“Okay, I’m going to load him in,” Russ said. He picked up the top edges of the lawn chair contraption and dragged the injured man travois-style to the net. He unfolded the edges of the net and pulled it out of the water before wrestling Waxman into place at the center. He stood up, looked around the area one more time, then hefted the abandoned backpack onto his shoulder and rolled it into the net, next to its owner.
Russ stepped into the net, sat down tailor-style facing Waxman, and tugged the backboard onto his lap. It was awkward, but he figured he could give some added support with his crossed legs. “Clare,” he said, “we’re good to go.”
“Great. Here we go.” The boom strap began to rise out of its loose folds like a film running backward. He had thought he was prepared, but the jolt when the strap caught and yanked the netting off the ground still knocked the breath out of him. He threw his arms across Waxman’s chest. The man’s legs were forced upright by the press of the net until his knees fell forward and he spraddled like a roadkill frog. The backpack wedged itself against Russ’s shins, its metal buckles biting into his jeans. The net spun so that he had to close his eyes against the stomach- churning whirl of the horizon.
Clare was hauling him in a lot faster than she had thrown him out. The net spun up and up, then stopped with a jerk that vibrated into his bones. He opened his eyes and looked up. The sausage-shaped boom was overhead, maybe three feet away, and above it, the blur of the rotors, their hard chop pulsing through his ears and into his brain. The cargo area gaped open a couple of feet away from where he and Waxman hung. He suddenly realized that Clare had never discussed this part of the plan.
“Clare!”
“Don’t yell. I can hear you fine.”
“How am I supposed to get back in?”
“You’re not.”
The chopper rose from where it had been hovering and ascended slowly, crossing the lip of the crevasse and leaving it behind.
“You can’t just leave me hanging here!”
The voice over his headphones was soothing. “I’m heading back to the helipad. We’ll be there in a minute. Then we can get you out of the net and get Waxman settled into the cargo area.”
He closed his eyes and began counting to sixty out loud. He had reached thirty-one when her amused voice said, “Are you looking?”
“Are you kidding?”
“Go ahead. Open your eyes.”
He did, and then shut them again with relief when he saw the helipad rising up to meet them. The
“Climbed over the seat,” she said. “I don’t like to leave the ship while the engine is on.” She leaned to one side of the doorway, and the strap holding him and his load off the tarmac rolled out of the boom again, dropping him to the ground. He threw the netting off his shoulders and rose in a crouch, intently aware of the rotors still chopping overhead.
“How come it’s still going?” he yelled.
She winced, poking at her headphones. He snapped his mike off and she did the same. “I want us back in the air ASAP. Tilt him up this way and I’ll grab one end.”
He wrapped his hands around the aluminum struts protruding above Waxman’s shoulders and gave a heave. Clare knelt at the edge of the door and grabbed, pulling up and back. He worked his arms under Waxman’s legs and together they slid the unconscious man into the cargo area. Russ tossed the backpack in beside Waxman.
“Are you coming or going?” she yelled.
He opened his hands, indicating he didn’t understand the question.
“Are you flying with us to Albany? I’d like the help, but I’m not going to make you.”
He stopped, his hand on the edge of the cargo door. He hadn’t thought about just heading back to his truck and driving away. He could do that. It wasn’t as if he could do anything more for Waxman than he already had. He could head back to the station, get the paperwork started on this incident, track down Peggy, and get her statement. He looked up at Clare, who was waiting for him to make up his mind. “I’m coming with you,” he said and hauled himself up into the cargo area.
She didn’t say anything, merely winched the net back up and yanked the cargo door shut, but he could see her smiling to herself. She fiddled with her headset and tapped one of his headphones. He switched his back on. “Help me move him closer over there,” she said, gesturing past the safety web. She picked the web up and draped it over her back to keep it out of the way; then, hunched over, they half-dragged, half-lifted Waxman’s still form into place within arm’s reach of the passenger seats. She nodded, stepped into his seat, and climbed over the partial bulkhead into the pilot’s chair. “Strap in and let’s get going,” she said.
His butt was barely in the seat when the chopper rose. This he remembered, too, the scramble to get off the ground, the wounded on the floor, the trees bending and shaking as the slicks rose out of the grass. Clare was at it again. “Fee-fee-fi-fi-fo-fo-fum, Lookin’ mighty nice, now here she comes,” his headphones sang. He rested his elbows on his knees and laughed. Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. All she had to do was throw in some Doors and she’d have the complete sound track to his youth. He looked at Waxman’s pale face and was suddenly consumed with the urge for a cigarette, something he had given up in1985.
Up they went. Up and up, angling slightly to the east as Clare sang “Devil with a Blue Dress” into the headphones and the rotors thundered to her rhythm. “Wearing her perfume, Chanel Number Five, got to be the— what the heck?”
He sat up again and looked out the window, immediately wishing he hadn’t. They were up. Way up. As high as an airplane. The mountaintops stretched out beneath them in rough and rounded shades of dark green and smoky blue. Clare had gone silent. In his experience, it was never good when a pilot went silent.
“What is it?”
