“Where are you?”
He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his mind back into its normal channels. Opening them again, he peered at the ground, estimating his distance. “You done good,” he said. “I’m maybe five feet above the stream.”
“Okay. Get ready. Here we go.”
The net jerked, jerked, jerked down, and then his butt was in the cold water, sliding over slick round rocks. “I’m down, I’m down,” he said.
“Okay, I’m letting it go,” she said. The net collapsed all around him as several yards of the wide strap ribboned over itself. He flailed out of the wet netting and sloshed the two steps to dry ground. He reflexively patted himself down to make sure everything was there and wiggled the bows of his glasses where they were clamped to the side of his head by his headset. He was intact. He glanced up and waved his arms. “I see you,” she said. “You’re a couple yards downstream from Waxman. Can you see him?”
He picked his way upstream over loose stones. He could clearly see Waxman’s backpack resting against the cutaway curve where the sides of the crevasse met the bottom. Then he spotted Waxman. He was sprawled awkwardly near the stream, half-hidden by a boulder.
“I’ve got him.” Russ crouched next to the unmoving form and placed two fingers at the side of his neck. “He’s got a pulse.” He ran his hands lightly over Waxman’s body and head. “I’m pretty sure both his arms are broken. His legs may be okay. God only knows about his spine.” He looked up to the chopper as if he could see Clare’s face. “Even with the stuff we brought, we’re taking a risk by moving him.”
“I could fly us to Glens Falls and alert the life-flight helicopter. That’ll tack on another hour and a half, two hours before he gets any treatment. You’re the man on the ground, Russ. Literally. It’s your call.”
He looked back down at Waxman. His face was pale despite his tan, and a swollen purple bruise spread across his forehead and disappeared into his hair. Russ pried open one eyelid, but Waxman remained unconscious, his pupil fixed and unresponsive.
“I don’t think he’s got that kind of time,” he said finally. “Let me get the stuff and I’ll bind him up as tightly as I can.” He picked his way back to the net and hauled out the lawn chairs and bag of rags. Opening one chair, he leaned it against the boulder and jumped on it like a kid engaged in vandalism. The flimsy rivets snapped, and he had a floppy chaise longue. He wrenched off the U-shaped leg pieces and stomped them into relative flatness before jamming them through the webbing in two parallel lines. He held up his impromptu backboard and shook it. It still shifted more than he liked, but it would give Waxman a chance to get out of this without being paralyzed. He laid it on the ground next to the unconscious man and carefully rolled him into place on top of the aluminum poles, praying that he wasn’t causing more unseen damage.
The rags needed to be knotted together before he could stretch them across Waxman’s chest and tie them to the chair’s webbing. Waxman’s breathing was shallow and sparse, more like hiccups than actual breaths. Russ pulled his headphones off to listen for the telltale hiss of a punctured lung, but he didn’t hear anything. He tied Waxman’s shoulder, chest, and waist to the supports and stood up to tackle the other chair.
This one he smashed against the boulder until it broke apart into pieces. He took the aluminum poles, splinted them against Waxman’s arms, and tied them in place with the remainder of the rags. Then he tore the plastic grocery bag in two and used it to tie Waxman’s immobilized arms to the jury-rigged backboard. He stood up and surveyed his handiwork, wiping the sweat from his eyes. Waxman looked like a victim of backyard bondage gone awry. If we don’t kill this guy trying to save him, it’ll be a miracle, he thought.
“Okay, I’m going to load him in,” Russ said. He picked up the top edges of the lawn chair contraption and dragged the injured man travois-style to the net. He unfolded the edges of the net and pulled it out of the water before wrestling Waxman into place at the center. He stood up, looked around the area one more time, then hefted the abandoned backpack onto his shoulder and rolled it into the net, next to its owner.
Russ stepped into the net, sat down tailor-style facing Waxman, and tugged the backboard onto his lap. It was awkward, but he figured he could give some added support with his crossed legs. “Clare,” he said, “we’re good to go.”
“Great. Here we go.” The boom strap began to rise out of its loose folds like a film running backward. He had thought he was prepared, but the jolt when the strap caught and yanked the netting off the ground still knocked the breath out of him. He threw his arms across Waxman’s chest. The man’s legs were forced upright by the press of the net until his knees fell forward and he spraddled like a roadkill frog. The backpack wedged itself against Russ’s shins, its metal buckles biting into his jeans. The net spun so that he had to close his eyes against the stomach-churning whirl of the horizon.
Clare was hauling him in a lot faster than she had thrown him out. The net spun up and up, then stopped with a jerk that vibrated into his bones. He opened his eyes and looked up. The sausage-shaped boom was overhead, maybe three feet away, and above it, the blur of the rotors, their hard chop pulsing through his ears and into his brain. The cargo area gaped open a couple of feet away from where he and Waxman hung. He suddenly realized that Clare had never discussed this part of the plan.
“Clare!”
“Don’t yell. I can hear you fine.”
“How am I supposed to get back in?”
“You’re not.”
The chopper rose from where it had been hovering and ascended slowly, crossing the lip of the crevasse and leaving it behind.
“You can’t just leave me hanging here!”
The voice over his headphones was soothing. “I’m heading back to the helipad. We’ll be there in a minute. Then we can get you out of the net and get Waxman settled into the cargo area.”
He closed his eyes and began counting to sixty out loud. He had reached thirty-one when her amused voice said, “Are you looking?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Go ahead. Open your eyes.”
He did, and then shut them again with relief when he saw the helipad rising up to meet them. The thwap-thwap-thwap of the rotors reverberated from all around and the downwash threw a whirl of grit and dust into the air. Then there was a gentle rocking and they were down. A few seconds later, Clare appeared in the cargo doorway.
“Climbed over the seat,” she said. “I don’t like to leave the ship while the engine is on.” She leaned to one side of the doorway, and the strap holding him and his load off the tarmac rolled out of the boom again, dropping him to the ground. He threw the netting off his shoulders and rose in a crouch, intently aware of the rotors still chopping overhead.
“How come it’s still going?” he yelled.
She winced, poking at her headphones. He snapped his mike off and she did the same. “I want us back in the air ASAP. Tilt him up this way and I’ll grab one end.”
He wrapped his hands around the aluminum struts protruding above Waxman’s shoulders and gave a heave. Clare knelt at the edge of the door and grabbed, pulling up and back. He worked his arms under Waxman’s legs and together they slid the unconscious man into the cargo area. Russ tossed the backpack in beside Waxman.