by Joe Poyer
-
For a long time, the top of the pass seemed to come no nearer and Gillon was reduced to the old climber's trick of forbidding himself to look at the crest again. He concentrated his whole being on shifting first one leg forward, pause, then shift the other again and once again in the incessant, maddening rest step that continues to carry you forward long after you would have sworn that you had no strength left at all. His back and hips were on fire from the weight of the pack, and
the carbine, light as it was, dragged down at his right shoulder until it was all he could do to keep from throwing it away. Then the thirst, the terrible thirst of high-altitude exertion, began to make itself felt. At these altitudes and in winter the humidity is close to non-existent. The continual gasping for breath exposes the membranes of the mouth to the air, which greedily extracts their moisture. That, coupled with intense exertion, dehydrates the body quickly and it becomes impossible to force water into tissues in sufficient quantities to replace that lost to the air. Intense exertion at high altitudes then becomes a race against fatigue and dehydration, complicated by lack of oxygen for starved body tissue.
The darkness in those places shadowed from the moon, drifted away into a grayish sea that obscured the ridges on either side of the pass. Gillon gradually became aware that the slope had changed and when, forgetting his promise not to look up, he raised his eyes, he saw that the endless expanse of white was no longer above them but was now slipping away beneath his feet to a distant line of dark rock below. He glanced back over his shoulder and, in the gathering light, could see the straggling figures of the others strung out behind on the line. Their movements as they staggered up the killing slope were reminiscent of dangling fish.
Jones had stopped. Gillon closed the twenty-foot gap between them and they both sank down in the snow breathing heavily, and waited for the others to come up. For several minutes there was only the wind and the sound of their gasping before Dmietriev trudged up and collapsed beside them.
'Downslope . . . three miles . . . or more,' he rasped finally, 'trees begin,'
Jones nodded but said nothing, rubbing his forehead as Rodek and Leycock straggled in.
It was too cold to rest for long:
Gillon watched as Jones got to his feet They were all staggering, but Jones more so than the rest of them. That blow must have been more severe than they had suspected, Gillon thought, and Leycock caught his eye
and nodded at Jones, but there was nothing that either of them could do for him and they both knew it.
As they started forward again, Gillon detached himself from the safety line. The others did likewise and he coiled the rope, tied it off and slung the bight over the upright portion of his pack frame. He watched the others file past, then turned to examine the pass and the high ridges on either side. The top of the nearly twelvethousand-foot-high pass was no more than a few hundred yards wide. Looking back down the way they had come, he was even more impressed by the fan shape of the pass, resembling nothing so much as the spillway of a millrace. The two ridges that had paced their climb closed in around the top of the pass, broken only by a quarter-mile-wide gap at the top – the pass itself. The ridge to the right fell away to the west while that on the left loomed above the point where they stood. Overhanging its lip was a huge brow of snow, undercut by the wind.
Because of the darkness, it had been invisible from below and Gillon was grateful for that. He would have had serious doubts about ascending the pass with the wind blowing as hard as it was and that massive pile of snow hanging above their heads like the sword of Damocles. The whole area had obviously been carved by a massive glacier creeping slowly down from the north, eons ago. Gillon tried to imagine the immense tonnage of ice that it would have required to fill the thousands of feet and cubic miles of mountain valleys and ridges until it finally overlapped this ridge, cut its way through the solid rock and carved out this pass before spilling over into the interior of the Tien Shan. It was beyond comprehension and, shaking his head, he started down after the others.
The snow on the south side of the pass was not packed, as the wind was less intense on this side. As they proceeded, down undulations of the gentler slope, the snow deepened until they were plowing up to their knees. Jones brought them to a halt and they donned snowshoes. From there on, their progress became easier and the three miles to the heavy forest at eight thousand feet were sure to be completed by dawn. A few minutes later, the
-old familiar lacing pain began to grow inside
his thighs, arcing over to join beneath his crotch, as tht unnatural, wide-legged stance forced by the snowshoes dragged at his unaccustomed muscles. Within an hour, Gillon knew the pain would be unbearable; every step would be a grinding, stabbing pain until the muscles grew numb with tension. And by nightfall, the pain would begin again as the cold cramped his legs. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the pain and struggled on.
As they trudged down the slope, the light grew apace until short of the tree line, the first rays of the sun could be seen above the peaks to the east. Gillon glanced around. He had been dragging his parka, weighted with the ski pack, in an effort to wipe away any tracks. The drag was doing its job and the steady wind would finish it. There would be nothing for low-flying search aircraft to see.
The sky was turning from its overcast gray to blotches of clear blue as the cloud cover began to break up, when Jones led them into the first of the pines, scrubby spruce that indicated they were below ten thousand feet once more. Gillon slapped the snow from his parka and halted long enough to slip back into it, retie the ski pack, then hurried on to catch up. The trees, sparse as yet and low growing, barely reached above his head but they would serve to hide signs of their passage.
They trudged on for another hour while the forest thickened and rose about them. As they marched on, Gillon noticed that the snow was becoming deeper and deeper and the saucer-like depressions around the tree trunks were more pronounced as they moved toward nine thousand feet, where the differential between day-and nighttime temperatures was great enough to allow intermittent thawing and freezing. They crossed one wide expanse of open slope, hurriedly, half sliding, half running on their snowshoes.
There were no egg-carton marks as yet – hollows carved into the snow by the sun. They would come as the season advanced.
Jones brought them to a halt at 0900 hours, well inside a thick stand of towering spruce that closed in overhead to obscure any sign of the sky. The slope widened to an almost horizontal ledge at this point, then dropped sharply downslope for a hundred feet. There would almost certainly be a stream, frozen long since and covered with snow at the foot of the bluff. The trees were thickboled, shooting as straight as shipmasts for eighty feet to one hundred feet. Virgin timber, Gillon suspected; natural selection had spread them widely in their contest for sunlight, and the underbrush, buried under several feet of snow, provided the site that Jones had chosen with a feeling of total silence, almost cathedral-like in nature. Except for the monotonous wind, there was not a sound to be heard in the immensity of the forest. Gillon stared off across the open space cut by the buried stream to see nothing but more trees forming a seemingly impregnable barrier a hundred feet away. To his left, the small canyon narrowed less than a hundred yards upstream to form a convenient crossing point.
Jones called to him and Gillon walked back through the trees. He had been less than twenty feet away, but so thick was the forest that the others were invisible and the sounds they made in setting up the small camp were completely obscured by the peculiar muffling quality of trees. He thought, as he walked through the forest, of his almost superstitious love of trees; the feeling that, among these giants, he was safe and could de-. Pend upon them for concealment and protection.
Jones was sitting on his pack, the map spread in front of him on the snow, while the others stood about waiting. He glanced up as Gillon joined the circle.
`This looks to me to be a good place to spend the day,' he began without
preamble. 'We'll start again at 2100 . . . that'll give us about two hours of travel before we need to stop and eat. We'll sleep during the day tomorrow and by dawn on Thursday, we should be there.
Also, if that damned caravan is still behind us, the jog to the east tonight will take us well out of their line of march. These trees are thicker than I thought but if the rest of you are as bushed as I am, we could stand the rest.'
Dmietriev nodded, indicating that Jones's plan made sense to him.
'I am afraid that the Chinese will be out after us in force. I think we need to put a guard at the top of the pass . . . anyone coming up the pass can be seen for miles and that should give time for the guard to ski down to warn us.'
Gillon grunted acknowledgment and Jones nodded. `Good idea. Any volunteers?'
Rodek stepped forward without hesitation and as Gillon started to get up, Leycock pushed past him.
`Rodek and I'll go. My skiing is pretty good. How about his?'
`Sergeant Rodek was the Soviet Army cross-country champion two years ago,' Dmietriev answered solemnly. 'He is an excellent skier.'
Àll right.' Jones nodded. 'If both of you go, you can spell one another and get some rest.
I wish we had thought of this earlier. It would have saved you a long climb back.'
Leycock shrugged. 'It's not so far and with the snowshoes, we should make pretty good time.'
`Don't forget to drag your tracks,' Stowe said suddenly, and without another word turned and walked over to his tent. Jones watched him for a moment, started, as if to say something, but thought better of it. Only Gillon noticed the slight head shake that Jones gave before he too stood up.
A few minutes later, Leycock and Rodek had marked their maps to show the location of the rendezvous in case they became separated from the main party, shouldered their packs and disappeared into the trees. Dmietriev, Jones and Gillon watched them go, then separated to set up their own tents.
CHAPTER NINE
Gillon finished rigging his one-man tent and crawled inside to arrange the sleeping bag, admitting to himself as he did so that he really did not envy Leycock and Rodek the long hike back to the summit of the pass; in fact, he had been downright relieved when Leycock had volunteered so quickly. Sitting on the edge of the bag, he tied the tent flaps shut, leaving a small opening for ventilation, pulled off his boots and slipped them between the nylon sheet ground cloth and the bag, near the foot, beat the snow from his outer clothes and slipped under the down cover. He was exhausted, more so than he would have believed possible after all of the rest he had gained during the previous two days. Aircraft pilots required oxygen at ten thousand feet and for all intents and purposes, they were sitting still. He downed more aspirin tablets, recalling his advice to Jones a few minutes before and the argument that had ensued before he would take them.
Over Jones's objections, he and Stowe had forced an examination of his head. But, beyond a nasty-looking purple and black bruise that extended below the hairline, there was nothing to be seen. Only X-rays could show if there had been a bone fracture but he was certain that Jones had suffered a fairly severe concussion at the very least.
Between them, they had overridden his objections, splitting the watch between Dmietriev, Stowe and himself to allow Jones the maximum rest possible. Stowe had volunteered to take the first watch, Dmietriev the second and he the last – and part of the sentry duty was to make sure that Jones stayed inside his sleeping bag until they were ready to travel again. Jones had finally conceded after a lengthy argument, but with, Gillon remembered, barely concealed relief. The three of them had then gathered out of earshot of Jones's tent to discuss his condition.
Stowe began, not callously, but with a hardheaded appraisal of their predicament. 'If I had to guess,' he said softly, 'I would say that his skull is fractured. It's obvious that he is concussed from the way he moves. The way he dragged us up that damned pass should have killed him.'
'Should have,' Gillon agreed, 'but didn't. As far as I know, there is nothing that you can do for a concussion except bed rest. And he sure as hell is not going to get that out here.'
'One of us could stay behind with him,' Dmietriev suggested hesitantly. 'The plan calls for us to go back out over this same pass.
Stowe swore loudly and added, 'Nonsense! With the search parties the Chinese will throw into this area as
soon as they spot the wreckage, you can't believe we're going to be able to come back out this way? Hell, there's not a chance,' he answered his own question. 'We have to go deeper into the back country and hope to hell that a pickup aircraft can find us. There isn'
t a chance that we can come back this way,' he repeated for emphasis.
Gillon knelt down and spread out his map and began to study it closely. There was twenty miles yet to the rendezvous. Most of it seemed to be downslope and he guessed that it would be either snowshoe or ski work, although he did not relish the idea of skiing unknown territory by moonlight. But Stowe was probably right. It would be foolhardy at best to try and return through the pass to the drop point on the plateau, where an aircraft had been scheduled to return in three days to pick them up. He shook his head and looked up at Dmietriev.
'Stowe is right. We have to go on farther into the mountains.'
Stowe looked smug at that and turned to stare in the direction that Rodek and Leycock had taken. 'We shouldn't have stopped here either. We should have kept on as long as we had the forest for cover. I don't like waiting here . . . if they come after us, this is a damned bad spot to be trapped.' -
Gillon snorted. 'That's why Jones sent Rodek and Leycock back up to the top of the pass.'
At this challenge from Gillon, Stowe spun around, a sharp rebuke ready, but Gillon stared at him challengingly until he flushed and glanced away. Perhaps, Gillon thought, he remembered the incident on the plane or perhaps he had just decided to bide his time for a while longer; either way, he kept silent. It looked more and more to him that Stowe was pushing hard to take over now that Jones was seemingly incapacitated and Gillon did not know if he liked that idea at all. If anyone, Dmietriev was the more senior and the most likely candidate if, in fact, Jones was really so badly hurt that he could no longer lead. But ever since the landing, Dmietriev had been curiously hesitant, not at all the same strong-willed man he had seemed after taking over the aircraft, and he wondered what had happened to
him. Gillon shrugged and stood up. Those were all problems for some other time. Right now, what he wanted more than anything else was some sleep.
`Well, we can wait until tonight to see how Jones is. It might not be a fracture after all.
The size of that bruise shows that he got hit pretty hard, but that's all it shows. A blow like that would be enough to shake anybody up. The altitude and exertion on top of everything else certainly aren't doing him any good. It may be that all he needs is a few hours' sleep and he'll be okay.'
`Yeah, maybe,' Stowe answered doubtfully, and turned away. Dmietriev glanced from one to the other and then with a shrug went to his tent.
Gillon lay in the sleeping bag staring at the vague sunlight that penetrated the tightly woven nylon, thinking back over the conversation. Jones's face had had a grayish tinge as he crawled into his tent but Gillon wasn't sure whether it had been the light, his imagination or what. Either way, he knew that there was nothing to be gained by rushing Jones into total incapacity. He was the only one with a detailed briefing, and as far as Gillon was concerned, there was a hell of a lot more to what was facing them than he at least, had been told. He only hoped that nothing had been deliberately concealed from Jones.
Outside the tent he could hear the restless crunch of snow under Stowe's boots as he paced around the clearing. Gradually, the sleeping bag warmed and he fell asleep.
When he awoke to Dmietriev's call, the tent was deep in gloom and, wondering if he had overslept, he fumbled for his boots and chafed and rubbed them back into some semblance of softness, then slipped them down into the
bag for a moment to rid them of their chill. The interior of the tent was icy cold and he shivered violently as he struggled out of the encumbering warmth of the sleeping bag and tugged on and laced up his boots.
Outside, he found that the sun had slanted so far to the west that it had dropped beyond the distant line of peaks. The cathedral-like atmosphere of the trees had disappeared, leaving behind a deep, all-pervading gloom
that seemed half haunted. He slid back a parka sleeve to expose his watch and found it was close to 1600; he had been asleep for almost nine hours. Dmietriev came up to him and nodded and they stood for a moment without speaking, enjoying the comfort of each other's company in the lengthening shadows. Finally Dmietriev shivered, said good night and trudged off toward the snow-colored nylon mound of his tent. Looking around the tiny clearing, Gillon thought that anyone coming upon them would have to look hard to see the tents; bleached white as they were.
He stared about him once more, then crawled back into his tent and rummaged through the outside pockets on his pack for the Primus stove and the day's rations. Within minutes, he was sitting on the foot of his bag, crouched under the rain flap of the tent and watching the stove's almost colorless flame bring the double cup of water to a boil. He added the soup mixture, then sprinkled the contents of a package labeled beef stew into it. The soup was chicken noodle, or so the label read, but alone, or mixed with the beef stew, it would taste terrible. Gillon had yet to encounter a dehydrated food that tasted the way the label promised; all seemed to be chronically undercooked . . . as if manufacturers had never realized that at high altitudes water boiled at lower temperatures and what might taste fine in a sea-level laboratory was only so much over-spiced, half-cooked mush at high altitudes.