Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(19)

Most used handmade wooden pack frames; a few had more elaborate welded-steel ones. None bothered with padding or waist belts.

The more fortunate of the porters wore laced leather shoes. Most made do with cheap Chinese molded-plastic footwear, no match for the double-insulated climbing boots worn by Crocker, Akil, Davis, and Mancini.

In addition to their climbing gear, the Americans brought along cold-weather clothing, sleeping bags, compression sacks, self-inflating ground pads for sleeping, cooking gear—cup, spoon, bowl—SPF 40 sunscreen, lip balm, water bottles, pee bottles, knives, toiletries, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, hand and toe warmers, first-aid kits, medications, cameras, and note-taking materials.

The first few miles were gentle, past rich green fields, trees—the valley on one side, villages peeking through the trees on the other. But as soon as they neared the Braldu River, the trail veered sharply upward.

With the sun beating down it was boiling hot, but when afternoon clouds moved in, the temperature quickly dropped into the forties. Dark clouds sped across the sky.

This is the easy part, Crocker thought.

After a long day of trekking, the Americans stopped to set up their tents. While they hammered spikes into the hard ground, the porters called out evening prayers to Allah. The sounds collided and echoed into the valley.

As Crocker watched, the porters, bickering and laughing, created a communal shelter behind three-foot-high rock walls, which they covered with a plastic sheet. For warmth they huddled together, wrapped in thin blankets and woolen shawls while the cook prepared a dinner of daal (a bland stew made from dried beans), chawal (rice with kidney beans), and achar (spiced Indian pickles), which all the men shared. Then they slept.



Two days of trekking later, the team reached the Baltoro Glacier, which slowed them down considerably. Most of the slow-moving ice river they traversed was covered with rocks, sand, and dirt, giving it a grayish aspect. The parts exposed to the sun were slick and especially treacherous.

Crocker led the way, looking to avoid ice ridges and crevasses. To his left, sharp granite peaks covered with snow and ice stabbed the sky.

He wished Holly was with him to see this. She was a government operative like him, also a black belt in karate and an accomplished runner and cyclist. Fit and beautiful, too. Their friends and family called them Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

He wondered what she was doing, and how she was getting along with Jenny. As much as he loved them both, he preferred the excitement of training with the team and missions to the comforts of home.

His first wife could never understand that. But Holly did. Crocker knew that he was lucky to have found her—a woman who appreciated what he did and didn’t try to change him. He gave her total credit for making their marriage work.

He pushed ahead, picking his way through an endless maze of giant boulders, all the while thinking he had to track down Abu Rasul Zaman. Shoot the bastard in the head.

One of the Balti porters told him the glacier moved so fast that the route was different every two or three weeks. Sounded a bit like his own life.

Eventually they reached a path that wound a thousand feet up from the glacier to the next campsite, perched high on a hill. It was a slippery, near vertical climb.

“How much farther?” Akil shouted.

Turning to look over his shoulder, Crocker saw Mancini lose his grip on the ice, flip in the air, and slide ten feet before he could perform a self-arrest by sticking his ice axe in the frozen snow and stopping his momentum.

Shit!

He was down, squirming, trying to pull the axe out from underneath his body.

Crocker shouted: “Is he okay?”

Davis, by Mancini’s side, shouted back: “The blade went into his thigh. He smashed his knee and ribs.”

“Let me see.”

A light rain started to fall as they arrived at the permanent camp. Multicolored tents covered a broad grassy slope three hundred yards above the glacier, which formed an enormous granite backdrop, like a giant rippled curtain. As the porters sang and banged out an intricate rhythm on blue plastic drums, Crocker bandaged the ugly slash to Mancini’s right thigh. Then he fitted him with an elastic knee brace and handed him a couple of Motrins.

He felt for damage to his ribs, kneecap, and ligaments. “You might have bruised and possibly fractured a couple of ribs. The knee looks bruised, not cracked. If that’s the extent of your injuries, you’re lucky.”

“That’s the same knee I smashed playing football,” Mancini said.

“You’re probably gonna have to stay off of it awhile.”

“Fuck me.”

“How’d it happen?”

“I was feeling a little light-headed,” Mancini said. “I started imagining the smell of my wife’s lasagna. Then I thought I heard her talking to me.”