The Arctic Event

And then there was the other problem: her lack of gloves. So far she’d been able to protect her hands inside the overlength sleeves of the outer shirts she wore. But she would need them to climb with. How long would she have before she started to take skin damage at this temperature? Two minutes? Three?

There was one positive. The face immediately above her couldn’t be too high. The falling snow had reached the ledge in only a couple of seconds. She looked over her shoulder. The flashlights were growing brighter. She had to act, now!

Randi pulled the sleeves back from her hands and sprang upward as far as she could. Her nails scrabbled across ice-sheathed rock; one tore in a stab of pain; then she caught a handhold. Breath hissed between her clenched teeth. She hauled herself upward by arm strength alone, not letting her boots touch and mark the cliff face. Supported by her left hand for a moment, she darted her right upward, and a merciful universe let her find another grip.

Once more she hauled herself upward, shoulder muscles cracking. She was high enough to use her boots now without leaving obvious marks, and she could start hunting for and using toeholds as well. She had rock climbed before, for pleasure, but there was nothing pleasant about this. Her hands were already on fire with the cold.

Come on, Randi! You’ve only got your eyes closed because the Utah sun is too bright. It’s ninety degrees in Zion National Park and you’re wearing shorts and a halter top and you can feel the climbing harness hugging you, keeping you safe. You’ve got just a few yards left to go and you’re at the top and you can dangle your feet over the edge and laugh and drink a cold Diet Pepsi from the cooler.

Just a few yards more.

She found a horizontal fissure she could stand in for a moment, and she beat her fists against the rock to force feeling back into them. She couldn’t let them go completely numb yet. She had to be able to touch her way up!

Voices! Reflecting lights. The search party! Limpetlike, Randi plastered herself against the rock face. They had reached the slide. They were on the ledge directly below her.

This would be it. Would they buy into her accidental death, or would they suspect the trick? Would a light beam play up the cliff face, followed by a stream of bullets or just one carefully aimed shot?

Her hands! Dear God! Her hands!

They were having an argument down there! Come on! Come on! Before I fall off and land on top of you! Who was going to win? The tired or the dedicated? I’m dead, damn it! Buried under an avalanche! Your red-haired bastard boss should be satisfied with that!

They were moving. They were going back. They were leaving. After an eternity they were leaving. And no one had looked up.

Randi had to continue the climb, and she had to pray there really was only a short distance to go. She had no feeling left beyond her wrists, and she was not going to get down from here without either falling to her death or losing her hands.

Just a few yards more.

Another hunt for a foothold. She didn’t care anymore if it was solid or not. A levering of her trembling body up another foot or two, again…again…Reach up once more and find something to hook those numb claws over. Something…soft. Fresh banked snow, the trailing edge of the broken cornice. The top! A final push and she was burrowing wormlike through the cliff-edge drift. She was out. She’d made it!

Randi came up onto her knees. Fumbling dully, she pulled her nonexistent hands back up the sleeves of the overshirts. Crossing her arms over her chest inside the shirts, she thrust her hands into her armpits. Shivering and rocking in place, she waited in dread. Slowly, slowly, she began to feel pain, the terrible fiery pain of returning circulation. It felt wonderful! And she knelt there for a long time savoring the agony, tears streaming from her eyes.

But she could feel the tears freezing. As the deadness left her hands she became aware once more of the deeper overall cold saturating her. The wind was stronger, more piercing up here, the snow being driven harder before it.

That should mean something to her, but to Randi’s failing mentality it didn’t. The deadly, stealthy enemy hypothermia was on her now.

Move. She had to move. Tapping the last dregs of her energy reserves, she forced herself to her feet. With her arms still crossed under her shirts, she tried to bulldoze ahead through the snowbanks. Why was the wind so much worse here? She muzzily groped at the thought. Of course, she must be right on top of the ridge. There was nothing to windward to block it anymore.

But what did that mean? Why was that important?

Randi bulled forward another yard, another step, struggling through snow and blackness; then, suddenly there wasn’t anything under her left boot. She heard the crump of another collapsing cornice, and the snow around her came alive. She was falling with it, sinking into it, drowning in it.

But why was that important?

Chapter Forty-two

The North Face, Wednesday Island.

The climbing rope uncoiled as it arced outward and down to the target ledge, sinuously outlined in the light of the dropped flare.

“I’m going to double-line you down.” Jon Smith twisted a loop of the rope through a carabiner on Valentina Metrace’s climbing harness. “I’ll be supporting most of your weight on the safety line.” He snapped the second rope into place. “All you have to do is back down the bergschrund and keep the main line untangled as it feeds.”

“Fine. No problem. What’s a bergschrund?”

Smith smiled patiently in the glow of their lum sticks. “It’s the interface between the mountain and the glacier.” His beard-darkened features looked tired but also confident, as if he had every certainty in the world she could pull this off. Valentina wished she could feel the same.

“I’ll take your word for it. And then?”

“I’ll use the main rope to lower the packs and rifles to you. Haul the gear well away from the glacier side. It looks a little unstable and we might have an icefall or two.”

She felt her eyes widen, and she glanced toward the glacial lip. “An icefall?”

Again came that steadying smile. “Then again, we might not. But be ready to duck, just in case.”

“You may rest assured!” Valentina knew flippancy was inappropriate at the moment, but she had used it as an effective screen for personal self-doubts and fears for so long, it was a difficult habit to break.

“I’ll send Smyslov down next. Secure him well clear of the glacier face as well. And Val, remember, he is a prisoner.”

She started to flare but caught herself. After all, she’d been the one to inject that concern into the proceedings. “That’s now a given, Jon.”

“Good enough. After that, I’ll rappel down to join you on the ledge. Then we’re out of here and on our way.”

Valentina suspected that for all Smith’s confidence it likely wasn’t going to be all that easy.

The black drop down the trough between stone and ice, with the winds clawing at her and nothing at her back but a long fall, was easily one of the most terrifying things she had ever done, and she had lived a life that held many moments of terror. Yet she could view the act almost in the abstract. Valentina Metrace had long ago learned to compartmentalize her fears, locking them up to scream and weep in their own little mental cage while the remainder of her being dealt with the necessities of survival. She could do the same with pain, compassion, or any number of other emotions when needs required. As with her sophisticate’s humor, she found it a useful mechanism.

Still, 120 feet could take a century to descend. Twice, loose ice slabs broke loose beneath her boots, crunching and clattering away to shatter on the ledge below. In each instance she paused, took a deliberate, steadying breath, and continued.