the header correctly. This hadn’t been some ordinary flight.
“Jeremy, we’ve got to go.” He began packing his gear.
Jeremy stuck his head out from under the port wing where he’d been inspecting the exhaust port of the Number Three engine. “I’m not done yet.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got bigger problems. I need to get up the mountain.” Then he began stuffing Jeremy’s tools into his pack.
“Hey!” Jeremy scrambled free. “You’ve got to organize it or it doesn’t all fit.”
“Fine, then you do it. You have thirty seconds.” Jon threw up his hands, then shouldered his own pack.
“Where’s the fire?” Somehow, though his pack had been half emptied and laid out across the top of the wing, Jeremy had everything stowed and had slung it into place while Jon was still adjusting his straps.
“In Washington, DC,” Jon said grimly, then turned to climb up the steep slope. It was steep enough that in many places it was only a matter of reaching out to touch the rising ground. “People really ski down this?”
“I’m a computer and airplane nerd from Seattle. What makes you think I’d know?”
“I’m a SEAL’s kid from San Diego who decided to be a black sheep and join the Air Force. You’ve got to know more than me.”
“Not about skiing. I can’t even waterski. Besides, isn’t the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs? That’s where the Olympic ski team trains, right?”
Jon could waterski, but had never liked the cold so kept his mouth shut.
He knew they were about six or seven hundred feet from the top. That shouldn’t take long. He might not have skied at the Academy, but he’d certainly run more than enough in the foothills of the Rockies.
He made the first hundred feet before he had to stop, his pulse thundering in his ears.
“What the hell?” he managed to gasp out.
“Altitude,” Jeremy gasped as well. He was glad to see that Jeremy was in no better shape.
“Then how do they climb something like Everest?”
“Again, what makes you think I’d know? Supplemental oxygen above the eight-thousand-meter Death Zone. Most teams do a four- to six-week acclimatization for altitude at Base Camp.”
Typical. Jeremy seemed to know a lot about everything, even if he couldn’t ski. Jon made it another fifty feet up. Reminding himself it was just five stories didn’t help.
Jeremy dropped to sit beside him. Jon didn’t even remember sitting down.
“Why are you…” Jon had to drag in another deep breath, “…giving me such a…hard time?”
“Am I?”
Jon decided that an eye roll would use less oxygen than speech.
Jeremy seemed to be studying the peaks lying to the north for a while. “I didn’t know I was.” It didn’t sound as if he was lying.
“Well, you’ve been grinding on something since the moment I got here. The hammer. Banging the engine. Insisting that every camera angle I used wasn’t optimal. Stuff,” he finished lamely.
“Huh!” Jeremy’s grunt was thoughtful. Or was it another brush-off like Miranda had given him?
They rose to their feet and made it up another seventy-five or so. They should be halfway up the slope and it looked good. He pushed an extra twenty-five and came over a rise. After a short meadow that looked almost level, though he’d bet it wasn’t, the mountain rose up high above them.
“It got taller,” Jeremy gasped out. He pulled out an altimeter, studied it, then turned it to Jon. According to it, they were still over four hundred feet below the main crash.
Jon turned to look back down at the wings. They were smaller, he was sure of it. Just not much. Upslope, the top still looked very, very far away.
They had to work together to get around an outcropping and not be tipped over backward by their heavy packs. When they were sitting atop it, with their legs dangling out into space, Jeremy pulled out his water bottle, offering it to Jon first.
He drank deeply before returning it and felt better for doing so.
“You’re upsetting Miranda.” Jeremy said as if it was simple fact, again studying the horizon.
“I’ll be damned if I know how.”
“You like her?”
“Yes.”
“A lot?”
“Uh-huh.” Jon slowed down on his answer.
“And you’re sleeping with her.”
“Not sure that’s your business, but yes. When our schedules allow.”
Jeremy hadn’t looked away from the distant peaks. And again he stopped talking. But if Jon was judging correctly, he wasn’t angry. His profile looked puzzled.
“Do you wish it was you sleeping with her?”
“What?” That finally had Jeremy facing him. “No! Why?”
Jon finally figured out what was going on. He should have seen