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“Absolutely.”
Sam stuffed a fourth brick into the brazier. Whoosh!
They both looked over the side of the platform. The tops of the pine trees seemed impossibly close. Remi felt something snag at her foot, and she tipped sideways. Sam leaned forward, grabbed her arm.
He added another brick. Whoosh!
Another. Whoosh!
“A hundred yards!” Sam called.
Another brick. Whoosh!
“Fifty yards!” He grabbed a brick from the duffel, shook it in his cupped hands like dice, and extended it toward Remi. “For luck.”
She blew on it.
He dropped the brick into the brazier.
Whoosh!
“Raise your feet!” Sam shouted.
They felt and heard the tip of a pine tree clawing the underside of the platform. They were jerked sideways.
“We’re snagged!” Sam called. “Lean!”
In unison, they tipped their torsos in the opposite direction, hanging over the edge while clutching a guyline. Sam kicked his leg, trying to free them from whatever lay below.
With a sharp crack the offending branch snapped. The platform righted itself. Sam and Remi sat up, looking down and around and up.
“We’re clear!” Remi shouted. “We made it!”
Sam let out the breath he’d been holding. “Never doubted it for a second.”
Remi gave him the look.
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe for a second or two.”
Now clear of the ridge, the wind slackening slightly, they found themselves heading south at what Sam estimated was ten miles per hour. They had traveled less than a few hundred yards before their altitude began bleeding off.
Sam dug another brick out of the duffel. He dropped it through the feed hole and it ignited. They began rising.
Remi asked, “How many do we have left?”
Sam checked. “Ten.”
“Now might be a good time to tell me your landing Plan B.”
“On the off chance we don’t manage a perfect, feather-soft touchdown, our next best chance is pine trees—find a tight cluster and try to fly straight in.”
“What you’ve just described is a crash landing without the land.”
“Essentially.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, exactly. We hold on tight and hope the boughs act as an arresting net.”
