His favorite songs: “My Way” sung by Frank Sinatra and Sid Vicious, “Gimme Shelter” and “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Stones, “Sky Pilot” by the Animals, AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.”
That’s when he thought he heard a voice. “Tom!” It sounded like a woman’s.
“Mom? Is that you?”
She had told him once that she believed in spirits and ghosts.
“Mom, I’m down here!”
No response. Maybe the wind was playing tricks on him. Maybe it had been his imagination.
Favorite movies: Pulp Fiction, The Deer Hunter, Dances with Wolves, Apocalypse Now, Platoon. The Godfather at the top of the list.
Minutes passed before he heard the voice again, faintly: “Tom. Tom. Where are you?”
“I’m down here! Down here!”
A column of cold wind found its way into the crevasse and spun in a circle, chasing itself. A chill rattled up his spine.
Crocker thought: The worst thing that could happen is that I start to lose my mind.
Extreme conditions could do that. He knew from experience. He had hallucinated several times during multiday nonstop treks. Like once, in the Iraqi desert after almost a week of sleep deprivation, he thought he saw strange objects flying overhead.
Crocker hugged himself into a tighter ball. His mom felt close.
Feelings of mortality started to creep into his head, along with a numbness that moved through his feet, up into his ankles.
He shivered three times in succession. His teeth started to rattle.
Fuck…
His muscles were frozen, and there was no room to move. Not that he wanted to risk slipping off the narrow ice bridge and falling deeper.
So he focused on the sun. And understood why ancient people had gotten on their knees to worship it each morning. Without the sun, there would be no trees, no birds, no life. Modern man paid homage by going on vacation and lying on the beach. He preferred a soft sand run or a swim. He’d done so all over the world: Panama, Vietnam, Florida, Maine, Virginia, the south of France.
Suddenly Crocker felt the slightest warmth, and smiled to himself. The power of suggestion.
He heard something stir. “Mom?”
Looking up, he saw a light at the top of the crevasse, then heard a familiar voice.
“Crocker! Are you down there?”
There definitely was a light.
“Akil!”
“Boss!”
“What the hell took you so long? I’m fucking freezing.”
“I had better things to do.”
No doubt. The testosterone-loaded SEAL and the East European climber had been going at it practically nonstop since they’d met two and a half days ago.
“What are you doing down there, boss?”
“I was looking for a quiet place to take a shit.”
As they continued talking, Akil lowered a rope. Crocker didn’t take his eyes off it as it snaked down the icy blue wall.
When the yellow line reached him, he grabbed it.
Using a small cord he had in his pocket, he tied two emergency Prusik knots on the line and started to pull himself out.
The ice wall made foot placements almost impossible, but the farther he climbed, the better he got. Yard by yard. His heart pounding.
The pressure on his arms and shoulders was so intense that his muscles started to spasm as he reached the top.
“Another couple of yards!” Akil shouted, offering a gloved hand.
Crocker tightened his grip on the rope, his right foot clinging to a little ridge in the ice. He took a moment to reach down deep, through all his experience and training, to the ball of fire that burned inside him.
With a last burst of energy, he got to the top and held on. Akil’s sure hands helped him out.
“Thanks!”
“You must have antifreeze in your blood.”
“I won’t forget this, buddy.”
Then, acknowledging his mother, Crocker looked up to the stars spinning in the neon blue sky and passed out.
Chapter Eight
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.
—H. G. Wells
CROCKER DREAMT he was a boy looking at a birthday cake, waiting for his opportunity to blow out the candles. The electric lights were off. Familiar voices were singing in a range of octaves. Most beautifully, one slightly off-key. He turned to look for the face it belonged to. Saw a cascade of beautiful strawberry blond hair, then awoke.
Who does that hair belong to? Not my sister.
His tent was suffused with a warm reddish light. He lay zipped into a sleeping bag, a woolen hat pulled over his head. When he sat up, his right side barked, from his shoulder to his knee.
Which made him remember the ice crevasse of the night before. The eerie blue light.
No more wandering out at night alone.
Pulling on his boots, he returned to the warm image of the cascade of strawberry blond hair and wondered where he’d seen it before. Didn’t it belong to the missing Norwegian girl Mikael Klausen had shown him on his laptop, back at the camp in Urdukas?