Reamde

Such an opportunity came along rather soon, as they came to a place where they could see an obvious way to traipse off in the general direction of Abandon Mountain. Every greenhorn pot smuggler who came this way tried it, only to find himself in difficulties two hours later when he learned that this easy-looking trail led to a cul-de-sac. In order to prove that it was a cul-de-sac, it was necessary to expend another few hours probing for a way out of it, thereby wasting most of a day. And so here Richard actually did have to perform a little sell job, convincing Jones that it would really be much better for them if they turned aside from the obvious and easy path and instead spent the next couple of hours picking their way down a slope that, had it supported a proper trail, would have been an endless succession of densely packed switchbacks. But no one could have built a proper trail on this thing without using tactical nuclear weapons. It was a junk pile of fallen logs strewn over primeval talus and covered with a loose slippery froth of moss and decaying vegetation. After leaving a green spray-paint annotation at the top, they devoted four hours to clambering down it, covering all of about half a mile on the map.

Richard, back in his dope-carrying days, had made this trip three or four times before he had lost all patience with it. He had come here with nothing on his back except for food and a bedroll and devoted several days to finding a quicker and easier way down: the proverbial Secret Shortcut: an abrupt and chancy descent into a dry wash followed by a relatively quick and easy hike down a gully leading to a spot near the top of the falls. Had it not been for that discovery, his nascent smuggling career probably would have been snuffed out by the sheer unattractiveness of this part of the journey. But he felt no particular need to share the shortcut with Jones and his men. For now, they were stuck in a place that had no phone reception: a state of affairs that seemed to limit the amount of damage that Jones could do. The longer this lasted, the greater the chance that someone would notice the signs of his hasty departure from the Schloss and launch a proper investigation.

And there was also the fact that, like it or not, Richard was leading these people directly toward the place where Jake lived. He was doing all of this to save the life of his niece. It had all seemed easy until he had looked out from the mine’s exit and seen Abandon Mountain. Now he was thinking pretty hard about the fact that, to save his niece, he was leading a band of terrorists straight toward a remote cabin containing two brothers, a sister-in-law, and three nephews.

The plan that took shape in his head, then, as they devoted the entire morning to clambering down into the valley of the river, was that he would slip away from camp tonight and make his way to Jake’s place and warn them.

They took a long siesta at the side of the river, prayed some more, cooked lunch, rested sore muscles, and wrapped bandages around twisted ankles. Richard pulled his hat over his face and pretended to sleep, but in fact stayed awake the whole time working out the plan in his mind. They would make one more push after this break, and he would show them how to get around the falls: yet another surprisingly difficult operation. After that they would set up the evening’s camp, and Jones would kill him or not. If not, Richard would try to get out of there after dark. The falls were deep in a rock bowl, covered with mist-fed vegetation so dense that not even GPS signals could get through. Forget about phones.

If only he had a flashlight.

Then he remembered that he did have one, a pinky-sized LED light attached to his key chain.

Water he could get from the river. Some energy bars might be useful, and he had a couple of those in his pack that he could slip into his pockets when no one was looking.

He had gone, over the course of a few hours, from utterly hopeless cynicism to toying idly with this nutball idea, to seriously working it out, to deciding that it was doable. That he was going to do it. When they got moving again, working their way down the river toward the falls, he was already thinking several miles ahead, trying to remember the way he would take tonight up out of the gorge and into the lower slopes of the mountain.