The Edge (23 page)

“Don't,” Alessia pleaded.

“I am not going to shoot you,” Émile said. “Step away from them.”

“No!” Alessia grabbed Zopa and pulled him in to us.

It was a delaying tactic that wasn't going to work for very long, but it was worth it to see Émile's rage. I thought he was going to shoot Alessia too, but he didn't. He just stood there glaring.

“We could fall back into the river,” I said quietly. “Take our chances.”

“A cork couldn't survive in this water,” Mom said.

“We will be fine,” Zopa said. “Just stay where you are. Watch the
shen
.”

The
shen
jumped from the wall to the shelf and started moving toward the inflatable boat. Émile swung his rifle toward it.

“No!” I shouted, breaking away from the group—

The
shen
freezes in place and looks up at the sky. Émile points his rifle at me and grins. The gorge somehow gets darker, like a cloud is passing overhead, which is impossible. The gorge is too deep and narrow for sunlight to reach the river unless the sun is directly overhead. I wonder if this unnatural darkening is something that happens just before you die. I look back at Mom. She is moving toward me with her arms out, screaming. I hear a gunshot, then another, and another. I'm surprised it doesn't hurt. I look back at Émile . . .

He was on the ground covered in blood.

The
shen
bolts, bounding up the cliff face as if it's running across flat ground. Mom must have found the pistol she dropped. That's the only explanation . . . But it isn't . . . Ethan floats down to the shelf, releasing his paraglider chute two feet from the ground. The chute billows into the river and is swept away . . .

ETHAN DIDN'T TAKE
his rifle off of Émile as he walked over to him. He kicked Émile's weapon away, then kneeled and felt for a pulse. It wasn't until he was sure Émile was gone that he looked at me and grinned.

“Guess you and I are back among the living,” he said.

Mom and Alessia threw their arms around him. Zopa stood to the side, smiling.

“From above,” I said.

Zopa shrugged.

“How did you know?”

I expected another shrug, but he surprised me. “I saw him. He looked over the edge of the cliff with a pair of binoculars. The sun caught a lens. He watched us for a long time. At first I thought he might climb down after us. When he didn't, I remembered his parachute.”

“Paraglider,” I said.

Zopa shrugged.

“How did you know it wasn't Géant?”

“He would have shouted down to Émile.”

It all made perfect sense, and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. I didn't want it to make sense.

“He had to wait until we were on the ground,” Zopa continued. “He had to time his jump perfectly.” He looked up at the cliff. “And so did the
shen.
”

I looked up. The
shen
was two hundred feet up the cliff and moving quickly. I watched until the cat disappeared, then looked back at Zopa.

“What do you mean the
shen
timed its jump perfectly?”

“The jump to the shelf. A second earlier, or a second later, one of us would have noticed Ethan floating down and looked up. Émile might have followed our gaze and shot Ethan before Ethan could . . .” He nodded at Émile. “The
shen
was here to distract us. To hold our attention at the right moment.”

I grinned. That was more like it.

THE BOAT WAS FILLED
with supplies, including life vests and two satellite phones, which didn't work in the gorge. There were about four hours of daylight left.

“The water's fast,” Mom said. “It won't take us more than twenty minutes to get out of the gorge. But we won't get out at all if I don't take some time to familiarize myself with this boat.” She looked at Ethan. “Have you had any experience with a boat like this?”

“Just riding in one,” he answered. “Not piloting one. I'm more of a canoe and kayak guy.”

The boat had a huge engine in back and four oars.

“Give me a few minutes,” Mom said. “You might as well eat something or just chill out.”

We broke out the camp stoves and started water boiling. I sat down next to Ethan.

“I don't understand why you came after us,” I said.

Ethan smiled. “I told you I wasn't very good at following orders.”

“We didn't have orders. We had a plan.”

“They figured out we'd flown the coop quicker than we thought. Halfway up the hill, I spotted the guard following us. He was moving quickly, but he was alone. That could only mean that Émile and Géant were going after you. I sent the film crew on ahead and told them to keep going, no matter what. I waited for the guard and ambushed him.”

I didn't ask what he meant by “ambushed,” because I already had a pretty good idea. I noticed that after Ethan had checked Émile, he hadn't once looked back where he lay. He had done what he had to do, but he wasn't proud of it.

“My choice then was to catch up with the film crew or try to help you. Wasn't much of a choice. I hurried back down to the stream, grabbed my gear, and set out to find you, which wasn't as easy as I thought it would be until I saw the snow leopard.”

“The one that got skinned?”

Ethan shook his head. “No, I saw that one later. This one had to be the same one that helped me with the trapdoor. I know you're going to think this is weird, but I think it was leading me to you.”

“I don't think that's weird at all.”

“Good, because I believe that's exactly what it was doing. I lost your tracks in the woods.”

“That's because Zopa and I smudged them out.”

“That explains it. When I broke out of the trees onto the plateau, I had no idea where you were. That's when the snow leopard showed up again. It would run in front of me, then stop as if it were waiting up. It seemed crazy to trust a cat, but that's what I did. It led me to the skinned cat. I freaked out. When I first saw it, I thought it was one of you. Anyway, when I was gawking at that horror story, I heard the gunshots.”

“They caught up to us just as we reached the gorge.”

“That's what I figured. The snow leopard bounded ahead and led me to Géant. Who shot him?”

“Mom.”

“From the gorge?”

I nodded.

“Wow. That's good shooting with a pistol at that range. He was probably dead before he hit the ground.”

I didn't want to talk about dead people. We'd all had enough of that. “What happened then?”

“I saw the snow leopard disappear over the cliff and start following you down. By the time I got there, you were four hundred feet below. Too long of a shot for me. My only choice was to jump when you got to the bottom and hope for the best. The glide was a little difficult in that narrow space, but there wasn't much wind, so I was able to control it. I was shocked Émile didn't look up. If he had, it would have been dead man falling.”

I think the trick to keeping a boat afloat in fast water is to be faster than the water. As soon as we launch, Mom guns the motor. I'm behind Zopa. Alessia is behind Ethan. We're manning the oars. The problem is, with the exception of Ethan, none of us have ever used an oar.

“Dig in!” Ethan shouts over the roar of the water.

Zopa's oar snaps in two as we slam into the opposite wall of the gorge. My oar stays intact because I'm not strong enough to hold it against the wall. The handle hits me in the chest like a brick. I tumble backward. Mom saves me from going overboard by grabbing a handful of T-shirt and shoving me back into place.

The boat is spinning, bouncing from one side to the other, banging into walls, like a pinball. It's like falling horizontally and trying to save yourself by clutching a wet beach ball. During one of our out-of-control spins, Mom guns the motor just as the bow swings upstream. The boat stabilizes.

“Use the paddles as rudders!” she shouts. “Keep the boat centered! I'll control the speed!”

And in this way, we slowly back our way out of the gorge . . .

AS SOON AS
we hit calmer water, we pulled over to shore to bail out the boat and repack our gear. Ethan got on the two-way and tried the film crew. JR answered right away.

“
Where are you?”

“Upriver from you. Where are you?”

“Still crossing the scree. We should be at base camp in an hour or so. What about the guard?”

Ethan hesitated.

“He's not going to be a problem. You're safe. We're all safe.”

Not Phillip, or Elham, or Aki, or Choma, or Ebadullah,
I thought.

“So you're in a boat?”

“Yeah. We might even get to base camp before you.”

WE DID GET TO BASE CAMP
before them, but there were people there. Rafe and Cindy were standing outside their tents. They looked as surprised to see us as we were to see them. The camel and the donkey were there as well. Rafe looked even worse than he had two days earlier. The butterflies had come loose. He had a flap of skin hanging down on his forehead.

“You're supposed to be in a kayak halfway to Kabul by now,” Ethan said.

“That didn't work out, mate. Hit some rocks. We saw a boat just like this come by. Tried to wave him down. Blighter wouldn't stop. Figured that if there was one boat, there would be more. We decided to come back here and wait for another boat. Someone friendlier.”

Ethan grinned and shook his head but said nothing about who the blighter in the boat had been or what he would have done if he had stopped.

“Where'd you get the boat?”

“Long story,” Ethan said.

“Where's Phillip?” Cindy asked.

I'd been waiting for this. So had Mom. And Alessia.

“Let's go up to the tent,” Mom said. She and Alessia took Cindy's arm and led her away.

“Aki? Choma?” Rafe asked.

We shook our heads. Ethan began explaining what had happened as he patched Rafe up again. I walked down to the river. Zopa joined me. He had a sat phone in his hand.

“There's a signal,” he said.

I shrugged.

“I suppose we should wait and have Alessia call the embassy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And within a few hours after the call, our camp will be swarming with helicopters filled with soldiers, police, and the press. We'll be an international news story. Plank's Peace Climb will be a disaster.”

“Do you care about what happens to Plank?”

“I have never met him, but he was trying to do a good thing. So were Choma, Aki, and even Phillip, in his own way. It's bad enough that Émile and the others murdered our friends. I don't think they should be allowed to murder the Peace Climb as well.”

“What do you have in mind?”

I gave him another shrug.

“Tell me.”

“It's too crazy. We're all exhausted. Give the phone to Alessia. Let the story begin.”

“Whose story is it?” Zopa asked.

“It's our story.”

Zopa smiled. “Then let's talk to the other characters and see how they want it to end.”

I WAS SHOCKED
that Cindy wanted to go with us, and even more surprised when she insisted on climbing. She didn't do too bad, considering that the most complicated thing she had ever climbed was a ladder. I put her in the
P
cave, and I took the
E
cave, so I could keep an eye on her. Rafe climbed up to the
A,
although he said he really didn't want to. Mom took
C,
and Zopa took the last
E.
We spent the night in the caves and climbed down at dawn.

Alessia called the embassy.

We spent the wait keeping the
vautours
off our friends Elham and Ebadullah.

PIERRE, WHOSE REAL
name was François Bast, was caught three days after we left the French embassy. I'm not sure what happened to him, but I hope he rots away forever in a bastille. The Afghan he was with was not caught. His last known whereabouts were somewhere in Syria. There was not one news report about what happened to us in Wakhan Corridor. The French government wanted to keep it quiet, and so did we.

Sebastian Plank flew to Kabul to meet us as soon as he heard what had happened. He wanted to cancel the Peace Climb and the documentary, but we talked him out of it. It wasn't his fault. It wasn't our fault. The fault lay at the feet of the terrible men who murdered our friends.

JR, Will, and Jack flew to their studio in Boulder, Colorado, to edit their video.

Rafe went back home to Australia, with what I am sure is a very interesting version of what happened on the climb and the role he played in it.

Cindy went back to California to pursue an acting career, and she's gotten a couple of small parts. The reason I know this is because she sends me text messages several times a week. I write her back when I see the texts, which is not very often, because my phone is . . . well, you know.

Ethan decided to stay in Kabul. Alessia's mother hired him as her security chief, but the real reason he stayed was to learn Pashtun and more about Afghan culture. He couldn't get that snow leopard out of his mind.

“I need to see what I can do about helping those cats,” he had said. “The snow leopard was there when we needed it. I'd like to return the favor.”

After returning the camel and donkey to their owners, Zopa stuck around long enough to meet Plank and asked him for a lift back to Kathmandu on his private jet. I went to the airport with them to see him off. Just before he stepped into the jetway, I thanked him for everything and told him to say hello to Sun-jo for me.