BLIND DESENT Page 31

  "Bag," Sondra mumbled.

  Good. They'd be a while. It would give Anna a few precious moments to figure out what in the hell she was going to do.

  Murmuring banal encouragements, Curt followed Sondra, stoop-walking out the passage Anna'd crawled in. When they'd gone, their words an indistinguishable mutter, Laymon turned on his lamp and pulled his pack between his knees. As he reached in, Anna decided not to leap. Whether the decision was spawned by cowardice or good judgment, she would never know. She knew only that her little weight and exhausted efforts against his considerable bulk would end badly. Before she had time to consider whether the sacrifice could have saved Curt, Laymon drew his hand from the pack. He held not the anticipated handgun but a long, narrow package wrapped in brown waxy paper, and a coil of coarse gray wire.

  Dynamite.

  Anna found herself remembering the pistol with something akin to affection.

  23

  Meticulously, Laymon checked the sticks of explosives and the fuse wire, stowed them back in the pack, and began removing climbing gear. There was no need to shoot anyone. Laymon was the de facto head of the group. Curt and Sondra would do as they were told. Curt, Anna guessed, was not entirely comfortable with the way things were shaping up. Discomfort and suspicions would not be enough to start a mutiny. Not where there was a crazy woman to be looked after.

  Laymon would descend first, then the weak link, Sondra, then Curt, taking up the guard position. They would cross the Lounge. Laymon would climb the ninety feet to the narrow aperture that led to Razor Blade Run and on to Lake Rapunzel. In less time than it would take to tell it, he could cut the line, leaving Curt and Sondra marooned in a pit deeper and darker than Edgar Allan Poe ever imagined.

  Safe from pursuit and unseemly interference, Laymon would continue on to Katie's Pigtail. In the slide area he would lay the dynamite and a good, long fuse. He'd be well clear when it closed off this wing of Lechuguilla permanently. Evidence and witnesses buried. The rockfall written off to natural causes. Laymon hailed as an insightful manager for closing an unstable part of the cavern before anyone else got hurt.

  Sondra McCarty? She'd disappeared some time ago, something to do with a bad marriage. Anna and Curt? Laymon wouldn't need to explain. What had they to do with him? Given sufficient warning, the Blacktail would close up shop before Holden had a chance to investigate. Holden would tell of their entering Lechuguilla and why. A dig through the slide in the Pigtail would be considered, then rejected as too dangerous and costly. If anybody had to take a fall, Oscar Iverson would be chosen. Laymon, with Anna's invaluable assistance, had set him up.

  As if he felt the menace behind him, Laymon stood suddenly and crossed to the far side of the room. Anna watched as he put the pack with the gun between his feet and sat on a ledge. The time for pouncing had been frittered away in indecision. Anna had deliberated too long. A minute ticked by to the unsuspecting murmur of Curt's voice down the passageway. Muttering harmless nothings to assure Sondra he was still there.

  The mother of invention brought an idea. Though it promised little in the way of success, Anna embraced the opportunity to take action. Laymon guarded his pack with care. Curt's was closer but, gone missing, would cause alarm. Anna was counting on the fact that distraught women are never believed, even by the most well-meaning men. Unless they'd seen Sondra drop it themselves, they would assume she'd left her pack behind, lost it in one of the hiding places Lechuguilla offered in such abundance. Squelching a desire to rush, Anna weaseled quietly back the way she had come. Sondra's pack lay out in the room, only partially shielded from view by a formation. Laymon had his light on, but unless he trained it in that direction, she could maneuver the pack into her trough unnoticed.

  As she dragged it, the pack made a faint grinding sound. Light streaked toward the back of the room. A snatch, and the pack was clutched under Anna's chest. The light poked, preyed, faltered, then returned to Laymon's feet.

  Scuttling backward with her prize, like an alligator with a Pekinese, Anna vanished into the trough. The water, she drank. The webbed belt, she wriggled into, graceless as a supine woman donning a wet girdle. Safety and rack were tethered to the webbed climbing belt. She was sliding the pack over her shoulder when she heard Curt and Sondra coming back from the ladies' room. Burrito bundle in hand, Sondra emerged first. Trusting the noise of their return to mask that of her crawl, Anna moved through the trough on elbows and knees. The pilfered water sloshed in her stomach, then was manifested as salt sweat in her eyes.

  "Time to move out, kiddos," Laymon said. "The sooner we get to Glacier Bay, the sooner we can get back to your Miss Anna."

  Belly flat against the rock, Miss Anna dropped onto an eighteen inch ledge used as a jumping-off point for the descent. Two yards ahead she could see the rope, red and inviting, where it crossed the step and vanished into the pit.

  "Suit up," Laymon said jovially. To others it might have seemed he strove to maintain morale. To Anna's ear the good cheer was that of a man who very soon would have the solution to all of his problems.

  Gear grated, nylon rustled, carabiners clinked; then came a thin wail. "I can't find my stuff!" Sondra'd discovered the theft.

  "Oh for Chrissake," Anna heard Laymon groan just above her. He rose to his feet and stalked back into the chamber. Anna dared one quick peek. He'd taken his pack with him.

  Blessing the timely diversion, she scrabbled along the step and grabbed the rope. Ignoring her safety, she laced the rope through the rack. No mean feat without light.

  "You two keep looking," Laymon said. He was returning to his former position. "I'll head down. If you don't come up with it, I'll send my gear back up and we'll sort of piggy-back from here on."

  Anna's rigging was probably imperfect, possibly deadly, but it would have to do. With an unvoiced prayer to an unknown god that looked remarkably like her older sister, she swung over the edge. The rope was snug through the rack. Nothing snapped loose or flew open. Almost falling for the first few seconds, she descended rapidly. Without light she had no way of knowing where the bottom was.

  When she found it, she wished she'd had the good sense to go more slowly. Her tailbone smacked into rock, sending a paralyzing jolt up her spine and down both legs. What a bad joke, to be lying crippled when Laymon dropped on her. Luck held. Everything worked. It hurt, but it worked. Daring one flick of her lamp, she sighted the ascension rope on the far side of the pit. Between the looming crusted tables, a red snakey tongue licked dead-white stone.

  Hidden by darkness, she crawled in the direction she'd aimed herself. The crack of her helmet against the wall let her know she'd arrived.

  "Did you hear something?" Curt, sounding hollow as he looked down into the dry well that was the Cocktail Lounge. Lamps appeared, weak and watery searchlights, scouring the pit. Anna lined herself up behind one of the flat-topped formations that gave the place its name. If they saw her the game was up. Shooting fish in a barrel.

  Every cloud, and all that: Anna found a silver lining. In the light from the search and under cover of sound from conversation, she opened Sondra's pack and fished out her ascenders. Ascenders were complicated, made to go over boots, not rubber socks. Until they were properly attached to the rope, the angular devices of metal dragged on the ground, clattering at every step. Gloves in her teeth, Anna worked so fast her fingers fumbled one into the other, but she was rigged by the time she heard Laymon say, "Must've been Hodags," and the lights were snatched back from the deep.

  Holding an ascender in each hand to muffle their noise, she knee-walked awkwardly along the wall till the elbow she skinned over the stone brushed against the rope. Working by feel, she wrestled the metal chest harness over her head and cinched it tight above her breasts. The fit wasn't bad. For so tall a woman, Sondra was small-boned. Taking the pin from the ascender on her right foot, she threaded rope through it, replaced the pin, and tugged on it to assure herself it was rigged solidly. The left foot went into a stirrup, the ascender
at the knee. Anna threaded it, then double-looped the stirrup around her foot so it would stay in place without the rigidity of a boot for support.

  Ready as she would ever be, she stretched the elastic line from her shoulder into the hook on the ascender and pulled herself upright on the rope.

  The ascender wouldn't catch. Rope flailed impotently between her legs. Panic stopped her breath, and she heard the freight-train roar of blood behind her eardrums.

  Easy does it. One step at a time. Walk before you run. Her mind chanted aphorisms to keep her body in touch with her brain. An ascender grabbed. She rope-walked up twelve inches. The other caught, the left, and the noose she'd tied around her foot tightened over the fine bones. Pain was bad; damage could be considerable. There was no time to rethink the plan.

  Another few inches gained. By taking as much weight as she could with her arms, she eased the coils around her instep. Ten more inches. Maybe eight.

  Step and step and do not scream. Behind her, scarcely ten yards across and thirty up, she could hear the others as clearly as over a good AT&T connection. Any minute, surely, one of them would turn their light on her and the shooting would begin.

  A step, a lift, a grinding of bones. A step and another. With every lift of her feet, rope dragged across her ankles. Where once there had been leather there was only thin cotton. Her trousers were no match for the heft of rope and body. Skin was abraded away one thin slice at a time. Twenty-seven steps. Seventy-three left to go. Would seventy three layers of flesh take the rope down to bone? Anna pondered that conundrum for eight more pulls in hopes the grisly picture would serve to block out the cutting.

  Ascenders were designed to allow climbers to use thighs and butts rather than relying on the weaker muscles of the upper body. Trying to bull her way up with her biceps to keep the weight off her strangled foot, Anna burned out arms and shoulders. Each pull became feebler. Aching was replaced by sharp stabs of pain.

  Fifty steps. Maybe. Anna lost count. Tears streamed down her face. She would have been tempted to stop had hanging not been nearly as painful as climbing, and the thought of Laymon winning more painful than both.

  "On-rope." Laymon. Whirring followed as he dropped easily into the pit.

  Eyes squeezed against salt sting, teeth clamped, Anna stepped and stepped again. Rock grated over her knuckles. She jammed her feet into the rope noose and shoved.

  "Off-rope." Laymon was down and free of the line. Had she been able to hear over the pounding of her heart, she knew there'd be the crunch of boots as he crossed the Lounge.

  A reprieve was granted. "Rack and seat sling on-line. Pull it up." Laymon was carrying through the charade. Curt and Sondra were to be allowed to descend. It made sense. Had Laymon gone on, Curt would have known something was wrong. He could descend in a fraction of the time it would take Laymon to climb the other side. With an angry man messing with one's rope, a climb would be seriously compromised. Younger and stronger, Curt might even be able to catch him before he reached the top.

  Dimly, Anna was aware of Sondra descending, of talk back and forth. These things meant little to her. She'd entered her own world of hard pain and harder work. Her life was fighting this rope, easing the breaking hold on her foot, accepting the searing across her ankles. Other lives, other people, diminished to a memory, a dream of another life.

  "On-rope." Curt Schatz. His voice penetrated Anna's red fog. He was close, over her shoulder, on the opposite side of the Lounge. She must be nearly to the top. With a last burst of strength she pushed herself up. The line curved. Air was mashed from her lungs. Her belly scraped over the lip. Locked at the knees, her legs poked over the pit. Gear tied her belly-down on the ledge near the anchor. Pulling gloves off, she jerked the quick-release pin from her chest wheel and felt some give. The buckle beneath her arm was yanked open. The metal-and-web harness let go, freeing her upper body. Crumpled facedown on the ground, she welcomed the cooling water on her face. A drip puddle edged the drop, and she had crawled into it. So drenched was she in sweat she could not feel wetness, only coolness.

  The need to lie still, to lick her wounds, was as powerful as a drug. Bankrupt of fuel, her body was shutting down. Forcing herself to a sitting position, she pulled the pin from the ascender on her knee and shook the rope out.

  "On-rope." Laymon.

  The rope jerked, dragging Anna toward the edge of the cliff. Water, so recently her friend, reduced friction, and she slid easily over the slick rock.

  "What's the problem?" Curt's voice floated up.

  "The rope is snagged on something," Laymon said.

  "Let me give you a hand."

  Anna lurched for her right foot where the rope held it out over the pit. Grasping the ascender's release, she yanked, desperate as a man pulling the pin of a hand grenade.

  "Now."

  Her leg yanked painfully down. Throwing herself back from the edge, she clung to the anchor. Another jerk and the rope tore free of her foot. She reeled the leg in. Systems weren't working, limbs rebelled. She'd gotten ahead of Laymon, between him and the flawed exit from Katie's Pigtail, but she was spent. In a wrestling match with a butterfly, she would have come out the loser.

  The rope twitched: Laymon climbed. Shielding her light lest she lose the one playable card she held—surprise—Anna searched for a weapon. In a wonderland of rock there wasn't a stone to throw. Nothing bigger than a marble. His moment of greatest vulnerability would be when he floundered over the lip. She could kick him. Feet were bare and broken. Laymon's cranium was protected by a hard hat, his body secured to the rock face with rope and carabiner. All he'd have to do was catch hold of some part of her. A little leverage and she'd go over the edge like laundry down a chute.

  Cupping her headlamp between her hands, she crawled away from the cliff. Tucked around a curtain of flowstone, behind the formation used as an anchor, she hid. Light off, she couldn't even tell if her eyes were tracking. She must catch her breath. Then she must think. The last of Sondra's water was sucked down, making her feel more alive. That was not necessarily a good thing.

  Grating. Grunts. Laymon was up. Time had come to do something. Unable to think what, Anna stayed in her hole.

  Metallic sounds followed. Laymon taking himself off-rope. He wouldn't bother to derig for the short journey through Razor Blade Run. The ascenders would be needed again to climb out of Lake Rapunzel. It no longer mattered that they could destroy a few million-year-old crystal formations in the Run. No one would ever know.

  He was loose from the rope, but he said nothing to those below. Light flickered across the wall opposite Anna's niche. He was headed her direction. With more effort than it would have taken to lift a tractor, she eased to her feet. Leftover pride from watching Westerns as a child: die standing up. She wished she had her boots on.

  Light winked out. Laymon had turned his back. On torn and bleeding feet, she stepped out. He was five or six feet away. Mesmerized, she watched as he took a Swiss Army knife from a nylon sheath on his belt. From below, Curt was calling his name. Wordlessly, Laymon began cutting the line.

  The son of a bitch wasn't even going to say good-bye.

  Anna lurched toward him. Her left foot buckled beneath her. A scream was stifled in her throat.

  Laymon was turning.

  Anna was stumbling, counting on momentum to do what strength could not.

  Her shoulder caught him on the left hip. Light from his helmet fled erratically into the pit. A fist grazed Anna's jaw. Then he was gone. For a moment she lay in the cool of the water where he'd so recently stood, feeling it seeping into her eyes, mixing with tears and sweat. Muscles and mind in rebellion, she began shaking apart. Still there was something left to be done. For a long moment she tried to remember what. Finally it came to her.

  Hanging her head over the drop, she called, "Off-rope."

  24

  Anna walked a mile in the dead man's shoes. Burdened with a greater sensibility, Curt was squeamish about robbing the corpse, but Anna's
feet were killing her. Packed with extra socks, Laymon's boots served as both protection and splint. Still, much of the exodus was accomplished on hands and knees.

  They were welcomed back in the park with something less than open arms, an age-old need to kill the messengers and a bureaucratic loathing of independent action. In the subsequent furor over the defection of George Laymon and the destruction of that glorious chamber, Anna escaped punitive action. She was, however, invited to leave Carlsbad Caverns on the next available flight, and it was hinted that the personnel department there would not be a good choice should she need letters of recommendation in the future.

  At the insistence of Carlsbad's superintendent and Holden Tillman, drilling at the Blacktail was stopped, pending investigation. A warrant was obtained to search George Laymon's office and home, but no papers were found to indicate with whom on the Blacktail staff he'd been conspiring. If the law never figured it out, the gas drilling company probably had a good idea. After paying the American public for damages, they would be inspired to take the difference out of the perpetrator's hide, if only metaphorically.

  Sondra recovered quickly. The adventure had not mellowed her. Twenty-four hours after she was brought out of Lechuguilla, she and Peter returned to St. Paul. Peter wore a beaten, hangdog look, and Zeddie one of long-suffering patience. The divorce, if there was to be a divorce, would be every bit as ugly as Sondra could make it.

  The day following the departure of the doctor and his wife, Curt drove Anna to the Carlsbad airport. Her left foot was in a cast, the lateral metatarsal bone broken during the ascent from the Lounge.

  Since Curt had prodded, threatened, and cajoled her up the last climb out of Old Misery Pit, Anna had done little but eat, sleep, and watch TV. Depression as black as any room in Lechuguilla had settled over her mind. She didn't know if she grieved for the dead, despaired the endless plundering of the wild places, or just needed a vacation.

  She wasn't sure she wanted to be a park ranger anymore. What other line of work she was suited for was unclear. At the moment, bagging groceries at the A&P or working the cosmetics counter at Wal-Mart looked tempting. A job where one was seldom called upon to kill anybody.