Missing (7 page)

     He managed a smile in what must have been a truly monumental effort.

     “Oh, they’re still there. I was checking them out on the other side. Nice legs. How about the rest of you?”

     “I think I’m bleeding internally. And I think at least one of my ribs is broken.”

     She spoke barely above a whisper, and in short breaths. Any effort beyond that brought her incredible pain.

     She looked again at the arm, and she had to know. Was that the arm of her good friend John? Or was John somewhere else? Perhaps himself injured and hurting on the other side of the crash site?

     “Please, I have to know. My friend John. Did he make it?”

     The crewman looked at the arm, where Hannah had been directing her attention moments before. Then he looked at Hannah with the most agonizing look on his face.

     She braced herself for the bad news that she was sure was coming.

     The crewman would have preferred to be a thousand other places, doing a thousand other things, than have to tell this woman what she already suspected but didn’t want to hear.

     But he was a crewmember, and she was his passenger, and he was responsible to her. Even in the most tragic of circumstances.

     “I’m sorry. He didn’t make it. None of them did. Except you and me.”

     Hannah wanted to wail. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. To curse the heavens and whatever caused this ugly thing to happen.

     Instead she cried a single tear for her friend.

     Then the world around her started to blacken, and she passed out again.

Chapter 10

    Staff Sergeant Darrin Smith awakened to a loud pounding on his dormitory door.

     “Oh, great,” he muttered as he placed his spare pillow over his head.

     “Please be a dream, please be a dream.”

     He’d been sick as a dog for days with an upper respiratory infection, and hadn’t slept well. Now he was exhausted as well as sick, and had gone to bed early to try to catch up on some of his lost sleep.

     But it was not to be.

     And it definitely wasn’t a dream.

     “Sergeant Smith! It’s the CQ. Time to get up.”

     The pillow came off Smith’s head and his feet hit the floor.

     This wasn’t just one of his buddies being a nuisance. When the Charge of Quarters woke him up it was official business. Something had happened and he was needed.

     He opened the dormitory door, wearing boxer shorts and an olive drab t-shirt. His hair was tussled and his eyes were sagging. Between his illness and lack of sleep, he cut a pretty pathetic picture.

     But it didn’t matter. He belonged to the United States Army. And when duty called, Smith came running.

     “Sorry to have to wake you, Sergeant, but you’ve been ordered to report to Base Operations ASAP.”

     “Yes, sir. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

     Smith was luckier than most, in that he was Colonel Travis Montgomery’s personal driver. As such, he had access to transportation that most of his fellow soldiers didn’t. Specifically, he got to take a staff car home with him each night.

     It had its down side, though. When his friends told him they were jealous because he didn’t have to march back to the dormitory each day after retreat, he reminded them that the staff car was a pain in his ass.

     “The reason I have it because I’m on call, twenty four seven, in case the colonel needs a ride somewhere. And I’m not allowed to drive it for my own personal use, except to get to and from the headquarters building each day.”

     Once his friends heard the conditions of the car’s use, it didn’t seem like such a great benefit.

     Ten minutes later Smith was in front of the dormitory, making sure he’d remembered to remove the eagle plate from the front bumper of the car.

     His head had been so cloudy that morning when he’d dropped the colonel off at the airfield that he’d forgotten to remove it.

     All the way back to his dormitory he’d been saluted by every soldier he passed, who assumed there was a bird colonel sitting in the back seat.

     When he went back to the airfield later to pick up Colonel Montgomery and to take him to his quarters, the colonel hadn’t yet returned from his trip.

     A sympathetic captain told Smith, “You look like hell, sergeant.”

     “Thank you, sir, but I feel even worse.”

     “Colonel Montgomery’s chopper hasn’t checked in for awhile. We honestly don’t know how much longer he’s going to be. Why don’t you head on out? I’ll scare somebody else up to take him home when he returns.”

     “Thank you, sir.”

     Smith hadn’t wasted any time beating feet back to the dorm to get his rest.

     When he was rousted from his sleep and heard the pounding on the door, he first assumed that the captain couldn’t find another driver and that he was being recalled to pick the colonel up.

     But that call would have come from the airfield. When the CQ said the words, “Base Operations,” that took it up a notch.

     Smith parked the staff car in one of the reserved parking slots marked “O-6 and General Officers.”

     It was the only other perk of being Colonel Montgomery’s personal driver.

     He reported to the duty officer at the front desk.

     “Staff Sergeant Smith reporting as ordered.”

     The duty officer was a female first lieutenant. Smith thought she was pretty but wisely decided not to mention it.

     “Thank you for getting here so quickly, sergeant. I’ve been asked to escort you directly into the Command Post.”

     The words “Command Post” caused the hairs to stand up on the back of Smith’s neck.

     Whatever was going on, it was something big.

     He was escorted into a large room where small clusters of officers and high ranking enlisted personnel whispered and looked over paperwork.

     A two-star general stood up from a desk in the center of the room.

     Smith recognized him as the base commander, Major General Roland Arrand.

     “Is this him?” the general asked the lieutenant.

     “Yes, sir. Staff Sergeant Darrin Smith.”

     The general had a reputation as being a soldier’s soldier. An amiable sort who cared more for his troops than for military protocol.

     But he looked anything but friendly.

     “Follow me,” he said curtly and turned on his heels.

     Smith followed the general, wondering to himself, “Holy crap! What did I do?”

Chapter 11

     General Arrand led Smith to the north side of the room, where a huge area map covered the wall, floor to ceiling.

     “Were you briefed at all on why you were brought here?”

     “No, sir.”

     “We’re missing a chopper, Hilo One. This particular chopper had one of our colonels on board. Your colonel.”

     “Colonel Montgomery?”

     “Yes. He was due back two hours ago. And the pilot missed his last two checks. I understand that the colonel is a stickler for being on time. I also understand that the pilot, Major Davis, is a stickler for procedure.”

     Smith noticed for the first time that it wasn’t anger on General Arrand’s face.

     It was worry.

     He went on.

     “At this time, we’re presuming it’s gone down. The problem we have is, the sortie wasn’t dispatched to a military base or forward operating base. In the course of his duties, Colonel Montgomery frequently flew to places off the grid, if you will.”

     He looked at Smith and confessed, with some visible stress, “The fact of the matter is, we don’t have a clue where his final destination was. We’re hoping you do.”

     Smith swallowed hard.

     He chose his words carefully. Telling a general you didn’t have the answer to an important question wasn’t unlike walking on very thin ice with a very heavy pack.

     “Sir, when I dropped the colonel off at the airfield he didn’t say where he was headed. He just directed me to return to the field at seventeen hundred hours to pick him back up.”

     “I see. I was afraid of that. Travis has never been very good at sharing information.”

     “Sir, if I may…”

     “Yes, sergeant. Go ahead.”

     “The gentleman who was with Colonel Montgomery… who took the tour with him. I believe he was the same gentleman I delivered a communique to a few months ago.”

     “Where did you deliver the communique?”

     “It was in the hill country. Up by Kerrville. Off the beaten path. I had to drive up and down several dirt roads to find it.”

    “Can you show me roughly where it was on the map?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     Smith was handed a wooden pointer by one of the general’s aides and pointed it to the general area east of Interstate 10, and north of Junction.

     A major in one of the small clustered groups exclaimed, “Sir, that’s right on the chopper’s projected course as of his last check-in.”

     General Arrand looked at Sergeant Smith.

     “Sergeant, I know it’s dark, and I know it’s been awhile. But I need to know… can you find that place again?”

     Sergeant Smith wasn’t hand-picked as Colonel Montgomery’s driver because of his good looks and charm, or because he liked to kiss ass. He was chosen because he was good at what he did, and he had a good head on his shoulders.

     Moreover, he liked Colonel Montgomery.

     It didn’t matter that he felt like hell. It didn’t matter that he was running a sleep deficit of at least a dozen hours.

     What mattered was that the Army… and Colonel Montgomery… needed his help.

     And whatever it took, Sergeant Smith would accomplish his mission, as he always had before.

     “Yes, sir. I might not be able to go to it directly. But I’ll find it.”

Chapter 12

     It was nearing midnight at the compound, and the situation was taking its toll.

     Debbie, the camp medic, ignored Sami’s pleas not to and ordered her relieved from duty at the security desk.

     “But that’s my dad who’s out there somewhere. What if the helicopter crashed? What if he’s hurt? What if he’s…”

     She didn’t finish the sentence, to everyone else’s relief. No one else wanted to consider that possibility either.

     Debbie sympathized with the younger girl, but was adamant.

     “And you won’t do your dad, or Hannah, or Sarah, any good by running yourself into the ground, honey. You’ve been on the desk for too many hours. You’re losing your edge. This is a crisis that requires a clear head and split second decision making. You owe it to your dad to let someone relieve you for awhile.”

     Sami reluctantly gave in.

     But she didn’t like it.

     Debbie gave her a mild sedative.

     “This won’t knock me out, will it?”

     “No. It’ll just help you relax. Your stress level is worrisome, and it’s certainly doing your baby no good either. I’m going to push one of the recliners over here from the lounge. You can monitor what’s going on, as long as you don’t interfere with the process. Agreed?”