16 Souls

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Present Day — August 14^th, 7:55 pm

Summit of Long’s Peak

With a deep sigh, Marty pried his mind away from the virtual reality of his memory — his all-consuming mental hologram. Somewhere in his head a small shiver registered that his body was now cold, but he couldn’t feel it, even though the temperature on the peak was probably below forty and the wind at least a steady fifteen knots. As the wrenching realism of that January night receded like an evaporating nightmare, it left in its stead a stark loneliness.

I wish Judith was here right now, he thought, I wish she had understood. Maybe I could have explained better…

But there would be no need. After all, he would be dead and gone and who gave a tinker’s damn in the broader scheme of human existence if some schmuck named Marty screwed up and people died as a result. People died all the time. No, as he’d told her, he would not be a pawn in their game of chess.

But deep inside, Marty Mitchell knew that was a damnable lie. He longed for vindication. Or, perhaps, something resembling forgiveness.

Marty took another deep breath, gazing at the boulder strewn summit, which was now bathed in semi-darkness.

It was time. Yes, he was burning to get all his points across, yet aching for relief from the all-too-vivid replaying of the accident every single solitary fucking night. And that’s what he’d climbed this ancient pile of granite to find: relief.

Marty stood and snapped on his flashlight, playing it on his pack as he started to lay out his own last supper. Whiskey and pills. Food of the gods, he chuckled. The only thing missing was peanut butter.

And that thought alone brought a smile… for at least a few seconds.

Marty had never contemplated suicide before, other than to condemn those who had… those who had indulged in it as an ultimate escape clause. Oh, he could understand someone accelerating the process of dying from cancer or Alzheimer’s or something else clearly fatal. But to eat a shotgun without warning one morning like Hemingway? Pure selfishness. Pure cowardice, or so he’d thought — until the unbelievable pain of his failures was redoubled by the harsh condemnation of society. Suddenly, suicide made sense.

For some reason he remembered Michelle Whittier’s words before the landing. What had she called it? Oh, yeah. Her “benediction.” She hoped God would be with them. Of course she had to know that there were, in fact, at least some atheists in foxholes. That old phrase insulted atheists and thumped agnostics, and he had imagined himself one or the other. In fact, he’d always worn an agnostic attitude as a slightly snobbish badge of honor. But if his cynical point of view was right and there was nothing else beyond this life, the Marty Mitchell he knew and had once been very proud of was about to evaporate. The irony was, he’d never know it. He’d never know anything. All that life and experience gone. All that training as a pilot. All that memory. Poof. Something was deeply illogical about that, he mused. Maybe in these last minutes he should at least consider that there might be something after this mortal excursion.

Marty looked down at the prepared items and reached for the bottle.

“Time to find out,” he said to the wind as he uncorked the whiskey. “Checkmate!”

Boulder — 8:05 pm

A frantic Judith Winston glanced at her brass wall clock, stalking around her office, cell phone glued to her ear. It had been less than an hour since she’d rushed back to try to convince someone to organize a rescue to Rocky Mountain National Park. Fortunately, her secretary was working late on a weekend, and she pressed him into immediate service.

A voice returned to the other end of the line, causing a head shake.

“No,” she replied. “I need General Stone. I need to speak to the adjutant general of the Colorado National Guard, as I told you. And yes, he does know me, and this is an emergency, and I can tell you with certainty that someone is going to die if I can’t get through to him!”

She rolled her eyes at the response.

“No… no, sergeant, listen carefully. That was not a threat! I’m trying to prevent a suicide on a mountain top that apparently only your helicopters can reach, okay? Now please, drop your defensiveness and call the general!”

Her secretary had been waiting, leaning in the door, and Judith motioned him to come, punching the mute button in the process.

“Anything?”

“This may be his home number. I’m not sure.”

“Call it and see if you can get him on the line.

Judith stopped to look at her hastily taken notes. She’d talked to the National Park Service, two hospital emergency rooms, and a longtime friend who owned a jet charter company out of Broomfield, as well as two medical evacuation helicopter operators, both of whom claimed their choppers couldn’t go to fourteen thousand feet. She supposed that was truthful, but it was hard to accept, knowing that someone had recently landed a helicopter on Mt. Everest at 29-thousand feet. She’d even seen the YouTube video.

Her secretary was back and holding a portable office phone.

“It’s General Stone,” he whispered.

“Great. Tell whoever comes on here that we found him. It’s on mute.” She handed over her cell phone and took the offered portable.

“General, Judith Winston here. We met last fall at the benefit in Cherry Creek for… oh. You do? Good. Well, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I’ve got a crisis on my hands and I’m told that only your team can help, but I can’t get hold of anyone in your outfit who’ll dare to make a decision.”

Denver

Across town in the Centennial Airport command post for RescueFlight, the shift chief was drumming his fingers on the desk and thinking about the rescue he’d had to reject. Despite being the primary source of medical helicopters for central Colorado, Long’s Peak summit was not a place their choppers could safely reach. What had snagged his attention, however, was the name of the person needing rescue.

He thought for a few more seconds, turning over the question of whether tipping off a reporter he knew could get him in trouble.

Hell, we’re not really involved. Not my monkeys, not my circus.

Scott Bogosian answered on the first ring.

“Hey, Scott, Jeremy here at RescueFlight, although this call never happened, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I remember you told me you were considering doing a book on the Regal accident, and I’ve got a bit of breaking news involving that airline captain who’s on trial.”

Boulder

The callback to Judith from the head of the Colorado National Guard affirming that a powerful Blackhawk helicopter would be airborne inside a half hour propelled her into motion northbound to the Estes Park area. Technically the LZ — as the landing zone they were preparing had been described — was the Long’s Peak trailhead parking lot south of Estes. The rescue attempt would be launched from there, and if Marty Mitchell could be found — and if it wasn’t too late — there would be an ambulance waiting at the LZ.

Fortunately, the night seemed mild, the sky clear, and no ominous clouds were approaching the front range. Probably as ideal as it could be for a helicopter rescue, she thought.

She had checked the GPS location of Marty’s phone again before darting to the parking lot, and once again the target had moved slightly, still on the summit of the peak, but at least a few feet away. That had to mean he was still alive, she concluded. At least she hoped that’s what it meant.

North Denver

Three rings had come and gone on the best number Scott Bogosian had for the Superintendent of Rocky Mountain National Park, but so many people now forwarded one phone to another, he decided to stick with it. On the fifth ring, a no nonsense voice he knew well, a voice laden with a heavy southern accent, barked a hello.

“Joe? Scott Bogosian.”

“Hello, Scott! What’s up? I’m a bit busy right now.”

“Does that have anything to do with someone on Long’s Peak?”

There was a distinct chuckle on the other end. “You wouldn’t ask me that if you didn’t already know. Yes. And this is off the record, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

“We’re arranging a landing zone for a National Guard Blackhawk… near the Long’s parking area. You know the location?”

“I’m a veteran of that lot.”

“Thought so. I’ve got to get moving… I’ll be there myself in thirty minutes. You didn’t hear this from me, okay? And I do NOT want to hear about it on KOA or KNUS.”

“You won’t… at least if you do, it won’t be from me. I’m a print reporter, not broadcast, remember? And I owe you, Joe.”

“You always owe me Bogosian! When you gonna pay up?”

“Well, when you tell me in what form payment should be rendered for past intelligence provided? Cash, check, liquor… women?”

“Women? Shit, Scott, your sense of humor is gonna get us in deep trouble one of these days when the call gets monitored by NSA or something and someone posts it on Facebook.”

“You started it, old friend. Okay, I’m in motion.”

Long’s Peak Trailhead Parking Lot, Rocky Mountain National Park

The crew of the inbound Army Blackhawk spotted the LZ almost thirty miles away. Cordoned off by ranger vehicles and sheriff’s SUV’s, all with red and blue beacons flashing urgently, it was impossible to miss. Using their GPS anchored displays of the terrain, the pilot guided them though the wide valleys leading up to the mountain and settled the twin engine turboshaft machine onto the concrete for a quick pre-mission brief.

The crew had shut the helicopter down and had used the hood of a car to layout and examine a terrain map. Now, a half dozen park rangers pushed in around the pilot and his crew as he looked up from the terrain map they’d been examining.

“Okay, folks, weight is a factor, even for a Blackhawk, but we’ll have one flight nurse and the most terrain-savvy ranger with us. So, five of us — two pilots, two crew chiefs, and our one flight nurse — plus Ranger Wilson here, who knows the summit very well. No one else. We’re not going to use night vision goggles because we will need to use our night sun to illuminate the area when we arrive, and we’ve got pretty good moonlight with moonrise in a few minutes. We’ve been briefed that there is no flat, open terrain up there on which to set the machine down, so I’ll either hover just above with the crew chief using the winch as necessary, or I’ll balance one of my main wheels on the flattest rock available to get people in and out, and essentially remain barely airborne in the meantime. Weather at the top this evening is very moderate, winds should be no more than twenty knots from the southwest. Any questions?”

Judith could see the position lights and the beacon of the Blackhawk lifting off from the LZ as she turned off the main highway. She had briefed the Guard command post by phone since she knew that riding along was not possible. As she pulled around the circle of ranger SUV’s and parked, she could still see the machine climbing toward the north. Judith watched for a few seconds, startled when a uniformed man materialized at her window.

“Ma’am, we have a rescue operation going on…”

“I know that. I called it.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m the one that asked for this.” She still wasn’t making sense and she held out her hand instead. “Judith Winston. The guy we’re trying to save on the peak is my client.”