47- Shot and Fall of the Mountain

  The cliff edge trembled violently as rock and ice debris showered around him. Agent 47 couldn’t move forward because of the hail of gunfire from the Chinese man’s QBZ-95. Going backward would mean falling with the imminent avalanche and being buried alive beneath tons of ice and snow.

  Once again, the assassin aimed the Silverballer at the dangling bodyguard, exposing himself in the man’s line of fire. But the turbulence was too strong. The entire mountainside acted as if it was about to topple like a house of cards. The ice beneath his feet lurched and threw 47 sideways, just as he felt a searing stab of fire penetrate his left side. As he fell hard on the craggy surface, he had the presence of mind to realize that the shaking ground had saved his life. The Chinese man’s round had indeed pierced the fleshy part at the edge of his waist, but had 47 been standing upright, the bullet would have gone through his abdomen.

  The shock waves traveled up the side of the cliff to Nam Vo’s men. The one spotting the dangling man lost his balance and slipped. He slid off the cliff edge but managed to grab hold of the rope that suspended his partner. Agent 47 heard them shout to each other in their language. The rope wouldn’t hold them both. The rock ledge cracked, and the two men bounced with the hemp. One of them screamed in terror, for there was nothing below them but thousands of feet of air.

  Agent 47 crawled forward. Blood trailed on the white snow behind him. The tremors grew more intense as the boomer did its job. If only he could get far enough away in time.…

  The rope holding the Chinese men finally gave way. They both shouted a death call.

  Agent 47 watched them plummet until they were mere dots against the gray misty mountainside.

  He kept moving. The outward edge of the cliff was just a few feet to his right. Still intent on the success of his mission, the hitman dared to peer down to see what Nam Vo and his party were doing.

  They were still in place, not really sure what all the commotion above them was about and oblivious to the oncoming holocaust.

  Then the sky and earth opened and the ice cliff completely collapsed, carrying Agent 47 with it through blinding lights and into deep and total darkness.

  Morphological experts and the news media recorded the catastrophe as a large “slab avalanche” that measured 4,600 meters in length and 18,000 meters in volume, making it one of the biggest in the Himalayan region. It was blamed on a natural trigger. Nam Vo and his expeditionary team were wiped away, and their bodies were never recovered.

  Although he didn’t know it at the time, Agent 47 was very, very lucky.

  He had fallen with the bulk of the sliding snow and ice for about eight hundred feet when his body struck an upward incline of rock upon which was packed new, soft snow. The impact caused the assassin to bounce toward the mountain face instead of away from it. Unconscious, Agent 47 rolled like a log into a rock-solid crevice from which the ledge protruded. He would have plummeted deep into the fissure had its walls not been so narrow. Instead, his body wedged inside a bottleneck, several feet from the opening at the top. He was cut off and protected from the deadly maelstrom that lasted nearly thirty minutes.

  When his eyes fluttered open, the first thing he noticed was the cold. Then, almost immediately, he felt the excruciating pain in his back. He didn’t know if it was broken or not. He couldn’t move, although he knew his legs dangled freely. He was stuck in the crevice, his torso pinned in place by the tapered walls of ice.

  Trapped. Like a cork in a bottle.

  The only thing that brought him any comfort was that the sun shone above him through the opening. He could climb out if he made the effort. The agony in his back was the biggest obstacle to doing so.

  47 couldn’t see his legs, since the rock walls squeezed tightly against his chest and waist, but he could kick them. He wasn’t paralyzed, which meant his back was miraculously unbroken. It just hurt like the devil. He had most likely ruptured a disc or two. The cleft in the mountain had saved his life, but it had brutally wrenched his torso as if it were made of clay.

  It was also difficult to breathe. The pressure of the stone against his chest prevented him from inhaling deeply. That realization was enough for 47 to attempt the escape. He’d known pain in his lifetime, but this was going to be severe. Luckily, his arms were caught above his shoulder line, allowing him to gain some leverage. The mere act of pressing down with his forearms and hands brought intense jolts of misery to his muscles.

  Take it a little at a time.

  Push down, wiggle up. Push down, wiggle up.

  Agent 47 felt like a worm struggling to slip through a hole lined with sharp spikes.

  His clothing ripped as the rocks dug into the skin on his chest and belly. The bullet wound was minor compared to what his back was going through.

  The assassin nearly blacked out from the pain and effort, but he willed himself to keep at it. If he didn’t get out of that hole now, he’d never do it. He would die there, a fly caught in a web of ice and stone.

  Push down, wiggle up.

  He didn’t know how long it took, but once his hip bones cleared the craggy bottleneck, he was home free. It was then only partially painful to use his legs and boots to support his weight. Five minutes later, he was standing on top, looking down at the abyss that might have been his grave.

- Hitman: Damnation, chapter 18