The Kingdom

by Clive Cussler

  That too stopped, and Sam and Remi found themselves in perfect silence. They got to their feet and peeked over the gondola.

  “Well, that’s not something you see every day,” Sam said drily.

  32

  NORTHERN NEPAL

  It took ten seconds for Sam and Remi to piece together the scene that lay before them.

  After bouncing off the gondola, the crippled Z-9 had reversed course and skidded toward the runnel that cut through the plateau, where, like a pinball caught in a groove, it had slid to the edge of the plateau, then over—or partially over. The Z-9’s tail, a few inches narrower than the runnel itself, had become lodged in the trough.

  The helicopter’s cabin sat suspended over the edge, water cascading over the fuselage and through the open cabin door.

  “We should see if anyone’s left alive,” Remi prompted.

  Wary of the still-hot engine, they picked their way over to the Z-9. Sam knelt down beside the runnel and crawled on hands and knees to the edge. The fuselage was crushed to half its height, and the windshield was missing. He could see nothing through the doorway, so thick was the cascading water.

  “Anyone in there?” he shouted. “Hello!”

  Sam and Remi listened but heard nothing.

  Twice more Sam called out, but still there was no response.

  Sam stood up and rejoined Remi. He said, “Lone survivors.”

  “That sounds both wonderful and terrifying. What now?”

  “First, we can’t climb out of here. And even if we managed to without getting injured, we’re thirty miles from the nearest village. Between the subzero temperatures at night and no shelter, we’d have little chance. For that matter, we need to start thinking about surviving tonight.”

  “Cheery,” Remi said. “Go on.”

  “We have no idea how long before Karna declares us overdue and a search party is mounted. And even more important, we have to assume the Z-9 was in contact with its base after Hosni opened fire. When they don’t make contact again and don’t return, the base will send another helicopter, probably two.”

  “Any guesses on how soon?”

  “Worst case, a matter of hours.”

  “Best case?”

  “Tomorrow morning. If it’s the former, we may have an advantage: nightfall’s coming. It’ll make it easier for us to hide. I need to get inside that thing.”

  “What, the Z-9?” Remi said. “Sam, that’s—”

  “A really bad idea, I know, but it’s got supplies we need, and, if we’re very lucky, the radio may still work.”

  Remi considered this for a few moments, then nodded. “Okay. But first let’s see what we can scrounge from the Bell’s wreckage.”

  This took but a few minutes. There was little of value left, mostly charred bits and pieces from their packs, including a half-shredded section of climbing rope, a smattering of items from a first-aid kit, and a few tools from the Bell’s tool kit. Sam and Remi picked up anything that could be of use, whether recognizable or not.

  “How’s the rope look?” Sam asked.

  Kneeling beside their pile of supplies, Remi examined the rope. “It’ll need some splicing, but I think we’ve got eighteen or twenty feet of usable line here. You’re thinking a belay for the Z-9?”

  Sam smiled, nodded. “I may be a bit thick at times, but there’s no way I’m crawling onto that death trap without a safety line. We’re going to need something piton-like.”

  “I may have just the thing.”

  Testing the ground as she went, Remi moved off across the plateau and soon returned. In one hand she was holding a shard of helicopter rotor, in the other a fist-sized rock. She handed them to Sam and said, “I’ll start on the rope.”

  Sam used the rock to first smooth the edges of the shard’s upper half, then to taper and sharpen the lower half. Once done, he found a particularly thick patch of ice a couple paces from the edge of the plateau just to the right of the Z-9. Next, he began the painstaking process of hammering the makeshift piton into the ice. When he finished, the shard was buried a foot and a half in the ice and angled backward at forty-five degrees.

  Remi walked over, and they used their combined weight to wrench and pull the belay until confident it would hold. Remi uncoiled the spliced rope—into which she’d tied knots at two-foot intervals—and secured one end to the piton with a bowline knot. After shedding his jacket, gloves, and cap, Sam used the loose end to fashion a rope seat, with the knot tight against his lower back.

  “If this thing starts going over the edge, get clear,” Sam said.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. Concentrate on you.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” he said with a smile.

  He kissed her, then walked toward the Z-9’s upturned tail assembly. After giving the aluminum side a few test shoves, he climbed up and began crawling toward the cabin.

  “Getting close,” Remi called. “A couple more feet.”

  “Got it.”

  As he reached the edge of the plateau, he slowed down, testing each of his movements, before continuing on. Aside from a few heart-skip-inducing creaks and groans, the Z-9 didn’t budge. Foot by foot, he crawled forward until he was perched atop the Z-9’s belly.

  “How’s it feel?” Remi called.

  On his hands and knees, Sam shifted his weight from side to side, slowly at first, then more vigorously. The fuselage let out a shriek of tearing aluminum and shifted to one side.

  “I think I found its limits,” Sam called.

  “You think so?” Remi shot back. “Keep moving.”

  “Right.”

  Sam moved sideways until his hip was up against the landing skid. He grasped this with both hands and leaned over the side as though looking for something.

  “What are you doing?” called Remi.

  “I’m looking for the rotor mast. There it is. We’re in luck; it’s jammed into the runnel. We’ve got a bit of an anchor.”

  “Happy day,” Remi said impatiently. “Now, get in there and get out.”

  Sam gave her what he hoped was a reassuring grin.

  After adjusting the rope so it ran straight back to the piton, Sam grasped the skids with both hands and lowered his legs down along the fuselage. The spewing water immediately drenched his lower body. Sam groaned, clenched his teeth against the cold, then kicked his legs, trying to gauge his position over the door.

  “I’m going in,” he called to Remi.

  Sam kicked forward, swung his legs backward, then repeated the process until he’d built up a steady rhythm. At the right moment, he let go. The momentum carried him through the cascade and into the cabin, where he slammed into the opposite door and landed in a heap on the floor.

  He went still, listening to the Z-9 groan around him. A shudder coursed through the fuselage. Everything went still. Sam looked around, trying to orient himself.

  He was sitting in icy water up to his waist. Part of the flow was seeping out around the closed door, the other part flooding into the cockpit and out through the shattered windshield. A few feet away, the body of a soldier lay lifeless. Sam eased forward until he could see between the cockpit seats. The pilot and copilot were dead, whether from his bullets or the impact, or both, he couldn’t tell.

  He could now see that the cockpit had suffered more damage than he’d realized. In addition to most of the windshield, a section of the nose cone and dashboard, including the radio, was gone, probably somewhere at the bottom of the lake by now.

  The helicopter dropped beneath him.

  Sam’s stomach rose into his throat.

  The movement stopped, but now the helicopter was resting at an angle; through the cockpit, he could see the waters of the lake far below.

  Running out of time . . .

  He turned around, eyes darting around the cabin. Something . . . anything. He found a partially full green canvas duffel bag. He didn’t bother examining the contents,
but instead began snatching up loose items from inside the cabin, paying little attention to what they were. If they felt useful and would fit in the bag, he took them. He searched the dead soldier, found a lighter but nothing else of use, then turned his attention to the pilot and copilot. He came away with a semiautomatic pistol and a kneeboard stuffed with paperwork. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a half-open hatch at the rear of the cabin. He climbed up to it, stuck his hand inside. His fingers touched canvas. He pulled the object free: a lumbar pack. He stuffed it into the duffel.

  “Time to go,” he muttered, then shouted through the door, “Remi, can you hear me?”

  Her reply was muffled but understandable: “I’m here!”

  “Is the piton still—”

  The helicopter lurched again; the nose tipped downward. Sam was now half standing on the pilot’s seat back.

  “Is the piton still firm?” he shouted again.

  “Yes! Hurry, Sam, get out of there!”

  “On my way!”

  Sam zipped the duffel closed and shoved the looped handles down over his head so the bag was dangling from his neck. He closed his eyes, said a silent One . . . two . . . three . . . then dove through the open door.

  Whether his shove off from the pilot’s seat was the cause, Sam would never know, but even as he broke clear of the sheet of water he heard and felt the Z-9 going over. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, instead concentrating on the wall of rock rushing toward him. He arched his head backward, covered his face with both arms.

  The impact was similar to slamming one’s chest into a tackling dummy. The duffel bag had acted as a bumper, he realized. He felt his body spinning, bumping over the wall several times, before he settled into a gentle swing.

  Above him, Remi’s face appeared over the edge. Her panicked expression switched to a relieved smile. “An exit worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster.”

  “An exit born of desperation and fear,” Sam corrected.

  He looked down at the lake. The Z-9’s fuselage was slipping beneath the surface; the rear half was missing. Sam looked left and saw the tail section still jutting from the runnel. Where the fuselage had torn free, only ragged aluminum remained.

  Remi called, “Climb up, Sam. You’re going to freeze to death.”

  He nodded wearily. “Give me just a minute—or two—and I’ll be right with you.”

  33

  NORTHERN NEPAL

  Exhausted and shaking with adrenaline, Sam slogged his way up the rope until Remi could reach over and help him the rest of the way. He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky. Remi flung her arms around him and tried to hide her tears.

  “Don’t you ever do that again.” After a deep sigh, she asked, “What’s in the duffel?”

  “A whole bunch of I’m not sure. I was grabbing anything that looked useful.”

  “A grab bag,” Remi said with a smile. She gently lifted the duffel’s handle over Sam’s head. She unzipped it and began rummaging inside. “Thermos,” she said, and brought it out. “Empty.”

  Sam sat up and donned his jacket, cap, and glove. “Good. I’ve got a mission for you: take your trusty thermos and go scoop up every drop of unburned aviation fuel you can find.”

  “Good thinking.”

  Sam nodded and grunted, “Fire good.”

  Remi slowly moved off and began kneeling beside depressions in the ice. “Found some,” she called. “And here.”

  Once she was done, they met back at the gondola. “How’d you do?” Sam asked, jogging in place. His pants were beginning to stiffen with ice.

  Remi replied, “It’s about three-quarters full. The melted ice partially diluted it, though. We need to get you warmed up.”

  Sam knelt by the pile of debris they’d collected from the Bell and began sifting through it. “I thought I saw . . . Here it is.” Sam held up a length of wire; at each end was a key ring. “Emergency chain saw,” he told Remi.

  “That’s an overly optimistic name for it.”

  Sam examined the gondola, walking down its length, then back again. “It’s half tipped into the crevasse, but I think I’ve found what we need.”

  He knelt beside the near corner of the gondola, where a series of wicker stays had popped free. As though threading a needle, Sam slipped one end of the saw through the wicker, then out the other. He grasped both rings and began sawing. The first section took five minutes, but now Sam had an opening in which to work. He kept sawing chunks from the end of the gondola until he had a good-sized stack.

  “We need flat rocks,” he told Remi.

  These they found in short order; they fit the rocks together to form a hearth. On top of this went the wicker chunks, stacked in a pyramid. While Remi balled paper from the pilot’s kneeboard into kindling, Sam retrieved the lighter from the duffel. Soon they had a small fire going.

  Arm in arm, they knelt before the flames. The warmth washed over them. Almost immediately they felt better, more hopeful.

  “It’s the simple things in life,” Remi remarked.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Tell me your theory about the Chinese.”

  “I don’t think the Z-9 showing up was a coincidence. One shadowed us the first day, then again today. Then one shows up here just minutes after we touch down.”

  “We know King is smuggling artifacts over the border; it follows that he’s got a Chinese contact. Who would have that much freedom of movement, that much clout?”

  “The PLA. And if Jack’s right, King probably guessed the general area in which we’ll be searching. With King’s reach, all he had to do is call his Chinese contact, then sit back and wait for us to show up.”

  “The question is, what did this Z-9 have in mind? If Hosni hadn’t opened fire, what would they have done?”

  “I’m only speculating, but this is the closest we’ve come to the border; it’s about two miles to the north. Maybe the opportunity was too good to pass up. They take us prisoner, slip across the border, and we’re never heard from again.”

  Remi hugged Sam’s arm more tightly. “Not a happy thought.”

  “Sadly, here’s another one: we need to assume they’re coming back—and sooner rather than later.”

  “I saw the pistol in the duffel bag. You’re not thinking of trying to—”

  “No. This time, it was mostly pure luck. Next time, we’d have no chance. When reinforcements arrive, we need to be gone.”

  “How? You said yourself we can’t climb out.”

  “I misspoke. We need to appear to be gone.”

  Remi said, “Tell me.” Sam outlined his plan, and Remi nodded, smiling. “I like it. The Fargo version of the Trojan Horse.”

  “Trojan Gondola.”

  “Even better. And, with any luck, it’ll keep us from freezing to death tonight.”

  Using the rope and the makeshift piton as a grappling hook, they slid the gondola a few feet from the crevasse, a task made easier by the ice. The tangled rigging Sam had spotted earlier trailed from beneath the gondola down in the crevasse. Sam and Remi looked over the edge but could see nothing beyond ten feet.

  “Is that bamboo?” Remi said, pointing.

  “I think so. There’s another one, that curved piece there. It would certainly make our job easier if we cut it all free, but something down there might be of use to us.”

  “Piton?” Remi suggested. “Cut it free and tie it off.”

  Sam knelt down and gathered some of the cordage in one hand. “Some kind of animal sinew. It’s in amazing condition.”

  “Crevasses are nature’s refrigerator,” Remi replied. “And if all this was covered by that glacier, the effect is even more dramatic.”

  Sam collected some more of the rigging and gave the mess a tug. “It’s surprisingly light. It would take me hours to get through all this sinew, though.”

  “We’ll pull it along, then.”

  Using the avalanche probe, Sam measured first the width of the gondola, then
the width of the crevasse.

  “The crevasse is four inches wider,” he announced. “My gut tells me it’ll get wedged, but if I’m wrong, we lose all our firewood.”

  “Your gut has never steered us wrong.”

  “What about that time in the Sudan? And in Australia? I was way off that time—”

  “Shush. Help me.”

  With one of them stationed at each end, they crouched together and grasped the bottom edge of the gondola. On Sam’s signal, they heaved, trying to straighten their legs. It was no good. They let go and stepped back.

  “Let’s concentrate our power,” Sam said.

  Standing an arm’s length from each other at the gondola’s center point, they tried again. This time, they got the gondola two feet off the ground.

  “I’ll hold it,” Sam said through clenched teeth. “Try a leg press.”

  Remi rolled onto her back, wriggled beneath the gondola, then pressed her feet against the edge. “Ready!”

  “Heave!”

  The gondola rolled up and over onto its side.

  “One more time,” Sam said.

  They repeated the drill, and soon the gondola was sitting upright. Remi peered inside. She gasped and backed away.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “Stowaways.”

  They walked up to the gondola.

  Lying at the far end of the wicker bottom amid a jumble of rigging and bamboo tubes was a pair of partially mummified skeletons. The remainder of the gondola, they could now see, was divided into eighths by wicker cross struts wide enough to also serve as benches.

  “What’s your guess?” Remi asked. “Captain and copilot?”

  “It’s possible, but a gondola this size could hold fifteen people at least—it might take that many to handle all this rigging and the balloons as well.”

  “Balloons . . . as in plural?”

  “We’ll know more when I see the rest of the rigging, but I think this was a full-on dirigible.”

  “And these were the sole survivors.”