The Line

CHAPTER 17

The sun had raced around and come up again, bathing the east coast of the United States with light. Trace had spent an uneasy night in the motel. She’d wanted to call Hawaii again, but there was nothing more to say and it was the middle of the night there. She’d relayed the important information in her phone call to Maggie. Maybe she could talk to Boomer later today.

Through the leafless branches of the trees lining the highway, Trace could see New York City off to her right. She’d entered the Palisades Parkway at its start point, near the George Washington Bridge and that had brought back memories of Boomer. She remembered his telling her that he’d grown up in the shadow of that bridge on the other side of the river.

As she drove, the route paralleled the river. The Hudson flowed in its glacial bed past her toward the Atlantic and on the Jersey side, high cliffs — named the Palisades by Henry Hudson when he’d first sailed up the river — looked down upon the dark water.

Trace felt a familiar feeling ignite in the pit of her stomach, overshadowing even the present crisis she was in. She was returning to the Point. Like Pavlov’s dog hearing the bell, her body responded to four years of psychological and emotional strain and terror. Every West Pointer going up the Hudson felt it, no matter what the occasion for their return. Trace often imagined that even an old graduate being assigned to take over the Academy as superintendent felt it. There was no getting over the memories of Beast Barracks and four years inside the gray walls of the Academy.

It didn’t matter how far along on the Army chain of evolution a graduate was. The Point kept him or her in its grip. Even first-class cadets nearing graduation would aimlessly wander the barracks halls on Sunday nights in their tattered gray bathrobes or sweats, feeling the oppression of another week looming. In the Academy’s perverse way there was even an official ditty for the mood listed in the issued Bugle Notes (the cadet bible) called the Sunday night poop:

Six bells and all is well.

Another weekend shot to hell. Another week in my little gray cell.

Another week in which to excel.

Oh, hell.

The last two words were uttered with all the anguish and exasperation only a cadet could muster.

As she crossed the state line from New Jersey to New York, the Palisades Parkway veered away from the river and moved inland, crossing under the New York State Thruway. The terrain grew more hilly, and Trace passed the turnoffs for New City and Harriman State Park. The closer she got, the greater her anxiety.

Looping around the bulk of Bear Mountain, the parkway came to an end at a traffic circle. The first right led to Bear Mountain State Park. The second to Bear Mountain Bridge and Anthony’s Nose on the far side of the river. The last exit, before looping back on oneself, was Route 9W. The sign pointed the way to Fort Montgomery, Highland Falls, and, ultimately. West Point.

Trace took the turn, going by the Revolutionary War sites of Fort Clinton and Fort Montgomery. For a young country like the United States, West Point was about as old and venerable a site as could be found to place a military academy. It was geography that fixed the name, and it was geography that dictated the early military significance of the site.

She passed through the small town of Fort Montgomery and took the turnoff on 218 into Highland Falls, the town that lay just outside the main gate to the Academy.

Since Trace’s day, the Academy had expanded south, gobbling up what used to be Ladycliff College on the river side of the town and turning it into an extension of itself, housing the museum and a brand-new visitors’ center.

Trace had not been back to West Point since graduation and she turned into the visitor center to get acquainted with any further changes that might have occurred since her day.

Besides, she was still somewhat at a loss about how to proceed. She didn’t exactly envision herself digging up Custer’s grave on a bright, wintery Sunday morning. That might attract a bit of unwanted attention. She had never been in the cemetery during her time as a cadet and she had no idea how many people visited it or how accessible Custer’s grave was.

Despite the early hours, busloads of tourists were there at the center, eager to see how their tax dollars were being spent. Their official tour guides were the wives of officers assigned to West Point — a keen public relations move. The women could talk about their “husband’s cadets,” in a motherly tone, giving the impression of the Academy being one big happy family. That there were numerous off-limits signs posted all over the Academy saying “Authorized Personnel Only,” wasn’t noticed by most of the tourists. The signs blocked off all the barracks and academic areas from the public. A less naive person might wonder what it was the Academy didn’t want the public to see. After all, there was no classified training going on at the Academy and it was fully funded by the taxpayer.

Trace walked past a group waiting to board their bus and entered the center. A large gift shop to the right sold practically every article of clothing ever made with the valuable addition of a West Point emblem stenciled on it, along with assorted coffee mugs, glasses, pennants, bumper stickers, and posters. In the other direction, an area housed several displays telling about “life” at the Academy.

Trace veered left and stopped in front of a display, staring across the velvet ropes at a “typical cadet’s room.”

She was reminded of the different rooms she had inhabited in New South Barracks. Memories came back to her in waves, each one leaving a trail of emotion as the thought receded: the cold, winter nights that never seemed to end until they turned into bitter, gray mornings where plebe roommates would talk to each other only to pass essential survival information like who the officer of the day was, while they prepared their room for the daily AM — morning inspection; the sunny spring days with the trees high up on the cliff behind the barracks just beginning to show green and having the feeling in her chest that she just wanted to explode and be somewhere else and be doing anything else, not sitting here in her room studying Napoleon’s campaigns, afraid to walk out the door for fear of being stopped and hazed.

Trace had heard that there were some plebes who were so afraid of leaving their room to go to the latrine that they urinated in the sinks in their rooms. She was glad she had never been that desperate, although she and her roommate had ended up eating toothpaste, they’d been so starved in the third week of Beast Barracks. Toothpaste was authorized, but they couldn’t buy food at the small cadet store.

They’d been broken, some swiftly, some more slowly, depending on the strength of character each individual brought on R Day. By the end of the first day each new cadet had received a hair cut, been put in uniform, and marched in formation to Trophy Point where they’d sworn their oath of allegiance to the United States. By that time, half of them would have marched in step into the Hudson if told to do so, they were so disoriented. And instead of backing off, the pressure had increased through the years at the Academy until what resulted was a “graduate,” able to recite MacArthur’s duty-honor-country speech and the number and weight of the links in the Great Chain.

But they were not only supposed to be able to recite facts. Trace knew. They were supposed live Duty-Honor Country And she had tried as best she could for thirteen years in the Army. But something had gone wrong, badly wrong.

Trace curled her fingers around the rope blocking off the room and tried to remember who she was before she arrived at the Academy.

Because she now realized she no longer was who she had been when she’d graduated. And since her four years at the Academy had taken her previous life from her, she felt totally empty and drained.

Tears flowed for the second time in twenty-four hours, but these were not tears of anger, but tears of profound loss for the idealistic seventeen-year-old girl who had walked into a meat grinder in 1978 and seventeen years later finally realized she had gained nothing and lost everything.

From the visitor center it was only 200 yards to the main gate of the Academy grounds proper. As Trace drove to the gate, she wasn’t surprised when the military policewoman on duty waved her through despite the fact she had no Department of Defense decal on the windshield of the rental allowing access to the post. Because it was such a tourist attraction. West Point was an “open” post, meaning that anyone could enter.

Behind Trace, the MP’s head swiveled and noted the license tag. The MP dashed inside the small building that stood in the middle of the gate and picked up the phone.

She dialed the duty NCO at the Provost Marshall’s office.

On the other side of post, the duty NCO put down the phone and looked in the instruction binder he was issued when coming on duty. A new piece of paper had been paper-clipped to the front of it. The description of Trace’s car and its license tag number was there, with orders to be on the lookout and to report it if spotted to the phone number listed. The NCO noted that since the phone number had only five digits, it had to be on-post. He dialed and it was picked up on the first ring.

“Major Quincy.”

“Sir, this is Sergeant Taylor at the Provost Marshall’s office. We’ve spotted that red Beretta coming through Thayer Gate.”

“How long ago?”

“Not more than a minute. Do you want me to alert my patrols?”

“Negative,” the major said.

“Just order your people on patrol to look for it. If it’s spotted, your people are not to approach but simply to keep the car under observation and report to. you. You will immediately give me a call.

Is that clear, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I say again, you are only to report back to me. Your people are not to approach the vehicle or alarm the driver in any way.”

“Yes, sir.”

The phone went dead. Sergeant Taylor was curious and also somewhat irritated with the officer’s attitude. He pulled out the reverse directory phone listing for West Point and looked up the number he had just called, wondering what office he had talked to. The five digits were listed under the office of the superintendent.

Taylor’s irritation disappeared. Whatever was going on was at the highest levels possible at the Academy, and one thing Taylor had learned after three years of duty at the Academy: there was the law, then there was the super intendant law, and the second one had overuled the first one on more than one occasion in Taylor’s experience. He remembered the time an MP had caught a pair of male cadets, naked and in a rather awkward carnal position up at Redoubt Number 4. The two cadets had been gone from the Academy the very next day and the MP shipped off to Korea with orders to keep his mouth shut. The story never made the blotter report or the news and that was the way West Point wanted it.

In the same manner suicides among the Corps of Cadets were totally blanketed with secrecy along with drunken accidents by senior cadets in their shiny new cars. Avoiding negative publicity was more important than anything else, even the law. Taylor wondered what the driver of the Beretta had done to draw the attention of the superintendant’s office.

In fact, he wondered so hard about it that it reminded him of something else that the Provost Office sergeant major had told him and he picked up the phone and made another call.

Trace was surprised by the number of cars going onto the post this early on a Sunday morning in front of her.

She was part of a line of a dozen or so vehicles. Trace accelerated through onto Thayer Road, passing the Thayer Hotel on the right and Buffalo Soldier Field to her left. At the end of Buffalo Soldier Field, she came to a stop sign.

The road to the right went down to the river, 200 feet below.

Straight ahead was the cadet area, and to the left, the road wound its way up to Michie Stadium and Lusk Reservoir and the various housing areas.

A small temporary sign indicated going to the left for the Scout Jamboree at Target Hill Field, and the other cars all turned in the direction, which helped explain the unusual amount of traffic. Trace went straight, deciding to go around the Plain before heading toward the cemetery. A low stone wall and concrete walk was on her right. As a pair of cadets jogged by. Trace thought of the hundreds of times she had made the run out to Thayer Gate and back from the barracks, a round trip of about two miles.

Officers’ quarters crowded the hill to her left and then she came to a fork in the road. Straight ahead, the road dipped down, running between Mahan Hall and Thayer Hall. To the left, the road passed between the cadet barracks and the academic buildings. Trace turned left and very slowly drove by. Sunday morning was when the Academy was at its least active, and there was little sign of life as she passed New South Barracks, her home for her first two years. Not for the first time she wondered what sadistic mind had decided to cover every building with gray stone.

Certainly not the most inspiring building material and with the current overcast sky, one that was sure to dampen even the most buoyant heart.

Bartlett Hall, home to the hard sciences taught at the Academy, was on the right while old Pershing Barracks, still standing from the days of MacArthur, was to her left.

It was there that Trace got her first real surprise on the grounds. The road, which used to continue straight ahead and go around the Plain, was gone. The Plain had been expanded since her time, and where the road had been there was now only smoothly cut grass. Her only option was to turn to the right and go by the library. Trace stopped the car, glancing in her rear-view mirror to make sure no one was behind her.

She stared out at the green surface of the parade field, remembering sweating out there in the fierce summer sun, learning to march. About the only good memory she had of the Plain was her final parade just prior to graduation when she finally could believe that she would be out of the Academy after four long years, Trace continued’on, her mind and heart overwhelmed with memories. She had a job to do, but she found it difficult to not pluck at the scar tissue that surrounded her core. Whether positive or negative, the Academy was a part of her life.

What she had learned after years of active duty and more recently, the revelations about The Line, still couldn’t totally eradicate the four years spent at her “Rockbound Highland Home.”

Trace was surprised to hear the distant chatter of helicopter blades and she twisted her head to watch an aging Huey helicopter fly by, then dip down over the horizon in the direction of the river on the north side of the Academy.

The road curved around, following the contour of the Plain, overlooking the Hudson River below. Trophy Point and Battle Monument went by on the right and Trace was reminded of the chapter in her manuscript that had started this whole mess.

Old houses that were quarters for the permanent faculty at West Point, the heads of each department, lined the road to her left. She wondered which one Colonel Hooker had lived in during his long tenure as head of the history department, The entrance to the cemetery, directly across the street from the fire department, appeared on her right. The old cadet chapel had been transplanted here in 1910, stone by stone, after the present chapel had been built, and stood just inside the gate.

Trace went past the entrance to the cemetery and continued to the post exchange parking lot. The cemetery was now off to her right, shielded from the parking lot by a line of eight-foot-high trees. Trace parked and sat still for a few minutes, collecting her thoughts. The PX wasn’t open yet.

That was obvious from the fact there were no other cars in the lot. The post gas station was directly ahead and it too wasn’t open.

Trace remembered Boomer’s statement about being paranoid, but she felt there was no reason why she couldn’t at least go into the cemetery and find out exactly where Custer was buried. Despite her time at the Academy, she had never entered the cemetery; she’d never had reason to.

Trace left the car and walked through a gap in the trees at the edge of the parking lot. Among the grave markers in front of her, one immediately stood out: a massive concrete pyramid, at least twenty feet high. She followed the gravel road around, checking out the stones as she went. Many of the markers were relatively new, within the last several decades, so she knew she had to get to the older section of the graveyard.

Passing the pyramid, which on the other side showed itself to be a mausoleum, she came upon another elaborate marker, this one consisting of several columns holding up a roof with an eagle on top. She recognized the name: Major General Daniel Butterfield, born October 31, 1831, died July 17, 1901. Butterfield, a graduate, was the man who had written the traditional military bugle call Taps among many other accomplishments in his life.

Trace knew she was getting closer to Custer as the markers got older. A large tree hung over an obelisk at the edge of the next row of graves.

A small placard was nailed high up on the tree and Trace walked up and read it: fag us sylvatica, pendula, a weeping beech,” it said, identifying the tree. Trace walked around the tree and looked to see over whose grave it wept. The bronze plaque on the base of the obelisk told all:

Trace pulled out the letter and looked. It said the diary was to the left of the base of the monument, between Custer’s and his wife’s grave. But there was no grave to the left, just the weeping tree.

Trace went around the obelisk, to the other side. A bronze buffalo head stuck out of the side facing the tree.

On the far side, a soldier on a horse was emblazoned, along with the family name of Custer at the base. To the left, a long, stone grave marker read:

The top edge of Mrs. Custer’s marker was on line with the front edge of her husband’s. The diary lay in between.

The cemetery was on a level with the Plain, a hundred feet above the Hudson River. A hundred and fifty feet from Custer’s grave, there was a low stone wall, then the heavily wooded ground on the other side precipitously descended down to Target Hill Field at river-level where Trace had spent many an afternoon playing soccer in intramurals. She could hear the descending whine of a helicopter engine coming from that direction; it must be the Huey that had flown by while she was driving around the Plain shutting down. The sewage treatment plant for the Academy was also down there, and the smell of the plant was well known to cadets because every time they had to take their two mile physical fitness test run, the course went out past the treatment plant and then back.

Trace looked about in the immediate vicinity of the grave. The cemetery was empty, and this spot wasn’t visible from either the PX parking lot or the building that housed the caretaker of the cemetery.

To the left of the Custers, Trace was interested to see the name Robert Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter when it was fired upon at the beginning of the Civil War. She wondered who else that had been such an integral part of the country’s history was buried here, but now was not the time. The PX would be opening shortly, and she needed to go in there and get the equipment to uncover the diary.

The doors to the PX were unlocked At exactly at eleven, and Trace was the third person in. She went to the back of the store where the four seasons section was and quickly found what she was looking for — a small hand spade that she could easily fit into the pocket of her coat. In hardware she picked up a measuring tape and took her purchases to the front. She was required to show her ID card before paying, then she made her way out into the parking lot.

The weather was still cold and gray with a low overcast sky. Trace could hear distant cheers coming from the vicinity of the track and field stadium down at river-level below the cemetery, next to Target Hill Field. She passed her car and slipped between the trees into the cemetery.

She walked directly to Custer’s grave.

There was still no one about, so Trace kneeled in the hard earth and pulled out the tape measure. Two feet to the left, on line with the front of the gravestone. She dug the point of the spade into the earth and began digging. She was grateful the ground wasn’t frozen or else it would have required dynamite to make any sort of penetration. Trace felt very exposed as she continued to dig and kept glancing about, keeping an eye out.

In the PX parking lot an MP car pulled up to Trace’s rental car, noted the license tag, then drove away to park near the main PX itself. The MP in the car picked up his radio mike and called it in to Sergeant Taylor. Within four minutes a van pulled up, and a major — identified as Quincy by his nametag — and a young captain stepped out. The MP pointed out the car to them.

Quincy glanced around, then pointed at the PX.

“She must be inside.” He jabbed a finger at the MP.

“You stay here and watch the car.” He grabbed the other officer.

“Let’s go. Captain Isaac.” The two entered the PX and began a systematic search of the store.

The spade hit something solid about ten inches down.

Trace continued to excavate, adding to the small pile of dirt next to the hole. She brushed away with her fingers and exposed a red plastic surface. She carefully dug around, until she reached the edges — about ten inches long by eight wide. She pressed the point of the spade in along the sides, breaking the box free from the dirt. After four minutes, it came loose and she held in her hands a plastic box, the seams wrapped in duct tape. It was heavy, as if whatever it contained was solid and filled most of the space inside.

“She’s not in here,” Captain Isaac said. They were standing at the checkout counters, having been through the entire store twice.

Major Quincy looked out into the parking lot, noting the location of the car, and thinking furiously.

“Could she be at the gas station?”

Isaac shrugged.

“Let’s check it out.”

The two officers double-timed across the parking lot and after a brief look inside, insured that the object of their search wasn’t there.

“Where the hell is she?” Quincy muttered.

Isaac pointed.

“The cemetery?” he guessed.

“What would she be doing in there?” Quincy asked, moving before Isaac had a chance to answer. The two headed for the break in the trees.

Trace shoved the dirt back into the hole, but the absence of the box left a depression there that would be noticeable to the first person passing by. She pulled her key chain out and flipped open the small knife attached to it and began cutting open the duct tape to see what was inside.

“There she is!” a voice cried out.

Trace looked up and she didn’t have to consider the situation very long. Two officers, their long black raincoats napping in the wind, were racing toward her. She tucked the box under her arm and ran in the opposite direction, straight for the wall enclosing the cemetery.

She made it there with a fifty-meter lead on her pursuers. She looked down the rock-and-tree-strewn slope on the other side, unable to see the bottom. She knew it had to come out around Target Hill field, and she also knew that that was putting herself in a dead-end situation, but a glance over her shoulder convinced her that it was better than the one she was currently in. The two officers had drawn .45 caliber pistols from the pockets of their raincoat and the lead one — a major from the oak leaves on his collar — halted briefly and fired, the round cracking by. Trace threw herself over the wall and began scrambling downhill.

Quincy and Isaac made it to the wall in time to see Trace disappear into the woods below.

“Follow her!” Quincy ordered.

“I’ll get the van and meet you there.” He turned and ran back to the PX parking lot.

Trace cursed as she slipped on the steep slope. She dropped the box as she desperately grabbed with both hands for a low tree branch to arrest her fall. The box continued downslope on its own. Trace followed it at a slightly slower pace and reclaimed it when it lodged next to a small boulder.

She could hear the yells from what must have been the scout jamboree at the stadium off to her far right. She glanced over her shoulder and couldn’t see any pursuit, but she assumed there had to, be. She didn’t know how they had found her. Maybe the damn checkout women in the PX were scanning IDS for all she knew. At this point it didn’t really matter.

Trace tried to come up with a plan as she continued down. She knew that there was only one way out once she got to the bottom. Target Hill Field was a level area surrounded on two sides by the mountains and on the third by the Hudson. She would have to go to the right, past the sewage treatment plant. She also knew that whoever was after her also knew that and they could cut her off. She increased her pace, ignoring safety for speed.

She broke out of the trees just to the left of the sewage treatment plant and skidded to a halt, trying to catch her breath as she looked around. The Huey helicopter she had seen was parked in the middle of the nearest soccer field.

She heard a distant yell above and behind her. No time and no other options. She ran forward to the helicopter. It was open; the crew must have been over at the scout jamboree.

A sign giving the aircraft’s specifications was leaning up against the open left cargo door; obviously the aircraft was a static display for the scouts to look at later in the day.

Trace swung open the left pilot’s door and settled into the seat. There wasn’t time to do it by the book, the way she’d been trained at Fort Rucker over ten years ago. She flicked the generator switch to start and opened the fuel flow. She grabbed the throttle and rolled it to the start position while pulling the start trigger. She was rewarded with the turbine engine slowly whining to life. She breathed a short prayer of thanks that the battery had been up to power as she watched the N-l gauge — the indicator of the. engine’s RPMS — slowly rise. The engine was still warm from its recent shutdown, so the startup was much faster than starting a cold engine.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted one of the officers emerge from the woods and look about. The I’ll gauge hit fifteen percent, and the blades overhead began to slowly turn. The officer stared at the helicopter in surprise and then began running forward. Trace increased torque on the throttle, turning on the inverter switch, going to full power. She knew she was risking overheating the engine, but the options seemed limited as the officer pointed his pistol at her from forty feet away and fired a shot. The bullet ricocheted off the Plexiglas to Trace’s right, cracking it-She pulled in the collective with her right hand, keeping the engine at full throttle. With a shudder the helicopter slowly lifted. The officer fired again, missing wildly. Trace kicked the pedals, putting the bulk of the helicopter between her and the man. She wasn’t surprised to see a van skid through the chain link fence surrounding the field and come bouncing straight toward her. She pulled further up on the collective and the gap between the skids and the ground grew. With only twenty feet of altitude, she pushed the cyclic over with her left hand and headed along the ground, away from the van.

“Come on, baby, come on, give me some power,” she pleaded as the old Huey strained under the punishment. She leveled off, still only twenty feet above the ground, with the bulk of Storm King Mountain less than 400 meters away. Trace pulled back on the cyclic, slowing her forward progress, and put everything into the cyclic, gaining altitude as quickly as possible.

She cleared the foothills of Storm King with barely five feet between the skids and the highest tree tops and was off to the west, disappearing from the sight of the two officers below.

“What do we do, sir?” Captain Isaac asked, holding his empty .45 in his hand.

“The. bitch has got to land somewhere,” Quincy said, “and when she does, she’s ours. Let’s go alert all the local airfields and the State Police.”

Trace’s options were rapidly dwindling. The thickly overcast sky was pressing down on her, forcing her to stay below 1,500 feet altitude.

With the mountainous terrain that surrounded West Point, there were only a couple of directions she could fly. Out the right window, the tree covered slopes of Crows Nest and Storm King Mountains loomed, stopping her from going north. To her rear, the low valley of the Hudson beckoned, but Trace instinctively didn’t want to go the easy way — that’s where they would look first.

South, Bear Mountain blocked the way.

In her haste to simply get away from Target Hill Field, she’d headed west and passed over Washington Gate less than a minute ago — the rear entrance to the Academy from Route 293. For the present she was following the road, fifty feet above the black ribbon. She tried to remember as best she could the surrounding terrain. Following the road was the safest route for the moment. She knew the New York State Thruway was about a dozen miles to the west and she estimated she might be able to follow that to the north and land at Stewart Airfield, a former military airbase, that had been turned over to civilian authority several years previously.

Trace figured she had a good chance of landing there and getting away in another rental before the alert went out.

At the West Point MP station. Sergeant Taylor received a call from the superintendent’s office less than two minutes after getting the radio call from two of his MPS about shots fired near the cemetery and Target Hill Field. He wasn’t surprised when the superintendent’s aide told him to ignore all reports and that nothing had happened.

Taylor instructed his MPS to stay away from whatever was going on and to forget about it. Then he picked up the phone and called the same number he had called earlier after realizing he was dealing with the supe’s office.

He started speaking as soon as the other end was picked up.

“Harry, it’s Sergeant Taylor. Something’s happening.”

Long Pond flashed by on the left, then the flashing yellow light indicating the turnoff for Camp Buckner. Trace’ banked right, overflying the long barracks that made up the summer training encampment. Popolopen Lake appeared and Trace flittered across the surface, continuing on a southwesterly direction. She knew the Bull Hill fire tower was somewhere off to her right, but the cloud cover was so low, the tops of the hills were completely covered.

Doubt began to creep into Trace’s mind. Did 293 intersect the Thruway or did it loop back to Route 6 and Bear Mountain? She had driven out this way numerous times as a cadet but that was over a dozen years ago.

Of one thing she was certain: the Thruway was to the west, and it was her best and only shot through the mountains and to Stewart Airfield.

She remembered seeing the four-lane highway from her plebe field training at Lake Frederick which she knew was very close, somewhere off to the right. With her hands full of cyclic and collective, there was no way she could check to see if there were any charts in the helmet bag next to the seat. A helicopter needs two hands to fly; let go of the controls even for the briefest of seconds and the aircraft will immediately attempt to invert and destroy itself.

A gap appeared in the solid line of green to Trace’s right as the terrain descended below the clouds, an opening heading due west. Trace made her decision and turned, heading directly into the opening. A pond appeared: Lake Frederick?

Trace wondered. She was caught between the gray clouds less than a hundred feet above and the black water thirty feet under her skids. The far side of the pond was a solid wall of trees. She was forced to turn left again, south 9 west, following the pond’s surface.

The pond gave way to swamp and Trace slowed to an airspeed of less than thirty knots. She was looking out to the right when something appeared in the corner of her eyes. As she spun her head about she screamed a curse and pulled in on the collective as she slammed the cyclic over.

High-tension wires were directly ahead, looming down out of the clouds and attached to a tower to her far left.

For a brief second Trace thought she’d make it as they flashed beneath the cockpit. The toe of the right skid didn’t clear. It hooked on the topmost wire. The helicopter tilted and the blades flashed through the steel wires, destroying the wires and themselves in a split second. The helicopter went from an aerodynamic object to a rock.

Trace’s hands were still struggling with the dead controls when the cockpit slammed into the rock wall face, then tumbled to the ground below, coming to a rest in a pile of broken tree limbs, crumpled metal, and shattered Plexiglas.