by Ryder Stacy
Rockson took it all in while tying up the hybrids to nearby posts. Rath tried to lighten the mood momentarily by admiring their tremendous bounty of bear meat, but Rockson was scarcely listening. It sounded like everything that could be done was being done—but he had to see for himself. Besides, it would be good for the men’s morale up there in that freezing hell to have Rock join them. A leader should be with his men in the best and worst of times.
In an hour he was suited up in nylon double-insulated climbing gear, spiked boots and goggles. He and another ten-man team headed across the two sparsely wooded meadows that separated Century City from the midway point up Ice Mountain. Ice Mountain—19,890 feet high, the top several thousand feet sheer rock face. There was a field of glacial ice atop it exposed to the harsh sunlight virtually every day. The very next peak over, about a mile, from the mountain beneath which Century City was built, the Freefighters had realized almost a decade earlier that it was the perfect spot for a solar generating unit. Small at first, consisting of just a few cells, the power unit had been built up over the years until it supplied nearly seventy-five percent of the city’s power. A far better situation than when they had to use gas-powered generators which meant raids on Red gasoline-truck convoys weekly and a tremendous loss of life. The solar plant had made them independent for the first time. It had been a milestone in the history of Century City. And there the unit had been humming away until the crash.
Rock and the climbing squad, loaded down with both climbing tools and packs filled with emergency repair equipment, reached the top tree line of Ice Mountain within an hour. Then they climbed up a slowly steepening ridge for a good two hours more. Finally they reached the base of the fifteen hundred feet—a wall of rock towered straight up above them, rising like an impossibility into the clouds.
Rock immediately saw the spikes that the other climbers had left in the sheer rock face. Foot holds, and eye sockets for securing their nylon climbing ropes. The wind howled around their bundled ears. Pockets of snow were already falling on the team, ice forming so rapidly on their equipment and goggles that there was the immediate danger of being weighed down, of losing balance.
Rock went first, tethered to Carruthers, Sanchez, Moore and the rest by thin but ultrastrong thousand-pound test climbing rope. Each man was connected to the next. If one slipped, it was the other’s desperate duty to pull him back or perish. That’s the way Freefighters were in all endeavors—they would never let a buddy down. Soon they were moving smoothly if slowly up the side of the nuclear-bomb-created mountain. Rock would follow the holds already made, secure himself at the next possible ledge, tie a safety rope on, and head further up. He knew the team, equipped with laser cutting tools, had to reach the peak soon. Without the tools the job would take until daybreak—and in the daytime the repair crews would certainly be spotted by either the drones or Red planes searching for wreckage. And the fogger couldn’t be used. Fog never existed naturally that high up during the day. The Russians would notice the aberration and send a massive force to annihilate the repair crews—and trace the cables back to the city. He pushed himself harder.
They climbed and climbed, the icy wind howling louder and louder, screaming like a pack of frost wolves in their ears. Occasionally they rested against the rock wall to hyperventilate, a trick the Freefighters had learned called Swant’s Breath. It opened their lungs to full capacity, enabling them to take in more oxygen and go without the cumbersome masks and tanks. At these heights even the toughened American lungs needed some assistance.
Rock was just reaching up for the next handhold when he felt a sudden jerk that nearly pulled him backwards. Carruthers, twelve feet below him, let out a muffled scream as he slipped and fell off the face of the mountain, only to be pulled short after only a five foot drop by the rope connected to Rock and the others. The second man reached out and grabbed hold of a spike and reattached himself, antlike, to the wall of the mountain. They continued on, through the howling wind, ice forming on gloves and goggles. Below Rockson was 5,670 feet of empty air. Above him was the most difficult part of the steep climb. The famed challenge called The Top Face had to be climbed “clean,” without driving steel pitons into the cliff wall, because the rock was a basalt-mica formation and the metal wedges would wiggle free in just seconds. For anchors and fall-stoppers, Rockson began using only the aluminum wedges and nuts that he and the team had dangling from their climbing belts. The aluminum jobs could be popped in and out of the numerous—and more sturdy—cracks with the fingers. On such devices, no larger than a finger nail, they were staking their lives and the hopes of Century City.
After nearly a half hour of muscle-numbing climbing, straining every fiber in their bodies, the team was in sight of the fogged summit. But from here on in, it would take every ounce of energy they had left. They stopped momentarily and chewed the cactus extract, a mild stimulant that gave them a carbohydrate boost. They could not afford the luxury of resting for more than a minute. If the wind should pick up or if a Red search plane dropped too low . . . The engineer who maintained the solar power units usually came around the mountain via a trail going up a fairly navigable route. But that took almost a full day, another luxury the repair crews didn’t have.
Rockson started up again, looking up the rock wall for any little opening for support. He found a winding eighth-of-an-inch crack that meandered along the face for about twenty feet. It was deeper than he could see into. He picked a tiny aluminum wedge from his belt clips and threaded a loop of rope through its eyelet. He threaded the wedge into the crack and tugged hard on it, as hard as he could. Solid. It would have to hold Rock’s full weight if he fell, and the others behind him if they should slip after him. Rockson took his pickax and snagged another, wider crack overhead and pulled himself up.
There were, unfortunately, no “chimneys” on this side of the mountain. That meant none of the crack systems led to a crevice wide enough to rest in, or to use to continue the ascent by pressing against the sides with shoulders, back, arms. The team had to use sheer muscle every inch of the way.
Much of a climb is reflective and silent. You can hear the wind, and you can hear grunts and breathing—but usually just of your own straining breath. However if you pause you can hear the others. It is a strange cacophony, those breaths and grunts. All you are aware of is that each moment is a lifetime in itself—or the moment of a death fall.
Rockson never felt so much like an ant dangling on a gossamer string as he did at these dizzying heights. And he had never seen strong men like Carruthers and Sanchez, coming up below him, look so fatigued. They pushed on ever upwards toward the dome of heaven itself. The moon set and pierced rapierlike through quick-flying narrow lines of clouds. It was growing darker by the minute though as bigger cumulus rumblers came pushing in from the west, meaning even greater menace. A slip or a rock fall at this time would mean disaster. Curse the damn Reds for their stupid luck.
Only the sheer tenacity of the American will to live enabled the whole team to reach the top safely. In the dimness of the green lights undetectable to the drones, amidst the rolling waves of fog from the four foggers that had been set up at the corners of the peak, the previous crews were solemnly working. Rock and the climbers stumbled over, almost wheezing as they tried to catch their breath.
“Here, we’ve got a lot of that fancy stuff you need—laser torches and metal-cutting clips,” Rock said to Saunders, the head of the repair crews, who stood supervising the demolition of the main piece of crashed ramjet.
“Thanks, Rock,” Saunders said, his body and half his face covered in a thick, green down parka. “Tell your men to take all their equipment over there to Sturges by the tent we’ve erected. He’s handling materials.” The rest of the team hustled over as quickly as their freezing legs and cramped muscles would carry them, praying that somehow there was hot coffee inside the dimly lit storage tent.
“Looks like you’ve actually got things slightly under control,” Rock said, glan
cing around at the frantically working crews. Then he got the bad news.
“Rock, I wanted to give you thirty seconds to catch your breath,” Saunders said grimly, “but something terrible has happened. One of the crews, climbing over to the lower glacial peak about a mile over that way to check for more wreckage, was captured by a Blackshirt patrol just an hour ago. Fiden was watching with binoculars and saw it happen. Two choppers just popped out of the sky and surrounded the men. They didn’t have a chance without weapons and were taken. The Reds didn’t see us—and had no reason to think there was anyone else. Poor bastards. Armstrong, Smith, Gilhooley, Fitz and Scranton. They’ll all be tortured to death for sure.”
Rockson didn’t let on that the situation was far worse than that. With the new Mind Breakers, the five captured Freefighters might, would, talk. Century City would be just a smoldering memory like Westfort within twenty-four hours.
“Keep working,” Rock said. “Don’t let the men slack off or get depressed because of the capture. You’ve got your job to do, I’ve got mine.”
The situation was critical. They couldn’t use flags to contact Century City, as they often did on routine missions up the mountain. With the moon totally hidden behind ever bigger clouds and the beginning of more snow, the flags would be totally invisible, even to ground watchers with binocs. To wait until dawn could mean disaster. Rock had to get the message to Century City—and there had to be a rapid hit on the Stalinville KGB prison, where the men would have been taken, before the Mind Breakers made them spill their city’s location. Rock was the inevitable choice to lead such a team. He would have to somehow get back down the mountain fast, deliver the message of doom and assemble the Attack Force. But how the hell could he do it? It would take twice as long to get down as it had to get up. And it was ten times as dangerous on the descent, especially in the dark, when handholds and footholds were always below one in the shadows, instead of upslope at eye level.
There had to be a way, had to. He glanced around the plateau on which the crews worked feverishly. If only he had a parakite or— Wait a minute! The Russian airlifter ramjet’s wreckage—the Reds had huge paragliders built into the wing sections of their large craft, so the planes could glide down to earth in case of trouble. This time the thing hadn’t worked. Rock went to the main piece of wreckage. There! Red pieces of fabric in the snow, about fifty feet to the side of the hulking engine. A paraglider—slightly damaged but nothing unmendable. Could it be adapted for him?
Rock quickly got several of the repair crew to help him mend the tears in the fabric with an instantly bonding glue that was used in the solar panel installation. Within minutes the contraption was as good as new. Looking much like a hang glider of the days of old, Rock had the men quickly weld a bar across the underside of the kite-shaped nylon wing. He had the men help him carry it to the edge of the peak and strapped himself in, tying his legs to the steel struts beneath. It was as good as it could get.
“All right,” Rock said, holding on to the sides of the paraglider, with a wingspan of ten feet. “Give me a push and pray for me, boys.” The men around Rock looked at each other and then back at their top fighter. The paraglider dwarfed the man under it.
“You sure, Rock?” Saunders asked. “I mean, this—”
“If the Reds get the wrong info out of our captured men, we’ll all be dead by tomorrow morning. There’s nothing to lose, everything to gain. So push me off, boys.”
With two men holding each wing and two behind, they maneuvered the paraglider to the very edge of the four thousand foot drop, straight down—and pushed.
Rock was falling. The glider wasn’t catching the air, but just dropping like a stone. He had to change the angle of descent. He kicked his legs hard and managed to flip the nose of the nylon glider up. Suddenly the wings filled with freezing air and the craft began gliding. Wobbly at first, Rock quickly figured out how to shift his weight from side to side or kick his legs to make the strange man-sized kite respond. He could see almost immediately that he couldn’t make a direct descent, the angle of the trajectory would make the wings lose their currents of air. No, he’d have to circle around, slowly dropping down. The thin, icy air burned his lungs with cold.
The moon suddenly came out, peeking from behind an opening in the clouds and Rock took a quick look at the bright panorama below him. There, he could see Century City’s Mount Carson, towering to the right, and all the woods and valleys spreading off in every direction. God, it was beautiful. He felt his mind getting tired. The air. It was too thin, he’d have to dive quickly.
He came to about a thousand feet down, nearly careening into a rock ledge. He must have blacked out for a second. He shifted his weight with a wild lurch and the paraglider banked to the right, only feet from a projecting cliff. But now he was heading in the wrong direction. Where the hell was everything? He dropped lower and lower, in wide concentric circles, until he saw Vulture’s Peak, which was just above one of the city’s entrances. He maneuvered in that direction, making fine adjustments with his legs and shoulders, zeroing in. At last he was only fifty feet above the ground, having narrowly missed several trees along the ridge. How in blazes do you stop this thing? he suddenly wondered. He tried several maneuvers to slow it down, and finally settled for what he hoped was the right approach—pulling up at the last instant. The snowbanked slope on the southern side of Vulture’s Peak was suddenly upon him. He slid his legs from the tubing and kicked down suddenly, pulling the nose of the paraglider straight up. He landed like a drunken pigeon, crashing into an eight foot drift of cushioning snow.
“I’m alive,” Rock said, standing up, half disbelieving he had pulled it off. But the Survivor had beaten the odds once again. He walked quickly toward the hidden entrance to the city on shaky legs, frozen, red-eyed, his lungs rasping from the descent. But he had saved time, valuable time that the rescue mission would need.
Sixteen
Rockson stormed into the Council chamber, beside himself with rage at the taking of the prisoners. It could turn into a disaster. The fifty-man Council was in session, debating emergency procedures to deal with the present solar power crisis. The large chamber was lit by flickering light bulbs strung up haphazardly around the walls, powered by a groaning old gasoline generator that had been dug up from supplies.
All eyes turned toward the sweaty, clothes-torn Rock, his eyes blazing with a mad fire as he made his way to the podium of the oval-shaped chamber.
“Members of the Council,” he began immediately without waiting to be recognized. “I have just returned from the salvage operations on Ice Mountain and I have terrible news to report. Five of our men, including Armstrong, were captured by Blackshirts and flown to Stalinville. We all know what awaits them there, the poor bastards. We must immediately mount a rescue operation—an attack. It’s not just their lives I’m thinking of,” Rock continued, scanning the Council members as he spoke, “but with this new Mind Breaker machine the Reds have, these men will talk. We already know they made Preston talk and we saw what the result of that was.”
A chorus of loud voices met his words. From “Yes, let’s get the bastards” to “No, we must wait.” Immediately the Council members began arguing among themselves. Composed of twenty-nine men and twenty-one women, the Council members were fiercely democratic, debating all issues with a vigor and loudness that sometimes appeared to degenerate into a free-for-all. But it worked!
“There isn’t time for bullshit,” Rock said, his nostrils flaring. “Every minute could mean the difference between life and death for every man, woman and child in Century City.”
“Now, just a minute, Rock,” an elderly man, Councilman Rostas, spoke out. “This is a democratic council. All decisions must be approved by a vote. No man—even you—can just come in here and dictate what we must do!”
“Well then, goddamn it, debate and vote,” Rockson shouted back. “But let’s get on with it!” He stepped down from the podium and, glaring at the Council, threw himse
lf down in one of the front rows of circular seats that ringed the central, raised platform of the chamber.
Councilman Rostas, as the eldest member of the Council, was given the protocol of speaking first. He rose slowly and walked with a stately dignity that he had cultivated over the years to the redwood podium, coughed several times to get some quiet and addressed the chamber.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Council, we have all heard Mr. Rockson’s request for an attack on Stalinville. Now without belittling The Ultimate American,” he said, with the slightest trace of a sneer, “I do believe that his demand is impulsive, reckless and dangerous.” The Council members exploded into a series of bellowing shouting matches for and against the line of the councilman. “Now, you all know my position. I have long believed that an accommodation can be worked out with the Russians. After all, our Free Cities are functioning quite smoothly even in the midst of their occupation. They can’t get us and we can’t get them. I’m sure that were we to try to deal with them rationally, they would be only too willing to settle things. We could both share this land. It’s big enough. They’re wasting billions of rubles every year fighting us. I believe, therefore, that to attack Stalinville now would be the height of foolishness and would precipitate a violent counterattack, not just against us but perhaps the Free Cities all over America.”
