Missing (13 page)

     “Is that what I said in my sleep? Was I calling for Sami?”

     “Not calling for her, exactly. Apologizing, actually. You kept saying, ‘Sami, I am so very sorry,’ over and over again.”

     “It’s going to destroy her when she finds out. He was the only family she had left.”

     “Then I’m sorry for her. And I’m sorry for you, too, because I know you’ll share her pain. That’s what good friends do.”

     “Did you see my son?”

     “Pardon me?”

     “My son. He came and told me to get up and take him fishing. My husband sent him to get me. I don’t see him. Did they leave without me? Did they say when they were coming back?”

     “Hannah, that was a hallucination, brought on by shock. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m supposed to raise your feet and put a blanket on you. Only your feet are covered by hundreds of pounds of helicopter and we don’t have a blanket. The only thing I can do to help you stay alive is to keep you conscious so your body doesn’t go limp and stop fighting the internal bleeding.

     “And obviously I’m not doing a very good job of that.”

     “So Markie wasn’t really here?”

     “Stay with me, honey. It was a dream. I’m sorry.”

     “But he was so real.”

     “Hallucinations always are. But think logically. If he were here, would they have just left you here with a man who desperately wants to kiss you? And who only hasn’t done so because he knows you’d kick his ass?”

     She smiled and said, “You’re nuts.”

     “I’m nuts? You’re the one who’s hallucinating. And by the way, you sound sexy when you whisper.”

     “Can I have a drink?”

     “No. I’m sorry, but you can’t drink while you’re in shock and you can’t drink while you’re bleeding internally. Both are forbidden.”

     “Says who?”

     “Says the Army and its Self-Aid and Buddy Care Classes.”

     “Yeah, well screw the Army.”

     “Yes. I’ve said that myself many times over the years. I even spent the weekend in the brig last year because I told our first sergeant to screw the Army, and then told him exactly how to do it.

     “He wasn’t amused.”

     “Why can’t I have a drink? Just a little one?”

     “I don’t know, exactly. I just remember that being part of the course. It may be that you’d throw it up and then choke to death on your own vomit. Or it may be another reason. I just don’t remember.”

     “Can I at least put some in my mouth to moisten my throat? It really hurts.”

     He thought about the request for a moment and then relented.

     “Only if you promise not to swallow it.”

     “Okay.”

     “Open wide.”

     Hannah opened her mouth and was surprised to feel a stab of sharp pain in her jawbone.

     Joel saw her wince, and then poured a couple of tablespoons of water into her mouth.

     “Now, then. Swish it around, and then use your tongue to push the rest of it back through your lips. If you follow the doctor’s orders we’ll do it again whenever your throat’s dry again. Disobey me and no more water for you.”

     “Oh, so now you want to play doctor?”

     “Sure. Why not? You have the greatest ideas, Hannah.”

    He smiled, thinking himself pretty clever.

     “Want to know why it hurt to open your mouth wide?”

     “Why?”

     “Well, I can’t say for sure, but I think your jaw is broken.”

     “Really?”

     “Yes. I mean, it’s not displaced, and you’re still able to speak, so my guess is probably a hairline fracture. I suspected it because the left side of your face is horribly swollen and bruised. The pain you felt confirms my suspicions.”

     She seemed more concerned about the damage to her face than to her jaw.

     “My face is swollen and bruised? Really? Because I can’t feel any pain. It’s just numb.”

     “Don’t worry. The swelling will go down and the bruises will fade. And you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”

     “Oh, you smooth talker, you. How about some more water?”

     “How about you marry me?”

     “I told you, Romeo, I’m already married.”

     Joel was undeterred and smiled broadly.

     “You’d rather stay married to a man who abandoned you to go fishing, when you could marry a man who crawled through ten miles of forest filled with lions and tigers and bears, just to bring you water?”

     “And who won’t let me drink it?”

     “Touché.”

     “Shhhh. Did you hear that?”

     “No. Hear what?”

     “It sounded like a helicopter.”

Chapter 24

     “No. I’m not imagining things. I swear I heard it. It was very faint. Like it was way off in the distance. It was very difficult to hear at first, and then it got a little louder before fading again.”

     “And you’re sure? You weren’t hallucinating?”

     Hannah stopped short and considered the possibility. She didn’t think so. The sound was amazingly real to her.

     But then again, so was little Markie’s face as he stood over her and asked her to get up to go fishing.

     “I… can’t say for sure, Joel. But it sure sounded real to me.”

     Joel looked up at the treetops.

     “The wind is blowing out of the south. You might be right. If you are, we’ll hear another helicopter soon. It will pass by just like the one you heard, but will be a little bit louder.”

     “How do you know?”

     “We filed a northbound flight plan. The flight crew is required to periodically call in to report their position. Standard protocol when a chopper is lost is to begin the search at the last call-in point. Then to sweep back and forth across a designated area, moving in the same direction the chopper was headed.

     “The choppers on the search team leapfrog past each other as they finish their sweeps. Then they head back in the other direction until they get to the other turnaround point.”

     He paused to look at her. Her eyes were glazed.

     “Are you able to follow me so far?”

     “Yes. I think so.”

     “If what you heard was indeed one of our search choppers, then it didn’t see us and flew past us. That’s not surprising, because if it was faint, it means it was far away.

     “But… if it
was
one of our rescue choppers, that means another will be passing by soon. Only this one will be a little bit farther north, a little bit closer to us. And it will therefore be a little bit louder.”

     “What if it doesn’t spot us either?”

     “Then it will finish its run, leapfrog a bit to the north, and sweep back the other way.

     “They’ll get closer and closer until one of them spots us. Then they’ll report our GPS coordinates to the others and they’ll all come running.”

     “How much space is between them?”

     “It depends. In open country, they can see greater distances when they sweep over. So there may be up to a mile between them.

     “In heavily wooded areas, though, they have to fly slower and closer together. Say an airplane goes does on a shallow dive. It’ll leave an easy to spot trail by chopping off a lot of trees. The chopped off trees act as a marker to lead the searchers to the crash site, and can be seen from a great distance away.

     “But a chopper is a different story. We don’t glide down when we crash. We generally fall out of the sky like a brick. We leave a very small crash signature that frequently can’t be spotted until the rescue craft are right overhead.

     “And we didn’t explode, thank God, so they have no burned trees to make us easier to spot.”

     Hannah was having trouble focusing on his words.

     “Okay, now you’re losing me.”

     “Sorry. They have to fly much closer together when they fly over dense woods, so they don’t miss anything. So it takes them longer to do a thorough search.”

     “So, I shouldn’t necessarily worry that the helicopter flew by without spotting us?”

     “Not as long as we keep hearing them. And not as long as each one seems a bit closer than the last one. We don’t have to worry until they appear to be getting farther away each time we hear one.”

     “Because that will mean they’ve passed us by and didn’t see us, and they’re continuing to work their way north.”

     “Exactly. You’re beautiful
and
brilliant. That’s a deadly combination, you know.”

     “You’d better behave yourself, then. So you don’t piss me off.”

     She only had one question that remained unanswered.

     “You said the wind was coming out of the south. Why does that matter?”

     “Because the wind can carry the chopper’s sound for several miles. That means the one you heard may be several miles away from us. And if they’re flying at two hundred yards of separation, and the search field is twenty miles across, it could be hours before they finally spot us.”

     “Is there anything at all we could do to speed up the process any?”

     “Yes. Maybe. But you’re not gonna like it.”

Chapter 25

     Bryan hadn’t slept in over thirty hours, yet wasn’t sleepy.

     Sami had been up just as long, except for a short nap that ended in a nightmare. She wasn’t sleepy either.

     They were many other things, though. Exhausted, irritable and testy were perhaps the most noticeable.

     Their friends were torn. They wanted very much to console them, to hug them and lend them a shoulder.

     But they also felt the sting when Sami and Bryan snapped at them out of frustration.

     It was almost as though they resented anyone who said that anything was amiss. Or who dared suggest that some harm had come to their loved ones.

     Although they pretty much stayed in two different places: her in the control center and he in the woods searching for his wife, they behaved remarkably the same.

     Moody, irritable and grouchy.

     Still, out of love for them, and empathy for their plight, their friends still bit their tongues and made the effort.

     Karen, realizing that Bryan hadn’t eaten since the day before, packed him a lunch. Two roast beef sandwiches on white bread with Miracle Whip. Just the way he liked them. Some of her homemade potato chips, and four chocolate chip cookies.

     She called him on the radio.

     “Bryan, this is Karen. Come in.”

     “What now, Karen?”

     “Bryan, you need to eat to keep up your strength. I packed you a lunch you can eat on the go. Tell me where you are and I’ll bring it to you.”

     “Damn it, Karen, I can’t stop and wait for you. My wife is out here somewhere. I can’t find her if I stop and wait for food.”

     Karen, one of the most patient of the compound’s residents, held her tongue.

     “Okay. If you change your mind it’ll be waiting for you in the refrigerator. Just give me a call and I’ll meet you wherever you like.”

     A “thank you,” or even a “ten-four” would have been nice. But he offered neither. He simply ignored Karen’s last transmission.

     She went to the control center to check on Sami.

     “Sami, honey, how are you holding up?”

     “I wish people would stop asking me that.”

     “We’re only trying to help, sweetie.”

     “You want to help, Karen? Make this whole thing just go away. Take back today and yesterday, and make them start all over again. Take us all back to when Dad and Hannah were supposed to arrive, and snap your fingers and work some magic and make them arrive like they were supposed to do.

     “If you can somehow figure out a way to make that happen, then please do it. Otherwise, nothing you or anyone else can do will help a damn.”

     Sami could tell by the look on Karen’s face that she was hurt.

     And Sami softened.

     She held out her arms and Karen went to her.

     “Oh, Karen, I’m sorry.”