Page 43 of Mountain Shadow

Shaking her head, she straightened up slowly, grateful not to find herself in a heap at the bottom of the ladder.

She saw Jens immediately, on his knees in a sea of bright red and green fabric. He was leaning over something—someone. His hands were on the patient’s chest.

That doesn’t look good.

Fear made her breaths loud and shallow.

“The helicopter is on its way,” she finally got out.

Jens’s voice was calm when he replied. “Airway is clear and I can’t detect any fractures in the chest area, but he’s not breathing.” He didn’t stop what he was doing. “I’ve initiated CPR.”

“Thirty.” Jens moved to tilt the man’s head back and sealed his mouth over the man’s lips, pinching his nose with two fingers before breathing twice into the man’s mouth.

Sarah watched on, wringing her hands together, hoping for a miracle, but the man in front of them remained still as a corpse.

Undeterred, Jens went back to the chest compressions. Sweat poured down his forehead. “Breathe, dammit, breathe,” he whispered.

As the wind picked up, the sail fluttered around them, the material seeming almost alive.

“Be careful,” Jens warned. “I unclipped him from the glider, but the sail weighs a ton and could easily throw you off the roof if you get tangled in it.”

That doesn’t sound good, with a helicopter on the way.

“Would it help if I get it off the roof?”

Jens nodded. She gathered the sail in her arms and half-carried, half-dragged it to the edge of the roof. She sighed in relief as she finally got it off the roof, and ran back to Jens.

“What can I do?”

“He’s got a walkie-talkie on his belt. Take it. We need to contact the other paragliders, make sure they get out of the way before Kat gets here.”

Nodding, even though Jens couldn’t see her, Sarah picked up the walkie talkie. There were only two buttons on the thing. She pressed the side button, like she’d seen people in movies do, and spoke quickly.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?” There were words she should be using, she knew, both to start and end the communication, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what they were. She took a deep breath—at least projecting her voice loudly and clearly was something she could do.

“This is an urgent message for the paragliders flying overhead. We are down here with your friend, with the red and green sail.”

“Bonjour?” the voice on the other side of the line sounded anguished. He started firing questions at her in rapid French.

Sarah stuck to her guns. There was no way she was going to try this in French.

“Help is on its way. I need you all to move away from this area so the rescue helicopter can land.”

“I understand,” the voice said, in thickly accented English this time. “We move.”

She hoped that meant they were moving away. She had no idea how much control they had over their sails.

“They’re moving,” she said, looking back at Jens. He was breathing heavily, still doing rhythmic compressions on the man’s chest.

Is the man’s face grayer than it was a minute ago?

“Look for Kat in my contact list, please. I need to speak with her.”

Sarah popped in the code again. She put the phone on loudspeaker.

“Trouble seems to find you lately, Jens,” Kat said as she picked up. “We’re on our way.”

“Prep the defibrillator, Kat. I can’t get his heart restarted.”