The crackle of walkie talkies broke the midnight air. The shadows from 8 men and 2 women moved up the switchback trails, their flashlight beams breaking up the darkness.
"Jane! Lisbon cried out, the cold air stinging her face and the back of her throat as she took each labored breath. "Damn it Jane!"
Agent Rigsby, a good fifty meters ahead spotted the familiar landmarks surrounding the old crime scene from earlier that day. His flashlight dropped to the side as his long legs picked up pace and ran blindly towards the tree that Jane stopped at only a few hours ago.
Suddenly, Rigsby lost his footing as the earth began to crumble under him. He fell backward to avoid sliding with the rocks into the giant pit below. "Hey!" He grasped onto a tree root and his flashlight tumbled downward. The distorted rays of light hit the shaft walls until a single bright beam came to rest on the earthen shaft floor.
The rest of the team caught up quickly, lending arms to Rigsby. Lisbon watched wearily from a distance, too afraid to glance into the hole that shouldn't be there. The hole that wasn't there before, but was now.
Rigsby dusted himself off now that he was upright. "Well, Jane said he fell from the ground," he almost joked, not allowing himself to believe that Patrick Jane was actually in there.
But he then turned around to examine the pit. "Wait! Guys! He's in there! I see him." The flashlight that had fallen was now aimed directly at Patrick Jane, a crumpled, bloody mess underneath rotten wood and rock.
The search leader, Martin Sanders, snapped into action. "Call the rest of the team in! Give them our coordinates. We need proper harnesses and rope. Someone needs to get down there."
"Sanders!" Lisbon ran to his side, as he began to radio out information. "How long until we can get in there?" She asked breathlessly.
The crew leader waved the radio in her face. "Give me a moment woman! I'm doing my job!" Theresa Lisbon flinched at his words but let him continue. "It'll be at least twenty minutes. The only repelling equipment we have right now is meant for belaying water and supplies. The rope and chassis I have can't hold anything over 120 pounds."
Lisbon made a quick decision. "I may be a woman." She emphasized the same word he had. "But I worked four summers straight of search and rescue, two fire crew, and I am not going to let twenty minutes idly pass while one of my men dies down there! I don't care if I have to dangle by dental floss to get to him! I am going in!"
Sanders eyed her carefully, calculating her weight and her determination. "You under 120?"
Lisbon breathed carefully and smiled against all likelihood. "I am under…120."
What if death was only death? What if…after you cross that fine line between this world and the next, you come to find that there is no other world? Some believe in reincarnation. It's a well accepted thought that you come back again and again until you finally get life right. When you get it right, you've reached nirvana. Is nirvana heaven? Heaven is something other people believe. If you did life right, kinda' like the other with the other idea, you get to this place of absolute fulfillment. My little girl was born with a short Achilles tendon in her left ankle. She was limited to walking. When we talked about death once, she said that in heaven, you're given a new body. She said that she would go running first, and then she would hike and maybe join a track team of angles.
My wife told me that everyone meets five people when they go to heaven. She said they'd all be people she somehow affected during her life on earth. I don't know if she ever met those five people, and I don't know if my little angle is jumping hurdles with other winged friends. But I do hope that they're happy. And that if there is something after death, that something is them. I'll find out soon.