Page 28 of Mountain Impact

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Two hours later, Drake leaned back against a different helicopter wall, listening to Beau Fontaine, commander of the Annecy unit, drone on and on about those older helicopters in that gruff voice of his.

“It wasn’t the helicopter’s fault, Beau. I clipped the rock,” Kat insisted.

It must be strange for her to be sitting down back here with them. She’d wanted to stay back with her machine, but the colonel had called them all back. The mechanic wasn’t going to be available until the following morning, and nobody wanted Kat to sleep out there.

“While flying the machine in a storm, working to get a man onto that ledge with only a thirty meter winch cable,” Drake clarified. “I’m with Beau on this one.”

“Come here, Kat,” Gael said, reaching out and giving Kat an easy hug. Gael looked exhausted, but his dark green eyes were smiling. Beside them, on a stretcher, the injured climber dozed, supervised by Jens.

Back up in the mountains, when he’d realized the team wasn’t going to be able to get them out, Gael had managed the unthinkable. Using only a scalpel, an elastic bougie and an endotracheal tube, he’d performed a surgical cricothyroidotomy and successfully established an airway.

In the middle of a fucking storm.

“Good work out there, Gael,” Drake said.

“The scar’s not going to be pretty.” Gael looked down at his hands. “I’m really not cut out to be a surgeon.”

“He’ll be alive to tell the story, which is more than would have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

“We’re home,” the pilot informed them. Moments later, they felt the helicopter touch the ground gently. They moved quickly out of the way, making space for the two doctors who jumped inside to help with the patient. Jens exchanged a couple words with one of the two women, and then moved to the side, letting them take over.

As they stepped out of the helicopter, it had finally stopped raining.

“Cerveza?” Gael suggested, smiling.

“What a day,” Drake said. “You guys all―”

The words died in his mouth as Jens’s large body crumpled. Drake rushed forward, only just managing to catch his friend before he hit the tarmac.

“I need help here!” Drake shouted.

Chapter 10

Isolde

This wasn’t the first time Isolde had rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night. In her line of work, it happened more often than she’d like, such as whenever a police officer was injured―but getting a call from Drake, asking him to meet him at the hospital, had terrified her.

He called me.

That means he’s okay.

It has to mean that.

Putting on the same clothes she’d worn to work earlier that day, which were still lying across the back of a chair, Isolde got into her car and drove to the Hôpital du Pays in record time. She was glad there was still no snow on the roads.

I really have to get rid of that car sometime …

She hadn’t thought of asking Drake where he was, but assumed the Urgences desk was the most reasonable place to start looking. She knew a lot of people here, but not the two women manning the reception.

She was about to approach them when she suddenly saw Drake, pacing at the end of the corridor, outside the restricted area.

“Drake!”

Physically, he seemed to be okay. He was wearing navy blue technical pants and a light blue polo shirt, covered in stains.

Is that blood?