Under the Alaskan Ice (Alaska Wild #2) - Karen Harper Page 0,2

is one of our most skilled search and recovery pilots, name of Bryce Saylor.” He spelled the name since that wasn’t quite how it sounded.

Trying to concentrate, she closed her eyes. They had put their sun goggles back on, but that did nothing to blur the horrid hole in the ice. Should she have tried to go out there, crawl on her stomach? It was not a lone swimmer going under the ice but an entire plane with no one visible, so the impact must have stunned, injured or even instantly killed the pilot and any passengers. It would have been a more merciful death if that were true.

“Bryce Saylor, I’ll remember that,” she promised, scanning the sunny, lovely and empty sky. “We’ll be here to meet him.”

But even as the man stayed on the phone, counting down the plane’s estimated time of arrival, one thing she’d been told snagged in her brain. The pilot they were awaiting was an expert not in search and rescue, but in search and recovery of equipment, of bodies. Recovery—yes, she understood that. She was still working on that in her own life.

* * *

Bryce knew the basic lay of the land and water around Falls Lake. He’d actually stayed briefly at the lodge there about eight years ago, planning on some downtime after his breakup with the woman he’d thought he’d marry. It had been run by an elderly lady and her staff; he remembered that much. He’d done some hiking and fishing. But he’d received an emergency call—much like this one—for a sightseeing bush plane that had gone down near Anchorage, and he’d checked out of the lodge about as fast as he’d checked in.

He flew now by sight, though the snow and ice below would have blinded him without his pilot’s sunglasses to reduce the glare. He saw the mountain peak with the waterfall. Right now it was a tower of ice, gleaming in the sun. The story was that the big waterfall had been dammed up by boulders for years, and a pioneer village had been built on the dry lakebed. Then, after a few decades, the boulders shifted in an earthquake, and the water burst forth over the cliff to bury the little settlement.

He couldn’t help thinking of the lives lost. Loss of life was exactly what both kept him going and haunted him. Diving to recover bodies in wreckage, especially when in icy water, was not a task for everyone—maybe even not for him at times. He’d done it in the navy and had wanted to leave it behind, so he turned instead to diving for abandoned fishing nets off the harbor at Anchorage, then helping a friend establish a kelp-and-micro-algae farm, which he’d invested in.

But he wanted to put his skills to use for good, such as when victims needed to be recovered for their loved ones, so he’d joined the NTSB. He had soon been promoted to oversee recovery efforts as an official incident commander living in the state capital of Juneau, though his official base was Anchorage. It had made his dad, a former navy pilot, proud and his grandfather, who had flown the big flying fortresses called B-17s in World War II, even prouder. If only they could see him now, handpicked for a covert special task force for a very powerful man above the NTSB. But his father and grandfather were both gone now, his mother too, and he missed them all. At least he still had a brother and his family, though he wanted one of his own.

He flew lower as he spotted both the hole in the lake—with no sign of a plane in it—and two people waving from the shore. He dipped a wing to let them know it was him and made a tight circle back to give himself a trajectory to land away from the place that was probably some poor pilot’s grave until he or she could be recovered. Strange to have assignments that made families both grieved and relieved to have their loved one’s body back.

He cut his speed and coasted in, keeping away from any evidence, hoping the woman and the boy his contact said awaited weren’t the ones who had lost this pilot, and especially that they had not gone out to meet the plane on Thanksgiving Day expecting a happy reunion. Whatever they had witnessed and whoever they were, he hoped he could help them and that they would be a help to