“Let’s go,” she said, picking up a gallon of water.
I fell in behind her and stepped through the crack. It looked like this dead man was going to live another night. We made our way down a dark, narrow tunnel. At the end, maybe a hundred feet away, was another light. We passed three small openings on the right and two on the left, all big enough for someone to slip through. The first opening on the left had cool air coming out of it. The light at the end of the tunnel came from another Afghan. He was sitting on a blanket shuffling a deck of cards in lantern light. He gave me only a cursory glance as Marlboro pushed me through the opening at the end of the tunnel, which led to another tunnel about four feet long. Mom and I had to turn sideways to get to the cavern where the others were being held.
Alessia was on her feet in an instant. She ran across the cavern and threw her arms around me. Everyone started talking at once, but all I could hear was Alessia, because she was talking in my ear.
“We were so worried . . . We hoped you had gotten away . . . I am sorry to see you here . . . This is all my fault . . . Elham, Ebadullah, Aki, Choma, Phillip, all dead because of me . . .”
I held her at arm’s length. Tears were flowing down her cheeks. “It’s not your fault.” I nodded toward the opening. “It’s their fault.”
“But they are French.”
I shook my head. “They are murderers.”
JR, Will, and Jack came over and patted my back. The only person missing was Zopa. I looked around the dim cavern. He was sitting next to a wall with his knees up, smiling. He was the only one who didn’t seem surprised to see me. I gave him a nod. He nodded back.
“Where’s Rafe?”
“What about Ethan and Cindy?”
“How’d you find us?”
“Were you able to get word out?”
“Let’s keep our voices down,” Mom said, pointing at the entrance. “We’re not sure if they speak English.”
This quieted everyone down. I took off my pack and sat down next to Zopa, which was the farthest spot away from the entrance.
Alessia was going to sit next to me, then looked at Mom. “Please, you sit there.”
Mom smiled. “No, go ahead.”
The others sat down close and listened as I told them what had happened since I saw them last.
“We thought you were playing possum in the cave,” JR said. “We were hoping you were on your way to get help.”
“It would have taken days to get help,” I said. “Rafe and Cindy are on their way downriver in Ethan’s kayak. The nearest village is at least three days away, providing they don’t swamp the kayak, which looked like a definite possibility when they pushed off.”
“I hope they don’t run into Pierre,” Jack said.
“Who’s Pierre?”
“The third Frenchman,” Mom answered. “I told you about him. He and the third Afghan left yesterday with the video.”
I looked at JR. He had his head down. “They made us film the—”
“You didn’t have a choice,” I said, then looked at Jack. “Let’s get back to this Pierre guy.”
“They have a boat,” Jack said.
“Probably two boats,” Will added.
“Zopa’s been eavesdropping on our guards,” Mom said. “They don’t know that he speaks Pashtun.”
I looked at Zopa. He hadn’t said a word since I got there.
“My Pashtun is far from perfect,” he said. “But I believe they have two boats. Pierre, as we call him, is on his way to Kabul to make their demands. They want to have everything arranged and be gone from the area before the helicopter is scheduled to pick us up. He’s not coming back here. The man he is with will return and tell the others that the negotiation was successful and it is time to leave. They are using complete radio and cell silence while they are here. Everyone left their phones in the boats. The second boat is for escape if the need arises, or to transport hostages. But of course there will be no hostages. They have no intention of letting any of us live.”
I hoped Ethan was getting all this—
Idiot! There were no guards in the cavern. There was no reason to keep the two-way strapped to my side. There was no reason why I couldn’t actually ask him if he was getting all this.
“Check the entrance,” I said to Mom.
“The radio,” she said.
She crawled over to the entrance, listened a moment, then turned and whispered, “The second guard is with the first. It sounds like they’re playing cards.”
I stripped my T-shirt off and began unwrapping the bandage. “Does anyone have earbuds?”
Three pairs appeared almost immediately. Jack’s earbuds had a microphone. Mom stayed near the entrance. The others gathered round and shielded me in case a guard came into the cavern, which they said happened from time to time. I pulled the tape off the radio, plugged in the buds, and hit the talk button.
“Can you hear me?”
There was a slight hesitation, then a whispered “Yeah, I can hear you.”
“What about earlier?”
“Most of it . . . I think.”
“Where are you?”
“In a tree. Line of sight. Good tip from your mom. Probably seventy-five yards from the cave. Pretty much parallel. I’m looking through binoculars. It’s dark. Can’t see very well, but there’s a guy standing just inside the entrance smoking a cigarette. I can see the ash glow.”
“That might be Émile.”
“What kind of shape are these guys in?”
“Excellent.”
“What kind of weapons do they have?”
“Automatic rifles, pistols, knives, maybe other stuff I don’t know about. You can’t use the entrance. There are at least two guys there all of the time. There’s a tunnel at the back of the entrance that leads to the small cavern we’re in. Maybe a hundred feet long. There’s an Afghan guard, sometimes two, outside the cavern all the time. Right now there are two. They’re playing cards.”
“Is the tunnel lit?”
“No. The guards use headlamps and have a lantern. There are five small openings in the tunnel. Two on the left, three on the right. I felt cool air coming from the first opening on the left heading toward the cavern we’re in.”
“How far is that opening from the guard?”
I had to think about that for a moment. “I’d guess sixty feet, maybe a little more.”
“I guess it’s ninja time for me. There has to be another way into the cave system. These guys are pros. They’d never put themselves into a dead-end hole. Does anybody know how they chose the hideout? They certainly didn’t stumble across it. They had to know it was there.”
I wasn’t sure why this was important, but I asked the group. Zopa answered. He’d obviously spent a lot of time listening at the crack.
“It was a terrorist hideout during the war,” he explained. “Émile was on the team that raided it.”
I passed this on to Ethan.
“Definitely has to be another way in. I’ll try to find it. Ask someone what the guard situation is. What happens at bedtime? With some luck, I might be able to take one of them out, but not two of them.”
Zopa said they usually played cards until ten or eleven, then one of them went up to the front cavern to sleep. He thought they were on roughly four-hour guard schedules. I told Ethan.
“One more question. How are the Afghans dressed?”
“Traditional Afghan clothes.”
“Perfect. It will probably take me a while to get inside. Tell everyone they might want to get some sleep if they can. If we pull this off, the only thing we’ll have going for us is a head start. We’ll have to move fast and hard until we find help, which could be several days. I’ll keep you posted. Out.”
Now it was all up to the guy who had topped McKinley, ridden a snowboard down, and gotten chased by a wolf.
If
Nobody is sleeping. We are looking at Phillip’s maps and drone photos, which Géant didn’t think were dangerous and
let me keep. That was a mistake. The maps and photos are dangerous. They’ll get us to Kabul if Ethan manages to get us out of here. Zopa thinks we should split up. Four people in two groups taking two routes. “Divide and conquer,” he says. “Two chasing us is better than four, and eight cannot travel as fast as four.” It makes sense to me. It makes sense to everyone. But who’s on which team? This is why we are looking at the maps . . .
“THE GORGE BENEATH the plateau,” Mom said, pointing at one of the drone photos. “This must be where the boat is.”
“If there is a second boat,” Jack said.
“And if there isn’t a boat, you’ll have to climb back up the gorge and go overland,” JR said. “Doesn’t look like there’s a shoreline in the gorge. It will take the gorge group a day or two longer to get to base camp than the other group. If they can get there at all. Look at that terrain.”
He was right about the river gorge and the terrain.
“It looks like the photo was taken on Mars,” Will said.
“I think the boat is there,” Mom said. “There is no way that Émile and Géant would allow themselves to be stranded here if things don’t go well in Kabul with Pierre. We’d be able to get downriver quickly and pick the other team up.”
“And if we had the only boat, they’d never catch us,” I added.
If there was a boat. If Ethan found the other entrance. If we got past the guard . . .
“Technical climb,” Zopa said, pointing his thick index finger at the photo.
What he was saying was that it would be a dangerous climb. There were two drone photos of the river gorge. A close shot and a long shot. The long shot showed a twisting gash a hundred and fifty feet across, a couple miles long, and maybe a couple thousand feet deep. The close shot showed a smooth face with hardly any holds. We didn’t have enough rope to get down to the river. We’d have to do it in stages. It other words, it was going to be a very ugly descent. If there wasn’t a boat and we had to climb back up, it was going to be even uglier.
“You think they climbed this?” I asked.
Mom shook her head. “Not all of them. Géant and Émile are fit, but I don’t think they’re climbers. The same with our two guards. All four of them have relatively soft hands. My guess is that Pierre and his Afghan partner, who definitely looked like climbers, dropped the others off downriver to make their way overland, then motored up to the gorge, stashed the boats, then made the ascent.”
“Why not leave the boats downriver?” JR asked.
“No place to hide them from the eye in the sky,” Mom said. “No cover along the river. A surveillance drone would pick out a boat along the barren shore in an instant.” She pointed at the gorge. “This is the only place to hide boats.”
“So who’s going where?” Will asked.
“Nobody is going anywhere unless we get out of here,” Mom said. “But if we do manage to escape, I think the climb master should make the call.” She looked at Zopa.
Zopa looked at me. “How is Ethan’s ankle?”
I’d forgotten he’d injured it. He hadn’t limped since we had gotten to the stream. “Healed, I think.”
“Good. Peak, me, Teri, and Alessia will descend the gorge. JR, Will, Jack, and Ethan will meet us downriver.”
I think I saw relief in the film crew’s faces. I wondered what Ethan would think of Zopa’s team division.
“How long do we wait at the river?” Jack asked.
“You don’t wait for us,” Zopa answered. “You keep moving. The only thing you’ll carry is water and some food. Speed will be everything. We can stay in touch with the two-way radios when we are close enough. We will take your climbing equipment with us. Everything else stays here.”
“What if we can’t reach you on the radio?” JR asked.
“You keep moving downriver,” Zopa said. “The goal is for someone to survive this.”
IT TOOK US OVER AN HOUR to sort and divide the gear, which was good because it took our minds off Ethan’s progress, or lack thereof. We hadn’t heard a word from him since he signed off. Our team split the water between us. Ethan’s team (that’s how I thought of them) didn’t need water because they’d be able to replenish at the stream before they tackled the hill. According to the maps and photos, our team would be heading away from the stream and wouldn’t be able to get water until we reached the river at the bottom of the gorge. And to be honest, the water at the bottom of the gorge had me a bit worried because I couldn’t swim. I brought this little snag up with Zopa and Mom, suggesting that maybe I should go with the film crew and Ethan should go with them. Of course, in a small cavern, there is no such thing as privacy. Everyone got in on the conversation.
“You cannot swim?” Alessia asked.
Great.
“I can’t swim either,” Mom admitted. “We’ll go down together,” she added.
“I don’t want to climb down that gorge,” Will said. “And no offense, Peak, but I’d rather take my chance with an ex-marine, even if it means crossing the open scree again.”
“No offense taken.”
“Can you swim?” Alessia asked Zopa.
He shook his head. “Not many opportunities for a Sherpa to swim in the Himalayas.”
“As narrow as that gorge is,” Jack said, “I doubt an Olympic swimmer would be able to tread water in those rapids. In fact, if there is a boat, it will be interesting keeping it under control.”
That was a comforting thought.
“Not a problem,” Mom said. “When I was young, I made my climbing money leading white-water rafting trips.”
Yet another thing I didn’t know about her.
“You said you couldn’t swim,” Jack said.
“And you said no one could tread water in the gorge, and you’re right. But that holds true for almost all rapids. We wore life vests. It’s probably too much to hope for, but I hope the boat is fully equipped with life vests. Be assured, I will be the first—” She glanced at me. “Make that the second person to strap one on.”
I heard someone whispering in my ear. I’d forgotten that I’d left one of the buds in to listen for Ethan. I waved everyone to be quiet and pressed the talk button.
“I’m here.”
“Me too . . . or almost. The second entrance is on top. There’s an old ladder that leads down to the tunnels. Pretty easy to follow because they’ve been using the entrance. Before I poke my head into your tunnel, I need to know where your guard is, what he’s doing, and if he’s alone.”
“Hang on. This might take a while.”
“I have all the time in the world.”
I explained the situation to the others, saying that I would go down the short tunnel to check on the guards.
“I’m skinnier than you are,” Will said. “I’ll go.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“No,” Will answered. “Turn off the lights.”
We turned the lanterns off. For a second, dim light filtered through the entrance, then the cavern went completely black as Will squeezed through the narrow crack. If Will made a sound, if the guard, or guards, looked up at the wrong time, our escape hopes would be all over, and there was a good chance Will would be dead.
There was no sound except for our breathing. My eyes began to water from staring at the black entrance. I looked at my watch. A minute went by, then two, then three . . . Six minutes after he started, the dim light reappeared through the crack.
“Turn the lights on,” Will said.
He was drenched in sweat. I was too.
“He’s alone,” Will said. “Playing solitaire. Cards on his blanket. Facing the long tunnel. Headlamp on. His rifle is leaned against the wall. Pistol still strapped to his waist . . . I think.” He grabbed a water bottle and drained it.
I passed the information on to Ethan in a whisper.
“Copy that. Wish he was asleep. Guess I’ll just have to try the frontal approach.”
“What do you mean?”
“Pop out into the
tunnel wearing Afghan garb. Blind him with my headlamp. Hope he thinks I’m his partner. Take him out without making a sound. Simple. This is going to take a while. I’m at the base of the ladder so they can’t hear me. Stand by. Be ready to split. Make sure you tie down all the gear so it doesn’t rattle in the tunnel. Out.”
The two-way went silent. His rattle suggestion was a good one. My gear was already cinched down. It took fifteen minutes to silence everyone else’s gear. When we finished, we simply stood there with our packs on, staring at the crack in the wall, listening. Several more minutes passed.
“Did you hear that?” JR whispered.
I hadn’t heard anything. I looked at the others. All of them were shaking their heads.
“A thump,” JR said. “I swear I—”
Someone was coming through the entrance. He was wearing a headlamp, a rifle slung over his shoulder, a pistol tucked into his Afghan pants. Ethan. His easy smile was gone, as if he had never smiled in his life. He had blood on his hands.
“Follow me,” he whispered, harshly. “Not a word, not a cough until we get up top. Turn your headlamps off.”
I was the last to leave the cavern. I looked to my left as I stepped out of the entrance. Our guard was sitting on his blanket. His headlamp was pointed down at a deck of bloody cards.
Up Top
It’s a maze of tunnels, right, left, left, right . . . I’m completely turned around. I’m surprised Ethan remembers the way, but he does. We stop in a narrow tunnel, single file. Ethan sheds his Afghan disguise. One at a time, we climb a rickety wooden ladder, maybe twenty feet up. I’m the last to pop through the rabbit hole. We are in a grove of trees. It’s dark and cool. It feels good to be free, but the hard part is still to come . . .
ETHAN CLOSED a crudely built trapdoor over the hole in the ground.
“Get some rocks and logs,” he said. “I’d like to disable this exit if we can.”