The Kingdom

36

NORTHERN NEPAL

The flames leapt up in the brazier’s interior, disappearing through the balloon’s mouth, until Sam and Remi were floating at knee height above the plateau.

“When I say so, push with everything you’ve got,” Sam said.

He stuffed the last two pieces of wicker into the brazier and watched, waited, eyes darting from the brazier to the balloon to the ground.

“Now!”

In unison, they coiled their legs and shoved hard.

They surged upward ten feet. Then descended just as rapidly.

“Get ready to push again!” Sam called.

Their feet struck the ice.

“Push!”

Again they shot upward and again they returned to earth, albeit more slowly.

“We’re getting there,” Sam said.

“We need a rhythm,” Remi replied. “Think, bouncing ball.”

So they began bouncing over the plateau, each time gaining a bit more altitude. To their left, the edge of the cliff loomed.

“Sam . . .” Remi warned.

“I know. Don’t look, just keep bouncing. Fly or swim!”

“Lovely!”

They shoved off once more. A gust of wind caught the balloon and shoved them down the plateau, their feet skipping over the ice. Remi’s leg slipped off the edge of the cliff, but she kept her cool, giving one last united shove with the other leg.

And then, abruptly, everything went silent save the wind whistling through the guylines.

They were airborne and climbing.

And heading southeast toward the slope.

Sam reached into the duffel and withdrew a pair of bricks. He fed them into the brazier. They heard a soft whoosh as the brick ignited. Flames shot from the flue. They began rising.

“Another,” Remi said.

Sam dropped a third brick into the brazier.

Whoosh! The balloon climbed.

The pine trees were a few hundred yards away and closing fast. A gust of wind caught the balloon and spun it. Sam and Remi clutched at the guylines and tightened their legs around the platform. After three rotations, the platform steadied and went still again.

Looking over Remi’s shoulder, Sam gauged the distance to the slope.

“How close?” Remi asked.

“About two hundred yards. Ninety seconds, give or take.” He looked her in the eye. “It’s going to be razor thin. Go for broke?”

“Absolutely.”

Sam stuffed a fourth brick into the brazier. Whoosh!

They both looked over the side of the platform. The tops of the pine trees seemed impossibly close. Remi felt something snag at her foot, and she tipped sideways. Sam leaned forward, grabbed her arm.

He added another brick. Whoosh!

Another. Whoosh!

“A hundred yards!” Sam called.

Another brick. Whoosh!

“Fifty yards!” He grabbed a brick from the duffel, shook it in his cupped hands like dice, and extended it toward Remi. “For luck.”

She blew on it.

He dropped the brick into the brazier.

Whoosh!

“Raise your feet!” Sam shouted.

They felt and heard the tip of a pine tree clawing the underside of the platform. They were jerked sideways.

“We’re snagged!” Sam called. “Lean!”

In unison, they tipped their torsos in the opposite direction, hanging over the edge while clutching a guyline. Sam kicked his leg, trying to free them from whatever lay below.

With a sharp crack the offending branch snapped. The platform righted itself. Sam and Remi sat up, looking down and around and up.

“We’re clear!” Remi shouted. “We made it!”

Sam let out the breath he’d been holding. “Never doubted it for a second.”

Remi gave him the look.

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe for a second or two.”

Now clear of the ridge, the wind slackening slightly, they found themselves heading south at what Sam estimated was ten miles per hour. They had traveled less than a few hundred yards before their altitude began bleeding off.

Sam dug another brick out of the duffel. He dropped it through the feed hole and it ignited. They began rising.

Remi asked, “How many do we have left?”

Sam checked. “Ten.”

“Now might be a good time to tell me your landing Plan B.”

“On the off chance we don’t manage a perfect, feather-soft touchdown, our next best chance is pine trees-find a tight cluster and try to fly straight in.”

“What you’ve just described is a crash landing without the land.”

“Essentially.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, exactly. We hold on tight and hope the boughs act as an arresting net.”

“Like on aircraft carriers.”

“Yes.”

Remi considered this. She pursed her lips and puffed a strand of auburn hair from her forehead. “I like it.”

“I thought you would.”

Sam dropped another brick into the brazier. Whoosh!

With the late afternoon sun at their backs, they glided ever southward, occasionally feeding bricks into the brazier while keeping a sharp eye out for a landing spot. They’d traveled approximately four miles and had so far seen only scree valleys, glaciers, and copses of pine trees.

“We’re losing altitude,” Remi said.

Sam fed the brazier. They continued to descend.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Dissipation, I think. We’re losing the sun, along with the temperature. The balloon’s bleeding heat faster than we can put it in.”

Sam dropped another brick through the hole. Their descent slowed slightly, but there was no denying it: they were on an irreversible downward glide path. They began gaining speed.

“Time to make a choice,” Sam said. “We’re not going to make a meadow, but we’ve got a Plan B coming up.”

He pointed over Remi’s shoulder. Ahead and below was a stand of pine trees. Past that lay another boulder-strewn valley.

Sam said, “Or we can stuff the rest of the bricks into the brazier and hope we find a better spot.”

“We’ve pushed our luck too far. I’m ready for terra firma. How do you want to do this?”

Sam checked the approaching tree line, trying to gauge speed, distance, and their angle of approach. They had three minutes, he guessed. They were traveling at perhaps fifteen miles per hour, and that would likely double by the time they reached the trees. While a survivable crash inside a car, on this platform their chances were fifty-fifty.

“If only we had an air bag,” Sam muttered.

“How about a shield?” asked Remi, and tapped their bamboo platform.

Sam immediately grasped what she was suggesting. “Dicey.”

“A lot less dicey than what you were just mulling over in your head. I know you, Sam, I know your expressions. What do you put our odds at?”

“Fifty percent.”

“This may give us a few more points.”

Sam’s eyes darted to the tree line, then back to Remi’s eyes. She smiled at him. He smiled back. “You’re a hell of a woman.”

“This, I know.”

“We don’t need this anymore,” Sam said. He sliced the straps holding the brazier and shoved it off the platform. Amid a plume of sparks, it hit the ground, tumbled down the valley, then crashed into a rock.

Sam scooted across the platform until he was snug against Remi. She was already grasping the guylines in both hands. Sam grabbed another with his left hand, then leaned backward, laid the blade of his Swiss Army knife against one of the risers, and started sawing. With a twang, it parted. The platform dipped slightly.

Sam moved to the second riser.

“How long until we hit?” he asked.

“I don’t know-”

“Guess!”

“A few seconds!”

Sam kept sawing. Pitted and slightly bent from overuse and Sam’s attempts to sharpen it on rocks, the knife’s blade was dull. He clenched his teeth and worked harder.

The second guyline snapped. Sam moved to the third.

“Running out of time,” Remi called.

Twang!

The opposite end of the platform was dangling by a single riser now, fluttering like a kite in the wind. With both hands clutching guylines, Remi was all but hanging, with only one foot perched on the edge of the platform. Sam’s left hand was grasping the line beside hers like a talon.

“One more!” he shouted, and started sawing. “Come on . . . Come on . . .”

Twang!

The end of the platform swung free, now hanging vertically below them. Sam was about to drop his knife when he changed his mind. He folded the blade closed against his cheek. He clamped his right hand on a guyline.

Remi was already lowering herself down the risers so her body was behind the platform. Sam climbed down toward her. He peeked around the edge of the platform and saw a wall of green rushing toward him.

Their world began tumbling. Though having taken a good portion of the impact, the clawing branches immediately spun the platform around. They found themselves hurtling through a gauntlet of whipping boughs. They tucked their chins and closed their eyes. Sam unclenched his right hand from the riser and tried to cover Remi’s face with his forearm.

On instinct she shouted, “Let go!”

Then they were falling through the tree, their fall softened by branches.

They jolted to a stop.

Sam opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a croak. He tried again. “Remi!”

“Here,” came the faint reply. “Below you.”

Lying faceup and diagonally across a pair of boughs, Sam carefully rolled onto his belly. Ten feet below, Remi was lying on the ground in a pile of pine needles. Her face was scratched as though someone had swiped her with a wire brush. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

“How bad are you?” he asked.

She forced a smile and gave him a weak thumbs-up. “And you, intrepid pilot?”

“Let me lie here for a bit and I’ll let you know.”

After a time, Sam began the task of climbing down.

“Don’t move,” he told Remi. “Just lie there.”

“If you insist.”

Sam felt as though he’d been pummeled by a bat-wielding gang, but all of his major joints and muscles seemed to be working properly, if sluggishly.

Using his right hand, Sam lowered himself from the last branch and dropped in a heap beside Remi. She cupped his face with a hand and said, “Never a dull moment with you.”

“Nope.”

“Sam, your neck.”

He reached up and touched the spot Remi had indicated. His fingers came back bloody. After a bit of probing he found a three-inch vertical gash below his ear.

“It’ll coagulate,” he told her. “Let’s check you out.”

Their clothes had likely saved them, he quickly realized. The parkas’ thick padding and high collars had protected their torsos and throats, and the knit caps had served as a crucial bit of cushion for their skulls.

“Not bad, all things considered.”

“Your shield idea saved the day.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Where’s High Flier?”

“Tangled in the tree.”

“Do I still have the bamboo?”

Sam saw the end of it jutting from her collar. “Yes.”

“Does my face look as bad as yours?” Remi asked.

“You’ve never looked more lovely.”

“Liar-but thank you. The sun is setting. What now?”

“Now we get rescued. I build you a fire, then go find some friendly villagers who will offer us cozy beds and hot food.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Sam pushed himself to his feet and stretched his limbs. His entire body hurt, a throbbing pain that seemed to be everywhere at once.

“Be right back.”

It took him only a few minutes to find the emergency chute pack, which had been ripped off his back during the crash. It took longer to find the duffel bag, however; it had fallen when the platform’s last riser had given way. Of the seven or so bricks that had been left, he found three.

He returned to Remi and found she had managed to sit upright with her back against the tree. Soon he had a brick burning in a small dirt circle next to her. He placed the two remaining bricks beside her.

“I’ll be back in a flash,” he said.

“I’ll be here.”

He gave her a kiss, then headed off.

“Sam?”

He turned. “Yes.”

“Watch out for Yetis.”