White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella

CHAPTER ONE

It is often said that our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness. Lieutenant Christian Hartz, Tenth Mountain Division, Swiss Army, was about to learn firsthand the terrible truth of that dusty old bit of wisdom. The lesson would be taught to this young fellow by a mountain. Der Nadel, an infamous Swiss Alp, was known to climbers around the world by its nickname, “White Death.” And for very good reason.

Christian toe-pointed the spiked crampons strapped to his boots into the vertical wall of sheer ice. He was able to kick the steel spikes at the toes of his boots a good two inches in. His lower body secure, he then secured his upper torso, swinging his ice ax into the wall above his head, and then a second ax to lock him in. Firmly wed to the mountain, he leaned back and looked straight up.

The towering vertical slab of ice and rock soared high into the clouds above him, finally disappearing into swirling grey mists that haunted the peak almost daily. He started moving again.

At this point, the summit of the mountain was 15,330 feet above his head. Roughly three miles straight up. The summit of Der Nadel was at 25,430 feet above sea level. It was called “The Needle” because of the thin, twisted spire that scratched the sky at the summit. Attempting to scale that spire had killed more climbers than any other mountain in Switzerland.

So far, the lieutenant’s moves had not been technically difficult. Still, the climbing was causing him continuous insecurity due to the foehnsturms swirling about him as he went higher. A foehn is a downslope wind that occurs in the lee, or downwind, side of a high mountain range, like the moist winds off the Mediterranean Sea that sweep up over the Alps.

Recent weather from the north had brought winds of eighty-plus miles per hour, subzero temperatures, ice, and the relentless blinding snow. Still, Hartz had made good progress.

The wide ledge on which he now stood, very secure for the moment, was known as “Das Boot.” The mammoth rock formation looked as if some giant battleship’s entire bow section had suddenly blasted through the rock and now protruded from the mountain at ten thousand feet. A good place for tea. The lieutenant fired up his little stove and melted some snow in his pot. Earl Grey had never tasted so good.

The good-looking soldier had been sent up the hill to find, and bring safely down, a lone climber, a young Italian woman who’d spent the night on a fingernail of rock, suffering in the ninety-plus-mile-per-hour winds and ice. For a long time, this climber had been the focus of the ranger station’s high-powered optics.

When dawn broke she was gone. She’d either fallen, pitched forward into a hidden crevasse, or descended safely to a spot now hidden from sight. Lieutenant Hartz’s job was to find out which one was true and bring her down. Due to weather, the chances that she was still alive and fighting for her survival were slim. But there was a chance.

Christian reached up, stretching his body to the limit so his fingers could feel along the smooth face. He was looking for the next place where he could sink a pick or a cam so he could haul himself up the next pitch. He felt strong, but he’d been climbing since first light and it had been painfully slow going, mostly due to the increasing winds and dropping temperatures as he gained altitude.

Five long hours later, his lats, biceps, and triceps were screaming in unison, and he hadn’t even reached the hard part yet. But he knew it was coming. The hard part was next. The hard part was the north face of Der Nadel, otherwise known as the “Murder Wall.”

The infamous vertical face had long been called that, and for good reason. It was the last big hurdle one had to overcome before attacking the imposing summit. Of all those who’d risked their lives to conquer this final ascent, many had served, but few had been chosen.

Lieutenant Hartz, now just twenty-seven years old, had been acclaimed the highest-ranking alpinist in his entire army division. He was proud of that. When he’d told his mum about it, she’d cried. He was number one out of some ten thousand Swiss soldiers, all of whom, like him, had been born on skis with axes in their hands — highly skilled young men, fiercely determined, in peak condition for physical and mental strength, extreme high-altitude climbing, and, most important of all, supreme confidence. That was your ticket up the hill.

His timing couldn’t have been worse. One of the most violent storms to rip through the canton in nearly a decade had arrived as if on cue. And he was on a time crunch. The lost climber’s rescue clock had started ticking long before the first swing of his ice ax at dawn to begin his ascent.

The woman could no longer be seen. She’d been on a narrow ledge, high on the Murder Wall. She was now out of sight and out of communication range. Aerial searches by helicopters had not been successful, and the weather had finally grounded them. The young woman’s last transmission had indicated she’d been gravely injured but was determined to survive. “I’ll hold on,” she had promised, “but please come soon!”

Christian’s division commander had espoused a theory that the woman might well have found one of the old wooden escape doors built into the side of the mountain. Behind these doors were safety tunnels bored into the mountain over the centuries. The problem was that there were countless numbers of these doors up there, invisible flyspecks spread across the massive north face.

Classic needle in a haystack, Christian thought. His divisionnaire, Baron Wolfgang von Stuka, known behind his back as “Wolfie,” had summoned Christian to his office just after midnight, given him the brief, and said, “Lieutenant, please get your ass up there, and find that young woman!”

And here he was.

Darkness was closing in. It was now past five o’clock on that brutally cold grey afternoon in December. Lieutenant Hartz, trying to reach the same narrow ledge where the climber had last been seen, was struggling a bit. He was currently in the midst of an upward traverse across the lower sections of that sheer wall so smooth that it appeared almost polished. This part, the hard part, was challenging to the world’s very best climbers. And he was only best in his Swiss Army division.

“Imagine climbing a couple of miles up a slightly cracked mirror looking for invisible cracks,” was how his Tenth Mountain Division instructors had explained it to the new cadets. That message had sunk in with many of them, but many had not listened. Tales of the Tenth Division versus the Murder Wall were legend. The number of cadets who’d died up there was a closely guarded secret.

One that no one wanted to know.