Raymond Benson - High Time To Kill

“There are some short ice steps we’ll have to fix rope on,” Philippe Leaud said. “How big are they, Roland?”

“Ten to twenty meters. No problem. How does everyone feel?”

They all mumbled, “Fine.”

“Let’s go, then.”

The team kept the same formation as the previous day, with Marquis and Leaud leading. The ropes were attached easily enough, and they trudged up the slope in silence. As the air grew thinner, their strength diminished with each step. It took twice as long to travel a few feet as it would have at sea level.

They got to Camp Two midafternoon, totally exhausted. Tom Barlow fell to his knees, gasping for breath.

“Chettan, take a look at him,” Marquis told the Sherpa. “Make sure he’s all right. The rest of you, set up the tents. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can collapse.”

Barlow regained his wind after a few minutes. So far no one except Marquis had shown any signs of AMS. They erected the tents and huddled in two of them to eat. Bond found himself in a tent with Chandra, Marquis, and Leaud. Marquis brought out his cell phone and punched the memory dial.

“Camp Two to Base, Camp Two to Base,” he said.

“Hello? Roland?” It was Paul Baack.

“Paul, we’re here. We’re at Camp Two.”

“Congratulations!”

“How are things down there?”

“Fine. We’re all restless, but we just watched Gone With the Wind on television. Uncut. No commercials. That passed the time.”

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” Marquis said, laughing at his own joke.

“Hope wants to know how everyone is feeling,” Baack said.

“Tell her we’re fine. Tom had a few moments of breathlessness, but he’s all right now. Tomorrow we’ll push on to Camp Three and wait for you to join us. In the meantime, can we order some Chinese takeaway?”

“Sorry, we’re all out of Chinese food. You don’t want Chinese food tonight. Why don’t you order a pizza?”

“That sounds fine, too,” Marquis said, laughing. “Over and out.”

He put away the phone as they began to eat Alpine Aire freeze-dried rations, which were types of casseroles made of vegetables and/or meat. Sealed tightly in waterproof plastic bags, the rations were lightweight and easily boiled to produce a high-calorie meal with no dishes to clean.

“Hey, come out here!” a voice called outside.

“Who’s that?” Marquis asked.

“Sounds like McKee,” Bond said. He stuck his head out the tent flap. Doug McKee was standing a few feet away, pointing at something.

“Come look at this,” he said. The others were gathered around a dark object in the snow.

Bond and his group climbed out and stomped through the ice and snow to see what the fuss was about.

I wonder how long he’s been here,” McKee said, pointing to the thing frozen in the ice.

It was a man’s skeleton, fully dressed in climbing gear.

Bond’s dreams that night were filled with unholy terrors. He thought that an avalanche had buried him at one point and that he was suffocating and freezing. As he dug frantically in the snow with his bare, frostbitten hands, he came upon the frozen skeletons of an entire expedition. The skulls were laughing at him. One addressed him in Roland Marquis’s voice: “Oh, bad luck! You never were the best, Bond. But you tried to be, didn’t you? Now look at you!”

He awoke with a start. Chandra was shaking him. “James, there’s a fire. Wake up!”

“What?” Bond snapped out of it, groggy and disoriented. The first thing he noticed was the biting, cold air attacking his lungs. He coughed hard and wheezed for a few seconds.

“One of the tents is on fire!”

Bond leaped out of the sleeping bag, slipped on his boots, and followed Chandra outside. The sun was just rising, casting an eerie orange glow over the ice around them.

Three men were stomping on a tent that was ablaze. Bond had to think a moment to remember whose tent it was.

“Schrenk?”

“He got out. He’s over there.” Chandra pointed. Otto Schrenk was one of the men putting out the fire. They were using snow shovels and blankets to snuff it out. Bond and Chandra jumped in to help, and within minutes it was extinguished.

“How did this happen?” Marquis asked, stumbling up to the scene. His voice was hoarse.

“The goddamn stove in my tent,” Schrenk said. “I was trying to boil water, and the tent caught fire. Look, it’s all ruined.”

“What gear did you lose?”

“I’m not sure yet. My extra clothes, I know.” Schrenk began to rummage through the blackened fabrics and pulled out some tools that were still intact. “There are these, thank God.”

“He can borrow some of my clothes until we reach Camp Three,” Philippe Leaud said. “You’re my size, Otto?”

“I think so, thanks.”

The team settled down for breakfast and attempted to get their wits about them. No one was thinking particularly straight. They gathered by Marquis’s tent as he pulled out a map of the route.

“Today we come to our first big obstacle. After we cross the glacier, we come to the so-called ice building. Now, we have a couple of options- The normal route is to climb six hundred meters on a steep ice slope to the left of the seracs of the ice building. We would then traverse right across the first snow plateau to make Camp Three at sixty-six hundred meters. Now, this is very steep ice climbing, which we will fix rope on. I know that an American team who did this claimed it wasn’t that difficult, just extremely tiring. The other possibility is to do what the Japanese did and climb directly through the ice building. This would be easier going technically, but it could be dangerous. This ice building is really the key to the north face— how to get around it. A serac collapse in the area killed a Sherpa in 1930. It’s pretty scary, I must say, and different teams chose different strategies for getting around it.”

“What do you recommend?” McKee asked.

“I say we should try the Worth method from 1983 and climb the ice-wall to the left of the ice building. Above that we would go right across the glacier back to the north face.”

“You’re the boss,” Leaud said.

“Now, when Schrenk—where is Schrenk?” Marquis asked, looking around. Only then did everyone realize he was the one member of the team missing.

“Maybe he’s putting his gear back together?” McKee suggested.

They looked around and found Schrenk walking toward them with his gear packed and ready to go.

“Sorry,” he said. “Did I miss anything?”

“It’s all right,” Marquis said. “Just follow us. Let’s go, everyone! I want to start climbing in ten minutes!”

Bond and Chandra rushed back to the tent and packed quickly. Bond slipped on his crampons and joined the party outside. The wind had died down, the sun had risen, and it was a relatively beautiful day considering the fact that they were on the side of the third tallest fountain in the world. They were already higher than many of the Peaks around them. This was what Bond truly loved about mountain climbing. It was a vigorous, dangerous sport that, when one achieved the goal, gave one a sense of accomplishing the impossible. Here one really was the king of the world.

The “ice building” is a beautiful but frightening formation that is virtually a tunnel of ice. It could have been used as a shortcut up to the plateau, but, as Marquis said, the possibility of icefalls is very high.

Instead, Marquis led them up the ice slope to the left, which was at a steep angle ranging from forty-five degrees to seventy. Slowly and carefully, they worked their way up a gully that proved to be quite strenuous an operation.

They were nearly halfway up the gully when it was Bond’s turn to make the next pitch. Chandra belayed while Bond used the ropes already set in place by Marquis and Leaud, who were a hundred meters above them.