Clear to Lift (33 page)

“Rescue Seven, things are startin' to stack up out here. Request ETA, over.”

“Mono County Sheriff, estimate—” I look to Boomer, who holds up two fingers followed by a zero sign. “Twenty minutes. What do we have, over?”

“We've got nine people trapped by rising floodwaters. Jack said you're familiar with the compound. Is that right?”

“That's affirm, Walt.”

“You've got a family of three on the roof of Cabin Ten, two women on the roof of Cabin Eleven, and we've got three of our swiftwater rescue team members—Jack, Kevin, and Thomas—stuck on the detached garage, halfway between the highway and those cabins. Will's with them, so make that four men on the roof of the garage. The water's runnin' pretty fierce through there.”

What? Water running between the outer cabins and the garage? I can't picture it. I can't picture it
at all.
That means the river has widened by at least forty yards, if it's surrounded the cabins, and if it's widened to the point that it surrounds the garage, that's another twenty. I know the distances exactly, having played countless games of hide-and-seek as a kid around those cabins, and in that very garage.

Not only has the river widened at least that far, it's running so fast that swiftwater rescue team members can't cross the gap.

Holy hell. What are we dealing with here?

I swallow, especially when I remember that Walt said “two women on the roof of Cabin Eleven.” Mom and Celia. It has to be them. And Jack is out there. And Will …

“Rescue Seven copies. Anything else?”

“Be advised, there's a rope rigged from the main lodge to the outer cabins. Our guys tried to pull themselves across in a raft using the rope, but when they moved beyond the garage, the current was too great. They—Stand by.”

Current was too great. Impossible …

I look at the fuel gauge, extrapolating, taking into account the headwinds and all the diverting, and realize we're going to arrive on-scene with less than an hour of fuel. Actually, way less. More like thirty-five minutes, forty if we're lucky.

“Rescue Seven,” Walt says. “A new update for you. Jack's in the raft again. He's attempting to move across from the garage to the outer cabins.”

He probably sees her. He sees my mom, and he's trying to get to her.…

“Mono County Sheriff, Rescue Seven copies. We're gonna need a fuel truck, over.”

“Mono County Sheriff copies. I'll call for the truck.”

We continue flying south, moving past the towns of Minden and Gardnerville, traversing wide, windswept pasturelands that butt against the eastern slopes of the Sierra, shrouded in a gray curtain of relentless rain, until we finally—
finally
—approach Topaz Lake, only ten minutes from Walker.

My eyes shift to the clock.

“What time did they say the sun sets?” I ask Boomer.

“Sixteen forty-five.”

“Great.”

We'll be pushing up against darkness, too.

“And the fuel…,” Boomer says.

“Yeah, I know. If they can't get a fuel truck, maybe Carson City Airport if we need to?”

“Yeah, they'd be closest.”

We don't say anything more as we accelerate across the now-flooded ranch land south of Topaz Lake, finally passing the town of Coleville. Walker is just ahead, and less than a mile farther, Walker Canyon.

“Things aren't exactly stacked in our favor, are they?” I say.

“They never are…,” Boomer says with a resigned snigger.

The seconds stretch, rain streaking across the windshield, as we chase the remaining daylight to Walker Canyon … and to a scene I don't think I'm prepared to see.

 

38

“Rescue Seven, Mono County Sheriff, over.”

“Mono County Sheriff, Rescue Seven, go ahead,” I say.

“Rescue Seven, request ETA, over,” Walt says, straining to keep the urgency out of his voice.

“Two minutes, over.”

“Copy two minutes. Switch to ground frequency, one two three point six, for rescue coordination, over.”

“Rescue Seven, wilco.”

Depending on the nature of the rescue and the number of people involved, sometimes two frequencies are used—a “quiet” frequency, like the one we've been speaking on with Walt, and a “not-so-quiet” frequency that everyone involved on-scene can use.

Boomer leans over to enter the numbers on our second radio, and we know immediately that we're up the correct frequency, because the chatter is going a mile a minute.

“… halfway across!” It's Jack, his words barely discernible over whatever's happening in the background. Crackling, garbling, roaring … that roaring again.

“Jack, this is
not
good!” Will's voice rises above a heavy, hollow thumping sound. And metal … screeching metal.

“Whiskey One, Mono County Sheriff, chopper's en route, ETA two minutes.”

“Whiskey One copies,” Will says. “Jack, the bird's here in two minutes! They can get them! Come back!”

“Guys, set in back?” I ask.

“All set, ma'am,” Beanie says. “Hap has his harness on, and I'm ready on the hoist.”

“Be ready for anything,” I say.

I look at Boomer. “Can you take the controls?” I ask.

For a multifaceted, multiperson rescue like this one, it'll be far easier for Boomer to fly and me to coordinate.

“I've got the controls,” he says.

“Walt, we're not in a good place here!” It's Kevin this time, shouting to be heard above the clamor in the background. “Water's undermining the building! Like really
not
in a good place!”

“Hang on, Kevin! The chopper's almost here!”

“Mono County, Whiskey One, is the helicopter up this freq yet?” Will says.

“Whiskey One, Rescue Seven, coming around the bend now. Stand—”

My breath is stolen.

We enter the canyon, where nature has unleashed its fury. The river arcs up and alongside the east wall of the canyon to our left, carving, gouging, dissolving, destroying. A muddy, brown, raging torrent, it carries massive chunks of debris—cars, propane tanks, trees, chewed-up pieces of wood, concrete, and metal fencing.

The Walker River—the normally gentle, slightly meandering trickle of a river—has consumed almost the entire width of the canyon. The flat to rolling terrain that normally separates the river on one side of the canyon and the highway on the other, a distance one hundred yards wide in places, is underwater.

To our right, a line of police cars, ambulances, and several volunteers' vehicles crowd the section of Highway 395 at the canyon's entrance that remains above water. Even with the poor visibility, I recognize Kelly's bright pink Patagonia guide jacket as she stands on the roof of a sheriff's van, looking through binoculars. Walt stands next to her, a radio in his hand.

Tawny, clutching a bullhorn and wearing the sky-blue jacket I remember from rock climbing at Donner Summit, stands on a small spit of land that remains above water about thirty yards in front of the cluster of vehicles. Continuing my scan further up-canyon, I see that entire chunks of the highway are gone.

But at the canyon entrance the highway remains intact, men and women scurrying about in rain jackets and ponchos, talking on radios, carrying ropes, and some just looking on at the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven structures remaining in the river's path.

Seven structures? There used to be fourteen or fifteen, easy. And they're gone. They're just … gone.

Crrrrrrack!
I jump in my seat, whipping my head around in response to a noise so loud it resonates above the thwack of the rotor blades. The barn—
No! Not the barn!
—pulls from its foundation and disintegrates into the torrent, the largest piece slamming into a tree downstream, shattering on impact. If the horses were in there, I didn't see them. I tell myself they're safe somewhere else, knowing it's probably a lie.

“Shit. This is serious,” Beanie says.

And in an outright odd, slow-motion moment, a motor home lolls and bobs down the river, then is stopped in its forward progress by a cluster of trees that is almost totally submerged, one that has accumulated a car-sized pile of twigs and sticks and other detritus. I expect the motor home to move past, but there it remains, just downstream from …
Mom! There she is!

Guest Cabins Ten and Eleven stand by themselves in the middle of the canyon, my mom and Celia on the roof of one, the family of three on the other. Cabin Nine is missing altogether. They're a full sixty yards from the highway, water on all sides. The family hunkers under a tarp of some sort, while my mom and Celia huddle in the corner of the roof, wearing yellow rain jackets.

Twenty yards closer to the highway, Kevin and Thomas, wearing neon-orange dry suits and white helmets, stand on the roof of the detached garage. Will is also there, probably the most visible person in the entire canyon due to his bright yellow North Face jacket, neon-orange gloves, and matching orange GPS unit, which is strapped to his chest. He is also topped with a white helmet.

And Jack. Dressed in a dry suit like Kevin and Thomas, but topped with a red helmet, he bobs in a raft, tossed and yanked in the water, moving hand over hand across the rope, which is attached to the main lodge at one end and a majestic Jeffrey pine near Cabin Eleven on the other. Because the main lodge is farther downstream than the cabins, the rope runs diagonally across the river—a distance of about seventy yards. The garage, where Will, Kevin, and Thomas have taken refuge, marks roughly the three-quarter point of the rope, and Jack is now a further ten yards from here, about halfway to Cabins Ten and Eleven.

I'm sure a sling connects the raft to the rope above, but I can't see it at the moment, not with the wind that snaps our helicopter sideways, and the rain that moves horizontally across the windshield, and the darkening skies as the unseen sun drops behind the walls of the canyon.

Due to the rolling nature of the terrain in this section of the canyon, four structures of the remaining seven stand taller than the others, like tiny islands—Cabins Ten and Eleven, the main lodge, and Cabin One. Of all the cabins, Cabin One is the largest, a two-story structure adjacent the main lodge.

Water crashes around the other remaining structures, just as it does around the garage—and thus Will, Kevin, and Thomas—closing in, set to swallow them.

“Rescue Seven, Whiskey—”

Kapow!

“Jack! Watch—” a voice yells on the radio.

The small aluminum equipment shed, the one next to where the barn used to be, the one I helped paint electric blue the summer I turned ten, shatters, catapulted by the ruddy surge directly into the rope that spans the width of the river, slicing it clean through.

“It's severed! The line's severed!” Will cries out.

I'm unable to follow the path of the snapped rope. All I know is that Jack has lost his tether, and is now being carried downstream.

It happens in an instant, the motor home twisting and corkscrewing away from the anchoring cluster of trees, just in time for Jack to slam into them.

“I can't see him!” Will shouts.

“I've got him!” Kelly says, viewing the scene with a better vantage point on top of the sheriff's van. “He's at your two o'clock, under the raft! Jack's under the raft!”

“Got him! I have him in sight!” Will says. “He's hung up in the trees. Jack! Are you up? Jack, do you copy?”

It's several agonizing seconds before he answers. “I'm up,” Jack says, barely audibly. The roaring continues, like a house-sized vacuum cleaner.

“Boomer!” I say, pointing to where Will, Kevin, and Thomas huddle, the water ripping the siding from their perch. “The garage is coming apart!”

I recheck the situation at Cabins Ten and Eleven. The water is lower there, the structures more stable—for the moment, anyway. But the priority is absolutely these three men, followed by Jack.

“Let's go!” I say.

“Checking power,” Boomer says. The wind wildly buffets the aircraft as Boomer checks the power required to hover.

We watch the gauges closely, and as suspected, the margins are slim.

“The winds aren't gonna make our lives easy today,” Boomer says, accelerating forward. Our tail snaps left, right, left, right—“unsettling” would be an understatement—as we move toward the garage, reminding us that the only predictable thing about canyon winds is their unpredictability.

“Whiskey One, Rescue Seven, we're getting you first, then we'll get Jack.”

“Whiskey One copies.”

Boomer circles, and I look down and to my right, which allows me a direct view to Will. I wonder, briefly, why he doesn't wear a dry suit, while Kevin, Thomas, and Jack do. With all the talk of “warm” fronts and “tropical” storms, it's easy to forget that this flooded river is fueled primarily with snowmelt, resulting in icy, icy, frigid water. Add rain, with wind and temperatures that have now dropped into the mid-thirties, and without doubt these are winter conditions. Kevin, Thomas, and Jack are dressed for the possibility of immersion in this brutal cold, so I can only surmise that Will is not a regular member of the swiftwater rescue team, because if he was, he would have been outfitted similarly.

“The tree's not gonna let us in for a one-skid,” I say to our crew, referring to the large cottonwood tree that butts up against the garage. “We're gonna have to hoist.”

“Whiskey One, Rescue Seven, inbound,” Boomer says. “Prepare for hoist, over.”

“Whiskey One copies.”

“All set, Beanie?” I ask.

“All set, ma'am. Recommend lowering Hap. He can hook up two guys at once, send 'em up, then we'll send the hoist back down for Hap and the remaining guy.”

Stinging arctic air invades the aircraft as Beanie slides the door open, rain shooting inside and battering the back of my neck.