The Last Airship (20 page)

How
had he caught up with them?

Then,
Sam realized that the man must have followed them when they left the B&B,
and then made his way past them when they’d stopped to enjoy their macchiato
yesterday.

Aliana
then grabbed hold of Sam and kissed him.

“Thank
God you’re alive!” she said, with tears in her eyes. “We’ve got to go.”

“You’re
absolutely right, but go where?”

“I
have no idea yet. Let’s just start making our way down the mountain, until we
can find a place to traverse, and then get up above him.”

“Agreed
– I don’t like the idea of someone looming above me who wants to see me dead,”
Sam said, as he started to climb downward.

Sam
and Aliana had both climbed down the ladder a distance of about three hundred
feet, until they reached a ledge. In that time, the man above them had
significantly decreased the gap between himself and the two of them. He still
hadn’t said so much as a single word to them, but his machine-like approach
could hardly be considered as anything but sinister.

Sam
looked at the ledge in both directions.

“Do
you have any plans or idea as to where we go from here?” He asked.

“No,
I don’t know this route very well. Let’s see if we can follow this one until we
find another Via Farrata that takes us upwards from here. We just need to get
to a position above that man. I don’t think he’s got a weapon or anything,”
Aliana added.

“Why
not?” Sam asked, moving as fast as he could along the ledge without falling. He
was moving much faster than his nerves would ordinarily allow.

“Because
otherwise he would have used it already, wouldn’t he?”

Sam
wasn’t completely convinced by her logic, but he agreed that their priority was
to get to a position above the man.

He cursed
himself for his own stupidity in not bringing along a weapon, especially after
the attempt on his life at the bottom of Lake Solitude. Sam had hoped that
whoever had attempted to kill him down there, had done so in an attempt to
protect whatever secrets the lake held, and not because they were specifically
trying to kill him.

Like
all fools, he had convinced himself that he would be safe, because whoever they
were, they didn’t know who he was or where he’d gone. He’d hoped that they were
simply trying to protect their own interests, and hadn’t yet discovered that it
was him.

And
he’d been wrong.

Taking
a quick look behind himself, Sam could see that on the flat ground of the ledge
they’d neither lost nor gained ground on their opponent.

When
he again turned his head, he was horrified to discover that the ledge had
ceased to exist.

“Now
what do we do?” Aliana asked.

“What
about that?”

Above
them was another set of stemples, old and rusty, leading upwards, and along in
the other direction up the mountain. He could just make out where the top of it
met up with a more recent, modern path.

Aliana’s
pupils dilated at the suggestion.

“That
looks like it hasn’t been used in a half a century!” Aliana exclaimed.

Sam
grabbed one with his hand, and pulled on it with all his might. “I don’t care
how long it’s been here. We’re all out of options. I just hope it holds.”

 “I
don’t know how secure those stemples are.”

“Neither
do I, but would you rather wait and see what our friend wants with us?”

“No.”

Acknowledging
the danger they were in, Aliana started to climb. Without a running line to
clip into, she was at the mercy of the bolts which she climbed. A single
misstep here would mean certain death.

Fortunately,
she was athletic, and had told him that she used to do this during her holidays
as a child, and maintained a good pace up the mountainside.

Sam
struggled, but managed to keep up with her.

Below,
he could now see that the man who had gone by the name of Carl, had chosen to
follow them.

Although
Carl hadn’t said a word, Sam was now certain that the man was there to kill
them both. After all, no one risked their lives climbing a ruined set of iron
rungs, unless they had something important to catch.

Sam
took another brief look at Carl, down below.

There
was something sinister about the mechanical way the man climbed the steps. He
was much faster than either of them. At this rate, he would catch up to them
well before they reached the top.

Looking
around
,
Sam discovered that he had very few options when it came to looking
for a weapon.

Blake
cursed his age, as he looked up at the mountain.

Years
ago, he could have scaled these mountains as fast as the best of them. But
those days were long gone now.

The
Rockblitz was one of those ritzy climbing clubs, found all over Europe, where
you could eat good food and drink good wine, while comfortably watching as your
companions struggled to scale the distant mountains; and testaments of man’s
strength over nature.

There
were a number of men around, carrying massive optical-zoom cameras
,
and
taking pictures of the climbers today.

He
noticed that one of them was standing at the end of the viewing platform, a
Mediterranean man with long dark hair. The photographer had set up his camera
on a tripod so that he could follow someone’s ascent
,
and had now sat
down to have a smoke.

“Excuse
me, sir. May I borrow your camera for a few minutes to try to locate a friend
of mine?”

“No,
monsieur. I am using it to keep an eye on my own friend’s ascent.”

“Your
friend will be there for a long time yet,” Blake reassured the man, and pulled
out his wallet, extracting two purple 500 Euro notes, and said, “I only need to
borrow your optical zoom lens for a few minutes while I locate my friends.”

The
man shrugged his shoulders, pocketed the proffered Euros, and sat back down to
finish smoking his cigarette.

Blake
sat down on the chair set up behind the high-powered lens. He followed the line
of the Via Ferrata until he spotted the first climber. It was a woman, in her
early twenties, her brown hair casually tied back in a ponytail, and nice legs,
he noticed. At any other time, he would have enjoyed admiring her further, but
having easily determined that she was not who he was after
,
he continued
using the lens to zoom in further up the line.

There
were literally hundreds of Via Ferratas in sight, and more than a dozen
mountains ahead of them. It was one of the main reasons why this particular
lookout, was the choice for avid climbing photographers and filmmakers. It could
take him all day to find them, but his friend’s message said that they had
started their climb on the Via Ferrata Con Grande, and he was confident that he
would spot them soon enough.

It
ran for nearly a four hundred feet vertically, and once reaching the top of it,
a climber could continue on another four pathways.

Blake
continued following the line of the iron trail up the mountain, occasionally
stopping when he spotted a climber, to see if he’d found them.

It
was taking much longer than he thought it would.

He
felt the tap on his shoulder, and turned to see that the owner of the
telescopic lens was now extinguishing his smoke.

“I’ll
have my camera back now,” the man told him.

“Please,
monsieur. I have not yet found my friends, and I assure you that I will not be
much longer.”

“A
couple more minutes, and then I don’t care that you just gave me 1000 Euros, I
have a job to do today, and it’s worth a lot more to me than a 1000 Euros.”

Without
taking his seat again, Blake bent down until he could train his eye on the line.
This time, he started at the top and quickly worked his way down.

Finally,
he spotted them.

The
woman was in the lead position, and Sam Reilly was close behind her on the
wall.

His
friend, he noticed, was pushing himself to his absolute limits, but was closing
the gap between himself and the other two.  The man was now about fifty feet
below the next person up the ladder.

Training
the lens just below the three of them, his eyes stopped scanning when he saw a
fourth climber. This man was only a little further behind his friend, and he
seemed strangely familiar. He focused in on the man’s face – and even at that
distance, he instantly recognized the man.

What
the hell are you doing on the mountain?

There
was no mistake about it.

There
was no way the man was there purely by coincidence.

Blake
thanked the photographer, and walked away from the camera, pulled out his phone
,
and made the call.

“Yes?”
A surly man’s voice answered.

“I
have spotted him.” He uttered each word slowly and deliberately.

“Good.
Where are they now?”

“Halfway
up a side track of the Grande Via Ferrata.”

“Do
you think they know about it
,
then?” The man’s normally cold voice held
a little more concern than usual.

“They
must. The coincidence otherwise is surely too much,” Blake Simmonds acknowledged.

“What
are you going to do about it?”

“I'll
have one of our own helicopters meet me here shortly and take me to the top,
where I will meet them personally.” Blake fidgeted with the cell phone, and
then said, “I’ll be prepared for any eventuality, of course.”

“Excellent.
I knew I could trust you,” the stern voice on the line said.

“There
is something else.”

“Yes?”

“He’s
there also,” Blake said.

“Really?
But we were certain he was searching on the other side of the Alps. Are you
sure it’s him?”

“Yes,
of course, I’m bloody certain.”

“Now
,
that does change things, doesn’t it?”

*

John
Wolfgang’s thighs burned with each step he took.

Above
him,
on the dilapidated Via Ferrata
,
he watched as
the three figures struggle to reach the top. The one man trailing behind and
therefore closest to him, John recognized as Carl, one of Blake Simmonds’ goons.
Maybe forty feet above Carl, was Sam Reilly. He still struggled to believe that
Sam had somehow managed to escape off the Australian coast three weeks ago.
After his men had reported back to him about it, he wasn’t entirely convinced
that they were talking about the same man, until now. Then, located above Sam,
John spotted what could only be the silhouette of a woman.

At
this distance, it was impossible to make out any defining features, but he
noticed that she was getting closer to the next ledge.

At
his age, it would be impossible for him to keep up with them any longer.

He
hoped that Carl was there for the same purpose as he, but he trusted that
possibility even less than he trusted that Blake Simmonds was still on his
team.

No,
the goon is Blake’s man, and that certainly doesn’t make him my friend. He’s
most likely here to kill them, but he could just as easily be there to help
them.

John
climbed up another eight rungs of the rusty ladder, and then stopped to catch
his breath.

But
what is Blake after?

John
simply could not work with anyone with whom he was unable to manipulate with
either money, women or the threat of painful death.

Looking
up again, he realized that it was time for him to make a final decision about
his next step in this most violent treasure hunt.

The
first climber was just about to reach the top.

John
pulled out his pistol and took aim.

*

Sam
Reilly was close to the top.

If
they could just get to the next ledge they could then circle the mountain,
placing themselves out of the reach of the man who was trailing them like a
machine.

That
was when he heard the loud crack echo across the canyon.

At
first, Sam thought that the sound might have been caused by a natural crack in
the rock face ahead. The sound echoed throughout the entire Dolomite range.

It
took a few seconds for its source to register with him.

Did
someone just shoot at us?

He
and Aliana both picked up their pace, and he watched as Aliana climbed over the
mountain crest and disappeared.

As
he climbed, his mind writhed to grasp how anyone could have known that he was
still alive. He was certain that they had taken sufficient precautions while
they were searching, so that the other treasure hunters wouldn’t notice him.

But
somehow, someone had taken notice.

He
knew that he had been careful to tell no one where they were going. He’d
intentionally neglected to even tell his own father, just in case someone else
might have been listening. Carl, the man from the bed and breakfast
,
must have recognized him somehow, but Sam couldn’t understand where they could
have possibly encountered each other before.

Just
before Sam reached the crest, he heard another loud report, quickly followed by
two more.

The
rock, about a foot to the right of his hand shattered into dust.

Sam
had no way to protect himself from the gunfire. It was just enough
encouragement to force him to take four more steps, and clamber onto the other
side of the ledge.

“You
made it!” Aliana sounded relieved.

“Yeah,
but for how long?”

She
ignored his question, and then, reaching for a boulder on the ground, said,
“Quick, help me with this. It’s the only chance we’re going to get to beat this
prick.”

“I
like your thinking,” Sam told her, as he squatted down to help. Between the two
of them, they managed to roll the boulder to the edge of the cliff.

One
quick look over the side confirmed that the two men who were pursuing them,
were still trailing close behind. The man nearest to the top was no more than
fifteen feet away.

Sam
didn’t take the time to warn the man, or even ask him to stop, before rolling
the boulder over the edge.

Sam
could hear the man scream out from below, and he could only imagine the painful
death he must have suffered when the boulder hit him.

Slowly
and carefully, Sam ventured a peak over the edge.

The
man’s right leg had been crushed by the boulder, but he’d managed to clip the
carabiner from his safety line onto a bolt, a split-second before the rock
struck him.

A
rapid succession of gunfire ricocheted off the limestone directly above Sam’s
head.

“Shit!” 
Sam swore.

“He’s
still alive?” Aliana asked.

“Yes,
but I think it’s the man below him who keeps shooting at us.”

“Damn!” 

Sam
and Aliana both started looking around for anything that they could throw, but
with the exception of the one boulder which they’d already put to good use, the
entire ledge appeared to be otherwise devoid of loose rubble.

Sam
continued to eyeball the ledge. A path followed the natural protection of the
ledge
,
and alongside it were two more sets of ladders. Sam didn’t have
the strength to keep trying to out-climb the other two men, although he
sincerely doubted that the younger of the two would be able to keep pursuing
them for much longer, either.

“Any
ideas?” Sam asked Aliana.

“There’s
a tunnel, just around there,” she said, pointing to the end of the natural
ledge.

Sam
noticed that the tunnel’s entrance was well hidden.

It
was unlikely that their pursuer would not notice that they’d stopped climbing,
but at least they could buy some time and remove themselves from the direct
line of fire while he searched for where they’d gone.

He
followed Aliana into the tunnel.

The
mouth of the tunnel wasn’t much bigger than Sam, as he fell crouched down on
his knees to enter, but once he got inside, he found that the tunnel opened up,
so that he could walk around freely without crouching.

“This
way,” Sam said, “there are a couple of different routes here, and we might be
able to lose him. Stay close to me.”

Aliana
took his left hand in hers, and the two of them stepped further into the dark
tunnel.

At
the far end was another opening.

“There!”
Sam directed.

They
both made their way toward it as quick as they could manage in the darkness.

Reaching
it, Sam looked down and was able to see that there was another long Via Ferrata
ladder which dropped for a distance of more than a thousand feet on the other
side. He then turned his head and looked up.

Absolutely
nothing.

There
was no way that he and Aliana would survive such a long, downward climb. Even
if it took their attackers half an hour, they would eventually discover their
location. Then it would only be a matter of time before they finished what
they’d tried so hard to achieve.

In
the vista below, rested an enormous lake. It was colored a stunning green and
turquoise near its shoreline which turned an almost emerald darkness at its
center. It was only then that Sam realized that this was the same lake that he
and Tom had dived two days ago – Lake Solitude.