To The Last Breath by Francis Slakey - Chapter 1

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Breath

Francis Sl akey

Simon & Schuster New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi

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Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Copyright © 2012 by Francis Slakey Certain names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition May 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@ simonandschuster.com.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Designed by Joy O’Meara Maps by Paul Pugliese Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-1-4391-9895-7 ISBN 978-1-4391-9897-1 (ebook)

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Arctic Ocean

Vestvågøy Island ASIA

Denali

NORTH AMERICA

Plage des Nations

Encinitas

Atlantic Pacific Ocean

Mt. Elbrus Mt. Everest

EUROPE

SOUTH AMERICA

AFRICA

Mt. Kilimanjaro

Ocean

Indian Ocean

Cerro Aconcagua

E S

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Puncak Jaya Bali OCEANIA

N

W

Vinson Massif

Pacific Ocean

Surfing Climbing

ANTARCTICA

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Contents

Cast of Characters窶ナx

Chapter 1

Beyond the Sky 1

Chapter 2

Be Strong 21

Chapter 3

Three Pillars 37

Chapter 4

The Amulet 53

Chapter 5

Cold and Broken 87

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contents

Chapter 6

The Ambush 117

Chapter 7

Shared Purpose 151

Chapter 8

Interconnected 181

Chapter 9

A Map Comes Alive 217

Chapter 10

The Amulet Decoded 241 Afterword 251 Acknowledgments 253

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Cast of Char acters * In Order of Appearance

Tom Paxton

Climbing partner

Estomii Molell

Masai elder, Tanzania

Most Holy Rinpoche Thyangboche monastery, Nepal of the Khumbu Gina Eppolito

Trekker on Mt. Everest, Nepal

Jim Williams

Climbing partner

Ang Nima

Sherpa, Khumbu Valley, Nepal

Mike McCabe

Climbing partner

Patsy Spier

Survivor of the ambush in Papua, Indonesia

Antonius Wamang

Leader of the ambush in Papua, Indonesia

Hassan

Driver, Essaouira, Morocco

Pemba

Drooling mutt

the Fixer

Professional grifter, Lhasa, Tibet

the Snake Goddess

Deity, Bhutan

Kinle

The Lama of Dhorika, Bhutan

Mr. Jayasinghe

Innkeeper, Haputale, Sri Lanka

Agarwal the Engineer Inventor, New Delhi, India Knute

Owner, bunkhouse, Vestvügøy Island, Norway Pictures at: www.ToTheLastBreath.com

* The names of some of the people appearing in this book have been changed.

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Chapter 1

Beyond the Sky

I am out of balance. I hang dangerously off center but I’m oblivious, until

some dim awareness of the world shakes me awake.

I lift my head up slightly and look toward my feet. Sure enough, I’m not flat. My body is sloping downward and I can barely see the tips of my toes in the faint moonlight. This wouldn’t be anything to worry about if it weren’t for the fact that I’m on a cot pinned to a sheer granite wall two thousand feet above the valley floor.

My shifting around was enough to wake my climbing partner, Tom Paxton. Pax is lean, but with a muscled frame that looks like he could haul a bull if the circumstances called for it. I don’t know much about his past, and he knows nothing about mine, and that makes for an ideal pairing. We both live without rearview mirrors, driving ahead through our days, and only when absolutely necessary tapping the brake. Pax never boasts, another admirable quality. There are plenty of climbers who talk and never summit; Pax summits, without complaint or glory.

At the moment, like me, he’s trying to make sense of what’s

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To the Last Breath happened to the cot. Since it is just barely long enough and wide enough for the two of us he was bound to sense my slightest motion.

We’re sleeping head to toe so when he lifts up, he sees that he’s sloping dangerously upward—his head is a good ten inches lower than his feet.

We had spent a half hour pinning the cot into the wall to make sure it was secure. We jammed thick aluminum blocks into a crack in the granite face, pulling them tight, wedging them deep into the rock. The blocks are solid, they could hold the weight of an elephant; there’s no way that they’re coming loose. Something else must be going wrong.

As my eyes adjust to the dark, the strips of webbing that hold the cot together come into focus. The strip attached to one of the corners looks like it is lengthening, stretching out like a rubber band.

After a few moments, I shake off my sleep haze and my brain starts processing things more carefully. I realize that the webbing isn’t stretching; our situation is much worse than that. The webbing is unraveling. In a few more seconds the webbing will come completely undone and our cot will drop out from under us. There is nothing we can do to stop that from happening.

“Slake.”

“Yeah, Pax.” “We’re going to fall.”

I look over the edge of the cot, down into the void, and wait for the inevitable.

There was a time when people thought that El Capitan could not be climbed. It is easy to understand why. The hammerhead of granite bursts out of the ground and rises straight up, three thousand sheer vertical feet, looming over Yosemite Valley in central California.

Nothing man has ever built has stood this high. Even after a

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