Two lighters. Half a dozen plastic water bottles. A case of Budweiser. It was a start. The wind gusted up the gorge, rushing through the darkened pines and shirring the dark steel surface of the river. Peyton sat down on a rock. Hunched over, in pain, she looked bedraggled and small. It made her look younger, emphasized her nerves and fright. “When it gets dark, predators’ll come out,” she said. “Maybe cougars.” Jo had wilderness experience, thanks to years of rock climbing and backpacking trips in the Sierras and Cascades. Though it was nowhere close to Gabe’s training, she knew the basics. She knew that things could go wrong at the snap of a finger and that nothing should be taken for granted. Life and death were only fragile, irrevocable breaths apart. And she knew that there were real, and tough, psychological aspects to survival in a wilderness emergency. Gabe knew it too: He’d been trained to recognize it in himself and his men and women. But he was busy taking care of perimeter defense.
