“Go, go, go!” she said. She got an arm under Aidan, and Bob did too, and they slung him up and onto the top of the wing—he was exposed then, but there was nothing else they could do, and he clung tight to it, flattening himself as a bullet whined over his head. Then Emily threw herself up and forward, got her top half onto the wing, squirmed up until she was lying facedown next to Aidan, an arm around him to hold him tight. She glanced right and saw that Bob was on too, and they were accelerating, gathering speed down the slope.
They passed one of the men in white, and he spun, rifle pointing at them, fired an automatic burst that hammered against the wing. Emily clutched Aidan’s hand, pulled herself even closer to him and him closer to her, so she was wrapped around him, almost, as they swished over the snow, going quickly now, toward the tree line.
She pressed him to her. For warmth. For protection.
Suddenly she realized: they would hit a tree and stop and that would be it.
But they didn’t.
They shot smoothly through a stand of pines, and on the other side was a wide, long expanse of snow, almost like a ski run, all the way down to a forested hill above a river, far below. Faster and faster they went, snow whipping their faces, the cold air rushing, a thing of form, not emptiness, like water, flowing over them and into their eyes, the hiss of the wing as it glided downhill like anxiety and relief made into sound.
It was then that she realized their mistake: they had only the clothes they were wearing, no blankets, nothing to wrap themselves in. The cold air hummed against the wing, as if singing of how it was going to kill them.
She hung on: to the wing; to Aidan. And balanced, feeling every shift and slide of the wing. Holding on was something she was good at. Balanced she had been, once.
But she was working on it.
It felt like a mile, two miles, they must have gone, down that long slope of snow, until they hit a rock just before the forest and were slingshot—a moment of pure weightlessness, tumbling, Emily trying to enfold Aidan with her body, to encase him in her strength—and crashed into a snowbank. Where the impact made her let go.
Aidan Aidan Aidan.
She fumbled desperately for his limbs, for the outline of his body. He was wailing with pain…until she realized he was laughing.
“You OK?” she said.
“I think so.” He smiled. “Let’s do it again.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
They sat up, looking back at the mountain they had come down. There was no way the remaining men could follow, not without being seen. And they knew Emily had a rifle. Or at least, they thought she did. She had dropped it somehow, in the chaos of the slide. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How many? she wondered. She wasn’t sure if the explosion had killed the one who had fallen. So at least two but possibly three. And they’d be coming, rifle or no rifle.
“Well, goddamn,” said Bob. He was lying flat on his back but then levered himself up. His gun-shot arm hung at his side. Blood staining his sleeve. They were going to have to do something about that.
“Can you walk?” said Emily. “We need to keep moving.” She was thinking of those men, clad in white, their eyes covered, ready to shoot. They’d be coming, and they’d be pissed.
“Sure,” said Bob. “But give me five minutes, OK, boss?”
She blinked. Nodded.
He took his cigarettes from his pocket, and his lighter. Emily shook her head at him. It was possible the men would see the flame, from up on the mountain. If they thought Emily and the others had been wiped out, if they’d seen the wing suddenly stop, and flip, then they may as well keep thinking that.
Bob sighed.
“I’m glad you have the lighter, though,” she said. “That was smart, to bring it.” She knew he’d just had it in his pocket, it had been there by default, but, well, it didn’t hurt to flatter people, especially ones you were stuck with in a survival situation.
He smiled very slightly.
Yep.
They sat there for a moment longer, looking up at the mountain in the pale sunlight. They could see the orangey red of the still-burning helicopter, its smoking ghost rising into the air.
“So, are you going to tell me who the hell those guys are?” asked Bob. “I mean, I’ve done some air defense work, contract stuff for the military bases up here. And these guys, whoever they are, they’re serious.”
“I guess you could call them the men in black,” Emily said.
“They were wearing white.”
She stood, and helped Aidan up. “Yeah, well,” she said. “It’s snowy.”
CHAPTER 9
THEY LEFT THE wing where it was. Emily wanted to keep moving. Needed to keep moving. So that Aidan would be safe.
“They’ll be coming,” she said. “The ones who are still alive. At least two of them. Maybe the other one too, the one who was knocked down by the explosion. I don’t know if he’s…dead or not.”
A pang as she said the word dead. Something like a stitch, but in her heart. She had shot deer before; rabbits. She had not wanted, ever, to shoot a person. Even her dad, macho man extraordinaire, wouldn’t talk about the people he’d killed in Iraq.
“Why?” said Bob. “What do they want?”
“Who,” said Emily.
“What?”
“Who—not what—is what they want. But I’ll explain later.”
“No,” he said. “You’ll explain now.” His eyes were hard, and he wasn’t smiling even a little bit.
Emily touched his hand; it was a manipulative move, a power move, the kind of thing call-me-Rachel, her cheerleading coach, would have done, but she didn’t have time to take it slow. “Listen,” she said. “I will tell you what’s going on. I mean, where am I going to go?” She gestured at the emptiness all around them. “But first I need to make sure you don’t die, and we need to put some distance between ourselves and those assault rifles while there’s still light.”
She looked down as she said it, and he followed her eyes and saw the blood on the snow, from his bullet wound.
He took a breath. He knew as well as she did that daytime was a fleeting thing up here. “OK.”
She made him sit on the rock they had crashed into, and looked at his upper arm. There were two distinct blossoms of blood on his sweater, front and back; the bullet had gone right through. That was good. She thought so anyway—she wasn’t exactly experienced with bullet wounds, not ones in people, but she figured there was less chance of infection with the bullet not still inside.