Clear to Lift Read online

  A door slams in the background.

  “She just walked in,” Celia says. “Oh, before I forget, were you able to switch your duty? I really want to make Thanksgiving work at the lodge. I don’t know why, but it seems important to your mom. It’s important for her to go there, I think.”

  “Oh, I wondered where I’d left my phone,” I hear my mom say. “Who are you talking to, Cee?”

  “It’s Ali. We’re talking about Thanksgiving.”

  “Sure you were,” she says. Paper rustles in the background. Wine out of the bag?

  The phone clicks to speaker. Refrigerator door opens, closes. “You’re on speaker, Ali,” Celia says. “Weren’t we talking about Thanksgiving?”

  “We were. And no, I haven’t been able to get my duty switched yet. I’m gonna hit up one of our new pilots, Danny, on Monday. I’m pretty optimistic.”

  “Excellent,” Celia says. “All right, I’m switching off the speaker and giving the phone to your mom. I’ve hogged it long enough.”

  “Okay, bye, Celia.”

  “I’m going back to the bedroom, Cee,” I hear my mom say. “I need to get out of these clothes.”

  “Okay, I’ll fire up the grill,” Celia says. “Here, take the phone.”

  “Hi, honey,” my mom says.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “I’m glad you called. I’ve been thinking about you a lot today, and I think we need a visit. Just you and me. And soon.”

  A visit. Which could mean a talk. Which could mean more information about my father. I would want to see my mom anyway, of course, but with her revelations of late, it can’t happen soon enough.

  “Yeah, definitely. When were you thinking?”

  “How about this weekend?”

  Shoot, shoot, shoot. “Mom, Rich is coming this weekend. Remember?”

  “Oh … that’s right. How could I forget?”

  “Well, how about next weekend?” I ask.

  “I’ll make that work. We need to talk.”

  “Mom, I desperately want to talk. I have so much to ask. There’s so much—”

  “I know, I know. But Ali, remember, honey, I need to take this slow. I’m working through a lot, and I’m getting there. But just … slow.”

  “Okay…”

  God, so many things to ask. About my father. About what the heck I’m feeling right now with—

  “Mom, can I ask you just one thing right now, though?”

  I can feel her bracing on the other end.

  “Did you know … I mean, did you have any idea he might leave? Was it sudden or was it…?”

  “It wasn’t a surprise, no.”

  Not a surprise …

  “Why not?” I voice with restraint. Only two words leave my mouth, but it takes all of my willpower to stop there. In my head, the questions continue. Had he talked about leaving? Was there a disagreement? Did you wake up one morning and he was gone? Or did he tell you in advance—

  And with a suddenness that leaves me near queasy, I realize that not only has Will told me he’s leaving, I probably won’t see him again before he departs for South America. I’ll be spending the weekend with Rich, and then Will leaves on Monday.

  He’s leaving.

  “… Your father wasn’t much for staying in one place. He liked to roam. To explore. If he was home for too long, he would get—what’s the word…?”

  “Antsy?” It pops out of my mouth, no thought required.

  “Yes! Antsy.”

  You see, Ali. You can’t go there.

  21

  Mushroom-shaped, bulbous clouds build up behind me, shifting into ominously darker shades of gray. I have a close-up view from my perch on Basin Mountain, elevation 13,240 feet. Actually, I’m not that high. I’m positioned on “the Notch,” located at the upper end of Basin Couloir, which is probably closer to twelve thousand feet.

  I enjoy a rather grand view from my position high in the Sierra, including the Bishop airport—tantalizingly close, and yet impossibly out of reach.

  I was playing victim for training purposes with Clark and Danny—no issues with power at this altitude today, since it’s so cold—and they dropped me here with the intention of returning in less than five minutes to effect my “rescue.” But a sudden loss of oil pressure in the number-one engine changed all that. They were forced to depart to make an emergency landing at the Bishop airport.

  So now I’m waiting for Boomer, Tito, and the crew of Longhorn 06 to come retrieve me. Fortunately, I brought a small backpack containing a fleece sweater, a windproof shell, and a fleece ski hat. I donned them as soon as Longhorn 07 departed, knowing that my pickup would be delayed. It’s probably in the low twenties up here, and Longhorn 06 is still an hour away—they’re coming all the way from Fallon.

  Stranded up here, I realize I’m going to be late picking Rich up at the airport. Why? Because today is Monday, and we had this conversation on Saturday.

  “What do you mean, you can’t come?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air.

  “I know how it sounds,” Rich said. “But Monday. I can be there on Monday.”

  “But I’ll be working on Monday. I … I cleared this whole weekend for you.”

  “It’s lousy timing, but it’s just a few days, and it’s beyond worth it.”

  “Why? What’s so important?”

  “We’re finally closing on that deal I told you about. The investors are flying in tomorrow. Ali, this is huge. We’re talking a multimillion-dollar deal here.”

  “But—”

  “There’s no way I can’t be here for this. We’ve worked this deal for two years.”

  I stared, appalled, at the grooves I’d just cut into my wooden kitchen table with a paring knife. I’d been cutting apple slices during our conversation, popping them into my mouth at intervals, but once the subject turned to another postponement of Rich’s visit, my knife turned its attentions to the wood grain, carving checker patterns among discarded apple seeds.

  “When I get there on Monday, I’ll take you out to celebrate,” he said. “Wherever you want, okay?”

  That conversation happened just an hour before I was to leave for the airport to pick him up. I had felt so guilty about pulling myself from the duty schedule, just when the air wing’s op tempo was picking up, just when Stage Three training was getting under way.

  If there’s ever a week during the course of an air wing’s training when the SAR team might be needed, it’s this one. The exercises flown in the last stage are always the trickiest and most complex, involving almost every aircraft they bring. They’re also the most dangerous, because they’re flown at night.

  But it was going to be worth it. A weekend alone with my fiancé was absolutely going to be worth it.…

  Thankfully, the air wing’s exercises have progressed like a dream over the weekend. But for me, I’ve been left to replay my conversation with Rich, just as I’ve done countless times this afternoon, while the wind picks up, the temperature noticeably dropping.

  An hour in these conditions would be doable—not comfortable, but doable—on most days, but the mountain has other ideas. I know I need to leave this exposed position and move lower.

  I start the hike down the snow-filled couloir—a wide thirty-degree swath that runs close to two thousand vertical feet. It’s the easiest way down this mountain, by far, but as I sink into knee-deep snow, a creeping disquiet moves through me. The only protective layers of clothing between the lower half of my body and the snow are a single base layer of polypropylene long underwear, my flight suit, a pair of socks, and steel-toed flight boots.

  “Longhorn Six, Longhorn Ground, over,” I say, speaking into my handheld radio.

  “Longhorn Ground, Longhorn Six, go ahead,” Boomer says.

  “Longhorn Six, I had to leave the Notch. The weather’s not looking too good up here and I couldn’t stay. I’m climbing down the couloir now. Just plan on finding me lower down, over.”

  “Roger that. We’re fifty minutes
out.”

  I trudge my way through the snow in switchback fashion, gritting my teeth against the cold as the snow finds its way into my socks and boots. And while the polypropylene base layer I wear is moisture-wicking, my flight suit is not. But that’s okay, because the sky directly above me remains clear, and my ride is only fifty minutes away. I can do this.

  * * *

  Distances can be deceiving in the mountains. I falsely believed I could descend the length of this couloir to the shelter of the extra-large boulders at its base in thirty minutes, maybe forty minutes tops. That was two hours ago.

  If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve made it three-quarters of the way down. I can’t say for certain where I am, because the visibility has been reduced to zero. Ten minutes after I started my descent, my worst fears were realized, as the darkening storm moved over the summit of Basin Mountain, swallowing it whole. God, the speed of it. The enormity. The winds turned on in earnest—thirty miles per hour? forty?—and the clouds let go, snow pummeling the mountain, pummeling me.

  A helicopter rescue? Out of the question. According to Boomer, when they arrived in the area, what I had thought to be a local weather phenomenon, affecting the high mountains only, had in fact moved into the valley. Boomer even had to fly an instrument approach to get into the Bishop airport, due to the low ceilings and accompanying low visibility. The “good” news is that our maintenance guys repaired the oil line on Longhorn 07, which now sits side by side with Longhorn 06, neither able to fly in whiteout conditions.

  I always thought that flying on a pitch-black, moonless night would be one of the most disorienting things I could ever experience. I’m proved wrong in the blinding snow that whips frontways, sideways, backways, up, down, and around. Wholly vertigo-inducing, I’m reduced to crawl speed, guessing where to step next, knowing I can’t stop in the open, always hedging to the left—where I think is left, anyway—to the rocky border of the couloir for some shelter from the wind.

  From the waist down, I’m so wet and cold it hurts. My muscles throb from the shivering and my feet and hands sting. I shove my pained hands under my armpits, cursing the fact that I wear a flight suit and boots. I’m dressed this way because when pilots act as victims, a routine scenario is for the aircraft commander to remain in the helicopter while the copilots rotate through, one doing the flying while the other waits for pickup. Bottom line, we’re all dressed for flying.

  We are not dressed for hours of exposure in a snowstorm. I thought I had done my due diligence in bringing an extra fleece, a hat, and a jacket shell in a backpack, but I never could have anticipated this. Where the hell was this storm in our weather brief! I may as well not be wearing shoes at all, the steel in my boots voraciously hoarding the cold, the pain akin to stepping on shards of glass.

  The shivering started in earnest forty-five minutes ago. Whether this is the reason for my loss of coordination, or if it’s my brain function deteriorating in the throes of hypothermia, I don’t know. But I’ve fallen several times, losing both my pack and my hat somewhere along the way. Somehow, I’ve managed to hang on to my radio, which is a miracle, since my flight gloves are soaked through, and my hands burn with cold. God, they burn.

  The alarm runs thick, because I know I’m in trouble. Desperate trouble.

  I tuck my head, pinching my eyes closed to shield them from the snow that slaps my face, while keeping my ear to the radio.

  I’ve been privy to a few intermittent calls, the key word being “intermittent.” Maybe it’s storm interference? Or maybe it’s my wet radio—I’ve dropped it how many times? Whatever the reason, from what I gather, Boomer knows I’m in trouble, too.

  “Mono … SAR, Rescue Six … affirm. She … Basin … hours. Way to get … some … for her?”

  I’m lucid enough to recognize that Boomer is using the call sign Rescue rather than Longhorn. And yeah, that’s probably right, too.

  “Rescue Six … Mono County copies. Going … impossible … whiteout.”

  I try to answer, pressing the radio switch with my wrist, since my fingers are useless. I hear the momentary static of the keying sound, so it seems to be working, but I receive no response to my calls.

  I continue blundering downward. Snow clings to my exposed neck, my hair now frozen into hard plates. I shield my eyes with one hand while keeping the other one “warm” under my armpit, rotating every thirty seconds or so. The exposed hand suffers a sustained piercing, the wind slicing straight through the soaked fabric of my flight gloves.

  Add to this, my legs aren’t working right anymore. Numb from the waist down, I move my feet, not really knowing if they’re doing what I’m asking them to, particularly since I can’t see a damned thing. I could walk straight off the side of this mountain and never know it.

  An icy gust pounds into my chest, and I stumble once again, plunging headfirst into the snow, my legs flipping over the top of me in a clunky somersault that leaves me head down, feet upslope … I think. I push myself up, completely disoriented. Right? Left? Up? Down? My only recourse is to begin walking, feeling for that downward pull of gravity, the steps taking longer if I’m tracking downhill.

  My foot slams into solid rock, a jarring shock to the knee, but a welcome one. I put my hands out, feeling for the rock wall, scooching along its sides to find any relief from the wind. My hand slips around a corner, finding a space between a fallen boulder and the rock wall lining the couloir. I drop into a tiny ball and back into the corner. It’s not great, but it’s better than where I was—in terms of exposure, anyway.

  The sounds are a different story. The wind takes voice—a tenacious roar in the opening in front of me, a high-pitched caterwauling through the cracks in the rock above. I pull my knees more tightly to my chest, tucking my face as best I can into the collar of my jacket, all of me shaking.

  And I think, What just happened? How did I get to be here—in what I would now classify as dire straits—in so short a time and without warning?

  My jaw aches with the effort of clamping down so my teeth won’t chatter. All my muscles ache, actually—contracting and shuddering in spasms in an involuntary effort to keep my body warm. It crosses my mind, just briefly, how ridiculous this is going to play out in the local news—search and rescue team member dies of hypothermia during SAR training.

  Slowly, although I no longer have a reliable sense of time, the notion of dying from hypothermia takes solid root, as the shakes begin to subside and my mouth widens into a yawn. Oh, no. This is how it happens, right? Didn’t I learn about this? In the late stages of hypothermia, the victim becomes tired. All they want to do is sleep. My hand moves shakily to cover my mouth when the next yawn comes.

  It’s all happening so fast, and yet, it’s not.

  I’m dying.

  Shit, Ali. You’re in a life-or-death situation here, and you’re utterly helpless.

  This is a jarring thought, because I’ve always been able to take care of myself. I’ve made it a point of pride not to have to rely on anyone, so it should be no different now. Except that I don’t have the faintest idea what to do.

  This is the point in the story when the hero comes to the rescue, right? God, how embarrassing.

  But I don’t need a hero. I need a miracle.

  22

  Will carries me.… At least, I think it’s Will. A balaclava covers his face, no skin exposed. The hood of a yellow ski jacket is cinched tight over his head. I peer into goggle lenses tinted gold, comforted by the familiar blue eyes behind them. He is speaking; I see the lips moving behind his mask. But this dream is soundless. I close my eyes, strangely at peace.

  * * *

  “Come on, Alison! Talk to me!”

  Warm, moist air rushes over my face. My mouth seeks the source, my head turning. I breathe in deeply. Ahhhhh. Like drinking in the sun. I inhale again, the heated air moving over my palate, warming my throat.

  “Alison! Hey! You can’t go to sleep on me, Alison! Come on. Wake up!”

  My
eyelashes are heavy, frozen, but the unknown thermal source works to thaw them. I bring my hand to my eyes, fumbling, pulling, trying to draw them open.

  “That’s it, Alison. That’s it.”

  The voice is warm, too. Like the air over my face. My left eye springs open, freed from the cold’s frosty hold, followed by the right eye.

  I’ve awakened into a dream. Will’s face hovers just above me, his mouth open. I hungrily suck in the precious hot air contained in his exhalations, and my lungs fill with the life-giving warmth.

  “Will?”

  A strong arm lifts me to a sitting position, hugging me close, but my head lolls backward. I only want to lie down. My body slackens.

  “Alison, stay with me! Come on, stay with me!”

  A hand—the dream-Will’s hand?—moves across my face, fingers pulling at my eyelids.

  I blink, opening my eyes, coming eyelash-to-eyelash with the dream-Will, another rush of warm air across my lips.

  “Look, we have a fire,” the dream-Will says. “You’re going to warm up here in just a second. But I need you to wake up.”

  “Is it you?” I ask. “Are you real?”

  “Yes. It’s Will. It’s me. I’m here, okay?”

  “Will…”

  I raise my hand to touch his face. The stubble across his chin and jaw confirms it. He’s real. He’s here.

  He loosens his hold just briefly, turning and reaching for something.

  “Here, you need to drink this.”

  He raises a thermos cup to my lips. Warm liquid dribbles into my mouth, spills a bit, drips down my face. Sugar …

  “That’s it,” he says. “This’ll work miracles, if we can just get it in you. Keep drinking, Alison.”

  I take a sip. And another. Warm sugar water.

  “Do you think you can hold it?” he asks.

  I wrap my fingers around the cup, bringing it to my lips. Without warning, the shivering starts again, my body racked by a series of uncontrollable spasms. I cough, sputtering, spraying Will’s face.

  “Sorry,” I say, as he takes the cup from me.

  His mouth spreads into a smile. “Hey, I’d much rather have you awake and spitting up on me than unconscious.”