Long Road to Mercy

Chapter 58

The heat of the day passed with no choppers coming for them. And no teams of uniformed soldiers with M4s scaling the trails after them, either. The reason might have been obvious: The daylight revealed everything.

The rains kicked in while Kettler and Pine had taken turns sleeping. When they rose at ten p.m., the weather system had passed, and the skies had cleared a bit. They woke Roth, and the three of them ate and drank enough to fuel themselves for the final assault to the North Rim.

As they roped up, Kettler put his hand on Roth’s shoulder. “Okay, Dave, here’s the deal. We got some switchbacks coming up and they’re steep. But we’ll get through them. Then it’s long and rough, but doable. Then we get a few miles of fairly flat terrain. After that, we’re going to head east where the trail forks. There are more switchbacks, and it’s a lot more rugged than the trail to the west, but it’s miles shorter. You just watch me and take it slow and easy, and before the light comes, we’re going to be on paved surface roads. Sound good?”

“But what about the pack? It’s my turn to carry it.”

“Atlee and I have decided to divvy up that duty.”

“But it’s not fair to the two of you.”

“You’ve been down in this Canyon a long time. We haven’t. It drains you. Every person has to look at themselves and see what’s best for the team and mission. Same thing you and your team probably do when inspecting WMDs.”

Roth put a hand on Kettler’s shoulder. “It is. And... thanks.”

Kettler hoisted the lift pack, and they set off.

Roth struggled at times, and even Pine felt herself having to dig down into extra reserves of strength and endurance. She marveled at Kettler, who just seemed to move like a fluid machine. Even with the lift pack, she could see where he was actually pulling the other two along, making the burden of the climb easier for them, and, correspondingly, harder for himself.

They turned east at the fork and reached the steep switchbacks.

Kettler glanced back at Roth and put up his hand for them to stop.

“I’m... I’m okay,” said Roth breathlessly.

Kettler came back down to him. “Yeah, but I need a breather. My calves are spasming a little. And Atlee can take over the pack.”

“Okay, if you say so,” replied Roth, who collapsed to the ground.

Pine gave Kettler an appreciative look.

Then her features tightened.

Whump-whump-whump.

The sounds of the chopper prop came out of nowhere.

“Headlamps off,” snapped Kettler.

They all switched off their lamps.

Kettler grabbed Roth and pulled him under some scrub pines. Pine quickly joined them.

They all squatted there, frozen, as the searchlight started moving across the steep terrain, like a luminous spider gliding over glass.

Pine found herself holding her breath. The only good thing was there was no place here for the chopper to land.

But then she envisioned a cannon opening up on them from the air if the light found them. She gripped the M4 and thought how best to shoot out the chopper’s tail prop, if need be.

It seemed like the aircraft hovered over them for an eternity. But Pine’s watch showed it was only a couple of minutes. Then it rose, moved to the east, cleared a ridge, and was gone.

They didn’t move for a few more minutes, just to make sure.

Finally, when the sounds didn’t return, they all came out from hiding.

“You ready to go?” said Kettler calmly.

“I’m ready,” said a visibly shaken Roth.

Kettler helped Pine on with the lift pack, and they started climbing once more.

Shortly after, the trail steepened considerably.

And the rain started up again, stinging them in the face. As Roth took a step up on a narrow path that was unnervingly close to the edge of a long fall, the stone gave way and part of the drenched trail crumbled.

With a scream, Roth fell to the side, clawing at the air. And then, with a shriek of terror, he went over the edge.

His plummeting weight immediately pulled hard on Pine, who fell face-first. The full weight of the nuke and the lift pack slammed into her back, smashing her against the dirt and forcing all the air from her lungs.

Down below, Roth dropped lower, dangling from the hitched rope around his waist. He was swinging and trying to grab the rope. This just unsettled things more on the trail as his constantly shifting weight pulled Pine ever closer to the edge. She slid across rock and mud and cacti, as she frantically tried to halt her momentum.

At the other end of the rope line, Kettler was struggling mightily to keep from getting pulled over, too.

As Roth continued to windmill below, Pine’s face was now over the edge. She did not want the rest of her to follow. She pressed the palms of her hands into the rocky terrain and pushed hard backward, to keep herself from going over. It was like she was bench-pressing a thousand pounds.

“Shit!” she cried out. She was being stretched to her limit.

The next moment Kettler called out, “Atlee, I’m going to pull back as a counterweight. If I get too close to the edge with you, we’re all going over. Once I get stabilized we’ll work out a solution. Just hold on.”

She gritted her teeth and nodded to show she understood.

Her face peering over the edge, she saw Roth dangling about fifteen feet below her. And after that it was an insanely long drop to certain death.

“David,” she screamed. “Stop moving. We’re figuring this out up here, but your flailing around is not helping.”

Roth, to his credit, instantly became motionless.

Pine tensed every muscle in her body, gripped the jagged rocks embedded into the cliff and tried to lever herself backward some more. But with Roth’s dead weight, it was a stalemate. If she hadn’t been as strong as she was, Pine would have already gone over the precipice. The added weight of the nuke she was carrying was actually helping her, acting as an additional counterweight to Roth’s mass. Yet having the thing pressing down on top of her wasn’t exactly pleasant.

Kettler cried out, “Okay, Atlee, I’m going to toss you a rope with a D-link. Snap it into the one around your waist. Do not wrap the rope around you, just snap it into the link.”

She nodded again and slowly looked to the side where he was.

Kettler had wrapped the rope connecting him to Roth around a massive rock wedged against the side of the trail. This had stabilized and secured Roth’s weight load on his end.

He held up the second rope with the link, so she could see it.

“Here it comes.”

The link landed right next to her left hand. She snapped it into the other link that was connected to the stout climbing rope around her waist.

“Okay, good,” said Kettler, who’d been watching her.

He took the other end of the rope and, as he had his own line, wrapped it several times around the large rock and then tied it off securely.

Pine understood why he hadn’t wanted her to tie the rope around her waist. Roth’s dead weight was already exerting enormous pressure on her frame. Wrapping another rope around her could have, if things went wrong, sufficed to squeeze her like a constrictor had a hold of her. Now if she was pulled over by Roth’s weight, this rope and the other one Kettler had tied around the large rock would hopefully prevent her and Roth from falling to their deaths. The only dilemma now was that she was literally caught between a rock and a hard place.

Kettler raced over with a fresh loop of rope and a D-link.

He touched Pine’s arm. “Are you holding up?”

She nodded, the pain in her features. “But I can’t do this forever.”

“You won’t have to.”

He peered over the edge. “Dave, I’m going to feed this rope down. Snap the D-link into the one you already have on, okay?”

Roth nodded and Kettler fed the rope down.

Roth grabbed it on his second try and clicked the link into place.

Kettler took the other end of the rope, ran back to the large rock, and clipped this line into the one he’d already secured around the rock, making sure that it was taut.

He hustled back to the edge and peered over. “You’re secured to a large rock up here. Now, I’m going to unlink you and Atlee.”

“No!” screamed Roth. “Don’t! I’ll fall.”

“You’re not going to fall. The rock you’re secured to weighs about five thousand pounds. That’s the belt. And the line I just fed down to you will serve as the suspenders, just in case. Now, I need to free Atlee, so she can help me pull you up. Now, when I release the line, you might drop a few inches, but you are not going to fall, okay? I’ve got two lines securing you.”

“Oh, God, oh please, God,” they could hear him moaning.

Pine called out, “David, we are not going to lose you, okay? This is a good plan. And it’s the only one we have, okay?”

Roth finally called up, “O-okay.”

Kettler looked at Pine. “You ready to be unhitched?”

“My back sure as hell is.”

With a mighty struggle, because of Roth’s dead weight pulling on Pine, he managed to release the D-link connecting her to Roth.

Roth cried out as he dropped but quieted when he was held in place by the other ropes.

Pine let out a long, tortured breath.

“I need this frigging bomb off me. Now!”

Kettler released the bindings and, with a struggle, managed to get it off her.

She lay there breathing hard.

“Atlee, I need you to help me pull,” said Kettler, a bit of anxiety creeping into his voice, as the rain continued to pelt them.

She could understand his nervousness. If the chopper came back now, they were all dead.

“I know you do, just give me a sec.” She took several deep breaths. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Great, but we’re taking no chances.”

In a flash Kettler had linked both of them to the ropes around the large rock.

When he came back over he handed her a pair of gloves he’d had in his pack. He’d already donned a pair.

They stood side by side on the edge of the trail.

Kettler looked at her and grinned encouragingly. “Okay, almost Olympian, let’s see what you got.”

She managed a weak smile in return and then blew on her gloved hands and rubbed them together. “Let’s do it.”

They squatted down and pulled and grunted and slid and lurched backward. The ground was very slick as the rain kept pouring, and a couple times their feet and fingers slipped, with the result that Roth was pulled up and then dropped down a few feet. But Pine was incredibly strong, and so was Kettler. Their combined efforts lifted Roth inch by inch until the top of his head appeared over the edge of the trail.

Kettler quickly tied the rope off so they would not lose this hard-fought gain.

He and Pine went right to the edge and squatted down again. They both put their hands under Roth’s armpits.

“One, two, three, pull,” said Kettler.

Roth’s upper torso landed on the trail.

“Again,” said Kettler.

And the rest of Roth followed. They all collapsed to the dirt and lay there for a few precious minutes, gasping for air, the sweat pouring down their faces, even as the rain drenched them.

They finally stood, undid all the ropes around the rock, linked themselves together once more, and began to set off, with Kettler now carrying the nuke pack.

“Th-thank you,” Roth said to them both as they walked along.

“Don’t thank us yet,” Pine replied. “We’re not to the top.”

About twenty minutes of climbing later, Kettler looked back.

“It levels out in a bit. And after that is the Rim.”

Pine checked the sky and then her watch. “How much longer?” she called ahead to Kettler.

“Couple hours or so.”

“Let’s push through,” she said. At the higher elevations the dawn would not be delayed.

She pulled out her phone and was thrilled to see several bars. She punched in the number, praying the call would go through. The person answered sleepily on the third ring.

“It’s Atlee. You said if I needed any help, I just had to ask. Well, I’m asking.”

About two and a half hours later, they reached the North Rim. Kettler put his hand up and the others immediately stopped. Roth collapsed to the ground, breathing hard.

Kettler set the lift pack down, came back to them, and undid the ropes holding them together. He squatted down and surveyed the area up ahead with a practiced gaze.

“So what’s the plan now?” asked Kettler. “I don’t like being exposed up here. That chopper could land anywhere along here.”

Pine looked to the sky, watching out for lights cutting through the dark over the Canyon.

If the chopper did come and land, she told herself she would just open fire, aiming for the fuel tanks.

“I’ve got help coming. They should be here soon.”

“Let’s hope it’s soon enough,” replied Kettler.

Thirty minutes later, a pair of headlights did cut through the darkness, but they were coming along the road, not through the air. Kettler swung his M4 around and took aim at the approaching vehicle.

“Stand down,” said Pine quickly, as the vehicle came close enough for her to see it clearly. “I know them.”

The Chevy Suburban stopped in front of them, and Joe and Jennifer Yazzie climbed out.

Joe Yazzie Sr. was a big, burly man. His dark hair, worn long, was shot through with gray. His skin was leathered from living his whole life in a desert environment, and he walked with a bit of a limp.

Pine knew this stemmed from a shot he’d taken to his thigh that was still healing.

He had on his police uniform and held a pump-action shotgun in his right hand, muzzle down.

“Atlee?” called out Jennifer.

“It’s us,” said Pine as the three of them came out of the shadows.

“Agent Pine? Are you okay?” Carol Blum had climbed out of the rear seat and was hurrying toward them.

“We’re all fine.”

The group met in the middle of the road. Pine introduced Roth and Kettler to the Yazzies and Blum.

Blum gripped Pine’s hand. “I knew you’d find him.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be here without Sam’s help.”

Blum put a hand on Kettler’s shoulder and mouthed the words, Thank you.

Joe Yazzie eyed her severely and said, “You didn’t tell us much, Atlee. In fact, you really didn’t tell us anything.”

“I wish I could tell you everything, and one day I hope to. But right now, I have some things to do. And we don’t have much time.”

“Where do you want us to take you?”

“Tuba City, as fast as you can.”

Joe looked surprised. “Tuba City? Why?”

“Because it’s sovereign. And we have to bring something with us.”

She and Kettler ran over and grabbed the lift pack. Together they brought it over and set it down next to the SUV.

Joe glanced at it suspiciously. “What the hell is that?”

“That,” said Pine, “is our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”