ENCOUNTER by Hep Aldridge (bill gates books recommendations .txt) 📕

she slowly helped Eduardo to his feet and then let him sit for a minute on a boulder. She carefully got him to his feet, and they started making their way through the rocks to the lip of the gorge. I looked at my watch. We were rapidly burning up half of our two-hour lead and still had to get everyone down safely. They made it back to the edge, and I could see Reggie peering over the ledge. She sat Eduardo down, leaning him gently against one of the rocks.

We heard him say, “Senorita Reggie, how did you get here?”

The kid was still out of it as Reggie said, “It’s okay, Eduardo. I’m going to help you get back down to Colt and the team, but you are going to have to do exactly as I say, all right?”

“Si, I understand.”

“Good, now let’s get this rope off you. I’m going to need to tie it off up here so we can get you down.”

Eduardo lifted the rope over his head and handed it to her. Reggie untied it and looked around, trying to find a suitable anchor point. She finally found two smaller boulders that were elongated enough to get a good wrap around. She got back to Eduardo and looped the rope around his chest, under his arms.

We watched her move very efficiently and quickly, and all felt helpless standing there viewing things playing out on a 12-inch video screen—nerve-racking.

She said to Eduardo, and for our benefit as well, “What I’m going to do is hold you with the rope while you climb back down; can you do that?”

“Si, I think so,” he said.

“Okay, turn around, and I’ll start lowering you; talk to me on your way down. Tell me when you get a good handhold and you get your feet planted, and I’ll feed out more rope, but you are going to need to move as quickly as you can because the bad men are getting closer.”

It sounded like she was talking to a small child, but I knew in Eduardo’s condition, she wanted to make sure he understood what he had to do and the urgency of the situation. Eduardo was about five inches taller than Reggie and outweighed her by at least fifty or sixty pounds. I was concerned about her ability to support him as he came down and said so.

“Reggie, are you sure you can support his weight?”

“Guess we’ll find out. It’s not like we’ve got much choice in the matter,” she said as she stepped in and ran the rope behind her back and braced her feet against a large rock, feeding the rope out with her left hand while keeping tension on it around her with her right. Eduardo started down. It was slow going, and Eduardo miss-stepped a couple of times and lost his footing, but Reggie was able to hang on and stop his fall enough for him to find new footholds and handholds. Eduardo kept up somewhat of a stilted dialogue with her as she had told him. You could tell he was still fuzzy in the head, but he was trying.

That is until about twenty feet from the bottom when he said, “I feel dizzy, Senorita Reggie; I don’t know…” Then he went limp and became dead weight. He lost his footing and his grip as he passed out and hung on the end of the rope. Reggie had pretty much thrown herself back to the ground and was lying with her feet braced against the rock. If she hadn’t figured out what was happening before it happened, Eduardo’s sudden dead weight could have easily pulled her head-first over the edge. But she was in a bind. “Guys, I’m losing my grip. I’m going to have to lower him down pretty quickly; I’m not going to be able to hold him.”

“Roger that,” Dimitri said as he bolted for the wall. “Give me two seconds.” With some effort, he was able to get within eight to ten feet of Eduardo’s feet.

“Okay, lower away; he’s almost within my reach.”

Reggie started feeding out rope, and Eduardo began moving down the face of the wall, hanging limp. His speed kept picking up as Reggie’s grip deteriorated. When he hit Dimitri, it was a pretty good jolt, but Dimitri’s ability to take some of the weight off Reggie and her still having control of the rope allowed him to get Eduardo to the ground slowly.

While this was going on, Doc and O’Reilly had gone back to the mules and consolidated one of the loads. They brought the unloaded mule up, and Doc quickly gave Eduardo a cursory exam while Dimitri removed the rope. He dug into his med kit, brought out the smelling salts, and was able to rouse Eduardo. O’Reilly and Doc helped him get to his feet and move to the mule.

Dimitri said to Reggie, “Off rope.”

“Roger that, on my way down.” She kicked over the edge, and with the rope still behind her back, began feeding it out and walking backward, perpendicular to the rock face, down to us. It was a semi-controlled rappel. The smell of hot leather permeated the air as she hit the ground, shedding the leather gloves she had gotten off Eduardo.

“Well, that was exciting,” she said as she stepped out of the rope, pulling off the gloves. “Can’t say I’ve done anything like that in a while.”

“Great job,” I said to both Reggie and Dimitri. “That was an impressive climb, girl; we should have gotten you to do it from the beginning.”

“Yes, you should have. You forgot how I made my living before joining you guys. Do you think we just followed footpaths through the mountains when I ran Extreme Expeditions? This kind of stuff was my bread and butter. Next time, let all of us in on the plan; it might make it easier and safer.”

“Point well taken; things just evolved quickly on this one. It won’t happen again.”

“Yeah, we need to make