Chapter 82 - Descent into the Cirque
The wooden maintenance platform beneath the trestle was never intended for human foot traffic in the dead of winter. It was an ancient, grease-soaked catwalk suspended four feet beneath the main cog rails, preserved only by the dry, sub-zero air of the Presidential Range.
The downdraft from the helicopter screamed above us, rattling the loose planks like machine-gun fire. A steel cable dropped from the belly of the aircraft, the heavy magnetic hook smashing against the granite boulders fifty feet up the ridge with a deafening clang.
"Hold on to me! Wrap your legs around my waist, Lily!" I screamed over the tempest, pulling her close into the shearling lining of Arthur’s coat.
Lily did not cry. Her arms locked around my neck with a strength born of pure adrenaline. "Mom, there's a ladder! Look by the timber post!"
My flashlight beam caught the dull gleam of rusted iron rungs bolted directly into the vertical cliff face beneath the trestle's stone foundation. It was the old surveyors' descent route, abandoned in the 1970s after an avalanche took out the lower safety ropes. To go down into the Great Gulf in an eighty-mile-per-hour blizzard was near suicidal.
To stay on the tracks was certain death.
A burst of automatic gunfire chipped the timber ties above our heads, splinters raining down onto my hood. Julian wasn't playing games; his retrieval team had opened fire with suppressed carbines from the helicopter's open side door, aiming to pin me down while the extraction team rappelled.
I didn't hesitate. I swung my boots over the edge of the catwalk, finding the first rime-coated rung with the toe of my hiking boot.
The cold hit us like a physical blow. The moment we left the shelter of the trestle frame, the updraft from the gulf slammed into us, threatening to peel my fingers from the frozen metal. Every muscle in my forearms burned with searing fire. With Lily strapped against my chest using Arthur's leather belt as a makeshift sling, my center of gravity was pulled dangerously outward.
*Clang. Step. Clang.*
Above us, the spotlight swept across the rock face, missing our dark silhouettes by inches as we slipped below the lip of the overhang. High above, two black-clad figures in tactical cold-weather gear descended onto the catwalk we had just vacated.
"They're on the bridge!" Lily whispered against my ear, her breath warm against my neck.
"Keep your eyes closed, baby," I muttered, my boots slipping on a patch of slick verglas. I caught myself on one arm, my shoulder screaming in agony as my joints popped under the sudden strain. "Just hold onto Mom. Don't look at the lights."
Thirty feet down, the rusted ladder ended abruptly where an old rockslide had sheared the bolts clean off the mountain. Beneath us lay a steep, sixty-degree snow chute leading directly down into the bowl of the ravine.
I had no ice axe. I had no crampons. I had only the heavy canvas of Arthur's coat and the sheer instinct to survive.
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"Take a deep breath, Lily," I whispered, pulling her hood down tight and burying her head into my collarbone.
I let go of the ladder.
