PART TEN: THE CHIMNEY*
He can barely move.
John's managed to get himself and Dev, minus the last few anchors he had thanks to a nasty gust of wind that took his breath…and the anchors…away, into the relative protection of the V-shaped chimney. He's unstrapped Dev and shoved him back into the deepest hollow, having just dug out as much snow from it as he could manage.
Now he knows he's got to try to secure Dev's broken fingers. Better to do it while he's already unconscious than to wait for him to wake up and have him pass out again when John splints it. By now, every inch of John is hurting, but he fishes Dev's balaclava from his backpack and gets it on, and that starts helping warm his face up, at least.
It also brings to life the nerve endings that tell him his right cheek is a lot more gouged from that first wind blasting him into the rock than he'd thought.
The emergency kit he's carrying has just enough in it for him to splint each of Dev's four fingers, and his thumb, then wrap them all in a small thermal protective bag, securing it with medical tape wound around so many times he's used half the roll to do it.
The shape of the chimney makes the wind howl eerily around them. John pulls out Dev's cell phone and his own. He finds no signal from regular cell towers, as expected, and still nothing from Thunderbird Five. He checks his watch again, now that he can actually see it in front of his face, and confirms that it is well and truly smashed all to hell.
They've got emergency flares, but in this weather, there's no one to see them.
Now that he's able to stop and take stock of the situation, he realizes that at this point, going down is not an option. The pitches are too steep to try to descend without the gear Mike had attached to his backpack.
As far as he can remember from the last look at Mike's West Buttress map, there are a couple of awkward chimneys standing between him and the upper Cassin Ridge, where they'll be at around sixteen thousand feet. They'll be able to find a tent ledge there, giving John some much needed rest – assuming their tents can withstand wind gusts he estimates at around eighty miles per hour – and giving Dev an opportunity to wake up and get enough painkillers in him to keep him mobile.
The trouble now is actually getting to the Cassin Ridge. John is using his body to shield Dev from the part of the chimney that's exposed, but he won't be able to hold position indefinitely. You know, there are some things you just can't train for.
Well, if he and Dev make it out of this alive, he'll suddenly have the title of Expert Mountain Rescuer to use whenever a mountainous danger zone calls. Assuming, of course, that his dad doesn't actually kill him as soon as he sees him.
Oh, to be back down on the Kahiltna Glacier with Mike still alive and no hare-brained scheme to climb Denali in the middle of January.
But John's suspicions…and conviction to see this through…still stand.
He knows that on this mountain temperatures can routinely drop below minus forty. He also knows that oftentimes even without severe weather, the winds can get themselves up to a hundred miles per hour. But…
He is John Tracy. He is International Rescue. And if there's something atop that mountain causing damage to the planet, causing people to lose their lives, then he knows of nothing else to do than try to put an end to it.
His two regrets, as he looks down at Dev's unconscious form, are dragging his friend along with him, and Mike, who's lost his life in John's pursuit of the truth.
Maybe this hasn't been the brightest move John's ever made, but he and Dev are still alive, and there's still possibly something sitting atop Denali causing earthquakes and storms like the one roiling around the mountain now. There are an awful lot of lives at stake if this doesn't stop.
So John's got to keep going. He's going to save Dev, he's going to find out what's at the summit, and if there is something there, he's going to figure out how to make it go away.
Eventually, he figures, his dad will somehow find out what's happening, and that John's there in the middle of it.
He hopes.
When Dev wakes, it's not pretty. He's in so much pain all he can do is moan in agony as John makes it past the second chimney to a long ridge where all he's got to do is find somewhere to pitch a tent for them. It's the Cassin Ridge. They made it.
He gets Dev unlashed from his back, digs him a bed in the snow, and manages to get three D-level ibuprofens down his throat before Dev just passes out again. John can only pray his friend doesn't have internal injuries much worse than his busted fingers. His vital signs are decent enough, as rudimentary as John's techniques for gathering them have to be up here, and his pupils aren't either fixed or dilated, so at least there's no concussion.
But beyond that, he just doesn't know.
The winds have died down to only about sixty mph now. Only, John thinks, wishing he could do a good eyeroll without worrying about his eyeballs freezing. Because while the wind's not as strong, the temperature has most definitely dropped.
He manages to dig a good three-foot deep trench in the snow, and get one tent nestled securely into it. Its Teflon coating will keep the wind off them, at least, and the snow banking around them should actually keep it fairly warm, all things considered.
Then it's a matter of getting Dev into the tent and into a thermal sleeping bag. Lightweight and thin, the material developed by Brains for use in both space and Earth-bound cold rescue situations make it easy to carry these things on a climb or as rescue gear without taking up a lot of room.
John has never found himself so grateful for the inventor as he is right at this moment when he settles into the other bag himself, then gathers Dev into his arms and holds on tight. When he falls asleep, it's with Dev softly snoring and the sounds of the wind whipping around them filling his ears.
*Chimney: A rock route large enough for a climber to fit inside.