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Mueller flipped the rope around a fairly well rooted hickory and slithered both ends so that they were even. If they had any sense at all they would have quick knotted it as well; if anyone lost one of the doubled ropes they would be holding thin air, but sometimes quick knots got stuck and while if the rope slipped one of them might die, if the rope got spotted all of them probably would.
"Me first," Mosovich said, picking the rope up and slipping it under his thigh.
"Let me go," Mueller said. "I'm the heaviest; it'll be the best test."
"Nope," Mosovich said with a chuckle. "We're going in order of weight. I want as many of us as possible to make it down. You go last. And carry the Barrett."
"Screw you, Jake," Mueller growled. He put one hand on the rope. "Just remember who's at the top with the knife."
"I will," the sergeant major said. He leaned back and started to walk backwards down the slope.
Although he probably could have gotten away with a simple "hand" rappel, holding onto the rope with both hands, Mosovich had set up a "body" rappel with the rope run between his thighs and up over his shoulder. It was much safer and more controllable and he was, frankly, getting a little tired of living on the edge. As it was, it worked well. He went down the slope about seventy feet, well short of the end of the rope and better than two thirds of the way to the road, and found a sort of ledge where a vein of quartz created a shelf. There was just enough room to stand with relative ease. Mountain laurels grew all around it so there was some concealment, and another largish tree jutted out of the soil-covered cliff. This tree wasn't quite as robust as the one Mueller had secured the rope to above and was on a worse slope, but beggars can't be choosers.
Sister Mary came next, fast and smoothly. They had been training together for nearly six months, but she had come with mountain climbing experience from somewhere and she showed it now. She actually bounded down the slope, something Mosovich preferred not to do when on a body rappel, and still managed not to dislodge much in the way of debris. She hit the ledge a bit hard—the quartz was friable and rotten—and dislodged a fairly large rock. But it hit in the mud of the drainage ditch along the road and disappeared into the muck; no harm done.
Next came Nichols, who hadn't had any mountaineering experience before joining the LRRPs. He took the slope very carefully, both moving slowly and making more of a trace than Mosovich or Sister Mary. But he made it, one-hundred-fifty-pound rucksack and all, and shuffled sideways to make room for the next team member, very carefully not looking at the straight drop to the roadbed below.
Instead of coming down, Mueller pulled the rope up. It took Mosovich a second to figure out what he was doing, but when the Barrett and the master sergeant's rucksack came down the slope it was fairly obvious. Mueller followed them in rapid succession, dislodging another rock when he hit.
"I du
"I'll take it," Mosovich said, throwing the rope over his shoulder. "Sister, on rappel."
"Okay," Sister Mary said without demur. If the sergeant major said he could hold the rope, he would hold the rope. She took it and slipped it around her body. "I'm going to cross right away."
"Oh, yeah," Mosovich agreed. "And hit the stream. But wait there."
"Roger," she said, dropping over the cliff. Her descent, again, was fast and smooth. When she hit the road she crossed quickly, grabbed one of the saplings on the edge of the bank and dropped out of sight into the streambed.
"Nichols," Mosovich said. "And take the Barrett. Mueller, gimme a hand."
Both of them bracing were able to support Nichols and his massive load. The weight caused the sniper to drop far faster than he had probably preferred, but he made it to the road and crossed quickly, dropping out of sight on the far side. There was a faint cry that reached their perch over the chuckle of the river and the two NCOs traded glances and a shrug.
"You sure you can support me, Jake?" Mueller asked. "I could go last."
"Sorry man, I'd rather trust myself," Mosovich said. "I can handle it. 'He ain't heavy . . .' "
"Right," said Mueller with a laugh. He dropped over the side of the ledge, but was careful to catch his weight on as many footholds as he could find in the eroded cliff. At the bottom he threw the rope aside and darted across the road.
Which left only Mosovich. Jake looked at the tree he was supposed to depend upon, the eroded hillside and the woods across the way. "What a screwed up situation," he muttered. Then he coiled up the rope, tucked it in his rucksack, turned around and dropped off the ledge.
The technique was another picked up in too many years of risking his life. On a cliff like this, with outcroppings, brush and trees sticking out all over, it was barely possible to slow yourself by catching various items on the way down. It was not a matter of stopping, that was going to happen suddenly at the bottom, but just slowing yourself enough that you didn't break anything.
It was not the sort of technique that anyone but mountain troops used, and then only in extremis, because it was so stupidly dangerous. But, Mosovich thought, that's my life all over. There were two things uppermost in his mind on the short descent. One was that if he dug in too hard, it would leave a path a blind normal would notice. So he couldn't slow himself the way he would have preferred, placing both hands and feet into the slope and "dragging down." The other thing that was uppermost in his mind was that, at the speed he was going, if one of these damned white pine saplings jammed him in the groin there weren't going to be any more little Mosoviches.
The cliff flattened out a bit at the bottom from runoff and caught one foot sending him into a backwards roll. He tucked into it and fetched up, hard, against a rock fallen at some previous time. But all the pieces were in place and nothing appeared to be broken. So it was clearly time to cross the road.
He trotted across and grabbed one of the saplings on the edge to swing down on. He was going to drop directly into the streambed and that was damned near as dangerous as going down the slope; the rounded and slimy rocks of the stream would turn an ankle sideways in a heartbeat and with all the gear they were carrying that would mean a broken tibia just as fast.
He slipped down the slope and looked at the team huddled against the streambank. "Everybody golden?"
"No," Nichols gasped out.
"He broke both ankles jumping off the bank, smaj," Sister Mary said, putting a splint in place.
"Well, Stanley," said Mueller leaning back until his head was in the stream. "Isn't this a fine mess you've gotten us into."