Logan looked up from the deep well with dawning realization, briefly training his furious gaze from Milo’s horrified expression to Isabelle’s running camera. The geologist’s face reddened, cheeks flushing as a large, twisting vein in his forehead engorged itself on his anger.
Smiling, Dale lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Charlie, come in,” he said. “You okay down there?”
Milo began to mouth incredulous words, but no sound came from his lips. Silence and crackling static buzzed from the radio, shrill against the churning waterfalls.
“You okay down there?” repeated Dale. “Charlie?”
The radio crackled to life suddenly, making Milo jump. “Goddamn!” came Charlie’s voice, now distant and high-pitched over the transmission. “What a rush! All good down here. Shit, man . . . I’m still shaking. May have rolled my ankle a bit on the landing, but I’m fine.”
Unable to listen to another second of the self-congratulatory report, Joanne stormed over, yanked off her leather climbing gloves, and aimed a finger at Dale’s face.
“That man is a fucking arsehole,” she shouted, jamming the digit into the center of Dale’s chest. “He is done, bloody well done.”
A flicker of annoyance crossed Dale’s face before disappearing, replaced by a wide, conciliatory smile as Duck interjected himself, physically pulling Joanne back.
“Oh, don’t be so hard on him,” said Dale, ignoring the jabs and placing a fatherly hand on Joanne’s shoulder. “Charlie has been base-jumping for years. Just last month, he was at the Cave of Swallows in Mexico. You think I would have permitted this if I didn’t have total confidence in his abilities?”
“I’m going down that shaft,” said Joanne, her voice cold with anger. “And once I’m at the bottom, I’m sending him back to America. Hog-tied, if need be.”
Hearing raised voices, Isabelle swiveled her camera to the arguing pair, pouring harsh light over them both.
“No, no, no,” said Duck, pointing at Isabelle. “Do not even start with the camera right now. Are you for real?”
“Put ’er down,” said Dale, waving apologetically to the producer. “Take five. We’ll pick back up in a minute—maybe do some interviews. I want to reshoot Charlie on the radio; give you a couple of takes to choose from.”
“You’re the boss.” Isabelle shrugged as she flicked off the camera to conserve the battery. “Won’t be as dramatic as this, but your call.”
“I can’t have this cowboy nonsense on an expedition,” said Joanne, her voice now whisper-quiet as she leaned in to Dale. “You know it—I know it. Completely unacceptable. You know what happens if you break your leg back home? Paramedics come in ten minutes; you’re at hospital inside twenty. Think about what happens out here. First we have to carry you out of the cave. An hour to abseil, an hour to package the patient, maybe four or five to get back out to basecamp. Then ten hours and a border crossing to Nairobi, which still doesn’t have a proper trauma center. God forbid he got a serious head injury on the way down, Dale. The closest treatment option isn’t even on this bloody continent.”
“I hear you,” said Dale, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Message received. But I need you to see this from my perspective. I’m backing his television series—just like I’m backing your firm’s charity foundation. His first episode needs excitement, something nobody has seen before. This was his moment, the moment that will sell the entire show. Nothing else will happen without your say-so, I promise. No more surprises.”
“You should have warned us.” Joanne scowled as she looked up from the rope anchor she’d tied at the base of a particularly large stalagmite.
“Yeah,” added Duck. “Seriously not cool, man.”
“Everybody,” said Dale, addressing the group with open arms like a circus ringmaster. “I’m sorry for the surprise jump, I really am. But I promise we’ll all laugh about this soon.”
Bridget, Logan, and Milo all looked at each other uncomfortably as Logan mumbled something that sounded like doubtful.
The anger had drained from Joanne’s face, replaced by ice-cold resolve. “Nobody’s laughing, Dale. Most of us thought we’d just watched a man jump to his death.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” said Dale, trying but failing to match Joanne’s deadpan intonation. “Get us down to the bottom of the shaft. If you’re still mad when everybody’s safely below, we’ll send Charlie home, okay?”
“You’d better be serious about that deal,” said Joanne, breaking away from the older man to return to the other guides. “Because this is not over. He’s going home—or I am.”
Dale folded his arms and frowned, absentmindedly nudging at the muddy cave floor with his boot as he collected his thoughts.
“Take a moment and look around,” Dale finally said, total earnestness filling his voice. “What we are already doing is groundbreaking, record-setting. I can understand why Charlie’s little stunt—well-planned as it was—bothered you. Like I said, no more surprises, we’ll follow your lead and stick to the rules from now on. Can you back me up, Isabelle?”
The producer nodded in agreement. “No more stunts,” she agreed.
Joanne just swore under her breath and shook her head furiously, returning to Duck and the rest, checking their knots and set up the last of the ropes and carabiners.
The guides finished their work on the three rope systems while the rest of the party milled about in awkward silence.
“Dr. McAffee and Ms. Christian,” commanded Dale, waving Bridget and Isabelle over as he finished. “You two are on the first trip down with Duck.”
“Aww yeah!” said Duck, breaking the tension. “Ladies first!”
Each woman was tied into their harness with Duck in the middle, Bridget and Isabelle carrying small backpacks while Duck hung two hundred pounds of stuffed backpacks and duffels from the seat of his own harness. For safety, each was linked up to a main line, a safety line, and then roped again to Duck for good measure.
“How much weight can these ropes support?” whispered Bridget, her eyes cast over the dizzying array of carabiners, harnesses, and synthetic line.
“Each of these lines can hold about two Batmobiles,” said Duck as he leaned back in his harness, testing the elasticity of the line and preparing to lower himself down the fifteen hundred feet to the bottom. “It’s more or less a standard unit of measurement.”
“Excuse me?” said Isabelle, nervously adjusting her helmet for the tenth time. “What does that even mean?”
“It’s, like, super technical,” said Duck. “You know that crazy car from the Batman movies? The one that looked like a tank made a baby with a Lamborghini? Yeah, so each of these ropes could support the weight of two Batmobiles, plus Batman. It’s eleven millimeters thick. That’s good for, like, five tons apiece, probably a lot more under ideal conditions. Awesome, right?”
“It’s somewhat reassuring,” admitted Bridget.
“I’ve had a lot of gear break on me, but never one of these rope systems,” said Duck, winking. “I got you.”
“It’s not the rope I’m worried about,” said Isabelle. Those were the last words Milo heard as the trio leaned back against the taut lines and disappeared into the darkness.
Milo couldn’t get used to the hurry-up-and-wait pace of the expedition. With Bridget, Isabelle, and Duck over the edge, there wasn’t anything to do but sit on a rock and wait for his turn as Joanne did the final adjustments for Dale and Logan. Milo could tell Logan felt more than a little insulted about the amateur-hour treatment. But after Charlie’s parachute plunge into the shaft, Logan had wisely decided not to push Joanne’s patience.
He couldn’t help but imagine what DeWar would have used more than a century ago. Without the benefit of synthetic ropes, wall anchors, or rappelling racks, his expedition would have been stuck with rope ladders, maybe even a mule-and-winch setup.
A few minutes later, an all-clear sounded over the radio. Soon Dale and Logan went over the edge as well.
&
nbsp; Joanne was too busy to talk, leaving Milo in silence. He’d just failed Joanne’s pre-rappel checklist due to an improperly secured climbing harness—the same test everyone else had passed with flying colors. It suddenly occurred to Milo that he was the only one that had never been rappelling before.
“We Brits call it abseiling,” said Joanne as she tied the last knot to his harness. “I first learned how from an ex-SAS commando I was dating at the time. We went over the edge of St. John’s Head, the tallest cliff in Scotland.”
Milo nodded, listening as intently as he could through his growing fear.
“You are linked to me,” continued Joanne. “Even if both your main and safety lines fail—a near impossibility unto itself—you’ll still be safe as safe can be. But please—no mucking about, and especially no swinging as we make our way down. If these ropes fail, you’ll be falling at a speed of 200 kilometers an hour when you hit the bottom. So go at my pace at all times. Got it?”
Milo nodded as Joanne finished tying up his harness, trying to imagine what that much velocity would do to a human body upon impact. He felt a little uncomfortable with the sheer level of mental intensity directed at his crotch as she manipulated the rope, but appreciated her thoroughness nonetheless.
After what felt like hours of waiting, the all-clear call came in over the radio, allowing the final duo to slowly back up to the open chasm, waiting to descend. The last one, Milo leaned back, allowing the rope to take his weight little by little, until he was almost horizontal hanging over the edge. And then he allowed the rope to gently slip through his gloved fingers, lowing himself inches at a time into the pit. The entire sensation was alien, nerve-wracking. Everything about it felt so wrong.
“Speed up,” said Joanne from below. “Smooth and steady. You’ll take hours at this rate.”
Milo nodded and allowed the rope to slip through his rappel device at a greater clip. In an instant, he disappeared into the mist, sucking in the cool air one ragged breath at a time. As he blinked back moisture, the reverberating waterfalls took on a new intensity, as though he were on the inside of a massive drum. Beneath him, a wind gathered, swirling through the chasm.
A foot turned into five, into twenty, and then a hundred as Milo spiraled into the depths. Soon he was lost in the darkness and wet, seeing only the cave wall before him, the entrance and the bottom lost to the lightless mist. The sense of floating, of freedom, was incredible, his truncated senses revealing no true conception of the sheer length of the drop. The shaft widened as he slowly spun on the rope, creating a lazy helix with his rotating form.
Clinging moisture seeped into every layer of his clothing, chilling him. The falling waters gained force as he descended, transforming the gentle pattering sensation on his helmet to a hard, gravel-like impact.
A crackle came over the radio, and Joanne held up her hands for Milo to stop. Milo held the rope tightly against his hip, not allowing it to slip through the metallic friction device on his harness. In the silence, he slowly swayed back and forth in his nylon seat, a weight at the end of a thousand-foot pendulum, the glistening, craggy wall just inches away from his furthest reach.
“We must hang here for a tick,” said Joanne, turning off her headlamp to conserve the battery. “Bit of a logjam at the bottom, a couple of the ropes became tangled.”
Deciding to leave his own on, Milo took a moment to consider his situation, hoping to bury his still-burning fear with another layer of rationality. The rope suspending him was hardy enough to heft a truck, and it was secured to a million-year-old limestone column. Then there was the safety line, the safety-safety line, and Joanne’s emergency line. On balance, the descent was likely safer than an average bicycle commute through Georgetown.
But without warning, Milo’s mind seized on the nothingness below him. He couldn’t tell if he was a foot or a thousand feet above the bottom of the endless yawning maw. The mask of reason was violently ripped away, leaving Milo with short, gulping breath. Sweat poured from his face, mixing hot and salty with the cool water vapor. His hands tingled and the onions from his last meal bubbled up into his raw throat.
With his feet dangling in the air, Milo was clenched by a single, unshakable thought.
I’m going to die down here.
CHAPTER 11:
THE ANCHOR
1,100 feet below the surface
Pain radiated down Milo’s chest and legs, as though his heart had turned to ice and now pumped freezing liquid throughout his body. His heartbeat thumped deafening in his ears, louder even than the cascading waterfalls. He tried to force air into his lungs but could only manage little hiccups. He was choking, his vision gray. He needed to run, but was trapped as the walls of the shaft dropped away, leaving him hanging in nothingness, hard droplets slamming against his plastic helmet like hail.
Milo breathed a wheezing gasp of air, barely enough to keep himself conscious. The rope in his hand slipped and he slid one, three, five feet before catching himself.
“Milo!” shouted Joanne from below him. “Stop fucking about!”
He tried to say something reassuring like yeah, sure, no problem, but just loudly coughed.
“Milo!” said Joanne again, but this time Milo couldn’t even speak, his jaw and mouth clenched in fear, flashes of heat all over his body overpowering the freezing spray.
But then in front of him, a sparkle of refracted light pierced through the void and the fear and the pain, a delicate pinpoint almost lost behind a sheen of moisture. Milo fixated his entire attention on the glint, trying not to think about the fact that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t move.
He had to reach the glint.
Pulling in a single jagged, uncertain breath, Milo wiggled his frozen, tingling legs back and forth, swinging toward the wet, rocky wall of the shaft. The glint came almost close enough to touch, then fell away.
“Bloody hell, Milo!” shouted Joanne. “What are you doing? I told you to stay put!”
“Have . . . to reach . . . the wall,” murmured Milo through gritted teeth, each swing placing him a tantalizing inch closer to the glint. The rope snaked through his stiff hand, abruptly dropping him another three feet. Kicking against the wall, he swung back, hard, and slammed bodily against the slippery rocks.
The rope harness went loose as Milo held himself up on an inches-wide ledge, allowing feeling to rush back into his twitching, unsteady legs. The drop had put him a few feet below the mysterious glint. He’d have to climb to reach it.
“Milo!” yelled Joanne, fear entering her voice for the first time. “We must get to the bottom—please!”
Ignoring her, Milo pressed his face against the rock wall, limiting the spread of his headlamp to an intense circle just inches across. Unable to see his hands or feet in the misty darkness, he felt around for handgrips and footholds until he could drag himself up another precious few inches.
“Oh God,” said Joanne, gulping. “Milo, please, please, please stop climbing. This is static line, not an elastic climbing rope. A drop of even a few feet could cripple you, even kill you.”
“I’m . . . I’m not climbing out,” protested Milo, finally finding his voice. “I just saw something—I need to get a closer look.”
He found another handhold, grunting as he dragged himself upward another few inches. The glint was finally within reach. He extended a trembling hand and brushed across its cool surface with his fingers, feeling a small metal anchor bolt secured into the wall. Experimentally, he pulled against it, feeling it just slightly loose in the slimy rock.
“Milo!” pleaded Joanne. “Whatever you’re doing is not worth it. Talk to me, you must talk to me.”
“It’s a metal anchor,” shouted Milo down to the others, feeling the last of his sudden fear slowly slip away as he fumbled in his pocket for a small folding knife. “It’s loose—I think I can get it out.”
“If you can talk, you can listen,” said Joanne, her fear turning to outright anger. “And if you can listen,
you can bloody well follow instructions.”
“Just give me a second,” protested Milo, digging the blade of the knife between the wall and the bolt.
“You’d better not be getting that blade anywhere near the rope, Milo,” said Joanne. She too kicked back and forth until she reached the wall, clinging to the rocks underneath him.
Without warning, the anchor popped free from the wall. Milo watched in slow motion as it tumbled through his field of vision, corroded stainless steel glinting in the harsh glare of his headlamp, slipping through his outstretched fingers and into the darkness. The sudden jerk had thrown him off balance, and he felt his tenuous grip slip loose.
And then Milo fell.
CHAPTER 12:
BASE CAMP
2,150 feet below the surface
Profound relief washed over Milo as his feet touched the bottom of the shaft. His vision still narrow and gray, he focused all his attention on steadying his shaking hands as he untied the ropes from his harness. Joanne watched him for a moment, dropped her harness with a swift, elegant motion, and strode off purposefully toward Dale.
Descent rope now freed from his harness, Milo took in his surroundings. The base of the shaft opened up to a large chamber, its domed, stalactite-thick ceiling a hundred feet above. The egg-like shape almost resembled a stomach at the end of a long esophagus. The waterfalls joined at the base of the pit, slamming against loose rocks and pooling in a small subterranean lake that drained along a deep, narrow crack spanning the entire length of the new chamber. The mists of the waterfalls fell to the glistening floor, leaving the majority of the colossal room dry and untouched. The noise was almost overwhelming—Milo felt as though he were standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, a choir of jets throttling their engines for takeoff.
Feeling rushed back into his legs as pent-up blood released from below the straps of the climbing harness. Milo lifted his knees up past his waist, rotating his ankles, feeling the pins-and-needles of nerves coming back to life. Part of him felt relieved at the firm ground now underneath his boots. The other part desperately tried to think of anything other than the over quarter-mile between him and the surface.
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