The kid was obviously drunk or on drugs, screaming, “You crazy old man! Get your hands off me before I call the police!”
Crocker held him up by the collar, slapped the hat off his head, and said, “If you say another word, I’ll kill you right here!”
The kid shut his mouth.
“You dare take my fifteen-year-old daughter out in your car when you’re drunk off your ass. Give me one reason I shouldn’t beat the living shit out of you.”
Jenny, meanwhile, was crying, screaming, “Dad, you’re overreacting! He didn’t do anything. Leave him alone!”
Crocker shouted, “Get your butt into the house.”
He threw the little punk to the asphalt, searched him, and had to fight the impulse to wring his neck. Irresponsible little shit. The kid never asked Crocker’s daughter out again.
Now the SEAL team leader stopped to catch his breath. God, I love my daughter.
Beside him, Davis readjusted his gaiters.
Crocker remembered holding baby Jenny on his right forearm. She had translucent skin like her mother’s, and light hair. A sweet, gentle sparkle in her eyes.
He turned to Davis and said, “Yeah, daughters are wonderful, but they’re challenging.”
“I bet.”
Long streams of white condensation issued from their mouths when they reached the crest. The snow-covered ground in front of them dipped slightly, then rose in a sharp U to the last peak, which shot up at a seventy-degree angle.
Following the footsteps left by Edyta and Akil, he spotted them approximately two hundred feet ahead, with Edyta leading the way, breaking trail in the fresh snow.
“Where’s she taking him?” Davis asked.
Crocker pointed at a crease in the mountain. “She’s going to start her final ascent there.”
“What about Akil?”
“I assume she’s got him carrying supplies that she’ll leave at the bottom. Unless he’s so damned pussy-whipped that he’s following her up to the summit.”
“Knowing Akil, it’s hard to tell.”
The final ascent looked almost impossible, especially since the entire peak was covered with several feet of fresh snow. Crocker admired Edyta’s courage. But it struck him as extremely foolish to attempt the summit in these conditions.
In the whiteness before him, he saw Edyta turn back and measure how far Akil lagged behind. He felt he could read her thoughts-having to do with men, strength, and her unending appetite for sex. Maybe men related to her easily because she thought like they did.
Spotting Crocker on the ridge, Edyta waved with a yellow mitten that matched her parka.
“Stubborn old bird,” he muttered under his breath.
She seemed to be shouting something. Her eyes widened and brilliant sunlight glinted off her teeth. Then suddenly her expression darkened, and she turned back to face the mountain.
Crocker stood, wondering what was going through her head, when he heard a deep rumble and immediately understood.
“Avalanche!” he shouted at Davis.
“Where?”
Crocker pointed ahead.
The ground beneath them started to tremble, then shake, and the entire peak in front of them shifted, as though the hard granite mountain had decided to shrug off its white coat.
“Jesus!” Davis exclaimed.
Quickly the roar grew louder. A massive, incalculable amount of snow slid off the mountain, picking up speed and funneling into the crease that Edyta had been climbing to. She and Akil were standing a mere hundred feet away from it, directly in its path.
“They’re gonna get hit!”
As Crocker watched, both climbers turned their backs to the mountain and assumed a seated position, with their heads bent forward and arms over their faces.
A horrible chill came over him as he saw the enormous wave of snow bear down and overwhelm them. His mind worked fast, calculating the route the avalanche was going to take and his and Davis’s safety. Its momentum and the configuration of the mountain would push the snow into the U, then off the mountain to their right.
He grabbed Davis by the shoulder. “This way!” he said, pulling him sharply left. Around them rose a huge billow of white. A thunderous crunching, rushing sound. The snow and ice shifted under them.
“Davis, hold on to me!”
There was nothing they could do but try to keep from being swept off their feet-and pray. Somehow, through the enormous whiteness, he saw a red object tumble past.
“It’s Akil!”
“Where?”
His mouth and nostrils filled with fine powder, making it hard to breathe. The two big men shook.
As quickly as the massive surge had started, it settled, and the roar echoed farther down the mountain and faded. Then the eerie silence returned, and the mountain stood still. Defiant. Clouds of fine powder rose and disappeared.
Davis grabbed Crocker’s shoulder. “Jesus, boss. Do you see them?”
“I’m not sure. Hold on.”
“Incredible. Fucking incredible!”
Crocker used the rope in his pack to tie the two of them together. He warned, “Walk carefully. The snow hasn’t settled. Step into an air pocket and you’ll disappear.”
“Okay. But you said you saw him.”
“I did for an instant. Hold on.”
“Where?”
Crocker calculated the approximate spot where Akil had landed, got down on his knees, and used his ice axe and hands to start digging through the mélange of snow and ice. Davis did the same, approximately two feet away.
“They should have been wearing their avalanche beacons!” Davis shouted.
Nothing in that spot.
Crocker said: “Let’s try farther right.”
Every second that passed felt like a loss. They dug furiously, burrowing into the snow, then moving forward.
Davis found a bone-a human femur. An awful reminder that another climber had died in that location sometime earlier, maybe from the same cause.
Anger, fear, and determination were clashing with one another.
Dammit, Edyta. An experienced climber like you should have known better.
His mind was performing jumping jacks.
Do we keep looking here, or move closer to the edge? Should we shift farther left or more to the right? What are the chances they survived?
Both men were breathing hard. The muscles in Crocker’s arms and shoulders burned. His knees and calves were rigid from the cold.
Somewhere in front of them they heard a scratching sound. Davis pointed, “Boss! Jesus, boss. Two o’clock!”
Ten feet closer to the edge of the mountain, they saw the heel of a boot poking through the snow. Pouncing on the spot, they dug frantically. One leg, to his butt, to another leg, then his torso. They found Akil sitting upside down under five feet of snow.
Crocker figured he’d been there two or three minutes at the most as he dug around Akil’s head and found a pulse on his icy cold neck. “He’s barely breathing and is probably hypothermic.”
Working together, they grabbed him around the legs and torso and carefully slid him free. They had him seated on the ground, and were brushing snow off his beard and head when the big Egyptian American opened his eyes.
“What the fuck…”
“Easy, Akil.”
“Where the hell am I?” Blinking, grabbing his right shoulder.
Davis gave him a drink of Jack Daniel’s from a small metal flask.
Crocker warned, “Just a sip.” He knew that any attempt to warm a victim of even moderate hypothermia too quickly could result in metabolic acidosis, which could cause a stroke or heart failure. “We need to get him off the ground and warm him up slowly.”
They sat him on Davis’s backpack, then wrapped Akil in a lightweight Tyvek blanket, making sure his head was covered. Within minutes his breathing and color returned to normal.