Chapter 19

For a moment, no one moved or said anything. Annja wasn't sure anybody even dared to breathe. She had to remind herself to do so, and that only happened when the already razor-thin membrane keeping hypoxia at bay began to fray, and the blackness crowded forward threatening to crush her vision to a pinpoint, and then extinguish it completely. She swayed then went to one knee. She focused on taking in deep breaths. Otherwise she risked following Hamid and his victim Fred into white oblivion.

It was Larry Taitt who came to her side and helped her to her feet. His thickly gloved hand trembled on her arm. The face behind his goggles was the same color as the snow.

"Ms. Creed," he stammered. "A-Annja. Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said. "I guess so."

She was shaken. She had just stabbed a man in the back and watched another brave man fall to his death. She'd seen many people die since the sword had come into her possession but she was sure she'd never get used to it. At least she hoped it would never become unremarkable.

"You took your bloody time booting the traitorous bastard over the edge," Wilfork bellowed as he scrambled up over the ledge as lithely as a skinny adolescent. Baron grabbed his arm and hauled him away from the drop. "Were you taking time to admire his rhetoric, or what?"

"Waiting for my chance," Annja said.

But the question did bother her. Did I wait too long? she asked herself mentally again and again. Did I buy my secret's continued security with the life of that poor boy? Even if the "boy" was likely the same age she was.

While Hamid had obviously dismissed her from his consciousness, it didn't mean he didn't keep cranking his head left and right like a feral Brooklyn tomcat navigating an unknown alley. Once he caught the flash of purposeful movement in his peripheral vision it wouldn't matter whether it was caused by man or mere woman—he'd instantly wheel and shoot.

But was I too concerned about trying to hide the sword from the others? she wondered. She feared she would see the grimace of pain on Fred's face as he fell for a long time in her dreams.

The rest of the climbers reached the top quickly and safely despite the full-on blizzard that had descended around them. Tommy and Josh came up last. The survivors basically clumped into two shocked groups huddled against the now-howling storm. The Young Wolves moved to one side, the Chasing History's Monsters trio to another.

Jason was babbling excitedly to his companions. His voice was lost to Annja in the greater voice of the wind. They cast the occasional wide-eyed look at Annja but sent no recriminating words her way. She dared to hope they'd finally grasped that her act of violence, shocking though it was to their tender sensibilities, had been to save them. Had been the only thing that saved them.

More likely, she thought, they're too scared of me to speak to me now.

Levi stood close to her, making soothing noises he seemed to hope were helpful. She appreciated his solicitude but tried to tune him out. She was sitting with her back to the granite wall, trying to sort out her own chaotic seethe of thoughts and emotions. The thin air didn't help.

Wilfork also loomed nearby, his ski cap off, his white-yellow hair ruffled by the wind and rimed with snow. He kept looking at her strangely.

"You actually kicked him off the cliff," he said, several times. To Annja it sounded as if he was trying to talk himself out of something. Did he think he saw something?

She was questioning, now—oh, blessed hindsight—whether she'd even needed to use the sword. But as tightly wound and wary as Hamid had been, could she realistically have been sure of getting close enough to land a solid kick before he turned and shot her? The three-foot steel length of the sword's blade had been her margin of success.

She knew she'd got a clean heart shot, even if she'd slightly misjudged the range. Trying to reach a man's heart through a man's stomach was taking the long way around, she knew from anatomy classes. And also experience. But the additional kick that sent him over the edge hadn't just been to hide the fact he'd been run through. She'd also seen firsthand how even a clean heart shot wasn't always instantly lethal. Especially on someone totally stoked on adrenaline. She couldn't afford him the chance to pull the trigger and wave goodbye to her companions with his automatic weapon.

Blood spills, burned deeply into fresh snow and already cooled to the point they no longer steamed, spattered the edge of the sheer drop. Nobody, Annja figured, was going to be in position to analyze them and find out they belonged to Hamid as well as his victim. It was relief, but a small one.

Bostitch and his acolytes had formed an inward-facing circle linked with arms on shoulders and heads together. They seemed to be going through some kind of ritual for their lost friend.

"Have they done this often before?" Levi asked. He'd shoved his goggles up onto his forehead so he could scratch the bridge of his nose beneath his thick glasses.

"Good question," Annja said, feeling suddenly colder than even weather and circumstances called for.

"We have to push on," Bostitch announced as the circle broke up with some kind of joint exhalation of prayer.

"What?" Annja and Wilfork asked at the same time. The television crew echoed them a moment later. Jason had recovered his presence of mind enough to take up his big video camera and start filming again.

"Didn't you hear the man?" Baron snapped. "He said we have to move. Get bodies in motion, people. Daylight's wasting."

"It's still daylight?" Trish asked.

"You can't be serious," Jason said. His voice shook but he held the camera steady as stone. Annja had to admire his professionalism. "Somebody just died here," he said.

"We have to go back," Trish said. "The expedition's over. I mean…isn't it? Surely it is." She looked pleadingly at Annja.

"And let Fred's sacrifice go in vain?" Josh snarled. His own face was so white that for a heartbeat Annja feared he was on the verge of massive frostbite.

"This is crazy, man," Tommy said. He also looked to Annja for support. "You tell 'em."

But she shook her head slowly. "I'm not going back," she said. "We're within a day of our goal. We didn't quit when Mr. Atabeg got killed. I don't see why we should quit now."

Trish and Tommy stared at her, white-faced beneath the goggles they'd pushed up on their heads. Jason shook his head.

"We're just used to covering imaginary horrors," he said. "Not real ones."

"We're moving on," Bostitch announced. His own voice wobbled like a relapsing alcoholic after a couple of stiff ones. "Move on. Up. We have to get away from here."

"What, man, are you afraid it's haunted?" Wilfork demanded.

"Does this look like a debating society?" Baron shouted. "The man says move, people. Now, do it!"

Even the Rehoboam Academy grads seemed to move slowly in response, although that could well have been residual shock from the sudden horrible death of a friend. But move everyone did.

Annja realized with a little shock that she hadn't even raised a peep of protest herself. Did I just realize it was futile to argue with the boss, she asked herself, or am I as eager to get away from this place as Bostitch is?

The day, such as it was, grew dark around them. Annja thought it reckless to the point of craziness to continue to climb. But Josh took point and they struggled upward over a hundred feet higher through the snow and twilight. Annja moved in an internal fog almost as chill and blinding as the hell of half-lit and darkening snow whirling around her, compounded by physical fatigue and emotional overload. A good dose of adrenaline-buzz letdown had been thrown in, too.

Perhaps in desperation, both to escape the scene of horror below and to find some kind of relatively safe harbor before darkness and the storm trapped them dangling on the sheer gray face like flies on a single spider-strand, they took more risks than they should have. Perhaps mental numbness and physical fatigue took its toll on the others as well as Annja.

Jason, though not the most skilled climber in the television crew, insisted on accompanying the lead climber, now Josh Fairlie, as he blazed a trail while the others rested as best they could suspended in midair, roped closely to pitons and spring-loaded camming devices jammed in cracks in the rock. He also insisted on making his own way, paralleling the Rehoboam graduate from the right and slightly below.

Annja thought that was a foolhardy risk to take for the sake of some grainy snow-filled video in a gloom even the camera's built-in light did little to dispel. But the crew from Chasing History's Monsters didn't seem to be listening to her right now. Possibly they thought she'd gone over to the "other" side, as they apparently saw it. Or maybe they were so creeped out by what she'd done they couldn't bring themselves to deal with her.

During the desperate storm-whipped scramble tempers had frayed. Below her Annja could hear Trish and Tommy snarling at each other with voices held low to prevent dropping some shelf of snow and ice hanging over them unseen down in their faces. The odd acoustics of storm and stone both muffled their voices and oddly amplified them.

For his part even Levi seemed too exhausted for the usual cheerful banter he tried to fill time with when circumstances kept him from his beloved reading. He gave her a smile, weakly, slowly blinking long lashes behind his goggles and thick glasses. Just below the soles of Annja's boots, Robyn Wilfork groused to the Higgins twins beneath him, past an untalkative Zack Thompson, who climbed right after the New Zealander to help secure him. What, if anything, Jeb and Zeb said in reply she couldn't hear.

It happened, as disasters did, with a suddenness that stole the breath like a plunge into icy water. Somewhere above the vertical procession a rock gave way with a crack and a rumble. Josh cried out a frantic warning and caught himself by sinking his ice ax with a ringing clang into the rock as his legs swung free.

The falling rock was about half the size of a human torso. It struck Jason's shoulder and knocked him free. He cried out sharply and fell off the mountain's face.

Continuing down the rock missed Annja by the breadth of her outspread fingers. Whether it had struck Charlie Bostitch or not she couldn't tell. But the bulky shape twenty feet above her dropped toward her goggled face with shocking speed. At the same moment she heard Wilfork bellow in terror below her and knew he'd lost his grip, too.

"Hang on, Levi!" she shouted to the man above her.

Jason plummeted past. Annja caught a nightmare glimpse of his face, eyes and mouth strained wide. His arms and legs moved as if he were trying to swim on air. His camera's brilliant beam wheeled around him like a spoke of yellow-white light.

Annja pressed herself against the rock, clung with outflung hands as well as boot-tips to the rock. She thought the plentiful safety anchors and lines should keep anyone from falling too far.

That was the idea, anyway. But the more climbers who peeled, the greater the risk that pitons would rip free of rock, or the ropes themselves might break. Annja's body took a brutal shock as Wilfork's considerable weight hit the length of the rope that separated them. She gasped for breath and clung for all she was worth.

A second shock almost tore her from the cliff. Bostitch's hurtling mass had plucked Levi right off the wall. The rabbi flailed as he dropped the short distance toward Annja.

"Grab onto me!" she screamed. She probably didn't get it out in time to do any good.

But somehow Levi managed to get a grip on her right leg. He clung with both hands, his own legs swinging wildly above white emptiness that swirled into oblivion.

For a moment Annja seemed to be single-handedly supporting the combined weight of several helplessly flailing men, more by strength of will than body. Below her she heard more cries as other climbers fell. She braced herself.

But she knew she couldn't take any more. As it was she could only hope to hold out seconds more against the killing weight that hung from her climbing harness. She felt her fingers weaken, seeming to squeeze the handholds out like watermelon seeds.

No further shocks hit her. The mountaineering training the Rehoboam grads had received evidently kicked in. The party was still anchored. They'd survive, she told herself. If only I can hold out…

She heard Baron's voice, low yet penetrant, speaking reassuringly to his boss. The former SEAL and current security-contractor mogul hunched like a big dark spider. He had lost his cap. His bare head jutted from his jacket like a bullet from its casing.

Annja felt the relief as Charlie Bostitch's weight came off her harness. Baron had taken up the slack. A moment later the tycoon himself had gotten his own purchase on the rock and even found the presence of mind to screw in a fresh camming device to help hold him.

At the same time the load from below diminished further as somebody secured Wilfork once again. And then Zack was alongside Levi, snapping a safety line onto the scholar's harness, lashing them together. Levi released his death-grip on Annja's legs as Thompson made both fast to the wall.

"Are you okay, Ms. Creed?" the young ex-marine called softly, his words echoing between cliff and cloud.

All she could do was nod weakly.

As if they had passed some kind of test the sky cleared. The snow stopped. The wind died. Shafts of golden late-afternoon light stabbed past the mountain to either side, illuminating the rolling few miles of land between Ararat and Iran. Annja found the side-scatter light almost blinding after the terrible white night of moments before.

By the golden fading sunset light they hauled themselves up to a substantial ledge, perhaps twenty feet deep and fifty long. Josh had been on the verge of laying a gloved hand over the actual lip of safety when the big rock had broken loose.

They all made it up to lay gasping, exhausted and safe, on ice-sheathed stone. All except Jason.

Examining the lines they quickly learned that tempers weren't the only thing that had frayed on the climb. The television crew chief's belaying rope had parted. Jason had fallen away down the steep northern face of the Mountain of Pain, to vanish forever in the storm.