Abandon

She heard Jerrod say “Shit.”

Two seconds of silence, then the ground shook and shards of the ceiling fell down.

Abigail said, “Lawrence? You okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“My ears are ringing.” She sat up, turned on her headlamp. The chamber had filled with a haze of dust and smoke. They got to their feet, moved over to the tunnel.

“I don’t hear him,” Lawrence whispered. “Think he had time to throw it over the edge?”

They heard something behind them, and both turned, their headlamps spotlighting Isaiah, who was trying to sit up.

“We have to go,” she said. “We’ll shoot him with Jerrod’s gun.” Abigail followed Lawrence back through the tunnel into thickening smoke. As she came out under the overhang, she could see that her throw had been perfect. Her headlamp shone on the rock, blasted black from the detonation, steel fragments everywhere—under her feet, embedded in the stone.

But no Jerrod and no blood.

“Where is he?” Abigail whispered, the words hardly out of her mouth when Jerrod appeared around the corner from the narrow ledge, walking toward them unscathed, a red dot moving back and forth between their chests, Lawrence and Abigail backpedaling toward the far edge of the overhang, snow blowing in, squeezing out the residual smoke.

“Isaiah!” Jerrod hollered at the opening in the rock. “Is he alive?”

Before Abigail could answer, Isaiah’s voice boomed back.

“You got ’em?”

“Yeah.”

“Motherfucker clocked me with a rock.” Isaiah climbed out of the tunnel.

“I almost ate shrapnel,” Jerrod said. “Missing anything? You didn’t hear your M sixty-seven go off?”

“I was out cold.”

“Yeah, I’m standing here hollering through the tunnel, and you aren’t answering, and just when I’m starting to think maybe something’s not right, this grenade comes banging through. Dropped right where you stand.”

“No shit.”

“I didn’t know if it had been cooked off, so I didn’t have time to throw it over the cliff.”

“What’d you do?”

“Hauled ass around the corner and prayed to God that skinny ledge wouldn’t break up underneath me.”

Isaiah turned his attention to Lawrence and Abigail. He smiled, severe pain in his eyes. “Damn, Larry, cute bitch, you bad motherfuckers you. Almost took out a couple of marines. That would have been some shit. Ah, damn.”

“You all right?” Jerrod asked.

Isaiah bent over, shook his head as if to gauge the pain. “I think he f**ked me up serious. Put your light here.” Jerrod inspected the side of his partner’s head. “How’s it look?”

“Nasty bruise. How’s it feel?”

“Like a monster migraine.”

“You’ve probably got a concussion.”

“Where’s my Glock?” Jerrod lifted the nylon strap over his head and Isaiah grabbed his machine pistol by its long magazine, staggered toward them, wincing with each step.

“Abby,” Lawrence said, “do exactly what I say, right when I say, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

Lawrence took hold of his daughter’s hand, the backs of their boots only inches from the edge and Isaiah less than five feet away.

“Jump.”

FORTY

Abigail raced feetfirst down a forty-degree slope. She’d lost her father’s hand on impact, but she could hear him yelling at her from above. “Get on your stomach, Abby! Dig in! Stop yourself!” Fifty feet below, she saw where the slope ended and dropped over a cliff. Now she rolled onto her stomach, snow rushing under her parka in a spray of freezing powder. She kicked in her boots. “Your elbows!” Lawrence shouted. Abigail dug in her elbows, slowed to a halt, gasping, shivering. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the cliff edge less than five feet beyond the soles of her boots, felt a queasiness in her stomach, her depth perception skewed by vertigo, right leg badly quaking—the only appendage keeping her on the mountain.

Upslope, Lawrence’s headlamp shone down on her. “Climb back to me!” he yelled. “Make sure you’ve got purchase with each step.” Her face ached with cold. She wiped away the powder and started to climb toward her father, taking her time, kicking steps in the smooth old ice under the new-fallen snow. As the adrenaline rush waned, her tailbone began to throb. Lawrence reached down, grabbed her hand, pulled her up onto a boulder.

“You in one piece?” he asked. His pack lay open in the snow and he was cinching the last strap of a crampon onto his boot.

“My tailbone kills. It’s cracked, or worse.”

“I busted up my right ankle.”

“That was insane, Lawrence.”

“We were dead otherwise. I knew it was only a thirty-foot fall. I just crossed my fingers and hoped the slope was steep enough and had enough snow to cushion our landing.”

Abigail peered up into the darkness, spotted two points of light somewhere above, obscured by the blizzard. “Turn off your headlamp,” she whispered. “I see their lights.”

Voices tumbled down from the overhang, vague but audible: “Snow’s coming down too hard and my beam’s weak. How many clips you got left?”

“Two. Let’s just spray the f**kers.”

Lawrence whispered, “We gotta move right now. Follow me.” It was only five steps upslope to the base of the cliff. They reached it, flattened themselves against the wall of rock, and waited. From above came the sound of slides racking.

Then the machine pistols murmured. Abigail could hear the bullets striking ice and rock a few yards downslope. It went on for some time—random bursts across the slope, one of which came within two feet of the cliff base where they hid. It finally stopped, everything quiet save the wind. Jerrod’s voice: “Well, that was a waste of ammo.”

Isaiah: “How you feeling, Jerrod? Strong and big-balled?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your ass better be right behind me.”

Something crashed into the snow thirty feet downslope.

“Goddamn!” Isaiah screamed.

Jerrod landed several feet beyond, shouted, “Fuck, I can’t stop!”

“Jerrod, try to—”

“Fuck!”

“Stick your knife in the snow!”

“I can’t reach—” There was a long, fading scream. Lawrence began to climb down, Abigail following close behind. They reached the boulder, turned on their headlamps. Twenty feet below, Isaiah clung to the slope’s steepest pitch, struggling to find an edge on the ice.