Free Fall (45 page)

"Well, we went through all the trouble of coming up here. You say you left the file in that lookout tower?"

She nodded.

"Under the floorboards."

In the end, the file was the only thing that mattered. It was probably a trap, but their lives weren't worth much without it.

"I guess we should go take a look, then."

She put her eyes to the binoculars again and moved them slowly across the empty snow in front of them.

"They could be in the lookout tower. There's no way to tell."

"What's in there?" Beamon asked.

"Is there more than one way in and out?"

"No. Only one door it's on the other side. There used to be windows, but they broke a long time ago, and me and some friends boarded them up.

Other than that, there's nothing in there. Maybe some Powerbars or something left over from last year."

"So it's not in use anymore."

She shook her head and moved to a slightly better vantage point.

"See that steep slope behind it? The Forest Service decided that it could slide, so they ended up building a new lookout in a better location a few miles from here."

"Slide. You mean avalanche?" Beamon looked up at the steep slope dwarfing the tiny building.

"That's all we fucking need."

"Relax, Mark. Snow conditions are pretty stable today. Besides, I've never seen that slope slide. I mean, the building's still there, right?

More than likely, the Forest Service had some money they didn't know what to do with."

The certainty in her voice made him feel a little better, but he was still stuck in a completely unfamiliar situation and was dead sure that some one, somewhere out here, was waiting for him with a really, really big gun. The colorful Popsicle that had been Darby's friend Lori pretty much guaranteed that.

"Do you think they might be inside, Mark?"

"No. There's no way to see out. Sort of evens out the element of surprise if they can't see us coming and just have to wait for the door to open. If it were me, I'd be under it. Looks like there's a pretty deep indention under those stilts."

Beamon motioned to Darby and she followed him back down the way they'd come. After putting about a hundred yards between them and the clearing, Beamon turned to the west. He continued forward through the deep snow until he broke out of the densely packed trees and found him self at the edge of what seemed like an almost vertical snow slope.

"What about down there?" he said, looking along the edge of the drop-off to confirm that they were out of sight of the lookout tower.

"Down there what?"

"Could we go down there a ways and traverse to where we're right beneath the tower? If anybody's up there, they're expecting us to come up the canyon."

She looked doubtful.

"Well, I could, but..."

"Come on, Darby. I've done pretty well so far, haven't I?" Beamon popped off his skis and walked closer toward the edge in his boots.

"Not too close, Mark."

The large evergreens at the bottom of the slope looked to be about a half an inch tall. He felt himself getting a little dizzy from the height and stepped back.

"Yeah, you've skied okay, Mark. You have." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, seeming to gather her will.

"Look, Lori's dead. So are Sam and Tristan. Getting you killed isn't going to do anything to change that."

"I don't see this as an either-or situation, Darby. If we lose control of the file, we've got nothing no leverage to use against anyone. Do you think in that situation the men who have killed your friends are just going to leave us alone and hope that we won't do something desperate like try to get our story printed in the papers? Believe me when I say that I don't want to hang my ass out a thousand feet off the ground, but we've got a chance here. If not now, when?"

She looked down the slope for a moment and then dropped her pack into the snow. She dug out a stuff sack with a sleeping bag and tossed it to him, then went back to searching around in the pack, finally coming up with a rope and a shovel.

"Take the sleeping bag out of there and fill the sack with snow. As much as you can pack into it," she said, starting to dig a hole about ten feet back from the edge of the precipice.

He did as he was told, feeling the exhaustion in his arms as he shoved snow into the sack with his gloved hands.

"Okay," he said when he'd finished and rolled it toward her. She climbed out of the hole she had dug and started clearing a narrow trench of the same depth to the edge of the slope. He still had no idea what she was doing, but she seemed to, so he wrapped his arms around himself and tried to stay warm as she secured one end of the rope around the middle of the snow-filled stuff sack, dropped the sack into the hole she'd dug, then threw the other end of the rope off the edge of the slope.

Five minutes later, she had completely buried the stuff sack and was jumping up and down, packing the snow on top of it. She looked up at him and shrugged, then unstrapped the two ice axes from the outside of her pack and handed one to Beamon. He looked at the sharp edges and remembered what an axe just like it had done to Tristan Newberry.

"We'll climb down about fifty meters," Darby said, turning to face the slope and starting down it backward.

"We're going to go down really slow, like this. Kick your boots in hard, balance yourself, and get the point of your axe in. Then one more step.

If you start to slide, don't try to dig your toes in it'll flip you over. Lay all your weight on the back of your axe."

"And the rope?" Beamon said as she continued down, illustrating the proper technique.

"If you get into really big trouble, try grabbing it." She shrugged again, or at least he thought she did; it was hard to tell under all the layers of clothing.

"It might hold. If you're lucky."

"Great," he said, easing himself over the edge and starting down like she'd showed him. He paused just before his head ducked below the flat section they'd been standing on and looked down at Darby. Beyond her, the snow was completely unbroken for about five hundred feet. At that point, it was bisected by a narrow rock band that dropped off into space.

"How high is that cliff down there?"

"Doesn't matter," Darby said, stopping and digging her feet and axe in.

"Okay, come on down."

"Doesn't matter?" Beamon said.

That fatalistic shrug again.

"A thirty-foot fall will kill you, Mark."

Not exactly encouraging. Beamon continued down, his heart rate notching a little higher with every step away from flat land.

More and more the cliff below him consumed his mind. After about twenty feet, he was finding it hard to concentrate. It seemed that every move he made put him in a less stable position than the last, bringing him within a hairbreadth from skidding out of control like the fallen ski racers he'd seen on television.

Finally, he had to stop to try to get control of his breathing and fear.

Not grabbing the apparently unreliable rope running along the snow to his right was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.

"You're doing great, Mark. Not much further."

He leaned his head forward about six inches until it touched the snow in front of him.

"Sorry, Darby. I don't know why, but I've got to know.

How high is that cliff?"

He heard her start moving again in a slow, steady rhythm.

"Okay, okay. I'm not sure. Somewhere between six and eight hundred feet.

Does that make you feel better?"

For some reason, it did. At least it was now a known quantity.

"How long would you be in the air, you figure? You, know, before you hit the ground?"

The rhythm of Darby's descent suddenly stopped.

"I kind of try not to think about stuff like that."

Sensible. Beamon continued down, adjusting his position so that he was placing one foot on either side of the rope. It might not hold, but he liked having it there in front of him. A few more minutes and he was even with Darby again. She had traversed a few feet to the right and was waiting for him.

"How are you doing?" she said, grabbing hold of his shoulder with her free hand, steadying him psychologically more than physically.

"So you do this for fun?" The clouds were breaking up above them and the sun was coming directly from behind, reflecting powerfully off the blank white that they were clinging to.

"No mistakes here, okay, Mark? This is where we leave the rope behind."

Murphy's Law reigned, as it always seemed to. Sideways proved to be trickier than down. He mimicked Darby's every move, silently thankful that she never strayed more than a few feet from him. He doubted that she could arrest his fall if it happened, but the companionship somehow helped.

"It's beautiful out here, isn't it," Darby said in an exaggerated whisper.

Beamon took her words as an opportunity to stop his legs were feeling a little rubbery again. He looked around him, turning his head slowly so as not to disrupt his balance.

He actually hadn't noticed. When he'd looked below him before, all he'd seen was an unsurvivable fall. He hadn't taken in the sun glowing red off the rocky peaks or the pinkish-white glow of the aspen trees woven in to the forest below them. It seemed like you could see forever and that civilization and everything that went with it didn't really exist.

"I guess it is."

"Lori loved it up here," Darby said, turning her body dangerously and balancing on one boot as she looked out over the mountains.

"Said she would never leave here."

She brought herself back to face the snow a moment later, once again trying to shake off the memory of her friend.

"Are you ready? It's not much further."

"Lead the way."

She started again slowly, letting him keep up step for step, movement for movement.

After about another five minutes of constant motion, she stopped and dug in.

"This is it. The tower should be above us."

Beamon looked up. All he could see was snow and sky, but she hadn't given him any reason to doubt her yet.

"And some good news," Darby added quietly.

They started in unison, eyes trained on the ridge above them. When the roof of the lookout tower appeared, it was directly above, just as she had promised. They both stopped and Beamon started to carefully reach for his pocket.

"What do you need?" Darby said.

"My gun."

"You concentrate on your balance; I'll get it."

It was kind of humiliating to have some little girl dig around in his pocket for his pistol and then help him take his right glove off. But the memory of the cliff below and the fact that no one was watching hope fully made the embarrassment bearable.

"Stay!" he ordered, starting to move up, carefully using his left arm to drive the ice axe into the snow as he moved.

She ignored his order, staying right alongside, ready to lend a hand should he need it. He looked over at her and saw an expression of infinite stubbornness. Darby Moore had clearly decided that no one else was going to die on her watch.

Beamon stopped again just before the stilts that supported the lookout tower came into view. He leaned against the wall of snow in front of him and drew in deep breaths of the cold air, trying to relax. Gunplay was a game for the young.

He un looped his wrist from the strap on his axe and reached up, digging it in as high above him as he could. Taking one more deep breath, he pulled himself up on it.

Another impressive piece of deduction on his part the shot that hissed past his ear unarguably came from the underside of the lookout, just as he had predicted. So much for the element of surprise.

"Jesus!" Darby yelled as she flattened herself against the slope.

Beamon let go of his ice axe and balanced precariously on the toes of his boots, aiming at the shadow moving behind the snowbank built up beneath the stilts of the tiny building.

"Shit!" Darby squealed as a bullet impacted five feet in front of them and showered her with ice crystals.

"Stop it, stop it, stop it!"

Beamon felt a deep calm come over him as another bullet hissed past him, this time almost close enough to feel.

"Not good enough, asshole," he said quietly, and slowly applied pressure to the trigger. He felt the buck of the gun and saw the shadow he'd aimed at jerk backward. The moment of satisfaction and relief was short lived, though. The kick of the pistol had been enough to start him tipping backward. He dropped his gun and heard it skittering across the icy slope as he shot a hand out and just missed the ice axe still stuck in the snow in front of him. It felt like slow motion as he tilted back farther and farther. His hands clawed repeatedly at the snow, but there was nothing to grab hold of.

He'd just about resigned himself to the thousand or so foot ride when he felt the collar of his jacket tighten powerfully around his neck. Darby had managed to get hold of his coat and yank him forward, but the sudden motion cut his boots free and he felt himself start to slide.