Crescent Rising

By Zack Hamric

Ryan Black is living a life most men will never know- filled with high-risk adventure in exotic locales, an authentic hero who willingly confronts head-on the life and death challenges often found in emerging trouble spots around the globe. This high impact thriller takes you from Soviet fighter crashes in the California Sierras to high-tech naval battles in the Atlantic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zack Hamric
• Release date: Oct 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452417127

Book preview

Chapter 1

If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of grand alpinism to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs.

Lionel Terray, 1965

The wings of the bald eagle rippled from the rising currents as he knifed through the sky high above the foothills of the Sierra range. Feeling the turbulent air of the thermals boiling off the sun-baked landscape, he instinctively banked into the uplifting arms of the air column and was pulled skyward toward the roof of the world. He was the perfect predator- master of all the territory that lay thousands of feet below. A reflection on the distant East face of Mt. Whitney attracted his attention but for a moment and he resumed his pursuit in the ageless dance of hunter and prey.

If the eagle had possessed such a human attribute as curiosity and investigated any further, he would have seen a solitary figure steadily climbing upwards on the sheer face in the warm afternoon sun towards the fourteen thousand foot summit of Mt. Whitney.

Ryan’s world narrowed to the thin granular flake of primeval granite just inches beyond the reach of his outstretched hand. He was absolutely focused on the need to bridge that gap and not on the three thousand-foot sheer vertical chasm waiting beneath his dangling feet.

His solo climb up the East Face of Mt. Whitney had begun two days before with an easy hike through the virgin forests and beckoning foothills of the Sierras. In the rugged beauty and solitude of the mountains it would have been easy to forget the challenges facing him in the coming days where his success and even survival would hang on a margin thinner than the nylon climbing rope upon which his life depended. It was an unforgiving world demanding the perfect melding of technique and physical ability. As he carefully picked his way through the final snow-covered talus slope leading to the East Buttress Route, he continued to have flashbacks to the tragic events that changed his life while climbing the same route exactly three years to the day before.

His climbing partner for that attempt was Maria, a lithe, tightly muscled triathlete from Bellingham, Washington. Packed into her five foot seven frame was a boundless spirit with an insatiable appetite for high adventure and Ryan Black. They had shared a variety of raucous adventures in locales as varied as the West Face of Denali and the cramped single bedroom in her turn-of-the-century San Francisco loft apartment. The route they were climbing on Whitney was only rated a modest Class 5.8 in difficulty but was still considered one of the fifty classic rock climbs in North America.

They were using this climb as a warm-up for a major expedition later that year on the massive peak in Pakistan called Trango, an imposing, almost insurmountable mountain in the Himalayas with a sheer forty five hundred foot rock face. They had decided to use this climb on Whitney to field test some new expedition gear critical to their success in the Himalayas. They were carrying all the equipment required on the thirty-day ascent of Trango including the pulley systems for hauling the hundreds of pounds of gear and the portaledges that would provide the only flat sleeping platform for the duration of the expedition. The climb up the East Face normally only required six or seven hours for mountaineers possessing their level of experience - with the additional load of two hundred-fifty pounds of Himalayan expedition gear, they would spend at least two days inching their way up the face.

Ryan was feeling strong as he led the first two pitches of the climb. His climbing harness was filled with a variety of wedges, chocks, and nuts, which would be placed into the cracks of the rock to provide some margin of safety as he ascended. Each piece of hardware had a carabineer attached to a short length of nylon webbing that was clipped into the climbing rope as he ascended. In theory, the hardware would allow his belaying partner below to arrest even a fall of forty or fifty feet without injury. The reality was that often Ryan would be as much as thirty or more feet above the last piece of protection he had placed; during a fall, he would drop at least sixty gut wrenching feet before stopping.

Ryan reached above his head and dropped his largest cam into a crack just above the tiny rock ledge on which he rested and began to set up the pulleys for hauling the nylon gear bag up the face. He took up the tension and the bag began a slow tortuous ascent up the vertical wall. Within minutes, Ryan was sweating profusely and cursing in at least four languages as the gear seemed to hang on every exposed sliver of rock that it crossed.

Are you sure that we shouldn’t just drop the bags to the base and free climb? I guarantee it would be a lot more fun than this, grumbled Ryan as he cleared yet another jam.

Great idea love, but there’s a couple of cans of Guinness in your bag that would be somewhat the worse for wear after a thousand foot drop. If you would just haul the damn bags and quit complaining, I might even consider giving you mine.

With the slightest degree of renewed enthusiasm, Ryan hauled the bag up the final twenty feet and secured it to the narrow windswept ledge.

Maria led the tricky Tower Traverse without incident. Watching her climb was like watching an aerial ballet as she gracefully moved in a smooth tireless rhythm from one tenuous handhold to the next. After Ryan crossed the exposed face, they secured themselves and their pile of gear and prepared to spend the long night in the two-man portaledge. This flimsy contraption of poles and nylon webbing widely used on most big wall climbs that required overnight shelter provided a sleeping platform that was only slightly larger than the chaise lounges around their apartment swimming pool. The primary difference between the two being that the pool chairs typically weren’t suspended three thousand feet in the air by a couple of eleven mm climbing ropes. A rain fly would provide them some slight protection from the vagaries of the weather and they had an additional safety rope attached to each of their climbing harnesses.

After tying off any loose gear capable of taking an unexpected detour to the cliff base, dinner became a subject of intense interest.

Would you prefer the truly tasteless dehydrated rice with chicken or the absolutely inedible chicken with rice? asked Ryan.

Actually, I was thinking this would be a great time to have Domino’s deliver– can you just imagine, a large Supreme with jalapenos.

Yeah, but I’m sure the delivery guy would expect a huge tip, Ryan said as he unceremoniously lit their hanging MPG stove without creating a massive fireball and prepared their meager dinner for the evening. On the East Face, the sun set early in the day and the temperatures plunged just as quickly. They snuggled into their lightweight down bivouac bags zipped together against the bone chilling cold of the night and marveled at the sight of Jupiter and its attendant galaxy of stars as they glistened over the darkened Sierra range.

Ryan almost immediately fell asleep in a restless slumber that often comes from being in a hostile world, where to sleep soundly can mean death. He lay completely exhausted from the days effort, while Maria took a few minutes to enjoy the splendor of the nebula above so rarely seen from the brightly lit environment of the city.

Maria felt the familiar warmth of Ryan sleeping next to her, hesitated for a moment and slowly let her hand slide softly over the outside of his nylon wind pants. In a minute, her attentions were rewarded as he slowly began to respond to her touch. Their adventurous spirit had manifested itself in many areas of their life and making love hanging from the edge of a three thousand foot cliff was simply part of the game. She unclipped from her climbing harness, decided that actually trying to remove any clothing was out of the question under the circumstances and after some degree of pulling aside, unzipping, and strategic rearranging found herself lying on top of Ryan as she slowly guided him into her. By this time Ryan was deciding that if this was a dream it was certainly a most pleasant one and he gradually began to wake to find Maria moving slowly and sensually on top of him. The sense of risk and exposure heightened their excitement and they lost themselves in that closeness so rarely found in a relationship as their fragile shelter swayed to their rhythm in the darkness.

The mountain, completely oblivious to their presence or actions continued the endless process of erosion, which had shaped and refined it over the course of the millennia. During its lifetime there had been many occasions when millions of tons of rock had fallen, split away from the flanks of the massif by the repeated freezing and thawing cycles. This time the geologic event was quite inconsequential, merely a few rocks teetering on the edge of the yawning abyss which chose that evening to succumb to the siren call of the talus field below.

Ryan had a moment of terrible confusion followed by one of sheer panic as the hundred pound boulder careened down the cliff face and smashed through their flimsy shelter as if it didn’t exist. He was hanging upside down in a dreamlike, semiconscious state with his legs twisted in the ropes and mangled remains of the portaledge. His climbing harness was the only remaining link between him and an endless fall to the rocks below. After an interminable amount of time seeming to last for hours, but which in reality could have been at most only a couple of minutes, he realized that he was alone on the bare rock wall. That insignificant geologic event had ripped away the life and love of the one woman who had dared to share his world for the past decade.

It was time to decide the issue.

Ryan checked the last climbing nut that he had wedged into the fingernail thin crack in the wall below him. He would be at least fifteen feet above that protection before he could find another crack in the featureless granite to place the next piece of protective hardware.

Transferring all of his body weight to the small foothold under the edge of his right foot, he lunged for the elusive handhold. He hung precariously for a long moment. His entire weight was hanging on the three fingers locked viselike onto the tiny hold. He found a small flake for his next foot placement and continued his smooth progress as he ascended up the face.

Two long pitches later, he scrambled over the top. To celebrate his success, he made a steaming pot of his favorite Blue Mountain coffee and held it in both hands savoring its warmth. He spent the next hour staring at the rolling tableau of the Owen Valley, feeling his soul softly touch Maria’s for a fleeting instant and imagining what might have been. For the first time since her death, he felt that bond that he believed had been ripped away on the mountain that night. He realized then that Maria’s spirit would remain with him always and that she would have taken joy in his continuing to seek out new challenges and relationships in his life. For the first time since that night, he truly felt at peace.

As he looked out over the timeless expanse of the Sierra Range, there was a momentary glint of light reflecting from some object high above the valley floor. It must have been at least twenty miles away, but as he watched over the course of the next few seconds, he could see that it was a jet aircraft approaching at a tremendous rate of speed in complete silence.

Within thirty seconds, he could see enough detail to recognize the aircraft as some type of military jet. It appeared to be on a collision course with the peak on which he was sitting. He could see the swept back wings and the single huge air intake on the front of the jet like the mouth of an industrial age shark rushing to devour him.

Ryan had seen pilots like this one before who seemed to live for the thrill of pushing their machines and themselves to the very edge of disaster with often catastrophic results to themselves and innocent bystanders on the ground. He checked his climbing harness as he waited for the pilot to adjust his altitude to clear the peak. Ryan had no intention of being blown over the rock face by the shock wave as the jet roared barely overhead.

When the jet was less than a mile away, Ryan realized with an overwhelming sense of dread that the jet was still flying on a level course and headed directly for him. With a closing rate of over twelve hundred miles an hour, Ryan had less than three seconds to live before disappearing in an enormous firestorm of jet fuel and metal. Without having time to consider the consequences, he threw himself backwards over the edge of the cliff.

A heartbeat later, the Mig 21 disintegrated as it impacted the unyielding granite massif twenty feet below the shelf where Ryan had been sitting just moments before. The fireball and broken mass of metal continued to travel up the slope at just over the speed of sound. The rustic mountaineers’ shelter that had been built in the 30’s was swept away as if it had never existed. The wreckage erupted over the cliff edge and traveled another mile through the air before finally falling to earth in a ragged debris field almost three miles long.

Chapter 2

Beware of extremism in religion; for it was extremism in religion that destroyed those who went before you. Prophet Muhammad

Summer of 1976

Jusef was born in London in May of 1976 to parents who had emigrated years before from India and Pakistan to escape the crushing poverty of those two countries. They were both devout Muslims, but desiring their only son to have an exposure to the more diverse lifestyle in London, sent him for the first eight years of his education to a public school in London. They were trying as parents to do what they believed would be best for their son by raising him with their traditional Islamic values but still have him assimilated and accepted as a British citizen.

By the age of fifteen, he began to feel torn between the insular world of his Muslim family and the turbulent life of a typical teenager growing up in the ‘90s in Great Britain. Many of the teenage boys he went to school with came from middle-class families in what had grown to be an increasingly secular British society. He felt very much an outsider who was rarely invited to join his classmates in any social events. He felt completely repulsed by the widespread use of alcohol and rampant promiscuity that seemed to be a way of life for many British teens. The multiculturalism that had become a cornerstone of contemporary British society meant that unlike decades before when new immigrants were rapidly assimilated into a well defined culture where the emphasis was on conforming to the accepted norm, there were now groups of immigrants who kept their unique cultural identities and had little if any loyalty to the British realm.

At the small, run-down local mosque that his parents insisted he attend, he also couldn’t identify with the pious Islamic immigrants who were at the bottom rung of British society. They quietly suffered the indignities and quiet undercurrent of racism in London as if that were simply their accepted lot in life.

His father, although a man of great intelligence, seemed completely lacking in any human warmth and struggled to form an emotional bond with his son. He was employed as an electrical designer for a small manufacturing company and rarely saw his children except briefly in passing at the end of a long day at work. There was rarely any effusive praise from his father, just a set of rigid expectations to be met on grades and behavior with harsh punishment being quickly meted out for any minor perceived transgression.

At the age of sixteen, he finally persuaded his father to allow him to attend a Muslim school for the rest of his education. When he walked in the door of the madrassa for the first time he realized he had finally found a society where he seemed to fit. Five times daily, he prayed with other devout Muslims and learned more about his duty as a servant of the Prophet. His teachers were not the meek immigrants that seemed subservient to the British, these were men of valor, many of them Mujahadeen who had bloodied the Soviets for a decade in Afghanistan and fought with their Muslim brothers in Chechnya.

He heard radicalized philosophy for the first time that explained Islam not as a belief system by which individuals live and structure their lives but more as an ideology for directing whole societies. He realized for the first time that he and others like him had a duty to influence the direction of entire governments by obeying the Prophet in his teaching to bring Islam to the non-Muslim world, by persuasion if possible, by the sword if they rejected the Truth.

Jusef began to strive to become more pure in his beliefs as he was confronted with the normal turmoil in his life that every teenager contends with as his hormones began to wage war against his traditional values. His friends in the mosque were facing the same challenges. That combination of teenage angst and sexual tension brought them cohesion as a group but also built until there was an undercurrent of pent up frustration waiting for a catalyst.

As Josef was leaving the madrassa on Friday to walk back to his small flat just a few blocks away, he met his best friend Lotfi as he turned the corner.

Lotfi, where have you been? I didn’t see you at noon prayers today.

Lotfi quietly hesitated for a moment before replying. There is a big problem at home. My sister Saliyah is defying the will of my father. Her dress is immodest. She will leave home properly dressed, but then go into a restroom at the bus station and change into indecent western clothes. She has even taken to walking the streets without the hijab. Last week the imam from the mosque came and spoke to my father because he saw her alone with an unbeliever, a kafir after school. The shame that my father must bear is just terrible.

Jusef put his arm around his friend to console him. She is foolish, throwing away her purity on some dumb shit English. Has your family locked her in the house until she is cleansed from this evil?

Lotfi hung his head again in embarrassment as he explained, It is much worse than I told you my friend, my father forbade her to see any man until a proper marriage can be arranged as is our tradition. She cursed my father, renounced her religion and has run away with this pig. My three uncles are very angry and are looking for her now; they have threatened to kill her to restore my families honor.

Jusef was enraged to think that any non-believer would dare to corrupt an innocent girl. The decision was made, Lotfi, I will help you find this kafir and we will return your Saliyah to your home to face the judgment of your father. Where can we find this pig?

Lotfi was near tears at he told his friend, I know he has a flat in the bottom of a building on Blackstock Rd.; it’s probably no more than a mile from the mosque.

Lotfi and Jusef walked quickly through the grimy Finsbury Park neighborhood over the stained, worn cobblestones. Over the past couple of decades, it had been transformed from an average middle-class working English neighborhood into a heavily Muslim enclave whose population was comprised of immigrants from Pakistan, North Africa, and many from Afghanistan who had recently fought alongside the Taliban to defeat the Soviets in the late 80’s.

The ragged, dank apartments and mix of small storefronts advertising ethnic foods in a variety of languages, gave it more the look and smell of a ghetto in Pakistan rather than a neighborhood located mere blocks from some of the major tourist attractions of London. They passed several women wearing burqua walking slowly behind their husbands as they returned to their homes for the evening meal.

After a few minutes of brisk walking, they approached one of the more run down apartments in the area. The building was three stories, faced with brick discolored from the heavy pollution of the city. There was an ancient limestone cornice with The Meacham Building 1902 engraved in its worn surface. Over the decades, it had been converted from some long forgotten commercial purpose to its current life as a warren of small apartments linked by dingy, poorly lit hallways and inhabited by some of the poorest immigrants found in London.

Lotfi quietly led Jusef down a rickety wooden stairwell strewn with decades of refuse and trash to the door of an unmarked basement apartment. As he pressed his ear to the splintered wooden door, Jusef was able to hear faint sounds coming from inside the apartment indicating that at least one of the two was at home. He whispered to his friend, When I open the door, we will move quickly. We beat the shit out of this guy and get your sister out of here. OK?

Lotfi nervously cleared his throat as he prepared himself, OK, let’s go….

His eyes widened in surprise as Jusef pulled a chrome plated butterfly knife out of his jeans pocket, flicked his wrist to open it, and gently slid it between the worn wooden frame and the door to spring the cheap lock securing the apartment. Quietly easing the door open to prevent the hinges from squeaking and revealing their presence, they stepped into the darkened apartment and almost gagged at the smell of old mildew and stale cigarette smoke.

As they slipped quietly into the dingy apartment, they could barely see in the dim light provided by a single lamp with a torn fabric shade hanging askew. Visible through the flickering shadows was a ragged green couch in the middle of the floor, a couple of cheap wooden chairs with worn paint sitting on a threadbare carpet that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in decades. The sole remaining décor seemed to consist of numerous empty beer bottles and a couple of empty pizza boxes scattered about.

There was only one other door in the apartment from which the sounds seemed to be emanating. Jusef put his hand on the doorknob, quietly opened the door and stepped inside followed closely by Lotfi.

He would never forget what he saw at that moment; Lotfi’s sister was on her hands and knees with her head buried between the thighs of her boyfriend greedily sucking him while he urged her on, groaning and making sounds like a grunting animal as his excitement mounted. Lotfi uttered a sound of utter despair and fell to his knees with his hands covering his face