Snowman (19 page)

Bradford wondered now whether he actually cared about living or dying on the mountain. Would it really matter? He felt lost and confused. Jamie's death had shocked him, made him relive the scene on Lhotse. If Packard was also gone, the three of them would surely be claimed by the mountain. His mind focused on the word "Sierra." A chain of mountains with serrated edges. Yes, they were like sharpened, blazing knives raised against him.

It would be better if the mountain took him, he told himself, because he could not live with the thought of failing again. He had come after the Snowman this time to reclaim that part of him which had died. Now he no longer had the strength. He slumped onto his side, opening his arms, waiting for the blizzard to embrace him, to relieve him of the agony of confronting the Snowman another time.

On the other side of the sangar he saw a fleck of orange. It gradually grew larger, until he realized that it was Pemba. He had girdled the cirque below the summit. He moved agilely along the circle of cliffs contorted by the glacier.

Bradford's eyes were closed when he heard the voice. "
Thik hai?
" the voice called out.

Was he all right? What a question.

He was shaken, then yanked to his feet.

"Dan, you've got to move."

Pemba brushed the snow off his suit, then adjusted the mixture on Spider's oxygen nozzle to enrich the flow.

"I found a cave beyond the cirque."

Bradford's legs wobbled, and he supported himself on the sangar wall.

"Where are the Dexedrine tablets?" Pemba asked. Bradford indicated his pack; the Sherpa stuck his hand inside and found the medical bag. He broke out the tablets, swallowed one without water, and then undid Spider's oxygen mask and forced one down Spider's throat along with some new snow. Spider reeled drunkenly without the oxygen. His mouth hung open, and he was almost overcome by anoxia. Still weak and despondent, Bradford helped Pemba replace the mask. Spider began to breathe too rapidly.

"Slow down," Pemba ordered him. "Try to keep your breathing in a rhythm."

With Pemba at the head belaying them with the rope, they gradually circled an outlier which had been concealed by the storm. The minor peak extending out beyond the principal summit enabled them to climb in a traverse so that they could avoid the main path of the storm.

When Bradford looked back, the sangar they had left was no longer visible. A blanket of snow cloaked it, and gale-force winds lashed it unremittingly. They had moved south of the summit. The route to the top would not go, for the sheer face collapsed into an acute angle of perhaps twenty degrees. If they were to make an assault they would have to retrace the same path, and in these weather conditions it would be impossible.

Pemba seemed to glide along the depression of granite ice. When he finally stopped, they were just above a long, undulating couloir which had been formed when the glacier changed direction. Twisted spears of ice grew out of the mountainside like thorns, concealing the entrance to the cave. But mountains held no mysteries for Pemba. He deciphered signs which a mountain concealed from strangers.

They shone their flashlights into the mouth of the cave. It was like entering a frozen womb which contained the secrets of the earth's birth. The cave had been limestone when the mountain was a seething volcanic mass, spewing forth gases and molten lava. From its roof icicle-tortured masses of multicolored stalactites hung, like a cripple's contorted fingers. Growing up from the cavern floor, stalagmites joined them, creating a bizzare convoluted shape. Where the two met, solid pillars of ice were established. Spider was more frightened and tentative than he had been on the mountain; he shied away from the entrance.

"It isn't safe," he protested. The horns of ice were ominous and beautiful, suggesting a primeval temple of worship, at once inscrutable and forbidden. "I'm not going in."

"Okay with me," Bradford said, his voice echoing like a church bell.

Pemba and Bradford worked their way into the belly of the cave. Where it widened there was ample room to set up the primus and stretch out in comfort. Pemba lit the stove, then unwrapped the provisions he carried in his pack. He threw salt pork and thick strips of bacon into a frypan, adding beans and frozen potatoes.

Spider inched his way toward them as though spying on his enemies.

The bacon crackled in the frypan, sending up shafts of warm smoke which teased their noses. Soon Spider was crouched over the frypan. "What if there's another avalanche and we're sealed in here?" he asked.

"We hadn't considered the possibility," Bradford replied. "When I was a Boy Scout I learned that it was a fucking good idea to get inside—anywhere—when my ass was getting wet."

"But what if the Snowman finds us here?" he insisted.

"We'll be killed," Pemba observed.

"I got claustrophobia," Spider said, staring at the colored burrs of ice which hung on the stalactites like a pattern of knobs.

"Spider, you've got problems."

The bacon crisped and the ragout was dexterously dished out by Pemba on the aluminum mess plates.

Spider still balked, and circled them nervously. "Have you got a damned thing to say about Jamie?"

Bradford placed his spoon on the edge of his plate. "We tried to save him, didn't we? It could have been any of us. We've still got to eat. Now stop behaving like a righteous asshole. This is called survival. Right now it's the three of us against the Snowman. The odds stink, the weather's a son of a bitch, and griping isn't going to solve our problems."

"Do you think you could've killed him?" Spider asked, helping himself to a plate of steaming food.

"I wouldn't count on it," Bradford said. "When you wound a lion he becomes more dangerous."

"That's reassuring—we're never going to get down alive."

Spider insisted on taking the first watch. The cave gave him the horrors, so he sat vigilantly at the mouth, muttering to himself, while the other two slept inside. His frustration grew more intense as the minutes ticked by.

The night was clear; he felt that he could almost touch the stars. He was absolutely convinced that if he could establish some communication link, Monte Dale would send up a chopper to rescue them. He'd seen choppers land on a pinpoint in Laos on terrain that was as impassable as this mountain. All they needed was a few hours of good weather. Monte and the authorities must be deeply concerned about the team; once they had a fix on the climbers' position they would mount an evacuation operation. But how could they even begin to plan a rescue if they couldn't locate them?

Spider left the cave, convinced that his mission was to lead them all to safety. A windbreak wall diverted the heavy, crashing winds; for the first time in days he felt secure. He flashed his light around to be sure that the footing was secure. A flat ice platform extended beyond the cave, and Spider circumspectly walked along it. He stopped when he heard muted shouts and strangled cries coming from below. There was a girl's nerve-rending helpless wail, followed by a boy's pathetic whine. Then he could've sworn he heard the Kodiak's agonized roar resounding through the enclosed valley adjacent to the cave. It couldn't be the wind. The sounds were too distinct and well defined to be gusts of air trapped in a chimney.

The mountain was alive with trapped, wounded people, pleading for assistance. He'd been right to come out and investigate.

He took out his flare gun and fired a flare. There was a dull report, and the sky was lighted with a majestic flash of red-orange, which comforted him. The cries rang out again, and he shouted, "Hang on, they'll be coming up for us!"

The thought virtually guaranteed the act, and he congratulated himself for taking the lead. Bradford was insane and the Sherpa was too ignorant to understand the meaning of life. They were savages. The flare died. He fired another one, then another, and the sky was turned into a small man-made galaxy of light. Of them all, Spider knew that he was behaving with true courage—heroically. He waited for more responses from the trapped people, and when the new flares sputtered, he reloaded his gun, poised and expectant.

"Don't give up. I'm with you," he called out to give them fortitude. "You're not alone."

The wound was so piercing that for a moment he wasn't aware of it. But the warm, gushing blood began to spurt, and when he covered it with his gloved hand he realized that he had a hole in his side. His legs became numb and the stars appeared to move on a reckless collision course, like planes in a midair crash.

He reeled dizzily, expecting to fall to the ground, but he was lifted up, defying gravity. The stab wounds were becoming more frequent, and he was being forced into a cave in which sparks flew as though from a black-smith's anvil.

The cries of the girl and the child and the bear were mingled with his own, and the cave became a massive bed of gnashing spikes which gave off the intense heat of a blast furnace, searing his skin. Teeth dug into his face.

Dark patches of frozen blood laminated the snow outside the cave. Pemba held the flare gun in his hand and in a futile angry gesture flung it down the side of the mountain. He had tears in his eyes and strode toward Bradford, who looked impassively at the signs of death. Bradford embraced him; then, when Pemba had regained his calm, he pointed upward.

"We're going for the summit. It's our only chance."

The mountain was an unbroken white cataract. The earth that existed for the two of them was an unyielding ocean of filmy ice. The silence was intolerable, a deadly pall of frost which enveloped them, slowly crushing the life out of them.

"Spider panicked," Bradford said regretfully. "The cave spooked him."

"Dan, let's head down. We can double the ropes and rappel." Pemba looked at him hopefully. His breath was crystallized by the brutal cold. The summit with its treacherous ice towers loomed above them in clear outline. At the source of the glacier the snow had hardened to firn. The granules were as sharp as broken glass. Ridges of snow, sastrugi, as impenetrable as concrete, had been built up by the virulent winds.

Pemba's body shrieked with the agony of the cold. He had known such a sensation only when he crossed the Geneva Spur from Nuptse in the Himalayas and a freak storm had dropped the temperature to fifty degrees below zero.

It seemed colder now.

"I'm going up," Bradford said with finality. "Alone if I have to."

Penaba shook his head ruefully and pressed his palms together.

"I won't leave you. We should have died on Lhotse with the others. God gave us ten years and our destiny is the same."

"I don't want to die."

Pemba laughed. "We have no choice."

They climbed methodically across the terminus of the glacier. It was too cold to use the conventional prusik knots on the ascent; they switched to Jumar ascenders, mechanical clamping devices that enabled them to push up. The cam gripping the rope had a mouth of blunted teeth to prevent slippage. If there was any upward motion of rope beyond the cam, the Jumar would automatically grip the rope and prevent it from sliding.

At its most precipitous point the great facade of the glacier revealed white granite rock that appeared to be translucent, volcanic glass formed hundreds of thousands of years before. It was overlaid with a darker sedimentary rock border that looked like a massive wound that had hemorrhaged. A rock needle hung precariously from the slope. They were climbing on a forty-five degree angle. If any of the steel pitons holding the rope loosened, they would both fall into the enormous cwm below them. The enclosed valley at the foot of the glacier was some eight thousand feet below them. A drop from this height would last an eternity of four minutes.

It began to snow; wave-shaped masses of firn blasted in their faces. Exhausted, they stopped some two hundred feet below the summit and clung to the mountain like monkeys. A sudden thunderous crash of ice blocks shook the mountain, sending slopes of stones tumbling down.

Through the veil of snow, the Snowman appeared. He swung his single arm like an ax, hacking through the glacier. The ground under the men rumbled.

The speed at which the Snowman moved was alarmlng. He thrashed at the ice face in a frenzy, dislodging the pitons they had hammered in, cutting them off from their route down. Bradford hugged the flank of ice and set himself in firing position. The Snowman was coming into range.

Bradford scraped the ice from the telescopic sight with his teeth; it was still too heavily caked to see through. His fingers were numb; he threshed them hard against his side to regain some feeling.

"Pemba, fire, damn it, fire!" he implored.

Pemba stood transfixed, frozen with shock. He fell to his knees, shuddering.

Relentlessly the Snowman carved out a path on the sheer incline. Now he was only twenty yards away. His head was the size of a boulder. His breath hissed, searlng the ice. Bradford's fingers twitched, and with his little finger he managed to release the automatic trigger.

The arrow lodged in the Snowman's side. A squall of whining, bleating, tormented, incoherent sounds scattered from the monster's throat. Half of the massive body was demolished, and he fell backward, crashing onto the icefall.

The ice below Bradford was smoking, blackened by fire. The ridge became a bed of smoldering purple-red lava. The slopes below were fissuring; masses of granite ice were dropping into the enclosed valley.

Bradford struck Pemba across the face with his gloved hand; the blow shook the Sherpa out of his state of shock. He began climbing again toward the summit, followed by Bradford. When they reached the top, the storm ceiling had dropped; they could see the mountain boring open as though it had been bombed. It had become totally unstable. Huge séracs were tipped off, tumbling down thousands of feet. Sections of the glacier were penetrated so deeply that underground springs fed by boiling gases escaped, sending geysers of smoking water straight up in the air.

"We've done it. He's dead," Bradford whispered in awe.

But the Snowman had destroyed them in the process. We're alive but we're trapped, Bradford told himself. One canceled out the other. Radio communication was impossible from that altitude. He and Pemba lay prone, unable to move. The cutting boreal cold made them listless. They knew that unless a rescue helicopter had been sent out they would freeze to death, but they could not help themselves.