White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

He awoke in a state of grace.

He’d opened his eyes to a panoramic view of black eastern skies fading up to faint pink. So beautiful. Even before he rolled over and looked at his watch, he knew he’d changed somehow. While he’d slept, his mind had been hard at work, teaching him, leading him back to truths long lost to him. Yesterday had been far too exciting, simply because he’d been ignoring himself. Not hearing calls from some deeper region of his cortex. Ignoring some old muscle memories anxious to be recalled.

It had almost killed him. If that one last anchor point had failed to hold in the ice, he’d have been sleeping underground. If they’d ever found him. If not, at least he’d have been spending eternity in the company of his grandfather. It was, he thought, actually some consolation.

He knew, before he’d strapped his crampons to his boots, that this day would be different. He felt utterly rejuvenated. In an odd way, he was back. Once properly learned, the sophisticated techniques of climbing, like those of a competitive swimmer, are never really forgotten. All he needed was to rediscover what new limitations aging and inactivity had placed on his skill and nerve. And overcome them.

Contrary to common knowledge, a good climber, with sufficient experience, can move straight up a vertical rock face that he cannot cling to. It’s counterintuitive. Human nature dictates a natural desire to cling to anything solid. But a regular, predicted set of moves, from one point of imbalance to its counterpoise, will keep a climber close to the face, but only for so long as he continues moving with speed and grace.

From a distance below, it looks like you’re dancing up there. Gracefully careening on and off the wall as you sprint up. It’s a skill rather like that of a bicycle rider who has little trouble with balance unless he goes too slowly.

All that’s necessary is to first read the pitch accurately, plot out and rehearse the moves cinematically, then make every single move with smooth conviction from hold to hold. Do that, and you will arrive at the next predicted and reliable purchase. And the next.

These skills and abilities had once been Hawke’s forte. But during that exciting first day of climbing, he’d made several misjudgments, one that had caused a serious fall, others that had sent him slithering down twenty feet of scree, banging a little skin off his elbows and doing greater damage to his self-esteem than anything else. It wasn’t pretty

The intervening years since his last tragic climb had eroded the fine edge of his physical dexterity. This erosion, he now realized, was beyond repair, even with Luc’s valiant efforts down at the camp. Today it would be necessary for him to systematically train himself and relearn old tricks while he was up on the Murder Wall. If he wanted to survive, he now had to teach himself to think within the limits of his new, inferior body. He had to learn how to listen to himself.

He set his first pick and hauled himself up.

He was only halfway up the 24,320-foot peak. When he reached the ledge overhanging the Murder Wall, he knew he might find conditions up there worse than at the North Pole. Temperatures could sink to forty below, and winds howled at eighty to a hundred miles an hour. He knew: he’d been given a booklet by the rangers when he’d signed in for his solo climb. Insurance requirement. He’d read that “the combined effect of cold, wind, and altitude may well present one of the most hostile climates on earth.” His reaction to those preclimb caveats was to propose angrily that the rangers mind their own bloody business!

Tomorrow was going to be either a very long day, or a very short one.

But he was no longer afraid of the Murder Wall.

And that was the best guarantor of success that he was going to get when the sun came up.

Seven hours later, he found himself still alive and happy. The Murder Wall had failed to kill him.

The first thing he saw, heaving his body up and over the lip of the ledge, was a small wooden door set in the rock, dusted with fresh snow. Just where it was supposed to be. Until the second he saw it, he was not entirely confident that he’d reached his goal. Visibility was down to almost naught. His altimeter showed he’d reached the designated altitude, but there were other significant ledges of similar sizes above and below him.

This one was called “Das Boot” because it looked like the prow of the massive World War II German battleship Bismarck, sticking out the side of the mountain.

The GS on his wrist said that the Bat Cave, if it existed at all, was very near. Reason said this had to be the place. Unless, of course, the Chinese curio shop owner had lied to Ambrose and Sigrid.

The outcropping was wide and deep, and very substantial. Just eyeing it by sight, he’d guess seventy feet across and roughly fifty feet deep. It occurred to him that you could easily get a chopper on and off this thing. He took a few deep breaths to get himself oriented. Out across the far horizon, a sea of ice-topped peaks. The hard part was over. The Bitch had thrown everything she had at him. She’d killed his grandfather and she’d just tried to kill him too.

But this time she’d lost.

The Wicked Bitch was dead. He turned his attention to the escape door. Weathered by the fiercest storms on the planet for a century or more. Wide, and just high enough for him to enter without ducking. At this point, he was simply looking for a way inside the rock. He was searching for the Bat Cave. And he was getting close.

He dusted off the snow that had accumulated on his goggles and scrambled to his feet. He scanned the rocks and boulders to either side of the door, and also above it. He knew what to look for. “Granite2,” Blinky had called the material used to hide fighter squadrons and battalions from prying enemy eyes. “You won’t know it even when you’re staring at it,” he’d said. If there was any fake rock on this ledge, Alex sure as hell didn’t see it. And even if it was right in front of his face, it was so artfully created that it was virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. He pulled the old iron ring mounted on the door. Wouldn’t budge. Too much snow and ice accumulation down at the base. He got his trenching shovel and went to work.

It still wouldn’t open, so he got out his chopping ax and knocked out a section wide enough for him to peer inside. When he did, he gagged. Not the smell of death, the smell of old fetid engine oil. What the hell?

He leaned further inside and flipped on his flashlight. No one had been here in fifty years. More likely, never. Maybe never.

It took him a long time to identify the faux part of the mountain. He chopped away with his ice ax everywhere he could reach or see. Nothing doing. His arms burning with the fresh exertion, he dropped his ax to the ground to take a breather and leaned against a heavy boulder. The strangest thing happened.

It moved.