Extreme Limit

by Kendall Talbot

  Pope plucked Holly’s camera from her bag, assessed it for a moment or two, and when he went to throw it aside, she spoke her first words in hours. “We’ll need that.”

  Pope blinked at her, camera in hand.

  “If Regi’s to prove where he got the DNA from, he’ll need the camera.”

  Oliver was impressed with her quick thinking.

  “She’s right, Pope.” Regi croaked his assertion.

  Pope grunted and shoved the camera back in her case and removed Holly’s headlamp. He adjusted the strap, fitted it onto his head, and turned it on.

  In the end there weren’t too many things that Pope had rejected, and he tossed their packs aside. He flopped into the passenger seat in the front row, placed the gun on his lap, and folded his arms across his chest. “Get some sleep.” He turned to them. The torch beam made it impossible to see Pope’s face. “And don’t do anything stupid, or I’ll put a bullet through yer brain.”

  With nothing more to do, Oliver turned to Holly, and she tugged something from her jacket. The thermal blanket. Thank god for her. He removed the one she’d insisted he take and, realizing Regi would need it more than him, he shook it out and draped it over the young man.

  Regi croaked a thank you and adjusted the shiny fabric to fit his body. Pope’s torch beam was like an alien’s eye when he jumped up from his seat, strode down the aisle, and snatched the blanket off Regi.

  Regi clutched at the fabric but it slipped through his fingers. “Fucking bastard.”

  Pope returned to the front and the rustling sound confirmed he was wrapping the blanket around himself. Oliver wondered if Pope had made the fatal mistake of wrapping the gun up inside with him, but quickly conceded he had no intention of finding out.

  Holly shook out her blanket, and rather than wrap it around them she handed it to Regi. Oliver was two seconds off snatching it back when he realized that not only was it the right thing to do, but also that she wouldn’t have accepted it back anyway.

  He sat on the floor with his back up against the curved wall of the plane and opened his arms. Holly sat with her bottom between his thighs, her legs curled over his right leg and her side against his torso. When he wrapped his arms around her, he realized that this was the exact same position she’d described Angel and Frederick being in when they froze to death.

  It was a horrifying thought, but then… if these were to be his final moments, he was happy to be sharing them with the woman he loved.

  Sitting still for the first time since he got into the cabin, Oliver noticed the cold seeping into his skin, especially from the metal beneath his legs and back. His bones too began to ache, taking on the cold like ice was leaching in intravenously.

  The wind outside howled like a demon, and the wreckage creaked and groaned as if protesting the ferocious onslaught. Pope’s snoring added to the noises, and again Oliver wondered if this was his chance. But he quickly discarded the temptation. Here inside the cabin, there was no margin for error. Chancy’s death was proof enough of that.

  Thinking of Chancy gave him an idea, and as much as the thought was horrifying, it made sense too. Chancy no longer needed his jacket. He and Holly did.

  “Hey, babe,” he whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hop off me for a sec. I’m going to get Chancy’s jacket.” When she didn’t move, he added, “I need it to sit on; the cold’s getting to me.”

  She slid off his lap and crawled toward Chancy. Again, she showed incredible mental strength as the two of them worked together to remove their guide’s jacket. Oliver tried to ignore the metallic tang of Chancy’s blood as he folded the jacket and placed it so it’d shield as much of his legs and back as possible from the cold metal.

  When he sat on it, a bulge beneath his right thigh caught his attention. Feeling with his hand, he realized it was something in Chancy’s jacket. When he plucked it from the zippered pocket, he had to resist whooping for joy. It was a two-way radio.

  He concealed it from Regi’s potential line of sight, and once Holly was back in position between his legs, he showed her. Holly’s reaction was to wrap her arms around him and plant a firm kiss on his lips.

  Oliver wasn’t sure if it was sheer exhaustion, the comfort of the communication device in his pocket, or the woman in his arms that had him relaxing. But it wasn’t long before he closed his eyes and surrendered himself to sleep.

  A loud crack had Oliver snapping his eyes open. It was a couple of frantic heartbeats before he remembered where he was. Holly was in his lap, and her wide blinking eyes showed her confusion too. He glanced toward the front of the plane, where Pope had been when he last saw him. But he wasn’t there, and when Oliver turned to peer out the small glass window it was fogged up. Wiping a circle clean, he wished he hadn’t, because Pope was right outside, peeing onto the snow.

  The fact that it was already morning surprised him. He’d slept right through the night.

  When Holly pushed off him and groaned, he tried to move too and understood her verbal discomfort. Oliver pushed up from the floor, and every part of his body was stiff and painful. He rolled to his feet and tried to stretch the resistance from his muscles.

  Regi opened his good eye and shifted in his seat.

  “Hey, you okay?” Oliver asked Regi.

  “Been better.” Regi reached up to touch his swollen eye and winced.

  “Look, don’t try anything silly, okay? We’ll figure this out.”

  “I’m sorry about Chancy, I didn’t—”

  Holly touched his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We know it wasn’t you.”

  Regi nodded and despite his gruesome injuries, the relief on his face was visible.

  Pope’s return to the plane was announced by both the groaning wreckage and his grunts. He glared at Oliver as if he hadn’t expected him to be awake, let alone standing.

  Pope pointed the gun barrel at Oliver’s belly. “Get your spikes on, you lot. We’ve got a job to do.” He motioned for them to get outside and pointed at their crampons veiled in a thin layer of snow.

  Oliver placed Chancy’s jacket over his body and face, and made a silent promise that they’d return to him and take him home. His only hope was that he’d be able to keep that promise.

  Once outside, he plucked his crampons from the pile and handed Holly her pair. He climbed up the incline slightly and sat down on the snow. As he clicked them into position, he scanned the area. The morning brought with it perfect conditions, and he could see right down the valley.

  He saw something else too.

  A couple hundred feet below, to their left, was a giant gash in the white tundra.

  The crevice.

  He looked toward Holly, but it was Pope’s glare that caught his attention. He’d been watching Oliver, possibly ready for his reaction—which meant Pope had seen the crevice too.

  His grin was evil, knowing, and Oliver knew without a shadow of a doubt that once Pope had what he was after, he no longer needed him or Holly. Oliver needed to take control, without making Pope realize he was doing it.

  “Hey, Holly, come here.”

  She looked up from her feet, frowned, then clomped up to him. “Look.” He pointed toward what looked like a giant wound in the mountain.

  “Oh.” She turned to him, maybe unsure of what she should say.

  He gave a very small nod. “Is that it?”

  “Yeah. That must be the crevice.”

  “It’s closer than I thought. Okay. Pope, do you want me to stack the sled? We’re going to need a bit of equipment.”

  Pope squinted, revealing his skepticism. But thankfully he nodded.

  With Pope watching their every move, Oliver and Holly pulled unnecessary equipment from the sled and restacked it with what they needed.

  Twenty minutes after waking, the four of them left the wreck. Oliver was in the front, pulling the sled. Pope was at the rear, and he’d deliberately put Holly in front of him. At Pope’s insistence, they were roped together. Maybe
he thought they were going to run off.

  Not that they’d get far before a bullet hit their back.

  Overnight snow blanketed the slope with fresh powder that was about two feet deep, and Oliver tested each footfall for hidden holes by pushing his ice axe into the snow until it touched something solid. It was slow going, but thankfully not too taxing on his already aching muscles.

  They arrived at the edge of the crevice without incident a couple of hours later. Oliver took a moment to peer into the hole, expecting to see the helicopter wreck, but he saw nothing but blue-hued ice. He turned to the others, and a shiver ran up his spine.

  Pope had the gun pointed at Holly’s head. The menace in his eyes showed Oliver he had no intentions of messing around. Oliver held up his hands. “Don’t, Pope. We’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I know you will. Get in that hole. You.” He indicated to Regi. “Help him.”

  Bile rose to Oliver’s throat at the fear in Holly’s eyes. But he shoved his own distress aside, undid the rope that connected him to the sled, and released the webbing to access everything else.

  “Holly, can you get the ropes ready?”

  Without waiting for Pope’s approval, she stepped forward to take the three loops of rope from Oliver’s outstretched hand. Working together, they set up a belay system that would lower Oliver into the crevice.

  Pope stepped up to the chasm and peered down. The temptation to run at him full pelt was so strong Oliver could picture Pope’s demise. But there were so many things that could go wrong that he managed to talk himself out of it.

  Instead, Oliver stepped in close to Holly. “I have a plan,” he whispered.

  Her gaze shot from Oliver to Pope and back again. She shook her head. “No, Olly—”

  He nodded. “It’s okay, just be ready when I come back up.”

  She bit her lip, blinking, then after a long pause, she nodded. When her jaw clenched, he saw the look of determination he’d seen on her numerous times. She’d be ready. She gave him the camera and he zipped it into his jacket pocket. “Take heaps of photos of the bodies.” She didn’t need to clarify which bodies she was talking about… Oliver knew.

  A couple of minutes later, it was time to take the giant leap.

  With his rope attached to the belay device on Regi’s waist, Oliver turned his back to the crevice and planted his feet on the edge. “Climber ready.”

  Holly was on her stomach, right on the edge of the hole, ready to follow his progress. A rope attached her to Pope, and as much as she’d been repulsed by it, Oliver had been able to convince her of this safety precaution. Should the crevice give way, especially with how far she was leaning out over it, Pope would stop her fall. She turned to glance over her shoulder at Regi. They’d cleared away the loose snow to reveal the compacted ice, and Regi was seated with the spikes of his crampons driven into the ice to act as a brace. “You ready?”

  “Yes.” His gloved hands clamped the rope in the downward position just as Holly had shown him. His left eye was swollen shut, but his good eye was clear and focused, and when he nodded, Oliver was confident Regi understood that their lives were in his hands.

  Pope stood back, the gun slack at his side, but that was the only thing slack about him. His pupils were wired, and the two black eyes he sported after Regi’s punch in his nose made him look even crazier. Oliver was under no illusion that Pope would let them get off the mountain alive. It was something Oliver planned to change. He just didn’t know how yet.

  Oliver inhaled a long deep breath, let it out in a huge gush, and then, with his eyes on Holly, he descended into the hole. Each step required effort to dig the toe spikes into the ice. The lower he went, the cooler it became, and the harder the ice was to penetrate. It was impossible not to look down, but he saw no signs of the helicopter, let alone frozen bodies.

  About ten feet into the crevice, the wall curved inward. Over the years, since the helicopter opened the original chasm, snow had fallen and hardened with the seasons. The result was a growing overhang that would one day completely cover the crevice again.

  Beneath the overhang the chasm became wider, and when Oliver looked down this time, not only did he see the ledge that he assumed Holly had fallen onto four years ago, but he also saw parts of the wreck a further hundred or so feet below.

  Trouble with the overhang was that the more the wall curved inward, the harder it was to keep his feet on the wall. “Holly, I need to go free.”

  She would know what that meant, and after a second’s pause, in which he assumed she instructed Regi, she called back to him, “Okay, ready.”

  He released his ice axes and when he wriggled his crampon spike free and swung from the edge, Regi’s rope was the only thing stopping him from dropping into the void.

  Regi gradually released the rope in a smooth motion that had Oliver spinning in slow circles as he lowered. A ledge was a further five feet down. If it was the same one Holly had fallen onto, it was a miracle she’d landed there at all. It was barely two feet wide. “Nearly there… a couple more feet… stop.”

  “Stop.” Holly repeat his command.

  “I’m going to swing onto the ledge.”

  “Okay.” He heard her repeat his intention to Regi.

  Using his legs, he gradually worked momentum into the rope so he swung like a pendulum. With each swing back and forth he gradually got closer to the wall. His feet touched the ledge but he missed.

  “Give me an inch of slack.”

  He dropped a fraction, and this time when he reached the wall, he pushed off of it, fast and hard so he swung out to the middle of the chasm. When he swung back, he waited till the very last second before he rammed his crampons into the ice.

  It worked. “I’m here. Give me some rope.”

  Once the rope slackened, Oliver eased away from the edge and glanced around. Within a second, he knew he was on the same ledge Holly had fallen onto. Her blood was still there, permanently inked into the ice.

  But he couldn’t see the bodies.

  For a couple of thumping heartbeats, he wondered if her story had indeed been a figment of her imagination. At that time, she’d been severely wounded, lost, alone, and most likely in shock. The mind does weird things to shield a person from their tortured reality.

  Desperate to believe her, he inched along the ledge as it curved around what appeared to be a giant ice pillar. And there they were. Exactly as she’d described them.

  A man and a woman, frozen forever in a loving embrace. Holly was right: these two were not kidnapper and victim, as they’d been portrayed in the news. They were lovers who’d gone to great lengths to escape something or someone. Oliver now understood Holly’s determination to bring them and Frederick’s mother justice.

  He removed the camera and took a series of photos, paying particular attention to their faces, the heart-shaped gold locket in her fingers, and the suitcase at their feet. After stepping back as far as he dared, he snapped a few photos of their embrace and their position in the crevice. He photographed their icy grave, both up and down. Across the crevice was a giant piece of metal jutting out of the ice like a spike. It took Oliver a few moments to realize it’d been one of the helicopter’s skids. The blast must’ve driven it into the ice with some serious force.

  Thinking of the helicopter, he eased up to the edge, looked down, and, using the camera, zoomed in on the wreckage below and took a few photos. But when he spied a pair of legs protruding from beneath the charred wreck, he lowered the camera. Nobody needed to see that. He pocketed the camera again and reached for the suitcase.

  Oliver needed to buy some time to think. “I need a shovel,” he called up.

  Holly relayed his instruction, and, aware that they couldn’t see him, he knelt on the ledge, flipped the suitcase flat, and wrestled with the clasps to open it.

  Years of frigid air made the locks a struggle to open. Using the point of his axe to pry the metal clip, he prayed he didn’t damage the locks. One then the
other popped up, and he opened the lid. His breath hitched.

  Cash. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. All stacked up in neat bundles.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the shovel being lowered by rope. He stood, and with his feet firmly planted on the ice he used his ice axe to try to reach it. “Hold it there.” It stopped lowering, but it was still a good three feet beyond his grasp. “I can’t reach it. Can you swing the rope?”

  Gradually, the shovel swung back and forth. “That’s it, keep going.”

  “Got it.” He pulled the shovel over and unhooked it from the rope. He looked at the shovel as a weapon rather than a tool, and found it impossible to comprehend he was even thinking like this.

  His mind raced, desperate to formulate a plan.

  He turned back to the money, and that’s when an idea hit him. Oliver shut and locked the suitcase, then he stepped up to Frederick’s corpse, removed his hat, and, using a utility knife, he cut a frozen lock of hair from the body. He put it into his top zippered pocket and hooked the shovel onto his utility belt. After one final glance at the bodies, he looked upward. “Okay, I’m ready to come up.”

  The rope went taut. Oliver sat back in his harness, and seconds later he left the safety of the ledge. As he dangled over the chasm with the suitcase in his hand, he prayed his plan would work.

  Because the second he showed Pope the lock of hair, they were all dead.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Holly was surprised when Oliver announced he was ready to come up. There was no way he’d reached the bottom of the crevice, which also meant there was no way he’d seen Milton, or cut a portion of his hair. Her knowledge of the crevice gave them the advantage.

  Neither Pope nor Regi would know Oliver hadn’t reached the bottom.

  Oliver said he had a plan. Whatever it was, she was ready to be part of it.

  “About time!”

  Holly turned to Pope’s gruff voice with clenched teeth. Forcing back the abuse she wanted to spray at him, she channeled her fury into something useful. Something that she’d be willing to unleash at the perfect moment. The gun was still in his hand, and Pope had done nothing but pace back and forth since Oliver had disappeared into the crevice.