straps and fastening clips. The harness was on, and her body temperature had risen by what felt like ten degrees. She quickly fastened the clips across her chest.
A helicopter lifted off. She glanced around the plateau. The teenager had gone, along with most of the crew and the body bags. It looked like only a dozen people worked in the lengthening shadows.
Jordan came around to her front. He reached down and tightened straps around her upper thighs in a way both by-the-book formal and incredibly personal. The webbing cinched against her, pulling her toward him. She looked up into his blue eyes, which were darkening as the sun set.
“If there’s anything I need to know before we go down there,” he said, “now is the time to tell me.”
“Nothing.” She wanted to stay up here alone among all the bodies even less than she wanted to go down into the hole. “Bad day.”
“Sanderson’s got a chair warmed up for you.” He studied her face. “With the ROV in place, you could monitor our progress from up here.”
Summoning up courage she thought she’d lost, she forced a smile. “And let you have all the fun?”
He gave her one more worried look before returning to his men.
On either side, men tossed ropes over the edge. Blue blankets laid along the fissure’s lip cushioned the ropes and lessened friction between the rope lines and sharp, broken stone. They seemed to know what they were doing. She double-checked the ropes anyway.
Sanderson stepped up behind her. He wasn’t going down, only helping the others gear up. He passed her something the length and width of a pen.
“Sarge told me to give you an atropine dart,” he said. “Best to stick it in your sock.”
“What does it do?”
“If you’re exposed to the mystery gas, pop the cap and jab yourself in the thigh.”
Fear fluttered in her chest at the idea of that. “I thought there was no active gas down there.”
“It’s just a precaution, but be careful. Stuff’s strong. Don’t use it unless you
“Shouldn’t we be wearing biocontainment suits?”
“Too bulky to rappel in. And the straps would tear the fabric. Don’t worry, at the first sign of symptoms— nausea, bleeding—just use the needle. You should live long enough for us to pull you out.”
She scrutinized his freckled face to see if he was joking, trying to scare her.
He squeezed her shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”
She didn’t feel
Lieutenant Perlman, along with two other soldiers—a young Israeli and an older American—walked up to the fissure. The American had bushy brown hair and carried a satchel over one shoulder. She read the name stenciled on his fatigues:
On his bag were three prominent letters:
He caught her looking. “Explosive Ordnance Disposal. I blow stuff up.”
They must be planning on detonating any intact canisters they found down there. She should be more worried, but the shock of Heinrich’s death had left her too numb to panic.
McKay held out a hand. She shook it. He was a large man, a few cheeseburgers away from having a gut, and a decade older than the others. She guessed he was in his early forties. He smiled broadly while shaking her hand.
“Best-looking climbing partner I’ve had in ages.” He winked, and she tried to smile back.
He moved to the edge of the fissure as if stepping up to a curb. She stepped next to him and looked down. Shadows obscured the bottom. The fissure was broad enough to rappel down without worry, but she still shivered. The jagged, ugly thing didn’t belong on this mountain.
McKay and Cooper secured their rappelling gear to a pair of ropes.
She stepped to a free line and did the same, pulling it tight twice to check.
Another of Jordan’s team—a woman named Tyson—knelt beside the crevasse. She had fed a long hose down into the hole. Next to her camouflaged knee rested a gas chromatograph.
“What’s the reading, Tyson?” Jordan called.
“Spikes of nitrogen, oxygen, argon.” She kept her eyes on her screen. “A trace of everything you’d expect. No bad gases, Sarge.”
“Keep monitoring, Corporal.” Jordan faced them. “And everyone keep your atropine at the ready.”
“What’re we waiting for, Sergeant?” Cooper hung over the abyss. His line looked too thin to support his bulk, but his eyes danced with adrenaline. A born climber.
Jordan circled his arm in the air. “Rangers lead the way!”
With a whoop from Cooper and a tired sigh from McKay, the pair walked backward down the cliff face, as easily as if they were on horizontal ground.
The Israelis clipped on next and dropped over the edge.
Tyson fiddled with her monitoring equipment. She wasn’t harnessed up, so she must be staying up here, too.
That left Erin and Jordan. He came forward with a large weapon slung over his back, then secured himself on the rope next to her. Once set, he leaned over and tugged on her line. “Good tie-on.”
“You bet.”
Jordan flashed a quick grin, leaned back, and took a big step down. He stared up, face serious, words firm. “Anytime now. I’ll be right next to you.”
She leaned out, felt her hands open and close, letting rope slide through her gloved fingers as she backed up—and next thing she knew she was standing next to Jordan on the cliff face.
When his boots hit the ground, Jordan did an automatic inventory of his weapons. He patted the holstered sidearm on his hip, a Colt 1911, then checked the KA-BAR dagger strapped to his ankle. But his primary weapon—a Heckler & Koch MP7—hung on a strap over his right shoulder. The machine pistol fired hardened steel rounds to the beat of 950 per minute, capable of turning Kevlar armor into Swiss cheese.
He quickly checked the weapon’s safety, clip, and optics, ensuring he didn’t bump it against anything on the way down. He caught Erin staring.
“You need that much firepower down here?” Erin folded her gloves in half and crammed them in her back pocket.
He shrugged. “It’s standard carry for my team.”
Before he could explain more, Sanderson’s voice crackled over the radio in his earpiece. “
The evacuation chopper was early, but just as well. Jordan wanted everyone off this bloody mountain as soon as possible. He touched his earpiece. “Got it.”
He and Erin joined the rest of the team gathered at a thin seam in the cliff face. The ROV cable trailed down it and vanished into the darkness.
He glanced over at Erin. What the hell had happened to her in the lean-to? At first he’d thought maybe she was scared of heights and worried about the rappel, but she’d handled that without blinking an eye. He suspected she did have more than a hundred climbs behind her. So she must have seen or heard something during the few minutes she was alone that knocked her down. He didn’t think she’d told him the whole truth about it. She seemed better now, but he hoped whatever it was wouldn’t affect the mission.
Cooper pulled his head out of the two-foot-wide crack the ROV had run through and tossed a glowstick, lighting the way ahead. “That man-made tunnel opens just past this seam.”
Hands on his hips, McKay eyed the small opening.
Jordan clapped him on the shoulder. “Tight fit, but you should make it.”
McKay shook his head. “Spoken by a skinny guy who can barely bench-press his weight.”
Jordan wasn’t skinny, and he could certainly bench much more than his weight. But he’d fit through. For McKay in full gear, it would be a tight squeeze.
