Chapter 83
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They journeyed into hell. Not a hell Jack ever imagined, but a frozen, wind-blown hell, where gravity was stronger than it was supposed to be and there wasn’t enough air. He was a concussed, exhausted man dragging an injured woman on a makeshift sled piled high with gear, up an obstacle course at altitude in the middle of a blizzard. He didn’t know how badly his head would have hurt without trying to do daylong wind sprints. He didn’t know if there would have been fluid in his lungs if he’d had a way to stay warm and rest.
It was another day and night of hell. It was haul and stop for food and rest. Then it was haul and stop to pitch camp and cook and fight to sleep while coughing and fight to wake up and struggle to move. They finally made it to the top of the top of the last pass. Lee stepped off the sled, wanting to do her share on the downhill.
Downhill was too hard on her knee. Twenty minutes later she was back on the sled. They made it down the eastern side a thousand feet before he stopped. He’d fallen and he couldn’t get up. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t get up. He was spent. She helped him onto the sled. Instead of fighting the sled down the rest of the way she climbed onto the pile of gear and used one of the poles as a rudder to steer the pile down the hill into the shelter of a leaning rock.
He’d never seen it snow on the eastern side. He knew it did snow on the eastern side, because he’d been there with snow on the ground, but he expected, once they crested the pass, to walk out of winter. They were still in winter, but here in the rain shadow of the mountain, it was a different, dryer winter. Lundy Canyon received a sixth of the rainfall of the Grand Canyon of the Yosemite, yet they were only fourteen miles apart. The wind was forty miles an hour slower. The sandpaper ice was gone.
Every time he exhaled he felt a wet, rasping rattle. Either his head hurt less or he was so worried about his lungs that, by comparison, his head was better. Concussions are supposed to get better unless you have a little bleeder in your head seeping into your brain. Sometimes they could drill in and take the pressure off. Sometimes the little bleeder sprung a big leak and you were dead before your sphincter let go. Sometimes your mind turned into something with the computing power of a Brussels sprout.
Fever fried his brain. He didn’t remember any of his dreams that night. Maybe the cough kept them away. He woke at three covered in the sticky film that’s left after a fever-sweat. He felt brittle, as if on his next fall he would crack and shatter, like some ice sculpture weakened by an unexpected sun.
The wind had dropped off in the night, blunted by the mass of moisture that had been great enough to force itself over the mountain. There was a half-foot of new snow on the ground on the eastern side. That meant the Yosemite side would have gotten record snowfall.
He was a hunted man, more tired than he ever remembered being. He had very little chance of succeeding in his mission. His chances of making it out alive were slim. He buried his nose in Lee’s neck, smiling, thinking he’d never been happier.
“Have a nice nap?” She asked as he opened his eyes.
Her eyes were slits. What white he could see was mostly a bleary mix of red and yellow. The skin on her nose had been abraded by the ice-filled wind. She’d tucked jet-black hair behind her ears. Her left ear was swollen and the knuckles of her right hand were scabbed and bleeding. She was so beautiful. Somewhere in his sleep he’d decided to tell her the rest of the plan. It was so dangerous now. She had to know it all before they dropped down into the valley.
The coffee was scalding hot, too strong, and too sweet. Perfect. After it had loosened his jaw enough to talk he said, “After I pee, I’ll tell you the whole plan, the real one.”
He slid part way out of the tent, stopped and buckled on the shoulder holster and made sure the Sig Sauer was locked and loaded.
“We’re in enemy country,” he said as she watched him sling the weapon.
The wind had dropped off even more. His headache was down to the throbbing pain of a toothache. A sliver moon played hide and seek through the clouds. He walked as close to the edge of the mountain as he dared, and peed off the edge. His water felt thick, the way it did when he passed a stone. Some trick of the moonlight showed his water red as it splashed into the snow. Lee had showed him the bruises on his lower back using compass mirrors. He was lucky he could pee at all. He started to zip up. It felt as if a door in his brain opened and he felt the mass of hate and fear slice the night.
“Run, Lee, Run!” he shouted at the top of his lungs and sprinted toward the tent knowing he was too exposed, knowing he’d never make it. He heard a bolt slide back. The chicken-shit sound of an SKS modified to fire full-auto tore holes in the night.
A deep, parade ground voice shouted, “Hold your fire, Kaffirs!” just as something slammed into him. He tried to keep his balance on the edge of the cliff. The last thing he saw before he fell was a burst shred the top of the tent. His mind grabbed at the world. Everything turned sideways and slowed.