Off the Edge

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

T

he sun lit up Jim’s daydreams as a bright shaft penetrated the Seneca’s rear window. It was one of those sparkling, clear days, treasured by pilots, and common after a frontal change. He was glad not to miss the awe-inspiring sight of the North Cascade Mountains in the topaz light. On these clear days, Mount Rainier stood majestically to the south. It was just before six in the evening as the twin-engine plane banked left and started its direct course to Winthrop airport. As the plane climbed on a heading of zero six zero, Mount Baker shone brilliantly to the north. Beyond Mount Baker and the northernmost Cascades, the mountains that towered north of Vancouver were just visible on the horizon. The snowcapped peaks started to push aside thoughts of the assignment that he and Brush had just finished and allowed the more pleasant thoughts of their much-needed vacation to take over.

Jim was an expert pilot. Today, he preferred the solitude of sitting alone in the back while Brush and Bret bantered while flying the small Piper.

They were returning to Jim’s home in the north central mountains of Washington State, between the small ranching towns of Twisp and Winthrop. Since the population was small, not many people outside of Seattle even knew they existed. This peacefulness suited him, and he was looking forward to the quiet and some rest. Brush, on the other hand, never craved this kind of stand-down nourishment. His energy level never seemed to wane. Even at forty-four years old the somewhat stocky Canadian was always available for a party. He loved women and they loved him back, so he had never wanted, or needed, to settle down.

In some ways, Jim felt the same. His crazy lifestyle still made him happy. He took his occupation as assistant head of the State Department’s Biological Warfare Section seriously. He still lived for his work, which allowed him to help people that no one else seemed able to.

Suddenly, the dark memory that haunted him flashed into his mind and he was unable to extinguish it. Uncontrolled, his thoughts carried him back twenty-five years to the Cambodia-Vietnam border. The ever-repeating images of two trusting little girls and their mother engulfed his mind. He had promised them they would be safe with him and instead he had gotten them killed. He shook his head to clear the thoughts.

Sometimes the memory was just too intense to shake loose; this time he pulled away from it. He often involuntarily relived that time a over quarter century earlier in a small village just over the Cambodian border. The village children had been fascinated by Jim and Brush, and two girls in particular had become their favorites.

They had come from nowhere, regular NVA, North Vietnamese Army soldiers. Jim and Brush had called immediately for an emergency evacuation. As was standard operating procedure, the army would not respond over the border, but Captain Will Crystal would not even consider abandoning a soldier just because he was on the wrong side of a political border. He had been in the air immediately, headed as fast as he could to their location.

Jim was certain that the villagers who had befriended them would all be slaughtered, and the women and children r***d. Through their interpreter, he had told the two girls and their mother to stay close to him and he would get them to a better place, a safe place. He didn’t know what he was going to do with them later. It didn’t matter. Only the now mattered. Jim could see the fear in their eyes. He watched as it turned to trust and hope. They made their way toward the chopper as it churned their red smoke. Suddenly, black-clothed soldiers came at them from all sides. Jim was shot in the leg. The mother, her two daughters, and the interpreter ran in fear. He watched helplessly as, screaming, they were chewed-up in a deadly AK-47 crossfire. The rescue chopper’s door gunner saved Jim and Brush, but it was too late for the family. The family that had believed Jim would take them to a better life. Their hopeful, helpless faces were incised in his brain cells.

The memory and his failure became even worse when they returned with reinforcements a few days later and found that the villagers had not been harmed by the NVA soldiers. Jim’s mistake became magnified a hundred times in his memory. He had barely survived that day and would not have if the stocky Canadian had not picked him up like a sack of grain and thrown him into the chopper.

The black memory of his wrong decision, a fatal decision, never left him. Sometimes their faces appeared in his dreams and sometimes they were vivid faces of trust and other times only a hazy thought that churned just under his conscious thoughts. Then came the image of their innocent bodies, b****y and lifeless.

Brush knew that Jim had risked his life countless times since then—just as he had only a few days ago—trying to make right the error he had made so long ago. Even if they had just helped save Rwandan refugees from an ugly experiment, it would never be enough to erase from his memory that fatal mistake.

As the dark memory faded to the edge of consciousness, Jim forced his thoughts to shift to the present. A moment later, a glimmer of contentment passed over his face and he could not prevent a small smile. Heather would be waiting. He was certain that no other two people could be as close as they were. Their relationship, however, was more often lived in their minds, without communication, as he worked on sensitive assignments in remote and faraway places. He still felt the need to be useful, and perhaps he was addicted to the excitement—not to mention the danger—he and Brush always found in their work. A conundrum, one that was becoming more and more pronounced in his mind. He knew his work was his life, but without Heather, would life be worthwhile? Could he be content to abandon these adventures and settle into a soft and easy life with Heather? The dark memory stabbed into his thoughts again. A static flash of trusting brown eyes fused in his brain. Deep down he knew he could not quit his work and be with Heather full-time until he extinguished it completely from his active memory and found a way to live with his guilt. He wondered if he ever could.

Although Brush, antithetically to Jim, remained proud to be a ladies’ man, his quick wit and physical skills made him indispensable as a partner and best friend. Brush’s father was American, consequently Brush was surprised but not displeased when he received a draft notice for US Army. Jim and Brush had met as teenagers in Vietnam and forged their friendship in more battles and adventures than either could remember. Their respect for each other amazed Heather and anyone else who knew them well. They always seemed to know precisely what the other was thinking. Small talk was not something they often engaged in, and they were usually content to be silent. They rarely discussed their past missions and adventures, as they were usually too preoccupied with the present to dwell on what had gone before. The only exception was the memory that was always burning just below the surface of Jim’s conscious mind, smoky images drifting in and out of his thoughts. At times, he almost convinced himself that he had made the best choice, but had he?

Once again, he managed to shake loose the past, and his thoughts returned to Heather as the light twin plane began its descent over Lake Chelan and the mountains that separated it from the Methow Valley. He hoped she had arrived in time to meet them at the airport. His smile widened and his eyes crinkled; he knew she would not miss being there, not miss meeting him. He closed his eyes to better picture her lithe but shapely body. The image always gave him a sense of instant pleasure he was still not sure he understood. At five foot six, the green-eyed brunette was a few inches shorter than him. Although she had been part of his life for more than fourteen years his passion for her had not dimmed. In fact, it seemed so intense that he was sure it had increased, although he didn’t see how it could be possible. Physically, he thought she was perfect but equally important to him was her mind. She was a scientist, specializing in botany. Even though her science fieldwork and his missions often kept them apart for many months of the year, separated by vast gulfs of ocean and air, he could still feel her circling deep in his molecules, always present. He could sense her now, and it brought a small smile to his lips. They knew that their lives together had a mystical quality that could not be replaced. The times apart were hard, but they both had their careers. In the past, he was as addicted to his lifestyle and work as he was to her. Now that parity was unbalancing. Slowly, inexorably, she was becoming more important than anything else.

The plane descended rapidly from thirteen thousand feet, barely skimming the mountaintops as it descended into the Twisp River valley. The airport elevation was sixteen hundred feet and only eight miles from the last Sawtooth Mountain ridge. The little twin engine Piper bumped and dipped its way down in the early evening turbulence.

To their south was Oval Peak at nearly nine thousand feet. It was the last place that Brush, Heather, and Jim’s old college professor Simon Quincy had gone on a llama-packing trip. They had another trip planned in a few days to Horseshoe Basin, thirty-seven miles north of Twisp in the Pasayten Wilderness. The basin’s vast wilderness expanse was as special to him as it was to Heather.

Brush turned in the cockpit and gave his best friend his ever-present smile and a thumbs-up. Brush would never say anything to Jim, but he felt Jim had been different in Rwanda, more reflective than normal. Maybe it was just age. Maybe something to do with Heather. It would not be the first time that Jim had dwelled on mistakes, his past mistakes. Brush hoped that the break and time with Heather would allow Jim to resolve whatever it was that was bothering him. Over their years together, he was always amazed by Jim’s special resilience that allowed him to wake up with a smile no matter how bad the previous day had been, or how bad the current one portended to be. Brush turned his attention back to the plane, and hoped Jim stayed that way.

The flight had been as uneventful as the scenery was spectacular. He had raised the wind spoilers after starting their descent over the last ridge. They allowed him to reduce power slowly without picking up too much speed. Brush pulled in a notch of flaps, slowing the plane even more and, while marvelling at the beauty of the valley, he kept a close eye on the instruments.

The Methow was a small, glaciated valley with jagged, snow-covered peaks to the west and softer, pine-covered lower mountains to the east. Winding through its center, the Methow River dashed into the valley on its way from the high glacier peaks in the north until it merged with the voluminous Columbia, and eventually the Pacific Ocean. The lower valley was studded with aspen and hay fields. Sagebrush and bitter brush mostly covered the lower hills, but above three thousand feet the hills were covered with ponderosa pines. The Pinus occidentalis, as Heather never tired of telling visitors, and the Psuedotsuga menziesii, the false hemlock, better known as Douglas fir, grew lower on the north sides of the hills, while the south sides were mostly grass and brush. The sage was quite different from the green, woody plants that Brush’s mother had named him after, hundreds of miles east in his Canadian hometown of Smith Falls, Ontario.

Brush continued to fine-tune the plane. He was grateful for the wind spoilers, a recent addition to the aircraft, which had immediately become invaluable. Without them, there was a choice of cruising around wasting fuel so as not to over-speed on the steep descent or pulling the power back too fast and possibly shock-cooling the turbocharged engines. With the spoilers, he could dive straight into the airport.