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The group shrugged off their packs as they stood at the base of a towering cliff. Maddock rummaged through his bag until he came out with a pair of binoculars. He aimed them up at the rock face that stretched to the sky before them.
“Gotta be what, 2,000 feet?” Professor speculated, shading a hand against the sun as he squinted up at the daunting wall.
“Almost one thousand meters,” Leopov said.
Willis emitted a low whistle. “Something like 3,000 feet, then.”
“Looks climbable though,” Maddock said from behind the binoculars. “Lots of holds.” He shifted up to a higher portion of the cliff and began searching that though the glasses. After a few seconds, a scowl occupied his features. “Weird...”
“What?” Bones tried to follow his line of sight from the binoculars to the cliff but he couldn’t pick anything out with his unaided eyes.
“In this area here, about halfway up, I see what look like a series of caves, but in more or less an even row.”
Leopov put a hand out for the optics. “Let me take a look.” Maddock gave them to her while pointing to the spot. She raised them to her eyes and stared at the area Maddock indicated.
“So it is true.” She continued looking through the glasses, making slight adjustments with the fine focus knob.
“What’s true?” Bones asked, eager for a look.
She handed the glasses off to him. “I’ve long heard that during the war, the Germans used the lake as a naval testing site, for torpedoes and mines in the water. In fact, occasionally unexploded ordinance is still found in the water, which is part of the reason exploring the lake is so dangerous.”
Professor nodded. “I also heard there’s a layer of submerged logs just floating way down there in the middle of the water, that make it dangerous to get down to the bottom where anything of value would have settled.”
“That is also well documented,” Leopov said. “But until now I’d only heard rumors of heavy artillery shells being used on the cliffs surrounding the lake.
“Target practice?” Bones guessed.
Leopov nodded. “Right. And just testing the impact effects of different shells. From the looks of it,” she said from behind the glasses, “they had some powerful munitions indeed.”
Willis looked at Leopov. “You’re positive there’s no way they could be natural caves? Weathering, erosion?”
She shook her head. “Look how orderly they are...all in a perfect line.”
Maddock agreed, taking the binoculars back. He focused them on the blast holes again. “I’m looking at one of these impact caves, near the middle of the row, and it looks like it has holes within holes, like the same spot was blasted multiple times. So there are caves within caverns back in there, where each shell—these were probably early bunker busters—hit.”
“So if we climbed up there we could get back into those blast caves a ways?” Professor asked.
Maddock nodded. “Looks that way.”
Bones looked up at the cliff. “Anything else up there worth taking a look at?”
Maddock scoured the cliff face some more with the binoculars, but after a while he lowered the lenses and shook his head “Maybe the summit. It looks like it’s flat, like we could walk around up there. But I don’t see anything else on the face except uninterrupted rock.”
The team looked at one another until Leopov said, “The summit maybe more accessible from the other side.”
“Other side of the whole mountain?” Willis asked. “Couldn’t that be pretty far away?”
“Once we’re in those blast caves, though,” Maddock said, “we’re more than halfway up to the summit, so it would be much faster to keep climbing the rest of the way than it would be to come down again and hike, and possibly drive, around to the other side.”
Leopov agreed with this.
“Hopefully we find something conclusive in those caves and we don’t even have to go to the summit.” Bones rummaged in his pack and began sorting through his climbing gear. The others took a cue from him and did the same. Maddock watched Leopov carefully as she readied her equipment. From past experience with her in the Russian arctic, he knew she was tough and that she had some climbing experience. But this was a serious climb, not a mere trek, but a vertical ascent for thousands of feet before they would get a real rest in the blast caves. His eyes belied his concern as Leopov caught him watching.
“Don’t worry, Maddock. Maybe I’m not a navy SEAL, but I’ll be okay. I can handle myself.” Maddock gave her a hard stare and went back to his own gear.
After performing a few stretching exercises to limber up, the team moved to the wall itself. Bones was the first to pick out a route and identify his first hand- and footholds. After some discussion about various approaches on different sections of the wall, Bones took on the most dangerous role of lead climber. He would have no safety rope until he himself pounded one into the rock. He ascended surprisingly quickly, hands and feet moving with practiced ease as he traveled vertically up the face. Luckily the wall was not a smooth featureless face, but craggy and pockmarked with irregularities, which made for excellent holds. He didn’t stop moving until he was about fifty feet up, at which point he hammered his first piton into the rock. He attached a safety rope to this, dropped it down to the others, then fastened one to his own harness and continued on with his ascent. He settled into the familiar rhythm, a kind of mental zone he dropped into when he was entirely focused, muscles operating smoothly while the brain thought two or three steps ahead.
Meanwhile, Maddock led the rest of the group up the face once they were clipped off to the safety line. By the time he reached the first piton, Bones had already hammered in a second and dropped down a new safety rope. Maddock clipped off to that one and continued up the wall. The team continued up the wall in this manner, one hold at a time, slow but steady progress. None of the SEALs had much trouble, and even Leopov advanced at a good pace.
Bones was perhaps three-quarters of the way to the blast caves when they heard the first gunshots.
Maddock heard a thwack and then saw a puff of pulverized rock spit into the air a few feet to his right. “Shot fired! They’re shooting at us!”
Bones called down to him. “Sniper somewhere down in the woods. I can make the cave faster if I free solo it, then I can pull you guys up.”
The phrase free solo sent a chill down Maddock’s spine. It meant to climb entirely unaided, using ropes neither for ascending nor for safety in case of a fall. To fall from this height meant certain death. But then again, so did a well-aimed sniper round, Maddock reflected grimly. “If you think you can do it!” he called up to his friend. But Bones was already committed and on the move, scaling the wall quickly, with confidence, having already picked out a series of holds to take him to just below one of the blast caves in the middle of the row.
They heard another report that echoed throughout the lake valley, but this one was followed by Willis’ voice saying, “Damn. I’m hit!”
Professor looked up and saw blood drops rain past him, painting the rock just above his head. “How bad?”
“Not bad. Flesh wound on my right calf, but my leg’s a little weaker.”
Maddock was midway vertically between Willis and Bones. He glanced down at Willis and saw the splotch of red on the whitish rock around his leg, which was shaking. Willis was already about twenty feet above the next lowest safety point, and Bones wouldn’t be leaving more until he reached the cave.
“Hold tight, Willis. Don’t try to climb on it. Bones is going to make the cave and drop a line down to you.”
“Okay. I’ll just hang out for a while.” Professor actually managed a laugh at this, but the next sniper round silenced him fast. It slammed into the wall a foot above his head, causing him to scramble to his left, where he nearly lost his grip on a handhold, facing a long fall before he reached the end of his safety rope. He held on, though, and then resumed his upward trajectory, faster than before.
Then they heard Bones call down to them. “I’m in! Hold on...” The reverberations of his hammer blows echoed as he spiked a piton into the cave floor with a rock hammer. Maddock, now about twenty feet below the cave entrance, looked up but couldn’t see Bones. Good. Hopefully he was keeping a low profile, farther back into the cave where a sniper’s bullet wouldn’t be able to penetrate. They were counting on the caves to be a safe haven, after all; a place to both shelter them from the sniper (or snipers?) as well as an opportunity to rest while exploring the space for relics or clues to the Amber Room’s whereabouts. He then wondered whether they were getting shot at precisely because they were going for the caves—did the Russians know they contained something valuable?—or simply because they had been sighted and were easy pickings off this wall?
Whatever the case, the shots were coming closer together now and he knew their luck wouldn’t hold out for much longer. He stretched for the next hold above him and gripped it, feeling the skin flay from his fingertips as he locked himself into place. Then Maddock saw Bones’ head of dark hair appear low against the edge of the cave, and a rope fell towards him. Maddock let it pass him by.
“I can make it the rest of the way, Bones. Get it to Willis first. I’m worried about his leg.”
“Right.” Bones paid out more rope while Maddock ascended the remaining open rock toward the blast cave that Bones occupied. He spidered over the lip of the cave just as another round fragmented the rock wall below and to his right.
“Good thing we’re so high up, or we’d be toast,” Maddock said in greeting.
Bones merely nodded in reply, intently focused on guiding the safety rope down to Willis, who was just now attempting to grab it with an outstretched hand. He managed to snag it and rig it to his harness. Then Willis began to climb, aided by Bones hauling him up with the rope, which Maddock further secured by hammering in additional pitons to the cave floor.
They pulled Willis into the cave before more sniper fire came, and then Bones and Maddock worked feverishly to redo the safety rig so that it could be deployed again. Bones sent the line back down, to Leopov this time, who no doubt would insist on taking someone else first if she could talk to them, but she hooked into the rope and made the ascent, uttering only the word, “thanks,” as she climbed into the cave and disconnected her safety line.
Bones and Maddock repeated the process for Professor, who had the misfortune of now being the only sniper target on the rock wall. He moved fast, though, scrambling up the wall in such a manner as to elicit a “Spider-Man” comment from Bones. Even so, a sniper round came close to his right elbow as he neared the lip of the cave.
“Good thing that wind picked up,” Maddock said, referencing the forceful gust of air that no doubt made aiming from long distance that much more difficult. But although the shot had missed, it still had an effect on Professor, and not a good one. Chapman’s hand recoiled off of the hold it had been occupying. Fearing that the shooter would correct and that the next bullet would find its mark, Professor wanted only to put his body into motion, even if that movement equated to a fall.
He eyed a decent foothold about three feet to his right; damn near a small ledge, it was so substantial, and with a convenient handhold above it to boot. He wanted it. He knew he could make it. He sprung off his right foot, letting his fingertips graze across the rock face as he travelled freely across the wall until his leading, right, foot landed on the ledge and his left hand latched onto the knob of rock above it.
He steadied himself. He had done it! But then Maddock’s voice cut short his silent celebration.
“Get moving, Prof, you know they’re reloading and taking aim down there.”
Professor had to assume Maddock was right. He craned his neck to look straight up and saw the beckoning circle of darkness where the rock face was interrupted by the blast cave. The only problem was that now, because he had moved laterally, he was no longer underneath the same cave the rest of the team occupied, but a different one adjacent to it. But that made no different to him at this point. He had to break line of sight with that sniper down there and any cave would do the job.
Professor shoved off of the mini ledge he stood on and gripped onto two nice knobby handholds that allowed him to pull himself up to another chiseled foothold. From there he executed one more jump until his arms curled over the edge of the blast cavern. He hauled himself up and inside the sheltering space, where he wasted no time in wriggling deeper inside, hopefully beyond line of sight for the sniper.
They heard another round strike rock, but it was well below and to the right.
“Professor?” Maddock called out from the other cave. “Where are you? You okay?”
He cupped his hands over his mouth and responded. “I’m one cave over, to your left. I’m okay.”
In the other cave, the rest of the team exchanged concerned glances. They’d been separated by the enemy, one of their own isolated.”Now what?” Leopov asked.
Bones shouldered his pack and stepped away from the entrance, deeper inside the cave. “Time to find out what’s in here.”