Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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“Why not?” the press attaché said.

“Because it’s not safe,” Kate said, flashing her eyes angrily.

The attaché gave her a bright, slightly condescending smile. “Oh no, we have to do it here.” She formed a rectangle with her thumbs and fore-fingers, framing the derrick rising above the deck. “See? It’s perfect.”

Kate shook her head. “Wait a minute—”

But Tina was already looking past her, at a reporter who was calling over to her. “Sorry, I have to get this,” the attaché said, offering another calculated smile before rushing off to the other side of the deck.

Safety regs were nonnegotiable on an oil rig. You stepped foot on a rig, you put on a hard hat. Period. Too many things could go wrong when you started bending the rules. This was quickly turning into a highly unsafe situation. And to make matters worse, the chopper deck had no railings along its perimeter to prevent some careless reporter from falling eighty feet into the sea.

Kate waved sharply at one of her roughnecks, who was standing near the stairs. “Eddie!” she shouted. “Come here, please.”

Seeing her urgency, Eddie trotted over. “Get these people off this deck now. And I want hard hats on every damn one of them.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said.

“Starting with those guys right over there.” She pointed at the camera crew on the far end of the rig.

“Sorry, Tina,” Kate said, catching up to the press attaché. “I know this is a great photo op, but I cannot and I will not permit this to happen up here. It’s too dangerous.”

“Don’t force me to go over your head, Miss Murphy.”

“Listen to me carefully, Tina.” Kate gripped the press attaché with a firm hand, her voice low and intense and nonnegotiable. “On this rig, my head is the only one that counts. Now get your damn news crews below deck—” Kate stopped suddenly when she saw what was happening.

How it happened, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t see the event itself. All she saw was the roughneck, Eddie, falling backward over the edge of the deck, away from the camera crew, his face a mask of horror and surprise. He clawed at the air as he toppled backward, screaming. Kate saw him through the steel mesh deck, tumbling toward the surging sea below, his arms and legs circling. There was a strange, dreamlike quality to his fall. For a moment she couldn’t believe it was happening. Then he disappeared, her vision cut off by a section of the rig below the chopper deck.

Kate started to move, but by then it was too late.

At the far end of the chopper deck, one of the cameramen had opened a case, pulled out a sh toрort, stubby tube, and flipped up some kind of eyepiece. The State Department chopper was still circling overhead when a rush of flame erupted from the stubby tube. Something belching white smoke shot from the tube and tore through the air toward the chopper.

A missile.

The trail of the missile stretched out like white taffy. Then there was a loud whump, and what had been a helicopter was now a ball of flame, spewing randomly shaped black debris that slammed into the steel superstructure of the Obelisk. Within moments the chopper hit the water, rolled once, then disappeared, swallowed by a twenty-foot wave.

“Oh my God,” the press attaché whispered.

Kate turned to see the cameramen and journalists all stooping simultaneously, throwing open their cases with the precise coordination of dancers in some lethal ballet.

There was no camera equipment in the cases. As the camera crews stood, they were all holding guns. Kate recognized them as AK-47s, the kind with the big curved ammunition clips.

The two marine bodyguards and the Secret Service man were raising their weapons when the counterfeit news crews opened fire. The noise was deafening.

The two marines and the Secret Service man dropped like bags of meat, blood erupting from their necks, faces, and bodies.

One group of terrorists started roughly rounding up the rest of Kate’s on-deck crew, as a second group broke off, quickly descending the stairs toward the lower decks, sweeping and taking ground as they did. Using the chaos as cover, Kate started moving toward the second stairwell to try and warn Parker’s group, when she found herself face-to-face with Ransom. She gestured for him to come with her, when she noticed he was holding an automatic pistol. And it was leveled point-blank at her head.

Kate’s brain went into overdrive, trying to absorb what was happening. It became apparent to her that Ransom—or the man who’d claimed to be Ransom—was actually in charge when he addressed everyone on deck. “Listen to me carefully, because I’m only going to say this once,” he said. He wasn’t shouting, but his voice carried. “No one else needs to die.” He prodded one of the dead men contemptuously with his toe. “This was stupid and unnecessary. Cooperate and you’ll be home soon, playing with your kids.”

“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—” Tina whimpered.

“Shut up, Tina,” Kate snapped.

Tina stopped talking. Kate confronted the lead terrorist. “What do you want?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

“You’re not Cole Ransom. So who are you?”

“You can call me Abu Nasir.”

Kate felt a cold fear rising inside her. The man Senator McClatchy claimed had bled Trojan Energy for almost fifty million dollars over the last year was now seizing her rig. Her fear suddenly gave way to a primal anger when she heard a burst of gunfire nearby, followed by the desperate screams of men whose voices she recognized as members of her crew. “Leave my people alone, you son of a bitch—”

She lunged toward Abu Nasir, her fingers reaching for his eyes, but he sidestepped her easily and swung his gun-weighted fist across the side of her head, and she went down like a steer in a slaughterhouse.

Kate blinked hard, trying to squeeze the stars from her eyes as she was pulled to her feet by a large Asian man whom Abu Nasir called Chun. She felt her head. A tender knot was already rising under her hairline, where she’d been struck.

“Take Ms. Murphy to B Deck with Stearns and Prejean. Place Deputy National Security Advisor Parker in the stateroom. And after you finish rounding up the rest of the crew, put them in the mess hall.”

Kate saw four of Abu Nasir’s men down on the drill deck, wrestling with the large steel box that she’d seen them rolling across the chopper deck just a few minutes earlier. They were attaching it to the crane used to move drill pipe, winching it down through the drill shaft to some lower point on the rig. The men seemed completely comfortable and familiar with the equipment on the drill deck.

It was quite clear to Kate that whoever these people were, they had extremely good intelligence. They knew the design of the rig, and they knew who was on board.

Earl Parker eyed Abu Nasir. Then he spoke, his voice quiet but full of a calm authority. “I would prefer that you put me with everyone else. As the senior United States government official on this rig, I have a responsibility to take care of these people.”

Abu Nasir turned and eyeballed him with amusement. “You’d prefer?”

The bearded American slapped the older man across the face so hard that his glasses flew off. A thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of his lip.

Earl Parker continued to meet Abu Nasir’s gaze.

“All right then, Tillman. I insist,” Earl Parker said. Again, his voice was not loud. But it carried.

Abu Nasir laughed.

Earl Parker said, “All that I’ve done for you, Tillman . . . and you repay me like this?”

The American slapped him again, even harder this time. Earl Parker staggered backward, and his eyes lost focus. “Take this old bastard down to the control room, Chun,” Abu Nasir said, “while I decide whether or not to shoot his ass.”

The big man whom Abu Nasir had referred to as Chun quickly cuffed Earl Parker’s hands behind him with flexible plastic cuffs, then steered the now compliant deputy national security advisor away.

Abu Nasir surveyed the remaining people on the deck and said, “Anybody else feel the need to share any questions or concerns with me?”

Nobody spoke. Kate’s stomach churned.

“Good.” He turned to one of his men and said, “Round up any strays and get them to the mess hall. In the meantime, take Stearns, Murphy, and Prejean down to my cabin on B Deck.”

Heads nodded.

Tina raised her hand, ducking her head obsequiously. “Um, sir? What about me?”

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Abu Nasir blinked. “What about you?”

“Don’t I go with the VIPs?”

Abu Nasir looked at her curiously. “Don’t you go with the VIPs? Hm. Would it reflect badly on you if you had to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi? Is that the point of your question?”

Tina smiled weakly. “I just meant . . .” Her words died in her throat as Abu Nasir drew his pistol and shot the young woman in the head, then pushed her with his foot. She rolled once, then flopped over the side and fell into the ocean. The wind gusted, died, gusted again.

“Folks, I want you to understand something,” Abu Nasir said, smiling genially. “Any questions you might have, you’re going to get the same answer. This.” He waggled the pistol in front of them. “Do what I tell you, and don’t ask questions. We clear?”

Everyone nodded. Kate wanted to rage at him, wanted at least to raise her eyes from the deck. But she knew that it wouldn’t do any good. Right now she needed to focus on protecting her crew. And she couldn’t do that from the bottom of the ocean.

“Good.” Abu Nasir motioned with his head toward the stairs. Kate followed Stearns on rubbery legs as they headed back across the chopper deck.

Chun steered Earl Parker to the control room down on the drill deck, pointed silently to a chair, then stood by the door. Parker stared sullenly at the big man, who looked off at the ocean. The skies were low and dark, and the waves were so huge that you couldn’t quite make sense of just how big they were.

According to the last weather forecast Parker had seen, the typhoon off the Philippines wasn’t supposed to hit the rig. But it sure looked nasty out there. Maybe the forecast was wrong.

After three or four minutes, the muscular bearded American walked through the door, a pistol thrust into his belt.

“Can anyone see us?” Parker said.

Abu Nasir shook his head. “They’re all locked up in the cabins now.”

“Then get these goddamn cuffs off me . . . Abu Nasir.” Parker gave the nom de guerre a sarcastic twist.

“Yes, sir.”

The bearded American pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly cut the cuffs off Earl Parker’s wrists.

“Sorry about the face, Mr. Parker,” he said. “You told me to make it look real.”

Earl Parker eyed him expressionlessly, touched the corner of his mouth, then studied the blood on his fingers.

“You want me to get you something for that, sir?”

Earl Parker spit blood onto the deck. “Your people screwed the pooch. Gideon Davis is still alive.”

The bearded American nodded. “I know, sir. My team is still on it, though. They’ll find him. Trust me. He’s a dead man walking.”

“He damn well better be.” Parker stood. “I trust you didn’t bloth=Ñ€w it at Kampung Naga, too?”

“Clockwork. No survivors.”

“Good. Anything else I need to know? Any more screwups?”

“No, sir. Other than the ambush, everything’s right on schedule.”

“Good. Then put me back in with Kate Murphy and that fool Stearns. We’ve still got a long way to go before we cross the goal line, so I want to keep an eye on things from the hostage perspective. But if anything comes up, any decisions that need to be made, any wrinkles in the plan, anything whatsoever that’s above your pay grade—you bring me out. And I mean double-time quick.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

Suddenly Earl Parker’s hand shot out. He grabbed the younger man by the collar and jerked him forward so that their eyes were only inches apart. “And if you ever hit me like that again, Timken, it’ll be the last fucking thing you do.”

If you had managed to locate the passport for the leader of the group that had seized the Obelisk, you would have found that his real name was neither Cole Ransom nor Abu Nasir. And it certainly wasn’t Tillman Davis.

Sitting in a safe-deposit box in a discreet bank in Geneva, Switzerland– along with ten passports with ten other bogus names on them—was his genuine passport, the one imprinted with his real name: Orville Timken. The last person to call him Orville, though, was a kid in junior high. After Timken beat the kid to the ground for calling him “ORRRRRRRville,” nobody else had wanted a piece of that, thanks, and it had become understood that he preferred Tim or Timmer or just plain Timken.

Later Timken found out that he shared his name with a company that made ball bearings. He had been sent by his military unit to a convention for weapons manufacturers, where he stumbled across a booth with his name on it. The people who ran the booth had a glass bowl full of ball bearings on the table at the front of the booth. Each ball bearing had his name laser etched on it.

“Half-inch, ultrahigh precision 62100 steel, hardened to Rockwell 59,” the helpful salesman had said. “Every single one of them will mike at plus or minus three ten-thousandths of nominal, guaranteed.”

Timken looked into the bowl, saw his face reflected in hundreds of tiny fun-house mirrors. Something about the ball bearings—their featurelessness and hardness and regularity—gave him a momentary stab of pleasure. He reached into the bowl, grabbed a handful.

“Sir, if you wouldn’t mind limiting yourself to just one or two?” the helpful salesman had said.

Timken had given him The Look.

“Well, I suppose it’s okay,” the salesman said with a tight smile. “What application did you have in mind for them?”

“Putting them in a sock and hitting some nosy faggot in the face until he shuts the fuck up.”

The salesman’s tight smile didn’t go away. But after that he had just looked over Timken’s shoulder, as though Timken weren’t standing there at all.

Since then, Timken̵#82Ñ€7;s name had worn off the tiny, shiny ball bearings, and he suspected they probably would no longer mike at three ten-thousandths of nominal anymore. But they suited his needs just fine. He could put them in a pocket or a briefcase. He could take them on a plane without the TSA morons confiscating them. He could take them anywhere. Then when he needed them, he put them in a bag or a sock or a wadded-up shirt. And when he hit you with them you fell down and didn’t move.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Timken had carried the ball bearings in his pocket since...

His life would have been pretty much over with if he hadn’t been rescued from the wastelands by a man who understood the peculiar nature of his talents. A man who understood that a great nation sometimes had to do dark and ugly things, and that when those things had to be done, Orville Timken could be counted on to come through.

A man named Earl Parker.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

WATER CASCADED IN A thunderous rush over the high U-shaped cliff that rose before Monkey’s boat. Sunlight caught the spray from the waterfall, refracting a brilliantly colored rainbow. If not for the circumstances, Gideon reflected silently, this could have been a postcard for some idyllic tropical retreat.

Monkey throttled the engine back. To one side of the waterfall was a tiny strip of beach from which extended a bamboo pier. Behind it was a small cluster of grass huts.

“Is this where my brother is?” Gideon asked.

Monkey shook his head and pointed. “Up there.” The cliff face ran in an unbroken line of white rock as far in both directions as Gideon could see. It was as though the entire surface of the earth had cracked in half, one piece sliding down below the other. The cliff must have been nearly a thousand feet high and was topped by a thin green rim of jungle.

“How do I get up there?”

“Climb,” he said.

“Climb?”

Monkey shrugged, nudged the boat against the rickety bamboo pier, and killed the engine.

“Do you at least know the trail?”

“No,” he said, quickly adding, “And I’m not about to find out.”

Gideon knew that Monkey wasn’t to blame here. This wasn’t his fault. But still, he felt a flash of anger. “You took me all this way and you’re just going to abandon me?”

Monkey gave him a sideways look. “What you expect? You gonna get me killed.” He waved vaguely at the green line of jungle that capped the cliff. “We have a saying . . . Where the river ends, Allah has no power.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

Monkey stared up at the high cliff. “The people up there? They’re not people. Not like you and me. They got no rules, no laws, no right and wrong. No God.”

“Do you at least know someone who can guide me up?”

“Maybe if you had money . . .”

“My brother has money.”

“I don’t see your brother here.” Monkey seemed moderately pleased with the fix that Gideon was in.

“Come on,” Gideon said. “Help me out here. You’re in my shoes, what would you do?”

Monkey continued to stare up at the jungle. “Do what I’m gonna do. Get downriver, hope you reach KM without getting killed.”

Gideon’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve come this far, I’m not about to turn around now.”

Monkey shook his head, as if to say he was done trying to talk Gideon out of his suicidal scheme, then pointed at a cleat on the pier. “Tie us to the pier. Maybe I translate, help you find somebody.”

Gideon had cut one of the mooring lines back in Alun Jong, but there was another one coiled on the bow. He grabbed the end and stepped onto the pier, which felt spongy under his feet, as if it was rotting from within. As Gideon stepped carefully on the bamboo deck, afraid that he might fall through, he heard a roar. He turned in time to see Monkey slamming the throttle into reverse. Before Gideon could leap back onto the boat, it had already pulled away from the pier. Monkey was laughing as he backed the boat up.

Gideon tried holding on to the rope, but the boat was too powerful, and the rope slid through his hands, burning his fingers and palms as it slipped into the water.

“Next time you hold a knife to my neck—” The rest of Monkey’s threat was drowned by the sound of the Mercuries. He spun the wheel, slammed the throttle back into forward gear, and the boat tore a circular hole in the water, accelerating downriver. Within half a minute, the boat was gone, the engine noise lost in the thunder of the waterfall.

Gideon turned and looked at the village. He’d need to hire somebody to guide him to Kampung Naga. Just how he was going to manage that with no money, he wasn’t quite sure. But he’d figure out a way. He had no choice.

He walked through the tiny village, which was strangely empty. “Hello!” he called. “Is anybody here?”

But there was no answer. In fact there was no sound at all. The place was deserted. The roofs of the houses sagged. Several had been burned to the ground.

Gideon realized that he was very hungry. Almost a day had passed since he’d eaten. He searched the houses and finally found a tin of fruit sitting on a rotting shelf. He tore the tin open and gobbled the peaches hungrily. But instead of satisfying his appetite, it only made him hungrier.

He looked for more food but didn’t find any. He reflected wryly that he could think of better ways than this of taking off the ten pounds he’d gained in Colombia.

When he reached the far end of the village, he saw a small trail heading toward the cliffs, overgrown with vines and fast-growing tropical plants. He pushed his way through vegetation, then began to climb. As he walked, he looked at the map General Prang had gig há€ven him. Staring up at him was the red circle. Kampung Naga, the city that doesn’t exist.

From a distance, the cliffs looked white. Closer, and Gideon found they were composed of a grayish limestone. Foliage seemed to have a hard time growing on the winding trail. There were only a few gnarled trees and occasional clumps of grass sprouting from the rock. At first the cliffs were not really cliffs at all, just very steep hills, eroded into sharp gulleys and ravines.

But the higher he climbed, the steeper the trail became. The limestone was loose and crumbly, and the path narrowed as the face of the limestone grew steeper. Eventually the path was no more than a foot wide, sometimes dropping off for hundreds of feet on either side.

Halfway up, Gideon paused to rest his burning thighs. He ran thirty miles a week—but running on flat ground was not the same as climbing hills. Resting his back against the cool rock, he surveyed the view that spread for miles below him. In the distance he could just make out another small village on a crook in the river. When he and Monkey blasted past the village, it had seemed normal. Now it was on fire, a thick column of smoke rising into the sky.

In the distance he saw a tiny V-shaped wake rippling on the surface of the river. A boat was approaching. Gideon felt a stab of fear. Coincidence? Or was someone following him?

He stood and started up the trail again.

The going was slower now. The higher he went, the more it became like mountain climbing rather than hiking. He could see the lip of the jungle above him. But there were still probably five hundred sheer vertical feet to go. Gideon had drastically underestimated the height of the cliffs. And the steepest part of the climb was yet to come.

Soon he found that he had to keep both hands on the rock face at all times. The rock slid away below him. The only good news was that the temperature had dropped. It was still warm—but it wasn’t the oppressive tropical furnace that it had been.

Occasionally a toehold or handhold crumbled beneath him, the loose rock falling and bouncing and tumbling down the slope. Each time it happened, he momentarily lost his balance and had to claw for purchase to keep himself from following the dislodged rocks down the rubble-strewn face of the cliff.

Gideon tried pushing away the persistent doubts and fears that flitted through his mind—that this mission was foolish and pointless and that he should turn around and go back. If he wanted to find Tillman, he would have to face whatever lay ahead in the place that Monkey feared so much.

He paused again to massage his trembling thighs. The sun was lowering on the horizon and he still had a few hundred feet to go. He looked down. The boat he’d seen earlier was pulling up to the pier. A man leapt out and secured the boat, then several more men followed him ashore. They swept through the abandoned village. Even at this distance, unable to see faces or expressions, Gideon could tell they were moving with purpose, searching for something or someone. He wondered if the surviving jihadis from downriver had followed him all the way up here. But why would they bother going to all that trouble over some muddy, bedraggled foreigner? It seemed odd. Except for the fact that he’d been responsible for the death of several of them. Maybe they just wanted to make an example of him. Or maybe they were looking for someone else entirely.

As he en á€was mulling over the questions and massaging his legs, one of the men pointed up toward the cliff. Gideon heard a distant, barely audible shout. Then the men began running up the trail that led up the cliff. Well, he thought, that was clear enough. They were definitely following him. As they got closer he could see that they were carrying guns.

Gideon gave his aching calf a last hard squeeze, then headed upward. Speculating about why they were chasing him wouldn’t help him escape.

Gideon’s pursuers quickly closed the gap between them. He estimated that when he first spotted them, they had been more than a thousand yards away. But because they were on the flatter part of the trail, they were moving much faster than he was. Soon they would be within three or four hundred yards. And when they were—

The first bullet pinged off the rock and ricocheted with a noise that sounded like something out of an old cowboy movie. But the shot was nowhere close. Gideon guessed that his pursuers were carrying AK-47s with iron sights. Unless they were serious marksmen, he was in little danger at this distance. But once they were within two hundred yards, he’d be in trouble.

Gideon waited for the second shot. It didn’t come. He figured they were being smart, conserving their ammo until they’d closed the gap a little more. Once they got close enough, they didn’t have to be great marksmen to hit him. Gideon started climbing faster, in rhythm with his own quickening heartbeat. He realized that his legs no longer hurt. The fight-or-flight endorphins were powerful painkillers, better than aspirin any day.

He glanced back over his shoulder. The lower portion of the trail wound back and forth across the face of the cliff, passing directly beneath him. When his pursuers reached that point, he would be inside their kill zone. He had to think of something. Fast.

He scanned the steepening face of the cliff. An outcropping of rock about twenty yards ahead would give him cover until his pursuers passed directly below him. He scrambled upward as fast as his body would take him, until one of his footholds gave way under his weight and he only managed to keep from falling by catching his weight with his right hand. The broken rock fell away below him and disappeared. He held on with his one hand, spread-eagled on the rock face. The slightest motion might cause his grip to fail. He froze. He felt himself breathing steadily, his heartbeat slowing, and his mind clearing—and felt an acute focus he’d never experienced before. In front of his eyes a tiny sprig of lichen clutched onto the limestone.

Be the lichen.

He heard the words in his head. Literally: be the lichen. He almost had to laugh. It was as if his own personal Yoda was whispering to him from some unseen perch. But it made sense. Lichen had no hands or feet, rooting itself to the rock with its entire structure. Gideon relaxed, allowing his own body to mold to the irregular contours of the rock face. When he felt his center of gravity balanced, he began snaking his left hand upward, then his knees, his feet, and even his chest—trying to find another hold so he could relieve the strain on his right hand.

A bullet smacked the rock three yards to his left, and a little below him. The report of the AK followed, a sharp crack.

Another bullet struck the rock just below him. A third to his right.

He moved spid faá€erlike, finding one foothold, then another, until he’d clambered up the last ten or twelve feet and over the outcropping. A steady rattle of gunfire chased him, then ceased.

Gideon lay with his face pressed against the rock. Several small boulders scattered on the escarpment left just enough room for his body. He took a few deep breaths, then rolled over and looked up. He was no more than fifty yards from the top. There was a definite rim where the cliff ended and the jungle began. Serious jungle. Full-on triple-canopy rain forest. If he could make it to the trees, he could find cover. Two hundred yards from the trail and he might as well be two hundred miles. They would never find him. Never.

But right now he was pinned down.

If the jihadis were smart, they’d send half their guys up the cliff and keep the other half in position below. If he tried to make the last fifty yards, they would pick him off. And if he stayed where he was, they’d cover and advance for one another until one of them could kill him at close range.

Gideon peered over the ledge. The pursuers were smart. Two men were already working their way up along the narrow path while the remaining four stayed behind, their weapons pointed right at him. Seeing this, Gideon ducked just as a volley of gunfire smacked against the downslope side of the outcropping.

He made a quick assessment of his worsening situation. The rock behind which he had found cover was no more than three feet wide and ten feet long. Enough to protect him as he lay on it, but not enough to shield him once he started climbing. The rubble on top of the outcropping consisted of two boulders as large around as his body and several smaller rocks that were roughly the size of bowling balls.

An idea came to him, born of that purest and most primitive animal instinct—survival.

He shifted his weight behind one of the bowling ball-size rocks and pushed it toward the edge. It rolled with a grinding noise until its own weight carried it down the slope. Gideon heard some warning cries as he peered over the edge and watched one of the men below dodging the boulder, which narrowly missed him as it crashed at the base of the cliff.

Gideon pulled his head back, registering a strange disappointment that he hadn’t hit at least one of them. But at least he’d confirmed his theory: his attackers had been so concerned with the falling rock that they hadn’t shot at him.

He looked up at the cliff again. The next fifty yards weren’t too bad. He couldn’t exactly sprint up. But he figured he could make it in twenty or thirty seconds.

He set to work on the other rocks, pushing them all to the edge. As he was pushing the largest one, he noticed a large rust-colored smear on its surface. Blood. He held up his hand, turned it around. A jagged wound ran across his palm. He must have cut himself during his near fall. It wasn’t until he saw it that he noticed how much it hurt. Blood ran down his arm, dripping off his elbow in fat drops onto the limestone. Realizing that he couldn’t afford to think about it right now, he tore a strip from his shirttail and wrapped his bleeding hand, then finished moving the rocks.

It took him only a few minutes to line up the remaining rocks along the ledge. His plan was to push them over the edge in fast sequence, from smallest to largest. His foot lingered on the rock for a suspended moment. Now, he realized. It had to be now. And he pushed the rocks over the edge—one, two, three, four, five—one after the other.

A volley of frantic shouts echoed from below, as he launched himself up the cliff.

The last of the rocks were still clattering down the hill as he scaled the rock face. It was steeper than he’d thought, and his legs were weak. Up and up he climbed, realizing halfway that he’d underestimated the time it would take him to reach the summit.