Funny, your father’s been dead for fifteen years, but the sound evokes that memory and his voice stays trapped inside your head. You’re thinking about him when you hear an angry rumble like thunder just before the clap. You see Clegg and Hall standing still as statues. Sunglasses block their eyes, but you know they’re wide and filled with fear. The rumble grows louder by the second, followed by another crack, this one even more threatening. The cornice gives way. One second Clegg and Hall are there, and the next, both are gone.
An avalanche of cascading snow drowns out their screams. You see the breach in the ridgeline, feel a powerful tug as the ropes securing you to the other climbers start to pull. The force of the two men in free fall drops you to the ground. Instinct takes over. You go into a self-arrest position, feet aimed at the breach, to keep from sliding forward. You’re like a hooked fish being dragged toward the hole. Lying on your side, you’ve got the ice axe dug deep into the snow, but you still see the breach closing in fast. The climbing ropes skid along with an angry hiss, moving so quickly that the friction cuts a deep trench into the snow.
You’re ten feet from the massive breach in the ridgeline, still sliding. If you fall through, Clegg and Hall will drop as well. Three hundred feet down a nearly vertical cliff face. Maybe it’s willpower, but somehow you manage to stop your slide. Just your feet are dangling into the opening. You need to establish anchors before setting up a haul system. You flip onto your stomach, ready to get to work, but find the ropes are severely trenched. You hold your breath. There’s no way to establish anchors now, not with the weight of two men pulling on trenched ropes. Your head pokes out over the lip of the breach, with only a well-planted ice axe to keep you from falling.
You see Hall and Clegg.
Clegg dressed in blue, Hall in yellow, dangling like helpless marionettes above infinity. An image you’ll never forget. You try to shimmy backward, thinking you’ll use brute force to pull the men up. They’re screaming at you, begging for help. Their voices come at you as one, just like the wind. There’s too much weight. Forget about going backward. They’re pulling you down with them. Your breath catches, settling in your throat like frozen wind, because you realize at that very moment you’re all going to die. It’s a simple matter of physics: too much weight to pull against and seconds to decide what to do.
That’s when you remember the Spyderco knife, ten-inch blade, ultrasharp, clipped to your parka. You slide farther into the opening as you unfold the knife with your teeth. Clegg and Hall can see your shoulders now. They’re pleading with you not to do it. They can see the knife in your hand.
You’ve got to decide. Which rope to cut?
Whose life will you take to save your own?
Their desperate cries continue.
You begin to saw. It’s not oxygen depletion making you sick. You pretend that you can’t hear their pleas. You pretend it’s not your hand doing the cutting. You slide another several inches into the void. You have one hand on your ice axe, the other cutting with the knife.
You think about your wife and how much you love her. Your heart aches for his wife, but It’s the only choice, you say to yourself. He has children. He’s got kids. Your knife slices the rope in two.
Instantly, the pull against you is halved. You know you’re going to live. You hear the screams of a man falling. You watch as he goes from a person to a speck and vanishes into nothingness.
CHAPTER 1
Let me tell you how it feels to learn that your wife is going to die. It’s like you’ve swallowed something bitter, something permanently stuck in your throat. In an instant, the future you’ve been planning together is gone. The sadness is all-consuming. Trust me, a heavy heart is more than an expression. You try to act strong, sound reassuring. You glom on to statistics, study the odds like a Vegas bookmaker. You say things like, “We can beat this thing. We’re going to be the twenty-five percent who makes it.”
At night, darker thoughts sneak past your mental defenses. You imagine your life after the inevitable. You think about all the holidays and birthdays that will come