She Came to Inspect the Tower

I reached into my vest pocket and put my glasses back on.

Reed was still looking at me when I turned around. The air support rotor noise was already audible from the south — twenty minutes out had become closer, because Miller's last radio call had apparently been more persuasive than he knew. The fighters below the wire had pulled back, which told me they understood that their window had closed and that whatever came next was going to be expensive in a way their planning had not accounted for.

I crossed the courtyard to where Miller was propped against the pillar.

"Shoulder's through and through," I told Reed, because I had been watching Miller's movement and his color and the way he was managing the pain, and these things together told a story. "Clean exit. Keep pressure on the entry point. He's going to need a surgeon but he's not going to need one in the next seven minutes."

Reed looked at me for a long time.

I understood what he was doing. He was revising. It was not a comfortable process for him. It would not resolve quickly, and I did not need it to resolve quickly. The helicopter was coming. Miller was going to make it to a surgical facility. The ridge was quiet.

Everything else was paperwork.

"Who are you?" Reed said.

I pulled the clipboard off my vest and found the tower assessment form, which I had been working on for two days and which was technically due before the end of the week.

"I'm the engineer you should have let finish the tower report," I said.

I handed him the form.

In the section I had labeled Structural Risk Notes, I had written, in the same precise handwriting I used for everything, a sentence that described the load-bearing failure point and the specific trajectory of the tower's collapse. Directly below it, in a notation he had not read three days ago, was a line about the northern ridge position, the distance, the recommended engagement window, and the elevation correction for an M2010 at standard atmospheric conditions for this valley in October.

Reed read it.

He read it twice.

The helicopter arrived eight minutes later and took Miller south. Davies helped carry the litter and kept looking at me over his shoulder as if I might change shape again before he got back.

I went back to the bunker.

I had work to finish.

The tower assessment was due Thursday, and the load-bearing failure data I had gathered during the morning's events was going to make the report significantly more comprehensive than the original scope had required. I opened my laptop. I found the wind data file I had been logging since 0400 on day one.

I started typing.