Читать книгу Nuclear Storm - Don Pendleton - Страница 13

Chapter 4

Binoculars in hand, Park Ranger Sarah Dantlinger scanned the rocky terrain, searching for the slightest movement below as the Bell 206A JetRanger helicopter skimmed over Yellowstone National Park at one thousand feet. Beside her, pilot Mark Azoff kept the chopper straight and level as he perused the lush forest and grassy meadows on their left side.

“Got anything yet?” she asked over the intercom.

“Nope. You’re sure they’re out here somewhere?”

“That’s what ground said—five hikers on a day trip along Specimen Ridge. I just wish we’d had more information from their distress call.”

The two park rangers were looking for a family of five that had called in a patchy distress call on a cell phone. Since the call was too garbled to make out exactly what they were saying, headquarters had dispatched Dantlinger and Azoff in the Bell to locate the hikers and assess their situation.

Dantlinger continued scanning the area, her Zeiss binoculars making the parched meadows and forest leap into sharp relief below. She caught a black bear foraging for food to add to its winter bulk, and a fox that was there one moment and gone the next as the chopper’s clatter made it dart into the underbrush.

“Wait a minute! I got a trail!” Azoff slewed the Bell around so Dantlinger could get a look at the line of crushed grass that meandered across a field and petered out in some foothills. Following the line with her optics, Dantlinger saw a man waving his shirt over his head about one hundred yards away.

“Got ’em! Can you put it down here?”

“It looks all right from here, but that grass could be hiding a stump, branch, or rock—too dangerous to risk a full touchdown. I’m gonna have to hover and let you off.”

“Okay.”

Thirty seconds later, Dantlinger opened the door and stepped out onto the landing skid. Holding her flat-brimmed ranger’s hat in her hand, the wash from the rotors made her blink against the powerful wind. The ground was a few feet below, and she jumped carefully, ready to tuck and roll if she had to. Fortunately she landed on solid, level ground. Ducking as she sprinted away from the blurred blades spinning overhead, Dantlinger ran to the man, who hadn’t come out to meet her, but was waiting at the base of the hill.

“Thanks for coming. Hey, where’s he going?” the man asked as Azoff powered the chopper back into the air. He was only a few inches taller than Dantlinger’s five-feet-six-inches, with the beginnings of a pot belly. He was inappropriately dressed for the season, in khaki cargo pants, a T-shirt and the plaid, short-sleeved madras shirt he’d used as a signal. Despite the short autumn day, his face was pink from exposure to the sun.