Free Fall

by Kyle Mills

  Five minutes later, she had completely buried the stuff sack and was jumping up and down, packing the snow on top of it She looked up at him and shrugged, then unstrapped the two ice axes from the outside of her pack and handed one to Beamon. He looked at the sharp edges and remembered what an axe just like it had done to Tristan Newberry.

  “We’ll climb down about fifty meters,” Darby said, turning to face the slope and starting down it backward. “We’re going to go down really slow, like this. Kick your boots in hard, balance yourself, and get the point of your axe in. Then one more step. If you start to slide, don’t try to dig your toes in—it’ll flip you over. Lay all your weight on the back of your axe.”

  “And the rope?” Beamon said as she continued down, illustrating the proper technique.

  “If you get into really big trouble, try grabbing it.” She shrugged again, or at least he thought she did; it was hard to tell under all the layers of clothing. “It might hold. If you’re lucky.”

  “Great,” he said, easing himself over the edge and starting down like she’d showed him. He paused just before his head ducked below the flat section they’d been standing on and looked down at Darby. Beyond her, the snow was completely unbroken for about five hundred feet. At that point, it was bisected by a narrow rock band that dropped off into space.

  “How high is that cliff down there?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Darby said, stopping and digging her feet and axe in. “Okay, come on down.”

  “Doesn’t matter?” Beamon said.

  That fatalistic shrug again. “A thirty-foot fall will kill you, Mark.”

  Not exactly encouraging. Beamon continued down, his heart rate notching a little higher with every step away from flat land.

  More and more the cliff below him consumed his mind. After about twenty feet, he was finding it hard to concentrate. It seemed that every move he made put him in a less stable position than the last, bringing him within a hairbreadth of skidding out of control like the fallen ski racers he’d seen on television.

  Finally, he had to stop to try to get control of his breathing and fear. Not grabbing the apparently unreliable rope running along the snow to his right was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

  “You’re doing great, Mark. Not much further.”

  He leaned his head forward about six inches until it touched the snow in front of him. “Sorry, Darby. I don’t know why, but I’ve got to know. How high is that cliff?”

  He heard her start moving again in a slow, steady rhythm. “Okay, okay. I’m not sure. Somewhere between six and eight hundred feet. Does that make you feel better?”

  For some reason, it did. At least it was now a known quantity. “How long would you be in the air, you figure? You, know, before you hit the ground?”

  The rhythm of Darby’s descent suddenly stopped. “I kind of try not to think about stuff like that.”

  Sensible. Beamon continued down, adjusting his position so that he was placing one foot on either side of the rope. It might not hold, but he liked having it there in front of him. A few more minutes and he was even with Darby again. She had traversed a few feet to the right and was waiting for him.

  “How are you doing?” she said, grabbing hold of his shoulder with her free hand, steadying him psychologically more than physically.

  “So you do this for fun?’ The clouds were breaking up above them and the sun was coming directly from behind, reflecting powerfully off the blank white that they were clinging to.

  “No mistakes here, okay, Mark? This is where we leave the rope behind.”

  Murphy’s Law reigned, as it always seemed to. Sideways proved to be trickier than down. He mimicked Darby’s every move, silently thankful that she never strayed more than a few feet from him. He doubted that she could arrest his fall if it happened, but the companionship somehow helped.

  “It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it,” Darby said in an exaggerated whisper.

  Beamon took her words as an opportunity to stop—his legs were feeling a little rubbery again. He looked around him, turning his head slowly so as not to disrupt his balance.

  He actually hadn’t noticed. When he’d looked below him before, all he’d seen was an unsurvivable fall. He hadn’t taken in the sun glowing red off the rocky peaks or the pinkish-white glow of the aspen trees woven into the forest below them. It seemed like you could see forever and that civilization and everything that went with it didn’t really exist.

  “I guess it is.”

  “Lori loved it up here,” Darby said, turning her body dangerously and balancing on one boot as she looked out over the mountains. “Said she would never leave here.”

  She brought herself back to face the snow a moment later, once again trying to shake off the memory of her friend. “Are you ready? It’s not much further.”

  “Lead the way.”

  She started again slowly, letting him keep up step for step, movement for movement.

  After about another five minutes of constant motion, she stopped and dug in. “This is it. The tower should be above us.”

  Beamon looked up. All he could see was snow and sky, but she hadn’t given him any reason to doubt her yet.

  “And some good news,” Darby added quietly. “Up’s easiest”

  They started in unison, eyes trained on the ridge above them. When the roof of the lookout tower appeared, it was directly above, just as she had promised. They both stopped and Beamon started to carefully reach for his pocket

  “What do you need?” Darby said.

  “My gun.”

  “You concentrate on your balance; I’ll get it.”

  It was kind of humiliating to have some little girl dig around in his pocket for his pistol and then help him take his right glove off. But the memory of the cliff below and the fact that no one was watching—hopefully—made the embarrassment bearable.

  “Stay!” he ordered, starting to move up, carefully using his left arm to drive the ice axe into the snow as he moved.

  She ignored his order, staying right alongside, ready to lend a hand should he need it. He looked over at her and saw an expression of infinite stubbornness. Darby Moore had clearly decided that no one else was going to die on her watch.

  Beamon stopped again just before the stilts that supported the lookout tower came into view. He leaned against the wall of snow in front of him and drew in deep breaths of the cold air, trying to relax. Gunplay was a game for the young.

  He unlooped his wrist from the strap on his axe and reached up, digging it in as high above him as be could. Taking one more deep breath, he pulled himself up on it.

  Another impressive piece of deduction on his part—the shot that hissed past his ear unarguably came from the underside of the lookout, just as he had predicted. So much for the element of surprise.

  “Jesus!” Darby yelled as she flattened herself against the slope. Beamon let go of his ice axe and balanced precariously on the toes of his boots, aiming at the shadow moving behind the snowbank built up beneath the stilts of the tiny building.

  “Shit!” Darby squealed as a bullet impacted five feet in front of them and showered her with ice crystals. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!”

  Beamon felt a deep calm come over him as another bullet hissed past him, this time almost close enough to feel. “Not good enough, asshole,” he said quietly, and slowly applied pressure to the trigger. He felt the buck of the gun and saw the shadow he’d aimed at jerk backward. The moment of satisfaction and relief was short-lived, though. The kick of the pistol had been enough to start him tipping backward. He dropped his gun and heard it skittering across the icy slope as he shot a hand out and just missed the ice axe still stuck in the snow in front of him. It felt like slow motion as he tilted back farther and farther. His hands clawed repeatedly at the snow, but there was nothing to grab hold of.

  He’d just about resigned himself to the thousand or so foot ride when he felt the collar of his jacket tighten powerfully around
his neck. Darby had managed to get hold of his coat and yank him forward, but the sudden motion cut his boots free and he felt himself start to slide.

  He dropped about a foot or so before he jerked to a stop and was flipped around so that his back was against the snow. He felt himself choke on something, snow or fear probably, and started coughing violently as he stared down into the abyss.

  “Mark! Mark! Are you listening? Don’t get scared and make any sudden moves, but I’m starting to lose my grip.”

  Darby’s voice snapped him back into reality and he craned his neck around to look up at her. She had one hand wrapped around her axe and the other around the collar of his jacket. That tiny little gloved hand was all that was between him and …

  He moved as calmly as he could, grabbing hold of her arm and flipping himself over to face the slope again. A moment later, he had his boots dug in and had climbed up far enough to get ahold of his ice axe.

  “Oh, shit,” he coughed, gripping the axe so hard it was sending shooting pains up his forearm. “Oh, shit.”

  Darby let go of the front of his jacket and moved her hand to the back of it, helping him to maintain his balance. “I guess that’s why climbers don’t carry guns,” she said as Beamon’s choking slowly subsided. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded, still unable to speak. Fuck private industry. Fuck the FBI. That warm, safe jail cell was looking better and better.

  “You’re sure? You’re okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine. I’m fine.”

  “Did you…”

  Beamon turned his head with comic slowness and looked below him at the visible marks in the snow that his gun had made. “God, I hope so.” He also hoped that the man was alone.

  They started up together, eyes once again locked on the snow beneath the lookout tower. When they reached the top of the slope, Beamon waved at her to stay where she was and slid forward on his stomach. He was out in the open now, the proverbial sitting duck. He didn’t care, though. At least the goddamn ground was flat.

  Miraculously, he made it across the open snow and pressed his back against the bank guarding the underside of the lookout. He glanced back at Darby and gave her a tentative thumbs-up, then threw himself over the berm, holding his ice axe in front of him as a weapon.

  There was no one there.

  He looked around the deeply shadowed space, finding nothing but snow—some of which was tinted pink with blood. He crawled to the far side and looked out into the clearing. The steep slope rising into the sky two hundred yards to the east provided a flawless white backdrop, making the man struggling toward the treeline stand out perfectly.

  Beamon burst out into the flat sunlight and started running after the man as best he could through the intermittently deep and wind-packed snow. He could hear Darby coming up quickly behind him and waved her off without looking back. He was about fifteen yards behind when the man turned, holding a pistol out in front of him. Beamon dove to the ground at the same time the man fell backward into the snow. The gun went off, but the bullet sped harmlessly into the darkening sky.

  Beamon covered the rest of the distance in a crouch and ended up in a badly controlled slide and a brief struggle to relieve the man of his weapon.

  “Fuck you,” he said weakly as Beamon stood and aimed the gun down at him.

  “Are you all right?” Darby yelled, running up behind him, but stopping short when she saw the blood spreading out beneath the man lying in the snow. Her eyes moved up his face and she instantly recognized him as the man who had imprisoned her in that horrible Thai jail cell. She took an involuntary step backward.

  “Where is it?” Beamon said, not looking at the man, but scanning the trees at the edge of the clearing, searching for movement

  “Long gone,” he replied in a faded, but still smug, voice.

  Darby shuffled back and forth for a few moments, then pushed past Beamon and crouched down next to the man.

  “I sent it on ahead while I waited here for you,” he said, ignoring Darby as she opened up his jacket and cut through his sweater and shirt with a pocketknife.

  Beamon looked around the clearing again while Darby wadded up a piece of nylon clothing and pressed it against the man’s wound. This asshole didn’t look any better equipped to get out of here by himself than he did. There was just no way he was alone.

  “Where’s the Slovenian?” Beamon said.

  He saw Darby twitch at his words and then go back to working on the man’s wound, finally taking his bare right hand and pressing it against the makeshift bandage she’d fashioned. That done, she stood and started walking silently back toward the lookout tower.

  “Like I said. He and your file are long gone.”

  “Then, tell me about David Hallorin.”

  The man laughed and Beamon could see that his teeth were the same pink as the snow beneath him. “Oh, I could tell you some things about him. And I will when you get me to a hospital.”

  Beamon was suddenly aware of the absurdity of carrying on an interrogation of a wounded man on a frozen mountain in Wyoming. “Okay. Fine. We’ll get you all fixed up. But how about you ante up a little information to motivate me? Who are you?”

  The man coughed out another laugh. The crimson of his teeth had deepened a bit “I think you’re plenty motivated already, Beamon. You want Hallorin and I’m the only man who can give him to you.” He looked past Beamon for a moment. “What’s she doing?”

  Darby had reappeared about twenty feet behind them and was digging in the snow with her ice axe for no apparent reason.

  “I have no idea,” Beamon said absently, trying to get the facts in his head into some kind of coherent order. What now? Dangle the son of a bitch over a cliff by his ankles? There was no point—this guy had him by the balls and he was smart enough to know it. Threats would just sound silly. His only option was to save this prick and hope to get the story later.

  The sound of the ice axe repeatedly hitting the snow behind him intruded into his thoughts and eventually forced him to turn around. “Darby, what the hell are you doing? I can’t hear myself think here.”

  She ignored him—a skill she seemed to be developing at an alarming rate—and smoothed out something that looked like a chair cut out of the snow. He watched passively as she stood and walked over to the man lying at his feet. Still perplexed, he didn’t interfere when she grabbed the man’s lapels and dragged him toward her construction as he howled and swore in pain.

  It was a chair. She dropped him into it and stood directly in front of him.

  “You’re going to die,” she said matter-of-factly. The man looked up at her like she was speaking Swahili. Darby pointed to the west, where the sun had turned the snow-covered mountains a deep purple. It was a spectacular effect, making it impossible to tell where the mountains ended and the sky began.

  “It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Darby continued. “A lot better than what you had planned for me. A lot better than you deserve, you son of a bitch.”

  She picked up her ice axe and started walking smoothly through the snow toward the mouth of the canyon where they had stashed their skis and other equipment

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” the man slurred at her back. “Get the fuck back here, you bitch!”

  Beamon grabbed her by the arm as she passed. “Darby, we need him.”

  “This isn’t New York,” she said. He was a little shocked by the anger in her voice—it didn’t seem to fit her. “What do you want to do? Call an ambulance?”

  “No, I don’t want to call an ambulance. I want to make a litter or something and drag him to a hospital.”

  “He’s dead. Look at him.”

  Beamon did. Blood had soaked through a good half of his clothing and was actually dripping off him as he tried to stand. She was right

  “Last chance to unburden your conscience,” Beamon said, taking a few steps toward the man.

  “Fuck you! We had a deal. You get me out of here. You get me
out of here and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Beamon turned up his gloved hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’ll be lucky to get myself out of here.”

  “You can go to hell!” the man yelled as Beamon turned and started to follow Darby out. Surprisingly, though, he was finding it almost impossible to walk away. He’d been unfortunate enough to have killed men before, but he’d never left one of them to die. There had always been helicopters, doctors, hospitals….

  “Wait, Darby,” Beamon said, trying to increase his speed to a jog in the deep snow. For once she listened to him and stopped dead in her tracks. As he came alongside her, though, she didn’t seem to be aware that he was there.

  He looked behind him at the man who had now fallen from his makeshift chair and was attempting to crawl in their direction. “Jesus, Darby. I don’t care if it’s pointless, we can’t just leave him—”

  “Did you hear that, Marie?”

  He had heard something. The wind? They looked up at the steep slope hanging over them and both saw a distant figure standing at the top of it.

  “What the hell is that?” Beamon said.

  Whoever it was, he was shouting down to them, but the distance and the wind made it impossible to decipher his words.

  “It’s Vili,” Darby said as the quiet shouting stopped and the figure huddled to himself for a moment. When he straightened out, Beamon could see a plume of smoke rising from his hand.

  “Oh, shit,” Darby said quietly. She grabbed him by the jacket and started running, pulling him along behind. “Go for the trees, Mark! We’ve got to make it to the trees!”

  She let go of him and sprinted ahead, seeming to float over the snow that he was becoming more and more mired down in. When he looked behind him, the smoke plume had left Vili Marcek’s hand and was arcing gracefully through the air.