Free Hunt Beyond the Frozen Fire by Christa Faust, Gabriel Hunt Page B

insisted that he be the first one down, out of some atavistic sense of chivalry or propriety. But he owed it to Rue and Millie to get them down safely—he’d dragged them into this, after all. “Okay,” he said. “Just be careful.”
    Velda leaned forward awkwardly from her crouch and planted a kiss on Gabriel’s chin. She found his lips with her second attempt. “I’m always careful.” Then she was gone, making her way down the rope into the blackness.
    Half a minute passed in silence. Then they heard Vel-da’s voice. “I’m down!”
    “Is it stable?” Gabriel called.
    “Yes.” Another long moment of silence. “Can you send down the light?”
    Gabriel hauled up the rope, tied it tightly around the shaft of the flashlight, and without turning it off began lowering it. They watched the yellow cone of light reflecting off the ice walls, bright at first and then fainter and fainter as it descended. Eventually the line was fully paid out. “Hang on,” Velda called, “keep it steady…got it.” She was far enough below them that they could only see the faintest glow. Her voice, when it next came, was quieter, as if she’d gone some distance away. “There’s a…a passageway, anarrow one. It looks like it could lead into another crevasse.”
    “Any sign of a way back up to the surface?” Gabriel called.
    “Not yet.”
    “Well, it can’t be any worse than what we’ve got here,” Gabriel said. He gestured toward Nils. “I’ll tie the rope under your arms, lower you down.”
    “I can lower myself,” Nils said, climbing awkwardly down onto the driver’s seat.
    “All right,” Gabriel said. The tall Swede took hold of the rope and dropped through the windshield, rappelling downward against the ice wall.
    “Nils is coming down,” Gabriel called. “Help him off at the bottom.”
    Moments later, they heard a cry of pain as Nils touched down. “Got him,” Velda shouted.
    “Everything okay?” Gabriel said.
    “Just my ankle,” Nils shouted. “It’ll be fine.”
    “Not broken?”
    “No, just twisted.”
    As they spoke, Gabriel hauled the rope back up, tied Velda’s pack to the end, and lowered it. He felt a series of tugs at the bottom as Velda undid the knots, then a lightening as she pulled the pack off. He repeated the maneuver, sending down a bundle of loose gear tied up in Millie’s sleeping bag.
    “Here’s the rest,” he shouted.
    Again, the wait, then Velda’s voice.
    “Got it.”
    “Okay, Rue,” Gabriel said. “Your turn.”
    Rue looked doubtfully down the rope and back up at Gabriel.
    “I’ll hold it steady,” Gabriel said.
    “Great.” She took hold of the rope with both gloved hands, but didn’t begin letting herself down.
    “Time to go,” Gabriel said.
    “I’m going!” she replied indignantly. “What, do you think I’m scared?”
    “If you are—” Gabriel began, but before the words were out she was shimmying down the rope into the chasm, the bright red of her parka slowly swallowed up by the blackness.
    He held on tightly to the top of the rope, trying to minimize its torsion as she descended. “You doing okay?” he called after a minute of unbroken silence.
    “What do you think?” Rue called back. “If I wasn’t, you’d’ve heard me screaming.” A moment later, she called, “I’m down.” Then: “Man! It’s cold as hell down here. When we get out of this, you owe me a trip to a goddamn hot spring, Hunt.”
    Gabriel smiled and slapped Millie’s big meaty shoulder. “You ready?”
    “You know,” Millie said, his steaming breath labored as he grabbed hold of the rope, “the town I grew up in is only seven feet above sea level. Seven feet, Gabriel. I can’t help but ask myself what the hell a decent God-fearing Chalmetian like me is doing freezing his ass off and making like a yoyo at twenty-eight-hundred feet. It ain’t natural, I tell you.”
    “Go on, you big baby,” Gabriel said.
    “How do I keep letting you talk me into this kind of