Does he work for my father, or is he one of the others who were hunting for the Magdalena?
Aliana couldn’t readily answer the question, and her life depended on getting it right.
Of the two men on the Via Ferrata with her, there was only one whom she was certain she could place her trust. The man, despite never mentioning it, was after the Magdalena, of that Aliana was certain. But not for the reason that her father had told her.
Of that, she was also certain.
For what reason would her father have lied to her? She didn’t have an answer to that, but her only chance now was to trust her instincts. And they told her Sam Reilly might be her only hope of survival.
*
Sam watched Aliana above him.
Her face looked torn, as though she had just witnessed a horrific accident and knew that a decision needed to be made about what to do now. But she remained motionless and unable to make it happen.
She’d stopped again and was looking up. He wondered what she could possibly have to do with the attempt on his life and then dismissed the idea as impossible soon after it crossed his mind.
In truth, he knew very little about her, but his years as a leader had taught him a lot about reading people. Sam was certain that whatever secret intentions Aliana had for bringing him up this mountain, murder was not one of them.
“We have to go right now!” Aliana said as she started to move down the ladder toward him at a much faster pace than she’d used previously.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Look up there, Sam. It’s the guy from The Summit,” she told him. “I knew when we met him there was something about him I didn’t trust.”
Above them both, the large man from the bed and breakfast was continuing to climb down. He was still a fair distance away, but Sam could see that in his urgency to reach them, the man hadn’t bothered to clip his own carabiner into the running line.
It all seemed like too much of a coincidence.
The man had clearly just been starting his day at the bed and breakfast yesterday morning. Even the most expert of climbers couldn’t possibly have caught up with them so quickly. Sam was positive he’d noticed some sort of recognition dawning in the man’s face when he’d mentioned Aliana’s name.
How had he caught up with them?
Then, Sam realized the man must have followed them when they left the B&B, and then made his way past them when they’d stopped to enjoy their macchiato yesterday.
Aliana then grabbed hold of Sam and kissed him.
“Thank God you’re alive!” she said, with tears in her eyes. “We’ve got to go.”
“You’re absolutely right, but go where?”
“I have no idea yet. Let’s just start making our way down the mountain, until we can find a place to traverse, and then get up above him.”
“Agreed – I don’t like the idea of someone looming above me who wants to see me dead,” Sam said, as he started to climb downward.
Sam and Aliana had both climbed down the ladder a distance of about three hundred feet, until they reached a ledge. In that time, the man above them had significantly decreased the gap between himself and the two of them. He still hadn’t said so much as a single word to them, but his machine-like approach could hardly be considered as anything but sinister.
Sam looked at the ledge in both directions.
“Do you have any plans or idea as to where we go from here?” He asked.
“No, I don’t know this route very well. Let’s see if we can follow this one until we find another Via Ferrata that takes us upwards from here. We just need to get to a position above that man. I don’t think he’s got a weapon or anything,” Aliana added.
“Why not?” Sam asked, moving as fast as he could along the ledge without falling. He was moving much faster than his nerves would ordinarily allow.
“Because otherwise he would have used it already, wouldn’t he?”
Sam wasn’t completely convinced by her logic, but he agreed that their priority was to get to a position above the man.
He cursed himself for his own stupidity in not bringing along a weapon, especially after the attempt on his life at the bottom of Lake Solitude. Sam had hoped that whoever had tried to kill him down there, had done so to protect whatever secrets the lake held, and not because they were specifically trying to kill him.
Like all fools, he had convinced himself he would be safe, because whoever they were, they didn’t know who he was or where he’d gone. He’d hoped they were simply trying to protect their own interests, and hadn’t yet discovered it was him.
And he’d been wrong.
Taking a quick look behind himself, Sam could see that on the flat ground of the ledge they’d neither lost nor gained ground on their opponent.
When he again turned his head, he was horrified to discover that the ledge had ceased to exist.
“Now what do we do?” Aliana asked.
“What about that?”
Above them was another set of stemples, old and rusty, leading upwards, and along in the other direction up the mountain. He could just make out where the top of it met up with a more recent, modern path.
Aliana’s pupils dilated at the suggestion.
“That looks like it hasn’t been used in a half a century!” Aliana exclaimed.
Sam grabbed one with his hand, and pulled on it with all his might. “I don’t care how long it’s been here. We’re all out of options. I just hope it holds.”
“I don’t know how secure those stemples are.”
“Neither do I, but would you rather wait and see what our friend wants with us?”
“No.”
Acknowledging the danger they were in, Aliana started to climb. Without a running line to clip into, she was at the mercy of the bolts which she climbed. A single misstep here would mean certain death.
Fortunately, she was athletic, and had told him that she used to do this during her holidays as a child, and maintained a good pace up the mountainside.
Sam struggled but managed to keep up with her.
Below, he could now see that the man who had gone by the name of Carl, had chosen to follow them.
Although Carl hadn’t said a word, Sam was now certain that the man was there to kill them both. After all, no one risked their lives climbing a ruined set of iron rungs, unless they had something important to catch.
Sam took another brief look at Carl, down below.
There was something sinister about the mechanical way the man climbed the steps. He was much faster than either of them. At this rate, he would catch up to them well before they reached the top.
Looking around, Sam discovered he had very few options when it came to looking for a weapon.
Chapter Eighteen
Blake cursed his age as he looked up at the mountain.
Years ago, he could have scaled these mountains as fast as the best of them. But those days were long gone now.
The Rockblitz was one of those ritzy climbing clubs, found all over Europe, where you could eat good food and drink good wine, while comfortably watching as your companions struggled to scale the distant mountains; and testaments of man’s strength over nature.
There were a number of men around, carrying massive optical-zoom cameras and taking pictures of the climbers today.
He noticed that one of them was standing at the end of the viewing platform a Mediterranean man with long dark hair. The photographer had set up his camera on a tripod so he could follow someone’s ascent, and had now sat down to have a smoke.
“Excuse me, sir. May I borrow your camera for a few minutes to try to locate a friend of mine?”
“No, monsieur. I am using it to keep an eye on my own friend’s ascent.”
“Your friend will be there for a long time yet,” Blake reassured the man, and pulled out his wallet, extracting two purple 500 Euro notes, and said, “I only need to borrow your optical zoom lens for a few minutes while I locate my friends.”
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The man shrugged his shoulders, pocketed the proffered Euros and sat back down to finish smoking his cigarette.
Blake sat down on the chair set up behind the high-powered lens. He followed the line of the Via Ferrata until he spotted the first climber. It was a woman, in her early twenties, her brown hair casually tied back in a ponytail. She had nice legs, he noticed. At any other time he would have enjoyed admiring her further, but having easily determined that she was not who he was after, he continued using the lens to zoom in further up the line.
There were literally hundreds of Via Ferratas in sight, and more than a dozen mountains ahead of them. It was one of the main reasons why this particular lookout was the choice for avid climbing photographers and filmmakers. It could take him all day to find them, but his friend’s message said that they had started their climb on the Via Ferrata Con Grande, and he was confident he would spot them soon enough.
It ran for nearly four hundred feet vertically, and once reaching the top of it, a climber could continue on another four pathways.
Blake continued following the line of the iron trail up the mountain, occasionally stopping when he spotted a climber, to see if he’d found them.
It was taking much longer than he thought it would.
He felt the tap on his shoulder, and turned to see that the owner of the telescopic lens was now extinguishing his smoke.
“I’ll have my camera back now,” the man told him.
“Please, monsieur. I have not yet found my friends, and I assure you that I will not be much longer.”
“A couple more minutes, and then I don’t care that you just gave me one thousand Euros. I have a job to do today, and it’s worth a lot more to me than a thousand Euros.”
Without taking his seat again, Blake bent down until he could train his eye on the line. This time, he started at the top and quickly worked his way down.
Finally, he spotted them.
The woman was in the lead position, and Sam Reilly was close behind her on the wall.
His friend, he noticed, was pushing himself to his absolute limits, but was closing the gap between himself and the other two. The man was now about fifty feet below the next person up the ladder.
Training the lens just below the three of them, his eyes stopped scanning when he saw a fourth climber. This man was only a little further behind his friend, and he seemed strangely familiar. He focused in on the man’s face – and even at that distance, he instantly recognized the man.
What the hell are you doing on the mountain?
There was no mistake about it.
There was no way the man was there purely by coincidence.
Blake thanked the photographer and walked away from the camera, pulled out his phone, and made the call.
“Yes?” A surly man’s voice answered.
“I have spotted him.” He uttered each word slowly and deliberately.
“Good. Where are they now?”
“Halfway up a side track of the Grande Via Ferrata.”
“Do you think they know about it, then?” The man’s normally cold voice held a little more concern than usual.
“They must. The coincidence otherwise is surely too much,” Blake Simmonds acknowledged.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I'll have one of our own helicopters meet me here shortly and take me to the top, where I will meet them personally.” Blake fidgeted with the cell phone, and then said, “I’ll be prepared for any eventuality, of course.”
“Excellent. I knew I could trust you,” the stern voice on the line said.
“There is something else.”
“Yes?”
“He’s there also,” Blake said.
“Really? But we were certain he was searching on the other side of the Alps. Are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes, of course, I’m bloody certain.”
“Now, that does change things, doesn’t it?”
*
John Wolfgang’s thighs burned with each step he took.
Above him, on the dilapidated Via Ferrata, he watched as the three figures struggled to reach the top. The one man trailing behind and therefore closest to him, John recognized as Carl, one of Blake Simmonds’ goons. Maybe forty feet above Carl, was Sam Reilly. He still struggled to believe that Sam had somehow managed to escape off the Australian coast three weeks ago. After his men had reported back to him about it, he wasn’t entirely convinced that they were talking about the same man, until now. Then, located above Sam, John spotted what could only be the silhouette of a woman.
At this distance, it was impossible to make out any defining features, but he noticed that she was getting closer to the next ledge.
At his age, it would be impossible for him to keep up with them any longer.
He hoped Carl was there for the same purpose as he, but he trusted that possibility even less than he trusted that Blake Simmonds was still on his team.
No, the goon is Blake’s man, and that certainly doesn’t make him my friend. He’s most likely here to kill them, but he could just as easily be there to help them.
John climbed up another eight rungs of the rusty ladder, and then stopped to catch his breath.
But what is Blake after?
John simply could not work with anyone whom he was unable to manipulate with either money, women, or the threat of painful death.
Looking up again, he realized it was time for him to make a final decision about his next step in this most violent treasure hunt.
The first climber was just about to reach the top.
John pulled out his pistol and took aim.
*
Sam Reilly was close to the top.
If they could just get to the next ledge, they could then circle the mountain, placing themselves out of the reach of the man who was trailing them like a machine.
That was when he heard the loud crack echo across the canyon.
At first, Sam thought the sound might have been caused by a natural crack in the rock face ahead. The sound echoed throughout the entire Dolomite range.
It took a few seconds for its source to register with him.
Did someone just shoot at us?
He and Aliana both picked up their pace, and he watched as Aliana climbed over the mountain crest and disappeared.
As he climbed, his mind writhed to grasp how anyone could have known he was still alive. He was certain Tom and he had taken sufficient precautions while they were searching, so the other treasure hunters wouldn’t notice them.
But somehow, someone had taken notice.
He knew he had been careful to tell no one where they were going. He’d intentionally neglected to even tell his own father, just in case someone else might have been listening. Carl, the man from the bed and breakfast, must have recognized him somehow, but Sam couldn’t understand where they could have possibly encountered each other before.
Just before Sam reached the crest, he heard another loud report, quickly followed by two more.
The rock about a foot to the right of his hand shattered into dust.
Sam had no way to protect himself from the gunfire. It was just enough encouragement to force him to take four more steps, and clamber onto the other side of the ledge.
“You made it!” Aliana sounded relieved.
“Yeah, but for how long?”
She ignored his question, and then, reaching for a boulder on the ground, said, “Quick, help me with this. It’s the only chance we’re going to get to beat this prick.”
“I like your thinking,” Sam told her, as he squatted down to help. Between the two of them, they managed to roll the boulder to the edge of the cliff.
One quick look over the side confirmed that the two men who were pursuing them were still trailing close behind. The man nearest to the top was no more than fifteen feet away.
Sam didn’t take the time to warn the man, or even ask him to stop, before rolling the boulder over the edge.
Sam could hear the man scream out from below, and he could only imagine the painful death he must have suffered when the boulder hit him.
Slowly and carefully, Sam ventured a peek over the edge.
The man’s right leg had been crushed by the boulder, but he’d managed to clip the carabiner from his safety line onto a bolt, a split-second before the rock struck him.
A rapid succession of gunfire ricocheted off the limestone directly above Sam’s head.
“Shit!” Sam swore.
“He’s still alive?” Aliana asked.
“Yes, but I think it’s the man below him who keeps shooting at us.”
“Damn!”
Sam and Aliana both started looking around for anything that they could throw, but with the exception of the one boulder they’d already put to good use, the entire ledge appeared to be otherwise devoid of loose rubble.
Sam continued to eyeball the ledge. A path followed the natural protection of the ledge, and alongside it were two more sets of ladders. Sam didn’t have the strength to keep trying to out-climb the other two men, although he sincerely doubted that the younger of the two would be able to keep pursuing them for much longer, either.
“Any ideas?” Sam asked Aliana.
“There’s a tunnel, just around there,” she said, pointing to the end of the natural ledge.
Sam noticed that the tunnel’s entrance was well hidden.
It was unlikely their pursuer would not notice that they’d stopped climbing, but at least they could buy some time and remove themselves from the direct line of fire while he searched for where they’d gone.
He followed Aliana into the tunnel.
The mouth of the tunnel wasn’t much bigger than Sam, as he fell crouched down on his knees to enter, but once he got inside, he found that the tunnel opened up, so he could walk around freely without crouching.
“This way,” Sam said, “there are a couple of different routes here, and we might be able to lose him. Stay close to me.”
Aliana took his left hand in hers, and the two of them stepped further into the dark tunnel.
At the far end was another opening.
“There!” Sam directed.
They both made their way toward it as quickly as they could manage in the darkness.
The Sam Reilly Collection Page 18