Clear to Lift (26 page)

“Rescue Seven, Range Ops, what's your status, over?” Captain Woodrow asks.

God help me.
I press my lips together, swallowing, swallowing, my throat sore from the effort.

“No joy,” I finally push out.

The guard frequency becomes a tomb—not one sound from Hammer or anyone else for the full ten minutes of our return flight to base.

*   *   *

As I drive home—it's now four in the morning—I have the nightmare déjà vu moment from hell, pulling over to the side of the road, to the same pasture I visited after Shane flew me in his F/A-18. I vomit, as I did then, but this time I can't seem to stop, retching when there's nothing left to throw up. The despair brings me to my knees. On hands and feet, I rock back and forth, trying to get my breath back, numb from the inside out.

And the rain starts to fall again.

 

28

“He hit his tail, Rich, while pulling up,” I say, still drowning in disbelief. The words are coming out, but it's like someone else is saying them.

I cried myself out at the side of the road in the middle of the night, returning home a miserable, frozen shell. I know I'm not supposed to let it in. I normally don't. My defenses are usually up, just like they are for the rest of our team. Morbid gallows humor gets us through sometimes, but mostly, we detach.

I've been at the command for just over five months now, and this is death number four, up close and personal. The first? An F-5 pilot attempted to recover from an unrecoverable flat spin. Too late, he ejected, upside down, two hundred feet above the ground. We found him on a hillside, thrown away from the wreckage, his body leaning against a tree. From behind, he appeared to be resting, just back from the barber, his hair freshly cut. That sliver of hope rose.
He's okay. He must be.
Until our crewman pulled back on his shoulder to check his pulse, and his face fell apart, caved in like a jack-o'-lantern three weeks past Halloween.

I saw this, my physical body present. But in my mind, it registered just on the periphery, like a black-and-white horror movie, disconnected from all feeling. Same with deaths number two and three, a civilian glider pilot we found in the Sierra and a car-accident victim who took her last breath in our aircraft on the way to the hospital.

But Snoopy—Shane—bright eyes, quick, intelligent, humble, so ridiculously highly trained, and such a gifted flyer. Of course, we'll have to wait for the results of the mishap investigation, but when I contacted the base prior to calling Rich, the talk among those in the know centered around how fast the barometric pressure was changing, also suspect altimeter readings, and possible instrument failure. Bottom line, they felt Snoopy had done everything right. And that's the hardest part for me to reconcile.

Apparently, it's also hard for someone else—Rich.

“That doesn't mean he did something wrong,” I say.

The conversation took a strange turn earlier, Rich's questions about the accident ringing far more like accusations, and I find myself defending Snoopy.

“All I'm saying, Alison, is you can't take this so hard,” he says, trying to cheer me up but failing in a very big way. “This is on him. If he'd done everything right, as you say he did, he wouldn't have crashed. That's just the fact of it.”

“How can you be so flippant?” I say, my voice rising.

“Whoa, whoa! Ali, don't get angry. You're making way too much of this.”

“Am I? ‘That's just the fact of it'? You're sitting in your penthouse condominium in San Diego with your feet up on an ottoman watching reality TV on your eighty-inch flat screen and have the audacity to say, ‘If he'd done everything right, he wouldn't have crashed'? Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Ali! Wait! Don't do this! I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.”

“You have no comprehension of this, do you?”

“No, that's not it. This is a tragedy. It's awful. Of course you should be affected. It's just … well, it's just that you've always handled it before.”

“But I've told you about him, Rich. We've talked about Snoopy. I flew with him. Knew him. We were joking around just a week ago.”

“Ali, please. Look, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, all right?”

I take a moment to breathe, to corral my emotions, knowing deep inside that something has just irrevocably shifted in our relationship, something that, like a flat spin, will not be recoverable.

He doesn't understand. Can't. Here's a man whose biggest worry revolves around the roadside-assistance plan for his Lexus.
“It runs out at the forty-eight-month point, one of those items in small print, but I think they have a deal with Triple A where you can get a membership at a discount to keep the coverage after the four-year mark,”
he said during
this
very phone call. Yes, this is how our conversation started this morning. I listened to his “woes” in a state of suspended animation. This minutia. This trivial, insignificant, meaningless, of-no-account, worthless, unimportant blather.

And after, he asked how I was doing.

“I have to go,” I say.

“You're hanging up mad. Please don't.”

I'm about to respond with something positively rude, but I stop myself. I'm not blameless here. I joined the navy for security, as crazy as that sounds. Advice from Grandpa Alther, who enjoyed a successful, thirty-year navy career. He forever espoused the built-in support system found in the military. Something that couldn't be yanked out from under you.

So by the time I had made the decision to enter the military, everything about it seemed safe and familiar—guaranteed housing, health care, a paycheck, all the “guarantees” my mother and I lacked when my father left us. And within that context, I've locked myself in a supposedly impenetrable cocoon—life insurance, savings accounts, a stock portfolio, a 401K, annuities, mutual funds, and yes, even an AAA membership. Protected. Secure.

Flat tire? Covered. Dead battery? Got that, too. Extended warranty on the car? It goes without saying. Wrapping myself in security blankets, just like Rich.

When we met a year and a half ago, Rich and I matched. We were planners. Organized. The next fifty years of our lives laid out before us.
Just
do this, and such and such will happen. Got it wired. No problem. That's
just
the fact of it.

But Snoopy had plans, too. He was on top of it. In charge. In control. And in love … And yet, his life was snuffed out in a millisecond. I've always felt I was in control—until I got to Fallon, that is, now tiptoeing on a knife edge, barely splitting the difference between sliding on the blade and slicing myself with it.

And that same realization—in control one minute, out of it the next—occurred while I was hugging a rock face on Donner Summit.
“Let go, Alison! You gotta let go!”
That's what Will said, someone who knows all too well that control is an illusion. That things don't always turn out the way you'd like. That bad things happen to good people, prepared people. No rhyme or reason. Stuff just happens. Hell, it happened to me on Basin Mountain.

And in an electric moment of clarity, the truth sinks in. Really sinks in. That thing that's been knocking deep in my gut for weeks, but that I now know with certainty—I'm talking to the wrong person.

“Ali, are you there?”

“I'm here.”

“Is everything okay? I mean, we're okay, right?”

I take a deep breath. Hold it.

“No, Rich. We're not okay.”

 

29

My eyes flick to the dashboard clock—1105.
No!
I'm not going to make it!

I speed west on Interstate 80, assuming Will is still at the airport, but not knowing for certain.

I tried to call him before leaving, but—no surprise—was transferred to voice mail. Even if he could have answered, I doubt he would have.

You have to try, Ali. At least try.

I rub my eyes, still bloodshot after the
two-hour
conversation I had with Rich. It was the breakup conversation I hadn't planned on having—the ending of our engagement—and it was torturous.

I tried to convey—with difficulty, because Rich wouldn't hear it—that this was not his fault. Yes, I was upset with him, with how he handled Shane's death. But that wasn't the reason for breaking our engagement. It was just the smack in the head for me. The wake-up call that so many other things were wrong with our relationship. That our pairing just wasn't right, wasn't meant to be.

He's still a smart, engaging, successful man. He hasn't changed … nor will he.
I
have changed, and I can't go back to that place where Rich dwells in his small circle of stale comfort.

Rain spatters against the windshield. Spat. Spat. Spat. My brain muddied. Thick. Tired.

I wind through a curvy swath of low foothills that leads into Reno, noting the dirt and slush piled high to the sides of the road. Another weather system settled in today. Back-to-back warm fronts. And the rain that started falling early this morning continues, only heavier now.

I grip the steering wheel firmly, focusing on the slippery road ahead, but my gaze keeps drifting to my bare left ring finger.

I envision the jeweler's box housing my engagement ring sitting forlornly on my nightstand at home. Prior to Rich's visit, I hadn't worn the ring since October nineteenth, a date that just so happened to correspond with the rescue on Mount Morrison and my first introduction to a certain Will Cavanaugh.

Day to day, I'd explained it away. I was flying—of course, no wearing it then—or I was exhausted, having come home late, or tired, having woken up early, or I was going to be swimming that day. Any number of excuses. So when Rich and I finally returned to my apartment after the Basin Mountain “adventure,” I had to rush into the bedroom, blow the dust off the box before Rich could see, open it, and put the ring back on my finger.

I should have seen it all along, this sign, written in the tea leaves, like so many others. After Rich left Thursday, I pulled the ring off my finger and stowed it in the box—presumably, so it wouldn't slip off while I showered that morning. And there it's stayed.…

I told Rich I'd send it back to him, but he wouldn't hear of it. Said it was mine. His promise to me …

I grab a tissue. Damn it.

That conversation was so hard. I hurt him, plain and simple. I tried to explain I wasn't the right one for him, but he wouldn't accept it. And as we talked, I realized I was on the devil end of the worst, most horribly clichéd kind of breakup conversation there is.
There's nothing wrong with you. It's just me.
Those words actually came out of my mouth! And the more I talked, the more I built him up, listing everything that is nice and funny and sweet about him, how another girl is going to be so lucky. All of that. I said
all
of that! To which he responded, “And that's not enough?”

I pull another tissue from the box.

Damn, damn, damn.

Another glance at the clock—
1120!

Please let me make it! Please still be there, Will!

The rain pounds, a muted roar across the roof, almost loud enough to drown out the sound of the ringing.…

Ringing!

The phone lying on the passenger seat glows. It's Will.

“Hello?” I say.

“Alison? Is that you?”

“Yes! Will, I really need to talk with you.”

In the background, the sounds of people shuffling, suitcases rolling, bells and dings, flight announcements on the PA system.

“Alison, I'm at the airport. I'm going to be stepping on a plane here in about twenty minutes.”

“I know. I'm driving to the airport now.”

“What?”

“I really … I just need to … Will, a friend of mine was killed in an F/A-Eighteen last night. We did the search. I saw him—” I say, choking on the words.

“Oh, Jesus. Where are you now?”

“Just entering Reno. I think I can be there in ten minutes.”

“Okay, I'll meet you in the main lobby, by the slot machines. Do you know where that is?”

“I know it. I'll be there soon. Thank you, Will.”

*   *   *

I rush from the parking garage, outside to the crosswalk, using a run-walk to move across the slippery concrete to the terminal. Water runs over my hair and drips across my face as I race through the double doors that slide open to the lobby, maneuvering through what looks like the floor of a casino, slot machines flashing and ringing.

He stands just outside Peet's Coffee and Tea, hands in the pockets of his gray mountaineering pants, wearing a loose technical T-shirt, untucked, topped by a thin microfleece jacket. His boarding pass is shoved in his back pocket, and he carries a small leather carry-on bag, slung over his shoulder. His eyes latch on to mine, brimming with empathy and understanding, but something else, too. Something that sends my heart racing.

As much as I don't want them to, my eyes begin to water. My hands move to my face, covering my mouth, and I feel the sobs collecting in my throat. It's Snoopy, but it's Will, too. Facing him, missing him, needing him.

He doesn't hesitate, stepping forward and wrapping his arms around me. My breaths come in hitches, my shoulders shaking as the tears come. He squeezes tighter, running a comforting hand across the back of my head. And that energy that is uniquely his envelops me.

I've never been held by him, not like this, so I didn't know what to expect. But it's different, much different, from how it was with Rich. I
fit
here. Part of it is physical. Rich stands just an inch taller than me, whereas Will has me by about five inches—six-one, six-two?—so my head fits perfectly in the crook of his neck. And chemically? My systems are wired to him, my body molecules standing at attention and shouting,
“This is the one!”
As much as I tried to convince myself otherwise with Rich, there's just no comparison. I knew it the first time I ran into Will in the bakery, the first day I met him.