Page 5 of Red Boar's Baby

“Yeah, I see it.”

The smoke was rising from a steep ravine choked with brush and scruffy pines. It came up in fine wisps, like the last wisps of a dying campfire. Diana circled it.

“Saw a flash of something down there,” Luis said. “Metal. Could be a crash site.” He clamped a pair of binoculars to his eyes, then shook his head in frustration. “Can’t tell. There’s just too much in the way.”

Diana spotted a clear space above the ravine that would make a decent landing spot. “Base, we’ve found the smoke, but we can’t see much else; it’s down a gully. Luis says he sees something that might be wreckage. Investigate on foot? Over.”

The radio crackled, breaking up as the mountain peaks interfered. “You want to wait for backup?” the dispatcher asked as the static cleared.

“Is it close?” In situations like this, with possible severe injuries, every minute counted.

“You see anywhere nearby someone could land a plane?”

“Not at all,” Diana said.

“Then no. The only other ‘copter we have available today is working the grid north of you, near Mt. Graham. Probably an hour, two hours before we could have someone down there. Maybe more.”

“Then no,” Diana told her. “We’ll go in on foot. We’re going to be out of touch for a bit, but if we don’t check in, let’s say in twenty minutes, call in the cavalry.”

“Copy, Rescue 22.”

Diana moved in for a light touchdown in the clearing. It was less nerve-wracking than many landings she’d made before. She shut down, and the rotors beat their way to stillness. The echoing silence of the mountains filled her ears, along with the pings of the cooling engine.

“You could stay here,” she began.

“Hell no, you may be the boss of me in the field, but I’m not letting a lady go out there alone.”

As she was probably meant to, Diana rolled her eyes and shot him a sneer. She climbed out of the helicopter and got her bearings. The ravine was below them. It was chilly this high in the mountains, not yet spring as it was in the desert beneath. There was still snow on the high peaks. She zipped up her jacket and pulled a baseball cap over her thick dark curls. It was easy to sunburn quickly at this latitude and altitude, even though she was perpetually tanned from all the time she spent outdoors.

“Got reception?” she asked Luis, who was holding his phone up. Her voice sounded loud to her in the stillness.

“No bars, doesn’t even look like it’s able to do emergency calls. We areisolated.”

“And the radios won’t be much good in this,” she muttered, looking down at the twisting ravine and the mess of broken rocks, hills, and gullies below them. According to the helicopter’s altimeter, they were at about 5,000 feet. That was a lot of rough ground, steep cliffs, and deep holes to swallow a signal.

Luis had already started down, his movements sure and competent. Diana followed him.

The ravine quickly closed out all visibility except a slice of cloudless blue sky above them. The air, although cool, was fragrant with pine and crisp, dry brush that snapped underfoot.

“Smell that?” Luis murmured.

She started to ask if he meant the pine, then realized what he did mean. There was a faint smell of smoke in the air, acrid and garbage-y rather than the clean scent of woodsmoke. As they descended further into the ravine, she began to catch petrochemical whiffs.

“Gasoline?” she asked.

“Aviation fuel, most likely. Could be you’ll get that hot date after all.”

His tone was light, in the blackly funny way that all first responders had of dealing with the life-and-death situations they dealt with every day. But Diana’s stomach tightened. There were lots of options for what might be ahead of them, and many of those were nasty.

“Think we should sing out?” Diana asked.

“Call and see if there’s someone alive down there, you mean? Dunno. How likely you think, if there’s someone down there, that they’d be friendly?”

Yeah, that was the problem. They were too far off the beaten path and it was too early in the season for backcountry hikers. They were both quiet for a moment, considering the options: gangs, drug runners, angry survivalists.

“They had to’ve heard us land,” Diana pointed out. “Sneaking up on somebody hostile is just gonna make us more likely to get shot. Better if we give them time to get away, if that’s what they want.”

There were times when her job might involve investigating a suspected drug camp or illegal grow operation, but this wasn’t one of them. She just wanted to find the accident site and locate survivors.

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