The Ides of Matt 2015

by M. L. Buchman

  He unfolded the long aluminum pole and snapped it together so that he could test the snow before he stepped on it. Taking his ice axe firmly in his other hand, he set out at a fast clip.

  It would be best if he crossed as much territory as he could before the storm hit. The gray clouds were already flattening the light, making it hard to see just how high to raise a foot to make the next step.

  Sometimes the sun broke through the ragged southern edges of the clouds, but it soon disappeared behind the high shoulder of the mountain and he was on his own.

  That was one of the things that had drawn him to join Delta Force. Unlike the SEALs who trained in groups of four, six, and twelve as their ultimate team, Delta was trained to survive and complete the mission at all costs—even when it was just one man.

  Michael had always enjoyed the structure of the Army, but the “group think” had never fit him well. Delta, who called themselves simply The Unit, had answered much of that need within him. He trained with the very best and could slide seamlessly into any size team when required. But his favorite mode was to walk alone into the heart of a hostile city, see what had to be seen, perhaps kill who needed to be killed, and walk back out with no one the wiser.

  Counter-terrorism.

  The terrorists followed no set rules. Battlefield tactics didn’t apply. The Unit of Delta Force had been built from the ground up by its own soldiers with that in mind. When—

  He hesitated.

  Froze in place.

  Then took a careful step backward.

  His testing pole had gone too deeply into the snow ahead of him. He eased back another step and whacked the pole like a whipping cane flat against the snow ahead of him a half dozen times. The long sideways span of the slope silently disappeared from in front of him. The exposed crevasse was only a yard wide, but it would have swallowed him happily.

  He could traverse sideways looking for a crossing, which could lead him far astray from his intended path. And chew up valuable time that Charli Moore didn’t have.

  Instead he took a moment to pack the snow on his side of the crevasse and double-checked his grip on his ice axe. He used the packed snow as a sprinter’s lane, kicked hard off the rim of the gap in the glacier, and landed cleanly on two feet on the high side.

  He lunged upward onto his stomach to spread his weight and buried his ice axe as far upslope as he could.

  The snow held. He crawled a dozen paces further upslope before returning to his feet. He stood in place a moment and checked his crampons. The straps were tight and the closures were frozen in place, which was fine. He rubbed the tip of his nose through the thick balaclava for a moment to warm it up, then continued upward.

  Michael had joined the Army straight out of college at eighteen. And gone Delta as soon as they let him, at twenty-three. After five years…

  It wasn’t going stale.

  Not exactly.

  The ops were too challenging for that. The variety too interesting. But there was a sameness to it. The Unit had some of the very best soldiers on the planet and he was pretty much the top of that heap.

  That wasn’t ego.

  He reached a broad crevasse crossed by a narrow snow bridge; snow that had packed into the perfect pattern to hold shape over the gap. But would it stay there? A couple jabs with his pole were encouraging.

  His commanders said he was the best—consistently.

  He ran an ice screw into the low side of the crevasse, tied a line to it, and made a midpoint loop to attach to his harness. He crossed carefully and made it. So he ran in another ice screw well above the crevasse and tied the far end of his line to that. He then crossed once more to the low side of the bridge to recover the first ice screw, he had few to spare.

  His fellow operators always looked to him to take the lead.

  The bridge gave out on the third crossing, but he fell only a few feet before the line snapped taut. He hauled himself to the upper ice screw, recovered it, and moved ahead upslope. The fall barely registered. Little things like that didn’t when he was in the zone. You got through the mission by doing what had to be done. Whatever had to be done.

  It was fine for everyone else when you were at the head of the pack. But who was going to push him to be better? There was only so much you could do to drive your own self ahead.

  He circled a serac as big as C-130 cargo plane that was tipped so far forward it could well roll down the slope in the next gust. It was eerily quiet crossing underneath its looming mass.

  The fresh blast of needle-sharp ice crystals as he stepped from behind it only served to remind him that the storm’s hammer had hit the mountain now, with a vengeance.

  He double-checked his compass, considered how far the serac had been from the rocky outcropping of Disappointment Cleaver and knew he was off pace. He would not be up to where Charli and Fred’s lives hung in the balance before the next radio check in.

  But he’d be close.

  So would the darkness.

  6

  Mark Henderson hovered three feet above the empty football field at Enumclaw High School. They had made it flying totally blind, at least he had been blind. Richardson had kept a lookout just in case.

  But Mark had slid down the outer sun shield on his helmet’s visor and concentrated on the FLIR terrain data projected on the inside of his helmet, pretending it was pitch dark rather than a stormy evening.

  Per SOAR standards, he’d arrived within thirty seconds of the arbitrarily set time…barely. He’d have to work on that. That was one of the promises the Night Stalkers of SOAR made to their Special Operations customers, to always be there within thirty seconds of schedule…no matter where “there” was. No matter what the weather or the enemy were doing. “Landing zone is too hot” simply wasn’t in the Night Stalkers’ vocabulary.

  “Okay. Set me three geographic points. Who knows this area?”

  “There’s this crazy bike ride out here that a friend was telling me about,” Tim spoke up over the intercom. “It’s called the Rimrock or the…no, the RAMROD. It stands for Ride Around Mt. Rainier in One Day.”

  “Bike ride?” John cut in. “Hell, Tim. If your bike is so slow it can’t do that, you need to upgrade your scooter.”

  “Not motorcycle, dude. Bicycle. It’s like two hundred miles and tons of vertical climb. One hellacious lap of the mountain.”

  “I like it,” Mark decided. “Give me three target points.”

  Richardson was working the maps. “Top of Cayuse Pass.” He marked it on the display. Mark kept them hovering at three feet, steady despite the sharp gusts that slapped at him, and checked the route.

  Up the White River Canyon. Pick up route 410. Climb to the top of the pass along the road.

  “Around to Paradise on the south side.”

  Nearly due west over the lower flanks of Rainier, some good valley and ridge work there.

  “And back to base.”

  Follow the Nisqually River, shoot over Alder Lake and head home.

  “One more,” Tim suggested with a tone that Henderson was beginning to learn meant trouble. “Hit Box Canyon.”

  Ouch! Halfway between Cayuse Pass and Paradise, but at the bottom of a deep cleft carved by the Muddy Fork Cowlitz River.

  “And your max altitude for this operation,” Big John rumbled not to be outdone by his buddy, “is fifty feet…to the top of your rotor.”

  “C’mon, dude. You got a death wish asking the man to do that?”

  And Mark knew at that moment he was committed to it. And the next moment he realized that had been exactly Tim’s intent with his complaint. He was definitely going to have to watch out for this pair.

  But he couldn’t turn away from the challenge or he’d lose face as their commander; totally unacceptable.

  Top of rotor below fifty feet meant keeping his wheels below forty. Thro
ugh canyon switchbacks, winding passes, and unpredictable weather.

  He had to admit that it was a good challenge; now to make sure it wasn’t a lethal one.

  “Thirty minutes between each point, Richardson.” At full speed, straight flight, he could make each target in under fifteen minutes, but he wanted to nail the height limit as well.

  Mark double-checked his fuel, engine temp, and all of the other readings that were his copilot’s responsibility. All green and good to go. “I want to hit each arrival plus or minus twenty-five seconds.” It wasn’t like the big eight-hundred mile Black Route training loops that were a standard part of SOAR training, but it would definitely be a challenge.

  “Start the timer…now.”

  Mark shoved the cyclic forward to tip the nose down for speed and pulled up on the collective just enough to not eat the goal post at the end of the football field, though his wheels passed between the uprights.

  “I’d suggest hanging on back there.”

  7

  Michael arrived at the head of Disappointment Cleaver as full dark and the first big slam of the storm arrived together. He’d had to pull his second ice axe to make sure he always had one buried in the snow so that he wasn’t blown away.

  Charli had missed the one-hour check in and it was a grueling twenty more minutes before he reached her position. And another ten before he found her in the minimal visibility afforded by his headlamp.

  She was barely conscious when he arrived and was difficult to rouse from her stupor. When he did, she hugged him and then she wept. The tears froze on her face and would have sealed her eyes shut if Michael hadn’t brushed them clear quickly with his bare fingers.

  She’d been telling the truth about being secure. The various lines leading from the ice screw and the piton in the rock face down to her brother all met at her harness. So while she hadn’t been under any stress, she’d been solidly pinned against the snow and wholly unable to shift out of the wind or exercise her legs.

  She’d kept her arms moving and wore a balaclava, as he did, but her legs had no feeling up past the knees. She needed to get into a hospital fast if she didn’t want to be losing toes, feet, or even worse. Her words were already slurring though he couldn’t tell if that was hypothermia or altitude sickness.

  In minutes he had a Z-harness rigged and was levering Fred Moore back up from the crevasse. He didn’t want to think about what he’d find, but it wasn’t as if he had a choice.

  Except Fred wasn’t coming. The rope went taut—and stopped.

  Michael rigged a descending harness from the extra lines Charli had draped about her and lowered himself into the crevasse.

  The line between the brother and sister had been fifty feet long, about five feet too long for poor Fred. His head had shattered and the blood had frozen to the ice.

  Michael sat there for a long moment. In a war zone, you left no man behind. But in a civilian zone like a winter blizzard on Rainier he was less sure? If Michael simply cut the line, the chances of the body being discovered in the next thousand years was minimal until he spilled out in the Muddy Fork Cowlitz River at the base of the creeping glacier. Did Charli, if she lived, really need to see her brother’s battered body?

  That was assuming that he could keep her alive to get her off the mountain.

  Michael kept the dead body company while he dangled close above it and quickly considered the options.

  The woman certainly couldn’t walk down.

  He had a bivy bag that would only fit one person. If Charli and Fred had a tent or sleeping bags, they weren’t on their packs. They must still be down at Camp Muir; they’d thought to go light for a fast strike at the summit and a quick return. Pretty standard even if it hadn’t worked out this time.

  He could rig a sledge, but the dozen or more hours that would require to get her down the mountain safely would be a cruel torture and probably kill any chance for her survival.

  Old adage: when all the options suck, come up with a new option.

  As gently as he could, he used his axe to chip Fred free of the ice. Then he pulled the parka hood up and over the missing chunk of his skull and snugged the front closure as tight as he could until only a scarf-covered nose showed through. Then he hauled himself back to the surface.

  Charli was too far out of it to ask about her brother, so he pulled out his radio.

  The park rangers could be of no help here. He did reach them on a patch-through to Crystal Mountain Ski Resort a couple of peaks to the east. There the signal wasn’t blocked by the mass of Disappointment Cleaver.

  Michael was relieved that the park rangers had met the older couple most of the way down from Camp Muir and gotten them off the mountain. There was no chance of them setting out again in time to help him.

  Well, he might be sitting in what the park rangers clearly thought was a hopeless position. But they lived in a different world than he did.

  Michael had long since crossed over into the military world and could see how that completely overlaid the civilian one. It had a network of lines that connected as thoroughly as highways and airlines connected civilians. The American military and its allies formed a complete second layer all over the globe that was mostly invisible—unless you knew how to access it.

  Time to try that next layer out.

  He switched his radio over to the military radio band.

  If that didn’t work, he had a satellite radio. It was more typically used for calling in airstrikes, but it would do the job of checking all options if the first one didn’t pan out.

  He began transmitting on the military emergency frequency.

  8

  “We’ve got a Mayday on 243,” Richardson spoke up.

  Henderson slid to a halt inches above the road in the heart of Cayuse Pass and grinned at the clock. Twenty-four seconds early. He was inside his time window.

  Full dark had set in and—Shit!

  He yanked up on the collective barely in time to clear a truck that had decided to cross the pass at that moment. He wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised.

  “Give me audio,” he said to cover his nerves.

  “Roger, Mayday,” Mark kept his voice steady. “This is a Black Hawk out of Fort Lewis-McChord,” he certainly wasn’t giving his ID to some unknown. “How may we assist?”

  “I have a civilian at twelve thousand feet who needs immediate evac to hospital. Plus one.”

  No need to explain the “Plus one.” Plus one corpse.

  The guy on the far end of the radio call continued, “Winds currently gusting seven-five to one-one-zero estimated. Temp steady at minus thirty. Visibility under ten feet in driving ice and snow. Can you assist?” The wind howled over his headset while the guy’s transmit key was down. No question about mishearing the wind speeds aloft.

  The silence on the intercom was deafening after he keyed off. What kind of a crazy bastard was doing a search-and-rescue in those kinds of conditions? The guy was sitting in the middle of a Category 2 hurricane.

  Mark considered. He had wanted to prove that a DAP Hawk of the 5D could go anywhere and do anything. Hadn’t he wished for that just an hour or two ago while standing safely on the tarmac at Fort Lewis?

  Twelve thousand feet in the midst of a kick-ass, hurricane-force storm.

  What ultimately decided him was one word, “Civilian.”

  Based on the frequency and the way he spoke, there was a military man on top of that mountain asking for his assistance. And the military’s job was to—

  “Roger, Mayday. This is—”

  Mark released the mike switch. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to announce himself over the radio. “Richardson. Where is this guy? Do you have a vector?” A sharp gust over the pass caused his finger to bump the transmit button and send the last word.

  “—vector.”

  “Roger
, Viper. Mayday is at,” and he rattled off GPS coordinates that Richardson keyed down for him.

  Viper? Mark had said “vector” but over the wind’s roar it was miracle they could understand each other at all. Mark also noted that the guy still wasn’t identifying himself.

  Any normal soldier would do so. Even Green Beret.

  Whoever this was had to be extremely well trained to be doing a rescue in this weather and yet wasn’t transmitting his identity. That meant only one thing: Special Operations—the standard customers of the Night Stalkers.

  And he needed their help.

  “Okay guys,” Mark called over the intercom. “Dress warm. This elevator is going up.” The DAP Hawk was hovering at forty-six hundred feet in Cayuse Pass headed for twelve thou.

  “Women’s lingerie,” Tim started in as they climbed.

  “Bowling jerseys, jockstraps, and tap shoes,” Big John joined in.

  Mark tuned them out as they continued calling out more and more outrageous items.

  He considered the best plan of attack as he climbed clear of the trees and ridges and turned west. Staying low had been a rough ride up to Cayuse Pass through all the gusts. Up here the air was smoother, somewhat…and blowing him south like a son of a bitch. He carved harder to the north in order to aim straight west.

  The DAP bucked in a sharp curl of wind and dropped two hundred feet before he could find clear air for the rotors to get a good bite. He added another thousand feet to his altitude, and it got worse.

  Low, Mark muttered to himself. It was crazy, but it was what they had just been practicing. Come in low. Close enough to the ground that the worst of the winds were passing above you.

  “No rescue basket down to this guy,” he called back to the crew chiefs who were off in some strange shopping land of elf hats, reindeer girdles, and replacement runners for your sleigh. “If the wind catches it, it will just brain him. Long line off the winch. If he can catch it, we’ll trust to their climbing harnesses. And wrap it in glow sticks. They aren’t going to be able to see shit out there.”