High Citadel / Landslide (23 page)

‘By God, they’re going to break the truce,’ said O’Hara tightly. He grabbed the loaded crossbow as the machine-gun suddenly ripped out and stitched the air with bullets. ‘Get back to the trebuchet.’ He aimed the bow carefully at the Russian’s back, squeezed the trigger and was mortified to miss. He ducked to reload and heard the crash of the trebuchet behind him as Willis pulled the firing lever.

When he raised his head again he found that the trebuchet shot had missed and he paled as he saw what had been pulled out of the truck. It was a prefabricated length of bridging carried by six men who had already set foot on the bridge itself. Following them was a squad of men running at full speed. There was nothing that a single crossbow
bolt could do to stop them and there was no time to reload the trebuchet—they would be across the bridge in a matter of seconds.

He yelled at Willis and Armstrong. ‘Retreat! Get back up the road—to the camp!’ and ran towards the bridgehead, bow at the ready.

The first man was already across, scuttling from side to side, a sub-machine-gun at the ready. O’Hara crouched behind a rock and took aim, waiting until the man came closer. The mist was thickening rapidly and it was difficult to judge distances, so he waited until he thought the man was twenty yards away before he pulled the trigger.

The bolt took the man full in the chest, driving home right to the fletching. He shouted in a bubbling voice and threw his hands up as he collapsed, and the tightening death grip on the gun pulled the trigger. O’Hara saw the rest of the squad coming up behind him and the last thing he saw before he turned and ran was the prone figure on the ground quivering as the sub-machine-gun fired its magazine at random.

Rohde hacked vigorously at the ice wall with the small axe. He had retrieved it—a grisly job—and now it was coming in very useful, returning to its designed function as an instrument for survival. Forester was lying, a huddled heap of old clothing, next to the ice wall, well away from the edge of the cliff. Rohde had stripped the outer clothing from Peabody’s corpse and used it to wrap up Forester as warmly as possible before he pushed the body into the oblivion of the gathering mists below.

They needed warmth because it was going to be a bad night. The ledge was now enveloped in mist and it had started to snow in brief flurries. A shelter was imperative. Rohde stopped for a moment to bend over Forester who was still conscious, and adjusted the hood which had fallen away from his face. Then he resumed his chopping at the ice wall.

Forester had never felt so cold in his life. His hands and feet were numb and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. He was so cold that he welcomed the waves of pain which rose from his chest; they seemed to warm him and they prevented him from slipping into unconsciousness. He knew he must not let that happen because Rohde had warned him about it, slapping his face to drive the point home.

It had been a damned near thing, he thought. Another couple of slashes from Peabody’s knife and the rope would
have parted to send him plunging to his death on the snow slopes far below. Rohde had been quick enough to kill Peabody when the need for it arose, even though he had been squeamish earlier. Or perhaps it wasn’t that; perhaps he believed in expending just the necessary energy and effort that the job required. Forester, watching Rohde’s easy strokes and the flakes of ice falling one by one, suddenly chuckled—a time-and-motion-study killer; that was one for the books. His weak chuckle died away as another wave of pain hit him; he clenched his teeth and waited for it to leave.

When Rohde had killed Peabody he had waited rigidly for a long time, holding the rope taut for fear that Peabody’s body would slide over the edge, taking Forester with it. Then he began to dig the ice-axe deeper into the snow, hoping to use it to belay the rope; but he encountered ice beneath the thin layer of snow and, using only one hand, he could not force the axe down.

He changed his tactics. He pulled up the axe and, frightened of being pulled forward on the slippery ice, first chipped two deep steps into which he could put his feet. That gave him the leverage to haul himself upright by the rope and he felt Peabody’s body shift under the strain. He stopped because he did not know how far Peabody had succeeded in damaging the rope and he was afraid it might part and let Forester go.

He took the axe and began to chip at the ice, making a large circular groove about two feet in diameter. He found it a difficult task because the head of the axe, improvised by Willis, was set at an awkward angle on the shaft and it was not easy to use. After nearly an hour of chipping he deepened the groove enough to take the rope, and carefully unfastening it from round his waist he belayed it round the ice mushroom he had created.

That left him free to walk to the edge of the cliff. He did not go forward immediately but stood for a while, stamping
his feet and flexing his muscles to get the blood going again. He had been lying in a very cramped position. When he looked over the edge he saw that Forester was unconscious, dangling limply on the end of the rope, his head lolling.

The rope was badly frayed where Peabody had attacked it, so Rohde took a short length from round his waist and carefully knotted it above and below the potential break. That done, he began to haul up the sagging and heavy body of Forester. It was hopeless to think of going farther that day. Forester was in no condition to move; the fall had tightened the rope cruelly about his chest and Rohde, probing carefully, thought that some ribs were cracked, if not broken. So he rolled Forester up in warm clothing and relaxed on the ledge between the rock cliff and the ice wall, wondering what to do next.

It was a bad place to spend a night—even a good night—and this was going to be a bad one. He was afraid that if the wind rose to the battering strength that it did during a blizzard, then the overhanging cornice on the ice wall would topple—and if it did they would be buried without benefit of gravediggers. Again, they must have shelter from the wind and the snow, so he took the small axe, wiped the blood and the viscous grey matter from the blade, and began to chip a shallow cave in the ice wall.

The wind rose just after nightfall and Rohde was still working. As the first fierce gusts came he stopped and looked around wearily; he had been working for nearly three hours, chipping away at the hard ice with a blunt and inadequate instrument more suited to chopping household firewood. The small cleft he had made in the ice would barely hold the two of them but it would have to do.

He dragged Forester into the ice cave and propped him up against the rear wall, then he went out and brought in the three packs, arranging them at the front of the cave to form a low and totally inadequate wall which, however, served as some sort of bulwark against the drifting snow. He fumbled in his pocket and turned to Forester. ‘Here,’ he said urgently. ‘Chew these.’

Forester mumbled and Rohde slapped him. ‘You must not sleep—not yet,’ he said. ‘You must chew coca.’ He forced open Forester’s mouth and thrust a coca quid into it.

It took him over half an hour to open a pack and assemble the Primus stove. His fingers were cold and he was suffering from the effects of high altitude—the loss of energy and the mental haziness which dragged the time of each task to many times its normal length. Finally, he got the stove working. It provided little heat and less light, but it was a definite improvement.

He improvised a windshield from some pitons and pieces of blanket. Fortunately the wind came from behind, from the top of the pass and over the ice wall, so that they were in a relatively sheltered position. But vicious side gusts occasionally swept into the cave, bringing a flurry of snowflakes and making the Primus flare and roar. Rohde was glum when he thought of the direction of the wind. It was good as far as their present shelter went, but the snow cornice on top of the wall would begin to build up and as it grew heavier it would be more likely to break off. And, in the morning when they set off again, they would be climbing in the teeth of a gale.

He prayed the wind would change direction before then.

Presently he had melted enough snow to make a warm drink, but Forester found the taste of the bouillon nauseating and could not drink it, so he heated some more water and they drank that; at least it put some warmth into their bellies.

Then he got to work on Forester, examining his hands and feet and pummelling him violently over many protests. After this Forester was wide awake and in full possession of his senses and did the same for Rohde, rubbing hands and feet to bring back the circulation. ‘Do you think we’ll make it, Miguel?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rohde shortly; but he was having his first doubts. Forester was not in good condition for the final assault on the pass and the descent of the other side. It was not a good thing for a man with cracked ribs. He said, ‘You must keep moving—your fingers and toes, move them all the time. You must rub your face, your nose and ears. You must not sleep.’

‘We’d better talk,’ suggested Forester. ‘Keep each other awake.’ He raised his head and listened to the howls of the wind. ‘It’ll be more like shouting, though, if this racket keeps up. What shall we talk about?’

Rohde grunted and pulled the hood about his ears. ‘O’Hara told me you were an airman.’

‘Right,’ said Forester. ‘I flew towards the end of the war—in Italy mostly. I was flying Lightnings. Then when Korea came I was dragged in again—I was in the Air Force Reserve, you see. I did a conversion on to jets and then I flew Sabres all during the Korean war, or at least until I was pulled out to go back Stateside as an instructor. I think I must have flown some missions with O’Hara in Korea.’

‘So he said. And after Korea?’

Forester shrugged. ‘I was still bitten with the airplane bug; the company I work for specializes in airplane maintenance.’ He grinned. ‘When all this happened I was on my way to Santillana to complete a deal with your Air Force for maintenance equipment. You still have Sabres, you know; I sometimes get to flying them if the squadron commandant is a good guy.’ He paused. ‘If Aguillar pulls off his
coup d’état
the deal may go sour—I don’t know why the hell I’m taking all this trouble.’

Rohde smiled, and said, ‘If Señor Aguillar comes into power your business will be all right—he will remember. And you will not have to pay the bribes you have already figured into your costing.’ His voice was a little bitter.

‘Hell,’ said Forester. ‘You know what it’s like in this part of the world—especially under Lopez. Make no mistake, I’m for Aguillar; we businessmen like an honest government—it makes things easier all round.’ He beat his hands together. ‘Why are you for Aguillar?’

‘Cordillera is my country,’ said Rohde simply, as though that explained everything, and Forester thought that meeting an honest patriot in Cordillera was a little odd, like finding a hippopotamus in the Arctic.

They were silent for a while, then Forester said, ‘What time is it?’

Rohde fumbled at his wristwatch. ‘A little after nine.’

Forester shivered. ‘Another nine hours before sunrise.’ The cold was biting deep into his bones and the wind gusts which flailed into their narrow shelter struck right through his clothing, even through O’Hara’s leather jacket. He wondered if they would be alive in the morning; he had heard and read too many tales of men dying of exposure, even back home and closer to civilization, to have any illusions about the precariousness of their position.

Rohde stirred and began to empty two of the packs. Carefully he arranged the contents where they would not roll out of the cave, then gave an empty pack to Forester. Put your feet in this,’ he said. ‘It will be some protection against the cold.’

Forester took the pack and flexed the blanket material, breaking off the encrusted ice. He put his feet into it and pulled the drawstring about the calves of his legs. ‘Didn’t you say you’d been up here before?’ he asked.

‘Under better conditions,’ answered Rohde. ‘It was when I was a student many years ago. There was a mountaineering expedition to climb this peak—the one to our right here.’

‘Did they make it?’

Rohde shook his head. ‘They tried three times—they were brave, those Frenchmen. Then one of them was killed and they gave up.’

‘Why did you join them?’ asked Forester curiously.

Rohde shrugged. ‘I needed the money—students always need money—and they paid well for porters. And, as a medical student, I was interested in the
soroche.
Oh, the equipment those men had! Fleece-lined under-boots and thick leather over-boots with crampons for the ice; quilted jackets filled with down; strong tents of nylon and long lengths of nylon rope—and good steel pitons that did not bend when you hammered them into the rock.’ He was like a starving man voluptuously remembering a banquet he had once attended.

‘And you came over the pass?’

‘From the other side—it was easier that way. I looked down over this side from the top and was glad we did not have to climb it. We had a camp—camp three—on top of the pass; and we came up slowly, staying some days at each camp to avoid the
soroche.
’

‘I don’t know why men climb mountains,’ said Forester, and there was a note of annoyance in his voice. ‘God knows I’m not doing it because I want to; it beats me that men do it for pleasure.’

‘Those Frenchmen were geologists,’ said Rohde. ‘They were not climbing for the sake of climbing. They took many rock samples from the mountains around here. I saw a map they had made—published in Paris—and I read they had found many rich minerals.’

‘What’s the use?’ queried Forester. ‘No one can work up here.’

‘Not now,’ agreed Rohde. ‘But later—who knows?’ His voice was serenely confident.

They talked together for a long time, each endeavouring to urge along the lagging clock. After a time Rohde began to sing—folk-songs of Cordillera and later the half-forgotten German songs that his father had taught him. Forester contributed some American songs, avoiding the modern pop tunes and sticking to the songs of his youth. He was halfway through ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ when there was a thunderous crash from the left which momentarily drowned even the howls of the gale.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, startled.

‘The snow cornice is falling,’ said Rohde. ‘It has built up because of the wind; now it is too heavy and not strong enough to bear its own weight.’ He raised his eyes to the roof of the ice cave. ‘Let us pray that it does not fall in this place; we would be buried.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Midnight. How do you feel?’

Forester had his arms crossed over his chest. ‘Goddam cold.’

‘And your ribs—how are they?’

‘Can’t feel a thing.’

Rohde was concerned. ‘That is bad. Move, my friend; move yourself. You must not allow yourself to freeze.’ He began to slap and pummel Forester until he howled for mercy and could feel the pain in his chest again.

Just after two in the morning the snow cornice over the cave collapsed. Both Rohde and Forester had become dangerously moribund, relapsing into a half-world of cold and numbness. Rohde heard the preliminary creaking and stirred feebly, then sagged back weakly. There was a noise as of a bomb exploding as the cornice broke and a cloud of dry, powdery snow was driven into the shelter, choking and cold.

Rohde struggled against it, waving his arms in swimming motions as the tide of snow covered his legs and crept up to his chest. He yelled to Forester, ‘Keep a space clear for yourself.’

Forester moaned in protest and waved his hands ineffectually, and luckily the snow stopped its advance, leaving them buried to their shoulders. After a long, dying rumble which seemed to come from an immense distance they became aware that it was unnaturally quiet; the noise of the blizzard which had battered at their ears for so long that they had ceased to be aware of it had gone, and the silence was loud and ear-splitting.