Court and Zoya had discussed moving laterally along the cliff face until they could find a place wide of the Chinese safe house to make their way back up onto smoother ground on the hillside, but Court was glad they’d chosen to descend all the way down to the boats below. If they’d been caught out on the cliff by a flashlight now, they would have only been a few feet away from the balcony, and there would be nothing they could do but hold on to the wall while they were shot to death from above.
They moved along close together with Zoya below Court, and she found ledges, handholds, and small wedges in the rocks where she could jam her tennis shoes in to brace herself. Often she called up to Court softly to give him directions, which he followed carefully. At one point she had to use the makeshift climbing rope over her shoulder to hook it onto a rock and climb out to either side looking for a path. When she found her way she had Court lift the loop of the bedsheets off its outcropping, and then she had Court slide the loop over his own shoulder, while she hooked the other end on a closer rock.
They moved this way for twenty grueling minutes, and by now Court guessed from the sound of the waves they’d made it halfway down. They still had another seventy-five feet or so to go, and he’d just climbed down level with Zoya when she announced that the face of the wall just below her slanted in, and she couldn’t find a place for her feet.
“Okay,” said Court, straining under a tough handhold. “Do you want me to try?”
“No. Just find a good hold, loop the rope around your head and shoulder, and hang on tight. You’re going to have to lower me.”
“Right.” Court had to move to his left several feet to find a decent spot to hang on, and then he readied himself to take Zoya’s weight if she fell. When he was ready they both hooked into the bedsheets, he around his upper body and she around her waist.
It took every bit of Court’s strength to lower Zoya slowly, playing out the bedsheets with his right hand and taking the full weight of her 145-pound, muscular physique. She was aware of Court’s strain, and quickly she found a place to get a handhold inside the forty-five-degree inward slope of the wall. This took some of the weight away, and after another minute of work she managed to make contact with the wall with both feet and hands.
She called back up now. “You’re going to have to come down the same way, and I’m going to have to hold you.”
“Can you do it?” Court asked.
“We’ll know in a moment, won’t we?”
“Great.”
Court took his time, put a hand in one of his footholds, lowered himself, and grabbed on to the other tiny outcropping where his other foot had been. He hung down now, with his legs swaying in open air. Zoya could see them, right in front of her but three feet away. She could grab him by the waist, but from there he’d have to drop, and she didn’t know if she could carry both his weight and his momentum.
She called up to him. “Okay, here’s what we do. I hang out with one hand and one leg braced. You step down on my shoulder. I lean forward and you step on my lower back. I’ll pull myself and you back to the wall while you let go and grab on to me with your hands.”
“Jesus,” Court said, but he couldn’t think of a better plan.
“It’s all in the timing,” Zoya said. She tightened her left handhold, forced her left foothold tighter to the wall, and then swung out to the right. She fully extended her body away from the wall, and Court began climbing down her slowly. When he had both feet on her butt and one hand on her shoulder, she said, “Okay, one… two… three.”
Court let go with his remaining hand, lowered his head quickly so it didn’t smack against the lower edge of the outer wall, and “rode” to the deeper wall on Zoya’s back as she swung back in with her right arm and leg. Once there, he got off her as quickly as possible, finding his own foot- and handholds.
“You all right?” He knew that couldn’t have been easy for the five-foot, seven-inch woman.
She was clearly reaching exhaustion; he could hear it in her voice. “Fine. Take the rope off and give it to me. I may need both ends to traverse.”
Court did as instructed; Zoya put all the bedsheets back over her shoulder, and she started back down.
Court was still thinking about what she’d just had to do. As she lowered her left leg down to a spot far below her, he said, “Why don’t I lead? You need a minute to—”
A loud cracking sound in the rock interrupted him and then, to Court’s horror, Zoya dropped away suddenly.
Court’s mouth bled freely now, dripping onto the wet stone right in front of his face, though he could not see it. His right shin hurt because he’d smacked it on an outcropping as he threw himself forward, and now it was holding up more of his weight than it should have been, considering he had no power to control his shin like he did a hand or foot.
His right wrist and hand hurt, not because he’d hit them as he’d lunged for Zoya, but instead because he was now horizontal to the wall, facing straight down, and three fingers of his right hand were up high and behind his back. Other than his bloody shin the three fingers were the only part of him taking his body weight because his left foot hung down in open air, and his left arm was hyperextended, his hand gripping the thin fingers of Zoya Zakharova’s right hand.
He’d lunged for her, snatching her hand out of free fall in desperation and only then trying to find something of his own to grab on to. He’d banged his face in the process, and his leg, and although he had stopped her from dropping seventy feet to her death, he had no idea what either of them could do now to get out of this situation.
He’d lost hold of her hand almost immediately, but now their fingers were locked tightly together. The position was agonizing for Court, but he knew the woman below him must have been in excruciating pain with the way he held on to her.
Court spit blood into the wall so he could talk. “You okay?”
The voice came from below; he couldn’t see any part of her now, only the rockface in front of him. “No. There is another recess here, deeper than the one before. I can’t see anything, and my feet can’t reach the wall.”
“Can you stretch out with your left hand and find the wall?”
“I’ll have to spin around, and I’ll lose my grip with you. What are you holding on with?”
Court didn’t want to tell her, but she was the more experienced climber. If there was a solution to this problem, maybe she could solve it. He said, “Three fingers of my right hand. I can’t move my legs without losing my grip.”
“Shit,” she said, and she said it in English.
“Der’mo,” he answered back. He wasn’t going to be able to hold her for long.
She asked, “How far down do you think it is to the water?”
“The same distance it is to the rocks.”
Zoya said, “You are saying, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah.”
Court knew there was only one thing they could possibly try. “Look, I’m going to have to—”
Zoya knew before he finished the sentence. “Do it. Swing me out, then back in towards the cliff, and let me go.”
It was a Hail Mary, nothing more. He was going to have to generate some momentum by swinging her back and forth, in and out towards the wall below the underhang. And then, when he’d gotten her moving as fast as possible, he would let go, and she would fly in through the darkness and hope against all reason for three things to go right at the same time: One, that she made it to the wall before she lost momentum and fell to her death. Two, that she would somehow instantly find hand- or footholds that would keep her from sliding off the wall. And three, that he didn’t throw her so hard into the wall that she crashed face-first into the rock, knocking her hard enough to where she couldn’t grab on to a hold even if it was there for her.