either side of her injured shin, lashed in place with nylon cord. Snorts of discomfort turned to a thin, growling scream by the time she tied the final knot.
She punched the vinyl floor of the boat, lay and tried to get her breathing under control.
Fuck self-pity. Injured leg. Fleeting. Inconsequential.
She closed her eyes and stroked the Ranger emblem stamped on the leather sheath of her knife.
Injured leg. An inconvenience, nothing more.
She limped across dunes. She paused for a compass bearing. Flipped the lid of the lensatic, watched the liquid-damped needle swing and settle. Maintaining steady progress north. She snapped the case shut.
Backward glance. A trail of footprints. The raft was a distant dot.
Maybe if she covered a few miles she could raise someone on the CSEL. If she couldn’t bounce a signal off a satellite, if the MILSTAR network were down, NCASEC and TACAMO off air, she would have to coax an unboosted analogue transmission across the mountains to habitation. Tough job. Distant crags were marbled with uranium ore radiating magnetic anomalies that could potentially jam a radio signal.
She kept walking. Each jolting step made her leg burn like she was hung over a fire rotating on a spit, but if she stopped to rest, she might not be able to get moving again.
Nagging doubt: hard to know where the parachute brought her down. Maybe she was walking deeper into the wilderness, walking further from help.
Her father had been a Ranger. If he were here, keeping pace as she trudged through the desert, he would say:
over-deliberation fucks you up. A samurai will reflect for seven breaths then commit to a decision. So roll the dice and God bless you.
A monotonous landscape.
She glanced at a map before the flight. Geodetic data tacked to a noticeboard in the briefing room. A USGS chart: California/Nevada border. Blank terrain. Terra incognita. Mile upon mile of jack shit.
She couldn’t recall topographic detail, but she remembered names. Memorials to early settlers that headed west in covered wagons and found hell on earth.
Furnace Creek.
Dante’s View.
The Funeral Mountains.
A glint in the periphery of her vision. She stopped, turned and shielded her eyes.
Something metallic at the tip of a high dune. Probably a fragment of fuselage. Couldn’t be much else.
Hard to estimate distance. Rough guess: quarter of a mile. She couldn’t discern shape. Too much glare.
Quarter of a mile. A lot of energy, a lot of sweat, to reach a hunk of scrap metal. Her leg hurt so much she wanted to fall to the ground and puke. But a scrap of wreckage might provide a little shade, a spot to rest until nightfall.
She limped towards the distant object. Each step was teeth-jarring torment. She absented herself from her body, put herself on a wooded hillside, enjoyed the cool hush of the forest floor and let the pain and exertion happen somewhere else.
The top of a dune cratered like a volcano. An ejector seat sitting upright, bedded in sand.
Someone strapped to the chair. An arm hung limp. The sand-dusted sleeve of a flight suit. A gloved hand.
‘Hey.’
No response.
Frost climbed the dune on hands and knees. She caught her breath, rested in the shade. Then she gripped the back of the chair and pulled herself upright.
A dust-matted body strapped in the seat.
She brushed sand from the name strip: GUTHRIE.
Legs askew, head slumped on his chest. His face was veiled by a helmet visor and oxygen mask.
Frost checked the seat restraints. Jammed.
The guy had been killed by some kind of release failure.
The moment Guthrie, the route navigator, reached between his legs and wrenched the yellow egress handle a roof hatch would have blown. He would have been propelled up and out the plane, hitting 12g in half a second. A mortar cartridge behind the headrest would have immediately fired and deployed a drogue to stabilise the seat as it fell. Guthrie would have remained strapped in the chair, breathing bottled oxygen during
She punched the vinyl floor of the boat, lay and tried to get her breathing under control.
Fuck self-pity. Injured leg. Fleeting. Inconsequential.
She closed her eyes and stroked the Ranger emblem stamped on the leather sheath of her knife.
Injured leg. An inconvenience, nothing more.
She limped across dunes. She paused for a compass bearing. Flipped the lid of the lensatic, watched the liquid-damped needle swing and settle. Maintaining steady progress north. She snapped the case shut.
Backward glance. A trail of footprints. The raft was a distant dot.
Maybe if she covered a few miles she could raise someone on the CSEL. If she couldn’t bounce a signal off a satellite, if the MILSTAR network were down, NCASEC and TACAMO off air, she would have to coax an unboosted analogue transmission across the mountains to habitation. Tough job. Distant crags were marbled with uranium ore radiating magnetic anomalies that could potentially jam a radio signal.
She kept walking. Each jolting step made her leg burn like she was hung over a fire rotating on a spit, but if she stopped to rest, she might not be able to get moving again.
Nagging doubt: hard to know where the parachute brought her down. Maybe she was walking deeper into the wilderness, walking further from help.
Her father had been a Ranger. If he were here, keeping pace as she trudged through the desert, he would say:
over-deliberation fucks you up. A samurai will reflect for seven breaths then commit to a decision. So roll the dice and God bless you.
A monotonous landscape.
She glanced at a map before the flight. Geodetic data tacked to a noticeboard in the briefing room. A USGS chart: California/Nevada border. Blank terrain. Terra incognita. Mile upon mile of jack shit.
She couldn’t recall topographic detail, but she remembered names. Memorials to early settlers that headed west in covered wagons and found hell on earth.
Furnace Creek.
Dante’s View.
The Funeral Mountains.
A glint in the periphery of her vision. She stopped, turned and shielded her eyes.
Something metallic at the tip of a high dune. Probably a fragment of fuselage. Couldn’t be much else.
Hard to estimate distance. Rough guess: quarter of a mile. She couldn’t discern shape. Too much glare.
Quarter of a mile. A lot of energy, a lot of sweat, to reach a hunk of scrap metal. Her leg hurt so much she wanted to fall to the ground and puke. But a scrap of wreckage might provide a little shade, a spot to rest until nightfall.
She limped towards the distant object. Each step was teeth-jarring torment. She absented herself from her body, put herself on a wooded hillside, enjoyed the cool hush of the forest floor and let the pain and exertion happen somewhere else.
The top of a dune cratered like a volcano. An ejector seat sitting upright, bedded in sand.
Someone strapped to the chair. An arm hung limp. The sand-dusted sleeve of a flight suit. A gloved hand.
‘Hey.’
No response.
Frost climbed the dune on hands and knees. She caught her breath, rested in the shade. Then she gripped the back of the chair and pulled herself upright.
A dust-matted body strapped in the seat.
She brushed sand from the name strip: GUTHRIE.
Legs askew, head slumped on his chest. His face was veiled by a helmet visor and oxygen mask.
Frost checked the seat restraints. Jammed.
The guy had been killed by some kind of release failure.
The moment Guthrie, the route navigator, reached between his legs and wrenched the yellow egress handle a roof hatch would have blown. He would have been propelled up and out the plane, hitting 12g in half a second. A mortar cartridge behind the headrest would have immediately fired and deployed a drogue to stabilise the seat as it fell. Guthrie would have remained strapped in the chair, breathing bottled oxygen during
Similar Books
Different Seasons
Stephen King
Christmas Moon
Sadie Hart
Darkover: First Contact
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Guarded Heart
Jennifer Blake
Moscardino
Enrico Pea
Kickoff for Love
Amelia Whitmore
Fatal Fairies (Renaissance Faire Mystery Book 8)
Joyce Lavene, Jim Lavene
When the Fairytale Ends
Dwan Abrams
Killer Gourmet
G.A. McKevett
After River
Donna Milner