Tahoe Skydrop (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 16) Read online

  Spot was visible ahead of me, traversing the steep snow. Unlike the way I had to angle my boots and dig in the edge of my soles, he merely had to grip with his claws. Having four paws, each with four claws like sixteen-penny nail studs, made his mountain hiking much easier.

  Thirty minutes later, we had gone another mile and a half, much of it on snow, and I decided to stop at the next decent view of the Job’s Sister summit.

  It came five minutes later. There was a slight opening in the trees. The ground was relatively level. A thin forest canopy above allowed the sun to shine in during parts of the day. So the snow was mostly melted. Spot waited for me on the dry forest floor, seeming to appreciate that he could simply stand without gripping his claws to keep from sliding.

  Moving back and forth, I found a decent place to view the mountain summit. Despite being somewhat level, the ground was rocky. But when I extended the legs on Picard’s tripod, I was able to make it stable. When I was ready and looked at the image, it was as if the tree branches in front of me didn’t exist. I had a clear view of the summit of Job’s Sister. And with the zoom set on its maximum setting, it was like being only a few hundred yards away. Because the scope had binocular eyepieces, I could look with both eyes, which made it much less tiring than a single-eye scope.

  The mountain looked imposing. The cliff rocks were dark and menacing, the snow-filled crevasses slick with ice and frozen, crusted snow. I knew from experience that the blowing mist would have been freezing all through the night and probably still was freezing. The rocks that appeared bare from a distance would likely be coated with transparent ice.

  To the left of Job’s Sister was Job’s, 200 feet lower. Job’s loomed over Carson Valley to the east, 6000 feet below. In the other direction, Freel Peak, Tahoe’s highest mountain, was on the west, a few feet higher than Job’s Sister but not as rocky and with none of the Sister’s tall cliffs.

  Job’s Sister is shaped like a broad cone with a gash down one side. The cliffs line the side of the gash. The rest of the cone has relatively smooth slopes that a backcountry skier could enjoy in good weather, when avalanche danger is low.

  The scene was dominated by the constant rush of air movement over the summit, air with enough moisture to be visible. The moisture plume waved like a long, gaseous streamer. The high-speed river of wind came up from Carson Valley to the east, which lay below the mountains. The wind raced up the dramatic rocky summit of Job’s Sister and jetted skyward. From my vantage point, it was obvious that anyone who climbed up into that jet of air would risk being blown off the mountain. Perhaps a climber could hug the very edge of the summit and hope that the slope would thrust the gale at least a few feet above the climber’s head.

  I looked for men moving in the early morning light, but saw nothing. The spotting scope had too much magnification to easily scan. The image would jerk, and it was hard to reposition. So I left the spotting scope aimed and focused on the summit and periodically watched the mountain through my hand-held binoculars. They were much lower magnification. But it was probably enough to look for movement.

  It was twenty minutes before I saw the men. They probably hadn’t hiked any farther than I had, but I had gained less than 1000 vertical feet hiking to my vantage point because I had started at the base of Heavenly, which was relatively high. In contrast, the men Vince was leading had started lower and hiked much higher. They were now above Star Lake, hiking up the slope to the west of the cliffs. They were approaching 10,000 feet, a rise of over 3000 feet from where they started. That would be like hiking up a 300-story building.

  When I looked back through the spotting scope, it was easy to see them. Four men, spread out as they hiked up the steep trail above Star Lake. The lead man seemed larger than the other three, so I guessed him to be Vince. But beyond that assumption, I had no other way to identify them.

  On closer look, I saw another clue that the front man was likely Vince. The other three seemed to have darkened faces. I guessed they were wearing ski masks. I was glad to see it because it suggested they intended to let Vince live. Without the masks, Vince would know what they looked like. If he could identify them, it was more likely they would kill him after he’d provided the information and skills they needed.

  The men appeared to go slowly up the trail. In reality, they were probably moving at a brisk pace, a strenuous hike up a steep slope, fighting the wind, digging their boots and crampons in to get purchase on the ice and snow. And for all but Vince, they would no doubt be struggling to breathe in the high-altitude air.

  At 10,000 feet, the air pressure, and hence available oxygen, is 30% less than at sea level. Living at high elevation, Vince was adapted. The other men would be breathing hard.

  Unless they too lived at high elevation.

  I noticed that the last two men in the procession had stopped. One of them was making a dramatic gesture, shaking his hand toward the other. It appeared they were arguing. Vince and the other man continued climbing, leaning forward into the wind as they marched up the mountain.

  The last two men were still motionless but for their arms. From their motions, it looked like they were seriously angry.

  Vince and the other man eventually stopped and turned around, looking at the two men arguing.

  One finally lifted both arms up and out, a gesture I took to mean, ‘whatever you want.’

  Because I was focused on them, I almost didn’t notice that Vince had his hand on his hip.

  The indication of a coming hand signal.

  His left hand went to his right bicep. His lower right arm bent up, and his hand pointed down toward the men who were arguing.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell which of the men Vince was pointing at because Vince was too far above them. But I could tell that he was not pointing at the man closest to him. So the signal was useful.

  The leader of the group was one of the two men farther below.

  Then both of the arguing men turned and continued up the trail. Because of their argument, there was a large separation between the first pair and the second pair. But they were all still visible in the scope.

  I’d learned something valuable. It was not a harmonious group. There was substantial discord.

  Vince came to a stop as he got near the summit. He turned and waited for the others to catch up. As they drew close, he gestured toward the summit, then bent down and appeared to put his hands on rocks. I guessed he was explaining how to proceed when they rose up into the gale.

  Vince started climbing again, leaning forward. As he gained another 100 feet, he was so bent that his hands repeatedly gripped trail-side rocks. The men behind him mimicked his movements.

  As they finally approached the summit, Vince strayed from the trail, moving closer to the cliff edge, no doubt trying to stay beneath the wind as it blew off the back side of the mountain into the sky. It meant he was closer to the cliffs, but less likely to get caught by the worst of the gale.

  Vince came to a stop. The other men slowly joined him, gripping rocks, staying low. No one stood tall.

  Vince unhooked something from his belt and held it up. His ice axe. The other men did the same. Vince went through a range of movements, no doubt showing them how to hold the ice axe and how to climb with it. Then he holstered his axe and took off his pack. He pulled out a coiled rope and some other items. He did something at his waist, maybe putting on a gearbelt. Or maybe his gearbelt had been in place all the time, and he was unhooking carabiners or something else.

  He held up the coil of rope and pointed to various places on the summit. Then he took the rope or webbing and proceeded to rig rappelling anchors. I couldn’t follow the details from my distance, but it looked like he was using two different boulders. He then stepped into the loops of what must have been a rappelling harness. He pointed at his gear belt and appeared to explain how to use the various kinds of hardware. I wasn’t a rappelling expert, but I knew that the rappelling brake bar was a critical component.

  A brak
e bar actually has four to six bars that hook across a long, U-shaped piece of metal. The rope from which the climber hangs is woven through those brake bars. By sliding the bars closer to each other, the friction on the rope increases, and the rate of descent slows or stops. By sliding the brake bars farther apart, the friction decreases, and the rope slides through more easily.

  Vince seemed to attach his gear, and he backed up several feet, demonstrating how he could go down a steep slope or over an edge and control his descent.

  Next, he pointed to his feet and his ice axe. I couldn’t see details, but I envisioned crampons on his feet. During Vince’s on-mountain instruction, I tried to imagine how hard it would be to learn climbing techniques during a freezing gale, a situation where death was a very real risk.

  In time, one of the men began to move back and forth along the top of the cliff. I couldn’t tell if he was choosing the best place to go down or if he was just pacing, trying to get up his nerve. It also appeared that he held something in his hand and kept checking it.

  The man eventually stopped above a steep crevasse filled with snow. Vince helped him get attached to the gear and rope. The man turned around toward the men as if saying something. Then he started backing up toward the edge of the cliff.

  He began to drop down the rock face. He was easy to see, silhouetted against the icy snow that filled the depressions in the cliff.

  He tried to keep his feet against the ice and snow. But the snow was too vertical for gravity to give him any traction against it. He lost his footing and began turning in a circle as he hung in space.

  CHAPTER TEN

  As the man twisted, his descent stopped. It was a reaction I knew. Something surprised him, and he slid the bars closer together. The increased friction on the rope stopped his descent.

  The man’s rotation increased in speed, his slow turn becoming more like a spin. The man resumed his descent, still spinning in the wind. Eventually, his feet contacted the snow, and he stopped his spin.

  He dropped farther, stopped again. He reached out with his ice axe, swung it into the near-vertical sheet of snow next to him, and used the axe to pull himself sideways. He kicked his boots at the snow, no doubt trying to gain purchase with the toe spikes on his crampons. Then he pulled the ice axe out of the snow and quickly swung it farther to the side. He used it to pull himself sideways again.

  It appeared that he was looking around, turning his head one way and then another. He looked down at his waist, then craned his neck out and sideways and seemed to look down. Then he began to lower himself again, easily visible against the white backdrop of snow. Vince and the other men up on the summit couldn’t see him below. I was probably the only person watching as he dropped like a lowering spider down to what appeared to be a large two-tone duffel bag protruding from the snow, partially hidden by an outcropping of rock.

  The man maneuvered himself to get closer to the duffel, reaching out and pulling on the fabric. He’d pulled himself far enough sideways that his rope was substantially angled from vertical. Like a pendulum at the farthest part of its swing, if the man lost hold of the duffel, or if his ice axe came free of the snow, he’d swing wildly back the other way. It was a precarious position. No doubt the duffel contained something valuable. Maybe it was full of money.

  The man reached for his brake bar, made an adjustment, and dropped down a precise, additional foot. He anchored his knee against the duffel to hold his position and then swung his backpack partly off one shoulder. Despite my distance, the pack was easy to see because it was bright red.

  He reached into his pack and pulled out an object. I couldn’t tell what it was. He held the object against the duffel bag and moved it around. He made a range of other motions I didn’t understand, movements that were focused on the duffel bag.

  To relieve my eye stress, I pulled away from the scope to blink and rub my eyes. Looking back, I saw movement above the man. Vince was walking away from the cliff edge, behind the other men. He put his hand on his hip. Then he reached up and seemed to grip his throat.

  The hostage symbol, used to communicate a man in danger.

  In a sudden sickening moment, I realized it wasn’t a duffel bag. It was a human.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  All indications suggested the human was dead, a body that had spent some time in the cliffs of Job’s Sister. And now the man dangling below the cliff was doing something to a human body.

  Why?

  The man looked like he was shifting the body. Lifting or prying. Perhaps the body was wedged in place. Another possibility was that the body was in a precarious position such that the wrong movement might make it fall farther down the cliffs. Maybe the man was trying to free the corpse. At over 10,000 feet of elevation, this corpse would be frozen solid. Even if he could free the body, it would be rigid and very difficult to move.

  The man continued to make small motions. But his purpose wasn’t clear.

  After a few minutes, the man again pulled the object from his pack. And again he moved it around near the corpse and then put it back in the pack.

  He resumed movements. Next, he pulled his axe out of the snow, holstered it, and moved his knee from its anchor position.

  Like a pendulum freed, he swung away from the corpse, left and right, several times.

  When you have a rope hanging down from a cliff, or even a building, there are several ways for a climber to ascend the rope without needing excessive strength.

  Climbers going up a rappel rope use a prusik knot or a mechanical ascender. The ascender has a clamp that allows a rope to slip through in one direction. But if the rope is moved the other direction, the clamp shuts tight. The prusik knot is less fancy, but it accomplishes the same thing, gripping a rope with enough friction to keep it from slipping through unless the prusik knot is loosened.

  The basic principle for climbing a rope is to have two ascenders on the rope, one above the other. Each ascender holds a loop of webbing. In the most basic version, the climber puts his feet in the lower loop and stands up. He raises the upper ascender and loop, then sits in that upper loop. With his weight off his feet, he raises the lower ascender and its loop, then once again stands up with his feet in the lower loop.

  The process looks and feels somewhat ungainly. But it’s reliable, efficient, and a skillful climber can go up almost as fast as walking up a staircase.

  After ten minutes, the man was up over the edge of the cliff. He used his hands to pull himself farther up the rope, away from the precipice.

  The three men stood near Vince. It looked like they were talking.

  I got the sense they’d achieved their goal.

  Until they began fighting.

  After a few moments, one of the men pointed down below the cliff, then bent his elbow, shaking his fist in a strong motion suggesting anger. The man standing in front of him gestured back, pointing his hand at the other man’s face. The first man turned again and walked away with a jerky movement as if he were stomping. He turned around and came back. The two men grabbed each other, grappling and turning. They fell to the snowy ground, rolling and hitting each other in a violent fight. One man seemed to be victorious. He got up and walked away, leaning into the wind.

  Vince went over to the man on the ground, got down on his knees, and tried to help the man up. It took some effort with the wind, but Vince put the man’s arm over his shoulder and stood up, lifting the man.

  The victorious fighter seemed enraged. He ran toward them and threw himself at them like in an angle block in football. Vince and the man he was helping were slammed downwind. They weren’t pushed off the cliff but a bit to the side where the steep snow-covered slope stretched down to the west for miles. With the wind pushing them, they slid fast as if the snow were as slick as ice.

  The two men accelerated, two dark marks on the white mountainside. At first, they seemed a pair, moving together. Then the one on the right seemed to shift. I saw his arms reach out. The main portion of his body form
ed a kind of a curve. His speed immediately slowed. It was a classic glissade, a kind of controlled slide down a steep snowfield that a skillful mountaineer can use to quickly descend.

  Without being able to see the details, I knew that Vince was sitting on the snow, his legs bent a bit in front of him, heels lightly digging into the icy, snowy surface, and his arms holding his ice axe. Despite being under control, Vince was moving fast. I knew he’d be holding onto the head of his axe with his dominant hand. His other hand would be gripping the handle near the pointed end.

  Vince would dig the head of the axe into the snow. More pressure meant more braking. The results were clear from a distance. Vince slowed himself, making a rapid but controlled descent.

  The other man may have still had his axe. But he had no skills. He sped up on the steep, icy slope. They were both still far above treeline with no obstacles to catch and slow a person. I couldn’t tell the other man’s speed, but I guessed he was going 60 miles per hour or more when he hit the first ridgeline that threw him into the air. His body flipped over in the air. Even from my distance, his landing looked violent, and he may have landed directly on his head. After his impact, he looked like a limp rag doll, sliding, bouncing, and flipping over as he rocketed unconscious down the mountain. There was no more tension or rigidity in his body. At one point he went airborne again, did a full backward flip, and then, when he hit, began a rapid tumbling.

  I knew the man would likely die before he came to a stop if he hadn’t already. Eventually, he flipped and tumbled into a ravine, and I didn’t see him again. His body would not be found until the last of the snow melted at the end of summer. Depending on his location, his body might never be found.

  Vince kept perfect control of his glissade. He also used his ice axe and his boots to have a small amount of control over the direction he slid. Vince steered himself farther from the cliff. By the time he’d dropped maybe 1000 feet of elevation and approached the treeline, he had steered himself over toward the trail they used to climb up. He came to a stop and stood up.