The Challenge(23)

“God, that’s all we need,” Pitt said with a glance at Anne. He could just imagine what that would be like, particularly if any of the kids were hurt or, God forbid, dead. He hoped not.

“If we don’t solve this very soon, it is going to be very big news. Brace yourselves. The press makes it all a lot harder. They want anything sensational, and they love rescue stories. We’ll be hearing from them soon. They’ll want an update on our progress every hour. Press conferences are not my favorite in situations like this, a lot of misinformation gets passed around, so you won’t be seeing a lot of me on TV. We have a press aide for that.”

Harvey took off a minute later, talking into his radio, as his assistant ranger drove the car. They were sending forty rangers on horseback into the mountains, and the planes were taking off twenty minutes after he left.

Anne offered them all another cup of coffee before they took off. Bill and Pitt had already gone to the barn to saddle up. They didn’t want to waste any time.

Marlene was right behind Harvey in her car, on her way back to Bob. She was normally a pretty blonde, and he thought she had aged ten years in the past few months. He knew what those days were like.



* * *



—

The kids woke up having slept fitfully through the night. They had spelled each other off hour by hour so that one of them was always awake in case of an animal attack, or any other untoward experience. They had heard coyotes the night before, howling and obviously in a pack. An owl had hooted at them from above. Only Benjie had slept well because he didn’t have to do a shift. Juliet had a spare sweater in her backpack, so it was dry and she put it on him. He’d been shivering. And Matt took him to attend to his needs in the bushes, as they all did.

They started the day with a small square of the remaining peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a good swallow of water for each of them.

“I never knew water could taste so good,” Peter said with a sigh. “I could drink a gallon of it.” They had gathered two full cups of water from the rain the night before to add to their supply, and Juliet put the cups back in her backpack after they poured the rainwater carefully into the two big bottles.

They heard the helicopters in the distance a short time later, but they were still far in the distance, flying a set path. The children could hear them, but barely see them. Peter frowned.

“Why don’t they bring them closer? They’ll never find us from there,” he said, worried, as Justin watched the sky too.

The helicopters headed in the wrong direction then, farther up the mountain and farther away from where they were.

“Shit, they have no idea where we are,” Matt said, looking disheartened. “I hope we don’t have another night out here.” He had worried about the bears all night, but there had been no sign of any. They had kept out of caves though.

“Or a lot of nights,” Justin added. They all looked tired. It had been a long night, and they were hungry and uncomfortable, and chilled from the night air on the mountain. Their damp clothes had dried by morning.

Tim suggested they pick berries then, which cheered everyone up. He knew which berries to pick, from a Boy Scout camping course he had taken. They didn’t have any receptacles, so they used their hands and their T-shirts to hold them. They were less hungry after that. Then they conferred about which way to go. In daylight, a small narrow trail was visible past some trees they were sitting near. It went neither up nor down, but appeared to go around the mountain, and they decided to try that for a while. There were plenty of berries on the new trail as well, so they ate those too, until Benjie said he had a stomachache.

“Are you sure you know which kind we can eat?” Justin asked Tim, who assured them he did. Otherwise, Justin was quiet and pensive, trying to think of creative ways to get down the mountain, and worried about his brother. As the oldest member of the group, he felt responsible for all of them, and even more so for his brother. He should never have let him come, or at least he should have thought to ask Noel if he had a spare pump with him. But they’d been planning to ride back after lunch, and had gotten carried away. There was no reason to think he’d need another pump.

Justin was thinking about his father too, and wondering how he was doing. He felt terrible about the worry they were causing their father, who was in no condition to weather more stress, if he even knew what was happening. Justin wondered if their mother would tell him. He somehow had a feeling she wouldn’t. She always protected Bob so carefully, and he got more upset now than he used to, and cried over things he never would have before. Justin hated worrying his mother too, when she had so much on her plate. He felt like he had failed them both, letting Noel get into a situation where he was now at risk. He told himself he should have stopped him before they crossed the riverbed.

They’d been walking for almost two hours when they came back into a small clearing that looked familiar, and they realized that it was where they had spent the night. They had been going in a circle for the last two hours.

“I vote that we head down,” Matt said. “That makes the most sense.” But every path they tried to take was blocked, and the trees and bushes got thicker and thicker. No recon plane or helicopter would be able to see them in the thick brush. They headed up the mountain then. It was the only path open to them at the moment, and they all gave a start as they walked along a narrow ledge and looked straight down into a ravine. One misplaced step and they would have fallen. They passed it without mishap but were all very quiet. In the dark, they would have fallen to their deaths for sure. Nothing about this adventure was fun anymore.