Stop it! Her inner voice yelled at her. Just stop it.
“I’m sorry, Emily,” Captain Constantine said. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I just cannot risk any more men for a search party. I know he was your friend, and God knows we owe him a debt of gratitude, but the risk outweighs the probability of finding him alive. I’m sorry.”
Emily stared at the hand on her arm for a moment, then nodded silently and walked back to her room.
CHAPTER 20
They postponed the Nevada sortie until the following day. No one was going anywhere until they were sure the creature that had snatched Jacob from his wheelchair wasn’t coming back for seconds, MacAlister said later that day as he, Captain Constantine, and Emily met for an update to the plan.
“Sorry, Emily,” MacAlister said, realizing his comment may have sounded insensitive. “I know Jacob was your friend.”
That was the second time someone had called Jacob her friend today. Jesus! Why did it stir up such a mass of confusion inside her? Either the man had deceived her into travelling to the backend of nowhere to save his ass, or he had been astute enough to figure out what was coming after the red rain, and saved her ass. She still did not know which of those was the truth. Maybe both? Either way, she was never going to get an answer now that Jacob was dead, but she was surprised at the pain she felt at his death. It was a sharp quandary of a pain that lodged itself somewhere in the space between her heart and the bottom of her throat. She may well have harbored a grudge against him, but they all undoubtedly owed him their lives to some extent. Truth was, there were so very few of them left here that losing a single person was a blow they could ill afford, and Jacob’s technical expertise was going to be sorely missed in the coming days.
Her thoughts trailed away as she realized that everyone was expectantly watching her, including MacAlister, waiting for a reply.
“Ummm… thank you?” she eventually said.
Emily barely remembered anything else about the meeting. Something about effective ranges and combat readiness preparedness.
That night, she barely slept. It wasn’t like she was restless, there was no tossing and turning, instead she just lay on her cot, her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling through the darkness as Rhiannon and Thor slept peacefully.
Now, as she stood on the shore waiting for the boat, the early morning fog rolling in from the bay, she found herself nervously fingering the harness of her backpack. Here she was again, setting off on another journey into the unknown, but this time, it would be without the guiding voice of the man who had effectively been her compass, her lodestone. While his voice had reached out over the miles to her she had always felt as though there was someone with her, someone watching over her. Even with MacAlister and his team standing just feet from her as they checked their gear for the third or fourth time, she felt more alone than she had ever in her life.
“Shit!” she said.
“Are you okay, Miss Baxter?” the captain said from behind her. She had not heard his approach across the shale beach.
“I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. She turned her head to face the sea and caught MacAlister looking at her. His eyes watched her with an intensiveness that was almost as unnerving, although in a pleasantly opposite way, as the nervous flutter she felt facing the unknown again.
“You know, you’re in the best hands. MacAlister is one of the finest men I’ve ever served with. You have nothing to worry about.”
“I know. I’m fine,” she said again, this time more to reassure herself. “Where’s the boat?”
As if her words had summoned it, the dinghy appeared from the direction of the dock and skittered across the waves toward them.
As soon as it beached, the sailors and Emily threw their kit onboard and climbed in.
“Good luck and keep your heads down, understand?” the captain said from the shoreline, the fast approaching high tide lapping around his shoes.
The sailors each snapped off a smart salute and then the boat was off again, scudding out across the bay toward the waiting helicopter on Coronado Island.
CHAPTER 21
Emily squeezed herself into the Black Hawk’s copilot seat, pulled the safety harness over her shoulders, and fastened it into place.
“Thor, lay down,” she ordered over her shoulder. The dog obeyed, settling down between the back of her chair and the passenger compartment behind it. While Thor had seemed at ease in every vehicle they had used during their journey to Alaska, Emily wasn’t sure how he was going to react to a helicopter ride. Truth be told, she wasn’t exactly sure how she was going to react. She had never flown in a helicopter before. That her first flight would be in a military one seemed pretty much par for the course when it came to her experience of “firsts” these days.
MacAlister appeared at her door and climbed up, his head ducked down to avoid the low ceiling. He visually checked her safety harness then gave it a sharp tug.
“Looks good,” he said, smiling at her, a pair of aviator sunglasses he had found in the helo’s cockpit covering his eyes but not his smile as he gave the harness a second yank. “Here, put these on,” he said, reaching for a pair of headphones that hung from a cord dangling from the ceiling. When she had placed them on her head, MacAlister pulled a microphone down from the side of the headphone and positioned it just in front of her mouth.
He said something that she couldn’t hear. “What did you say?” she said, lifting one headphone from her ear.
“I said they look very becoming on you. They’ll allow us to communicate during the flight. Just say what you need to say and the microphone will engage automatically.”
She nodded and let the headphone snap back against her ear.
MacAlister checked on the two sailors who had fastened themselves into the seats in the passenger compartment, making sure they were all secure and that everything that could move was either stowed away or tied down securely. He gave Thor a pat on the head and fired a thumbs-up at Emily as he climbed back into the cockpit, settling into the pilot’s seat. He began methodically working through the engine startup routine, his hands moving over a console that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie: so many dials and levers and switches.
Mac’s voice crackled over the intercom: “Okay, let’s get this thing turning and burning.”
A low rumble began to vibrate through Emily’s seat and up her spine. The wall of the cabin began to tremble. She looked out through the side window at the collection of sailors who had accompanied them across the bay, their hands already raised to protect themselves from the whirlwind they knew was coming. The four rotor blades of the Black Hawk cast shadows against the concrete of the landing pad and she saw them slowly begin to move. Then, as the vibration began to increase to a bone-shaking rattle, the ground began to drop away and she felt her stomach lurch as the helicopter lifted from the ground and rapidly ascended. She looked down at Thor. The damn dog was asleep already, totally unfazed.
Emily swallowed rapidly as her fingers searched and found the chair’s seat, curling around the metal frame. Her ears popped but gradually the weird feeling of falling up began to fade as their ascent slowed. Then the engines began to thrum faster and louder as the Black Hawk picked up speed, the nose dipped down slightly, and the helo swung around in a wide, lazy arc until it faced northeast toward their destination, Las Vegas.