Chapter 18
Sawyer
Sawyer carved a final sweeping turn across the lower apron of the canyon,
pulling up beside the heavy steel tracks of Caleb’s Tucker Sno-Cat. Declan
dropped through the spruce line on snowshoes thirty seconds later, his assault
pack swinging from one shoulder as he sprinted onto the debris field.
The roar of the Sno-Cat’s diesel engine filled the canyon as Caleb Vance and Dr.
Jude Miller vaulted out of the rear crew doors, carrying heavy aluminum trauma
litters, carbon probes, and oxygen resuscitators.
"Beacon signals are fifty yards east near the willow flats!" Caleb shouted,
pointing toward a tangle of crushed alder branches half-buried under five feet
of snow.
Sawyer clicked out of his ski bindings, unholstered his Barryvox transceiver,
and sprinted across the hard snowpack in fine-search mode. The digital readout
dropped rapidly: six meters, three meters, zero point eight meters.
"Strike here!" Sawyer yelled, driving his probe deep into the snow until the
carbon tip struck a rigid synthetic surface.
Declan, Caleb, and Sawyer formed an immediate three-man shovel conveyor. They
cut through the dense snow blocks with synchronized, explosive power, throwing
twenty-pound slabs behind them in a continuous rhythm. Within ninety seconds,
they unearthed the first rider, a man in a black snowmobile suit huddled inside
an air pocket formed by a crushed snowmobile chassis.
Caleb hauled the man out onto a silver thermal shroud while Sawyer pivoted
eighty feet down-slope, locking onto the faint pulse of the second transmitting
beacon.
Sawyer drove his probe into a depression beneath an overturned spruce tree at
one point four meters. "Second victim located! Deep burial!"
Declan dropped into the pit beside Sawyer, his heavy shovel moving in unison
with Sawyer’s blade. They cleared four feet of hard-packed snow in two minutes
flat, uncovering an unresponsive woman whose lips were dark purple from severe
hypothermia.
Jude dropped into the trench on his knees, immediately clearing ice from her
airway with a manual suction wand before inserting a laryngeal mask airway to
deliver warmed, humidified oxygen from a portable cylinder. Silas Ward clamped a
heated thermal wrap around her torso, establishing vascular access in her
forearm with rapid surgical precision.
"Airway secured," Jude reported, checking the digital pulse oximeter. "Carotid
pulse is forty-eight beats per minute, core temperature is eighty-six degrees.
She is viable. Let's get her into the heated cabin of the Sno-Cat."
Caleb, Declan, and Sawyer lifted the rigid litter from the trench, carrying the
patient up the snowy bank and securing the stretcher into the interior mounts of
the tracked vehicle beside the first survivor.
As Silas sealed the rear doors of the Sno-Cat, Caleb turned to Sawyer. Caleb
reached out, his heavy gloved hand clamping down on Sawyer’s uninjured right
shoulder with deep, authoritative respect.
"You dropped those Pentolite charges on a forty-five-degree pitch with thirty
seconds on the clock, Brand," Caleb said, his voice loud and clear over the
idling diesel engine. "You saved those three riders and kept my team from being
buried in this canyon. Outstanding field execution."
Declan stepped up beside Sawyer, his massive frame radiating heat in the
sub-zero air. Declan placed his large, warm hand flat over the back of Sawyer’s
neck, his fingers curling into the hair beneath Sawyer’s helmet in an open,
possessive gesture that neither Caleb nor Jude questioned for a second.
Jude stepped out of the vehicle cab, offering Sawyer a warm, approving smile.
"Your shoulder held the load, Sawyer. Clean work."
Sawyer looked from Jude to Caleb, and then up into Declan’s dark, proud eyes.
The hollow ache that had haunted Sawyer for twelve months was completely gone,
replaced by the profound, unshakeable certainty that he had found his place
among the crew of Sawtooth Peak.