He maneuvered me onto the seat and slid in behind me. He gave me a thirty-second tutorial about how to drive the vehicle, including how to avoid rolling it. The fact that I needed to focus on not rolling our mode of transportation did not inspire confidence.
“Start it and head over to the tree line. I’ll talk you through everything.” Nick’s voice was calm and steady. If he had any fear at all, he wasn’t showing it.
His Zen-like demeanor was contagious. I focused on the path in front of us, looking out for bumps and obstacles, and remembering not to lean too hard left or right. I could do this. We were getting closer to safety with every passing minute. I was doing this, and I was holding myself together really well.
Until the first shot rang out.
I screamed and instinctively shifted. Nick countered my movement so we didn’t flip.
“Steady, baby. We’re a fast-moving target and they’re trying to sight us through tree cover. Even the best sharpshooter would need a hell of a lot of dumb luck to make that happen.”
He’d used the phrase dumb luck when he’d explained that there were bad guys with helicopters close enough to possibly reach us before we could get to the base, so his assurance wasn’t reassuring enough. I shivered again. My teeth rattled so hard, my jaw ached. But I gripped the handlebars and focused on the path.
“Shit,” Nick muttered. “Cara, listen carefully. There are hostiles on the ground.”
I stupidly glanced to my right and saw another snowmobile riding parallel to us about 100 yards away.
“I’m firing a warning shot,” he told me, “in three, two, one.”
The rifle recoil rippled through him and into me, but not enough to break my concentration. The parallel snowmobile didn’t turn away.
“New plan,” he said, his voice smooth and even. “We’ll go the rest of the way on foot, through the woods. But we’ll need to deter the hostiles long enough for us to slip into the trees without taking fire. On my countdown, we both lean hard to the left.”
No. No, no, no! This was bad. Something had gone wrong with his plan and now we were going to run through the woods like helpless rabbits being chased by hunters.
“You can do it,” he promised me. “We can do this together.”
Yes, I could do hard things, but this was beyond the pale. Then he was counting down. He reached one, and we both threw our weight sideways. We landed with a harder thud than I’d anticipated. My phone slammed against the ground between me and the packed snow. At least we were clear of the vehicle, which had flipped onto its side. Nick pulled me with him to take shelter near it. We lay on our bellies with our heads down.
He propped his rifle on the vehicle and looked through the sight.
“Can you hit them?” I asked, my hope somewhat restored.
“Not from this distance,” he said. “That’s not in my skillset. But they don’t know that, so I might be able to keep them at bay.”
“Keep them at bay until what?” I asked. I didn’t really want the answer, but if I was going to die in a pile of snow in the middle of nowhere at the age of twenty-six, I wanted a few minutes to prepare for it.
He shot off three rounds, and the noise of the snowmobile engine diminished as the hostiles moved away. Nick shot off a few more rounds, then went still.
“Do you hear that?” He grinned. “We needed to keep them at bay until that happened. Do you hear how these birds sound different from the ones who were chasing us?” He referenced the whir of helicopter blades drawing closer to us.
I didn’t hear the difference, but he did, and I trusted him.
“The ones approaching now are Black Hawks sent from the military base. Yes, they’re rounding up hostiles as we speak, Pasco.”
In my terror, I’d forgotten Nick was connected to his team through a tiny comms unit in his ear. Whoever his teammates were, they hadn’t done much good, although maybe we had them to thank for our military assist.
I saw the shadow of a man approaching. He called out a series of numbers and the military words for alphabet letters to identity himself as one of the good guys. Nick lowered his weapon.
“You must be Roman and Miss Spencer.” The man’s voice rose to be heard over the helicopter that was landing several feet away from us. He seemed unperturbed by the snow and ice pellets the rotor blades kicked up behind him. “We’re going to give you a ride the rest of the way to the base.”
Nick helped me up off the ground. He and the soldier each took one of my arms and led me to the helicopter, then helped me into it. A minute later, the two men and Nick’s bag of weapons were on board, too, and the pilot lifted off and banked toward the base.
“You did great,” Nick said. He wrapped his arms around me and rubbed my back to warm me. “Really amazing.”
“Good job, ma’am,” the soldier concurred.
“And now we’re safe,” Nick added.
