Chapter 2 - The Cable from the Black Helicopter
The rescuer detached his harness karabiner with swift, practiced efficiency.
When he reached for my shoulders, his thermal storm goggles pulled upward, revealing eyes I had known since childhood.
“Evelyn!”
Gabriel. My older brother.
The Chairman of Sterling Global Logistics and founder of the Alpine Search & Rescue Vanguard.
“Gabriel…” I choked out, my voice cracking from the freezing air. “My baby… he’s still kicking…”
Gabriel stripped his outer thermal down jacket and wrapped it around my trembling frame, his hands shaking with fierce, protective emotion.
“Your biometric distress beacon broadcast your heart rate drop twenty minutes ago, Evie,” Gabriel shouted over the roaring rotors. “I brought the whole surgical transport unit.”
The titanium rescue basket descended through the blizzard.
With immense care, Gabriel and a tactical paramedic secured me into the insulated vacuum-mattress. Within forty seconds, the electric winch pulled the basket upward through the howling wind and directly into the heated cabin of the Sikorsky S-92 medical helicopter.
Inside the pressurized fuselage, Dr. Robert Bennett—our family’s chief obstetric surgeon—was already waiting with an active fetal ultrasound probe and heated intravenous lines.
“Core maternal temperature is 32 degrees Celsius,” Dr. Bennett called out, applying the warm acoustic gel over my abdomen. “Severe peripheral hypothermia, but fetal heart rate is strong at 138 beats per minute.”
The steady, galloping rhythm of my son’s heartbeat filled the cabin speakers.
Tears spilled over my frostbitten cheeks, evaporating in the cabin heat.
“Get us to the Aspen Surgical Institute in seven minutes,” Gabriel commanded the pilots, his jaw set in cold, unforgiving granite.
He knelt beside my stretcher, catching my numb fingers in his warm grip.
“Michael is already at the county sheriff’s station in Estes Park, Evie,” Gabriel murmured, his voice deadly calm. “He just reported that you slipped over the edge during a sudden gust of wind while he tried in vain to catch you.”
May you like
I looked at my brother, the agonizing cold inside my soul replaced by an unyielding, diamond-hard resolve.
“Let him think the mountain took me, Gabriel,” I whispered. “Let him play the grieving widower until the curtain falls.”
