Christmas at Thunder Horse Ranch. Elle James
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had decided to go with a few others to visit a local orphanage.
On the way back, her vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. Three of the four people on board the military vehicle had died instantly. Samantha had survived long enough to get a call through to the base. By the time medics arrived, she’d lost too much blood.
Dante had constructed images in his mind of Samantha lying on the ground, the uniform she’d been so proud to wear torn, a pool of her own blood soaking into the desert sand.
He’d thought through the chain of events over and over, wondering if he’d gone straight from his mission to Bagram, would Samantha have stayed inside the wire instead of venturing out? Had their talk about the babies they wanted spurred her to visit the children no one wanted? Those whose parents had been collateral damage or killed by the Taliban as warning or retribution?
Today was the third anniversary of her death. When Chris had called in sick, Dante couldn’t cancel the flight, and he sure as hell couldn’t stay at home with his memories haunting him.
For three years, he’d pored over the events of that day, wishing he could go back and change things so that Samantha was still there. How was he expected to get on with his life when her memory haunted him?
The only place he felt any peace whatsoever was soaring above the earth. Sometimes he felt closer to Samantha, as if he was skimming the underbelly of heaven.
As he neared the general area of the farm in the report, movement brought his mind back to earth. A dark shape exploded out of a copse of trees, moving swiftly into the open. It appeared to be a man on a snowmobile. The vehicle came to a halt in the middle of a wide-open field and the man dismounted.
Dante dropped lower and circled, trying to figure out what he was up to. About the time he keyed his mic to radio back to headquarters, he saw the man unstrap what appeared to be a long pipe from the back of his snowmobile and fit something into one end of it.
Recognition hit, and Dante’s blood ran cold. He jerked the aircraft up as quickly as he could. But he was too late.
The man on the ground fired a rocket-propelled grenade.
Dante dodged left, but the grenade hit the tail and exploded. The helicopter lurched and shuddered. He tried to keep it steady, but the craft went into a rapid spin. Realizing his tail rudder had probably been destroyed, Dante had to land and if he didn’t land level, the blades could hit first, break off and maybe even end his life.
The chopper spun, the centrifugal force making it difficult for Dante to think and move. He reached up and switched the engines off, but not soon enough. The aircraft plummeted to the ground, a blade hit first, broke off and slammed into the next blade. The skids slammed against the ground and Dante was thrown against the straps of his harness. He flung an arm over his face as fragments of the blades acted like flying shrapnel, piercing the chopper’s body and windows. The helicopter rolled onto its side and stopped.
Suspended by his harness, Dante tried to key the mic on his radio to report his aircraft down. The usual static was absent, the aircraft lying as silent as death.
Dante dragged his headset off his head. Frigid wind blew through the shattered windows and the scent of fuel stung his nostrils.
The sound of an engine revving caught Dante’s attention. The engine noise grew closer, moving toward his downed aircraft. Had the predator come to finish off his prey?
He scrambled for the harness releases, finally finding and pulling on the quick-release buckles. He dropped on his left side, pain knifing through his arm. Gritting his teeth, he scrambled to his knees on the door beneath him and attempted to reach up to push against the passenger door. Burning pain stabbed his left arm again and he dropped the arm and worked with his good arm to fling the passenger-side door open. It bounced on its hinges and smashed closed again, nearly crushing his fingers with the force.
He hunched his shoulder and nudged the door with it, pushing it open with a little less force. This time, the door remained open and he stood, his head rising above the body of the craft. As he took stock of the situation, a bullet pinged against the craft’s fuselage.
Dante ducked. A snowmobile had come to a stop a hundred yards away, the rider bent over the handlebars, pointing a high-powered rifle in his direction. With nothing but the body of the helicopter between him and the bullets, Dante was a sitting duck.
He sniffed the acrid scent of aviation fuel growing more potent as the time passed and more bullets riddled the exterior of the craft. If he stayed inside the helicopter, he stood a chance of the craft bursting into flames and being burned alive. If the bullets sparked a fire, the fuel would burn. If the flames reached the tanks, it would create a tremendous explosion.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bright orange flicker of a flame. In seconds, the ground surrounding his helicopter was a wall of fire.
Amid the roar of flames, the snowmobile revved and swooped closer.
Debating how long he should wait before throwing himself out on the ground, Dante could feel the heat of the flames against his cheeks. If he didn’t leave soon, there wouldn’t be anything left for the attacker to shoot.
The engine noise faded, drowned out by the roar of the fire.
With fire burning all around him, Dante pulled himself out of the fuselage one-armed and dropped to the ground. His shoulder hit a puddle of the flaming fuel and his jumpsuit ignited.
Rolling through the wall of flames, Dante couldn’t get the flame to die out. His skin heated, the fuel was thoroughly soaked into the fabric. He rolled away from the flame, onto his back, unzipped the flight suit and shimmied out of it before the burning fabric melted and stuck to his skin.
Another bullet thunked into the earth beside Dante. Wearing nothing but thermal underwear, Dante rolled over in the snow, hugging the ground, giving his attacker very little target to aim at.
Covered in snow, with nothing to defend himself, Dante awaited his fate.
* * *
EMMA JENNINGS HAD spent the morning bundled in her thermal underwear, snow pants, winter jacket, earmuffs and gloves, one of them fingerless. Yes, it was getting colder by the minute. Yes, she should have given up two days ago, but she felt like she was so close, and the longer she waited, the harder the ground got as permafrost transformed it from soft dirt to hard concrete.
The dig had been abandoned by everyone else months ago when school had started up again at the University of North Dakota. Emma came out on weekends hoping to get a little farther along. Fall had been unseasonably warm with only one snowfall in late October that had melted immediately. Six inches of snow had fallen three days ago and seemed in no hurry to melt, though the ground hadn’t hardened yet. The next snowfall expected for that evening would be the clincher, with the predicted two feet of snow.
If she hadn’t set up a tent around the dig site months ago, she never would have come. As it was, school was out and she’d come with her tiny trailer in tow, with the excuse that she needed to pull down the tent and stow it for the winter. If not for the steep roof, the tent would easily collapse under the twenty-four inches of white powder. Not to mention the relentless winds across the prairie would destroy the tent if it was left standing throughout the wicked North Dakota winter.
Each weekend since fall semester began had proved to be fair and Emma had gone out to dig until this weekend. Some had doubted there’d be snow for Christmas. Not Emma. She’d lived in North Dakota all her life, and never once in her twenty-six years had the snow missed North Dakota at Christmas.
So far, the dig had produced the lower jawbone of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Emma was certain if she kept digging, she’d find the skull of the animal nearby. The team of paleontologists and students who’d been on the dig all summer had unearthed neck bones, and near the end of the summer, the jawbone. The skull had to be close. She just needed a little more time.
There to tear down the tent before it was buried in knee-deep drifts, she’d ducked inside to find the ground smooth and dry and the dirt