The Arctic Event

It was futile. Under ideal circumstances she might have been able to lift the hundred and eighty-odd pounds dangling at the end of the rope, at least for a short distance, but conditions were far from ideal. Sprawled on an ice-glassy slab of rock, there was nothing to give her leverage or purchase. She was hopelessly pi

Again she heard her name being called. A dozen yards farther down the ledge she could see Smyslov leaning back against his restraints, trying to see what was happening.

“I’m here, Gregori, and from the look of things I’m not going anyplace.”

“What has happened?”

She hesitated for a moment, then realized her list of available assets and allies was ominously short. In a few terse sentences she described the situation.

“You should not have secured the lifeline like that,” he said.

“Do bloody tell,” Valentina grunted, again straining against the drag on the rope.

“Is the colonel all right?’

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t answered me and I don’t feel any movement at the other end of the line. I’m hoping he was just knocked out by the icefall.”

“You must get him up and out of there, Professor,” Smyslov called back.

“I know it, but I can’t get enough slack on the safety line to tie it off! If I cut loose, he’s gone!”

“Then you must drive in a second piton and secure your climbing harness to it. You will then be able to unharness without losing the colonel.”

Valentina gave up on fighting the lifeline. “That’s an excellent idea. Only I don’t have a second bloody piton!”

“Then use the spike of your rock hammer.”

She looked around within the arc of her reach and the glow of her light stick and swore again. “I managed to lose that, too.”

“Professor, he could be injured or dying!”

“I know that, damn it!”

Smyslov said no more. Panting, Valentina rested the side of her head against the frozen stone. They would all die if she didn’t do something. Trapped here, the storm and the inevitable, invasive cold would finish them all.

There was an answer, of course, obvious, simple, and easily done.

She could free herself by cutting the safety rope.

But as Jon had phrased it, that was an option she was not yet ready to consider.

She had her knives, three of them: the utility blade at her belt and her two throwing knives in the slip sheaths strapped to her forearms. Maybe she could use one of them as an ad hoc piton. But she lacked a hammer to drive the blade in solidly, and the hilts weren’t meant for the task. One slip or fumble, and Jon would be dead-granted that he wasn’t already.

That left Smyslov, the man she had quite been prepared to kill. But how had Jon phrased it? “I’m not sure if he’s an enemy yet, Val.”

Logic would indicate that he must be. But logic also indicated that her only alternatives were to cut Jon’s safety line or allow all three of them to perish on this mountainside.

“Gregori, how good a judge of human nature do you think the colonel is?”

“A very good one, I should think,” the Russian replied, puzzled at the question.

“I hope you’re right. I’m going to throw you a knife.”

It was going to be a task easier said than done. Combatant knife throwing was one of the most difficult of the martial arts to master. Were belts awarded for it, Valentina Metrace would easily be a red-belt master. Yet even the legendary William Garvin would have been challenged by this scenario: high gusting wind, miserable lighting, a bad throwing angle, and thick, hampering clothing. Most critically, there was nothing to sink the blade into.

The best bet would have been to skid the knife across the surface of the ledge to Smyslov’s feet, but given the way she’d tethered him to the cliff face, he couldn’t reach down to collect it.

Valentina peeled off her overmittens and gloves. Lying on her side, she pivoted around the piton to face Smyslov, the move putting her legs over the cliff edge from the knees down. She slid the utility blade out of its belt sheath, judging its throwing balance. “Here’s how it’s going to work, Gregori. I’m going to try to put this knife on the cliff face just above your head. You’re going to have to catch it as it slides down past you. Got it?”

“I understand, Professor. I will be ready.”

“All right, get ready. I’ll throw at the count of three. One…two…three!”

She made the throw, biasing the spin of the knife so it would strike haft foremost. Over the wind she heard the tink of steel hitting. Then she heard his explosive curse in Russian. “I missed it! It bounced off and over my shoulder.”

Probably that damn composite plastic grip. It wouldn’t hit and lie dead.

“All right,” she replied, keeping her voice level. “We’ll try that again.”

She drew the first of her handmade throwing blades, the steel of the little weapon warmed by her own body heat.

“Ready? Again, it will be over your head. Throwing on three. One…two…three.”

Her arm whipped back and forward, easing the throw into a toss instead of a strike. Steel rang on stone again, and she saw Smyslov’s silhouette lunge, trying to pin the sliding knife between his body and the cliff face. Again he cursed as the blade landed at his feet, wasted.

“I am sorry, Professor. I missed again.”

One chance left. Valentina blew into her cupped palms, flexing and wringing her aching fingers to renew warmth and sensitivity. “Once more, Gregori, only this time we’re going to work it a bit differently.”

“However you say, Professor.”

She slid the second throwing knife out of its forearm sheath. “All right. This time, lean back.”

“Lean back?”

“That’s right. Lean all the way back, with your arms extended out in front of you. Hang on the piton.”

Smyslov obeyed, tilting his body away from the cliff face. “Like this?” he questioned.

She studied his outline in the glow-stick light for a moment. “Yes, just right, perfect. Now, hold still, very, very still…And, Gregory, one more thing.”

“What is that?”

“Sorry about this.”

She heard Smyslov’s startled bellow as the steel fang spiked into his left forearm, just above the wrist.

“I apologize again, Gregori, but that was the only place I could make the damn thing stay.”

She watched the Russian cross his bound wrists and awkwardly yank the knife out of his blood-blotched sleeve. The razor-edged blade made short work of both the tether rope and the nylon handcuffs. Now he was the one free, and she the one bound.

No matter what, at least one of them would get off this ledge alive tonight. Jon would approve. With her own knife in his hand, Smyslov loomed over her now, his face impassive. What happened next would be out of her hands. Wearily, she rested her cheek on the ledge and closed her eyes.

Smith felt himself floating, adrift, but it wasn’t a pleasant, dream-state float. His body was twisted, distorted, and a broad spectrum of aches and pains stabbed at him. And there was the cold and the growing numbness. This wasn’t right. He must react.

His eyes snapped open, and he saw only snow-streaked blackness. Lifting his head, he could make out a twisted tangle of rope and harness enmeshing him, greenly outlined by the chem light. There was nothing else, nothing around him. He was hanging suspended, faceup in his climbing harness, swinging slightly in the gusting wind, a single thin line extending, bar rigid, above him.

Memory reactivated. He’d been rappelling down to the ledge when the whole vertical face of the glacier had disintegrated under him. The ice, under heavy compression, had given way explosively, and simple luck must have blown him outward, so he had not been caught and carried away under the fall. Nor had he hit the ledge. He must be hanging somewhere below it.

Cautiously, he reached around himself, exploring his surrounding block of space, trying to find something solid. The fingertips of his right hand just brushed a rock wall. The mountain face under the ledge must be slightly concave. He couldn’t call how far below the ledge he was suspended. Nor could he tell how much empty air was below him-possibly two feet, possibly two hundred.