Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  OLD IRONSIDES

  © 2016 Dean Crawford

  Published: February 2nd, 2016

  ASIN: B01BCUD3LY

  Publisher: Fictum Ltd

  The right of Dean Crawford to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  Dean Crawford Books

  Also by Dean Crawford:

  The Warner & Lopez Series

  The Nemesis Origin, The Fusion Cage

  The Identity Mine, The Black Knight

  The Atlantia Series

  Survivor, Retaliator

  Aggressor, Endeavour, Defiance

  The Ethan Warner Series

  Covenant, Immortal, Apocalypse

  The Chimera Secret, The Eternity Project

  Independent novels

  Eden, Holo Sapiens

  Revolution, Soul Seekers

  I

  Mount Harvard,

  Colorado

  Present Day

  ‘We won’t make it!’

  Nathan Ironside heard his friend’s cry of despair above the howling gale that tore across the mountainside. The buffeting winds hammered against his thick winter jacket, whipping snow in a horizontal blur across his field of vision in the rapidly fading light.

  ‘Hold firm!’ Nathan yelled back, one gloved hand grasping a safety line that dangled from the edge of a precipice above him. ‘One hand at a time!’

  Grant Rogers, five years Nathan’s junior and an experienced climber in his own right, spun in mid-air twenty feet below Nathan, the screaming winds tugging at his body as he dangled on the safety line that had broken away from the rocky mountainside. Beneath Grant was a plunging abyss that vanished into thick roiling clouds scudding across the barren wilderness. Fourteen thousand feet beneath them, the plains of Colorado State stretched for endless miles in every direction beneath tumbling blankets of dark cloud.

  Nathan held onto the safety line, which was looped through his own belt and down toward Grant. Above, the precipice rubbed at the thick cord, which was anchored in place by another belaying pin that Nathan fervently hoped was better secured than the last.

  Grant began reaching for the line, groping wildly in the brutal winds that screamed like wild horses across the mountainside. The light was fading fast, Nathan squinting through his goggles to keep one eye on his partner as he scrambled to right himself and start ascending to the safety of the ledge above them.

  ‘That’s it!’ Nathan yelled encouragement. ‘One hand at a time, stay upright!’

  The wind seemed to snatch his voice away from him and tried to drag the very air from his lungs as he held on grimly to the line. The temptation to climb up to the ledge ahead of his partner was almost overwhelming, but Nathan knew that his extra body weight on the line was helping to stabilize them. One false move, or if he took his chances and ascended onto the ledge, his partner would be left to fight against the screaming gale alone.

  Grant hauled himself up toward Nathan, one hand over the other, one leg hooked around the line below him to stop the violent wind from spinning him like a weather vane. He looked up and although Nathan could see the fear in his friend’s eyes through the ice-frosted goggles he wore, Grant nodded in a gesture for Nathan to continue upward.

  Nathan turned and hauled himself up the line, the torn remains of their main line writhing nearby like a deadly snake in the gale as he pulled himself up one agonizing effort at a time until the ledge was within his grasp. Nathan checked over his shoulder and saw Grant just behind him, his head down as he focused on moving and ignoring the horrific abyss below them.

  In the fading light a blinding flash of lightning burst from the tumbling clouds and illuminated the landscape around them. Nathan felt a plunging sense of horror at the ferocity of the storm raging through the atmosphere, black clouds tumbling thick and fast amid flares of lightning and the hail and snow whipping through the air like tiny spears that would shred the skin from their faces if not for the protective gear they wore. He could hear the icy particles rustling against his jacket as they battered him, and with one last weary effort he dragged himself over the edge of the precipice and rolled clear.

  Nathan kept one hand on the line and then leaned back over to see Grant almost within reach. The cable was dangerously frayed as Nathan leaned further over and reached out one gloved hand for his friend.

  ‘The line’s gone!’

  His voice seemed almost mute, torn from him by the fierce wind and Grant did not hear him, his head still down in his laborious ascent against gravity and everything else nature was hurling at them with all her considerable strength.

  ‘Grant, grab my hand!’

  Grant did not look up and Nathan saw the line suddenly quiver as its bonds failed and the jagged rocks bit deep into the cable.

  ‘Grant!’

  Nathan grabbed a small stone from beside him on the ledge and then dropped it toward Grant’s head. The stone thumped into his hood and Grant looked up in surprise, his eyes wide as Nathan reached out for him. The cable snapped with a crack that was audible even above the roar of the wind, and Nathan saw the safety line coil away from them as Grant’s gloved hand slapped against his.

  Nathan almost slid over the edge as he took his friend’s weight in one hand. Grant was a hundred eighty pounds, big for such a young guy and Nathan felt pain lance into his ribs as he hung on tight.

  ‘My wrist!’ he yelled.

  Grant was already moving as his free hand swung up to grab Nathan’s wrist, relinquishing the weaker hold he had on his gloved hand. Nathan held on grimly as Grant gyrated in the winds hammering the mountainside, and then he got one studded boot into the rocky surface of the mountain as Nathan pulled with all his strength.

  Grant pushed upward and his arms slapped down across the ledge alongside Nathan, one leg swinging up as he dragged himself from the abyss and rolled onto his back, his clothes coated in frost and ice and his breath puffing even through the thermal balaclava he wore.

  Nathan lay for several long moments, trying to recapture his breath and ignore the pain in his ribs as he looked up at the turbulent sky. The sleet whipped by in a frenzy of vortexes and straight lines, the clouds around them almost black now as they closed their grip on the mountains. Both he and Grant had known the risks prior to setting out that morning, but the storm front had closed in much faster than forecast and with far greater strength. The last report via their satellite phone had identified a super cell forming over the plains to the south, a gigantic thunderstorm that would eventually be broken up by the mountain ranges upon which they were now trapped. Clearly, Nathan reflected, the storm wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

  He rolled onto his side and saw Grant looking at him through his goggles.

  ‘Remind me to thank you for a wonderful weekend!’ Nathan yelled above the wind.

  Grant smiled faintly but did not reply and Nathan checked his watch, the face frosted with ice.

  ‘We’re here for the night!’ he shouted. ‘Better set up camp while we can!’

  Nathan rolled onto all fours, careful not to stand up and expose his body to the full force of the gale tearing along the mountain as he shuffled out of his rucksack and detached his bedroll and a compact tent. It would not offer much protection against the cold, but any kind of cover was preferable to remaining exposed on the remote ledge, and one look around him was enough to confirm that the rock was sturdy enough to pin the tent down.

  Grant got onto all fours alongside him, and together they erected the small two-man tent, hammering steel pins down into the solid rock to secure it. The fabric of such tents was to all intents impossible to tear, strong enough to bear
even the ferocious storm that surrounded them, but even so Nathan took the extra time and effort to fasten fresh safety lines into the rock and clip them to his belt. The line that had originally failed them had become inadvertently wedged into a fissure that neither of them could have seen, perhaps carved out by the endless freezing of water seeping inside that had weakened the rock. Nathan took extra care to secure the lines and test them as best he could before both he and Grant crawled exhausted into the tent and sealed the entrance.

  The interior was a haven after hours of torment by the winds, and although it flapped and rumbled as it was assaulted by the gale it seemed almost silent in comparison.

  ‘First light, we climb back down and we don’t come back until summer,’ Grant gasped as he hauled off his goggles and mask. ‘What the hell happened?’

  Nathan knew that his partner wasn’t referring to the broken line.

  ‘The mother of all thunderstorms,’ he replied. ‘Only way you’re going to get lightning and hail in the same place. Massive updrafts, low temperatures, black as night. Even airliners won’t go through them; they go over or around instead.’

  ‘Sat right over us,’ Grant murmured in reply and fished out two vaccum-packed meals as Nathan pulled out a small burner stove. ‘Damn it, I’d already paid for our hotel rooms.’

  Nathan smiled as he lit the stove and rubbed his sore hands together.

  ‘Never trust nature to do what she says she’s going to do,’ he replied as they dropped the sachets into water that Nathan poured into a small tin pan to boil. ‘Let’s just get this down us, get some rest and go home tomorrow. You can explain to my boss why I’m not at the precinct – I was too busy saving your sorry ass.’

  Grant shook his head and rolled his eyes, but Nathan could see that Grant was all too aware of the close call they’d had. The smile faded.

  ‘Thanks, man.’

  Nathan nodded and began unpacking his bedroll as they waited for the food to heat up.

  *

  It was the cold that awoke him. That and the absolute silence.

  Nathan’s eyes opened and for a brief moment he thought that he had gone blind for he could see nothing but utter blackness. He made to reach to his side to unclip a flashlight from his belt but his arm barely moved. The skin on his face felt taut and his eyelashes seemed partially stuck together.

  Nathan forced his arm to move as though he’d slept badly upon it and trapped a nerve, and slowly it reached down for the flashlight, his fingers numb and clumsy. He did not have the strength to unclip the flashlight so he switched it on where it was.

  Light filled the tent, a blue-white glow that to Nathan’s surprise illuminated ice crystals coating the interior. Nathan’s breath billowed in white clouds in the glow and he turned his head slowly to look at Grant. His friend lay in silence, asleep. Nathan stared at him for a moment, his own breath billowing before him, and then he realized that Grant wasn’t breathing.

  ‘Grant!’

  Nathan’s cry was a faint whisper as though even his vocal chords were frozen. He rolled over in his sleeping bag, heard the crunch of frost beneath him as he reached out with one numb arm and tried to shake Grant awake. He felt a pulse of horror as he realized that Grant’s face was solid, as though carved from the same ancient granite as Mount Harvard.

  Nathan felt tears pinch at the corners of his eyes and then the pain sharpened as they froze in place. Two words flashed instantly through his mind. Get moving!

  Nathan forced himself out of his sleeping bag, his joints aching with the cold and his breath coming in fits and starts as his heart struggled. The tent was too small to get upright, so he fumbled with the zipper at the entrance and yanked it down before stumbling outside, the flashlight whipping this way and that as he forced his legs to stretch out and allow him to stand upright. Nathan raised his arms outstretched either side of him and began pumping them up and down as he crouched and then straightened again, repeating the movements over and over as he fought to get his body generating heat from within. He was so completely absorbed with the task of surviving that it took him several moments to notice the night sky.

  Slowly, his movements ceased as he stared up in amazement.

  All around the mountains the air was crystal clear, but he could see flashes of lighting in the ring of turbulent clouds that surrounded Mount Harvard. The wall of cloud soared upward to dizzying heights, sixty, maybe seventy thousand feet into the stratosphere, and as Nathan stared up he could see veils of wispy cloud tumbling down from the frigid heights and spilling like angel’s wings into the central low pressure vault of the weather system, the heart of the storm where all was calm, like a hurricane.

  Nathan knew that all thunderstorm clouds, known as cumulonimbus, grew to heights above twenty thousand feet and up to thirty five thousand feet was typical, but the ones he could see now were something else. The more intense ones continued upwards until they hit the top of the troposphere, called the tropopause. Since penetrating into the stratosphere takes a lot of energy, many cumulonimbus clouds flatten out on the tropopause into the classic anvil shape with the tip streaming off downwind. If the storm is unusually intense, the updraft may punch into the stratosphere in cauliflower-like turrets. These “trop busters” were usually severe storms with internal updrafts perhaps exceeding a hundred miles per hour. Over Colorado the tops of the stronger storms could range up to seventy thousand feet from spring through summer, and from north to south.

  Nathan saw specks of light catching the flashlight beam all around him like fireflies. They filled the air in countless millions, and as he peered closer to them he saw a metallic glint reflected off the surface, as though the air were filled with billions of miniature ball bearings.

  Nathan looked up again at the stars above, as though the sky had opened to the bitter vacuum of space itself, and then in the flashlight glow he saw his own breath billow outward once again, filled with the countless metallic spheres.

  Nathan whirled and dashed back inside the tent, zipping it closed once more as he sat in the silence and looked down at Grant. From somewhere nearby he heard the wall of cloud coming closer, like a giant black fist closing in on the mountain, and then the winds plowed into the tent again and Nathan huddled down and hoped against hope that he could survive the rest of the night.

  ***

  II

  Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center,

  Colorado

  Six months later

  So this is the day that I die.

  Nathan Ironside sat in the rear of a luxury Limousine that cruised silently through the streets of Salida, the soaring Rocky Mountains as ever the backdrop to the small town that he had grown up in. The sun was setting behind them, the sky as bright as molten metal as the long mountain shadows crept upon Salida and swallowed it whole.

  ‘Almost there now.’

  Opposite Nathan sat his wife, Angela, and alongside her their daughter, Amira. The pretty seven year old stared wide eyed at Nathan, a reflection of the fear that he felt coursing through his own veins. He smiled, winked at her and saw a ghost of a smile returned his way.

  The limousine pulled into the medical center and stopped alongside the sidewalk. Angela got out with Amira, who remained silent, and moments later Nathan’s door opened and an orderly with a wheelchair positioned himself so that Nathan could clamber out with his wife’s help. He slumped into the seat, exhausted even by such a minor task, as Angela handed him his oxygen. Nathan closed his eyes and breathed deeply, but these days even the oxygen helped him little and he knew that he had only hours left.

  ‘How you doin’, kiddo?’

  Nathan opened his eyes and saw his father, Gerry, clap him gently on the shoulder with one thick hand, although more gently now than he used to. Nathan was the picture of his father, or more correctly he had been once before the illness, before all of this. Tall, square jawed and with thick wavy light brown hair, father and son alike were of a robust nature common to Colorado menfolk.
Had been, Nathan corrected himself again.

  ‘I’m good, dad,’ he rasped in reply.

  Gerry had lost weight, although not as much as Nathan, and his eyes seemed a little grayer than before, his smile a little weaker.

  ‘Up an’ at ‘em,’ he encouraged as he took the handles of the wheelchair. ‘This ain’t nothin’ but a pit stop, right son?’

  Nathan managed a nod. ‘Right, dad.’

  A small hand clutched hold of his, and Nathan turned to see Amira walking alongside him as Gerry guided the wheelchair into the center where a group of doctors awaited. They greeted Nathan and led the way to a private suite where a bed awaited. Nathan prepared himself, and then Gerry and Angela lifted him gently out of the wheelchair and set him down on the bed. Nathan shuffled into a comfortable position before he looked up at the doctors.

  ‘Okay, are you ready?’ Gerry asked.

  Nathan looked at Angela and Amira, their blonde hair identically cut and styled, their eyes equally wide and stricken, and it was tough not to let the grief overwhelm him as he lay on the bed, his body weakened and ravaged by a sickness that nobody understood and nobody could cure.

  They had said their goodbyes the night before, in private at his father’s ranch. Nathan’s mother, Rachel, could not bring herself to join them this evening and had remained at home.

  ‘I’ll see you in a while,’ Nathan whispered to little Amira.

  Amira hurried across to him and threw her arms about his neck. Nathan managed to lift one arm and return the embrace, smelled the soft scent of his daughter’s hair and felt the hot trickle of tears on his neck as she squeezed him tight.

  ‘See you in a while, crocodile,’ Amira whispered into his ear.

  Amira kissed him once and then backed away into her mother’s arms as Gerry grasped Nathan’s hands in his own and squeezed them, an encouraging smile veiling his grief.