The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (25 page)

Fat flakes of snow floated down steadily, creating a many-layered arras in front of us. But we managed to descend most of the way as it started to get dark. The curtain of snow had thinned out, and as we stood on a ridge, I saw the vast flat expanse of a glacier below us. Beyond that, I knew, was one more range, and then the U.S. border. With any luck, our ordeal would be over in two days.

 

I woke the next morning to find that a dense fog had settled onto the landscape. The view of the glacier from the previous evening had been replaced by a claustrophobia-inducing closeness.

We had to make do with a sparse breakfast, and I could not hide from the others that beyond that evening, we would be running on empty. Yuri was particularly vocal in his complaints, and he no longer hid his drinking.

Because of the fog, it took us much longer than I had anticipated to descend to the glacier. Dusk caused the mist to congeal around us; we were now on the glacier, but still had most of it to cross.

The setting of the invisible sun was marked only by a gradual attenuation of the already meager light. I dropped my pack, and the others came up behind me and unloaded their burdens as well. George, who had been at the back of the line, saw us standing there and said, “It's not time to stop yet.”

“It's getting dark. I can't see where we're going,” I pointed out.

“We have GPS. We gotta keep moving.”

“Go ahead, George. You can lead the way.”

“How much longer to the border?”

“At this rate, two more days.” This raised a chorus of groans.

“Two more days, two more days. You always say two more days. Are we even going in the right direction?” George asked.

“You have the GPS. You tell me.”

“We're out of food,” Yuri put in.

I turned to him. “Going ahead in the dark is suicide. The glacier is full of crevasses. Better to go slow and get there alive.”

I used up the last of our food to make a thin, confused stew that night. Yuri supplemented his portion with his inexhaustible supply of vodka. He sat there, whittling on some wood that he had picked up the day before. His drinking had never created any signs of inebriation in the past, but tonight the strokes of his knife became more and more savage, and an insane expression gradually suffused his face.

I was cleaning up the dishes and had my back to the group, but listened to the conversation, trying to pick out words from Russian that would at least indicate the general topic of the discussion. Omar drifted over to help me; his face was still a mess from the beating Yuri had administered.

“What kind of name is Sierra, anyway?” he asked at one point.

“I changed it when I came to Canada. My original name is James.”

“You're not Canadian?”

“Nah. I'm a draft dodger.”

“From the States?” I turned to look at him. He seemed quite agitated.

“From the States?” he repeated.

“Well, yeah.”

“You're American!”

“I've been here thirty-seven years. I'm a Canadian citizen.”

Omar stared at me from the one eye that wasn't swollen shut and then walked back to the others, who were still conversing in Russian. I was about to head off to sleep when I was confronted by George, Omar, and Thanh.

George started. “You're American.”

“No, I'm a Canadian citizen. What the fuck's the difference, anyway?”

Their angry expressions told me that there was a difference.

“I came here a long time ago so I wouldn't be drafted.”

“But you're American,” George insisted.

I decided to change tack. “Look, I have a warrant for my arrest in the U.S. for selling dope, in addition to being a draft dodger. That's why I can only take you a short way past the border. But I'll get you and your cargo there. I don't care that you're carrying drugs. I used to be a dealer myself.” I had never before exaggerated my involvement with drugs.

The three of them exchanged glances. Whatever it was that they were going to do next, it didn't happen, because suddenly there was a burst of loud Russian from behind them. Yuri was half standing, knife in one hand, wood in the other, roaring at Scarface. I could make out only one word of his tirade—
Taliban
. The insane expression on Yuri's face was terrifying, even from where I stood. His face was a deep red, glistening with sweat, and his eyes were tiny brown spots. His bristly hair stood on end like threatening porcupine's quills.

Scarface was sitting, impassive, except that the scar was like a white lightning bolt against the livid color that suffused the rest of his face.

Though he was in a posture to spring on Scarface with the knife, it was unclear whether Yuri actually intended to do so. Nevertheless, in a motion that my eyes could barely follow, Scarface reached inside his parka, pulled out a black gun, and shot Yuri square in the forehead. The bullet went out the back of his skull with a spurt of blood, and Yuri, still in a squat, tumbled over backward.

For a moment it was as if I were in a wax museum that was displaying a tableau frozen in time. Only the crimson stain seeping from Yuri's head into the snow got larger. Scarface sat rigidly pointing his gun to where Yuri had been, and my three interrogators, half turned toward him, looked like statues with their torsos awkwardly twisted.

Then everyone exploded into action. George confirmed that Yuri was dead, kicking the knife in his hand away from the body, and then started shouting at Scarface, who stood with his right arm hanging limply but still clutching the gun.

They ignored me while they stripped Yuri's body. His skin was as white as the snow around him, but I noticed a large reddish area on his back, as if he had a sunburn. Omar and Thanh burned the bloodstained clothes while Scarface and George dragged the naked body off somewhere into the darkness. The red stain in the snow was covered up, and by the time those two returned, the camp looked entirely normal. Scarface sat down and rapidly disassembled and cleaned his gun and put it back together. This was a man who knew his weapon.

Suddenly I was the one who felt out of his depth, as a military atmosphere suffused the camp. George issued terse orders, and the others carried them out without question. They soon turned their attention to me. My ankles and wrists were tied, and George decided that he liked my company after all, because he crawled into my cave with his sleeping bag next to mine. He had a rope tied to his wrist, the other end of which was looped around my throat. I awoke several times during the night to the sensation that I was suffocating; whenever George turned over, the loop would tighten around my neck, and I'd be forced to turn with him. Needless to say, I did not get much sleep. I guess Lana was right—I have issues about getting close.

 

When George and I did our synchronized crawl out of the snow cave the next morning, we were greeted by fog that was, if anything, more dense than the day before. This was surprising. It was rare for conditions to stay stable for such an extended period, because weather systems in the mountains tend to evolve rapidly. True, we were on the glacier, which forms an extended flat area and is more conducive to allowing a stable system.

Not that I could even tell that we were on the glacier. I could barely make out the openings to the snow caves where the others were sleeping, just five meters from me.

Our remaining provisions consisted of some coffee and a tiny bag of oatmeal, and George let me off my leash only long enough so that I could melt snow and prepare this travesty of a breakfast.

As I went about my tasks, I pondered my situation. I thought seriously about just making a break and leaving them. Surviving without my pack would have been difficult, but not impossible. In any case, I had little doubt that George would dispose of me once I led them across the border.

However, even if I abandoned the group, there was a chance that they would survive to carry out their mission. Scarface clearly had mountaineering skills. I had to chuckle at my dilemma. Owen and the other self-righteous activists always said that we all have to choose sides at some point. Circumstances sometimes force us to make surprising choices.

As I ruminated on this, my foot came in contact with something hard that was wedged into the crack under a block of snow that I was using as a makeshift counter. I bent down. In the dim light of dawn I saw the dark handle of Yuri's knife that George had kicked away from that inert body. Looking around to make sure no one observed me, I tucked the knife inside my parka.

Later, the process of dividing up the contents of Yuri's pack took place. George tied me up again, leaving me inside my snow cave, but even in the mist it was pretty obvious that it wasn't drugs they were transporting. As I peered out the opening, I could make out another blue metal canister, and something square that must have been a piece of electronics inside a layer of cushioning.

Soon we were under way again. Even under less bizarre circumstances it would have been advisable to rope ourselves together. If any of us fell into a crevasse, the others would prevent him from falling too far.

The storm a few days previously had dumped a large amount of snow over the area. This meant that the crevasses were difficult to detect. Over the winter, a snow bridge often forms over a crack in the ice. As long as it's cold, these snow bridges are strong enough to support a person crossing them. In spring, the bridges melt, revealing the gaping openings in the deep ice of the glacier. The most dangerous time is in between. The snow hides the traps but is not strong enough to support someone crossing over them.

We trudged along almost in lockstep, one long rope looped through the climbing harnesses that we all wore. I was in the lead, with George behind me, followed by Omar, Thanh, and then Scarface at the back.

Progress was slow, because of the poor visibility. Scarface had the GPS, and he occasionally shouted to me if I wandered too far from the correct heading. His voice sounded as if it came from another world, muffled by the fog. I could see no more than a couple of meters ahead, and when I looked back, I could see George, but Omar was a dark blur, and my eyes could not penetrate to see Thanh or Scarface.

George called for frequent stops. Their packs were obscenely heavy, having increased 50 percent as their numbers dropped. Mine, in contrast, got lighter as we used up all our food, since they were unwilling to trust me with their lethal cargo.

In the dull rhythm of putting one ski in front of the other, I had lots of time to consider exactly what these men were carrying. The red marks on Yuri's back looked like radiation burns to my inexperienced eye.

We stopped again after a while, sitting in a circle, sipping from our water bottles. There was some discussion in Russian, which may have concerned sharing the load with me. The only decision made was to put Scarface immediately behind me, thus leaving Thanh at the end. There was a fair amount of loose snow from the storm, and breaking trail made the going harder. The farther back in the line one was, the more packed the trail.

“How much longer until we get out of this fog?” George asked.

“It looks like it's settled onto the glacier for good. Once we start climbing, we'll probably get above it.”

“How long?”

“Maybe seven kilometers. Depends on how fast we go.”

He scowled, and then gave the order to move.

About a half-hour later, as my right ski slid forward, I thought I heard a soft crunch in the snow under me. My numbed brain took a moment to decipher the meaning of this sound, but my body kept its rhythm, one ski ahead of the other, and an instant later I heard a louder crack behind me. Instinctively, I threw myself to the ground, kicked off my skis, and dug my heels into the snow; at the same time, both of my hands grabbed the rope connecting me to the others. There was a violent yank on the rope, only a little of which I was able to absorb with my arms. I was being pulled back, my heels making deep grooves in the packed snow as I slid toward a wide black opening. On the other side of the gap I could make out Thanh, in much the same situation. We continued to skid, from opposite sides, toward the edge of the crevasse, pulled by the weight of the three men dangling on our rope.

For a moment the mist thinned, and I could clearly see the horror in Thanh's eyes as I swiftly pulled out Yuri's knife and cut the rope. Thanh struggled, but even for the two of us the weight had been too much. Thanh's face had a look of reproach as he disappeared over the lip of the crevasse.

I scrambled farther away from the edge, taking my skis with me. I dug a trench parallel to the opening, tied another rope to my skis, and then buried them to form an anchor. Using the rope as a belay, I crawled on my stomach until I could look over the lip.

The crevasse was very deep, and the walls were almost vertical. Not even Joe Simpson could climb out of it. I could barely see Thanh lying face-down deep below, on a narrow ledge. He looked to be unconscious, and there was a red smear near his face. I couldn't even see the others.

I crawled back to my pack, dug out the skis, put them on, and started trudging toward the border. I could sneak into some small town, pick up a few supplies, and then head back to Nelson.

The rhythm of my motion provided a hypnotic background to the thoughts swirling around in my head. I had deliberately killed four people, yet I felt no guilt. For one thing, Thanh and I could not have held the other three, so the alternative was that all five of us would die.

But I had to admit that even if there had been a way to save the others, I would not have done it. Like Oetzi, their bodies, along with their lethal cargo, would be spit out by the glacier in a few thousand years. I wondered if any humans would be left to find them.

As a kid, during the Cold War, I had lived with the constant threat of nuclear war. It had been averted, and we believed we had emerged into a new era of tranquility, where we would not have to be thinking about death from an outside, impersonal force. But we were wrong.