Seal Team Six Hunt the Wolf(23)
“We gotta stay together,” Crocker responded.
Crocker saw that Mancini was having a great deal of trouble putting weight on his right foot. When he did, ripples of pain and shame twisted what the team leader could see of his face. “Your knee still acting up?”
“It’s a little stiff. I’ll be fine.”
“Manny, conditions only get worse up there.”
“It’ll loosen up.”
Sometimes the die-hard SEAL mentality got in the way.
“Too much can-do can do you in.”
“I’m okay.”
“Show me.”
Reluctantly, carefully, Mancini rolled up his pant leg and medium-weight Icebreaker long underwear to reveal a bulge the size of a baseball and a livid purple bruise that ran from his calf to the bottom of his foot.
“Looks like you ripped your calf muscle.”
“No way.”
“That purple is the blood that’s drained from the tear.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you won’t be climbing. You’re going back to last night’s camp. I’ll send you with two of the porters. We’ll meet you in Islamabad on our way back.”
Mancini pulled off his goggles and threw them in the snow. “Islamabad? That won’t be for another two weeks!”
“Ten days max. You can hang with Ritchie.”
“That crazy fucker threw a live rattlesnake at me once.”
“As a joke.”
“It wasn’t funny. I’ll follow up the rear with a couple of the porters. In a couple of days I’ll be fine.”
“You’re going back to Islamabad.”
“Fuck me.”
A day and a half more of slogging through ice sharks—exposed fins of ice that shoot up as high as two hundred feet—they entered the Concordia, which the Baltis referred to as the “throne of the gods.” The sky was clear blue, and the view spectacular, unrivaled by anything Crocker had seen.
Before he left them, Mancini had explained that back in the seventh century the Buddhist pilgrim Hsuan Tsang had called this valley the most splendid place on earth.
Located at approximately 13,100 feet, the Concordia is actually a rippling, pitted, pockmarked river of gray and white ice where the great glaciers Baltoro, Abruzzi, and Godwin-Austen slide together before separating and going their individual ways. It forms a proscenium for a 360-degree panorama of peaks. Over forty of them reach over 21,000 feet, and ten of the world’s thirty highest peaks are here, including the revered Broad Peak (26,414 feet), Gasherbrum-I (26,509 feet), Gasherbrum-II (26,360 feet), and K2 (28,251 feet)—the second tallest mountain in the world.
“There she is! That’s K2, the Savage Mountain, over there,” Crocker said, pointing at the spear-shaped thrust of rock.
“Incredible,” Davis said.
“And a total bitch to climb.”
“Great.”
“Arguably the most difficult in the world. Steeper and more treacherous than most of the routes on Everest. And the weather is significantly colder and more unpredictable.”
“Whose idea was it to climb that beast?” Akil said.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going for a summit.”
Crocker, who had climbed a few of these peaks before, filled them in on K2’s history. First summited in 1954 by two Italians: Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni. Since then, something like 310 climbers had reached the top, compared to over 2,700 for Everest. Over eighty others had died.
As with most climbs, the descent was even more dangerous than the ascent.
Crocker told them that only ten women had climbed K2. Three of those had fallen to their deaths on the way down.
“And that’s the peak Edyta wants to summit?” Akil asked.
“Yeah, she’s kind of extreme.”
“I can’t wait to meet her.”
“Piss her off and she’ll kick your ass.”
The wind picked up, smacking them in the face as it blasted down between K2 and Broad Peak. It took them close to an hour to cross two hundred yards to the camp, a scattered collection of purple, pink, orange, red, yellow, and blue tents in various sizes and shapes.
The Concordia camp served as a meeting place for adventurers from all over the globe. Flags showed that there were climbers present from Korea, Nepal, Serbia, Pakistan, Norway, France, Ireland, and Germany.
While the porters sang and cleared places for the team’s tents, Crocker and Akil went to visit the Germans. Eight of them were packed into a rectangular blue structure, seated at a folding table. The two Americans were invited to share chapatis (flatbread), yak cheese (which tasted like unsalted butter), and goat-milk tea while one of the Germans relayed the latest weather report out of Switzerland.