“That’s what I’m here for,” I said. “My name is Jack, and we’re going to get you out of here.”
“I can’t feel anything from the waist down,” she said, starting to cry.
“But you can feel your arms?”
“A little,” she said. “Yes.”
“Both hands?”
“The left more than the right,” Tamara said, getting herself under control.
“That’s good, that’s a start,” I said, looking down twenty-five feet to the guide hanging there limply.
“Has your guide said anything since the fall?” I asked as I started to kick and pump like a kid on a swing.
“No,” Tamara said. “How are you going to get me off here?”
“With a little imagination,” I said, swinging closer to the wall and then farther away.
On the third swing I caught that secondary rope coming down from the top. I rigged my harness to it and called into the mike, “Give me eight feet of slack, then bring the litter down.”
“Got it,” Tavia said.
I waited until a loop of rope hung almost to the injured climber before I started down. When I reached Tamara’s side, she rolled her head over to look at me, another good sign.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Me too,” I said. “I hate this kind of shit.”
She smiled feebly. “And I love this kind of shit.”
“Your sister told me that.”
“Am I gonna be paralyzed, Jack?”
There was so much pain and fear in her voice and face that I felt tears well up in my eyes. I looked away and said, “I’m no doctor.”
She said nothing. I glanced at her. She was staring up.
I craned my head back and saw the stiff backboard twisting lazily on a second rope dropping from the tramcar.
“Jack?” Tamara said. “Could you hold my hand until it gets here?”
“I’d be honored,” I said, reaching out and taking her left hand. It felt cold and clammy, and I realized she was probably almost in shock.
“Did you see René up there?” she asked.
“I’m wearing his harness.”
Tamara nodded, her lower lip trembling. “He can’t deal with stuff like this.”
“Like what?”
“A paralyzed girlfriend,” she said, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“What is he? An imbecile of titanic proportions?”
Tamara laughed through her tears. “Sometimes.”
I kept up the light chat with her until the backboard reached us. It took quite a bit of finagling on both our parts to get Tamara strapped to the board, and the winch cable rope attached to the four lines supporting it. But we did it.
“Have a nice ride,” I said after I’d separated her from the rope that had saved her. “Very few people have ever done anything like this.”
“Thank you, Jack,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” I said, giving her hand one last squeeze. “And whatever happens, you’re going to be fine in the long run. Okay?”
“You think?”
“Only an imbecile of titanic proportions wouldn’t.”
She smiled and closed her eyes.
“Take her up,” I said into the mike, and I watched her rise for a few moments before starting toward Victor Barros.
By the time I’d climbed down to the guide’s side, Tamara had disappeared inside the tram, and the cable car was moving to the summit station.
“We’ll be right back, Jack,” Tavia called into the radio.
My fingers were on Barros’s neck by then. His skin was still warm to the touch, but there was no pulse that I could feel.
“Take your time,” I called sadly into the mike. “He’s gone.”
I hung there on the side of the cliff with the dead guide until the tram came back and lowered the winch rope. Then I clipped it directly to his harness and released him from the rope that had snapped his back and killed him.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled me into the tram. I sat against the wall opposite the corpse, feeling wrung out, and the cable car began to drop toward the mid-station.
“You okay, Jack?” Colonel da Silva asked.
“Honestly? I feel like I could sleep for a week.”
Tavia looked at her watch and grimaced. “I’m afraid you can’t, boss. We’re already running way late.”
I glanced at my own watch, closed my eyes, and groaned.
Chapter 5
IN A BOTECO, a small, open-air bar not far from the hospital, Dr. Lucas Castro took another belt of cacha?a, Brazil’s potent sugarcane rum. He stared numbly at the television screen, which showed some American guy hanging off a rope running out of one of the tramcars on Sugarloaf Mountain.
Castro turned to Dr. Desales, said bitterly, “A climber dies. A climber’s rescued. It’s on every channel. But two kids from the favelas dying from a virus? The day before the World Cup final?”
“Not a chance,” Desales said, nodding.