High Mountain Terror
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Janice Kay Johnson
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16
Chapter One
In her rare glimpses of the sky, Ava Brevick marveled at the stunning blue, made richer by the contrast with snow, ramparts of rock and the deep green of the forest cloaking the North Cascades Mountains.
Picking her way among the infuriating tangle of willow and alder near the river and having to watch for the fallen trees and rocks hidden beneath the snow, Ava hadn’t been able to maintain anything close to the pace that was possible on a stretch where snow lay smoothly on top of a trail maintained during the summer. Her snowshoes felt clumsy right now, almost more trouble than they were worth. This was nothing unexpected; even during the kinder time of year, most of the Cascade Mountain wilderness didn’t welcome two-legged intruders.
After unsnagging her snowshoe from a whip thin stem that was part of a thicket she thought was alder, she paused for the second time in the past ten minutes to look cautiously behind her.
She’d been alone out here in this snowy expanse for two days now. Trails in the park were closed during winter—and May was still very much winter high in the mountains. A respected wildlife and wilderness photographer, Ava had been dropped by helicopter to work her magic, seeking the extraordinary moment when sun slid through a snow-laden branch or glanced off water dancing between the ice and rocks. She hoped to capture some good photos of the animals that weren’t hibernating—or would be emerging from hibernation anytime. Not given to feeling lonely, she loved what most people would say was profound silence, but which to her ears was filled with the crack of a far-off branch, the whisper of wind, the occasionally ominous settling of ice and snow on steep slopes, the high cry of a bird or the scream of a small creature that had just become prey.
She’d already captured enough images she thought would delight the organization that had funded this expedition, but planned to set up another blind this evening in hope more nocturnal animals would wander her way. There were plenty of those deep in the Cascade Mountains, from mountain beavers and porcupines to the red fox, as well as the northern saw-whet owl she had yet to glimpse.
For herself, the only predators to fear in these mountains up by the Canadian border were grizzlies, reintroduced into the Cascades some years back, or an unusually aggressive black bear. She felt pretty confident neither would be emerging from hibernation just yet. Mountain lions could be a threat on rare occasions; she kept a sharp eye above when she passed below a tall rock upon which one might crouch. But a world without other humans was one where she relaxed her usual wariness.
What unnerved her now was the suspicion she wasn’t alone out here anymore. It was like walking through a dark alley, certain you heard footsteps behind, except they stopped when you did...only, a fraction of a second too late. Someone was behind her, and fleeing would do no good. She couldn’t exactly hide, given the conspicuous track she left in the snow, and if she parted from the almost-path following the bank, she wouldn’t be able to bull her way through the rampant growth. Unfortunately, the dense vegetation kept her from seeing who might be back there.
She had heard a helicopter yesterday, although she didn’t see it and had no reason to think it had landed. When the sound of the rotors had faded until silence reclaimed the wilderness, she’d dismissed any worry. Park rangers might keep an eye on the land they guarded with an occasional flyover.
But if it had dropped someone off, it had been a distance away, and how had he—or they—gotten close enough behind her that she heard the swish-swish of snowshoes and thought she’d gotten a glimpse of movement? And no, there weren’t a lot of alternate choices of paths around here, not with the steep flank leading up to a sharp peak on her one side and the rock-and ice-strewn river to her other.
If she stopped, would he? If she decided to turn around to go back, would he nod and politely let her pass?
She was being ridiculous; why would anyone want to sneak up on her?
She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that the trail was parting away from the river now and climbing above a jumble of huge boulders deposited by long-ago slides or avalanches, now surrounded by a clump of evergreens she identified as western red cedar, Sitka spruce and hemlock. Sunlight ahead dazzled her eyes as she emerged into the open.
The way was easier here, and she achieved a smooth stride in her snowshoes even as she continued to gain elevation and evaluated this open bowl of land. Now she had another cause for nerves: avalanche danger was high in this country, and it looked as if the trail led her across a curved, open slope she’d guess slanted at a forty-or forty-five-degree angle. She didn’t have an awful lot of experience with winter dangers, but anyone with common sense could see that the long-broken tree trunks poking jaggedly out of the heavy snow weren’t a good sign. An avalanche had plunged down this chute in the not so distant past. And yes, the warming conditions—although the day felt damn cold to her—contributed to the danger.
Still, she could see a clear line with the snow lying differently where the summer trail stretched across the way ahead. A single person stepping lightly wouldn’t put any significant stress on the weight of snow, ice and rocks higher up.
Except now she felt exposed because of that uneasy feeling that she was being pursued.
A couple of minutes later, Ava couldn’t resist stopping and turning. She’d been right. There he was, just emerging from the trees near the frozen river bank, moving fast and with surprising grace, climbing effortlessly to close the distance between them. She saw it was a big man wearing a dark green parka and carrying a huge pack. Only three or four hundred yards separated them.
Foolish instinct said to run, but her attention was abruptly jerked away from him when, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted movement high on the forested ridge across the river from her. To her shock, in an open stretch that had to be the result of a wildfire, a group of men were silhouetted against the blue sky. To her naked eye, they were nothing but small figures that didn’t belong there, at least this far north. There was no trail heading down that ridge, summer or winter, Ava was quite sure of that. What’s more, they were moving southbound, strung out, picking their way slowly. On snowshoes? She couldn’t tell.
Habit had her lifting her camera with the enormous lens that she always had ready hanging around her neck. She snapped off the cap and zeroed in on them, until she saw them as if they were startlingly near, if still very small. They all wore white, including their packs. Or something like white capes draped over the packs? Most had carriers of some kind slung over their shoulders, too, although those were black. Could the group be skiers dropped off by helicopter? She couldn’t imagine that kind of commercial venture was permitted within the national park. Besides, they were nowhere near an elevation high enough to be above the tree line. No slope could be skied in this vicinity, and she was pretty sure there wasn’t one on the other side of the ridge, either.
Suddenly apprehensive, she stared at the sharp image of the man in the lead. Distant as he was, even through her lens, she was shocked to see that he held a rifle, one with a shape that had become all too familiar from constant news reports about mass shootings and war. That had to be something like an AK-47, not a typical hunting rifle—and, anyway, hunting was banned in the national park.
Not even sure why she was doing it, she took photos, moving from one man to the next. A couple of them wore what were probably fleece balaclavas. Several didn’t, or had pulled them down. Maybe the sun felt warmer up there, she thought in some distant part of her mind. Those faces she saw clearly, and she photographed them without conscious thought.
Several of them had come to a stop while she studied them. At the same instant, she saw the glint of sun off glass and knew someone up there was looking back at her.
Men carrying automatic weapons, men who shouldn’t be where they were, were looking at her.
She hastily let the camera drop and snatched up her poles. Apprehension made her want to turn around and race back toward the trees, nearer if she went back instead of forward, except the stranger was closing in fast on her now.
Go, she thought.
She broke into a near run, wishing futilely that she was on cross country skis instead of the far clumsier and slower snowshoes, but that had never been possible in this difficult terrain.
Go, go, go!
ZACH REEVES HAD spent the past couple of hours speculating on who could be out here in the remote wilderness he’d expected to have to himself. He’d looked forward to cutting his own tracks in the snow.
Call him selfish—he’d wanted to be alone. The whole point of this expedition had been to escape the pressures he felt from coworkers, neighbors and crowds at the mall or competing with him for a corner table at the café. After ten years as a spec ops warrior, he wasn’t adjusting well to normal life.
Life on the military base between operations had been fine, if not his favorite. He’d always managed during his rare visits home to Minnesota where his sister and brother lived. Now, he almost wished he’d gone to work as a Washington state patrolman or sheriff’s deputy who patrolled miles of roads instead of the job he’d taken as a detective for the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Department. The work was more interesting, but on patrol he’d have been covering a lot of empty country in the rural county, likely going hours at a time without having to interact with anyone.
This was Zach’s vacation, damn it. He’d sought solitude and found a way to achieve it. It was bad enough that he had company, but what in hell was a woman doing out here alone?
Given the hefty pack she carried, it had taken him a while to realize the snowshoer ahead of him was female, but he no longer had any doubt. How had she gotten into this remote area, unreachable by road at any season or by trail in what was still winter in the North Cascades? Who did she think would bail her out if she got into trouble? He sure didn’t have cell phone service in this deep vee between a high ridge and a higher mountain. He supposed she might carry a satellite radio, as he did.
He evaluated the white slope above before breaking from the trees to climb after her into a bowl carved in the ridge. He knew an avalanche path when he saw one; in July or August, wildflowers and shrubs would dominate in the sunlight, free of the tree cover he’d been traveling through. He’d have avoided this stretch if he could, but a couple of snowshoers were unlikely to tip the balance to bring the icy monster down on them.
Zach raised his head to see that the damn woman had stopped dead, lifted an enormous camera and was staring up at the ridge above the river. Now what? Zach flicked his gaze the way she was looking, and his muscles locked. His radar jumped into the red.
He hadn’t heard a helicopter in the past day since his drop-off. Those men almost had to have crossed the Canadian border to get here, and this route wasn’t ever an approved border crossing. Right now, with the border patrol stretched thin and on high alert to watch for a known terrorist sneaking into the country, that group had to have slipped in, taking advantage of the remote countryside that couldn’t be adequately monitored. They must have expected to stay cloaked in dense, northwest forest, except that a wildfire had burned that cover in the past year or two.
He had razor-sharp vision. Even without lifting his binoculars, he recognized the weapon the guy at the front carried. A flash of light up there had him blinking; the sun must have reflected off the lenses of binoculars. Had they noticed him yet, or were they watching her?
Either way—
A very faint crack that might have been a gunshot came to him. From this distance, that wouldn’t have been a concern, but a flash of fire arced across the sky.
A rocket-propelled grenade. He was racing toward the fool woman in front of him even as he evaluated what he’d seen and knew they hadn’t fired directly at her.
No, they had a better way to kill a lone traveler who’d seen them.
An explosive burst came from the slope above the two of them on this side of the river. For one instant, nothing changed but for the white puff where the shell had landed. The sound of a second shot came to him. Before he had a chance to react, an enormous crack began to split open in the surface of a thick layer of snow and ice at the top of the slope, at first moving in slow motion in each direction.
Even before Zach saw the increasing speed the crack spread across the slab, he shouted, “Avalanche! Get out of the way!”
She gave a startled look at him, then up.
A loud whuump came from the sliding slope.
He wouldn’t get to her, he realized in the compartment of his brain that kept him making logical decisions under fire. Couldn’t help her, anyway. None of the old-growth trees with their massive boles had survived in this gully to provide shelter. He wouldn’t make it out of the path, either. Farther ahead of him, she might reach the edge of the avalanche zone if she put on the burners.
A boulder ahead provided the only hope. It wasn’t large enough to protect him, he knew, but he saw no other possibilities and raced to throw himself behind it.
Then he curled low, braced his pack against the cold rock and waited for one of the most brutal forces of nature to smash into him.
SHE RAN, cursing the need to lift each foot high to clear the snowshoe from the snow. It was as if she were moving in slo-mo even while the monstrous white slab fractured at what seemed a leisurely pace. She knew, knew, that appearances were deceptive. Snatching a quick look, she saw in horror that a mass almost as wide as this open bowl of land was gathering speed as it first slid, then thundered into motion down the slope. One last look at the guy behind her. There he was one instant, the next he vanished behind a boulder. Lucky guy. Her thighs burned, her breath whistled. A roar drowned out everything else.
It hit her like a semitruck on the freeway, slamming into her even as it tossed her, flipped her. A last instinct had her wrenching at the handle on the chest strap of her pack. Then her thoughts became nothing coherent. She had the terrifying sense she was upside down as she saw her snowshoes snatched from her feet to disappear in the white tsunami. Her poles were long gone. Winded, Ava flailed for a grip on anything at all, her hands finding nothing. She had to be screaming, but the sound was too puny to be heard even by her own ears. It was like leaping off an Olympic ski jump and not coming down. Weightless, she was flying, but also being buffeted from every side. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt.
THE NEXT THING she knew, she lay still. Astonishingly, when she shook her head, she saw a sliver of light. Had she lost consciousness? She had no idea. Something was choking her, and she gagged. Her legs felt as if they were encased in concrete that she prayed hadn’t quite hardened yet, but her arms—yes, she could move them, although it was a struggle. Her groping hand found a flap of nylon, blue rather than the green of her pack. Avalanche airbag. Oh, thank God, thank God. She’d remembered to pull the rip cord. It must have inflated immediately, creating a brightly colored pillow that acted to make her more buoyant, lifting her toward the surface.
She broke through the snow and saw sky. The airbag had worked. Fumbling, she discovered her camera had been whipped around her head, and it was the strap throttling her. Awkwardly, she untwisted the camera strap from around her neck. It was a miracle she hadn’t lost it. How damaged it was... Not important.
Now she just had to find a way to crawl free from the hardening snow.
She kicked and flung handfuls of snow away, widening the hole around her shoulders and head. One glove was gone, she saw, but she didn’t even feel the cold. That wasn’t a good sign, but if she couldn’t dig herself out, what was a little frostbite?
It couldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes. It felt like forever before she found herself on her hands and knees, facing downhill. Her pack weighed her down, but the fact that it hadn’t been torn from her body had saved her life. Would save her life again. She couldn’t whip out a phone and call for help. She hadn’t even brought an avalanche beacon, because she’d known that, isolated as she’d be in the back country, no one would come in response. With a sleeping bag, tent, food and more clothes, though, she could survive. She could.
She let out a cry. She was alive, but what about him? Ava had quit caring why he was following her; he was a fellow human being. He’d yelled a warning to her, hadn’t he?
She staggered to her feet and looked at the devastation around her, frantically trying to orient herself. She’d ridden the avalanche almost to the end, but what about him? He’d started slightly lower than her, but right in the center of the chute. The boulder. Where was the boulder?
It took her a minute, and that was a minute he couldn’t afford. In preparing for a trip in Alaska a couple of years ago, she’d read the horrifying statistics: someone who was really buried would start to lose consciousness in only four minutes from breathing their own carbon dioxide. The odds of surviving even after being dug out decreased dramatically as the minutes ticked by.
There! she thought. All she could see was a faint curve of rock surrounded by the tumble of snow and ice, but that had to be it. She didn’t remember seeing any other boulders so high above the river.
She scrambled the distance to it on her hands and feet and even knees.
“Can you hear me?” she yelled.
Nothing. No, something stuck out of the snow. Ava tugged it out. A snowshoe. Oh, my God. He had to be near, didn’t he?
She called out again, waited for an answer, tried over and over as she dropped her pack and unzipped it with fingers too numb to want to cooperate. She’d bought the airbag at the urging of mountain-climbing friends, but otherwise hadn’t planned much for an avalanche.
“I’ll be careful,” she’d told everyone.
Famous last words.
For whatever reason, she’d added a folding probe to her gear. At last she pounced on it. By accident, she spotted her other gloves and hastily, gratefully changed. Then she unfolded the long probe, stood and began stabbing it into the snow. The chances of her finding him weren’t good. If he’d been swept too far to the left or right of the boulder, she could poke the probe into the snow for days and not find him. If he was buried too deep...
Ava didn’t even want to think about that.
She prayed as she’d never prayed before, and stabbed the probe repeatedly into the avalanche debris.
