Beginning with You (15 page)

He knelt beside her, one hand on hers, the other on her brow. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?’ He was gasping for breath, and his hands were shaking badly. Paula’s flesh—what little there was of it—was cooler than usual. The house was warm. “Are you cold?”

“Just a little. I’m fine, Tag.”

“Are you sure?” Tears glittered fiercely in his eyes as he sat down, facing her, never letting go of her thin, frail hand. She was still so beautiful. Her dark-brown hair glinted with red highlights beneath the lamp. And her large, hazel eyes, flecked with gold and brown, held so much life in their depths. Tag could never get over the fact that, except for the weight loss, Paula looked the same.

She patted his hand. “I’m positive.”

“Why did you call, then?”

“Didn’t Jody tell you? I wanted you to pick up a can of soup from the store on the way home.”

Tag shut his eyes tightly. “Damn that little bitch! No, she just said you’d called and that you sounded really bad. She said she could barely hear your voice.” He opened his eyes. “I thought—I thought—”

Paula slid her arms around her husband, drawing him to her. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Maybe she just forgot about the soup.”

Tag gripped his wife to him, never wanting to let her go. He kissed her hair, brow and cheek, hungry just for Paula’s nearness. Not a minute of his day went by when he didn’t wonder how she was. Would he come home someday and find that she had died on the couch, without anyone near to comfort her? A deluge of emotions suffocated Tag, and he buried his face in the thick, rich, chestnut folds of her hair.

“Where the hell have you been, Eve?” Gil demanded as she walked in the door. It was ten o’clock. When he had come home earlier, the house had been empty, which was highly unusual because Eve was normally either on the phone or in front of the television watching one of her soap operas. He stood in the kitchen, waiting for her answer. She was dressed in a business suit.

“Out.”

“Out where?”

She set her leather purse on the table, along with a slim attaché case. For once, she felt confident, the entire day a glowing success. Shrugging out of her pale-lilac raincoat, she said, “I wonder how you’d react if I told you I got a wonderful job today.”

Anger tightened the planes of his face. The day had gone from bad to worse. “That’s not even funny. I called you on your cell and it went straight to voice mail. You could have called me back.”

Eve slipped out of her blazer and walked down the hall to hang it up, her heels echoing sharply against the wooden floor. “I was too busy to answer it. And neither is all this extra duty you’re standing. Why should I stay home if you’re not going to be here half of the time?”

Gil stalked into the hall. “Look, I told you the captain was trying to straighten out the mess, but he can only do so much until Vance and Wingate get back off leave. He’s already cancelled Wingate’s request for an extra week.”

With a shrug, Eve breezed by him on her way into the living room. She went over and turned on the television. “Sure, I hear this same old spiel all the time.” She smiled brightly up at Gil as he entered the room. “I did something about it.”

He shut the television off and stood in front of it. Eve sat down and crossed her slim legs, her eyes shining with happiness.

“All right, let’s talk about what you’re doing,” he said heavily.

She laughed prettily, clapping her hands. “I can’t believe it! This is the first time in six months I’ve gotten your full, undivided attention, Gil.”

“You’ve always had my attention,” he said tightly, walking to the couch and sitting down. “Now, where have you been all night? And why didn’t you have the common decency to leave me a note? Jesus Christ, I was worried half out of my mind!”

She clasped her hands in her lap, bubbling. “I was out, discussing business.”

“Business?”

Eve was thrilled over Gil’s interest. Finally, he was paying attention to her, and she gratefully absorbed every particle of it. “I went over to the
Star
and got a full-time job as a reporter this morning.”

Gil took a deep, controlling breath, folding his hands in front of him. “Why?” His mother had remained at home, and his father had provided for the family.

Her joy receded and Eve muttered, “Running a house is all you think I’m capable of, isn’t it? I’ve been hired by the editor and owner, Steve Hunter. I’ve already finished my first assignment: interviewing Lieutenant Rook Caldwell.” Pleasure sang through Eve until she saw the look of shock on Gil’s face. Eve felt her stomach knot. “I also am being given the society column. Isn’t that something?” Her voice grew strained as Gil’s scowl darkened. “My hours are eight to five. So far, I’ve typed up a rough draft of my interview with Lieutenant Caldwell.”

The hopeful look Eve gave him made Logan groan. “You know that paper is anti-Coast Guard, Eve!” He halted, trying to get his temper under control. When he spoke, his voice was low and clipped. “Did you ever think about the problems your spur-of-the-moment decision might generate for me at the station?”

Her eyes flashed. “As usual, you’re only worried about your precious Coast Guard image! You can’t even congratulate me, or thank me for helping to contribute to the income.”

“Eve, we don’t need the extra money. I make enough to support two people.” He nailed her with an exasperated look. “If we had a family, it might be different. But you’ve seen to that, too. So, you don’t need the job for monetary reasons. And why should I congratulate such an idiotic move, when I know I’m going to take heat from the CO because you’re working for that newspaper?”

She leaped to her feet, tears glittering in her eyes. “How come everything I do is leftovers or second class? Of course, when you come home bragging about your latest rescue and the people you saved, you thump the hell out of your chest! But let me get one small laurel and you’re ready to crush it!”

Gil stood ominously over her, his fists clenched. “You twist everything I’ve ever said to you, Eve. If I talk about a rescue, it’s because I’ve got to get it off my chest. I’m human. I can’t sit at the controls crying like a baby! I have to swallow everything I see, hear or feel. Some of those cases rip me apart. I can’t keep carrying that stuff inside me forever. I need to unload and talk about it. I wouldn’t call that bragging or thumping my chest, dammit.” His nostrils flared and he paced the living room at least another minute, trying to cool down. Changing topics, Gil said, “I don’t suppose you know that Paula Welsh is worse?”

Tossing her head, Eve got up and marched into the kitchen. She went to the cupboard that contained the liquor and poured herself a scotch on the rocks. Nothing she did was ever right. It hurt. Eve sobbed. “I don’t care about sweet, kind, selfless Paula. Right now, I care about the fact that you hate whatever I try to do.” She saw Gil enter the kitchen and threw some ice cubes into her tumbler. The scotch sloshed out of the glass and onto the Formica counter. Turning, she glared back at him.

“You can’t be that heartless,” he rasped. “Paula’s done so many things for you since we arrived here. She was the first to welcome you to the station, and she made special efforts to make you feel at home. Is this how you repay her kindness when she might need some comfort?” Gil walked over to her, his voice dangerously low. “Come on, tell me you don’t care.”

Eve took a step back, pinned between the counter and her husband. “I don’t care! I never did,” she rattled. “I’m sick and tired of hearing Paula’s daily life-and-death health report! You won’t even congratulate me on a job I love. All you care about is your Coast Guard family, not me!” she cried, and tried to escape from Gil’s presence.

“No, you don’t,” he snarled, clamping a hand around her delicate wrist. He seethed with frustration.

With a cry of pain, Eve tried to twist free. The tumbler flew out of her hand, shattering on the floor between them. She froze and then sobbed. “Damn you, Gil Logan! I hate you! I hate you!”

Thunderstruck by her outburst, Gil released her. Eve flew out of the kitchen, down the hall and to their bedroom, slamming the door shut. Silence filled the house as he stood there, staring down at the broken glass shards scattered over the floor and his feet. Rage welled up through him. He shook his head in shock. Eve hated him. She’d never said that before.

Placing a hand against the counter, he waited until his sudden dizziness passed. Hate was a powerful word. What had he done that would make a seven-year marriage go into this kind of a tailspin? Unable to sort through his snarled feelings, Gil left. He’d go to Tag’s place and see if there was anything he could do to help.

“Rook?”

She looked up from her desk. It was 0830 and she was just finishing her second cup of coffee for the day. Tag leaned in the door to Admin, dressed in his flight suit. “Yes?”

“Come on, we’ve got a SAR case. The Ops officer says I can pull you for my copilot. Want to come along?”

Unabashed at showing her eagerness to the secretaries, who had stopped to watch and listen, Rook stood up. Once in the hall with Tag, they walked quickly down to the SAR desk. Unable to still her excitement, Rook asked, “What have we got, Tag?”

“We just received a call from Barton Industries. They’re pulling logs out near Thatcher Ridge. It’s about a mile outside the Olympic National Park.”

Rook gasped. “Oh, no!” She automatically thought of Jim Barton. It had been three weeks since they’d gone sailing, and she had planned to call him tonight to tell him she had Saturday off. Her heart twisted. Jim loved his father as fiercely as she had loved her mother. “My God, what’s happened?”

Tag came to a halt at the counter, spreading out a number of maps and other items. “Howard Barton was driving a D-9 Cat up on a muddy ridge. It rained like hell up there last night, and the soil was unstable in their work area. Apparently the old man got too close to the edge of a ravine and it flipped end over end. I guess the Cat rolled a good hundred feet before coming to rest at the bottom of the ravine.”

Rook tried to control her sudden anxiety, unable to explain her emotional reaction to the news. “Is he pinned?”

“Yeah, but the timber company people are working to free him right now. We’re taking the call because there’s no access into that area. Guess the guy’s got internal injuries. Wouldn’t be surprised. This time, we’re going to become a medevac, Rook. The trauma unit at Mercy’s already standing by for us to fly Barton there as soon as we can extricate him from the area.”

Combating the devastation she felt, Rook fought to pay close attention to what Tag was saying. “So, how are we going to effect this rescue?”

He smiled over at her. “Bingo. You asked the right question.” Tag motioned to the local weather report. “We’ve got a familiar problem here in this area: high altitude. The spot we’ve got to fly into is at 4,500 feet. That’s near the maximum altitude for the ’60 for a litter pickup out of ground effect.” He shoved a couple of graphs in her direction. “I want you to figure out the power requirements we’ll need. The ’60 weighs a lot, and at that altitude, it will be tough for it to hover over the trees on its own, much less with a load from below. We may have to defuel.”

“You’re going to lower a litter to pick him up?” The Hover Out of Ground Effect, or HOGE, meant hovering very close to the earth’s surface where there was no benefit of downwash air currents to provide the helo with lift. More fuel was burned, as a result, to keep the bird in the air.

“We have to. The guy on the radio at the scene said the trees are anywhere from seventy-five to one hundred feet in height. Our basket cable is a hundred feet in length.

Jim had to be the man on the handset, radioing in for help. Rook tried to block out how he must feel, with his father trapped and seriously injured. She grimaced. “That’s cutting it close, Tag.”

“The name of the game, darlin’. So figure our HOGE power. Tell me how many pounds of fuel we can carry so we can lift this guy out.”

Speed was of the essence. Rook got out the performance charts and wrote down all the necessary information on another piece of paper, which would be used by the aircraft commander. A helicopter had its Achilles heels, and this was one of them. When the temperature and barometric pressure combined to create a high-density altitude, a helo would slug along. There might not be enough power for the rotors to lift the aircraft or much of a load. That was why the helicopter’s weight and pounds of fuel became a critical issue. Further, the danger of the situation increased because the HOGE altitude limit of the ’60 with a load would be around six thousand feet on a litter pickup. The higher the altitude, the harder it would be for the helo to hover because the air was less dense, providing less lift to keep it in the air. Rook pushed the final figures over to Tag, who was working rapidly on another part of the data.

“I’ve figured that we can do it with six hundred pounds of fuel on board, Tag.”

He rubbed his bloodshot eyes, rapidly going over her figures. “No, we’d better defuel to five hundred pounds.”

Rook’s eyes widened. Five hundred pounds left them very little air time over the rescue site. They would have only forty-five minutes to fly there, make a litter pickup and fly to the hospital—and allow a reserve. “But isn’t that cutting it close, Tag?”

“Yeah, but we don’t have many choices open to us, Rook. This one’s like walking the edge of a razor blade, any way we cut it.”

“According to my figures, we could still meet power requirements with six hundred pounds of fuel on board.”

“Five hundred will do it. Call over to the hangar and have them defuel 1418, please.”

Panic started eating at Rook. Tag had looked like hell when he’d come in this morning. According to Gil, Paula was worsening rapidly. Was his judgment impaired on this case as a result? She chewed on her lower lip, trying to decide whether or not to push the issue of the extra fuel on board. In the end, Rook decided not to. Tag had been a SAR pilot for five years, two of them here at Port Angeles. He would know the local weather and terrain conditions far better than she. Rook said nothing further and made the call.

Within fifteen minutes, they were airborne and heading south toward the snowcapped Olympic Mountains. Tied up with talking on the radios, Rook shoved her emotions aside in order to operate at maximum efficiency.

“We’re making good time,” Tag said, easing the helo up and over the first mountain and then dropping to a lower altitude. A green carpet of forest lay beneath them. A straight line would get them there faster, but this one particular mountain was too high, so they had to fly around it. It ate up fuel time. Tag fumed over the delay.

Rook glanced up from her duties. “Do we get many calls from timber companies that are logging in these mountains?”

“We get calls from lumberjacks all the time. Usually, it’s a tree that’s fallen on someone in an inaccessible area. This is the first time I’ve heard of a Cat rolling over a hill, but I’m sure it’s pretty easy to do out in these places.”

In another thirty minutes they had arrived on station. Rook looked out her window, and her heart slammed into her ribs. There, standing next to the yellow Cat turned on its side, was Jim. From this altitude, Rook could see anguish clearly written across his drawn features. At least ten other lumberjacks stood helplessly in a tight circle, every one of them mud-covered and exhausted. The Cat had been pulled off Howard Barton with steel cable by the timber trucks up on the top of the ravine. Rook saw Jim kneel down beside his unconscious father, who had several jackets thrown across him in an effort to keep him warm. He placed the radio close to his mouth and Rook leaned over, switching one of their many radios to his frequency.

“Coast Guard, this is Jim Barton. What do you want us to do? We’ve got to hurry. My father’s in bad shape.”

Tag nodded, giving Rook permission to use the loud hailer. Rook flipped on the switch and picked up the microphone. “Mr. Barton, prepare to receive a litter. We’ll winch it out of the helo shortly. Once the litter is on the ground, get your father strapped in and then step away from it. We’ll winch him up as quickly as possible and take him to Mercy Hospital. Their trauma unit is alerted and will be standing by. Over.”

“Rook?” There was disbelief and hope in Barton’s hoarse voice.

She tried to ignore the sudden emotion in his tone, struggling to keep hers cool and professional sounding. “Yes. Have your men clear an area for the litter. I’ll continue relaying instructions as needed. Over.”

“All right. I’m damn glad you showed up. My father…”

Her voice grew husky with feeling. “Mr. Barton—Jim—just get the area cleared as quickly as possible. Please.”

Tag went through the procedures with the flight mech, Seth Davis. To enter a HOGE, Tag made his approach into the wind and gradually reduced airspeed, maintaining an altitude of ninety feet—just clear of the fir trees. Control manipulation and power changes had to be made smoothly and precisely, or the helo could inadvertently begin to descend, which could lead to power settling—another dangerous flight hazard. Rook could feel the helo laboring heavily and kept an eye on the flight instruments. Below her, she saw the men clearing space for the litter. Jim had moved his father to the most accessible spot. They all stood tensely, looking up at them, waiting.

Sweat popped out on Tag’s face, all his concentration on keeping the ’60 steady in a hover as Seth got ready to lower the litter on the steel cable. The gray, rain-swollen clouds hung only a hundred feet above them, threatening to deluge them once again. The helo was floundering badly, trying to maintain the hover. His gloved hands tightened considerably around the collective and cyclic.

Rook’s job was to act as safety pilot, telling Tag if he got too low to the trees and making him aware of any other possible problems. She also had to monitor all the aircraft instruments. She remained in contact with Jim, leading him and his men through the steps of rescue. Once, Rook saw Jim wipe his eyes free of tears. She realized now how much her own emotional reactions could interfere on a rescue.

Tag was left completely free of all details except flying. And in this situation, Rook knew it would take all his skill to give them a safe margin. She glanced up at the leaden skies. Had the temperature or wind changed? If it had, it might affect their HOGE power. The helo was barely stable how, and they hadn’t even started the lift.

How much did Howard weigh? Suddenly, that became a critical issue. She remembered Jim pointing him out to her in the diner that morning, but she’d only gotten a glimpse of him. Should she radio Jim and ask? No, he might panic if he thought there was a problem. The possibility of settling with power shrilled through her mind. If the load was too much the helo could settle, and they’d all drop slowly out of the sky, probably killing some of the men gathered below, not to mention themselves. The only alternative, if that situation became a reality, was to shear the cable, then drop the litter and the patient. Rook’s throat constricted with tension. Automatically, she flicked a glance at the fuel gauge: three hundred pounds left. God, they had to hurry with this medevac, or they wouldn’t make it out of the mountains themselves.

“Go on hot mike,” Welsh ordered the flight mech.

“Roger, hot mike,”

Holding the helo steady at eighty-five feet, the sponsons brushing the crowns of the fir, Tag said, “Conn me in.”

“Roger,” Seth responded. “On hot mike, have target in sight, litter going out the door.” The wire litter hung suspended in front of Seth. He pressed the button that would begin lowering it toward the group below. “Litter below aircraft…litter halfway down…”

Rook’s gaze flew to the gauges. She felt the helo laboring heavily. Would the bird stay in the air, or were they going to settle in? Torque was gradually creeping up. Her gut tightened. That could spell disaster. And fuel? Two hundred and eighty pounds left. Jesus, they had to get that litter down, throw Barton in it and lift like crazy, or they’d never make it to the hospital!

“Litter on deck.”

“Thank God,” Rook whispered. She glanced over at Tag, seeing the concentration on his mask-like face. He knew they were in trouble, too.

“Seth, can you get a look and see how much the victim weighs?” she asked.

“Good move,” Tag growled, his thinned lips barely moving.

“I’m worried, Tag.”

“Makes two of us.”

Seth craned his neck out over the lip of the deck. “Uh…he looks pretty heavy, Ms. Caldwell.”

Rook tried to keep her voice calm and patient, but she felt anything other than that. “Seth, give me your best estimate.”

“Two hundred and fifty pounds?”

“Christ,” Tag whispered.

“Tag?” The question was in her voice. He was aircraft commander. What would he do? Call off the medevac because the situation was deteriorating around them, or try the rescue anyway?

“Seth, motion for them to get that guy in the litter pronto,” Tag ordered.

“Yes, sir!”

“What’s our fuel look like?”

“About two hundred and sixty pounds.”

“Torque?”

“Ninety percent.”

“Keep me informed.”

Rook’s hands hovered near her own set of controls. Anytime a rescue was in progress, the copilot’s hands were always near the cyclic and collective, in case something happened to the pilot.

“Taking the load,” Seth said. Rook felt the helo shudder as the cable began to winch up the victim in the litter.

Tag cursed softly, his knuckles whitening. They were just this side of overtorquing it.

“The trees, Tag—you’re sinking,” Rook said, her voice unsteady.

Gently, he fed a little more power to the laboring ’60. Throughout the cabin, the high whine of the winch continued, the gears screeching beneath the heavy load.

“Two hundred and fifty-five pounds of fuel.”

Tag’s mouth tightened. Hurry up with that damn load! The winching and weight was sucking the fuel tank dry! Why hadn’t he listened to Rook? Now they were critical! What the hell had made him decide on a hundred pounds less?

Seth watched as the litter threaded between two huge Douglas firs, branches swatting at the unconscious victim’s legs. He gripped the side of the fuselage hard, feeling the helo stagger perilously. Was Mr. Welsh going to make it? The ground looked a long way away to Seth.
Come on, come on
, he silently begged. Why the hell couldn’t they invent a faster-moving winch? Seth saw the blood over the older man’s abdomen. From years of experience in rescue, he knew the victim’s color wasn’t good, either. He pressed his lips to the mike.

“I’m gonna need CPR backup once I get the victim on board. He’s going blue on me.”

Rook responded, not sure if they were even going to be able to get out of here. “I’ll be back as soon as we’re clear of the trees.”