Jonas, page 1
Praise for Jonas
“It's an intense thrill-ride from the opening scene to the very last. And, yes, there will be moments when you'll forget to breathe or your shocked gasps will scare those around you. I don't know how Susan May Warren does it, but every one of her novels is spell-binding and Jonas is a prime example of the author's incredible creativity and writing prowess.”
MJSH, Goodreads
“Warren can always be counted on to show her readers a powerful spiritual insight along with a great story.”
Susan, Goodreads
“The author has a talent for bringing spiritual messages through her stories and has again done it masterfully. I closed the book with one thought: WHEN IS NED COMING?”
Sarita, Goodreads
Stock-full of adventure, drama, thrills and romance, Susan May Warren also packs a wallop of a faith message that is sure to reach into your heart and grab hold. God is in the midst of the storm. Jonas is a must read and highly recommended.
Laura, Goodreads
JONAS
The Minnesota Marshalls
Book Two
Susan May Warren
Soli Deo Gloria
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
What Happens Next
NED
Thank you for reading
About Susan May Warren
Also by Susan May Warren
One
He had to get off this mountain.
Because, if Jonas read the skies correctly, a doozy of a storm was headed his direction.
And Jonas Marshall, with his PhD in atmospheric science, always read the skies correctly. Or at least, with a 99.8 percent probability.
The other point-two percent were simply those God moments that no one saw coming. But then again, that’s when people died.
So yes, barring a divine intervention, the altocumulus clouds that had chased him most of the morning, now morphing into dark gray, ragged nimbostratus clutter, would turn this day hike into a soggy, freezing fight for survival.
“C’mon, we need to go.”
He said this to his buddy Nixon, who held his cell phone up, taking a panoramic view of the Julian Alps. “Just another minute.”
The wind cut through Jonas’s Gore-Tex jacket, and he shoved his hands into his pockets against the chill. But he got it.
He could take just another moment to soak in the glorious view from atop the 2,864 meter high Triglav Mountain. Craggy granite spires, high pockets tufted with white, rumpled the horizon from here in Slovenia to Italy to the west, and across the Austrian border to the north and east.
Gray cliffs fell down to green valleys pooled with moraine-blue lakes and countless spectacular waterfalls. Feeding them were roiling rivers that twined through a thick northland forest, ripe with cedar and pine and the sense of a world untouched.
Probably it was, because Slovenia was largely hidden from the popular tourist hotspots. Jonas had only found it because of Tarek—and, of course, the footage from Walter 01, one of his weather dirigibles, a solar powered, directed balloon soaring over the northern border.
Walt hadn’t quite captured the scale of the mountain, the crisp, thin air, the heady feeling of flying as he stood at the top.
Sort of felt like he could just take a step off and soar.
Sometimes, lately—especially since the accident—he wished it.
Shouting in Slovenian turned him, and he spotted a kid, maybe age twelve, sticking his head into the giant white canister at the apex of the mountain.
“Can’t believe that kid made it up here.” He said it to himself, mostly, but Nixon made a noise, even as he kept filming.
“Next time you invite me to visit, maybe let’s not do it on summer holidays,” Nixon said.
“Right.” He expected the holiday crowds down in the Alpine town of Kranjska Gora, on the banks of the river Sava, where Slovenes escaped with their families for the August holiday. But families and day adventurers clogged the trail through the Krma Valley, despite the technical challenges near the top, with him having to use carabiners attached to cables.
A tiny red flag on the apex of the canister whipped wildly in the wind.
Get off the mountain. He wanted to wave his hands and yell, but probably they had hours left, and maybe he shouldn’t be the crazy American on top of the mountain scaring everyone.
But still.
“Nixon—”
“Got it.” He pocketed his camera, grinning at Jonas. “Wait until Geena sees this.”
Jonas tried to keep his smile, nod, but he just…aw. “How is she?”
“She’s good. They have her hooked to a machine that moves her legs, and she sent me a video just a couple days ago of her upright and ‘walking.’” He finger quoted the last word with one hand.
Everything inside Jonas burned. “That’s great.”
“You’ll see. She’ll be walking again this time next year.”
He searched Nixon’s face for guile, but only found honesty in his friend’s brown eyes. Or maybe faith.
“Here, let’s take a selfie.” Nixon held out the camera and stepped up to Jonas, lifting it high to catch the breathtaking terrain behind them.
Jonas managed a smile, the camera and sunlight glinting off his mirrored sunglasses.
“She’ll love that,” Nixon said. “I’ll send it when we get to the mountain hut.” He pulled on his backpack.
“No internet there, Nix. You’ll have to wait until we get off the mountain.”
Jonas also shouldered his pack, glad to see the family with the kid had already left the top. Still remaining were a young couple and two women who’d just arrived at the peak.
He walked by them wanting to offer a “Don’t stay too long,” but opted to keep his mouth shut.
Mostly because he couldn’t speak the language, but also because it wasn’t his…nope, he couldn’t stay silent.
He stopped and turned to one of the women, her brown hair pulled back in a long tawny braid down her back, her eyes shielded by aviator sunglasses. “It’s going to rain. Don’t stay long.”
He wasn’t surprised when she just ignored him. But her friend, shorter with a pixie cut to her dark hair, looked past her. “Thanks.”
Hmm.
The couple was leaving, so he followed Nixon off the mountaintop, clipping into the line that led down the ridgeline.
An hour later, he’d descended nearly a thousand feet and found himself sitting inside the small gathering room of the Kredarica mountain hut, rain pelleting the windows, shivering as a man stoked a fire blazing in the black stove in the middle of the room. Around him, the family he’d seen shared sandwiches, and the couple had heated up some soup, all of them eating their dinners at the rough-hewn picnic tables. Many were still shivering.
“You were right,” Nixon said, handing him a cup of tea, then scooting in beside him. “That mountain is socked in. Hope those women got off it.”
He did too.
“Good call to book a night here.”
“Sorry about the shared room.”
“Hey. It’s a hostel. I expect bunk beds. As long as I don’t wake up to some kid drooling on me.”
Jonas laughed, picked up his tea. “Could be worse. We could be sleeping in a car under an overpass.”
Nixon’s smile tightened into a thin line. “Yep.”
And oh, the air between them stilled, tightened. Nixon looked away. Jonas stared at his cup. Why had he said that? Because of course, yes, they’d been there, done that, but in the case he hadn’t been referring to, their car had been thrown by a twister, landed upside down in the ditch, and they’d been trapped in the freezing rain for hours, waiting for help.
While Geena nearly died. So yeah, maybe Jonas should keep his stupid mouth shut.
“Water’s boiling,” Nixon said and got up, heading for the makeshift kitchen where their freeze-dried soup sat on the counter. He filled the soup as Jonas retrieved the buns they’d purchased in town, now slightly crushed. Some cheese, hot soup, and crusty bread. Yes, it could be worse.
“Tell me again what this grant is about?” Nixon blew on his hot chicken soup.
“Lightning. Storm patterns.”
“You finally got to use your balloons.” Nixon was back, grinning at him, the Geena specter at least diminished.
“Dirigibles, and yes. I’ve upgraded them since the last design. Now they’re controlled by drones, powered by air and sun, and can stay aloft for weeks. They’re programed to fly in a selected area, so we get real data points for specific areas. The black boxes send data down to my app, but it’s sketchy here in the mountains, so I have to constantly check on them.”
“Have any accidents?”
“One. Came down in a field north of our office in Ljubljana. No one was hurt, but it was a mess.”
“How?”
“Wind sheer.” He dunked his bread into his soup.
“How much longer on your contract?”
“Another month or so in country, then a few months in Oklahoma sorting out the data. Then maybe…I don’t know.”
“No more storm chasing?” Nixon had finished his soup and picked up his phone, scrolling through the pictures, occasionally showing Jonas.
Jonas said nothing, watching the family now taking out a deck of playing cards. Outside, the rain roared, and in the distant, low rolls of thunder.
He expected that there might be snow up at the higher elevation.
Yeah, he hoped the women had made it off the peak.
Eventually Nixon let the question die, showing Jonas pictures of the trek up and yesterday’s walk around Kranjska Gora, and then Nixon’s trip to Venice, Italy just over the border, and then Rome, where he’d finished a gig shooting a commercial for a clothing brand.
Probably a good thing Jonas had gotten out of the storm chasing biz. Gave Nixon a chance to spread his wings.
And that way, nobody else got hurt because of him.
The door blew open, and a man came in, soaking wet, breathing hard. “We’ve got an accident on the mountain.”
Everyone stilled. Apparently, he wasn’t the only English speaker in the room.
Jonas found his feet. The man shivered, came up to the heater, still breathing hard. “Big winds. Blew a couple women over.”
“Who’s hurt?”
“I don’t know. I heard them shouting, but it’s raining too hard to get to them.”
Jonas looked at Nixon, who blew out a breath. Nodded.
“How far up the trail are they?”
“About two hundred meters from here.”
“Anyone got climbing gear?” Jonas asked the room.
Silence again. He shook his head and headed toward the door.
The man stopped him. “You go out there, you’ll fall off the mountain too.”
Jonas brushed his hand away, feeling Nixon step up behind him. “I know how to live through a storm.”
The man held up his hands in surrender and stepped back. “Suit yourself.”
Jonas zipped up his jacket, pulled up the hood, and stepped out into the gale. The black sky obscured any hope of reading the clouds, the wind moaning.
For a second, his stomach hollowed, and a tremor went through him.
Jonas! Don’t let me die!
“You sure about this?” Nixon, grabbing his gear up behind him, steady as usual, as Jonas led him into danger.
“Never pin a weatherman down on his forecast.”
Nixon grinned, white teeth against a dark night. “You got this.”
Oh boy. But Jonas put his head down, the wind fighting him as he headed up the path.
Yeah, he really needed to get off this mountain.
The air up here was cold, brittle, and unforgiving.
Probably the perfect end to her life.
“Oh, you’re so morbid.”
“What?” Sibba Kovac looked at her friend Ina through the pelleting rain as they sat pocketed against the steep grade of the mountainside, trapped on a cliff.
“This is not how we’re going to die.” Ina sat with one leg pulled against herself, water running down her face and her red Gore-Tex raincoat, the other leg out.
“Maybe. Hopefully.” Sibba’s nimble fingers ran over Ina’s ankle. It didn’t feel broken, but she couldn’t know. By the swelling, however, Ina was in no shape to walk. “One cold gust of wind could knock us right off this mountain face.”
The wind around them moaned.
“Like I said, morbid.” Ina’s voice was tight with the pain darkness hid on her face.
“I’m trained to think of all the contingencies. And this is not how I want to end. Randomly, in a freak accident—although, given my alternatives, maybe this isn’t terrible—”
“Stop. We’re going to be fine. Besides, I think I can walk on it.” Ina started to rise, then cried out and dropped back down.
“Your ankle is the size of a German panzer.”
“Oy. Where did that comparison come from?”
“You know where. I have Nazis in my head after this summer. And clearly you can’t walk. And it’s dark and I don’t know how to get us out of here, so we’re staying put.”
And probably dying on this mountain.
So much for picking up the pieces of her life. Or even escaping them.
Shoot, she was smarter than this. Think, Sibba!
As far as she could tell, they’d only fallen about seven meters from the trail. It had happened so fast—the storm whipping up as they’d headed down from the peak, and even though they’d been latched to the cable, they’d slipped a few times on the slick rock.
Then the cable area ended, and a trail led down the slope spotted with snow and shale and death. Probably it hadn’t been a great idea to rope up together, but she wasn’t going to let her friend tumble down the mountain.
Alone.
Although, maybe, if she’d let Ina go, Sibba would have been able to get help. As it was, she and Ina had worked together to slow themselves in the slick shale and snow and had ended up winded on a sharp plane of rock jutting out into a black abyss.
Frodo and Samwise watching the world shatter around them.
Occasionally, thunder rumbled, and a splatter of lightning would crack open the sky, illuminating the thousand-foot drop below.
So yes, this was exactly what Sibba needed after the summer she’d endured.
“I’m sorry,” Ina said now, her teeth chattering.
Sibba still wore her backpack and now pulled it off, holding it between her knees, and grabbed her torch. The light shone on Ina’s torn leggings and the swelling ankle. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I will walk before I let us perish out here.”
Attagirl. But what did she expect? Ina was a fellow soldier—had done a decade in the Slovenian military, and had endured the same brutal summer that Sibba had.
“We should have listened to that guy.”
Sibba knew exactly to whom Ina was referring, thank you, because he’d sorta gotten under her skin with his know-it-all American tone. She’d been around enough Yanks to spot them, all arrogant and bossy and—
“How long do you think we’ve been off-trail?”
They’d slid quite a bit before they’d worked themselves to this place, and then there was the matter of getting Ina settled as well as straightening out her leg and—“Maybe a half hour?”
“How far are we from the mountain hut?”
“I don’t know. Two hundred meters, probably? Not far.”
“Get me up. I can do this.”
Now Sibba shone the light at her friend. Ina winced and held up her hand. Sibba flicked the torch away from her face so her expression hovered just in the glow. “The shale is slippery. And yes, I think I could carry you up, or at least help you…in the daylight. But without knowing where I’m going…we could take a header off this mountain.”
“Then you should go, without me.”
Sibba focused the light up, just to give their terrain another look-see. “I don’t love the idea of staying here all night, but I don’t want to leave you, either.”
“Give me a sleeping bag.”
“I didn’t bring one.”
Ina looked at her. “What’s in your pack?”
“Listen, you said you booked us at the hut. I brought water and some food and—”
“Your glider.”
Sibba lifted a shoulder. “I thought, if it was nice out—”
“Fine. Okay. I have a space blanket. And water. Leave me and go get help.”
Sibba shook her head. “I don’t…I’m not…” She looked up. “It’s too dangerous.”
Ina grabbed her hand. “Think this out like you would a minefield. You can see the dangers, but you can also see the way through, right?”
“I’m not superman. I can’t see in the dark. And I can’t fly.”
“Most of the time.”
“Ha. But especially not in the rain. This could go very wrong.”
“Fine. I’ll share my blanket with you. But it’s going to get cold.”
It was going to get cold. Sibba had been on top of Triglav plenty of times when the air turned her fingers into blocks of ice even when the sun was shining.
