The Last Letter(126)

“Slight problem, there’s nowhere to land,” the pilot called back.

“Can you rappel?” I asked Mark.

“In theory,” he answered.

“Get us to where we can rappel,” I told the pilot, then I turned to Mark. “Keep up.”

He nodded.

“I need you to be ready, Jenkins.”

“I’m steady.” He assured me from the bench. “Backboard and litter is ready.”

“You have the new report?”

He nodded.

“What time did it happen?”

He scanned through the clipboard and checked his watch. “Report came in forty-five minutes ago, and they called it in about ten minutes after.”

He’d been down almost an hour. I set the timer on my watch.

“Radio back and get as many hands down here as we can get.”

The helo steadied above the only clear ground visible. We looked to be a short distance from where the rocks would have fallen.

“We’re ready,” the pilot said through the comms.

I removed my helmet as Jenkins secured the line. Then I clipped Havoc into the slider and kept her between my legs as we shuffled for the door. Jenkins passed me the line, and I secured the slider that let me control her rate of descent. “I know you hate this,” I told her as I made sure it was tight where it attached to the line a couple feet above her harness. “But our Colt is down there.”

I gripped the line and her slider, gave her the knee signal she was all too used to, and we stepped out into nothing. She went completely still as I worked us down the line with her dangling between my knees.

We’d done this hundreds of times, but I’d never felt as urgent. Urgent caused mistakes, so I calmed my breathing and lowered us slowly, hand over hand, until we reached the ground.

Then I unhooked the slider and stuck it in Havoc’s pack. Mark started down immediately.

I slipped Havoc a treat from her pack. “Good job. I know that sucks.”

“How do you do that with a dog?” Mark asked after he reached the ground a minute later.

“A lot of experience.” I leaned down to Havoc. “Seek Colt.”

She started sniffing, and we walked in the direction of the slide. “How long will that take her?” Mark asked.

“Not sure. He didn’t walk this way, so she doesn’t have a path to go on. We’ll have to get close enough for her to catch his scent in the air, or anywhere he’s touched.”

We hiked uphill, through patches of knee-high grass and then under tall pine trees. I concentrated on my breathing and my footwork as Havoc walked ahead of us, searching. The less I thought about what we would find, the better.

“Colt!” I called out on the prayer he could hear us…that he was capable of hearing us.

“Colt!” Mark joined in. “Should we have brought Jenkins?”

“No. He needs to stay with the helo. When the other teams show up, he needs to be available, and if he’s with us, and someone else finds Colt…”

“I get the picture.”

“I’m a combat medic, which means I’m qualified to do just about anything besides surgery. Everyone in our…everyone is where I used to work.” It was part of the training before you were selected as a tier-one operator. “Colt!” I tried again.

And again.

And again.

The beep on my watch signaled that it had been an hour and a half, and still no Colt. I looked up the mountain. We were out of the tree line, right beneath the slide zone, and there were plenty of rocks around us that all looked the same. I couldn’t tell what was new and what had always been here.

We’d seen the helo drop a couple teams, and Mark had handled radio coordination, making sure we chose different grids. My grid was wherever Havoc decided to go, and they could all deal with it.

Havoc was sniffing like crazy toward the south, so we followed along the tree line.

“Colt!” I saw the bright patch of blue just as Havoc took off at a dead run.

I covered the ground quickly, jumping rocks, ducking pine tree branches as I ran. Havoc sat next to him, whining.

“Colt,” I called, but he didn’t respond. His upper half was clear, but his lower half was obscured by fallen foliage.

“Good girl,” I told Havoc, handing her a treat from my pocket out of sheer habit before dropping to my knees next to him.

“Colt, come on, bud.” His skin was pale, blood trickling from small cuts on his face. I put my fingers to his neck and waited.

Please, God. I’ll do anything. Please.

He had a pulse, but it was rapid and thready. His skin was cold.

“He’s bleeding somewhere,” I told Mark as he dropped to Colt’s other side. “We need to get these branches off him, but only the lighter ones. If it’s heavy, wait for me.”

Mark nodded and started pulling the smaller branches off Colt. “Rescue 9, this is Gutierrez and Gentry. We’ve found the male. Pulse is present but thready. Please send in medics ASAP.”

Static came through Mark’s radio as I unzipped Colt’s fleece.

“Shit. Gentry.”

I looked back to Colt’s lower half, and bile rose in my throat, but I looked up at the sky and forced it back down. Colt’s right thigh was pinned under a large, jagged rock roughly half the size of a car engine.