Cover Me

Chapter 1

It was a cold day in hell for Tech Sergeant Wade Rocha—standard ops for a mission in Alaska.

He slammed the side of the icy crevasse on Mount McKinley. A seemingly bottomless crevasse. That made it all the more pressing to anchor his ax again ASAP. Except both of his spikes clanked against his sides while the underworld waited in an alabaster swirl of nothingness as he pinwheeled on a lone cable.

Wade scratched and clawed with his gloved hands, kicked with his spiked shoes, reaching for anything. The tiniest of toeholds on the slick surface would be good right about now. Sure he was roped to his climbing partner. But they had the added load of an injured woman strapped to a stretcher beneath them. He needed to carry his own weight.

Chunks of ice and snow pelted his helmet. The unstable gorge walls vibrated under his gloved hands.

“Breathe and relax, buddy.” His headset buzzed with reassurance from his climbing partner, Hugh “Slow Hand” Franco.

Right.

Hold tight.

Think.

Focus narrowed, Wade tightened his grip on his rope. He’d earned his nickname, Brick, by being the most hardheaded guy in their rescue squadron. Come hell or high water, he never gave up.

Each steady breath crackled with ice shards in his lungs, but his oxygen-starved body welcomed every atom of air. Lightning fast, he grabbed the line tying them together and worked the belay device.

Whirrr, whippp. The rope zinged through. Wade slipped closer, closer still, to Franco, ten feet below.

“Oof.” He jerked to a halt.

“I got ya, Brick. I got ya,” Franco chanted through the headset. Intense. Edgy. Nothing was out of bounds. Franco would die before he let him fall. “It’s just physics that makes this thing work. Don’t overthink it.”

And it did work. Wade stabilized against the icy wall again. Relief trickled down his spine in frosty beads of sweat.

He keyed up his microphone. “All steady, Slow Hand.”

“Good. Now do you wanna stop horsing around, pal?” Franco razzed, sarcastic as ever. “I’d like to get back before sundown. My toes are cold.”

Wade let a laugh loosen the tension kinking up his gut. “Sorry I inconvenienced you by almost dying there. I’ll try not to do it again. I’ll even spring for a pedicure, if you’re worried about your delicate feet chafing from frostbite.”

“Appreciate that.” Franco’s labored breath and hoarse chuckle filled the headset.

“Hey, Franco? Thanks for saving my ass.”

“Roger that, Brick. You’ve done the same for me.”

And he had. Not that they kept score. Wade recognized the chitchat for what it really was—Franco checking to make sure he wasn’t suffering from altitude sickness due to their fifteen thousand foot perch. They worked overtime to acclimate themselves, but the lurking beast could still strike even the most seasoned climber without warning. They’d already lost one of their team members last month to HACE—high altitude cerebral edema.

He shook his head to clear it. Damn it, his mind was wandering. Not good. He eyed the ledge a mere twenty feet up. Felt like a mile. He slammed an ice ax in with his left hand, pulled, hauled, strained, then slapped the right one in a few inches higher. Crampons—ice cleats—gained traction on the sleek side of the narrow ravine as he inched his way upward.

Slow. Steady. Patient. Mountain rescue couldn’t be rushed. At least April gave them a few more daylight hours. Not that he could see much anyway, with eighty-mile-per-hour wind creating whiteout conditions. Below, his climbing partner was a barely discernible blur.

Hand over hand. Spike. Haul. Spike. Haul. He clipped his safety rope into a spike they had anchored in the rock on the way down. Scaled one step at a time. Forgot about the biting wind. The ball-numbing cold.

The ever-present risk of avalanche.

His arms bulged, the burden strapped to his harness growing heavier. Remember the mission. Bring up an unconscious female climber. Strapped to a litter. Compound fracture in her leg.

His job as a pararescueman in the United States Air Force included medic training. Land, sea, or mountain, military missions or civilian rescue. With his brothers in arms, he walked, talked, and breathed their motto, “That Others May Live.”

That people like his mother might live.

Muscles burning, he focused upward into the growl of the storm and the hovering military helicopter. A few more feet and he could hook the litter to the MH-60. Rotors chop, chop, chopped through the sheets of snow like a blender.

The crevasse was too narrow to risk lowering a swaying cable. Just one swipe against the narrow walls of ice could collapse the chasm into itself. On top of the injured climber and Franco.

On top of him.

So it was up to him—and his climbing partner—to pull the wounded woman out. Once clear, the helicopter would land if conditions permitted. And if not, they could use the cable then to raise her into the waiting chopper.

Wind slammed him again like a frozen Mack truck. He fought back the cold-induced mental fog. At least when Hermes went subterranean to rescue Persephone from the underworld, he had some flames to toast his toes.

Wade keyed his microphone again to talk to the helicopter orbiting overhead. “Fever”—he called the mission code name—“we’re about five minutes from the top.”

Five minutes when anything could happen.

“Copy, the wind is really howling. We will hold until you are away from the crevasse.”

“Copy, Fever.”

The rest of his team waited in the chopper. They’d spent most of the day getting a lock on the locale. The climber’s personal locator beacon had malfunctioned off and on. Wade believed in his job, in the motto. He came from five generations of military.

But sometimes on days like this, saving some reckless thrill seeker didn’t sit well when thoughts of people like his mother—wounded by a roadside bomb in Iraq, needing his help—hammered him harder than the ice-covered rocks pummeling his shoulder. How damned frustrating that there hadn’t been a pararescue team near enough—he hadn’t been near enough—to give her medical aid. Now because of her traumatic brain injury, she would live out the rest of her life in a rehab center, staring off into space.

He couldn’t change the past, but by God, he would do everything he could to be there to help someone else’s mother or father, sister or brother, in combat. That could only happen if he finished up his tour in this frozen corner of the world.

As they neared the top, a moan wafted from the litter suspended below him. Stabilizing the rescue basket was dicey. Even so, the groans still caught him by surprise.

The growling chopper overhead competed with the increasing howls of pain from their patient in the basket. God forbid their passenger should decide to give them a real workout by thrashing around.

“Franco, we better get her to the top soon before the echoes cause an avalanche.”

“Picking up the pace.”

Wade anchored the last… swing… of his ax… Ice crumbled away. The edge shaved away in larger and larger chunks. Crap, move faster. Pulse slugging, he dug deeper.

And cleared the edge.

Franco’s exhale echoed in his ears. Or maybe it was his own. Resisting the urge to sprawl out and take five right here on the snow-packed ledge, he went on autopilot, working in tandem with Franco.

Climbing ropes whipped through their grip as they hauled the litter away from the edge. Franco handled his end with the nimble guitarist fingers that had earned him the homage of the Clapton nickname, Slow Hand. The immobilized body writhed under the foil Mylar survival blanket, groaning louder. Franco leaned over to whisper something.

Wade huffed into his mic, “Fever, we are ready for pickup. One survivor in stable condition, but coming to, fast and vocal.”

The wind-battered helicopter angled overhead, then righted, lowering, stirring up snow in an increasing storm as the MH-60 landed. Almost home free.

Wade hefted one end, trusting Franco would have the other in sync, and hustled toward the helicopter. His crampons gripped the icy ground with each pounding step. The door of the chopper filled with two familiar faces. From his team. Always there.

With a whomp, he slid the metal rescue basket into the waiting hands. He and Franco dove inside just as the MH-60 lifted off with a roar and a cyclone of snow. Rolling to his feet, he clamped hold of a metal hook bolted to the belly of the chopper.

The training exercise was over.

Their “rescue” sat upright fast on the litter, tugging at the restraints. Not in the least female, a hulking male pulled off the splint Wade had strapped on less than a half hour ago.

Wade collapsed against the helicopter wall, exhausted as hell now that he could allow his body to stop. “Major, have you ever considered an acting career? With all that groaning and thrashing about, I thought for sure I was carting around a wounded prima donna.”

Major Liam McCabe, the only officer on their team and a former army ranger, swung his feet to the side of the litter and tossed away the Thinsulate blanket. “Just keeping the exercise real, adding a little color to the day.”

The major tugged on a helmet and hooked into the radio while the rest of his team gaped at him—or rather, gaped at McCabe’s getup. He wore civilian climbing gear—loud, electric yellow, with orange and red flames that contrasted all the more up next to their bland sage green military issue. Laughter rumbled through the helicopter. The garish snow gear had surprised the hell out of him and Franco when they’d reached the bottom of the chasm. They’d expected McCabe, but not an Olympic-worthy ski suit.

McCabe could outpunk Ashton Kutcher. For the most part they welcomed the distraction at the end of a long day. McCabe’s humor was also a needed tension buster for the group when Franco went too far, pushing the envelope.

End game, today’s exercise hadn’t pulled out all the stops for a mountain rescue. Nobody had to parachute in.

Suddenly the major stood upright as he gestured for everyone’s attention. “Helmets on so you can hear the radio.”

Wade snapped into action, plugging in alongside his other five team members, some in seats, Franco kneeling. The major held an overhead handle, boots planted on the deck.

“Copilot,” McCabe’s voice piped through the helmet radio, “have the Rescue Coordination Center repeat that last message.”

“Romeo Charlie Charlie, please repeat for Fever two zero.”

“Fever two zero, this is Romeo Charlie Charlie with a real world tasking.” The center radio controller’s Boston accent filled the airwaves with broad vowels. “We have a request for rescue of a stranded climbing party on Mount Redoubt. Party is four souls stranded by an avalanche. Can you accept the tasking as primary?”

Mount Redoubt? In the Aleutian Islands. The part of Alaska the Russians once called “the place that God forgot.”

The copilot’s click echoed as he responded. “Stand by while we assess.” He switched to interphone for just those onboard the helicopter. “How are you guys back there? You up for it?”

The major eyed the rest of the team, his gaze holding longest on him and Franco, since they’d just hauled his butt off a mountain. His pulse still slugged against his chest. Franco hadn’t stopped panting yet.

But the question didn’t even need to be asked.

Wade shot him a thumbs-up. His body was already shifting to auto again, digging for reserves. Each deep, healing breath sucked in the scent of hydraulic fluid and musty military gear, saturated from missions around the world. He drew in the smells, indulging in his own whacked-out aromatherapy, and found his center.

McCabe nodded silently before keying up his radio again. “We are a go back here, if there’s enough gas on the refueler.”

“Roger, that. We have an HC-130 on radar, orbiting nearby. They say they’re game if we are. They have enough gas onboard to refuel us for about three hours of loiter, topping us off twice if needed.” The copilot switched to open frequency. “Romeo Charlie Charlie, Fever and Crown will accept the tasking.”

“Copy, Fever,” answered their radio pal with a serious Boston accent. “Your new call sign is Lifeguard two zero.”

“Lifeguard two zero wilco.” Will comply. The copilot continued, “Romeo Charlie Charlie copies all.”

The radio operator responded, “We are zapping the mission info to you via data link and you have priority handling, cleared on navigation direct to location.”

“Roger.” The helicopter copilot’s voice echoed through Wade’s headset, like guidance coming through that funky aromatherapy haze. “I have received the coordinates for the stranded climbers popped up on a data screen and am punching the location into the navigation system. Major, do you copy all back there?”

“Copy in full.” McCabe was already reaching for his bag of gear to ditch the flame-print suit. “Almost exactly two hundred miles. We’ll have an hour to prep and get suited up.”

McCabe assumed command of the back of the chopper, spelling out the game plan for each team member. He stopped in front of Wade last. “Good news and bad news… and good news. Since you’ve worked the longest day, the rest of the team goes in first. Which means you can rest before the bad-news part.” He passed a parachute pack. “Speaking of which, chute up. Because if we can’t reach someone, you’re jumping in to secure the location and help ride out the storm.”

Apparently they might well have to pull out all the stops after all. “And that second round of good news, sir?”

McCabe smiled, his humor resurfacing for air. “The volcano on Mount Redoubt hasn’t blown in a year, so we’ve got that going for us.”

***



A wolflike snarl cut the thickly howling air.

Kneeling in the snow, Sunny Foster stayed statue-still. Five feet away, fangs flashed, white as piercing icicles glinting through the dusky evening sunset.

Nerves prickled her skin, covered with four layers of clothes and snow gear, even though she knew large predators weren’t supposed to live at this elevation. But still… She swept her hood back slowly, momentarily sacrificing warmth for better hearing. The wind growled as loudly as the beast crouching in front of her.

She was alone on Mount Redoubt with nothing but her dog and her survival knife for protection. Cut off by the blizzard, she was stuck on a narrow path, trying to take a shortcut after her snow machine died.

Careful not to move too fast, she slid the blade from the sheath strapped to her waist. While she had the survival skills to wait out the storm, she wasn’t eager to share her icy digs with a wolf or a bear. And a foot race only a few feet away from a sheer cliff didn’t sound all that enticing.

Bitter cold, at least ten below now, seeped into her bones until her limbs felt heavier. Even breathing the thin mountain air was a chore. These kinds of temps left you peeling dead skin from your frostbitten fingers and toes for weeks. Too easily she could listen to those insidious whispers in her brain encouraging her to sleep. But she knew better.

To stay alive, she would have to pull out every ounce of the survival training she taught to others. She couldn’t afford to think about how worried her brother and sister would be when she didn’t return in time for her shift at work.

Blade tucked against her side, she extended her other hand toward the flashing teeth.

“Easy, Chewie, easy.” Sunny coaxed her seven-year-old malamute-husky mutt. The canine’s ears twitched at a whistling sound merging with the wind. “What’s the matter boy? Do you hear something?”

Like some wolf or a bear?

Chewie was more than a pet or a companion. Chewie was a working partner on her mountain treks. They’d been inseparable since her dad gave her the puppy. And right now, Sunny needed to listen to that partner, who had senses honed for danger.

Two months ago Chewie had body-blocked her two steps away from thin ice. A couple of years before that, he’d tugged her snow pants, whining, urging her to turn around just in time to avoid a small avalanche. If Chewie nudged and tugged and whined for life-threatening accidents, what kind of hell would bring on this uncharacteristic growling?

The whistling noise grew louder overhead. She looked up just as the swirl of snow parted. A bubbling dome appeared overhead, something in the middle slicing through…

Holy crap. She couldn’t be seeing what she thought. She ripped off her snow goggles and peered upward. Icy pellets stung her exposed face, but she couldn’t make herself look away from the last thing she expected to see.

A parachute.

Someone was, no kidding, parachuting down through the blizzard. Toward her. That didn’t even make sense. She patted her face, her body, checking to see if she was even awake. This had to be a dream. Or a cold-induced hallucination. She smacked herself harder.

“Ouch!”

Her nose stung.

Her dog howled.

Okay. She was totally awake now and the parachute was coming closer. Nylon whipped and snapped, louder, nearer. Boots overhead took shape as a hulking body plummeted downward. She leaped out of the way.

Toward the mountain wall—not the cliff’s edge.

Chewie’s body tensed, ready to spring into action. Coarse black-and-white fur raised along his spine. Icicles dotted his coat.

The person—a man?—landed in a dead run along the slippery ice. The “landing strip” was nothing more than a ledge so narrow her gut clenched at how easily this hulking guy could have plummeted into the nothingness below.

The parachute danced and twisted behind him specter-like, as if Inuit spirits danced in and out of the storm. He planted his boots again. The chute reinflated.

A long jagged knife glinted in his hand. His survival knife was a helluva lot scarier looking than hers right now. Maybe it had something to do with the size of the man.

Instinctively, she pressed her spine closer to the mountain wall, blade tucked out of sight but ready. Chewie’s fur rippled with bunching muscles. An image of her dog, her pet, her most loyal companion, impaled on the man’s jagged knife exploded in her brain in crimson horror.

“No!” she shouted, lunging for his collar as the silver blade arced downward.

She curved her body around seventy-five pounds of loyal dog. She kept her eyes locked on the threat and braced for pain.

The man sliced the cords on his parachute.

Hysterical laughter bubbled and froze in her throat. Of course. He was saving himself. Nylon curled upward and away, the “spirits” leaving her alone with her own personal yeti who jumped onto mountain ledges in a blizzard.

And people called her reckless.

Her Airborne Abominable Snowman must be part of some kind of rescue team. Military perhaps? The camo gear suggested as much.

What was he doing here? He couldn’t be looking for her. No one knew where she was, not even her brother and sister. She’d been taught since her early teens about the importance of protecting her privacy. For fifteen years she and her family had lived in an off-the-power-grid community on this middle-of-nowhere mountain in order to protect volatile secrets. Her world was tightly locked into a town of about a hundred and fifty people. She wrapped her arms tighter around Chewie’s neck and shouted into the storm, “Are you crazy?”

“No, ma’am,” a gravelly voice boomed back at her, “although I gotta confess I am cold. But don’t tell my pal Franco I admitted as much. My buddies can’t fly close enough to haul us out of here until the storm passes.”

“And who are these buddies of yours?” She looked up fast.

No one else fell from the clouds. She relaxed her arms around her dog. He must be some branch of the military. Except his uniform wasn’t enough to earn her automatic stamp of approval, and she couldn’t see his face or read his eyes because of his winter gear and goggles.

He sheathed his knife. “Air Force pararescue, ma’am. I’m here to help you hunker down for the night to ride out this blizzard safely.”

All right, then. That explained part. It was tough to question the honorable intentions of a guy who would parachute into the middle of a blizzard—on the side of a mountain—to rescue someone.

Still, how had he found her? Old habits were tough to shed.

“Um”—she squinted up at the darkening sky again—“are there more of you about to parachute in here?”

He shifted the mammoth pack on his back. “Do you think we could have this conversation somewhere else? Preferably after we find shelter and build a fire?”

That much she agreed with.

Staying out here to talk could get them killed. For some reason this hulking military guy thought he needed to save her. She didn’t understand the whys and wherefores of anyone knowing about her presence in the first place. However, simply walking away from him wasn’t an option.

Easing to her feet, she accepted the inevitable, sheathed her knife, but kept her hand close to it. Just in case.

She would not be spending the night in a warm shelter, curled up asleep with her dog. She would have to stay awake and alert. With too many secrets, she couldn’t afford to let down her guard around anyone, and sprinting away wasn’t exactly an option.

Her uninvited hero was already taking charge. “We need to find the best location to minimize the force of the wind, then start digging out a snow pit.” He had some kind of device in his hand, like a GPS. “I’ll keep the instructions simple, and you can just follow my lead.”

“Excuse me, but I’ve already located shelter. A cave only a few yards away.” She knew every safe haven on this pass. She had a GPS too, although it hadn’t come out of her case since she’d left her small mountain community this morning. “But you’re welcome to work on that pit if you prefer.”

“Oooo-kay,” he said with a long puff of fog. “Cave it is.”

“Follow Chewie.”

“Chewie?”

“My dog.” She pointed to her malamute mutt, now sniffing his way westward along the ledge.

The man hefted his gear more securely on his back—a pack that must have weighed at least fifty pounds. “Looks like a pissed off wolf to me.”

“Then perhaps you need to get out those fancy night-vision goggles you guys use.” She felt along the rock wall marbleized by the elements. “Sun’s falling fast. Don’t lollygag.”

His steps crunched heavy and steady behind her. “You’re not the most grateful rescuee I’ve ever come across.”

“I didn’t need saving, but thank you all the same for the effort.”

He stopped her with a hand to the arm. “What about your friends? Aren’t you worried about them?”

His touch startled her, the contact bold and firm—and foreign. She came from a world where everyone knew each other. There was no such thing as a stranger.

She gathered her scrambled thoughts and focused on his words. “My friends?”

How did he know about what she’d been doing today? She’d been on her own, escorting Ted and Madison to a deputy from the mainland who would take them the rest of the way. He worked for a small county along Bristol Bay and arranged for transportation by boat or plane, even bringing in supplies for them in an emergency.

Had something gone wrong after they’d left her? Ted and Madison were seasoned hikers, physically fit. They’d been frequent patrons of the fitness equipment she kept at the cabin that housed her survival and wilderness trek business. She couldn’t imagine there would have been any problem with their trek off Mount Redoubt to rejoin the outside world.

“The rest of your group. In case you were worried—which apparently you’re not—they’re all toasty warm with dry blankets up in the helicopter on their way back to the resort cabin, probably wishing they’d stayed in California. How is it that you have managed out here so long away from the group?”

Climbing group, from California? He must think she was a part of some other group. Relief burned through her like frostbitten limbs coming to life again. He didn’t know about Ted and Madison or the sheriff’s deputy, and he had no idea at all why she was really out here today.

She couldn’t afford—her relatives back in their community couldn’t afford—a single misstep. There were careful procedures for people who left, methods to protect their location. “I’ve had better survival training than the average person.”

And she would need every bit of that training to ditch this hulking big military savior when the time came to escape.