A throbbing in his lower right leg was the first thing he noticed, followed almost immediately by warmth, the smell of wood smoke, and the sharp crack of pine sap in burning wood. The wood smoke was comfort and warmth, almost enough to banish the smell of electrical smoke that still lingered in his nostrils. For a moment he thought he was home; then he shifted and the rekindled pain brought back the memory of coming around in broken glass and fried circuitry.
He was surprised when he opened his eyes. He'd expected that the wood fire would herald nightfall but the late summer afternoon sun came in at an angle through the trunks of the trees and it was almost pleasant to wake, as if after a nap, stretched out on the ground, with a white suit jacket covering his upper body and his right leg resting atop a coil of 10,000 pound rope.
Briggs was sitting on the ground on the other side of the fire, sorting through the papers from his briefcase, tossing most into a stack near his feet and folding one or two into small origami like bits before tucking them into his trouser pockets.
Useful for kindling, Hawke thought. And then, he's going to burn everything that's classified.
Behind Briggs, there was an orderly arrangement of items from the helicopter: the toolbox, bits of wire and hardware, another coil of rope, a ground tarp, some lubricating spray, flashlight, charts, first aid kit with the lid partly opened, three life vests, fire extinguisher, two small bottles of water and what looked like a knife in a sheath. Briggs had also found Hawke's pistol and it was on the ground next to the briefcase, within close reach but not too near the fire.
"You've been busy," Hawke said, voice not much more than a raspy croak.
Briggs didn't look up from the final group of papers he was sorting.
"Uh-huh," he said, tossing most of it into the pile. "Assessing our assets and liabilities." As he tucked the last piece of folded paper into his pocket, he squinted across the fire at Hawke. "I'm sorry about the ankle. You passing out wasn't something I'd expected but it was probably easier on you."
Hawke nodded, still a little unnerved. Briggs without his glasses on looked oddly different. The white eye patch seemed to somehow emphasize the gray in his hair; Briggs looked older or maybe he was just as sore and bruised as Hawke felt.
"Does your phone work?"
Briggs shook his head.
"Tried it a few times. No luck. I'm going to take it out of the case and see if any wires or components were shaken loose or damaged in the crash." He sent Hawke a slight smile. "It would be a damn shame to lug a satellite phone around on a almost daily basis for years and have it not work the one time I really need it."
"Michael…" Hawke had to clear his throat to speak, but he'd already glanced at the supplies piled up and with a sinking heart, he noted that there wasn't much water and wasn't any food. "I don't remember the crash. Fill me in."
Briggs sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
"I was reading some of the case files so I didn't see the weather come up. When I looked up, we were already in the soup, which surprised me because the radar weather reports didn't mention any precipitation, much less thunderstorms or wind shear. You told me it'd blown up out of nowhere."
Hawke forced his mind back to Van Nuys, to the weather report he pulled as a regular part of his flight planning.
"Forecast called for VFR the whole route," he grumbled, more disconcerted than he'd like to admit that he didn't remember any of what Briggs was saying.
"Yeah," Briggs said agreeably. "Well, we hit a squall line that wasn't in the forecast, got bounced around, hit some wind shear and the next thing I knew we were in the trees."
Briggs exaggerated plenty when it suited him, but he was also prone to understatement about horrific situations after the fact or when there wasn't much that could be done to change the outcome. Hawke was pretty sure this was one of those situations.
"Snapped the mains in the trees?"
"We were almost on the ground actually." Briggs grimaced. "Hawke, I don't want to alarm you but we didn't get a mayday call out before going down. I tried – you were far too busy trying to keep us in the air – but never connected with any Air Traffic control, even with another aircraft. It's very possible that squall pushed us off course and frankly I don't know for sure if we're in Montana, Idaho, Washington, or if we crossed over into Canadian air space."