Child - Over the edge : the true story of the kidnap and escape of four climbers in Central Asia

PRAISE FOR OVER THE EDGE

Riveting and meticulously researched, Over the Edge recounts a climbing expedition gone horribly wrong. Greg Child tells the story of four American climbers who are captured by Islamist terrorists in mountains near the Afghan border in August 2000a harbinger of the attacks that would hit New York and Washington thirteen months later. Although much of the drama takes place over six harrowing days while the climbers are held captive, the bizarre turn their story takes after they return home is equally engrossing. Jon Krakauer

In Over the Edge, Greg Child embeds the gripping drama of four young American climbers taken hostage in Kyrgyzstan within a profound account of the geopolitics of radical Islam. Its an amazing story, amazingly told, by one of the best adventure writers of our time. David Roberts

Child has everything he needs for an Ian Fleming-type mountaineering drama: a great setting in the Pamir Alai region of Kyrgyzstan; a cast of quick-witted American mountaineers (three men and one woman); a backdrop of drug trafficking, political instability and economic free-for-all; Islamic mujahedeen facing Uzbeki soldiers armed with naivet or Kalashnikovs, or both. Publishers Weekly

Prefiguring the nations [9/11] tragedy, four American climbers were kidnapped in August 2000 by Islamic terrorists in the far-off mountains of Central Asia. Here is an account of how they barely survived. Library Journal

[U]nfolds tensely amid ambushes, nocturnal treks, and the murder of a fellow hostage... Child ably frames the politics as well as the mountaineering allure of the spur of the Himalayas that enticed the Americans, hinging the whole on the dramatic detail surrounding their escape from their captors. This is a huge story in the alpinist community, and armchair adventurers now have an excellent rendition... Booklist

OVER THE EDGE

THE TRUE STORY OF THE

KIDNAP AND ESCAPE

OF FOUR CLIMBERS

IN CENTRAL ASIA

GREG CHILD

Mountaineers Books is the publishing division of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas. 1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134 800.553.4453, www.mountaineersbooks.org

Copyright 2002, 2015 by Greg Child

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. First North American paperback edition. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc., Chapter 28 originally published by Random House Australia.

Printed in the United States of America

18 17 16 151 2 3 4 5

Book design: Barbara M. Bachman

Cover design: Jen Grable

Cover photograph, top: Yellow Wall Chris Harkness; bottom: Randy Plett Photographs, iStockphoto.com

Cartographer: Jackie Aher

Frontispiece: AP/Worldwide Photos

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Child, Greg.

Over the edge : the true story of the kidnap and escape of four climbers in Central Asia / by Greg Child.

pages cm

Originally published : New York : Villard Books, c2002.

ISBN 978-1-59485-959-5 (trade paper) ISBN 978-1-59485-960-1 (ebook)

1. Political kidnappingKyrgyzstan. 2. MountaineersCrimes againstKyrgyzstan. 3. TerrorismKyrgyzstan. 4. HostagesKyrgyzstan. 5. KyrgyzstanPolitics and government1991- I. Title.

HV6604.K97C55 2015

958.43'085092313dc23

2014039613

Printed on recycled paper

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-959-5

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-960-1

To

Sergeant Turat Osmanov

Captain Ruslan Samsakov

Captain Beishen Raimbekov

and all the soldiers killed in action

during the conflict around the

Karavshin Valley in August 2000

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T hanks are owed to Tommy Caldwell, John Dickey, Beth Rodden, and Jason Singer Smith for trusting me to tell their story. Likewise I am grateful to Beth and Tommys parents Robb and Linda Rodden, and Mike and Terry Caldwell, for their cooperation. Special thanks are due to my agent, Susan Golomb, of the Susan Golomb Literary Agency, for her representation. This story had its genesis as a feature article in Outside magazine, and I want to thank editor in chief at that time, Hal Espe, for the counsel he extended to me during the writing of that story and this book. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Hightower, my editor on the story for Outside. The other climbers who were swept up in the drama in the Ak Su and Kara Su valleys in August 2000 who shared their experiences with me deserve thanks too, namely, Kate Dooley, Natasha Kolysnik, Stefan Hiermaier, Radan Svec, and Roland Laemmermann. I also wish to thank the mother of Turat Osmanov, who welcomed John Dickey, Jason Smith, and me into her house and who shared her sons life with us. Thanks to Elena Domatov, Erika Monahan, and Larissa Collum for translating Russian tapes and text, and to Salley Oberlin, who transcribed countless hours of taped interviews. Thanks also to my interpreter in Kyrgyzstan, Erkin Atabekov. Others who helped me on the road to this story include Ivan Samoilenko in Russia, and, in Kyrgyzstan, Turat Akimov, Alexander Kim, Igor Shestakov, Garth Willis, and General Bolot Januzakov, secretary of the Kyrgyz Security Council, who allowed me access to Kyrgyz military facilities and personnel. Among the soldiers who helped me piece together the military actions of August 2000, I am especially grateful to Lieutenant Colonel Akyl Dononbaev. And thanks to Dewey, a good pal during the year I worked on this book.

INTRODUCTION

T he world changes fast. In 1995 I visited Kyrgyzstan with a team of American climbers, where I spent a month exploring one of the most beautiful and spectacular alpine rock-climbing areas on earth. The canyons, peaks, and glaciers that we had traveled to were in a remote corner of the Pamir-Alai range known to climbers as the Ak Su and Kara Su valleys. My memories of that time are of idyllic days camped on verdant meadows alongside rushing rivers, of encounters with friendly Kyrgyz shepherds, and of climbs on towering granite pinnacles up to four thousand feet in height. This vertical playground rightly deserved its reputation as the Yosemite Valley of Central Asia, and for twenty years Russian, European, and American climbers had flocked there.