Page 51 of Mountain Impact

In his mind, he was quickly running by the calculations. It’d take him a solid two hours to hike up to where he hoped Isolde was―and that was if he ran all the way up.

Hiro spoke up from the backseat―his phone was on his ear. “Kat just dropped Jens and the two patients off at the hospital. She was going to take the helicopter back to base but can meet us now and pick you up.”

Thank God.

“Is that going to be safe for her?”

“Looks like the wind hasn’t picked up there yet. But it’s pouring. She’s running low on fuel, though. You’ll have to rappel down and make your own way back afterwards―or call in another chopper.”

Drake nodded. Something gritty in both his eyes made them water. He rubbed at them with the back of his hand. When he looked back at his teammates, they were all staring at something else.

Drake knew this was a shitty time for him to disappear on his team.

“I’m sorry, Commandant,” he told Damien. “I have to go do this.”

Damien nodded. “You’re not going alone, Drake. One of us will come with you.”

Again, that inopportune bit of grit made his eyes water.

“No,” he said in a quiet voice. “It’s bad enough you’re going to be short one man, plus Kat for a bit. I know it’s going to be a busy evening, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’ll find Isolde and Amélie and bring them back.”

“You shouldn’t be going alone,” Damien insisted.

“We don’t even know anything is wrong,” he said, more to convince himself than the others. “Maybe it’s just a connection issue, and Isolde and Amélie are on their way down already. I’ve got my radio. It’ll be fine. I’ll contact you if there’s a problem.”

Drake didn’t need to say he’d find Isolde or die trying. His friends knew him well enough to know that was the case.

Less than ten minutes later, he was sitting in the helicopter with Kat.

“Thank you, Kat. This is … I don’t know how to thank you.”

For a long instant, the pilot didn’t answer. Her full focus was on the controls. Even if being inside a helicopter in this weather felt like being inside a tuna can set adrift in the ocean, Drake knew rain wouldn’t affect Kat’s ability to fly the machine. It did, however, impact visibility substantially, which meant she needed to be one hundred percent focused.

Once the weather cooled and the rain turned to ice, that could also create a whole host of other problems for the machine.

“How about you shut up, and just get Isolde and Amélie back safe and sound?” the feisty pilot replied. “You’re not the only one who likes Isolde, you know?”

Drake nodded. “I’ll find her, Kat. No matter what. I’ll try to bring them both home.”

Kat went quiet. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “If Amélie is … if she’s done what she threatened she would do, Isolde is going to need you.” It sounded to Drake like the pilot was talking about some personal experience in her life, but he didn’t have time to delve into it as, just at that moment, the glacier came into sight.

The helicopter leaned to the side. Kat’s hands were white on the controls as she struggled to hold the machine in place. The rain pelted the helicopter.

“There we are. You’ll be okay rappelling down, right? It’s not just the fuel situation. The fog’s too dense for me to land.”

“That’s fine―much easier for me to figure out the landing than your ten-ton machine.”

#

Fuck.

Talk about overconfident.

He’d almost killed himself rappelling down the helicopter into the fog. As it was, his weaker leg was shaking from the impact.

Most people assumed rappelling from a hovering helicopter was like rappelling down a mountain face. It was, in the same way as the Atlantic Ocean was similar to a garden pond. Rappelling down from a helicopter meant working on a moving target, as the ground moved up and down despite the pilot’s best intentions. Add the storm into the equation, and even a pilot as skilled as Kat couldn’t keep the helicopter still in the air for long.

As soon as he stepped out of the craft, he’d gone completely deaf―the only sound, that of his line zipping through the carabiners. He’d let out the rope fast, knowing every second he kept Kat up there was risking her life.