Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

Roth put a hand on Kettler’s shoulder. “It is. And... thanks.”

Kettler hoisted the lift pack, and they set off.

Roth struggled at times, and even Pine felt herself having to dig down into extra reserves of strength and endurance. She marveled at Kettler, who just seemed to move like a fluid machine. Even with the lift pack, she could see where he was actually pulling the other two along, making the burden of the climb easier for them, and, correspondingly, harder for himself.

They turned east at the fork and reached the steep switchbacks.

Kettler glanced back at Roth and put up his hand for them to stop.

“I’m... I’m okay,” said Roth breathlessly.

Kettler came back down to him. “Yeah, but I need a breather. My calves are spasming a little. And Atlee can take over the pack.”

“Okay, if you say so,” replied Roth, who collapsed to the ground.

Pine gave Kettler an appreciative look.

Then her features tightened.

Whump-whump-whump.

The sounds of the chopper prop came out of nowhere.

“Headlamps off,” snapped Kettler.

They all switched off their lamps.

Kettler grabbed Roth and pulled him under some scrub pines. Pine quickly joined them.

They all squatted there, frozen, as the searchlight started moving across the steep terrain, like a luminous spider gliding over glass.

Pine found herself holding her breath. The only good thing was there was no place here for the chopper to land.

But then she envisioned a cannon opening up on them from the air if the light found them. She gripped the M4 and thought how best to shoot out the chopper’s tail prop, if need be.

It seemed like the aircraft hovered over them for an eternity. But Pine’s watch showed it was only a couple of minutes. Then it rose, moved to the east, cleared a ridge, and was gone.

They didn’t move for a few more minutes, just to make sure.

Finally, when the sounds didn’t return, they all came out from hiding.

“You ready to go?” said Kettler calmly.

“I’m ready,” said a visibly shaken Roth.

Kettler helped Pine on with the lift pack, and they started climbing once more.

Shortly after, the trail steepened considerably.

And the rain started up again, stinging them in the face. As Roth took a step up on a narrow path that was unnervingly close to the edge of a long fall, the stone gave way and part of the drenched trail crumbled.

With a scream, Roth fell to the side, clawing at the air. And then, with a shriek of terror, he went over the edge.

His plummeting weight immediately pulled hard on Pine, who fell face-first. The full weight of the nuke and the lift pack slammed into her back, smashing her against the dirt and forcing all the air from her lungs.

Down below, Roth dropped lower, dangling from the hitched rope around his waist. He was swinging and trying to grab the rope. This just unsettled things more on the trail as his constantly shifting weight pulled Pine ever closer to the edge. She slid across rock and mud and cacti, as she frantically tried to halt her momentum.

At the other end of the rope line, Kettler was struggling mightily to keep from getting pulled over, too.

As Roth continued to windmill below, Pine’s face was now over the edge. She did not want the rest of her to follow. She pressed the palms of her hands into the rocky terrain and pushed hard backward, to keep herself from going over. It was like she was bench-pressing a thousand pounds.

“Shit!” she cried out. She was being stretched to her limit.

The next moment Kettler called out, “Atlee, I’m going to pull back as a counterweight. If I get too close to the edge with you, we’re all going over. Once I get stabilized we’ll work out a solution. Just hold on.”

She gritted her teeth and nodded to show she understood.

Her face peering over the edge, she saw Roth dangling about fifteen feet below her. And after that it was an insanely long drop to certain death.

“David,” she screamed. “Stop moving. We’re figuring this out up here, but your flailing around is not helping.”

Roth, to his credit, instantly became motionless.

Pine tensed every muscle in her body, gripped the jagged rocks embedded into the cliff and tried to lever herself backward some more. But with Roth’s dead weight, it was a stalemate. If she hadn’t been as strong as she was, Pine would have already gone over the precipice. The added weight of the nuke she was carrying was actually helping her, acting as an additional counterweight to Roth’s mass. Yet having the thing pressing down on top of her wasn’t exactly pleasant.

Kettler cried out, “Okay, Atlee, I’m going to toss you a rope with a D-link. Snap it into the one around your waist. Do not wrap the rope around you, just snap it into the link.”

She nodded again and slowly looked to the side where he was.

Kettler had wrapped the rope connecting him to Roth around a massive rock wedged against the side of the trail. This had stabilized and secured Roth’s weight load on his end.

He held up the second rope with the link, so she could see it.

“Here it comes.”

The link landed right next to her left hand. She snapped it into the other link that was connected to the stout climbing rope around her waist.

“Okay, good,” said Kettler, who’d been watching her.

He took the other end of the rope and, as he had his own line, wrapped it several times around the large rock and then tied it off securely.

Pine understood why he hadn’t wanted her to tie the rope around her waist. Roth’s dead weight was already exerting enormous pressure on her frame. Wrapping another rope around her could have, if things went wrong, sufficed to squeeze her like a constrictor had a hold of her. Now if she was pulled over by Roth’s weight, this rope and the other one Kettler had tied around the large rock would hopefully prevent her and Roth from falling to their deaths. The only dilemma now was that she was literally caught between a rock and a hard place.

Kettler raced over with a fresh loop of rope and a D-link.

He touched Pine’s arm. “Are you holding up?”

She nodded, the pain in her features. “But I can’t do this forever.”

“You won’t have to.”

He peered over the edge. “Dave, I’m going to feed this rope down. Snap the D-link into the one you already have on, okay?”

Roth nodded and Kettler fed the rope down.

Roth grabbed it on his second try and clicked the link into place.

Kettler took the other end of the rope, ran back to the large rock, and clipped this line into the one he’d already secured around the rock, making sure that it was taut.

He hustled back to the edge and peered over. “You’re secured to a large rock up here. Now, I’m going to unlink you and Atlee.”

“No!” screamed Roth. “Don’t! I’ll fall.”

“You’re not going to fall. The rock you’re secured to weighs about five thousand pounds. That’s the belt. And the line I just fed down to you will serve as the suspenders, just in case. Now, I need to free Atlee, so she can help me pull you up. Now, when I release the line, you might drop a few inches, but you are not going to fall, okay? I’ve got two lines securing you.”

“Oh, God, oh please, God,” they could hear him moaning.

Pine called out, “David, we are not going to lose you, okay? This is a good plan. And it’s the only one we have, okay?”

Roth finally called up, “O-okay.”

Kettler looked at Pine. “You ready to be unhitched?”

“My back sure as hell is.”

With a mighty struggle, because of Roth’s dead weight pulling on Pine, he managed to release the D-link connecting her to Roth.