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Between gusts of snowy wind he could make out two buildings, which he knew from Claudia’s diagram would be Pilatus’s two hotels. Several hundred feet above the larger hotel, he made out the faint lights on top of the Pilatus radar station.
It had taken them over five hours to hike to this height. They came to a ridge hidden from above by a wide plateau. Had they been normal hikers, the plateau would have signaled the final part of their journey with plenty of cold beer and Würstel to be had only twenty minutes away in one of the hotel bars. But, Scot Harvath and Claudia Mueller were anything but normal hikers.
The plateau allowed Scot and Claudia to maneuver their way around the mountain without risk of being seen by any sentries above. The idea, which had been Claudia’s, was to come from a direction Miner would never suspect-right up the icy face below the church. To have attempted to infiltrate the perimeter by one of the typical tourist routes would surely have been to invite early detection and probably more than a few bullets. Scot had had enough of those.
Because of Miner’s comments, Scot and Claudia believed the church was the most logical point of entry into the fortress. Any other choice might have meant days of searching for entrances that were either impossible to find or impossible to access.
It took them over an hour to round the ridge and arrive at the base of their climb. Looking up, Scot saw only snow, rock, and ice. There wasn’t any sign of the church, but he trusted Claudia’s judgment.
They slid into harnesses, strapped on crampons, laid out their ropes, and taped each other the rest of the way up. As Claudia was the more experienced climber, it was decided she would lead this part of the ascent. She warned Scot again about the dangers of climbing with the assault rifle fully assembled, but Scot’s mind was made up. He had climbed more difficult mountains with bigger weapons before. Besides, the need to be prepared for what might lie waiting for them when they reached the top far outweighed all other considerations.
Scot assembled the rifle while Claudia removed the pickaxes from their packs and finished laying out the rest of the gear.
They checked each other’s rigs, and satisfied that they were completely ready, or as close thereto as possible, Claudia started to climb the face.
She moved with extraordinary skill and agility. Climbing was normally viewed as a man’s sport, requiring lots of upper-body strength, but Claudia was obviously very strong. She swung the axes with great force and had no problem hammering in the pitons as she worked her way up.
Scot was sure the climb could have been done in half the time if he hadn’t been working with an injured left arm. There was no other way to covertly assault the mountain, so they had decided this would be it, but that they would take it slow.
His left arm throbbed, from both the fatigue of the climb and also the cold. Scot was glad that Claudia was on point, chipping out toeholds and hammering in the pitons. He had no idea if he would have been able to do it. He was breathing heavily and appreciated Claudia’s frequent stops to rest. He knew she didn’t need to. She was stopping for him.
The climb was slow going, and the wind tormented the pair with every step, threatening to rip them from the face of the mountain and cast them into the valley far below. Scot was growing more tired and started initiating the breaks himself, and with greater frequency. Claudia never said a word. She waited for him to give her the thumbs-up and only then would continue.
Finally, the sound in his ears of his own heavy breathing was replaced by the sound over his headset of Claudia clicking her tongue twice against her teeth. That was their signal that they were approximately twenty meters away from cresting the top. Claudia froze where she was and waited for Scot to join her. When he did, he rested for ten minutes without saying a word. He was exhausted.
He couldn’t ask Claudia to go straight to the top and put her life in danger by peering over the edge toward the church. What if there was a guard stationed there, or some sort of motion detector? The fact was that because Scot knew what to look for, he needed to be the first one over. When he felt he had sufficiently regained his strength, he began to lead the climb.
Hammering in the pitons and cutting out the toeholds was excruciating. Scot hadn’t realized how much he had demanded of his right arm while he favored the left. He wasn’t a quitter, though, and they were so close now. Just a few more meters. Claudia hung back, monitoring his progress and giving him plenty of space, as he had requested. She was to have her weapon drawn when he went over the top, just in case he was taken by surprise and one of Miner’s men should happen to peer over the edge to see if anyone was behind him. Scot didn’t want Claudia to be easy pickings, unprepared on the face all by herself.
Harvath continued to cut his toeholds and hammer the pitons. Reaching above his head, he readied to hammer another home, and the unthinkable happened. An enormous gust of wind peeled him right off the face and sent him shooting downward. Although he knew he had set his pitons properly, this was the moment in which every climber fears he will discover his safety measures hadn’t been set as well as he thought.
Scot kept falling, his hands flailing, knowing there was nothing to grab on to, but trying nonetheless. Then came the snap of being jerked to a slapping halt, but instead of feeling it in his harness, where he should have, he felt it hard along the left side of his ribs and dangerously across his windpipe. It took a few moments for him to realize what had happened.
He had not been stopped by his rope and safety harness, but rather by the shoulder strap of the assault rifle. Somehow it had gotten caught on a piton and, with the downward weight of his body, was threatening to cut off all of his oxygen and strangle him. Scot clawed at the strap, trying to free himself, but it wouldn’t budge. His legs were completely out of energy, and he couldn’t muster enough strength to even push himself away from the frozen wall of rock behind him. Harvath’s eyes drifted out over the dark valley below, and he wondered if this was how it would end.
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Claudia scrambled up the icy face to where Scot hung choking. In a flash, she had unsheathed her blade and was preparing to cut away the strap of the assault rifle pi
He didn’t want her to do it. Choking was okay, but God forbid the soldier should lose his assault rifle. Men!
Claudia frantically assessed the situation. If Scot didn’t want her to cut away the strap, maybe there was another alternative. She raced up to just about his shoulder level and tried with all her might to lift the strap and untangle him from where he was caught. As strong as she was, Scot was too heavy. It didn’t work. Time was ru
She thought about trying to wedge herself between Harvath and the face, using her legs push him out and off the piton, but there was too great a danger of them both becoming entangled and then falling with a combined weight that their equipment couldn’t handle. No, there was only one solution. Scot had to be lifted up, and that could only happen with Claudia off the face and anchored on the crest.
After wrapping an extra length of rope around Scot’s chest and under his arms, Claudia shot upward. There was no time to dig proper toeholds or hammer pitons; safety was forgotten as she focused on the man slowly choking to death below her.
The wind continued to buffet her body as she climbed. Twice the gusts threatened to rip her from the face, but she dug in deeper and refused to be beaten. Claudia’s axes swung and cracked into the ice, delivering bone jarring pings through her arms as she scrambled up the mountain. With each swing of the ax came a synchronized kick of the foot; her crampons sending shards of ice and rock flying in all directions, until she was just below the snow-covered crest of the face. From here, it would be two to three more ax holds, and then Claudia could swing herself over the top. This was the spot where Scot had said they would most likely encounter the first signs of danger-an intrusion-detection system or worse…a sentry.