Snowman (17 page)

Olafson looked despondently at several of his men, who were standing by the fireplace warming themselves.

"Then what the hell do we do?"

"We've got five experts on the mountain, led by Daniel Bradford. They've got weapons, they know what to expect," Monte said with assurance. "I hired them for this job."

At the door a mob of journalists had gathered and were shouting angrily for an interview with Monte Dale. Cathy went into the corridor to fend them off. Bright lights were switched on, and she was blinded by the unexpected glare. She was bombarded by questions, and she decided not to answer any of them until she was allowed to read a statement she had prepared earlier.

"If I can have your attention for a moment, I'd like to try to explain what happened today."

The room quieted down. The TV mini cameras rolled, and she cleared her voice.

"In all the survey work that was done before Great Northern Development decided to build a ski village and develop ski runs here, there was no indication that there was a geological weakness in Sierra Mountain. We may never know exactly what caused the avalanche, but right now we're trying to find out with a team of five surveyors up the mountain, headed by an expert climber named Daniel Bradford."

A voice from the back of the room boomed out, "Our research department ran a check on Bradford. He went after a Snowman years ago. Now why would he be the one you'd bring in if you thought a bear and an avalanche had killed those people?"

Cathy ignored the question and returned to the office.

The team had covered half of the icefall by late afternoon. Surrounding them were frost-riven spires. Packard was having difficulty breathing even with the oxygen, and he was slowing them down. Just ahead of them was a cwm, a small enclosed valley on the flank of the spur; it would be a good site for a supply dump.

The men were exhausted, staggering like drunks. Bradford knew he was pushing them too hard, but he needed to use the last hours of light in order to block off the principal route the Snowman could use.

The tracks he had been following were now covered by snow, but he could trace their path by the deep declivities that appeared at irregular intervals. He was able to work out a rough formula of how large the Snowman's strides were by pacing off the indentations. The figure he arrived at was approximately eight feet, which indicated that the Snowman must be at least twenty-five feet tall. When he had seen him at Lhotse it had been impossible in his panic to get any exact idea of his size.

The radio transmission was set up by Spider and Packard, but the signals were blocked by the mountain chain. Rather than waste batteries, they closed down.

Jamie took over the kitchen chores and boiled some snow for soup. They set up a small tent and unloaded the supplies they had brought up.

"What do you think?" Bradford asked Pemba.

"Let's go on ahead and see where the tracks lead."

"Did the others notice them?"

"I doubt it."

"What are we going to do with Packard?" Bradford asked.

"He can't handle the altitude, but he's the best shot."

"I'll leave him in charge of the supply dump to protect our rear."

Above them was the great saddle of the Sierra Col, a depression on the face buttressing the summit. It was obscured by iron-colored clouds and continuous sheets of snow. The men slithered across the ice, stopping every few feet, hunched over in the wind. A low, vibrating sound, different from the ice movement, was coming from a source near the summit. It was rhythmical and had no timbre.

"Christ!" Bradford began taking shelter against an arete. "It sounds like a heart."

They stood transfixed in the narrow rock passage, intimidated and thrilled by the possibility that they had located the Snowman. In a crevasse to the side, swollen like a large gray vein, were the remains of a Kodiak. It had been flattened against the ice wall; they would have to cross the corpse to reach the summit.

Bradford noticed an odd saline odor that was reminiscent of the sea at low tide. If only he'll stay put, he thought.

By the time he and Pemba returned to camp, Bradford had worked out a plan which would enable them to mousetrap the Snowman. It depended on Packard's remaining as a backup.

He drew a triangle on the map and said, "We'll form two groups—Spider and I, Pemba and Jamie. We'll use a rope ladder to cross the crevasse below the summit, then the two groups can move toward the summit. All we want to do is rouse him. Then we'll form a wedge and strike in a pincer move and hope he'll respond to the sound or the smell. We hit him once he comes down this pinnacle of ice."

"You're assuming he'll act predictably," Packard said. "Man, we made assumptions like that about the V.C. in Nam, and believe me, our plans weren't worth two shits."

"He's lodged behind the sérac," Pemba said. "There's no other way down this side of the mountain."

"There may be for him. We have to climb whatever's negotiable—he doesn't. But what we're counting on is his instinct to attack," Bradford explained.

"How can you be sure that he's not below us?" Spider asked edgily. "Could be he's cut us off."

"I heard him, and so did Pemba."

The men avoided looking at Bradford. The fire glowed in the center of the tent. The walls were frozen from the condensation of their breath. Outside the winds swept to gale force, bellowing between the sérac and the mountainside.

"It's time for a weapon-assembly drill," Bradford ordered.

Working with their gloves on, they fitted the riser with two aluminum limbs, then flexed the limbs on two pulleys rotated on the wire aircraft cable. They mounted their sniper scopes and took the firing position. Bradford kept them at the drill for an hour and managed to get their routine down to two minutes and forty seconds. Outside on the mountain even with ideal weather conditions, they'd be fortunate to break four minutes.

"We'll have to climb with them assembled," he said at the end. It was bad luck, since they ran the danger of having the bow freeze. The aluminum might begin to contract at certain sub-zero temperatures.

"Suits me," Spider said. "I never liked the idea of putting my piece together when I'm ready to fire it."

Relieved that he no longer was required to climb, Packard volunteered to take the first watch. Spider followed him outside when the others were asleep. They huddled against the ice wall to keep out of the direction of the wind.

"I don't like leaving you behind," Spider said.

"Shit, I can't hack the climb is all. At close range the bows'll work. But I think you're going to have to get a lot closer than a hundred yards. This wind'll blow a bullet off course." Packard opened his parka and revealed a .357 Magnum. "I'm not taking any chances, which is why I brought junior along with three boxes of ammo."

"I've got some plastique in my kick. If it comes to it, avalanche or not, I've got enough to blow that mother to Saigon. You didn't expect an old pro like me to go fighting with bows and arrows. Shit, if we're going to war, the Spider-Man's bringing his own deck."

There was a hollow uncertainty in their soft conspiratorial laughter. Shards of ice lashed viciously at Spider as he struggled back to the tent. The starless night frightened him. More than ever he wished he had remained safe in the East Vegas jail. Perched on an elbow in his sleeping bag, he looked up at the tent roof and muttered to himself, "Hard way four . . . twenty-two come up smiling."

By the time they reached the crevasse in the morning, it was covered. A snow bridge had formed across it. Bradford attached himself to Pemba's snap-link to test its stability. He walked stealthily, like a nervous burglar. As he crossed it, ice channels shifted between huge troughs.

"We'll use the rope ladder," he called out. At the sound of his voice, the moat shuddered, dropping a wall of snow down a gulley of inestimable depth. It was as though a wound ran through the body of ice. Surface tremors appeared, revealing further ice weaknesses. The glare from the sun on the glacier was blinding.

Pemba fired a grapnel, and Bradford hammered it into a shelf with his ice ax. He tied the heavy nylon ladder to another section, jamming it into the open head of a steel piton. The rope bridge extended for ten feet.

Spider cringed when he was waved onto it. His face was raw from the cold, and he inched his way along the, ladder, moving on his belly. When he reached the other side, he collapsed. Jamie was next; he shied away like a frightened horse. Bradford bullied him into crossing. Midway over, the ice below him splintered; he lay frozen with terror on the rope.

"Don't look down," Pemba pleaded. "You're almost there."

Bradford held out his hand to encourage him.

"I can't—"

"Jamie, you've got to move," Bradford insisted as the splinters widened into throbbing veins.

Crippled with fear, Jamie lay prone, gasping in the rarefied air. Another block of ice fell below him, creating a hissing cataract in the crevasse. Finally, Jamie forced himself to grope his way over to the other side, where he fell to his knees as though stricken.

Pemba was the last to come, wiggling adroitly and seemingly without fear. Now they were all on the other side of the slowly disintegrating moat. Pemba and Bradford pulled the ladder with them. As they stepped away, the gap widened, ice crackling, until the crevasse shattered. It was now almost the length of a city block. They watched in helpless frustration as they found themselves cut off from their camp and Packard.

They were on a cleaver, an island of granite rock sheathed with ice, circling the body of the glacier. Above them the dazzling bare-faced walls of the summit rose like threatening daggers.

"We'll never get down again!" Spider shouted.

"Don't be crazy," Bradford said. "We'll make it."

When he found his voice, Jamie joined the protest. "Dan, we were going to wait for the Snowman to come and get us. Why're we tracking him?"

"Because we couldn't wait and find ourselves trapped."

"He's luring us up the mountain," Spider said. "Man, you fell for the bait."

It was a dead-end argument—useless to continue. Bradford took out his walkie-talkie, raised the aerial, and spoke into it.

"This is Bradford—come in, Camp Two."

In a moment Packard's voice crackled over the line. "Camp Two. How are you mothers?"

"We're okay. We'll have to come down to you a different way. We're at the southeast corner of the icefall. Grid numbers forty-seven sixty-one. Try to get through to the ground when the weather clears and give them our position."

"Roger. Hey, listen, anything happening?"

"Not yet. How's it down below?"

"Beautiful. I've got my swimsuit on, and I'm going to take a walk to see if I can pick up a chick with big jugs I spotted on the beach."

"Over and out."

Bradford led the men to a bergschrund. The large crevasse was securely fixed on the upper slope of a glacier separating it from the steeper slopes of ice above them. They were a good eight hundred feet below the summit.

Bradford decided to wait until he detected some movement from the Snowman. The weather was fair now, the snowstorms of only short duration. The Snowman would not come out until the conditions became severe.

Time passed all too slowly for Packard. He failed to reach the sheriff. The signal was weak; he recharged the batteries but still could not make contact. He cleaned up the tent, made himself a can of pork and beans for lunch, dipped saltine crackers into it, and pretended he was eating a real Texas chili. He located Bradford's grid marks on the map, then found himself growing sleepy. He had planned to get some air, but the snowstorm had intensified at this level on the mountain.

He started daydreaming about returning to his ranch, the commotion he would cause at the bank when he deposited his fifty thousand dollars. Curled up in his sleeping bag, he had a smile on his face as he fell into a deep sleep.

It was a while before he reacted to the scraping noises he heard outside the tent. He wondered if they were natural to the mountain. He'd become accustomed to the noise the ice made when the wind lifted it and hurled it against the frozen rock.

But this was different. It was like someone grinding glass on concrete. He put on his boots and his parka, tied the hood, and peered out suspiciously. He couldn't see much. The snowfall was building high drifts on the level shelf of the camp. On impulse he picked up his bow. He was sorry now that he had agreed to stay behind. He could have managed the climb if he used his oxygen. They should have drawn lots, he told himself.

He wasn't sure if the wind was playing tricks. It was impossible, but he thought he heard the mewing of a cat, ululant and insistent. How could an animal survive outside? Yet the sound gained resonance. His uneasiness grew. If only he could see it. He was trying to reach Bradford on the shortwave when he was interrupted by an unexpected movement against the tent. The walls were swaying, and he jumped back, crashing into the stove and upsetting the pot of coffee on it.

"What is it?" he shouted.

The wall of the tent was torn open; something with huge claws slashed at his stores. Cans burst open. He backed away, not knowing what to do. He threw down the crossbow and pulled out his Magnum. He began to fire, round after round, at the claws which groped out blindly. His radio was smashed; the tent collapsed.

Packard struggled to get outside and reloaded. Where was it? He saw a shadowy outline of something enormous. He opened his parka, located the plastic cord, and flung it at the shadow. The explosion threw off blocks of ice and stone. But whatever was out there had not stopped. Now it was thrashing the air in a frenzy.

He staggered back. Something took hold of him, and he shrieked. It began squeezing him; he felt his hand go limp; the pain was intolerable.

"God, God, please help me," he whined. He was lifted high into the air. The wind battered him; he flailed desperately. Something hot and as foul as an infection made him sick; he began to vomit uncontrollably. Then, for the first time since he was an infant, he felt himself void involuntarily.