Chapter 66
JOE DID SOME reflected laser readings and simple triangulation geometry and confirmed what I already suspected: Number 2’s minions were leading us up a mountain taller than Everest, the highest peak on the face of the Earth.
“The ascent, however,” said Willy, “is more similar to K2, the second-highest summit.”
That was not good news. K2 is a much more difficult and dangerous climb than Everest, with hanging glaciers clinging to the ridges near the summit and a narrow mountain gulley filled with ice and snow that rises at an eighty-degree angle. For every four people who reach K2’s summit, one dies trying.
“We don’t have time to acclimate to the altitude,” Dana said, adding another problem to our growing pile.
I turned to Agent Judge. “It’d be suicide to march the entire strike force up the face of that mountain.”
“What do you suggest?”
“That my friends and I go forward with two dozen of your top mountain climbers.”
“We’ve got some airborne guys from the Tenth Mountain Division. And some of the Special Ops guys did time up in the Hindu Kush range of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
“Excellent. They’re with us. You lead the others out of here. Backtrack the way we came in.”
Agent Judge shook his head. “I’m not turning back, Daniel. Mel is my daughter.”
“Yes, sir. But she’s already lost her mother, and I refuse to allow this mountain to turn her into an orphan. With all due respect, sir, there is no way you can make the climb. And if you tried? We’re all tied together on the safety line. You slip and fall to your death, you’re taking people with you.”
“I’m coming,” said Lieutenant Russell. “We’re trained to survive in extreme environments. Plus, I’m particularly good in low-oxygen situations. I can hold my breath underwater for three full minutes.”
I grinned. I had to admire the guy’s guts.
The thirty of us moving forward started our ascent up the craggy face of the mountain in the frigid air. Wispy clouds shrouded us in total darkness, taking visibility down to zero. Of course, I don’t need to “see” to see, so I led the way. I had materialized crampons (spiked climbing shoes), carabiners, and climbing ropes—not to mention helmets, gloves, goggles, and tons of North Face thermal wear. We had left all the alien weapons with Agent Judge and the guys heading home.
So far, Abbadon’s forces hadn’t attacked us with overwhelming firepower. In fact, they hadn’t attacked us at all. If things changed, I’d quickly create all the alien-frying heavy artillery we needed.
Snug in our webbed harnesses, tethered to a safety line, we were making slow but steady progress up the frozen face of the mountain. The strike force members were fit but fatiguing, fast. At high altitudes, starved for oxygen, muscles chill. Brains tend to turn to mush.
“Blue ice!” Willy shouted as he probed the ground with his ice ax, looking to secure another anchor. “We need to change course. Rappel under that overhanging glacier.” He pointed to a three-hundred-foot-high hanging ice cliff, chunks of which could break off at any moment. “When we get to the other side, we scale the final four hundred feet up that steep ridge to reach the summit.”
“Let’s do it.”
Dana and I were the first ones to swing from a dead snag over the jagged ravine that plummeted beneath the projecting prow of ice. With lines belayed, we brought the rest of the team across in their slings, one by one.
Until the giant block of ice broke and rained down frozen boulders.
The avalanche swept six of our brave warriors off the face of the mountain.
I stood staring down in horror at their crumpled bodies, scattered across the glacial plane more than fifty meters below.
“We press on,” said Lieutenant Russell, who had been the last man to safely cross before the rockslide, grimly. “It’s what they would want us to do. It’s for the salvation of our world.” He gave one last look to the fallen, as if paying his last respects.
And then we did as he said and pressed on, shaken to the core by the horrible loss.
Hours later, twenty-four of us reached the summit, but there were no cheers of elation. A blinding blizzard immediately swept in and attacked us—a whiteout with winds that whipped our hard-shell climbing jackets like tent flaps in a tornado.
“Hang on!” I shouted.
The mountain rangers struggled to find hand- and footholds in the rocks.
“It’s a fast-moving storm,” Joe said, consulting the high-tech weather-radar app in his handheld unit. “It should blow through in a minute or two.”
I just prayed it didn’t blow away any more of our crew.
Ninety seconds later, just as Joe had predicted, the snow tapered off.
And moments after that, I felt water dribbling down both sides of my face.
Because all the ice that had accumulated on my goggles and climbing helmet was thawing, fast. So, too, was the snowcapped peak of the summit.
Like a freezer set to Defrost, the roof of the underworld was melting.
“What’s the temperature, Joe?” I shouted across the roar of ice floes rapidly splitting apart.
“Ninety-eight. And rising!”
Chunks of ice and rock sloughed down the sides of the mountain, burying the passes we had taken on our climb to the summit.
We would not be going out the way we had come in.