The Edge (21 page)

“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 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.

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.

“Your harness is set. You need to get into it. We have to go.”

“Two seconds.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then squeezed the trigger.

One of the men went down. I think it was Géant. Émile went flat and returned fire. He started to get back up. Mom fired again. She didn't hit him, but the shot ricocheted on a rock near his right leg. He hit the ground again.

“Time to go,” Mom said.

We backed our way to the gorge and dropped over the edge.

I rope down about forty feet and stop. There's a toehold just big enough for me to catch while I pull the rope and reset. Zopa and Alessia are about fifty feet below me to my right, setting up for their second pitch. Mom stops ten feet above me, a little to my left. We both have more rope, but it's best to rerig when you can, not where the rope ends. And then there's Émile. If he gets to our anchors before we pull our ropes, he'll cut us loose—

“
ROCK!
”
MOM SHOUTED
.

I hugged the wall and covered my head. I'd left my helmet on the hillside with the camel. It wasn't a rock. It was her pistol. It hit me in the shoulder, painfully. I made a grab for it, but missed.

“Drop something?” A man's voice shouted from above.

Émile. He was on his stomach, hanging out over the edge, pointing his rifle at us. “If any of you descends one more inch, I will shoot all of you.”

I doubted he would shoot Alessia, but I had no doubt that he'd shoot me and the others. He didn't even have to waste a bullet on Mom and me. All he had to do was reach out with a knife and cut our ropes. It was probably lucky Mom had dropped the pistol. If she hadn't, she would be falling right now. Climbing back up to Émile was not going to be easy, but that wasn't what he had in mind.

He called down to Mom. “Retrieve your rope, or I'll cut your son's rope.”

Mom hooked on to the wall and pulled her rope.

“You next,” he said, pointing his rifle at me.

I retrieved my rope.

“I am coming down. We will descend together. Slowly. If I tell you to stop. You will stop. If you do not. I will shoot you. Do you understand?”

I nodded, and I'm sure the others did too. The wall was as flat as the side of a glass building. There was no place to hide.

“I am going to attach my rope now. When I look back over the edge, if any of you have moved, I will shoot you.”

He didn't ask us if we understood this time; he just disappeared. We stayed exactly where we were. There was nothing we could do. There was obviously a second boat, and he wanted to get to it. A couple minutes later, a rope flew over the edge. A few seconds after that, Émile roped down with his rifle slung over his shoulder, stopping about ten feet above Mom. He may not have been climbing recently. Soft hands. But judging by the way he had rigged his harness and descended, he knew what he was doing. There was no sign of Géant. Mom had either killed him or wounded him so badly, he couldn't join us. I wished she had shot Émile instead.