Ilkovic fired again, the bullet whizzing past Coltrane, tearing up snow and earth. Enraged, Ilkovic switched his rifle from single shot to full automatic, releasing a burst that went wild as the snow swirled back in greater force. Ilkovic vanished in the storm, and Coltrane felt a bone-deep chill. Clutching his bleeding side, stumbling higher up the slope, he fled the louder noises of his pursuers.
3
THE WIND HAD WORSENED TO A GALE by the time Coltrane reached the top. If not for his injuries, he might have hurried over the crest, in which case he would have died, for the other side of the slope was a cliff, its bottom invisible in the gusting snow. Which way? Right or left? As far as his limited vision allowed him to determine, the cliff continued in both directions. But whichever way he chose, following the ridgeline was predictable. All his pursuers would have to do would be to separate and outflank him.
I can’t go back the way I came, he thought. He saw an outcrop ten feet below him, squirmed over the edge, ignored the pain of his injuries, and hung to the agonizing limit of his arms. When he released his grip and hit the ledge, he fell to his knees, then his chest, hugging the rock. He feared he was going to pass out.
But he couldn’t allow himself to give in to weakness. He had to get far enough down the cliff that his pursuers wouldn’t be able to see him in the snowstorm. Pulse racing, he peered over and saw another ledge, but it was farther down than the first one had been. Even hanging by his arms, he would still have to drop several yards, and the force of the landing would almost certainly throw off his balance, plunging him over the edge. As the angry voices rushed closer to the top, he imagined what would happen when his hunters got there. Staring down, their sullen faces would break into smiles when they saw him crouching helplessly ten feet below them. Their grins would broaden when they opened fire. He had to -
The snow gusted at an object that weighed on Coltrane’s injured shoulder: his remaining camera. He frowned at its nylon strap. If he didn’t get off this ledge in the next thirty seconds, he wouldn’t be going anywhere again. Frenzied, he extended the strap to its maximum length, about four feet, hoping it would hold him. His lungs heaved so much that he feared he might faint when he looped the strap over an outcrop and squirmed down, pretending he was clutching a rope. It wouldn’t get him to the next ledge, but at least it would get him closer. The snow buffeted him. Trembling, he eased lower, the ledge not yet close enough to drop to, almost a body length away. Spasms shuddered through him – because he hadn’t moved his hands to get lower. The strap had done it for him. It had stretched. It groaned. Every impulse urged him to hurry, but he didn’t dare. Any strong motion might cause the strap to stretch to its breaking point. Closer.
The strap broke. Scrabbling against the cliff face, he felt the wind shove him into space. He fell, clawed at the rock, and landed, half on, half off the ledge. The wind struck him harder. His gloves lost their grip. Slipping over, he tensed in panic, his stomach soaring toward his throat as he anticipated his impact on the rocks far below. With startling abruptness, he jolted to a stop much sooner than he expected, his legs buckling, his body collapsing. It took him a moment to realize that he had landed on another ledge. He might have passed out. He couldn’t tell. One thing he did know was that, as he lay on his back, blinking upward through the thickening snow, he couldn’t see the top of the cliff, which meant that he couldn’t be seen, either.
But he didn’t dare rest. The snow might lessen at any moment and reveal him. He had to keep moving. Another wave of nausea swept through him as he forced himself to sit up. When he peered over the side, his vision cleared enough for him to see that the next ledge was only four feet down. Wincing, he lowered himself onto it. The next time he peered down, he discovered he was on a slope that led to the bottom.
The snow rose above his ankles. Shuffling through it, his legs kept threatening to give way, but he refused to let them surrender. I have to get the film out of here, he urged himself. The air dimmed, the snow becoming gray, his vision narrowing, his thoughts blurring. When he stumbled into a fir tree, its icy needles stinging his face, he realized that he must have been walking half-asleep. He could barely see his hand in front of his face. If he didn’t find shelter, he was going to freeze to death. Sinking to his hands and knees, he crawled weakly beneath the drooping boughs of the snow-laden fir tree. In the space under them, he reached ground that was bare except for fallen needles, and he had just enough room to slump with his back against the trunk. The bark smelled sharply of resin. Except for that, in the gathering darkness, hearing the wind outside, he had the sensation of being in a tent.
He passed out.
4
A SMOTHERING BLACKNESS SURROUNDED HIM, so absolute that he feared he’d gone blind or was in hell. Immediately his pain jerked him fully awake. Muffled, the shrieking wind seemed far away. It was night. The dense blanket of snow on the needled branches made the air around him feel heavy, compressed. He licked his dry, cracked lips. Completely disoriented, racked with pain, he feared he was going to die in here.
He took off his right glove and mustered the strength to reach under the left side of his jacket. There, his sweater and his thermal underwear were soaked with a warm sticky liquid. His gentle touch made him shudder. The wound seemed as long as his hand, as wide as a finger. The deflected bullet had gouged a furrow along his side. And kept going? he wondered. Or was it still inside him? Had it hit only fat, or ruptured the abdominal wall?
He had never felt so powerless and alone. His feeling of isolation increased when he reached for the comfort of a camera and recalled that he had started out with four of them and not one of them remained. But I had the fourth camera with me on the cliff. Didn’t I take it off the strap and cram it into a pocket? In dismay, he pawed at the jacket but didn’t feel the camera. What he did feel were three cylinders of film. The fourth camera and, more important, the film inside it were lost to him.
He fought to rouse his spirit. Hey, I saved the other three rolls. That’s still a lot. If I can get them out of here…
The sentence didn’t want to be completed.
Yes? he asked himself. If I can get them out of here?
Are those photographs worth dying for?
This time, he didn’t hesitate. Are you kidding me? The UN inspection team is desperate to get its hands on evidence like this. The film will prove that the atrocities committed here were much worse than anyone imagined. That bastard Ilkovic will finally have to pay for what he did.
Maybe.
Coltrane felt uneasy. I don’t understand.
Oh, the photos you took are shocking enough to get Ilkovic convicted, all right. But what if the politicians become involved and declare an amnesty for the sake of peace in the region? What if nothing changes? Are your pictures worth getting killed for?
Coltrane didn’t have an answer. Again, he groped for the reassuring touch of a camera. A homicide detective friend of his had once joked that Coltrane felt about cameras the way police officers did about backup guns – naked without one. “Come to think of it,” the detective had continued joking, “cameras and guns both shoot people, don’t they?” But it wasn’t the same at all, Coltrane insisted. His kind of shooting didn’t kill people. It was supposed to make them immortal. That was the reason he had become a photographer. When he had been twelve, he had found a trove of photographs of his dead mother and had fantasized that they kept her alive.