He always handwrote the letter, and it usually took him a couple of drafts.  This time was no different.  He slipped the final piece of paper from the top drawer of his desktop stationary cabinet, a nice, heavy paper, and wrote the final copy.  He carefully folded it, making sure it was in perfect thirds. 

He looked over the letter.  His eyes misted up, just as they had every time he’d written one of these.  Even though he’d done it more than a score of times, each time was like looking into a fresh wound.  He read it over, inspecting every inch of the sheet.  If Nancy was going to get it, he wanted to be sure that the last thing he gave her was perfect in every possible way.  He set the folded letter down on his desk and reached for a matching envelope. 

“Seriously?” he said out loud in frustration when he didn’t see one in the small, oak stationary cabinet on his desk. 

The rest of his gear was packed and ready to go.  Stu would be by any minute to pick him up.  He walked through to make sure everything was put away.  He’d done it dozens of times, but each time he did the same checks… just so if something happened, Nancy or the girls wouldn’t walk in and find a mess… like it would matter then.  If they came in, he was already dead. 

He thought about writing letters for each of the girls, but he didn’t know what to say.  He’d never known what to say to them. 

He thought about little Caroline.  When she was a little girl, she always wanted blocks… she wanted to build.  She wasn’t good at it, but she still wanted to do it.  What she was good at was drawing.  Sometimes, she would set up her blocks like a city, and then draw what she had set up.  Callie would change her angle and draw it again.  Eventually she figured out how to build with the blocks, but drawing was what she was drawn to, and as she went into her senior year, she had decided that she wanted to be an architect. 

Rachael was already working toward a degree in culinary arts.  He kept thinking of her burning grilled cheese… and he ate dozens of them as she practiced until she got it right.  Then she stuck eggs to a frying pan.  Over and over.  And he ate most of them.  But she cooked for him a few months ago… some fancy thing that he didn’t even know what it was… and it was amazing.

The knock at the door startled him, even though he was expecting it.  It was Stu’s knock, tap-tap, tap.  Two knocks, a pause, then one more. 

Greg opened the door, “Just a second, Stu.  I’m looking for an envelope for my letter to Nancy.”

“Let me check the truck, buddy.  I think I have some down in the console,” Stu said, turning and heading back to the parking lot. 

He returned a moment later, “I thought so.  I usually have a few in the truck.  I have one that is a nice, heavy paper, too.  Like you usually use for your letter.”  Stu knew the deal.  He’d been holding Greg’s letters for years and couldn’t remember how many times he’d taken that responsibility.  He viewed it as an honor.

“Thanks, man,” Greg said, grabbing the letter from the desk and slipping it into the envelope, quickly sealing it up and handing it back to Stu. 

Major Stuart Champion took the envelope and slid it into his inside jacket pocket.  He grabbed the duffle closest to his foot and headed back out to his truck.  The drive to the base would be quick, but they were running a little late for Greg Green’s flight out. 

“We need to roll, brother,” Stu said as he walked away. 

Greg was only a couple of steps behind him with his other bag. 

She had a break from Eric during second period and was able to sit with Jakob in Science.  He had asked her if she could go to a movie with him on Valentine’s Day, and she was really excited, hoping her parents would let her go.  Then it occurred to her that more and more, when she thought of Gunny and Melody, she thought of them as “Mom and Dad” rather than by name.  That gave her a smile as science ended. 

English was another matter.  Eric was in her third period, and he was at it again.  She did everything she could to stay calm.  If there had been another seat in the class, she would have moved to it, but she had already asked Mr. Silas if she could switch to another seat and he’d refused her.  She didn’t know why, but she was pretty sure he didn’t like her.

As class was ending, she gathered her books and started out of the class.  Her locker was in the hall just outside, and she hurried to put her stuff away so she could get to lunch.  She spun her lock and opened the locker, putting her books inside. 

As she turned, Eric reached out and grabbed her chest.  “I bet you like it when ‘Jakob the tard’ does that, don’t you?  You puttin’ out for him yet?  I hear that you are a dirty girl.”

She hadn’t even thought about what she was doing.  She swept up with her arm, driving into his forearm and knocking it away from her.  Then she jabbed her other fist into his stomach with a lightning quick punch, knocking the breath out of him. 

As he went down, she felt a hand grab her left shoulder.  She reached across with her right hand and grabbed it, spinning around.  She twisted it around, and looked up into the eyes of Mr. Silas, wincing in pain.  She dropped his wrist and he grabbed it with his other hand. 

“Office, NOW,” he commanded through clenched teeth. 

Mali calmly turned and closed her locker.  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she slowly walked to the office.  She knew she was in deep trouble.  Before she went around the corner to the hall toward the office at the front of the building, she turned and saw that Eric Paulson was still on the floor and there was a crowd gathered around him.  There were muted whispers as she passed.  She clearly heard one person say that she wouldn’t be back…

She walked into the office and approached the receptionist.  After letting her know that Mr. Silas had sent her, she sat on the bench by the opposite wall.  A minute later the principal came out, glanced at her and left.  She was back a few minutes later.  When she came back into the office, Eric Paulson was in tow.  She took him into her office.  The receptionist started calling Gunny, but unable to get him, called Melody. 

Eric walked out of the office.  He looked over to her and whispered that she was going to be deported, sent back to Afghanistan.  Mali hung her head in shame.  She had really messed up and she knew it.  As she sat there waiting, the words she heard in the hall kept echoing back into her mind… she won’t be back…

She’d worked so hard to fit in.  But now she had injured another student and a teacher.  She walked over to the reception desk to get a tissue and blow her nose.  When she looked down in front of the receptionist, there were two forms… suspension and expulsion. 

She could barely see Melody through her tears as she walked past the receptionist and back to the principal’s private office. 

Approaching the end of the driveway, she cranked the wheel to the left, sliding out onto the Ridgeback Road.  She punched the clutch and pulled the shifter back into second gear.  Glancing in the rearview mirror she saw the black Mercedes gaining on her. 

The road curved sharply to the right and dropped just ahead.  She jammed the brakes, feeling the ABS vibrating the pedal as she entered the turn.  The car rotated through the turn, then as she passed the apex, she eased into the throttle.

Another shot punched into the right door.

Grabbing third gear, she pulled out a little distance on the black Mercedes.  She lost sight of the other car in the bends coming down the mountain, crossing the yellow line at will to keep up her speed. 

Another shot rang out from the rear as the Mercedes slid sideways around curve behind her, the passenger waving a rifle out the window.  Helena grabbed fourth gear and her speed closed in on one-forty before she speed-shifted into fifth gear. 

She wanted to call her husband, but she couldn’t take her hands off the wheel for even a moment.  At least until she got to a straight.  But every time the road straightened out the Mercedes was there. 

There was an unexpected dip in the road, tossing the car off balance.  The bend in the road was ever so slight, but it was enough for the Corvette to careen out of control.  The rear end swung right, then snapped back left, throwing the car at the guardrail.  It clipped the end of the barrier and spun over the edge, sliding toward the lower switchback.  Just before getting to the lower road, a rear tire grabbed traction on a rock jutting out from the side of the steep drop-off.  The car flipped over, landing on the roof. 

The convertible offered no protection to Helena as the car slid upside-down off the other side of the road, plunging and twisting again over the cliff.  A moment later it slammed into another rock outcropping, coming to rest on its side, Helena’s torn body hanging from the seatbelt. 

***

Security swept into Deke Swanson’s office.  Two burly guards remained at the door, while Swantech’s Chief of Security rushed to the window to drop the blinds.  Another one of the guards moved Deke from his desk and herded him out of his office. 

“Deke, we need to move you to a more secure location.  We have a credible threat report.  I have a team on the way to pick Jimmy up from Kindergarten, and we have another headed to the cabin to pick up Helena,” the Chief of Security said. 

“What the hell is going on, Owen?” Deke responded.  He had enemies, but in all his time, he’d never had his security team react like this. 

“One of our government contacts called in a tip.  There is a lot of chatter about a hit on you today.  We need to take this seriously.”

Deke allowed himself to be shuttled out of his office, grabbing his external hard drive and a folio with notes in it before he left.  Everything else he would be able to access on any computer in the building. 

“I’m with you, Owen.  Let’s go to the cubicle farm.  I want updates on Jimmy and Helena as soon as you have them.”

“You got it, Deke.  We should have both of them in fifteen to twenty minutes.”

Deke and Owen walked down a level to the second floor.  In the middle there was a large open area ringed with management offices.  They scouted a couple of empty desks and Deke set up shop to get back to work.  He had absolute trust in Owen Rogers.  His security chief had been his friend since college.  The two men had even been roommates briefly before Deke married Helena.  If Owen was worried, Deke was smart enough to be worried as well. 

“Deke, we have Jimmy.  He’s with Taki’s team,” Owen said, referring to Jill Takanata, one of the physical security team leaders.  She was Jimmy’s favorite, having an innate ability to connect with the five-year-old.  “But we haven’t been able to get Helena on either the house phone or her cell.  I dispatched a chopper to the cabin, and they should be there any minute.”

“Thanks, Owen.”

It wasn’t unusual for Helena to go dark.  She regularly forgot her phone, and often, when she was volunteering at the homeless shelter, she would leave it in her purse, locked away in an office.  Deke didn’t know her schedule for the day off the top of his head, and just assumed she left her phone sitting on the kitchen counter.

“Hey, Owen, have you called the shelter?  She might be there today.”

“I’ll double check.  She usually isn’t there when you guys are out at the cabin… but you never know.”

Owen returned a few minutes later.  The expression he wore wasn’t hopeful.  “She’s not at the cabin, and she was expected at the shelter today, but hasn’t shown up.  The doorman confirmed she hadn’t been at the condo.  I have Garcia doing a trace on her cell phone.  It’s probably nothing and it might tick her off, but I think it’s the right call.”

“It is the right call, Owen.  She’s probably shopping or something and she’s going to flip when your guys show up, but I’ll gladly take the heat,” Deke told him. 

Owen disappeared again, heading to one of the offices on the far side of the cubicle farm.  He stepped into Raul Garcia’s office.  Raul was one of the company hackers, and he routinely hacked location data from cell phones.  It only took him a few minutes to ping the last location from Helena Swanson’s phone. 

“Owen,” Garcia said with a dour expression, “I have her last location, but her phone has been inoperable for almost thirty minutes.  You need to get people in the area.”

“What’s going on, Raul.  What aren’t you telling me?” Owen asked. 

“Just before her phone went dark, it was doing one-fifty.  I’m overlaying the data on a map as we speak, but I can’t think of anything good that would cause that.”

A moment later the flatscreen on the wall behind Owen lit up with a map and a series of yellow dots, showing the pings from the phone.  It lined up with Ridgeback Road, near the cabin, until it turned and sharply crossed a series of switchbacks. 

“My location data is good, but satellite drift could make it off by as much as fifty yards.  She could be sitting on the side of the road here, or here,” Garcia said, pointing to the map on the TV, “but I don’t think so.  I think she is right in the middle.  You need your guys there fast, man.”

Owen nodded and headed back out to Deke on the floor.  As he walked, he dialed his phone, calling Dutch Slater, the team leader at the cabin with the helicopter.  As soon as the other man answered the phone, Owen quickly brought him up to speed.  He read off the coordinates that Garcia had given him a moment before.  “Go get her, Dutch.  Make sure she’s safe, Brother.”  He rounded the corner and came face to face with Deke, his son Jimmy standing next to him, Taki a few feet away. 

“Taki,” Owen said, “why don’t you take Jimmy down to the break room.  I hear there’s cookies and cream in stock.”

“Yes, sir,” Taki said.  She could see from Owen’ face that this wasn’t about ice cream. 

“What’s going on, Owen?” Deke said the moment Jimmy was out of sight. 

“I don’t know, boss.  Garcia got a location for her phone, but it had been off for half an hour.  The location is between the switchbacks, up by the cabin.  And just before it went offline, her phone was doing a hundred and fifty miles an hour.  Dutch’s team is doing an air sweep and then they are going to comb the spot her phone is supposed to be in.”

The two men sat down at the closest desk.  Realization caught up to Deke that there wasn’t a good reason for anything he’d just heard.  He had tried to rationalize each piece, and separately he could explain them… Helena liked to speed, that was why she had a hot rod Corvette.  The phone was tossed out of the car and tumbled down the steep hillside.  But together they didn’t make sense. 

Owen’s phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket, “What do you have for me Dutch?  Is Helena there?”

…

“Shit.  Can you…”

…

“We’ll meet you there,” Owen said before he hung up the phone. 

“What is it, Owen?”

“They found her.  Her car was laying on its side against a rock.  Helena is seriously injured.  He has two trained medics on his team, and they think the best thing is to transport her via chopper to Valley Medical Center.  We need to meet them there.”

the logistical challenge of getting fourteen backpacks down the cliff face.  The boys had redistributed a lot of their stuff to other boys in their patrols, so they weren’t carrying tents, but they did have sleeping bags, clothes and other essentials.  The packs were mostly about twenty pounds or so. 

Gunny oversaw the rigging of a system to tie a couple of packs together and lower them down.  They had to do it four times to get all fourteen packs down, and it was tough work.  The adults went first, lowering their packs and showing the boys the system.  It took over an hour to get all the bags down. 

Then it was time for them to start going down.  Two of the adults led off and rappelled down the face.  When they got to the bottom, they signaled for the first of the boys to come down.  Jack was in the second to last pair of boys to go down, and he was starting to get nervous.  He’d been to all the training rappels, but none had been this high.  As he stood looking out over the scene in front of him, he could see for miles and miles.  Off in the distance, he could even see the patchwork of farm fields.  In another situation, he would have marveled at the incredible view.  But at this moment the only thought that occupied his mind was that he was standing near a cliff… hundreds of feet from the landing below… and he was preparing to step off.

“Jack, look at me,” Gunny said to him as he held Jack’s shoulders.  He walked Jack backwards toward the cliff, the rope already set up on his carabiner.  Gunny was tied off to a tree, so he backed Jack right to the edge.  “You can do this Jack.  You’re out over the edge now.  Lean back… just the way you did in training.”

“Yes, Sir,” Jack said quietly.

Gunny made sure, for at least the fifth time, that Jack was holding the ropes correctly and knew the procedure. 

“Just lean back and walk backwards down the face.  Look up here to me until you get comfortable.”

Jack stepped off the cliff and started walking slowly backwards down the cliff face.  After a few feet, he came to a little shelf, and he had to jump to get over it.  It took three tries to get the timing right, but he jumped and let out rope at the same time and easily slid down about ten feet.  Getting the hang of it, he got more comfortable. 

Gunny stepped over to the other boy that had yet to go.  His name was Randy, and he was new to the troop.  He was almost fearless as he went over to the edge and started working his way down the cliff.  Soon he was lower than Jack.  But as Jack got down to about fifty feet from the bottom, he caught back up to Randy.

“I’m stuck, can you help me?” Randy asked. 

“What is it?” Jack asked. 

“It’s like there’s a knot in my rope.  It’s jammed.”

“Can you pull yourself up and undo it with the other hand?”

“No… I tried.  But I can’t hold myself up with one hand.”

“What’s goin’ on down there, guys?” Gunny yelled from above.

“Randy’s stuck, Sir,” Jack yelled back up. 

Gunny yelled down the same instruction, and Randy yelled back up that he couldn’t. 

At the top of the cliff, Gunny let out a sigh.  “It was all too smooth,” he said to Jim Davis and Charlie Jackson.  “There has to be one.”

Gunny walked back over to the cliff edge, “Jack, keep going down.  Mr. Jackson is going to come down your rope and see if he can get it undone,” he yelled down.

“Yes, Sir,” Jack yelled back as he continued down the mountain.  A few minutes later his feet were on solid, almost horizontal ground.  He unhooked his rope and waved his arms to let them know at the top he was off the rope. 

Partway up the mountain, Randy was starting to get nervous.  He was yanking on the rope to try to dislodge the snag and it wasn’t working.  A few times, while he was struggling with the rope, he lost his footing and smacked into the cliff face. 

“It’s ok, Randy,” Charlie Jackson said as he started down, “I’ll be there in a little bit.  Just hang out and enjoy the view.”

Charlie kept making his way down the face, knowing that hurrying would be more dangerous than taking his time.  But as the moments clicked by, Randy became more and more panicked. 

“Ok, Randy, can you pull yourself up to take pressure off the part of the rope that is snagged,” Mr. Jackson asked him.

He tried, but he couldn’t hold himself up enough for Mr. Jackson to do much of anything, but he tried for ten solid minutes to untangle the boy’s rope. 

“Charlie, hang out there for a minute.  I’m going to bring him up,” Gunny yelled down.  “Randy, when you feel me start to pull you, just walk up the mountain… like Batman, got it?”

“Yes, Sir, Gunny,” he responded, though still not sure how this was going to work out. 

Gunny told Jim to wrap the rope around the stump between the two men.  “Keep pressure on the wrap.  If I slip, you have to hold up Randy.  That kid probably weighs one-fifty, but with the wraps, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

Gunny double checked his safety line, then walked back over to the cliff.  He picked up the rope and started hauling it in, hand under hand.  “Keep walking, Randy,” he said as he brought the boy back up the cliff. 

After about fifteen minutes of pulling, including a couple of short rest breaks, Randy scrambled over the side at the top of the cliff.  He looked up at the Assistant Scoutmaster that had hauled him a hundred feet up the side of the mountain.  He was sweating and flexing his hands, but he barely looked winded. 

“What now, Gunny?” Randy asked.

Gunny picked the rope back up and undid the tangle.  “I don’t know how you managed that one,” he said to the Scout.  “Are you ready to head back down the side?”

“Do I have to?” Randy asked, looking rather nervous.

“That or make the run with Mr. Davis.  And he runs fast.  I’d rather go over the side.

Gunny checked over the rope and tossed it back over to allow Randy to try it again.  He rigged the youth and sent him back over the side.  This time he made it all the way to the bottom without incident. 

“After I get to the bottom, Jim, you can drop the ropes and head down the path.  We’ll wait for you.”

“Ha, I’ll wait for the hikers.  I’ll catch them before they make it to the trailhead.  It’s only ten miles and almost all downhill,” he laughed. 

Gunny shook his head at his friend and fellow scout leader.  Then, he walked over to the side, checked his rigging again and stepped backwards off the cliff.  He made it down the hundred and fifty-foot face in just a couple of minutes, bouncing down twenty or thirty feet on each leap. 

Just after he unhooked from them, the ropes dropped to the bottom and Jim Davis took off on his run.  The boys picked up their packs and started the rest of their hike.  The cliff had cut six miles off their ten-mile hike down. 

***

That was some story last night at the campfire, Gunny,” Ed said as the two men drove back to Hampton in Gunny’s truck. 

“Like that one?”

“Lots of details left out, but quite a story.”

“Think how fun it would be to tell the real one, Ed.”

“Jack wouldn’t believe it.  Heck, I barely believe it and I was there.”

“I know what you mean.”

***

Gunny’s pick-up truck pulled into the church parking lot that evening after their long ride back.  The van was already there.  The boys unloaded and were talking excitedly about the trip with their parents.  Randy’s mother walked over to the truck before Gunny could get out. 

“Mr. Grafton, I’m Elise Roberts, Randy’s Mom.  He told me what happened.”

“Please, Ma’am, call me Gunny, everyone does.”

“Well, be that as it may, I’m still a little concerned that a child could have been stuck on the side of the mountain,” she continued, with a bit of exasperation. 

“Ms. Roberts, my name is Ed Dixon.  I’m a parent, like you.  I was at the bottom, watching, when it happened.  The rope tangle was a freak thing.  Gunny and I, and a few of the other adults there, have done this for decades and never had a rope tangle like that.  But I can tell you that in no way was Randy endangered because of that.  We had several options to handle the situation.”

“Mom,” Randy said from behind her in an almost whiny voice, “it’s not their fault.  I think it was mine.  I was whipping the rope around behind me and I think I made the tangle with my foot.  And while I was stuck, I was scared, but Mr. Grafton and Mr. Jackson got me down.  They weren’t going to leave me,” he said, stretching out the word “leave” to three extra syllables. 

“This is a dangerous activity.  Is it really appropriate for these children?” she asked.

“Ma’am, it absolutely is dangerous.  Your sixteen-year-old son stepped off a hundred and fifty-foot cliff and rappelled down it.  Almost twice.  His harness and rigging were checked multiple times and by multiple people.  The young men that were allowed to rappel were all over fourteen and, like your son, not small guys.  I have been rappelling since I was a Scout, and I’ve NEVER had a person in my care, or with me, that had a serious injury from the activity,” Gunny said, flashing his best smile.  “Please excuse me for a minute, I need to unload the packs from my truck.”

Gunny turned and walked to the back of his pick-up truck to help get the packs distributed.  He reached in and grabbed several of the packs in each arm and pulled them out for the boys to grab and distribute.  A few moments later the back of the truck was clear, and parents were starting to leave with their sons. 

“Mrs. Roberts, did you have any other questions,” Gunny asked.

“It’s Miss Roberts, but please call me… Elise.  I would like to talk about this sometime, though.”

“I’m here every Monday.  I can usually break away to talk unless Mr. Holloway isn’t around, and then I might have some Scoutmaster duties.  Otherwise, I’m pretty easy to catch.”

She thanked him and turned to head back to her car.

“I think she was flirting with you, Gunny,” Ed said, smiling.  “At the end, anyway.”

“Ya really think?” he responded.

“Yep-  ‘but please call me-’ dramatic pause- ’Elise’,” Ed said back in a falsetto voice, “but whatever.  She is pretty, though.”