Chuck Barrett
Breach of Power
For Debi.
EPIGRAPH
"Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want
to test a man's character, give him power."
PROLOGUE
When the Austrians came for him, he knew what they wanted.
The journal.
He could never let them have it. That would be his death sentence.
He ran down the corridor, grabbed a coat from the resort's coat closet, tucked the journal inside an interior pocket, and buttoned it tight. He slipped on his gloves and ventured out into the storm.
Howling wind buffeted against his body. Ice crystals ripped at his exposed flesh like tiny shards of glass. Snow crunched beneath his boots. With each laborious step, the deeper drifts swallowed his legs to his knees. Without goggles his eyes stung and his eyelashes froze. Ice clung to his brows. He wiped it away with the back of his glove.
The 1917 Waterbury watch his father gave him, his only possession other than the clothes on his back, read 1:00. His father had carried it during World War I. Now it was his only heirloom. The last evidence that he had a past.
The blizzard, already raging for two days, was forecast to pound the area for another thirty-six hours. It had shut down the recently commandeered Schneefernerhaus Hotel and Resort atop Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain. The U. S. Army closed the resort hotel over 24 hours ago and all guests and non-essential personnel were sent down from the summit. Only a skeleton crew remained and were scattered throughout the resort. The only transportation from the mountaintop, a twenty-year-old cable car, was closed due to high winds, forcing him to escape on foot.
His first plan was to retreat across the sloping terrain of the Zugspitzplatt, a plateau below the summit of Zugspitze, and down through Reintal Valley to Garmisch. Ages ago, the Zugspitzplatt was carved by glaciers, which left in its wake a plateau with hundreds of limestone caves.
The Zugspitzplatt was a longer route, but its slopes offered a better alternative than the treacherous northeast face of Zugspitze. Even though he’d scaled that mountain face numerous times, it had been in warmer weather, and he'd never descended it. Under existing conditions, with gale force winds and icy rock faces, escape in that direction would be perilous, if not borderline suicidal.
In the howling snowstorm he trudged eastward through the crusty snowpack across the Zugspitzplatt when he spotted three Austrians fifty meters in front of him. Each man carried a rifle. He turned south, only to see more Austrians moving in his direction. He was trapped.
Like a loose cow on the prairie, he was being herded back to the hotel. Slowly. Deliberately.
He had two choices. Surrender, and surely die. Or take his chances descending the north face of Zugsptize in the raging blizzard, where he'd probably die anyway. He wouldn't give those bastards the satisfaction, he thought. There was a slim chance he could make it, and right now, that was better than no chance at all.
Most importantly, she wouldn't have the book.
He circumnavigated the hotel and fled for the summit.
He reached the vertex of Zugspitze exhausted, voices behind him barely audible over the wind whipping across the mountain's peak. He leaned into the wind and let the thought of keeping the journal from her drive his determination.
Descending the northeast face of Zugspitze offered no shelter from the squall. In fact, just the opposite, it kept him in the brunt of the storm's fury. The bitter cold wore on him with each passing minute. Each time he stopped to rest, he thought he heard voices above him mixed with the whirlpool of wind whipping and swirling through the jagged rocks. The threat forced him to keep moving, descending the treacherous decline toward the Höllentalferner glacier, where he knew he could make faster progress. But first, he still had to descend the klettersteig, or climbing path, a near vertical rock face outfitted with cables, ropes, stemples, and ladders. It was intended solely for climbing — not descending — and he knew it would be covered with ice.
When he reached the precipice, he looked down at the sheet of ice blanketing his path and knew the descent would be perilous.
And foolish.
He studied the path down the mountain and located each stemple, a wooden or iron peg wedged into the rock, and gauged how much ice had accumulated on the wall.
The next four hours were spent in a slow, meticulous descent. Grasping the frozen guide rope with one hand, he lowered himself to the next stemple, knocking it clear of ice with his boots before putting his full weight on it. His gloves, shredded against the jagged rocks, left little for protection and warmth. His fingers were numb. How he longed to return to the hot and humid South, where winters in his small hometown in northwestern South Carolina were mild in comparison to the brutal winters of Germany.
He'd long since forgotten about the men chasing him when it occurred to him that he hadn't heard their voices in over three hours. Maybe they gave up and turned back.
Fifty feet above the glacier he caught his first glimpse of the barren ice field through the raging snowstorm. Thirty more minutes, he thought, perhaps forty-five, to descend to the glacier. He stopped to catch his breath. His fingers throbbed from the cold so he cupped his hands and blew hot breath into them in a vain attempt to stimulate blood circulation to his fingertips.
Small rocks and ice pelted him from above, and he knew the woman and her Austrian thugs were still in pursuit. He tripled his efforts, traversing the steep decline faster, not taking the time to clean the ice from the stemples before each step.
Twenty feet above the glacier a wooden stemple broke. With one hand still clutching the guide rope, he swung away from the stemples and crashed against the icy rock face. A shot rang out and simultaneously a shock wave pounded his chest radiating upward through his shoulder and into his arm. Too painful for him to cling to the safety line, his hand slipped free and he plummeted toward the glacier, bouncing off a rock outcropping on the way down. A thick snowdrift next to the icy rock face cushioned his fall.
He grabbed at the searing pain. Underneath his heavy coat, he felt his warm blood spreading across his shirt.
He'd been shot.
He heard men yelling. He looked up and saw three faint silhouettes move across the snow-covered, icy crag. He pulled himself to his feet and sprinted across the glacial ice field. And away from his pursuers.
The man shouted again, then he heard the blast from a rifle. A patch of ice next to him exploded. He turned around to see where the shot came from but the snowstorm had swallowed the side of the mountain and the rock face was no longer visible.
Thank goodness he made it to the ice field. Although not level, it still allowed him to move much faster in the raging storm.
He was on the Höllentalferner glacier's accumulation zone, where each year's buildup of snow and ice fueled its downhill movement. The northeast facing notch in Zugspitze provided a perfect scoop to collect and add several feet of fresh snow and ice to the zone. The more the accumulation of snow, the easier it was to traverse the glacier's ice field. This blizzard alone would provide enough supply for several years' melt.
Without warning, the ice broke beneath his feet.
When he fell, his waist pounded against the lip on the opposite side of the crevasse, leaving his feet dangling in air. His fingers clawed at the snow and ice. He dug his fingernails in to keep from being swallowed by the mighty glacier. But he couldn’t find a hold and he felt his body slide deeper into the crevasse, as if something was pulling him from below.