Page 39 of Mountain Struggle

“Commandant?”

Damien shook himself back into the present, looking up at Jens as they walked together up the hill. Gael walked behind them, complaining incessantly about the heat, while Hiro and Bailey closed the group.

“I’m sorry, Jens, I was distracted,” Damien said apologetically. “What did you say?”

“I was saying, we’re getting close. There, under those trees,” he said.

Damien sped up. A couple hour earlier, they’d received the call from two trekkers, regarding a man they’d met on their way down the mountain. He was conscious and articulate, and had asked them for nothing, but something about him, and they had trouble explaining what it was, had them worried.

The couple had seemed earnest, and he and his team were sitting around the office anyway, so they’d come up to check it out. They’d driven further than normal hikers could drive, leaving their vehicle close by in case and extraction was necessary.

Damien looked around at the peaks of Mont Blanc rising all around them—the view from this spot was majestic.

He and his team rarely came up this way. This was one of the easy hikes by Chamonix standards—one of those day hikes for children or people who were nowhere near ready to climb Mont Blanc. The hikes were clearly marked, well maintained by the local authorities, and visited frequently both by individuals and by groups led by local guides.

It was rare for them to have to come up this way, and when they did, it was usually a case of a sprained ankle or knee, in which case Kat brought them down the mountain in the helo.

Less than a hundred feet later they saw the figure, slumped over a rock. As they approached, they confirmed his description matched the description the hikers had made of him, down to his flashy striped technical backpack.

Complete overkill for this trail.

“Sir?” Damien asked, raising his voice. “Are you okay?”

The man raised his eyes to look at them. He was younger than they’d originally thought, probably in his late thirties. Slightly overweight—somebody whose day-to-day included little physical activity. At first glance he seemed uninjured, but Damien had seen enough over the years to not make any such assumptions.

“My name is Damien Gray, we’re from the Peloton de Gendarmerie de Haute Montagne. We’re here to assist you if you need help, sir.”

“I need nothing from you,” the man said gruffly, accompanying his words with a dismissive wave of his hand. He went back to looking at his cell phone. He had an accent that Damien was having trouble placing.

Maybe Russian?

Damien called on all his training as a civil servant to swallow the response that came naturally to him.

As if reading his mind, Jens took a step forward, kneeling beside the man. His medical kit was already in his hands

Jens kneeled beside the man. “What’s your name, sir? Let me take your pulse. Sometimes the altitude can affect us and we don’t realize—”

The man shook him aside. “I’m absolutely fine. I’m just not having fun. This isn’t what the travel agency promised,” he said petulantly.

Damien and Jens exchanged a quick look.

Was he serious?

If the man wasn’t disposed to let them examine him, there wasn’t much they could do.

“Unless you have a helicopter?” the man asked, his beady eyes coming to rest on them. “I have money. Lots of money.”

“Uh … no helicopter, sir,” Jens continued politely. “But if you need assistance—”

“That’s exactly what I need. I need assistance. I’ve already called my travel agent. He’s going to get somebody to come and find me. But you’re here now—”

“Let me stop you right there, sir. That’s not how it works—we’re not a taxi service. And if you’re waiting for a taxi service to come pick you up here, you’re going to be waiting a long time—I don’t care what your travel agent says.”

“Get out of my way, then,” the man growled. Standing beside Hiro, Bailey growled back. Hiro’s hand came to rest on her head, his touch calm but firm. Bailey settled down.

You don’t like him either, do you, Bailey?

The man’s phone rang, and he picked it up as if they weren’t standing right in front of him. “Yes. What do you have for me?”