We piled everything we could find on top of the door.
“That ought to hold them,” Ethan said. “At least for a while. What’s the plan?”
Mom quickly rolled out a map and explained what we had in mind.
“Makes good sense,” Ethan said, without a word about the team divisions or anything else. “How much time do you think we have?”
Mom looked at her watch. “The second guard has been relieving the first guard around six. It’s a little after two now. So we may have four hours.”
“They’re going to know we used this trapdoor,” Ethan said. “But it’ll take them a while to get up here. We’re about fifty feet above the main entrance. They either have to climb up the wall or go around. From what you say about their climbing abilities, I think they’ll go around if there aren’t other exits. The question is, are they going to split up and send one guy after one group and two guys after the other? Hopefully we’ll be so far ahead of them that we’ll never find out.” He looked at me. “Do you want the pistol or the rifle?”
I didn’t want either of them. I’d never fired a gun in my life.
Mom stepped forward. “Pistol,” she said.
Ethan handed it to her. “Do you know how to use it?”
Mom answered by pulling the slide back, jacking a round into the chamber, and flipping the safety on.
French, she knows how to operate a boat, and she knows how to use a gun.
“Guess we’ll keep the radios on the same channel they’re on now,” Ethan said.
“How’d you find this entrance?” I asked.
Ethan grinned for the first time since leaving the cave. “It was kind of weird. It took me an hour to get up here. I was sure that if there was a back door, this was the place. An hour later I wasn’t so sure. I was about ready to give up and try a different area when I saw something move into this grove of trees and stop. Or I thought I saw something. Anyway, I started walking this way, and I saw that cat you were talking about.”
“The snow leopard?”
“I don’t know if it was the same one or not. Can’t be too many of them around, though. It was sitting on top of the trapdoor. I’m not kidding. Maybe it smelled food or something coming up from the tunnels.”
“Or maybe it was something else,” I said, although I wasn’t sure what that something else might be.
“Maybe,” Ethan said. “I’m just glad it did. I wouldn’t have come into this grove. I thought it was too far from the entrance for a back door.” He looked at his watch. “We better get footing it. With some luck, we’ll see you downriver.”
We shook hands and hugged. Ethan’s team headed southwest. Our team headed northeast.
ZOPA INSISTED that Mom and Alessia take the lead, saying that he wanted to talk to me. They set a pretty fast pace through the forest, which I tried to match, but Zopa held me back. It turned out he didn’t want to talk, he wanted me to help him obscure “the tiny boot prints” Mom and Alessia were leaving in the soft ground. We shuffled more than walked. Mom and Alessia pulled farther and farther ahead. I didn’t care if Zopa wanted to talk or not. I had things to say.
“You knew we were going to show up at the cave,” I said.
Zopa shook his head. “I knew you would try to reach the cave. I did not know about Ethan or his unique skills. That was good fortune.”
“Not for the guy he killed.”
“Karma. The man who died is the one who murdered Choma, Aki, and Phillip. But all of them carry responsibility.”
“You should have told Ethan that,” I said. “I think he was upset about killing him.”
“If you kill someone, or something, you should feel regret.”
“Ethan didn’t have a choice.”
“Of course he had a choice. He made the choice that most benefited his needs and ours. Émile and the others made the choices that most benefited their wants.”
“Are you saying they’re justified in what they did?”
“You were not listening,” Zopa scolded. “I said needs and wants. They are not the same thing. They want money. Their desire for this justifies anything and everything. We need to survive. Our desire for this justifies almost anything and everything.”
“Almost?” I asked.
“The difference between wants and needs is very slight. It is slippery. It is often difficult to tell the difference between the two.”
“I’ll have to think about that when I’m not fleeing for my life.”
Zopa laughed. “Yes, that is probably best.”
“What about the shen?”
“Now, that is a true mystery and something I will have to think about when I’m back at the monastery and not fleeing for my life.”
“Probably just a coincidence,” I said.
“Ha! Probably just a living talisman. There are no coincidences. Everything that happens has purpose, which is another thing you can think about when you are not fleeing for your life. Ethan joining us with his unique skill set was not a coincidence. He thought he was here to climb a mountain, but he was sent for a very different reason. Everyone and everything has a part to play in this, but none of us will know the full extent of what that part is.”
We nearly bumped into Mom and Alessia, who had stopped to wait for us.
“What are you two talking about?” Mom asked. “We’re feeling a little left out.”
“Talismans, want versus need, fleeing for our lives, destiny—just the regular stuff,” I said.
Alessia smiled, although I wasn’t sure she’d understood everything I had just said. We stepped out of the trees onto a plateau of barren rock lit by the waning moon. I looked at my watch. The GPS was down again. We’d been walking for two hours.
“At least it’s not scree,” Mom said. “Have you seen Pierre’s footprints?”
Zopa shook his head. “He might have come a different way. Finding where he descended should be easy once we reach the gorge.”
Which was about fifteen miles away, if we’d calculated our position correctly.
“I’m just glad we’re traveling at night,” Mom said. “Walking across this plateau during the day would be like walking on molten lava, but I guess it’s better than—” She stopped in midsentence and fixed her headlamp on Zopa. “How many men do you think are coming this way?”
“I think two of them. Émile and Géant. But only if there’s a second boat or if they pick up Alessia’s footprints, which I think we’ve managed to cover up pretty well.” He looked off across the plateau. “They won’t be able to track us on this hard rock, but they don’t have to. If they know we came this way, they know we are after their boat. That is the fastest way downriver. They have no more desire to cross the scree than we do. The boat is their best hope of catching us or getting away if they fail. I think they will send the remaining guard after Ethan’s team. Émile and Géant will try to get to the boat and cut them off.”
“But they aren’t climbers,” I said.
“Perhaps not,” Zopa said. “But they are desperate. They will do anything to capture us or get away.”
The Pelt
The sun is up. It’s early morning. The gorge is nowhere in sight. Mom has the map spread out on the rocky ground. I can’t say we’re lost, because we didn’t exactly know where we were in the first place. Everyone is pointing at the map and talking at once. Even Zopa is getting a little tense. This reminds me of the daily where-do-you-want-to-go-for-dinner conversations back in New York, which reminds me of the twins and Rolf, who have no idea how horrible our little vacation in “After Can Stand” has been, and they won’t know for several days. That is, if we survive. I back away from the debate and find a nice boulder to sit on. Alessia glances over her shoulder. A moment later, she joins me, leaving Mom and Zopa to figure out what to do next . . .
“IT IS TOO bad the GPS does not work,” she said.
“That would solve a lot of problems,” I said, amazed at how great she looked after the kidnapping, the long trek across
the scree, the deaths, the dank cavern, more death, and our escape. She wasn’t as perfect as she had been when I first saw her rappel down the cliff face, but she was pretty close. She had resiliency, which was something I wished I had more of.
“What will you do when this is over?” she asked.
It was all I could do not to point out that this was far from over, and that I might not be able to do anything, because I might not be alive. She might not be alive either.
“I’ll go home,” I found myself saying. “New York.”
“We go to New York,” she said. “Every year. For Christmas. My mother and I.”
“You’ll have to come and see us. Meet my twin sisters.”
“You have sisters?”
“Patrice and Paula. Seven years old. I miss them.”
“Your mother must be missing them as well.”
“She hasn’t said anything, but I’m sure she’s going out of her mind with worry.”
That’s when it occurred to me that Mom probably hadn’t said anything about the twins, or Rolf, because if she did, she might completely lose it. Her advice to me when I was on Everest was to be selfish and to think only about the climb. Your guts and heart need to be stone cold, she had said.
“It might be good not to say anything to her about the twins,” I suggested.
“I understand,” Alessia said.
I glanced over at Mom. She was rolling up the map. They must have come to an agreement.
“Vautours,” Alessia said, pointing.
I didn’t understand the word, but I recognized what she was pointing at. Circling over the plateau, maybe a mile away, were at least a dozen vultures. I remembered what Ethan had said about the three graves along the stream. There was something dead on the plateau.
Zopa looked over at us. “It’s on our way,” he said.
AT FIRST WE COULDN’T TELL if it was an animal or a human. A few of the vultures had landed and were feeding on it. As we drew closer, the vultures started to flap away.
“It is a snow leopard,” Alessia whispered.
At first I didn’t see how she could tell. All I saw was a pile of flesh the size of a medium dog. It could be anything. But she wasn’t talking about the pile, she was looking at something beyond the pile, something horrible. Stretched taut on a crudely made rack was a snow leopard pelt. Ethan had seen the snow leopard the night before. The men couldn’t have gotten in front of us and shot it.
“It is not the same snow leopard,” Zopa said. “It may be the mate of the one who has been watching over us. It is several days old.”
“But who did it and why?” I shouted, furious.
It wasn’t as if I wasn’t angry about the other deaths. I was. But seeing the skin drying in the morning sun pushed me over the edge. I’d had enough of stupid deaths.
Alessia put her hand on my arm. I thought about jerking away. I didn’t want to be comforted. I wanted to kill the guy who had done this and stretch his skin out on crude poles. I wanted vautours to feed on his flesh. I wanted to—
“As to who did this,” Zopa said, “it was probably one of the kidnappers. One of the Afghans, I would guess.”
“But why?”
“Ten thousand dollars in Russia,” Alessia said. “Maybe more. Poaching is a huge problem here. It declined during the war, which increased the price for pelts.”
“How do you know that?”
“My father was a conservation biologist.”
“Was?”
“He died,” she said. “In the Congo when I was ten years old. Killed by rebels, they say, but my mother believes he was murdered by the gorilla poachers he was trying to stop.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Seeing this had to be a lot worse for her than it was for me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“He was a wonderful man,” Alessia said.
“Maybe we should take the skin down,” I said.
“I’m certain whoever did this intended to pick it up on his way back through,” Zopa said.
“The one who did this might already be dead back in the cave,” I said. This idea made me feel a little better, but Mom shot this happy thought down.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “The man in the cave wasn’t a climber. This had to have been done by the man with Pierre, or maybe Pierre himself. The others didn’t come this way.”
“Why didn’t they take the skin with them when they came back through here?” I asked.
“They were in a hurry,” Alessia said. “And the skin is still green and heavy.”
“We will leave it where it is,” Zopa said. “We at least know that they walked this way.”
Zopa was right. An hour and a half later, we reached the gorge.
The Edge
It’s deep and sheer. Two thousand feet to the river. We walk along the edge, looking down, trying to figure out where they descended. Between us, we have four hundred feet of rope, which we will have to halve in order to retrieve the rope between pitches. We could tie the ropes together and take ten or twelve pitches down to the water. The problem with this is that everyone would have to hang on the wall until the last person on the rope reached them. I haven’t seen a lot of great places to hang on the wall. The crumbly rock is a lot like hard dirt. Totally unstable, which is probably how the gorge was formed in the first place. The river cut through it like it was tissue. The alternative is for each of us to make our own way down. This means taking more than forty pitches each to get to the river. Harder, but maybe safer, because we would be able to choose our own descents, making adjustments on the way, depending on the condition of the rock. But first we have to find out where and how Pierre tackled the problem. In an odd way, he’s the climb master now . . .
“HERE!” ALESSIA SHOUTED.
We joined her. She was standing next to a shiny new anchor.
Zopa got down on his knees and reefed on the anchor several times. It didn’t budge. “Long shafted,” he said. “It will hold. If we choose to use it.”
That was the question, and I could see by everyone’s expression we were all wondering the same thing. I got on my stomach and looked over the edge. It was a long way down. Twice the height of the New York Times building, which I had climbed when I was an idiot. The difference was that the fifty-two-story Times building was made out of solid steel and glass. The gorge was rotten rock all the way down. I did see some small ledges here and there, that might have allowed some purchase to reset the rope, but there weren’t many of them, and it was impossible to tell how solid they were. I was about to get up and report back to the others, but saw they were all lying next to me, heads over the edge, checking it out for themselves. I didn’t blame them. I’d never take someone else’s word for a descent. Especially one as hairy as this.
We stood and were about to start the descent discussion when a bullet answered the question for us. It ricocheted off the ground right between Mom and me. We hit the deck instantly, along with Alessia and Zopa.
“Did you see where it came from?”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“How’d they get here so quickly?”
No one had seen where it came from, no one was hurt, and no one had any idea how they, if it was they, had gotten there so quickly. They must have discovered the dead guard earlier than expected. Another bullet hit the ground, but farther away than the first. Probably because we were lying down now and not silhouetted against the gorge.
“I saw it this time.” Mom pointed. “A thousand yards. Two of them.”
I saw them. Two big figures jogging our way. It had to be Émile and Géant. One of the figures stopped, fired a round, then resumed jogging.
“Pound in anchors,” Zopa said. “Everyone over the side.”
“We’ll never make it in time if we don’t slow them down,” Mom shouted, pulling the pistol out of her waistband. “I can’t hit them with this, but I can get them to take cover.” To prove her point, she fired a shot. Both men hit the ground. ?
??I’ll use the anchor Pierre set after you’ve all started down.”
“I’ll set your rope,” I said.
“No, Peak!”
I ignored her and pulled the rope out of her pack. As I attached it to the anchor, I heard her fire another shot.
“That didn’t slow them down!” Mom shouted. “They’re running toward us now.”
“How far?” Zopa asked.
“Five hundred yards,” Mom answered.
Zopa had his anchor in and was fixing his rope. Alessia was a step ahead of him. She was clipping her harness around her waist.
“Four hundred yards,” Mom said.
I started pounding my anchor in.
“Three hundred yards,” Mom said.
“Fire at them,” I said, feeding my rope into the anchor.
“They know I can’t hit them from here. That’s why they’re up and running. I need to wait for them to get closer.”
I fixed my rope, then crawled over to Mom and pulled her harness out of her pack.
“Just go!” she said.
“Plenty of time,” I said with more calm than I felt. “I’m just going to get your harness set.”
Émile and Géant were now two hundred yards away, almost sprinting across the plateau. The only things slowing them down were their rifles and their heavy packs, which were both loaded with climbing gear. I looked over at Zopa. He and Alessia were hooked into their harnesses, squatting on the edge with their backs to the gorge.
“You see the gear?” I shouted.
Zopa nodded. “They’ll come down after us.”
I was more worried about them cutting our ropes before we were able to pull them and get rigged for our second pitch.
I think Zopa understood that too. “We have to go.”
“We’ll be right behind you.” I looked at Alessia. She was obviously frightened and worried. I tried to give her a confident smile, but I’m not sure she saw it before she and Zopa disappeared over the lip of the gorge.
“Hundred yards,” Mom said, the pistol still pointed at the men.