Page 25 of Twin Jeopardy

Danny delegated Ryan and Eldon to make the initial climb down. Once the vehicle was secure, Tony and Sheri would follow, with Caleb and Vince on standby if they needed more assistance. “We’ll need to package the victims for transport on the helicopter flying in from Delta. The chopper will set them down in the road, and we’ll transfer to an ambulance.”

“Any response from the truck?” Vince asked.

“Nothing,” Danny said. “I tried hailing them and got no reply. I thought I saw movement earlier, but it’s difficult from this distance to be sure.” He looked past Vince. “I think Bud has the wrecker in place now.” He raised his voice. “All right, everybody. Let’s do this!”

Vince positioned himself across from Caleb to monitor the rigging as first Ryan, then Eldon descended. He found himself holding his breath as Ryan neared the vehicle. One false move might send the truck plummeting the rest of the way into the canyon. From here, he couldn’t see the people inside. Maybe it was a good thing they were unconscious, since that made it less likely they would move about and possibly dislodge the vehicle.

With Ryan in place just above and behind the truck, Eldon started his descent. Vince watched carefully, trying to absorb everything. Maybe one day he would be the one setting the rigging or even making the descent. He had a little experience climbing, though nowhere near the training Sherri, Ryan and some of the others had completed in high-angle rescue.

When Eldon had almost reached Ryan, Danny signaled to Bud, who began lowering the heavy cable and hook from the boom, which was extended out over the canyon. Eldon snagged the hook, then prepared to crawl beneath the truck.

Bud radioed down. “Be sure to attach that to the frame, not the axle.”

“Understood,” Eldon said. “That truck better not slip and take me with it.”

“We’ve got you,” Caleb called over the radio. Eldon and Ryan were both attached to safety lines tethered to anchors at the top of the cliff.

A cheer rose up when Eldon emerged from beneath the truck, thumbs up. Then he and Ryan approached the truck’s cab, one on either side. They had to hold on to the vehicle in order to balance on the narrow ledge. Ryan cleared away broken glass and leaned into the driver’s side of the vehicle. A moment later he leaned out again. “A driver and one passenger. The driver is unconscious, lacerations on his head and face. The passenger is female. No pulse. We’re going to need the Jaws down here to get them out.”

The mood among the volunteers sobered at the news that the passenger was dead, but they set to work securing the hydraulic extractor, more commonly known as the Jaws of Life, for cutting into the truck to make it easier to free the driver and passenger. They attached the tool to a line, and Tony and Sheri took it down when they descended.

“This is the scariest thing I’ve seen,” Bethany said as she and Vince watched their fellow volunteers work on cutting the truck cab apart. “One slip and the whole truck might go over, and everyone down there with it.”

“Part of me is glad I’m not down there,” Vince said. “But it’s hard to be up here too, wishing I could do more to help.”

“Somebody has to be up here, making sure nothing goes wrong with the rigging,” she said.

“You’re right.” He glanced below again as Tony and Eldon eased the driver from the truck cab onto a backboard. “I’ll be glad when everyone is up top safely.”

“I hear you.”

Someone called to Bethany, and she moved away. Vince relaxed a little. Bethany was nice, but her obvious interest in him made him uncomfortable. She hadn’t said or done anything out of line, but every time he turned around, she was either standing next to him or watching from across the room. Others besides Ryan had noticed. He didn’t want to be rude to her, but he wished she would back off a little.

He focused again on the scene below. The volunteers fitted the driver with a helmet, neck brace and an oxygen mask and strapped him into a litter. They had a radio conversation with Danny, who, in addition to being the search and rescue captain, was also a registered nurse.

A heavy throb signaled the arrival of the rescue helicopter. The beam from its searchlight had them shielding their eyes from the glare. The chopper swept in, then hovered over the crash site and lowered a cable. The team below had affixed lines to the litter and attached these to the cable from the helicopter. At a signal from Tony, the helicopter rose and ferried the injured man to the middle of the closed road, where another team of volunteers helped lower the litter to the ground, unfastened it from the cable and carried it to a waiting ambulance.

The helicopter headed for the canyon again, this time to retrieve the black bag containing the body of the passenger. This second transfer accomplished, the volunteers collected their gear and ascended, one at a time, up the canyon walls. Vince, Caleb and Chris monitored the climbers. As soon as everyone was up top and out of their climbing harnesses, they began the tedious chore of disassembling all the rigging and putting everything neatly away, ready to be used in the next emergency.

“How did the passenger die?” Caleb asked Tony as they disconnected various pieces of hardware from the climbing ropes they had used to assemble the rigging.

“Can’t say for sure,” Tony said. “But maybe a broken neck. The driver had a head injury. I think he may have banged his head into the window. Everything in the vehicle was thrown around. I think it was a pretty violent descent.”

Vince shuddered, imagining. This was the first call where the real threat of danger had superseded the adrenaline rush of helping someone out under challenging conditions. Today, there had been a real threat of harm to everyone involved. His worries over a couple of annoying notes seem petty in contrast.

THEPASSWASclosed by the time Tammy arrived. She had to park half a mile from the accident scene and hike up the road in the dark, past the line of cars waiting to get over the pass when it reopened, then past parked vehicles belonging to search and rescue volunteers, highway department employees and local law enforcement.

The accident site was lit up like a movie set, halogen lights on tall stands ringing a section of roadside and shining down into the canyon. Tammy stopped to take a picture, struck by the contrast of the bright lights and the shadowy cliffs. She was tucking her camera away when someone brushed past her. A slim, dark figure was running down the mountain, away from the accident. Tammy stared after the woman—she was sure it was a woman, though she had seen the figure for only a few seconds. Nothing about her was familiar, though.

She moved closer. Deputy Shane Ellis, who was standing beside his patrol vehicle, watching the search and rescue team work, waved in greeting. Tammy took out her camera once more and moved closer, in time to get a shot of volunteer Ryan Welch begin his descent into the canyon. She took a few more photographs of other volunteers. She didn’t see Vince, but he would be easy to miss in the crowd with so many people milling around in the darkness.

She joined Shane by the sheriff’s department SUV. Shane—a former professional baseball player who had surprised everyone by becoming a sheriff’s deputy—nodded at her. “Good to see the local press reporting the latest news,” he said.

She took out a notebook and pen. “What happened here?” she asked.

“It looks like a pickup truck came around that curve with too much speed.” He pointed ahead of them, to a sharp curve on the highway. “He slid on loose gravel and went over the edge. The canyon walls are really steep in this section, and he must have had quite a ride. But he got lucky. The undercarriage of the vehicle hung up on a boulder.”

“The driver was a male.”

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