Ice Claw Read Online Free PDF

other free-riders just what to look for in these high, dangerous conditions. That was what Sayid had failed to realize yesterday. Hesaw the off-trail run and wanted to cut up the snow and enjoy the thrill of the deep powder.
    Max scanned the rock faces and mountain peaks. In the distance Le Pic du Midi d’Ossau soared like a gargantuan reptile’s head, the slashed summit like a jaw gasping for air at nearly three thousand meters. The malevolent eye of the mountain stared heavenward, ignoring the puny human being on the valley floor.
    Max checked the deep gullies above him. There was one couloir, a narrow chute formed by rocks at the top of a cliff, that whispered puffs of snowflakes. Max reasoned that they were due to an updraft of air twisting through the narrow crevices.
    Everything seemed fine, but his instincts were prickling, warning him of something being not quite right. He had learned to follow those primal feelings when he was in Africa, where he had grappled with death and survived its swirling darkness. But now … What was it? What was wrong here? Still no sign of movement. The snow embedded the silence. Perhaps he was being overcautious; maybe he was still emotionally uneasy because of losing the competition. No, it was more than that—but he didn’t know what. He glanced down at his father’s watch and realized there was something he could salvage out of the failure.
    It was a calculated risk, but he’d try and find Sayid’s beads.
    Max took a final glance across the shimmering valley. Satisfied that all appeared to be safe, he eased his board down into the deep snow. Like crushed diamonds, it flurried away as he rode towards the tree line that Sayid had plowed through. Bending down and searching the lower branches,Max spotted the dark shapes against the white backdrop. Draped like a forgotten Christmas-tree decoration, Sayid’s misbaha dangled from a branch. Max picked it up carefully and tucked the ninety-nine strung beads into the pocket of his ski jacket.
    It was time to leave; to get Sayid out of the hospital; to pack their bags and go home.
    A sudden blur of movement startled him so that he crouched quickly in anticipation of a perceived danger. Three hundred meters away a skier plunged from a high crevice; a black, billowing figure, he dropped ten meters or more, hit the snow with enormous skill and turned his skis in a furious dash across the face of the mountain.
    It was one of the weirdest things Max had ever seen.
    A bare-headed man, a monk, with a bushy gray beard. His shoulder-length hair streamed behind him, as thick and wild as a horse’s mane. He wore only a cassock, which flapped wildly as the air buffeted him, the hood acting almost like a drogue parachute behind his head. His concentration was so intense he glanced neither left nor right and didn’t see Max.
    Moments later, dropping from the same couloir, was another figure. As bizarre as the monk had been, so this skier was menacing—like the Grim Reaper stalking his victim. Sleek, carbon-smooth through the snow, the second man was a phantom, a silent Fury. The only sound he made was that of his skis slashing the surface. Max could barely see him, for as the skier tore through the white shower, he seemed to disappear from view, before suddenly appearing another ten meters down the hill. The ski ghost wore a body-hugging, one-piece ski suit, black helmet and visor; even the skis were black. Thereason Max could not see him clearly was that his outfit was fragmented by a disruptive pattern, white shreds of crinkled lines, like the veins of a leaf. It was perfect snow camouflage.
    Max hadn’t moved. The monk and his pursuer were level with his line of sight when the phantom, without losing a moment’s pace, lifted one arm quickly behind his neck, grabbed something and brought it forward. It was a rifle, camouflaged with black-and-white stripes, like those used by soldiers and marines for winter warfare. With a practiced, rapid