a pair of them, too.

  “You win,” he said, smiling. “I should have packed more. I’m going to poke around the plane while you’re cleaning up, so take your time.”

  Immediately her green eyes shadowed with worry. “Are you sure you’re strong enough—”

  “I’m sure,” he cut in. “I feel a lot better today.” Okay, “a lot” was stretching it, but he’d had all he could take of lying around, and he wanted to check out some things.

  She chewed her lower lip. “Call if you start feeling dizzy or anything,” she finally said, and dropped down to crawl inside the shelter.

  Cam turned and surveyed the wreckage, studying it with the eye of a pilot. He looked at the trajectory, marked by broken trees and debris. He saw where the left wing had dipped and caught a jagged outcropping of rock; that was probably where he’d lost the wing. The plane had then skewed violently to the right, and almost out of the trees into the rocky slope, which would have been a disaster.

  What had saved their asses was that the fuel hadn’t ignited. The impact of crashes were survivable a lot of times, but the resulting fire wasn’t. Even with the engine dead the electrical wiring still could have sparked a fire. Maybe Bailey could have made it out alive, but he certainly wouldn’t have.

  The fuselage wasn’t resting on the ground, but was sort of propped on the broken right wing, and impaled on a tree. The limb sticking through the fuselage was what had anchored the plane, kept it from flipping upside down. As long as the limb held, the plane would stay there. He hoped to hell it didn’t break while he was in the cockpit; wouldn’t that be a bitch?

  He hauled himself up onto what had been the copilot’s seat, before Bailey scavenged the foam pads and leather upholstery, and was now little more than a frame. The first thing he checked was the ELT. “Fuck,” he said softly, as soon as he flipped the switch. The indicator light was off—the battery was dead. The big question was: Had a satellite picked up the signal before the battery died, or had the battery been dead from the beginning? The ELTs were inspected once a year, as per code. The battery could have been dead for months, because the reality was that, other than the yearly inspection, no one checked the damn things.

  If the satellite had located the beacon, he was fairly certain Search and Rescue would have gotten to them sometime the day before. They hadn’t, and now he didn’t think they would, at least not in time. What troubled him most was that he hadn’t heard any Civil Air Patrol planes flying their search patterns, or a helicopter. He’d radioed their location, and though they hadn’t actually gone down there they were close enough that they’d have been able to hear a helicopter searching that sector.

  He knew a search had been organized. A plane didn’t go missing for two days with no one bothering to look for it. So where the hell were they searching?

  He wondered if his radio transmission had gone out. What if CAP had no real idea where to look for them? Mathematically the target area could be mapped out using the amount of fuel and maximum flying distance, but that was a hell of a lot of territory. Logically, he had to assume he and Bailey would have to get themselves off the mountain, something that was much easier said than done.

  The cockpit display was shattered and the radio busted, neither of which was a surprise. He poked around, looking for anything of use that Bailey might have overlooked, but she’d been thorough. Just about all that was left in the cabin that was usable were the seat belts; he pulled the shoulder straps as far out as possible before cutting them. The lap belts weren’t all that long, but they were usable. They were strong, and could be made into webbing to help them carry stuff. It wasn’t as if they could pack Bailey’s suitcases again and roll them down the mountain, but maybe he could use the seat belt webbing and turn one of the cases into a sort of backpack, just for carrying the most essential items. If his roll-aboard case was large enough, it would be the ideal size.

  The flashlight that he always put in the cockpit with him was gone. He was sure it was around somewhere, but likely covered by the new snowfall they’d had, and God only knew how far it had been flung on impact. They needed it, if they were going to walk out of here, but the odds of finding it weren’t good.

  Likewise, he needed his suit jacket, and the trail mix bars in the pocket—the bars more than the coat. The coat would be nice, but he’d be able to get by the way he was doing now; they really, really needed the bars for energy, though.

  Now that he knew the ordeal they faced, he looked at the wreckage with different eyes. Sharp pieces of metal or glass could be made into a crude knife, just in case his pocketknife was lost, or a blade broken. It never hurt to have backup. Maybe he could make some snowshoes, too, using some of the material Bailey had used to construct their shelter. The theory was simple enough. The question was whether or not the terrain was too rough, because snowshoes were clumsy.

  The farther they descended the more plentiful food would be. He was a Texas boy; he’d grown up setting traps for rabbits and squirrels. He’d be able to find food for them then, but they needed food now.

  He made his way to the other side of the plane. The slope was much steeper there, with stretches of almost sheer rock that would have made it impossible for him to navigate if he hadn’t been able to hold to the trees. He followed the path upward that the plane had made coming down, using his upper body strength to pull himself up when there was no footing to be found.

  Snow crunched under his shoes, came up over the sides, and worked its way inside, wetting his socks and freezing his feet. He couldn’t trek out of here wearing dress shoes, but damn if he knew what he’d do. He could ignore the cold for now; h