Killer Storm

by Matt Dickinson

  A shout cut through the night air. It was Viking’s voice. It seemed she had abandoned the burning gas store and was now concentrating on hunting us down. There was no breath left to debate Zhanna’s mysterious disappearance.

  We could only keep moving, lungs struggling for air.

  Next time we looked back we realised there were even more pursuers. At least a dozen head torches bobbed in the darkness.

  Our beautiful plan, I thought, turned to pure chaos.

  A shriek rang out. Viking calling for more men.

  We rushed onwards, passing the wreckage of some ransacked tents, jumping the small river of meltwater that ran on the eastern edge of the glacier.

  The first streaks of dawn were chasing away the night.

  ‘This way!’ Kami said.

  He led us into the lower section of the Icefall, navigating on instinct. We were slipping on the ice, no crampon spikes on our boots. Shots rang out behind us once again.

  I ducked, my spine tingling.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Kami blurted out. ‘Let’s cross one of the crevasses and pull over the ladder so they can’t follow.’

  I scanned the terrain; saw a huge crevasse just ahead.

  We had a slender chance of survival. The tiniest glimmer of hope ignited inside me.

  A ladder spanned it. Kami was right: all we had to do was pull that ladder over and we would be safe. At least for a while.

  A sudden cry came from our right. Two of Viking’s men were standing just fifty metres away – guards positioned at the top end of the camp.

  ‘Get down!’ Dawa hissed.

  One of the men pulled out a gun. We dived for cover.

  Spurts of ice kicked up beside us as he fired. My heart pounded fit to burst. Another shot split the air.

  Alex’s body jerked backwards. He gasped in surprise.

  He fell with a thud. His body twitched, his eyes didn’t seem to be able to focus.

  ‘No!’ Kami’s scream cut through the air.

  We pulled Alex behind a wall of ice. I snatched a quick look over the top. A spume of crystals erupted next to my face.

  Alex clutched at my arm. Blood ran from his mouth.

  ‘What can we do?’ Kami cried.

  I risked another look. Viking and her thugs were now shockingly close to our position. Weaving through the lower parts of the Icefall. Coming fast.

  Dawa pulled out his pistol.

  ‘I’ll hold them off,’ the Nepali said. ‘Buy you some time.’

  He moved swiftly. The sound of two rapid shots ripped up the air.

  We turned to Alex, pulling his Gore-Tex jacket aside.

  ‘Alex!’ Kami said. ‘Hang on in there.’

  For a few seconds it seemed he recognised us. The light of understanding in his eyes. Then he moaned, a deep and terrible call of pain.

  ‘Stay with us!’ I cried. ‘Stay with us, Alex.’

  Alex was slipping in and out of consciousness, his shirt already soaked with dark red blood.

  The terrible sound of air sucking from the hole in his chest told us the worst. I ripped open his shirt.

  In his chest was a ragged hole. The bullet wound was right next to his heart.

  Then his eyes opened again, refocused.

  ‘Kami,’ he said slowly. ‘Are we cool?’

  The slick, liquid crystal of a single tear trickled down Kami’s cheek. He eased the pressure on Alex’s neck, where his friend’s jacket had twisted awkwardly.

  Dawa rattled off another two shots. Rifle blasts came in return, the air filling with ice chips as the sérac took the hits.

  ‘We’re cool, Alex. We’re more than cool,’ Kami said.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘I’m happy about that.’

  Kami rolled up Alex’s jacket and placed it tenderly behind his head.

  ‘I’ve stalled them,’ Dawa called. ‘I think I hit two but not Viking.’

  ‘Let me see the mountain,’ Alex whispered.

  We propped him up so he could look to the north. The bulk of Everest was hidden behind a nearby ridgeline, but the summit was standing proud above it, peerless and above all else on earth.

  ‘There she is,’ Alex whispered. ‘My muse, inspiration, nemesis.’

  The tip of Everest was suddenly flooded with golden light from the rising sun. The clouds above it seemed a crown of deepest violet.

  Alex reached for Kami’s hand. He held it tight.

  ‘One day you’ll make it, Kami,’ he said. ‘One day the shrine bell will help you get to the top.’

  A tremor ran through him. Flecks of blood appeared at his lips.

  ‘I believe so,’ Kami said. ‘I truly do.’

  ‘And you too Ryan,’ he said to me. ‘Say a prayer for me on top?’

  ‘For sure,’ I replied, somehow forcing the words out.

  Alex Brennan shuddered, sighed.

  Then he was gone.

  ‘You’re out of time,’ Dawa said. He pointed down the glacier where more of Viking’s men had now come into view.

  ‘We need to put at least one big crevasse between us and them.’ Kami observed.

  ‘If you’re going to make a break for it, now’s the time.’ Dawa told us. ‘I’ve got two more clips of ammunition then I’m out. Now go!’

  ‘How will you get away?’ I asked.

  ‘This place is a maze,’ Dawa said. ‘I was always good at hide and seek.’

  Crouched down low, we used the cover of a gully to move deeper into the Icefall.

  Dawa was returning fire. A scream far back on the glacier told us another of his shots had hit home.

  We hit the first of the big crevasses. Our first opportunity to stop Viking in her tracks. There was no time to do a good job of de-rigging the ladder. We simply cut the ropes attaching it to the ice.

  Thirty minutes’ more climbing. Kami’s breathing was laboured. I heard the occasional sob.

  I felt tears prick my eyes. I was furious with myself, cursing that I hadn’t guessed there would be guards at the top end of the camp.

  And Tashi? Had she really escaped with Shreeya? Or had they also been caught by Viking’s men?

  I heard Kami sob again. The deep shock of Alex’s death was only just beginning to hit us both. Bile rose swiftly to my throat and I stopped to retch.

  When I looked up, sun had lit up the Icefall. We were surrounded by high séracs, unable to see what was happening behind us.

  The ice here was deep blue.

  The gunfire had stopped.

  Dawa had been awesome. Without him and his courage under fire we never would have made it this far.

  ‘Do you think he escaped?’ Kami asked.

  I thought of Dawa’s confidence, his military skills.

  He was a supremely capable person in every way. If anyone could use the terrain down there to dodge Viking, it was him.

  ‘I think so. But what on earth do we do now?’ I asked Kami. ‘It’s only a matter of time before Viking fixes a new ladder.’

  He looked at me intently, his dark brown eyes blinking back tears.

  ‘We do the only thing we can,’ he said. ‘We keep going up.’

  – CHAPTER 8 –

  Kami and I kept moving into the Icefall. Every time we passed a marker wand we pulled it up and threw it in a crevasse. Anything and everything to keep Viking from following our trail.

  We reached the second big ladder crossing. A crevasse that had been christened ‘Big Al’ by the climbers at Base. I went first, trying not to look down into the depths, the ladder sagging alarmingly with each nervous step.

  As soon as Kami had crossed, the two of us started dismantling the ladder. It was more complicated than I had supposed, the ice screws attaching the end of it had been twisted deeply into the body of the glacier and we didn’t have the right tool to extract them.

  We fumbled at it for a bit with no success.

  ‘We’ll just have to cut the ropes again,’ Kami suggested. We took our Swiss army knives and started to saw.
Not surprisingly, the cords were incredibly tough, and ten minutes of hard work was needed to sever them.

  As we worked, we heard voices in the lower part of the Icefall …

  ‘I think they’re looking for Dawa,’ Kami said.

  I prayed silently that they wouldn’t find him.

  The ladder broke free. We hurriedly pulled it over, stashing it on a flat section of ice and securing it so that it wouldn’t get blown away if a storm ran through the Icefall.

  Kami stared at the yawning mouth of the crevasse.

  ‘She can’t cross that,’ he said.

  The gaping ice crack was now a second serious barrier to Viking and her men.

  At that moment, far below us, we could see the terrorists halted at the first crevasse. Even at this distance, the tall figure of their leader was easily visible.

  She screamed something unintelligible in our direction, the shrill sound echoing around the ice towers.

  Viking and her men huddled together for some moments, obviously working out their next move.

  ‘You don’t think they’ll try to find another route?’ Kami asked.

  ‘They’re not climbers,’ I reminded him.

  Kami and I kept going; dismantling two further crevasse crossings as we went. One of them was a four-ladder extravaganza across a truly huge split.

  The Icefall was a punishing climb, filled with near-vertical steps, false summits and an ever-more complicated and nerve-wracking array of ladder crossings and cliffs.

  We started to talk about finding food and shelter at Camp 1. It was a good way of distracting ourselves.

  The scale of the place was impressive. And terrifying. We were far from properly equipped, slithering on the ice without any crampon spikes to keep us stable.

  What was worse was that in the days since the terror attack had begun there had been no maintenance on the route. The ‘Icefall doctors’ – the Sherpa team that had the job of fixing the trail – had all rushed down the valley. In the meantime, the crevasses had widened by almost half a metre with the movement of the Khumbu Glacier, in some places stretching the fixed ropes to breaking point, the ladders resting just by the tips of the side rails.

  Like me, Kami was suffering emotionally, tears running freely down his cheeks almost every time I looked at him. The loss of his mentor had knocked him for six. Alex had been like a father to him for the last two years.

  ‘I don’t remember Camp 1 being so far,’ he said.

  I couldn’t comment. It was my first time climbing through the Icefall.

  But it did seem like a monumental effort, not least because the higher we got, the bigger the crevasses became. Just before reaching the calmer environment of the Western Cwm – the vast valley that guards Everest’s southern approach – these deadly voids reach a veritable crescendo of chaos, splitting the surface of the glacier into a bewildering confusion of dramatic drops and life-threatening towers. The route through this maze seemed to have been planned by a suicidal lunatic, passing beneath overhanging cliffs of ice that I knew could collapse at any second.

  Suddenly, Kami slipped. He shot down a steep slope and crashed, hard, into some ice blocks at the bottom.

  ‘You OK?’ I called.

  He nodded but his face was screwed up in pain.

  I grabbed one of the fixed ropes and made my way down to him, helping him to rise awkwardly to his feet.

  I could see his legs shaking and his breathing was coming very hard.

  ‘My back …’ he muttered.

  We resumed the climb but I could see something had changed. Up until the fall, Kami had been impressively strong, his rehabilitated body coping with pretty much everything.

  Now he looked fragile, lacking balance. Every step seemed hesitant, but, even though I asked him, he would not admit he was in pain.

  Finally we reached flatter ground, and saw a clutch of tents in the distance.

  ‘Camp 1!’ Kami gasped.

  The tents were spread over a surprisingly large area of the Western Cwm. They were in three main clusters, each group positioned in the hope of minimising avalanche risk from the slopes above.

  We unzipped a few and found they were loaded with equipment, provisions and cooking gas. The Sherpa teams had already done a lot of supply carries to this point.

  We chose a tent to use as a base, then rested for a while outside it, getting our breath back, our minds catching up with the monumental events of the past twenty-four hours.

  Kami brought out the shrine bell, turning it in his hands. I guessed he was thinking about Shreeya.

  ‘Do you think the girls got away?’ he said.

  ‘They have to have done,’ I replied. ‘Or it’s all been for nothing.’

  We just sat there on the ice, lost in our own thoughts for a while, our bodies recovering after the intense activity of the climb.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Kami said. ‘We might find a radio, get in touch with the girls that way.’

  ‘Genius!’ I exclaimed. ‘Let’s get looking.’

  We split up, searching the tents one by one.

  It felt wrong to be rummaging through other climbers’ belongings but we had no choice.

  After an hour of scavenging, Kami and I met back at the base tent. Our raid had the required result: we had four radios, each loaded with fully charged batteries.

  We found some flat ice to sit on and examined the transmitters. They were simple devices, one grade up from a walkie-talkie.

  I snapped a switch and selected the first frequency.

  ‘This is Camp 1 on Mount Everest,’ I said. ‘Camp 1 on Everest seeking urgent assistance.’

  No reply.

  ‘This is Camp 1 on Mount Everest,’ I repeated. ‘Camp 1 on Everest seeking urgent assistance.’

  Nothing.

  No matter what frequency we tried the result was the same. Static. With not the slightest hint of a human voice on the other end.

  The two of us tried for almost an hour. Finally Kami turned away from his handset. His eyes were hollow.

  ‘You know what, don’t you?’ Kami said. ‘We’re being stupid.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We were right that there’d be plenty of radios up here,’ Kami continued. ‘But they’re not powerful enough to speak to Kathmandu.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’re just for the mountain. Talking from one camp to another. They’re probably not even strong enough to speak to the nearest village.’

  I turned the radio over and over in my hands. What Kami was saying made perfect sense. It was infuriating to think that we had the means to transmit, but not far enough to make a difference.

  ‘We could speak to Base Camp,’ Kami said bitterly, ‘for all the good that would do us.’

  I snorted. Viking was the only one with a radio at base.

  We kept stubbornly trying on the radios, but no reply came.

  A snowstorm came in from the north at 4 p.m. Flakes the size of fingernails began to fall. By five, visibility was down to a few metres and the snow was blowing like the devil.

  We retreated to the tent, which was already sagging under the weight of the snow. Good quality sleeping bags were stashed in there, along with a small cooker and plenty of food, all waiting for climbers who would never arrive. Kami zipped up the front and we spent a good half hour sorting out our borrowed equipment so that the space worked for us and not against us.

  We cooked up some corned beef hash and chucked in a tin of spaghetti. We were both ravenous after the climb and the pan of food was gone in a flash. Two tins of fruit followed, with a couple of sliced-up Mars bars thrown in for good measure.

  ‘Where do you think the girls are now?’ Kami asked. ‘You think they’re warm and cosy in a nice lodge somewhere?’

  ‘We just have to pray,’ I replied. ‘Pray with all our hearts that they didn’t get caught.’

  I shivered as the cold began to bite. It was time to curl up in our sleeping bags.

 
I doubted I would sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Tashi’s face. I forced myself to think about practical stuff, focusing on the radio problem.

  If we couldn’t get a radio message out, we would rot here until the siege was over, or until Viking found a way to get to us.

  ‘How long can we stay here,’ I asked, ‘before we go crazy or the altitude gets us?’

  ‘Ten days?’ Kami suggested. ‘Two weeks at a push.’

  We both fell silent.

  The very idea of being stuck up here for that length of time, haunted by Alex’s violent death, thinking of the girls but without any news, was enough to chill my heart.

  ‘Other options?’ I muttered.

  ‘A helicopter would be nice,’ Kami laughed sadly.

  I nodded, but we both knew the truth; a helicopter pilot would be risking Viking’s bullets by flying near Base Camp.

  I went out to collect some more ice for melting. We brewed up a litre of tea.

  ‘Alex saved us today,’ Kami said as we sipped the warm fluid. ‘We never would have made it without him.’

  Kami brought out the shrine bell once more, holding it tight to his chest.

  ‘I still believe in the power of the bell,’ he said. ‘A bad thing has happened but good things can still come.’

  He said a Hindu prayer for Alex.

  Exhausted by the emotional twists and turns of the day, we lay down to rest. As we tried to sleep, the radio began to crackle with a new voice, a man, speaking urgently in a foreign language.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kami said groggily. ‘It sounds like Russian.’

  I tried to connect with the mystery broadcaster, but there was no response.

  Everything went silent and both of us slipped quickly into sleep.

  Nightmares came fast that night. Alex’s death ran through my dreams, over and over.

  Breakfast was miserable. Lumpy porridge and frozen muesli bars.

  We weren’t chatting much and we had headaches from the altitude. I guess we were both wishing we had woken to find the whole thing had just been a bad dream.

  After we had eaten, Kami came up with an idea.

  ‘How about we climb around the top of the Icefall so we have a line of sight to the lodges at Gorak Shep?’ he suggested. ‘Then we can try the radio again.’