Page 17 of What Remains

“Hey, don’t forget at night, too. Southeast of here. It was easy-peasy. Just, you know, go between the snowflakes. Of course, it was dark, so…” Harvey shrugged. “Made it interesting.”

“How’d you manage it?” John asked.

“With great difficulty.”

“I didn’t think you could do that on account of all the mountains.” Ducking his forehead, Davila smeared sweat from face on his good forearm. “In fact, I don’t thinkweused anything but fixed wings to go in and out.”

“Certainly made it interesting. We landed just as the storm revved up,” Driver said. “Fair number of mountain lakes in this area, east of Khorog. Just a matter of finding a bowl wide enough to account for drift.”

“And then we did some hiking,” Harvey said.

“Sounds rough,” Davila said.

“I’ve done some firefighting back home,” Harvey said. “You’d be amazed what you can parachute into and carry out on your back. Of course, some fires in places like Yellowstone where you got the animals and people, that can be pretty hard going. I remember this one flare-up…” Harvey launched into a story about a wildfire in Wyoming, but John had ceased listeningabout three or four seconds after Driver had talked aboutwherebut more importantlywhenthey’d come in-country.

Well, I’ll be damned.He broke in. “When did you make your drop? How long ago?”

“Ah…” Clearly surprised at the interruption, Harvey stopped in mid-sentence then said, “Two days ago. Then we got orders to divert.”

“Divert?” And then John got it. “Oh, my God.We’renot the reason you’re here, are we?”

“Not, uh…” Harvey’s gaze flicked to Driver then back. “Not officially. But now that we are, we’ll just rescue your ass and then be on our way.”

“On your way to where?” John asked at the same time that Davila said, “I can take care of my own ass just fine.” They exchanged a glance, and then Davila said to Harvey, “To follow up on what John said, your drop was part of a different mission plan.”

“Notice that he wasn’t asking a question,” John said.

“Thank you, John,” Davila said. “And no, I was not.”

“He was stating a matter of fact.”

Davila nodded. “I believe I was.”

“As an invitation to expand on therealreasons for you being in-country,” John said. “More or less.”

“Preferably more,” Davila said.

“Well, I was giving them a degree of wiggle-room. Plausible deniability, as it were.”

“Ah.” Davila nodded. “Good point.”

“I thought you’d see it that way.”

“What are you?” Harvey asked John. “His translator?”

“Merely the chorus,” John said. “You have them in every good Greek tragedy, which I sincerely hope this isn’t.”

“Really?” Davila looked impressed. “I didn’t know that about the Greeks.”

“Yeah, the chorus’s function was to summarize and provide information. Me,” John said and spread his hands. “I’m amplifying.”

After a quick look to Driver, Harvey said, “We were asked to make a detour. Really, man, we were as surprised to find you guys as you were to see us.”

“You weren’t told who we were?” John asked.

“No,” Driver cut in. “We weren’t. We didn’t know there were any friendlies in the area.”

“So, in other words, like cool and all that we’re alive,” Davila said, “but we’re not the reason you dropped by for a visit.”

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