Snowman

by Norman Bogner

  Ahead of him, on the ice wall, Spider turned, shivering, and demanded in outrage, "What the hell's that stink you giving off? I never smelled that brand of suntan oil."

  "It's goose fat," Pemba said, laughing.

  "Goose fat! Lay some of it on me, monkey. My skin feels like a bear's ass."

  Nearing a great outcropping of rock, Bradford paused and fired his spring-loaded harpoon. A grapnel landed in the spur, and Bradford cut the trail ahead. He pulled hard at the rope to insure that the grapnel was anchored. He then passed the rope from man to man so that they could climb belayed. When he reached the top of the spur he found himself on a platform leading to the icefall. The step was a gigantic frozen cascade of ice. The surface of the glacier was badly split from the avalanche. Tottering blocks of ice hung on feathery threads of snow. The glacier itself was in a constant state of change and movement. He heard ominous underground noises as the gut of the glacier expanded and contracted.

  The team scoured the flanks of the mountain from the platform. The fresh snow overlying the existing layer made the direct route too dangerous; it was unstable and could peel off in avalanches. Heavy eaves of snow near the summit leaned forward portentously. Ahead of them crevasses appeared, widening and closing with startling suddenness. In the distance Bradford made out a shape of some kind, but even with his binoculars he could not identify it. He and Pemba decided to go ahead, leaving the others to rest.

  As their crampons crunched into the ice, Bradford spied a series of barely discernible tracks crisscrossing a pitch. It seemed impossible for anything to have climbed that stretch of icy rock between the ledges above the icefall.

  "Yeti," Pemba said nervously.

  "Could be." He tried to control his nervousness. They were above fifteen thousand feet, traversing the icefall, and as they moved in a northerly direction, the snowfall increased, slowing them down. If any place was ideal for an encounter with the Snowman, this was it. On this flat surface there was no danger of falling. The team could spread out and encircle the Snowman in a pincers attack, cutting off any retreat.

  They lowered their snow goggles and made for the object that Bradford had seen. It was difficult to judge distances over the vast icefall. They were shocked by how fast they reached it, and more so when they saw what it was. Lying exposed on the icefall was the severed body of Barry Harkness. The eyes had been gouged out, and the sockets were filled with slivers of ice. Part of the trunk had been eaten, and there were deep zigzagging wounds as though he had been thrust into an industrial saw. His hair had turned white, and sections of his skull had been torn open. Bradford stooped down and with his ice ax began to dig up blocks of hardened snow. In a moment, Pemba was helping him in the grizzly job of burial.

  "He was carried up here and left," Bradford said.

  Pemba shook his head ruefully. He laid his red Khada scarf on the mound of ice.

  "I don't want you to tell the others."

  "Kai chai na."

  "But it does matter," Bradford insisted. "They'll run out on us."

  They staggered back across the desolate frozen plain of ice and snow. Sharp waves of ice granules bit into their skin. It was like hacking their way through a frozen white jungle.

  The five men decided to establish a provision dump at the base of the icefall. Later that afternoon, when the weather cleared, they located a negotiable pass running beside the icefall so that they could girdle the peaks beyond their position. They made a diagonal traverse across the top of the spur, reaching an altitude of sixteen thousand eight hundred feet.

  Bradford was following the tracks he had seen earlier. They were covered with fresh snow. He cautioned the men to be ready to use their crossbows at any moment.

  Chapter Seventeen

  All the guests had now been evacuated from the lodge, and as Cathy peered out of the window at the disaster area she spied only highway patrolmen erecting barriers and newsmen huddled in small groups passing thermoses of coffee. Garson had been forced into a bind and was now under control. He had stuck to Ashby's account of the tragedy, but he had been pressured to reveal that a party of big-game hunters were now tracking the bear. He refused to give further details, and closed the mountain to any but official air traffic.

  Monte had spent most of the day on the telephone talking to Wright and trying to explain what had occurred. His face was drained of all color, and he could hardly string two coherent sentences together.

  The state of confusion in his office was maddening. Salesmen were lined up demanding their checks; the captain of the highway patrol was on the phone to the National Guard, who were waiting for approval from the governor's office. A new batch of journalists were on their way from the national magazines.

  "I suggested to the National Guard that we bomb the mountain," the highway patrol captain said confidently. "That way, whatever the hell's up there won't get another chance."

  "What're you talking about?" Cathy protested. "Five men are up there. You can't bomb them."

  "Hell no, just get them on the shortwave and order them down."

  Sheriff Garson pointed to the set.

  "Care to try raising them, Captain? I'd be obliged if you could. We've been trying to make contact all day, but there's a storm up there and just a little interference."

  "You've lost contact with them?" he asked in astonishment.

  "Afraid so," Ashby replied. "Now, have you got any idea what might happen to the town, not to mention the rest of the state, if you try to bomb?" He pointed at the colored relief map on the wall. "Here's Convict Lake and here's the Jeffrey Pine Forest, which leads up to Minaret Summit. This area is filled with volcanic domes. And as you can see, there's an earthquake fault right in the middle. This is only one of hundreds of fractures in the glassy volcanic rock covering the mountain. So bomb away, and we'll just head down to Berkeley and keep an eye on the seismograph. If you get lucky we might get a biggie on the Richter scale—maybe a nine-five. And that, Captain Olafson, ought to get you a nice place in the history books."

  Olafson looked despondently at several of his men, who were standing by the fireplace warming themselves.

  "Then what the hell do we do?"

  "We've got five experts on the mountain, led by Daniel Bradford. They've got weapons, they know what to expect," Monte said with assurance. "I hired them for this job."

  At the door a mob of journalists had gathered and were shouting angrily for an interview with Monte Dale. Cathy went into the corridor to fend them off. Bright lights were switched on, and she was blinded by the unexpected glare. She was bombarded by questions, and she decided not to answer any of them until she was allowed to read a statement she had prepared earlier.

  "If I can have your attention for a moment, I'd like to try to explain what happened today."

  The room quieted down. The TV mini cameras rolled, and she cleared her voice.

  "In all the survey work that was done before Great Northern Development decided to build a ski village and develop ski runs here, there was no indication that there was a geological weakness in Sierra Mountain. We may never know exactly what caused the avalanche, but right now we're trying to find out with a team of five surveyors up the mountain, headed by an expert climber named Daniel Bradford."

  A voice from the back of the room boomed out, "Our research department ran a check on Bradford. He went after a Snowman years ago. Now why would he be the one you'd bring in if you thought a bear and an avalanche had killed those people?"

  Cathy ignored the question and returned to the office.

  * * *

  The team had covered half of the icefall by late afternoon. Surrounding them were frost-riven spires. Packard was having difficulty breathing even with the oxygen, and he was slowing them down. Just ahead of them was a cwm, a small enclosed valley on the flank of the spur; it would be a good site for a supply dump.

  The men were exhausted, staggering like drunks. Bradford knew he was pushing them too hard, but he needed to use the last h
ours of light in order to block off the principal route the Snowman could use.

  The tracks he had been following were now covered by snow, but he could trace their path by the deep declivities that appeared at irregular intervals. He was able to work out a rough formula of how large the Snowman's strides were by pacing off the indentations. The figure he arrived at was approximately eight feet, which indicated that the Snowman must be at least twenty-five feet tall. When he had seen him at Lhotse it had been impossible in his panic to get any exact idea of his size.

  The radio transmission was set up by Spider and Packard, but the signals were blocked by the mountain chain. Rather than waste batteries, they closed down.

  Jamie took over the kitchen chores and boiled some snow for soup. They set up a small tent and unloaded the supplies they had brought up.

  "What do you think?" Bradford asked Pemba.

  "Let's go on ahead and see where the tracks lead."

  "Did the others notice them?"

  "I doubt it."

  "What are we going to do with Packard?" Bradford asked.

  "He can't handle the altitude, but he's the best shot."

  "I'll leave him in charge of the supply dump to protect our rear."

  Above them was the great saddle of the Sierra Col, a depression on the face buttressing the summit. It was obscured by iron-colored clouds and continuous sheets of snow. The men slithered across the ice, stopping every few feet, hunched over in the wind. A low, vibrating sound, different from the ice movement, was coming from a source near the summit. It was rhythmical and had no timbre.

  "Christ!" Bradford began taking shelter against an arete. "It sounds like a heart."

  They stood transfixed in the narrow rock passage, intimidated and thrilled by the possibility that they had located the Snowman. In a crevasse to the side, swollen like a large gray vein, were the remains of a Kodiak. It had been flattened against the ice wall; they would have to cross the corpse to reach the summit.

  Bradford noticed an odd saline odor that was reminiscent of the sea at low tide. If only he'll stay put, he thought.

  By the time he and Pemba returned to camp, Bradford had worked out a plan which would enable them to mousetrap the Snowman. It depended on Packard's remaining as a backup.

  He drew a triangle on the map and said, "We'll form two groups—Spider and I, Pemba and Jamie. We'll use a rope ladder to cross the crevasse below the summit, then the two groups can move toward the summit. All we want to do is rouse him. Then we'll form a wedge and strike in a pincer move and hope he'll respond to the sound or the smell. We hit him once he comes down this pinnacle of ice."

  "You're assuming he'll act predictably," Packard said. "Man, we made assumptions like that about the V.C. in Nam, and believe me, our plans weren't worth two shits."

  "He's lodged behind the sérac," Pemba said. "There's no other way down this side of the mountain."

  "There may be for him. We have to climb whatever's negotiable—he doesn't. But what we're counting on is his instinct to attack," Bradford explained.

  "How can you be sure that he's not below us?" Spider asked edgily. "Could be he's cut us off."

  "I heard him, and so did Pemba."

  The men avoided looking at Bradford. The fire glowed in the center of the tent. The walls were frozen from the condensation of their breath. Outside the winds swept to gale force, bellowing between the sérac and the mountainside.

  "It's time for a weapon-assembly drill," Bradford ordered.

  Working with their gloves on, they fitted the riser with two aluminum limbs, then flexed the limbs on two pulleys rotated on the wire aircraft cable. They mounted their sniper scopes and took the firing position. Bradford kept them at the drill for an hour and managed to get their routine down to two minutes and forty seconds. Outside on the mountain even with ideal weather conditions, they'd be fortunate to break four minutes.

  "We'll have to climb with them assembled," he said at the end. It was bad luck, since they ran the danger of having the bow freeze. The aluminum might begin to contract at certain sub-zero temperatures.

  "Suits me," Spider said. "I never liked the idea of putting my piece together when I'm ready to fire it."

  Relieved that he no longer was required to climb, Packard volunteered to take the first watch. Spider followed him outside when the others were asleep. They huddled against the ice wall to keep out of the direction of the wind.

  "I don't like leaving you behind," Spider said.

  "Shit, I can't hack the climb is all. At close range the bows'll work. But I think you're going to have to get a lot closer than a hundred yards. This wind'll blow a bullet off course." Packard opened his parka and revealed a .357 Magnum. "I'm not taking any chances, which is why I brought junior along with three boxes of ammo."

  "I've got some plastique in my kick. If it comes to it, avalanche or not, I've got enough to blow that mother to Saigon. You didn't expect an old pro like me to go fighting with bows and arrows. Shit, if we're going to war, the Spider-Man's bringing his own deck."

  There was a hollow uncertainty in their soft conspiratorial laughter. Shards of ice lashed viciously at Spider as he struggled back to the tent. The starless night frightened him. More than ever he wished he had remained safe in the East Vegas jail. Perched on an elbow in his sleeping bag, he looked up at the tent roof and muttered to himself, "Hard way four . . . twenty-two come up smiling."

  Chapter Eighteen

  By the time they reached the crevasse in the morning, it was covered. A snow bridge had formed across it. Bradford attached himself to Pemba's snap-link to test its stability. He walked stealthily, like a nervous burglar. As he crossed it, ice channels shifted between huge troughs.

  "We'll use the rope ladder," he called out. At the sound of his voice, the moat shuddered, dropping a wall of snow down a gulley of inestimable depth. It was as though a wound ran through the body of ice. Surface tremors appeared, revealing further ice weaknesses. The glare from the sun on the glacier was blinding.

  Pemba fired a grapnel, and Bradford hammered it into a shelf with his ice ax. He tied the heavy nylon ladder to another section, jamming it into the open head of a steel piton. The rope bridge extended for ten feet.

  Spider cringed when he was waved onto it. His face was raw from the cold, and he inched his way along the, ladder, moving on his belly. When he reached the other side, he collapsed. Jamie was next; he shied away like a frightened horse. Bradford bullied him into crossing. Midway over, the ice below him splintered; he lay frozen with terror on the rope.

  "Don't look down," Pemba pleaded. "You're almost there."

  Bradford held out his hand to encourage him.

  "I can't—"

  "Jamie, you've got to move," Bradford insisted as the splinters widened into throbbing veins.

  Crippled with fear, Jamie lay prone, gasping in the rarefied air. Another block of ice fell below him, creating a hissing cataract in the crevasse. Finally, Jamie forced himself to grope his way over to the other side, where he fell to his knees as though stricken.

  Pemba was the last to come, wiggling adroitly and seemingly without fear. Now they were all on the other side of the slowly disintegrating moat. Pemba and Bradford pulled the ladder with them. As they stepped away, the gap widened, ice crackling, until the crevasse shattered. It was now almost the length of a city block. They watched in helpless frustration as they found themselves cut off from their camp and Packard.

  They were on a cleaver, an island of granite rock sheathed with ice, circling the body of the glacier. Above them the dazzling bare-faced walls of the summit rose like threatening daggers.

  "We'll never get down again!" Spider shouted.

  "Don't be crazy," Bradford said. "We'll make it."

  When he found his voice, Jamie joined the protest. "Dan, we were going to wait for the Snowman to come and get us. Why're we tracking him?"

  "Because we couldn't wait and find ourselves trapped."

  "He's luring us up
the mountain," Spider said. "Man, you fell for the bait."

  It was a dead-end argument—useless to continue. Bradford took out his walkie-talkie, raised the aerial, and spoke into it.

  "This is Bradford—come in, Camp Two."

  In a moment Packard's voice crackled over the line. "Camp Two. How are you mothers?"

  "We're okay. We'll have to come down to you a different way. We're at the southeast corner of the icefall. Grid numbers forty-seven sixty-one. Try to get through to the ground when the weather clears and give them our position."

  "Roger. Hey, listen, anything happening?"

  "Not yet. How's it down below?"

  "Beautiful. I've got my swimsuit on, and I'm going to take a walk to see if I can pick up a chick with big jugs I spotted on the beach."

  "Over and out."

  Bradford led the men to a bergschrund. The large crevasse was securely fixed on the upper slope of a glacier separating it from the steeper slopes of ice above them. They were a good eight hundred feet below the summit.

  Bradford decided to wait until he detected some movement from the Snowman. The weather was fair now, the snowstorms of only short duration. The Snowman would not come out until the conditions became severe.

  Time passed all too slowly for Packard. He failed to reach the sheriff. The signal was weak; he recharged the batteries but still could not make contact. He cleaned up the tent, made himself a can of pork and beans for lunch, dipped saltine crackers into it, and pretended he was eating a real Texas chili. He located Bradford's grid marks on the map, then found himself growing sleepy. He had planned to get some air, but the snowstorm had intensified at this level on the mountain.

  He started daydreaming about returning to his ranch, the commotion he would cause at the bank when he deposited his fifty thousand dollars. Curled up in his sleeping bag, he had a smile on his face as he fell into a deep sleep.

  It was a while before he reacted to the scraping noises he heard outside the tent. He wondered if they were natural to the mountain. He'd become accustomed to the noise the ice made when the wind lifted it and hurled it against the frozen rock.