The Rescue Pilot. Rachel Lee

to hit our sick passenger first. I’d rather let it in as far from her as possible.”

      “Good point. Well, I doubt the snow is the problem.”

      “Not hardly,” Chase agreed. “Not yet. Not with this.”

      But the snow was a problem all right, one that promised to grow even bigger in the next few hours. “We’ve got to get out,” he said again. “Find out what our condition is, whether we’ve got anything else to worry about. And we’re going to need to build a fire to heat food.”

      “In this?” Yuma cocked a brow. “That’s always fun.”

      “I have plenty of alcohol onboard.”

      Yuma chuckled. “Imagine starting a fire with Chivas. Or Jack.”

      “I just hope it works. Alcohol burns cold.”

      “A handful of pine needles” was all Yuma said.

      “Sure. I see tons of them out there.” But Chase knew that even though the snow buried them, finding them wouldn’t be the most difficult task they’d face. But first this damn door. Preferably in a way that wouldn’t leave it permanently open to the cold.

      “You know,” he said as he and Yuma again put their shoulders to the door, “I should have painted this damn plane chartreuse or international orange.”

      “By tomorrow I don’t think it’ll matter if it were covered in blinking neon lights.”

      Chase paused, wiping his own brow. “Yeah. It probably won’t.”

      “Transponder?” Billy Joe asked as they pushed again.

      “Damned if I know right now. My instruments were acting like twinkle lights. But first things first. The transponder isn’t exactly going to get much attention at the moment.”

      “That’s a fact.”

      “At the very least we’ve got to check our situation, make sure we don’t slide farther, and then get some hot soup and coffee going. Then I’ll worry about everything else.” “Agreed.”

      On the count of three, both men shoved again, and this time the door opened. Not far, just a couple of inches at the top, but enough for Chase to see the problem. One of the heavy-duty locking bolts hadn’t slid fully back and it ripped at the door, tearing a small hole but not enough to cause any heartache.

      “I need a sledgehammer,” Chase muttered. And he needed it right now, because he wasn’t going to go outside and leave that door open, freezing everyone in the plane.

      He pulled up a service panel in the floor and went hunting. There it was, a heavy-duty hammer. He hadn’t ever needed it, but you never knew. He carried a lot of items just for that reason. If he’d learned one thing in the military, it was to be prepared for just about any situation. What you dismissed as unnecessary could wind up costing you a whole lot … like your life.

      Yuma leaned back while Chase started hammering on the locking bolt.

      “Do you have to make so much noise?” the Campbell woman said sharply. “My sister …”

      “Is going to freeze to death if I can’t close this door, okay?”

      He didn’t have to look at her because he could hear the snap of her jaws closing just before he banged again with the hammer.

      To his vast relief, it only took a half-dozen blows. He tossed the hammer back in the hatch, closed it and then faced the door with Yuma again. Already the plane was cooling down, but the fresher air was welcome.

      They counted to three again and shoved. This time the door flew all the way down to the packed snow beneath. Another scarcely acknowledged fear slipped away from Chase’s mind. They weren’t trapped inside. They had a functioning door.

      The two men scrambled out quickly over the horizontal steps, which were useless at this angle, then shoved the door up behind them, leaving it open the tiniest crack.

      Outside the world looked like a snow globe gone mad. Wind whipped them viciously, howling its fury, and the flakes were becoming icy needles. Chase ignored the discomfort, all his attention focused on finding out how the plane was situated. He didn’t want to learn the hard way that they were on the lip of another slide and some little thing could set it off.

      He headed straight for the plane’s nose. In this heavy snow, it was hard to see very far. He could make out only the faintest of gray shadows of trees around the clearing, but as he approached the front, he saw with relief that there were trees not very far ahead of them. Maybe a hundred, two hundred feet at most. Thick foresting that would stop them if they slid, no dark shadow indicating a deep gorge in the way. Thank God.

      The nose was completely buried and he left it that way. Every bit of insulation would do them good until this blizzard passed, cutting the wind, keeping the inside temperature up.

      But he felt something very close to sorrow as he walked back along the plane’s length. Even with deepening snowdrifts he could see buckled metal on the fuselage, and that the engines had vanished from under the wings somewhere upslope, leaving behind their twisted pylons. Any fuel that was left would be seeping into the snow from broken lines, but he couldn’t see any melting to indicate it.

      God, what had happened? He hadn’t had time to wonder before. He’d gone from half-full tanks to empty so fast it had seemed almost impossible. His fuel pumps must have been spewing precious liquid as fast as they could from somewhere. Just where he wouldn’t be able to tell now.

      He’d had the damn thing overhauled and checked out last week. That’s why he’d been in Seattle. All he could think now was that some mechanic somewhere had failed to do something right. Make some connection. Tighten some clamp, whatever. Somewhere between pumps and engines, there had been a critical failure.

      By the time he’d known things were going wrong, they’d been over the mountains with a storm catching up. At forty thousand feet, that was no big deal, but it sure cut his options. He’d had no choice but to hope they’d make it to the Conard County Airport. There was nothing closer that hadn’t already been closed by the storm.

      He supposed he ought to get down on his knees and thank God they were in one piece. But right now he wasn’t feeling all that thankful. He was feeling furious, and worried. Most especially worried about that sick woman in the back of his plane.

       Chapter 2

      Rory had added more blankets to cover Cait as the cabin temperature dropped a bit because of the opening and closing of the cabin door. She was grateful the air felt fresher now, but worried, too. How were they supposed to keep warm?

      Cait barely stirred as Rory tucked blankets around her all the way up to her ears. A knit stocking cap would probably be good, she thought, since Cait didn’t have enough hair left to keep her head warm.

      She went out to ask Wendy about it. Maybe the other woman had one.

      “Actually, I do,” Wendy said. “And I’m glad to tell you it’s in the overhead bin. Let me get it out. Didn’t you bring something like that for when you got to Minnesota?”

      “An ambulance was going to meet us. I wasn’t expecting Cait to be exposed at all.”

      Wendy nodded as she rose to open one of the overhead bins. She wore a baggy sweater and jeans, and a very sensible pair of work boots. Just like Rory herself. Accustomed as she was to being on work sites, Rory dolled up only for business meetings, and this trip hadn’t qualified for that.

      “What about you?” Wendy spoke as she fought with the bin door, at last managing to yank it open.

      “I have a parka I dug out before we left.”

      “Good. I don’t usually carry spares of those.”

      Wendy pulled a thick-knit cap out of a leather duffel and passed it to her. “There you go.”