The Kingdom

by Clive Cussler

  Twice in the afternoon they asked Hosni to land near a rock formation that looked promising, but neither panned out. As four o’clock approached, Sam put a red grease pencil X through the last point on the day’s map, and Hosni headed for Kathmandu.

  The morning of the second day began with a forty-minute flight to the Budhi Gandaki Valley northwest of Kathmandu. Three of Karna’s coordinates for the day lay within the Budhi Gandaki, which followed the western edge of the Annapurna range. Sam and Remi were treated to three hours of beautiful scenery—thick pine forests, lush meadows exploding with wildflowers, jagged ridgelines, churning rivers, and tumbling waterfalls—but little else, aside from a formation that, from above, looked mushroom-like enough to warrant a landing but turned out to be merely a top-heavy boulder.

  At noon they landed near a trekker’s stop in a village called Bagarchap, and Hosni entertained the local children with tours of the Bell while Sam and Remi ate sack lunches.

  Soon they were airborne again and heading north through the Bintang Glacier and toward Mount Manaslu.

  “Eighty-one hundred meters high,” Hosni called, pointing to the mountain.

  Sam translated for Remi: “About twenty-four thousand feet.”

  “And five thousand less than Everest,” Hosni added.

  “It’s one thing to see these in pictures or from the ground,” Remi said. “But, from up here, I can see why they call this place the rooftop of the world.”

  After lingering so Remi could take some pictures, Hosni turned the Bell west and descended into another glacier—the Pung Gyen, Hosni called it—which they followed for eight miles before turning north again.

  “Our friends are back,” Hosni said over the headset. “Right side.”

  Sam and Remi looked. The Chinese Z-9 was indeed back, again paralleling their course; this time, however, the helicopter had closed the gap to only a few hundred yards.

  Sam and Remi could see silhouettes staring back at them through the cabin windows.

  The Z-9 shadowed them for a few more miles, then veered off and disappeared into a cloud bank.

  “Next search area coming up in three minutes,” Hosni called.

  Sam and Remi got situated near the windows.

  As had become routine, Hosni lifted the Bell’s nose over a ridgeline, then banked sharply into the target valley, bleeding off altitude as he went. He slowed the Bell to a hover.

  Sam was the first to notice the valley’s surreal landscape below. While the upper slopes were thick with pine trees, the lower reaches looked as if they had been carved by a rectangular cookie cutter, leaving behind sheer cliffs plummeting into a lake. Jutting from the opposite slope and encircling one end was an ice-covered plateau. A runnel of churning water sliced through the shelf and cascaded to the waters below.

  “Hosni, how deep do you think this is?” Sam asked. “The valley, I mean.”

  “From the ridgeline to the lake, perhaps eight hundred feet.”

  “The cliffs are half that at least,” said Sam.

  Honsi eased the Bell forward, following the slope, as Sam and Remi scanned the terrain through their binoculars. As they drew even with the plateau, and Hosni came about, they saw that the plateau was deceptively deep, narrowing for a few hundred yards before ending at a towering wall of ice bracketed by vertical cliffs.

  “That’s a glacier,” Sam said. “Hosni, I didn’t see this plateau on any maps. Does it look familiar?”

  “No, you are right. This is relatively new. You see the color of the lake, the greenish gray?”

  “Yes,” said Remi.

  “You see that after glacial retreat. This section of the valley is less than two years old, I would estimate.”

  “Climate change?”

  “Most definitely. The glacier we passed earlier—the Pung Gyen—lost forty feet last year alone.”

  Pressed up against her window, Remi suddenly lowered her binoculars. “Sam, look at this!”

  He slid over to her side and peered out the window. Directly below them was what looked like a wooden hut half buried in a waist-high ice shelf.

  “What in the world is that?” Sam asked. “Hosni?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How close to the coordinates are we?”

  “Not quite a kilometer.”

  Remi said, “Sam, that’s a gondola.”

  “Pardon?”

  “A wicker gondola—for a hot-air balloon.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Hosni, set us down!”

  31

  NORTHERN NEPAL

  Hosni crabbed the Bell sideways over the plateau until he found a spot he decided was solid enough to bear the helicopter’s weight, then touched down. Once the rotors had spooled down, Sam and Remi climbed out and donned their jackets, caps, and gloves.

  Hosni called, “Step carefully! There will be many crevasses in an area like this.”

  They waved their understanding and started across the plateau toward the object.

  “Here, wait . . .” Hosni called. They walked back. He climbed out of the cockpit and stooped beside the tail storage compartment. He removed what looked like a foldable tent pole and handed it to Sam. “Avalanche probe. Works as well with crevasses. Best to be safe.”

  “Thanks.” Sam gave the probe a flick, and it snaked outward, the inner bungee cord snapping the sections into place. “Nifty.”

  They set off again, this time with Sam probing as they walked.

  The ice sheet that partially covered the plateau was rippled like waves frozen in place, leftover, they assumed, by the glacier’s slow grinding retreat up the valley.

  The object in question lay near the far edge of the plateau, sitting kitty-corner to the rest of the plateau.

  After five minutes of careful walking, they stood before it.

  “I’m glad I didn’t bet you,” Sam said. “That’s a gondola, all right.”

  “Upside down. That explains why it looked like a hut. They don’t make them like this anymore. What in the world is it doing here?”

  “No idea.”

  Remi took a step forward; Sam halted her with a hand on her shoulder. He probed the ice in front of the gondola, found it solid, then began poking around what should have been its sides.

  “There’s more,” Sam said.

  They continued sidestepping left, paralleling the gondola, probing as they went, until they reached the end.

  Sam frowned and said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”

  Remi asked. “How long is it?”

  “Roughly thirty feet.”

  “That’s impossible. Aren’t most maybe three feet by three feet?”

  “More or less.” He slid the probe over the gondola’s upturned bottom as far as he could reach. “Nearly eight feet wide.”

  Sam handed her the probe, then knelt down and crawled forward, hands sliding through the snow along the gondola’s side.

  “Sam, be care—”

  His arm plunged into the snow up to his elbow. He froze.

  “I can’t be entirely sure,” he said with a grin, “but I think I found something.” He laid himself flat.

  “I got you,” Remi replied. She grabbed his boots.

  Sam used both hands to punch a basketball-sized hole in the ice, then poked his head inside. He turned back to Remi. “A crevasse. Very deep. The gondola’s half straddling it diagonally.”

  He took another peek through the hole, then wriggled back away from the crevasse and pushed himself to his knees. He said, “I’ve found the answer to how it got here.”

  “How?”

  “It flew. There’s rigging still attached to the gondola—wooden stays, some kind of braided cord . . . I even saw what looked like a fabric of some sort. The whole tangled mess is hanging in the crevasse.”

  Remi sat down beside him, and they stared at the gondola for a bit. Remi said, “A mystery for another time?”

  Sam nodded. “Absolutely. We’ll mark it and come back.”

 
They stood up. Sam cocked his head. “Listen.”

  Faintly in the distance came the chopping of helicopter rotors. They turned around, trying to localize the sound. Standing beside the Bell, Hosni had heard it too. He stared up at the sky.

  Suddenly to their left an olive green helicopter popped over the ridgeline, then dropped into the valley and turned in their direction. On the aircraft’s door was a five-pointed red star outlined in yellow.

  The helicopter drew even with the plateau and slowed to a hover fifty feet from Sam and Remi, nose cone and rocket pods pointed directly at them.

  “Don’t move,” Sam said.

  “Chinese Army?” asked Remi.

  “Yes. Same as the Z-9 we spotted yesterday.”

  “What do they want?”

  Before Sam could answer, the helicopter pivoted, revealing an open cabin door. In it, a soldier crouched behind a mounted machine gun.

  Sam could sense Remi’s body go tense beside him. He slowly grasped her hand in his. “Don’t run. If they wanted us dead, we’d already be dead.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw movement. He glanced toward the helicopter and saw Hosni opening the side door. A moment later he emerged. In his hands was a compact machine gun. He raised it toward the Z-9.

  “Hosni, no!” Sam shouted.

  Hosni’s machine gun bucked, and the muzzle flashed orange. Bullets peppered the Z-9’s windshield. The helicopter banked sharply right, then accelerated away, skimming over the lake’s surface toward the ridgeline, where it banked again until its nose was again aimed at the Bell.

  “Hosni, run!” Sam shouted, then to Remi: “Behind the gondola! Go!”

  Remi spun into a sprint, with Sam close on her heels.

  “Remi, the crevasse!” Sam called. “Veer left.”

  Remi did, then pushed off with both legs, diving headfirst onto the gondola. Sam hit it a moment later, then pushed himself to his knees and helped Remi onto the ice shelf. They tumbled down the backside and landed in a sprawling heap.

  From across the plateau they heard the chattering of Hosni’s machine gun. Sam stood up and peeked over the ice. Hosni was standing defiantly at the edge of the plateau, firing at the oncoming Z-9.

  “Hosni, get out of there!”

  The Z-9 stopped in a hover a hundred yards away. Sam saw a flash from the left-hand rocket pod. Hosni saw it as well. He turned and began sprinting toward Sam and Remi.

  “Faster!” Sam shouted.

  With a brilliant flash of light and a plume of smoke, a pair of rockets burst from the Z-9’s pod. In a split second they reached the Bell, one striking the ground beneath the tail, the other slamming into the engine compartment.

  The Bell convulsed, leapt upward, then exploded.

  Sam ducked and threw himself over Remi. They felt the blast ripple through the plateau, felt the ice crackle beneath them. A wave of shrapnel pelted into the gondola and through the ice shelf a foot above their heads.

  Then silence.

  Sam said, “Follow me,” and crawled down the length of the ice shelf to the end of the gondola. On his belly, he wriggled forward and peered around the corner.

  The plateau was strewn with the shattered remains of the Bell. Jagged chunks of the fuselage, still rocking from the concussion, sat amid a sheet of burning aviation fuel. Splintered lengths of rotor blade jutted from the snowbanks.

  The Z-9 had retreated across the lake to the ridgeline, where it hovered, rocket pods still pointed menacingly at the plateau.

  Remi said, “Do you see Hosni?”

  “I’m looking.”

  Sam spotted him lying beside a ragged piece of the Bell’s windshield. The body was charred. Then Sam spotted something else. Directly ahead of them, twenty feet away, was Hosni’s machine gun. It looked intact. He pulled back and faced Remi.

  “He’s gone. Never felt a thing.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I spotted his machine gun. I think I can reach it.”

  “Sam, no. You don’t even know if it works. Where’s the Z-9?”

  “Hovering. Probably radioing their base for instructions. They’ve already spotted us; they’ll be coming in for a closer look.”

  “You can’t hope to hold them off for long.”

  “My guess is they want us alive. Otherwise, they would be pounding this plateau with missiles.”

  “Why, what are they after?”

  “I have a hunch.”

  “Me too. We’ll compare notes later, if we’re alive. What’s your plan?”

  “They can’t land, not with all the debris, so they’ll have to hover above the plateau and fast-rope soldiers down. If I can catch them at the right moment, maybe . . .” Sam let his words trail off. “Maybe,” he added. “What’s your vote? Fight and perhaps die here or surrender and end up in a Chinese prison camp?”

  Remi smiled gamely. “You really have to ask?”

  Half hoping, half expecting the Z-9 would make a reconnaissance pass before putting men on the ground, Sam sent Remi back along the ice shelf, where she buried herself in the snow between a pair of drifts. Sam crouched beside the gondola and readied himself.

  For what seemed like several minutes, but was likely less than one, Sam listened for the sound of the Z-9 approaching. When it came, he waited until the chopping sound was deafening. He risked a peek around the corner of the gondola.

  The Z-9 had stopped in a hover, just off the edge of the plateau and a few feet above it. The helicopter slid sideways like a dragonfly waiting for its prey to appear. In the side door, Sam could see the door gunner bent over the machine gun.

  Suddenly the Z-9 veered away and dropped out of sight below the plateau. Seconds later Sam saw it streaking back across the lake. Sam didn’t think but reacted, scrambling from behind cover and running, hunched over, to Hosni’s gun. He snatched it up and sprinted back to the gondola.

  “Made it,” Sam called to Remi, then began checking the machine gun. The wooden stock was partially splintered, and the fore stock charred by flames, but the working parts seemed in order and the barrel unscathed. He ejected the magazine; thirteen rounds left.

  Remi called, “What are they doing?”

  “Either leaving or waiting for enough of the aviation fuel to burn off so they can come in for a fast rope.”

  The Z-9 reached the edge of the lake and swooped upward along the slope to the ridgeline. Sam watched, fingers mentally crossed that the helicopter would keep going.

  It didn’t.

  As had become its pattern, the Z-9 banked over the ridge, reversed course, and came streaking back across the lake.

  “They’re coming back,” Sam announced.

  “Good luck.”

  Sam mentally rehearsed his plan. Much would depend on whether the Z-9 presented him an open door as the soldiers prepared for their fast-rope descent. Firing into the aircraft’s fuselage was pointless; Hosni’s attack had proven that. What Sam needed was a chink in the armor.

  The rush of the Z-9’s engine drew nearer, and the rhythmic chop of the rotors rattled Sam’s eardrums. He waited, head down and watching the ice a few feet from the gondola.

  Wait . . . wait . . .

  Snow began whipping across the ice.

  Sam peeked around the corner.

  The Z-9 was hovering thirty feet above the plateau.

  “Come on, turn,” Sam muttered. “Just a little bit.”

  The Z-9 pivoted slightly, bringing the door gunner around so he could cover the soldiers’ descent. Two thick black ropes uncoiled from the door and hit the ice. The first pair of soldiers stepped up to the door. Sam could just make out the pilot’s seat diagonally behind them.

  Sam took a breath, set his teeth. He clipped the fire selector to Single Shot, then ducked out. In a crouch, he brought the machine gun to his shoulder and took aim at the Z-9’s open doorway, then shifted left, placing the sight over the door gunner’s helmet. He fired. The gunner crumbled. Sam switched the fire selector to Three Round, adjusted his aim
again, and fired a burst into the doorway. Hit, one of the soldiers stumbled backward; the other ducked and dropped to his belly. Sam now had a clear view of the pilot’s seat—but that would last only a second or two, he knew. Even as he readjusted his aim he could see the pilot’s arm’s moving, adjusting controls, trying to make sense of the chaos around him.

  Sam focused on the seat back. He took a breath, let it out, then pulled the trigger. A trio of bullets peppered the Z-9’s interior. Sam pulled the trigger again, then once more. The machine gun let off an empty click; the magazine was empty.

  The Z-9 pitched sideways, nose spiraling down and toward the plateau. Through the open cabin door the lifeless body of the door gunner slid out, followed by a second soldier. Arms flailing for handholds, two more soldiers tumbled through the door. One managed to snag the Z-9’s landing skid, but the other plummeted to the ground. Now fully out of control, the pilotless Z-9 hit the plateau, crushing the hanging soldier beneath it.

  Sam tore his eyes free, ducked behind the gondola, and sprinted to where Remi was lying. “More shrapnel coming!” he shouted, and dove on top of her.

  Two of the Z-9’s rotors struck the ice first, shearing off and hurling away a quarter second before the fuselage struck. Pressed flat in the snow, Sam and Remi waited for a fiery explosion but none came. They heard a high-pitched grinding sound followed by a trio of grenade-like whumps.

  On impulse, Sam stood up and glanced over the gondola.

  It took a full two seconds for his brain to register what he was seeing: the Z-9, skidding, hurtling toward him, the mangled fuselage, half sliding, half lurching, as the remaining rotor blades splintered on the ice and propelled it forward. It looked like a crippled bug in the throes of death.

  Sam felt a hand clamp onto his. With surprising strength, Remi jerked him back to the ground. “Sam, what do you think you’re—”

  The Z-9 slammed into the gondola, shoving it backward into Sam and Remi, who began backpedaling, feet scrabbling over the ice.

  The gondola stopped moving. The grinding thud-thud-thud of the helicopter’s skid continued for a few seconds, then suddenly died save the stuttering coughs of the engine turbine.