Snowkill

PRAISE FOR

RON FAUST

Faust's prose is as smooth and bright as a sunlit mirror.

—Publishers Weekly

Hemingway is alive and well and writing under the name Ron Faust.

—Ed Gorman, author of Night Kills

Faust is one of our heavyweights ... you can't read a book by Ron Faust without the phrase 'major motion picture' coming to mind.

—Dean Ing, New York Times bestselling author of

The Ransom of Black Stealth One

Faust writes of nature and men like Hemingway, with simplicity and absolute dominance of prose skills.

—Bill Granger, award-winning author of

Hemingway's Notebook

He looms head and shoulders above them all—truly the master storyteller of our time. Faust will inevitably be compared to Hemingway.

—Robert Bloch, author of Psycho

Taut prose ... a splendid eye for detail ... an ability to create a central character who is not only interesting but unusually intelligent.

—Washington Post Book World

Resonant, sinewy prose ...

—The Los Angeles Times

ALSO BY RON FAUST

Jackstraw

The Wolf in the Clouds

The Burning Sky

The Long Count

Death Fires

Nowhere to Run

Turner Publishing Company

200 4th Avenue North • Suite 950 • Nashville, Tennessee 37219

445 Park Avenue • 9th Floor • New York, New York 10022

www.turnerpublishing.com

SNOWKILL

Copyright © 2011 by Jim Donovan

Copyright © 1974 by Ron Faust

All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Cover design: Glen M. Edelstein

Book design: Glen M. Edelstein

Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publishing Data

Faust, Ron.

 Snowkill / Ron Faust.

       pages; cm.

 ISBN 978-1-62045-424-4

1. Nazis--Fiction. 2. Alps, French (France)--Fiction. I. Title.

 PS3556.A98S66 2013

 813'.54--dc23

2013005075

Printed in the United States of America

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

     Adolph Streicher was the number two Nazi of the Grenoble group, and the Haute-Savoie was his special province.

     And so the people here would have reason to hate Streicher?

     Hate is hardly the word. Streicher had unlimited power, and he employed it in the usual Nazi style. Terror, torture, the shooting of hostages, the deportation of Jews. The men of these valleys were conscripted for compulsory labor in Germany and many of them never returned. There were irrational arrests, summary executions. People who weren't even born until after the war despise his name.

     Where was he from?

     Munich. He was a Bavarian, like so many of the Nazis.

     And where is he now?

     No one knows for sure ...

We were only three hundred feet below the summit when the storm finally broke. It was two o'clock on Saturday afternoon. The air had a chemical odor. There was a humming of static electricity, and St. Elmo's fire flickered bluishly around our metal equipment.

     We had noticed the storm building through the morning hours and at eleven o'clock had paused for a consultation. I wanted to continue. Cottier was in favor of a retreat. Streicher, the youngest and least experienced, said he would abide by any decision that Cottier and I reached.

     I argued that the storm was still a few hours away and that we could certainly reach a point near the summit before it broke. Most of the difficult climbing would be below us then. This was probably only a brief afternoon storm. It might snow for a couple of hours and then clear by evening. Even if it did not clear we could bivouac tonight and next morning push on to the summit, through bad weather if necessary. Actually, I said, if we moved fast we could probably make the summit before the storm hit us.

     I don't know, Cottier said.

     From the summit it was a relatively easy descent to the refuge on the northwest ridge.

     Look at that sky, Cottier said. I don't know.

     Today was the first of September. The season was almost over; we might not be able to do any more climbing this year.

     Well, he said, if we go all out...

     You decide, Etienne. We can start rappelling down to the glacier now or we can blitz the summit.

     All right, he said. Let's go on.

     Dieter?

     Let's get moving, then, Streicher said.

     We climbed swiftly, using a minimum of pitons and belays, but we lost an hour through poor route-finding and clumsy rope-management. If not for that lost hour we might have been on our way down the ridge when the storm hit.

     During the last few pitches we could hear thunder and see lightning stab through the dark clouds. We kept climbing, and then we were in it.

     We had just enough time before the storm struck full force to prepare our bivouac site: a few pitons to which we tied ourselves and our rucksacks; a moment to put on our down jackets and waterproof ponchos, just enough time to arrange ourselves in moderate comfort on the nine-foot-long, three-foot-wide ledge. That ledge was a beautifully horizontal piece of terrain compared to the rest of the vertical rock wall. Cottier and I sat on the ends; Streicher was between us.

     The air stinks, Cottier said. We're going to get some lightning.

     Do you want to put all the metal stuff in a rucksack and lower it over the side? I asked. But there was no more time.

     The mists swarmed around us and small hailstones began to rattle off the rock. There were flashes of lightning which expanded into huge spheres that illuminated the mist like sun shining behind a cloud, and these were followed by the peals of thunder. One detonation lasted for more than ten seconds. It went off like a munitions factory or oil refinery blowing up and then continued to rumble and crackle and re-explode until all three of us were shouting with fear.

     The expanding balls of light were all around us in the mist, some far out, just small brightly glowing spheres, and some closer, and these illuminated everything with a pale shuddering glow. Bright tentacles snaked through the smoky atmosphere. When the thunder was close I could feel the concussion in my abdomen. My mouth was dry and tasted bitter.

     We were in the worst of it now. There was a crackling and buzzing in the air, a throbbing hum of static electricity. The pitons and ice axe heads sputtered with bluish green light. Our woolen hats discharged sparks, and beneath the hats our hair bristled. A tiny blue flame danced around the metal rims of Streicher's sunglasses. We all shouted. It came then, a blinding flash of light, close above us, a brilliant quivering glare, and then the resonant explosion.

     I was knocked unconscious. I awoke dangling from my piton cord. My head felt as though it were filled with carbonated water. I pulled myself back onto the ledge.

     Silence now, although the mist still vibrated with the glowing and shrinking spheres and the jagged stabs of lightning. Mist billowed around us and condensed on the black rock. There was a coppery taste in my mouth. The air stank of ozone. Gradually my hearing returned. I could hear thunder, muted still, and a faint droning noise—my own voice. I was talking aloud. But my ears felt stuffed with putty; I could not understand the words and my mind refused to reveal their meaning to me. And so I talked without ever knowing what I said.

     Streicher and Cottier had been knocked off the ledge too. They hung limply at the ends of their safety cords. Both seemed to be unconscious but Streicher was groaning softly. I lengthened my own safety cord and slid down the ledge until I was just above Cottier. His head was level with the rim of the ledge. He faced down toward the glacier with his head lowered in an attitude of penitence. His eyes were open. I reached down and pressed my index finger against his eyeball. There was no reflexive response.

     Cottier's hat was gone and his fair hair was blackened and smoking. The lightning had entered at the base of his head and exited through his right knee. The wool knickers were blackened and smoking, too. I could smell burned fabric and burned hair and I could still smell the bitter chemical odors of the storm.

     Lightning flashed through the blowing mist. Thunder shook the mountain. My hearing had not completely returned and the thunder sounded dull and remote, like the artillery of armies fighting somewhere over the horizon.

     Streicher was gradually regaining consciousness. His eyelids fluttered and he spoke softly in German. His voice had a querulous tone, like the voice of an old man who was resigned to everything but still complained out of habit. I lay flat on the ledge and looked at him. There were burns on his face, and his hair had been singed down to the scalp on one side. An area of his nylon poncho had been melted.

     Dieter? I called.

     His eyelids fluttered.

     Dieter!

     His eyes opened. The pupils were tiny black dots. I watched the dots and when they had dilated I asked, Are you badly hurt?

     My leg, he said. Oh, Christ.

     We've got to get you back up on the ledge.

     Jesus, he said. Be careful of my leg, Holmes. Streicher usually spoke English beautifully but now there was a thick accent.

     Help me, Dieter, I said. I don't know if I can get you up here by myself.

     He helped me as much as he could and did not faint until his torso was resting on the ledge. His fainting then made the rest easier for both of us, since there was no way I could get his lower body up onto the ledge without abusing his bad leg. I handled him as if he were a sack of potatoes or a store mannequin. I got him onto the ledge and turned him over on his back. His right leg was broken midway between knee and groin. I could hear the bone ends grind together when I straightened the leg. Those ends had undoubtedly torn through a lot of muscle and tissue, but at least the fracture remained simple; bone had not penetrated skin.

     I could not understand how his leg had been broken. The femur is a very strong bone, and he had not fallen more than a couple of feet before the safety cord had stopped him. There should not have been any great strain or blow on his leg. The concussion of the lightning had been tremendous, but I could not see how it would break that one bone. There was no figuring it. It was just one of those freak accidents.

     I had to splint the leg before Streicher became conscious again. He was lying supine on the ledge and I did not have much room to work in. I could not have set the leg properly even if I had been competent to do so; but I could splint it and that way protect it from further damage, and maybe prevent an involuntary muscle contraction from driving a sharp bone end through the skin. I used two ice axes for the splint and wrapped them tightly with tubular nylon cord.

     The storm was receding toward the south now. The lightning appeared dimmer; the thunder no longer vibrated inside me. The clouds remained and snow ticked softly against the rock. There did not seem to be any more danger from lightning. Lightning can strike twice in the same place. It very often will. Once, twice, again and again. But not today.

     The lightning that had killed Cottier had discharged above us, and either the main or a subsidiary bolt had traced a path of least resistance down the rock. It was Etienne's misfortune that he happened to be occupying that path. He was dead and Streicher was injured and I had received a terrific jolt.

     Streicher groaned. His hands clenched and unclenched convulsively. After a minute his eyes opened.

     How are you? I asked when his eyes had cleared.

     I've felt better.

     A lot of pain?

     It's pretty bad. How is Etienne?

     Dead.

     It's snowing, he said.

     The summit isn't far. I'll climb out of here tomorrow morning and get a rescue party together. We'll have you down in the valley by tomorrow night, or Monday noon at the latest.

     Holmes, have you got any morphine?

     No, but maybe there's some in Cottier's rucksack. There was. I found a hypodermic syringe and three morphine ampoules in his first aid kit. Etienne had always been a well-prepared climber; it was just that there was not much you could do to prepare for electrocution.

     I gave Streicher an injection of morphine, and after a time his voice became drowsy and almost contented. We talked and then he fell asleep.

     I went through Cottier's rucksack and removed a wedge of cheese, a few rounds of sausage, and a half bottle of red wine. We had intended to drink the wine at midday but then had omitted lunch in our race against the storm. I drew the cork and drank directly from the bottle. It was bad wine demanding sanctuary behind a good label. I drank the wine and ate the cheese and sausage and then drank some water.

     It was snowing heavily now, big wet disks that fluttered endlessly downward. Because of the falling snow and the cloud, I could see no more than forty or fifty feet in any direction.

     My watch had stopped at exactly 2:33. The watch operated on an electric cell, and apparently the lightning had blown it out. I guessed that the time was about 3:30. I lit a cigarette and sat back to wait out the storm.

     The avalanches started at around 6:30. The rock wall above us was so steep that the avalanches were triggered before a dangerous amount of snow could accumulate. They came hissing down the face, powdery curtains of snow that poured past the ledge on down toward the glacier below. Snow piled up on the ledge and filtered through my clothing. Every now and then I brushed the snow off the sleeping Streicher. The force of the snowfalls moved Cottier's dangling body. His hair and shoulders were powdered white. These avalanches were no problem, but I could hear the dull thud and river-rapids roar of the big