“Two.”
“Three,” he finished, and they fell, still holding hands.
It was like sinking into a giant container of feathers
that slowed but didn’t stop them. He lost his grip on her
hand, and couldn’t see her or anything else. Some
primitive instinct kicked in and he immediately started
fighting the snow that closed over his face. Within
seconds, he’d reared to his feet and surfaced.
Laughing, she did the same, although only her head
appeared over the top. “That was fun!”
The kids were hollering, “She did it! Yay, Ms. Mac!”
“I give her a ten,” Dieter called.
“I don’t know,” one of the blond girls argued. “Didn’t
you see the break in her form?”
Ms. Mac stuck out her tongue at her students. “Brats!”
She looked comical covered with snow, her ponytail
and eyebrows white. Snow slid from his nose, reminding John that he looked the same. He reached up, pulled off his ski hat, shook it out and put it back on, icy flakes
slithering down his neck.
“This is so amazing!” As if she were standing in
water up to her neck, Fiona peered around. “I can see
how skiers fall and smother.”
“Yeah, not a good way to go.”
She shuddered.
He picked up a handful of snow and tossed it into the
air. “Lighter than usual for around here, though,” he
commented. “It’s damn cold.” Western Oregon wasn’t
known for powder snow; whatever fell was usually wet
and therefore heavy. Operators at Timberline and
Mount Hood Meadows must be rejoicing today.
“Yes, it is.” Fiona flailed her arms in front of her.
“Um…how do I walk?”
“You just shove forward. Or follow me.” He stepped
into the well her body had created, then bulldozed his way
forward toward the kids and the still-hidden porch steps.
By feel he located the steps and climbed to the porch,
where he collected the two snow shovels.
“Who wants first turn?” he called.
“Bummer,” somebody complained.
“You’re going to get cold and want to go in.”
“I’ll go first,” Erin offered. “My feet are already
getting cold.”
She was one of the girls without boots, he remembered.
“Me, too,” said Tabitha. Or was it Kelli?
They groped their way up the steps, too, and he
showed them how to wield the broad, flat-bladed shovels.
They cleared a few steps while the others romped. He
kept an eye on the two wielding the shovels, and when
they started struggling, he had them hand off to two of
the other girls. Meantime, he called the boys over.
“Deep as this is, we just need to trample paths. Let’s
get a good one to the woodpile around the corner first.”
They started, half working, half roughhousing. Fiona
stood beside John near the foot of the porch steps. She
was the only one close to him when two things happened almost at once.
The roughhousing reached a peak, with one of the
boys falling to one side and another of them swinging
around and taking a step as if he was going to run back
toward John and Fiona. At the same time, there was a
loud crack.
Not the whine of an incoming artillery shell. Damn,
somehow a sniper had gotten a range on them. They
were on base and he didn’t even have his weapon. John
saw blood spurting as the running man took another step
and then in seeming slow motion toppled. “Get down!”
John bellowed at the one standing soldier, then turned,
grabbed Fiona and threw her into the soft snow, going
after her to shield her with his body.
She struggled under him. He held her down, listening for the next crack of the sniper’s rifle. Where was he? In the stand of trees?
A thud sounded like far-off bombing.
“What are you doing?” she spat.
“Ms. Mac got tackled!” someone called gleefully.
He’d never seen snow in Iraq. Why were they in a
snowdrift, waiting for the deadly fire of a Russian AK47 to find them? Body rigid, he tried to think.
One second, they were under fire from insurgents.
The next, he lay atop a furious, frightened woman in the
snow outside the lodge.
Crap. Oh, crap. He’d heard a tree limb snap. That’s all.