Nadia Nichols - A Soldier's Pledge

“You owe me,” she said as she climbed out. “Big time.”

Walt was wearing one of his expressions. “Listen,” he said slowly as they walked down the dock toward the office. “Got a phone call yesterday after you left. It was from that guy’s sister. Lori Tedlow was her name. I couldn’t follow her conversation too good, she started crying, so I told her you’d call her back just as soon as you returned.”

Cameron halted abruptly and rounded on her boss. “What? I have nothing to tell her. She already knows where he is, right? You told her where I dropped him off, right? What more could I add to what she already knows?” She felt another surge of annoyance at this latest development.

“She was upset. Crying. You’re a woman. Women are better at handling stuff like that. She’s waiting for your call.”

“Walt, I’m starving. I haven’t had any coffee, I’m crippled from spending the night in the plane and I want my bonus money.”

“Yeah, I heard you lost a bundle at Ziggy’s, playing pool the other night.”

“Hank cheats. So does Slouch.” Cameron entered the office, tossed her ball cap on the desk, pulled the band from her ponytail and finger combed her dark shoulder-length hair. “One of these days they’ll pay, soon as I figure out how they’re doing it. I’m missing way too many easy shots I could make blindfolded when I was twelve.”

“I won’t be able to get your money till the bank opens. Coffee?” Walt asked, lifting the pot from the hot plate.

“No way. The coffee you make should be banned. I’m going to the diner for a real cup of joe and a big breakfast, and then I’m going to take a long hot shower in my rusty old trailer, and then I’m going to come back here and collect my bonus, so you better have it ready. Bank opens at nine. I’ll be back at nine thirty sharp.”

“If I have your bonus ready, will you make the phone call?” Walt asked hopefully.

“Nope. You talk to the Lone Ranger’s sister. I’m just the pilot who flies the plane. You’re the boss. You get the big bucks for handling all the drama. Tell her he was fine when I left him yesterday. I can’t vouch for how he is today. Wet, probably.” Cameron pulled her hat on and started for the door.

“I know how Hank and Slouch are fouling your shots,” Walt said as she reached for the doorknob. She paused and looked over her shoulder. “If you make that phone call for me, I’ll let you in on their dirty little secret.”

She hesitated just long enough to make Walt squirm before nodding. “Deal.”

* * *

TWO HOURS LATER she was back at the floatplane base, clean, well fed and dialing the number Walt had provided her. A woman’s voice answered on the third ring, and Cameron studied the words she’d carefully drafted on a paper napkin while she ate her breakfast at the diner.

“Mrs. Tedlow?” she said, speaking slowly. “This is Cameron Johnson. I’m a pilot for Walt’s Flying Service, and Walt asked me to call you when I got to the office this morning.” She read the words aloud over the phone to the Lone Ranger’s sister in Montana. Writing her opening had been clever. She had a tendency to get tongue-tied on the phone, so she’d made extensive notes in preparation for this call.

“Thank you so much for getting back to me, Cameron,” the woman replied. “I really appreciate it. I’m afraid I wasn’t very coherent when I called yesterday. I apologize for that. I was just so relieved to have finally located my brother. And please, call me Lori.”

“Walt understands completely how upset you were yesterday.” Cameron shot a glance at Walt, who gave her an encouraging nod and two thumbs up. “He’s a very understanding man.” She scanned her notes and continued reading. “I just wanted to let you know that I saw your brother yesterday afternoon, and he was just fine. He’d set up camp and was going to get a good night’s rest and start his hike today. It’s not raining nearly so hard now, so it won’t be bad going at all.”

“It’s raining up there?”

“First real rain we’ve had all summer, and it was coming down cats and dogs yesterday.”

“Oh no!”

“It’s not a bad thing. We needed the rain. We’ve been fighting a big forest fire up here, and thanks to this downpour it’s just about out.” She was getting way off script. She turned over the napkin and continued reading from her notes. “Your brother told me he was carrying an emergency transmitter, and he’s programmed our number into it. If he gets into any trouble at all, we’ll get him out. We have good search and rescue up here, what with the park being so close to us and all.”

There was a frustrated sound on the other end of the line. “My brother wouldn’t signal for help if he was being eaten by a grizzly. He’s an army ranger, and they all think they’re invincible. Look, Cameron, I’m going to be blunt. He checked himself out of Walter Reed—that’s a military hospital near DC. He was in rehab. He was badly wounded in Afghanistan and needs medical supervision and treatment. He can’t be wandering around in the wilderness. He has to be brought back before he gets into trouble. He could die out there in the shape he’s in.”

Cameron shot Walt an exaggerated frown. “I guess I’m not following you. You expect us to find your brother and bring him back? That’s not our job.”

“I know that, but you have to understand, this is all my fault. I’m to blame. This has to do with his dog.”

“This is about a dog?”

“I should have told him about his dog last summer after it happened, but I didn’t want him to freak out or be distracted when he was still deployed and doing dangerous soldiering stuff. I knew he’d be really angry at me, so I just kept putting it off. I kept lying to him and telling him everything was fine, and then when I went to see him in the hospital last week, I told him what happened and he just...” Her voice squeezed off and ended in a high pitched, mouse-like squeak.

Cameron waited a few moments for the woman to collect herself. She covered the phone and mouthed to Walt, “I bet she’s a blonde.”

“I’m sorry,” Lori continued shakily.

“No need to apologize, Lori. I think I understand the situation. You were taking care of your brother’s dog while he was deployed and something bad happened to it, and when you finally told him, he freaked out and took off.”

“It’s worse than that.” She paused, and the sound of her blowing her nose came over the line. “This wasn’t just any dog. This dog saved his life in Afghanistan. Twice. They featured the story on the national news down here in the States. We held fund-raisers to get the dog home because Jack was so attached to her. It took forever and three thousand dollars, but we finally got her flown back here a year ago last June.

“My fiancé and I had been planning for two years to do this paddling trek in Northwest Territories last July. My mother offered to take care of the dog, but she was really sick from her chemo treatments, so we thought we’d just bring the dog along with us rather than put her in a boarding kennel, you know? She’d gotten to know us and was well behaved. We traveled up where you are to take a canoe trip down the Wolf River to the Mackenzie, and then to Norman Wells.” There was a snuffling noise, another squeak or two, and then Lori resumed. “Everything went fine until a huge bear came into our camp on the second night. It walked right in while we were cooking dinner. The dog chased the bear off and she never came back. We waited there awhile, then moved a short distance downriver to get away from our cooking spot and stayed for two days hoping she’d return.”

“The bear probably killed her,” Cameron said. “Bears don’t like dogs very much.”