His words pinged against the icy walls.
“Fine.” She rappelled down the icy walls, landing on the ledge. It careened out eight feet, a platform perhaps six feet wide that squirreled down the side of the crevasse and into the depths. A gulf of five or more feet yawned between the ledge and another on the opposite wall, clearly a former ice bridge.
“Send the descender back up.”
“You’d better not fall,” she said, unclipping herself.
He pulled up the line, then he hooked into the descender.
She watched, her breath tight, as he rappelled down, his groans emitting from deep inside.
She grabbed him as he hit the ice, then helped him ease back.
“Easy . . .” He was breathing hard, trying to hold back his pain. He leaned back against the wall of the glacier as she unhooked him from the rope.
He reached out and grabbed her hand. “Thank you.”
She wanted to cry. And, in that moment, didn’t have the ability to do anything but lower her forehead to his gloved hand. “Please tell me we’re going to be okay.”
He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then suddenly tugged her against him, wrapping his arms around her.
“We’re going to be—”
The ice above them cracked, a giant icicle breaking off. It careened down, hit their ice anchor, and suddenly the entire rig, rope and all, unlatched from the wall and careened into the blackness.
The pain didn’t dismantle him the way it had in Afghanistan, but Orion had to breathe through and settle his heart back into his chest. Let himself relax into the ache. And the pain wasn’t just from his destroyed prosthetic knee joint.
The fall had done a number on his body. The terrible cascading fall. One second he’d been running along the glacier, the thunder of the avalanche crashing down over him, the next second he had been swept up as if he might be on a wave of water. The force of it turned him over and over, burying him, crushing him.
Then, suddenly, he launched out over the edge of the crevasse. Falling. Only his crash into the icy spire had stopped his fall into oblivion. He’d slammed his axe into the wall, dug his crampons into the ice, and hung on with everything inside him.
Die. He was going to die on the mountain that had taken his father. The mountain his father had loved.
No. Worse. He was going to drag two people down with him. The worst moment was when he looked up and saw Jenny careening over the edge.
Wow, she was fast. Strong. Brave. Fighting the pull of the rope, trying to save them both.
The force of the slide had opened up the crevasse, great chunks of ice falling deep inside. The rest continued to plummet down the mountain, and he could only hold his breath and offer words that felt very much like a prayer.
Please.
Please save us.
Please let Ham be alive.
The fact that his friend hadn’t appeared in the gap of the crevasse tightened the fist around his chest. Please, Ham, don’t be dead!
“What are we going to do?” Jenny said, her body tucked next to Orion’s.
He said nothing, just clung to her.
“Please tell me we’re going to be okay.”
He was trying to find the words. But he needed a moment to settle himself, to put his heart back into his chest. To take a deep breath and sort it all out.
Compartmentalize.
Finally, when his voice wouldn’t shake, “We’re fifty feet from the top. I don’t think our voices would carry even if anyone was out there.”
“What about the radio?”
“Ham had the radio . . .” He looked at her as she leaned away from him. She looked at him with a growing realization in her eyes.
“I saw him hunker down on the other side of the glacier. Maybe he’s . . . maybe he’s just . . .” She stared up into the blue, as if unable to say the rest.
He didn’t want to suggest that Ham might be buried under a sea of ice and snow. The thought, however, crippled him because he lowered himself to the icy floor. Leaned his head back to look up, truly assessing their calamity.
They were surrounded on every side by jagged blue ice, an overhanging lip at the top preventing their escape. It would take a champion ice climber to get them out.
He might be able to use his Prusik and foot hitch to inch his way up but that meant someone had to send a rope down from the top.
Which meant they’d have to rescue the rope from the depths below.
“If Ham’s okay, he’ll find us,” he said now to Jenny.
And if he wasn’t . . .
As if reading his mind, she got up and walked to the edge.
“Be careful!”
She glanced at him. “I’m being careful.” She looked over the edge. “I see the rope. Most of it’s about eight feet down, draped over a thin ice bridge. Maybe I can go down and get it.”
“Have you lost your mind?” He drew in a breath, aware that his voice echoed like gunshots.
Jenny stiffened.
“No,” he said again, this time calmer. “Better to figure out how to belay ourselves up with Prusiks and ice anchors.”
Jenny came back to him. “Ham is dead, isn’t he?”
“We don’t know that.”
“He shouldn’t have unclipped.”
“He was trying to get to higher ground.”
She was looking up. “It looks like things are getting whiter out there.”
“Could be the debris from the avalanche.”
“Or could be another storm coming down the mountain.” She blew out a breath and shook her head. “I can’t believe I jinxed us.”
“Huh?”
She looked at him with what looked like pain in her expression. “It’s my fault we’re on this stupid mountain. And now we’re going to die in a sliver of ice!”
“Hey. Hey. Breathe.” He wanted to reach out to her, but she stood too far away. “We’ll get out of here.”
She shook her head and unzipped her jacket, pulling it off.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to keep you from going into shock.” She knelt beside him, tucking the jacket over him.
“Not on your life! Jenny—put your jacket back on!”
“I’m sweating.”
“And then you’ll start shivering. C’mon. Please don’t make this worse for me.”
She stared at him, then pulled her jacket off him, slipped it back on.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t think you’ve won the war.” She looked at his leg. “This is really gross.”
Yeah, it was. His leg angled out below his knee about 30 degrees.
“You probably need to straighten it. And splint it.”
She knelt, her knees bracketing his legs. “Are you going to be okay with me doing this?”
“Oh, I’m thrilled with the idea.”
She looked up at him.
“I don’t have a choice. It’s got to be moved back into place if I want to restore the blood flow. Once the shock is over, I’ll be okay. It’s really the mechanical joint that’s out of place.” Although by the pain that ebbed through his body, he guessed he probably had a broken tibia, too.
“It’s not as bad as the first time around.”
She looked up at him. “The first time around?”