“We have to take it. My gut tells me it was why our friend had barricaded himself in here. Whatever’s inside was something he thought worth dying for.”
“I agree.”
It took only a few minutes for Sam to jury-rig a web of straps that allowed him to piggyback the chest on his own pack. They took a last look around the cave, nodded a good-bye to the skeleton, and departed.
In the lead, Sam crawled up to the lip of the pit and peeked over. “Now, that’s a problem.”
“Care to be more specific?” Remi said.
“The rope’s given way at the other end. It’s dangling into the pit.”
“Can you rig a-”
“Not with any confidence. We’re above the other opening. At this angle, if I try to cinch the slipknot into place, it’ll just slide off. There’d be no way to take up the slack.”
“That leaves only one option, then.”
Sam nodded. “Down.”
It took but a minute for Sam to secure himself to the line. As he did, Remi set up a second belay point by hammering a piton into a crack just below the opening. Once it was set, Sam began a slow rappel, walking himself over and around the jutting stalagmites, while Remi kept watch from above, occasionally telling him to pause and adjust position to minimize the rope chafing on the protrusions.
After two minutes of careful work, he stopped. “I’ve reached the other cam. Good news: the cam tore free.”
If the rope had parted, they would have had to splice their remaining line onto the loose end. Now he had sixty feet of line beneath him. Whether that would be enough to reach the bottom was still an unknown. If what awaited them was the icy cold water of the Bagmati River, they would have fifteen minutes at most to find a way out before succumbing to hypothermia.
“I’ll take that as a good omen,” replied Remi.
Foot by foot, careful step by careful step, Sam kept descending, his headlamp receding into a small rectangle of light.
“I can’t see you anymore,” Remi called.
“Don’t worry. If I fall, I’ll be sure to give out an appropriately terrified scream.”
“I’ve never heard you scream in your life, Fargo.”
“And, cross fingers, you won’t this time.”
“How’re the walls?”
“More of the-Whoa!”
“What?”
No response.
“Sam!”
“I’m okay. Just lost my footing for a second. The walls are getting icy. Must be mist from the water below.”
“How bad?”
“Just a thin coating on the walls. Can’t trust any of the stalagmites, though.”
“Come back up. We’ll figure out another way.”
“I’m continuing on. I’ve got another thirty feet of rope to play with.”
Two minutes passed. Sam’s headlamp was a mere pinpoint now, jostling back and forth in the pit’s darkness as he maneuvered around the stalagmites.
Suddenly, there came the sound of shattering ice. Sam’s headlamp began spinning, winking up at Remi like a strobe light. Before she could open her mouth to call to him, Sam shouted, “I’m okay. Upside down but okay.”
“More description, if you please!”
“Got turned around in my harness and flipped. Good news, though: I’m staring at the water. It’s about ten feet below my head.”
“I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
“The current’s fast-three knots at least-and it looks deep. Waist-high, probably.”
Though three knots was slower than a fast walking pace, the depth and temperature of the water multiplied the hazard. Not only would it take only one minor misstep to be swept away but the exertion it would take to stay upright would speed up the hypothermia process.
“Come back up,” Remi said. “No arguments.”
“Agreed. Give me a second to . . . Hold on.”
From the darkness came more cracking of ice, followed by splashes.
“Talk to me, Fargo.”
“Give me a second.”
Another thirty seconds of cracking, then Sam’s voice: “Side tunnel!”
After ten minutes of detailed work, Sam shouted, “It’s good-sized. Almost tall enough to stand in. I’m going in. Give me a minute to set up a belay.” If Remi went into the subterranean river, this measure would give Sam a fighting chance to reel her back in-provided there weren’t rocks downriver ready to bash Remi into pulp.
Once this was done and Sam was braced and ready to take slack, Remi started her descent. Lighter and a bit more agile than her husband, she covered the distance in less time, pausing only to allow Sam time to take up slack through the piton’s belay point.
At last she descended into view and stopped even with the side tunnel’s entrance. Headlamps shining into one another’s faces, they shared a relieved smile.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Sam said.
“Damn!”
“What?”
“I had a mental bet you were going to go with ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a nearly bottomless pit like this?’”
Sam laughed. “Okay, you’re going to have to go Superman in your rig and push off the opposite wall. I’ll catch you.”
Remi took a few moments to catch her breath and then made the appropriate adjustments to her harness until she was hanging perpendicular in the pit. Flexing her body, she slowly built up a swing until she could toe-push off the opposite wall. Three more of these allowed her to fully coil her legs and push off. Arms extended, she swung forward, hands grasping. The side wall rushed toward her face. She ducked her head. Her arms slipped into the tunnel. Sam’s hands clamped on hers, and she jolted to a stop.
“Got you!” Sam said. “Wrap both hands around my left wrist.”
She did, and Sam used his right arm to slowly release some slack in the rope so Remi could climb up his arm. Once her torso was inside the tunnel, Sam began back-crawling until her knees were also inside. He fell back and let out a relieved sigh.
Remi started laughing. Sam raised his head and looked at her.
“What?”
“You take me to the nicest places.”
“After this, a nice hot bubble bath-for two.”
“You’re singing my song.”
Though twice as wide as their shoulders and tall enough to allow them to walk stooped over, the tunnel’s floor was Swiss cheese-so riddled with potholes that they could glimpse the river’s roiling black surface rushing beneath their feet. Plumes of cold air and ice crystals shot up through the gaps, creating a fog that glittered and swirled in their headlamps. Like the pit behind them, the tunnel’s walls and ceiling were coated in a membrane of ice. As they walked, pencil-thin icicles broke from the ceiling and shattered on the floor like sporadic wind chimes. Though mostly clear of ice, the heavily rutted floor forced them to brace themselves as they walked, adding to the exertion.
“Not to be a wet blanket,” Remi said, “but we’re assuming this leads somewhere.”
“We are indeed,” Sam replied over his shoulder.
“And if we’re wrong?”
“Then we turn back, scale the opposite side of the pit, and leave the way we came in.”
The tunnel twisted and turned, rose and fell, but, according to Sam’s compass bearings, it maintained a rough easterly bearing. They took turns counting steps, but without a GPS unit to measure their overall progress, and only Sam’s sketched map to go by, they had no idea how much distance they were actually covering.
After what Sam guessed was a hundred yards, he called another halt and found a relatively solid section of tunnel and plopped to the ground. After sharing a few sips of water and a quarter of their remaining jerky and dried fruit, they sat in silence, listening to the rush of the water beneath their feet.
“What time is it?” Remi asked.
Sam checked his watch. “Nine o’clock.”
While they had told Selma where they were heading, they’d also asked her not to press the panic button until the following morning local time. Even then, how long would it take the authorities to arrange a rescue party and mount a search? Their only saving grace was that this tunnel had not branched; if they chose to turn back, they’d have no trouble finding the pit again. But at what point did they make that decision? Was an exit around the next bend, or miles away, or nonexistent?
Neither Sam nor Remi spoke of any of this. They didn’t need to. Their years together, and the adventures they’d shared, had put them on the same wavelength. Facial expressions were usually enough to convey what each was thinking.