Stolen - By Daniel Palmer
Prologue
You’ve reached twenty thousand feet above sea level. The sky is a color blue so deep, so rich, so damned infinite, it makes you want to weep. But your eyes are too frozen to form a single tear. You’ve got the best protective gear you can afford. Still, your body is chilled to the point where cold feels hot. Even though your hands are nested inside thick waterproof gloves—yes, the ones with QuickDry technology—your fingers feel like icicles. Your boots do their darndest to ward off the cold, but at this altitude you can ask for perfection and take whatever you get.
The sun taunts you. It’s so close, seemingly an arm’s reach away. You think it should melt the snow. Instead, its reflection is blinding. The wind kicks up as you inch higher, lashing your face with biting cold tendrils, just another reminder of your insignificance. You ignore the pain dulling your body, though it’s persistent and relentless. You warm yourself by celebrating each small victory—another foot forward, a good purchase on the ice. You focus all your energy on one goal: summiting. You’ve done your homework. The weather looks good. You’ve been making great time. It’s going to happen.
You think about all you’ve sacrificed to get here. The wife you left back home. You’ve been gone two months, with another week still to go. Tibet is a faraway place, but the Labuche Kang is like a planet unto itself.
People think you’re crazy. Selfish, some have said. You ignore their criticisms. Your wife understands, and that’s all that matters. You can stifle the itch to climb the same as you can will your heart to stop beating. You don’t have a death wish. No, you have a life wish. Up here, in the clouds, you feel your soul connected to God. You got a taste of that feeling when you were fifteen years old. Now, you’re twenty-five, and the passion to climb has only intensified with the years.
You see your companions below. David Clegg, a Boston police officer seven years your senior, husband and father of two. The guy hasn’t taken a vacation day in three years. That’s how long he’s been planning this trip. Behind David is Brooks Hall, a newly minted anesthesiologist from Acton, Massachusetts. Brooks is like you, a DINK, double income, no kids. You met Brooks through the New England Mountain Climbing School and went on several expeditions together. Brooks met Clegg after his wife’s appendectomy. They got to talking post-op and discovered a shared passion for the mountains. You don’t know the names of Clegg’s kids but think Hall’s wife is Amanda. Mostly what you’ve talked about is the mountain. Which route to take. How the snow is feeling. Gear. Weather patterns. Altitude adjustments. How amazing it feels to stand on top of the world.
You’re climbing up the West Ridge. To reach the summit, you’ve got to cross a cornice ridgeline. The mountain face is a mixture of bare rock, solid ice, and powder snow. The cornice is nothing but a mass of snow sent down from the ridgeline, deposited there by fierce howling winds that blow from right to left. The elegant cantilevered structures leave a drop-off where no snow can accumulate, reminding you of ocean waves sitting atop a mountain.
You test the stability of the cornice. You think it’ll hold. But just to be safe, you walk single file. You’re in the lead, with Clegg and Hall tied to you by two climbing ropes to safeguard a fall. You’ve got hundreds of feet of ridgeline to cross. Each step is more exhausting than the last. You try to focus on the moment, not the summit, but it takes effort to concentrate.
Your legs are burning now. You’re going too slowly. You know you could lose your one and only opportunity to summit. You decide to walk along the flattest part of the cornice to speed things up. If your muscles could talk, they’d thank you. The relief of a horizontal surface soon becomes addicting. Your mind tells you that it’ll hold, because that’s what you want to believe. You ignore the fact that the flattest part of the cornice is also the most dangerous.
One step . . . then another . . . and then . . .
The crack is loud, but partially concealed by rattling winds. Suddenly you remember being stranded in the middle of a frozen lake in March, the ice breaking all around you, and your father screaming, “Get back to shore!” Funny, your father’s been dead for fifteen years, but the sound evokes that memory and his voice stays trapped inside your head. You’re thinking about him when you hear an angry rumble like thunder just before the clap. You see Clegg and Hall standing still as statues. Sunglasses block their eyes, but you know they’re wide and filled with fear. The rumble grows louder by the second, followed by another crack, this one even more threatening. The cornice gives way. One second Clegg and Hall are there, and the next, both are gone.
An avalanche of cascading snow drowns out their screams. You see the breach in the ridgeline, feel a powerful tug as the ropes securing you to the other climbers start to pull. The force of the two men in free fall drops you to the ground. Instinct takes over. You go into a self-arrest position, feet aimed at the breach, to keep from sliding forward. You’re like a hooked fish being dragged toward the hole. Lying on your side, you’ve got the ice axe dug deep into the snow, but you still see the breach closing in fast. The climbing ropes skid along with an angry hiss, moving so quickly that the friction cuts a deep trench into the snow.
You’re ten feet from the massive breach in the ridgeline, still sliding. If you fall through, Clegg and Hall will drop as well. Three hundred feet down a nearly vertical cliff face. Maybe it’s willpower, but somehow you manage to stop your slide. Just your feet are dangling into the opening. You need to establish anchors before setting up a haul system. You flip onto your stomach, ready to get to work, but find the ropes are severely trenched. You hold your breath. There’s no way to establish anchors now, not with the weight of two men pulling on trenched ropes. Your head pokes out over the lip of the breach, with only a well-planted ice axe to keep you from falling.
You see Hall and Clegg.
Clegg dressed in blue, Hall in yellow, dangling like helpless marionettes above infinity. An image you’ll never forget. You try to shimmy backward, thinking you’ll use brute force to pull the men up. They’re screaming at you, begging for help. Their voices come at you as one, just like the wind. There’s too much weight. Forget about going backward. They’re pulling you down with them. Your breath catches, settling in your throat like frozen wind, because you realize at that very moment you’re all going to die. It’s a simple matter of physics: too much weight to pull against and seconds to decide what to do.
That’s when you remember the Spyderco knife, ten-inch blade, ultrasharp, clipped to your parka. You slide farther into the opening as you unfold the knife with your teeth. Clegg and Hall can see your shoulders now. They’re pleading with you not to do it. They can see the knife in your hand.
You’ve got to decide. Which rope to cut?
Whose life will you take to save your own?
Their desperate cries continue.
You begin to saw. It’s not oxygen depletion making you sick. You pretend that you can’t hear their pleas. You pretend it’s not your hand doing the cutting. You slide another several inches into the void. You have one hand on your ice axe, the other cutting with the knife.
You think about your wife and how much you love her. Your heart aches for his wife, but It’s the only choice, you say to yourself. He has children. He’s got kids. Your knife slices the rope in two.
Instantly, the pull against you is halved. You know you’re going to live. You hear the screams of a man falling. You watch as he goes from a person to a speck and vanishes into nothingness.