“Got it,” Quinn said, as he leapt headfirst out over the ice as if to dive into the shallow end of a swimming pool. He hit the ice smoothly and his yellow environment suit’s nylon surface slid across the ice with little friction. He was moving fast, head first, across the ice toward the pack Curtis had dropped. But now the rope pulled taught on the other carabiner that secured the rope to the inside of the pack. The pack began to slide toward the hole at an amazing speed.
“Current’s picked up. Damn it!” Quinn reached for the pack with his left hand and still clutched the ax in his right. He was a few feet from the hole when his finger felt a nylon strap. He clenched his fist and swung the ax down hard. It sank into the surface up to the shaft, and his body pivoted from the momentum. He clutched the pack firmly and let his body jerk to a hard stop. His shoulder felt torn, but he gripped the pack strap as hard as he could. He looked behind him to see that his feet were now dangling over the hole Curtis had made. Another second and they all might have been dead, their corpses washing ashore somewhere in India. Now Quinn pulled a leg up by the sunken head of the ice ax and clicked a plastic button on the side of his boot by smacking the boot on the ice. The spring-loaded climbing crampons extended with a snapping sound. Then he brought the boot down hard, digging the metal teeth into the ice. Next, he pulled the pack to his body, and wrapped the rope around his arm twice. Now he was an anchor. Curtis would have to do the rest.
It took a few seconds that seemed longer, before Quinn felt a steady pull on the rope. He waited. It seemed to take forever. His right arm ached, as he clutched the ax, and he prayed that the ice below him didn’t crack. A minute passed, and still there was nothing.
Then she was there. Eva broke the surface with a gasp, sucking in air, and clinging to the pack that Quinn held. She was about to say something to Quinn, when to his surprise, she literally launched out of the hole, and over Quinn, where she landed on the ice in a crumpled wet mess. Quinn’s eyes shot back to the hole where Johnson’s arm was extended after having shoved Eva up and out of the water. From the position of the hand, Quinn guessed that it had been on Eva’s backside, and he barked a harsh laugh, as Johnson hauled himself out of the hole and gulped in frigid mountain air.
“Good thinking,” Quinn told him.
Johnson took in the scene with the pack, the ice ax, and the boot crampons, and nodded. “Good save.”
“Good teamwork,” Eva managed through her violent shivering. “Now let’s get off this damn ice and get warm.”
CHAPTER 15
Curtis thought Quinn’s shoulder looked terrible. It was obviously dislocated. The flesh had turned purple from torn blood vessels, and the head of the humerus, the long bone in the upper arm, was now located about a fist’s width to the front of Quinn’s shoulder joint. In all their years of climbing together, it was the worst injury he had ever seen Jason Quinn sustain.
Curtis had always held a secret belief that Quinn was charmed with regard to personal injury. The man rarely got injured, and when he did, he tended to heal extremely fast. One time when climbing on Pinnacle Peak in Arizona, Johnson looked on in concern as Quinn showed the 6-inch gash to his forearm he received on a tough lieback crack called “Lizard’s Lips”. Quinn had wrapped it in gauze and they had headed home. The next day, Johnson was stunned to see Quinn’s cut sealed, and a week later, it was gone, with hardly a trace of a scar. As a result, Johnson was rarely alarmed when Quinn got slightly injured. But this one looked harsh.
“Oh, it looks fine. I don’t think we need to do anything with it,” Curtis commented nonchalantly.
Quinn was lying on the snow-covered ground with the top of his environment suit off, and pulled down to his waist. He wore only a thin Capilene tank top, and he was already beginning to shiver from the cold.
“Can the sarcasm and just do it,” he said.
“I can’t watch this. This is just too gross.” Eva said as she turned away.