15
Their arrival in the helicopter was a harsh surprise. Claudia winced when she first touched the metal outer hull, and after climbing inside, settling on the lifeless steel decking was a body shock.
In a single moment she’d gone from a world where the loudest thing was a breeze or Michael’s call from fifty feet away, checking in on her through heavy branches, to thudding helicopters, headsets, and three-meter monkey-lines to secure their climbing harnesses to the inside frame of the bird.
The transition was too fast, and now this was the alien world. Who had she turned into over these last forty-eight hours?
For the first time in her adult life, she’d gone more than a day without once thinking about her career and her position. And now she was screwing a Delta Force colonel at every
