The Climb Read online

  For Mark Wise, M.D., expert on what ails you at twenty-nine thousand feet

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  Dominic Alexis was waiting his turn to use the airplane bathroom when he got his first glimpse of Mount Everest.

  Standing there in the narrow aisle of the 747, he froze, gawking out the porthole in the emergency door. To the north rose the jagged, icy spires of the Himalayas, the highest mountain range on the face of the earth. And right in the heart of it, the giant among giants — barely lower than the cruising altitude of the plane — Everest.

  There should be trumpets, he thought reverently. A fanfare. Fireworks.

  Norman “Tilt” Crowley came up behind Dominic and hip-checked him out of the way. “Man, this airline stinks! What do you have to do to get a bag of peanuts?”

  Wordlessly, Dominic pointed out the window at the unmistakable silhouette.

  Tilt peered through the porthole. “Big deal — Mount Everest. What, you thought they were going to move it before we got here?”

  But for all his attitude, Tilt stayed riveted to the spot, fascinated by the sight of the big mountain that the Nepalese called Jongmalungma — “Goddess, Mother of the World.”

  An announcement came from the cockpit. “On our left, we see Mount Everest.” It was repeated in several other languages.

  There was a rush for the left side of the plane. For most of the passengers, this was the closest they would come to the top of the world. But Dominic and Tilt were part of SummitQuest, the youngest expedition ever to attempt the planet’s highest peak. For them, the massive profile of Everest was the shape of things to come.

  Sammi Moon shut off her Walkman and rushed over to join them at the porthole. “How is it? Extreme, right?” She spotted the mountain. “It’s beautiful!”

  “You paint it; I’ll climb it,” put in Tilt. “That lump of rock is going to make me famous.”

  “We have to wake Perry,” said Dominic. “He should see this.”

  The fourth member of their team, Perry Noonan, was in his seat, fast asleep.

  “Are you kidding?” snorted Tilt. “He’s so scared of Everest that he can’t even face the picture in the in-flight magazine. He’d take one look out the window and wet his pants!”

  Dominic’s eyes never left the mountain. “You’re crazy if you’re not a little bit scared.”

  “I’m just amped,” said Sammi. “I can’t believe we’re really on our way!”

  They squinted through the clouds, trying to discern the summit — the object of years of climbing and months of preparation.

  What Dominic, Tilt, Sammi, and Perry could not know was that the mist-obscured peak was more than a goal. For one of the four team members, it would be a final resting place.

  Kathmandu Airport, Nepal. Passports, permits, and paperwork.

  The arrivals line stretched from gate 1 to gate B76.

  Cap Cicero, legendary mountaineer and expedition leader, marched his team straight through in five minutes.

  No one questioned this. Their sponsor was Summit Athletic, one of the richest corporations in the world. Big money opened a lot of doors and smoothed a lot of paths.

  “So long, suckers,” Tilt tossed over his shoulder at the milling, exasperated crowd they’d left behind in the passport queue. He awarded Perry a slap on the back of the head. “Tell your uncle I said thanks.”

  Perry’s uncle Joe Sullivan was the president and founder of Summit Athletic. Although Cicero would never admit it publicly, that was the only reason Perry was on the team. No one believed this more strongly than Perry himself.

  The red-haired boy sighed, wishing he was almost anywhere else in the world than Nepal. “Yeah, when Summit does something, they do it right.”

  “You think they’ll have limos for us?” Tilt asked hopefully.

  But when the group passed through the gate, their welcome consisted of a hand-lettered sign scribbled in Magic Marker on the flap of a corrugated box:

  SUMIT

  Dominic regarded the short, squat man holding up the cardboard. “Is that a Sherpa?” he whispered to Cicero. Sherpas are the inhabitants of the Khumbu region around Everest.

  Cicero roared like a bull moose and rushed forward to throw his arms around the man with the sign.

  “This isn’t a Sherpa!” he cried. “It’s the Sherpa! I want you to meet Babu Pemba, the greatest climbing Sherpa the mountain has ever seen!”

  “Climbing Sherpa?” Tilt stared at the chubby Babu, who was taking bites out of a large sandwich clenched in his free hand. “Isn’t he a little, you know, out of shape?”

  Babu surprised him by replying in perfect English with only a slight accent, “Oh, no. I’m just short for my weight.”

  Sammi giggled until she had the hiccups. Even Perry cracked a smile.

  “I’ve heard of you,” Dominic said with respect. “You saved Cap’s life on Annapurna.” He indicated the sandwich. “Is that a traditional Sherpa delicacy?”

  “Philly cheese steak,” mumbled Babu, his mouth full. He looked meaningfully from Dominic to Cicero. The message was clear. Tilt, while only fourteen years old, was built like a lumberjack and radiated power and physical ability. Perry and Sammi, at fifteen, were both solidly put together. But Dominic Alexis looked like a fifth grader. He’d just turned thirteen and was small for his age. Who in his right mind would bring him on an Everest ascent?

  Cicero answered the unspoken question. “He climbs bigger than he looks.”

  It was a measure of their respect for each other that the Sherpa accepted this completely and without comment.

  * * *

  Babu Pemba drove them to their hotel in a rented Volkswagen bus so ancient that pieces were flaking off as they rattled over the cobblestones and rutted pavement. The chaos on the streets was total. There were cars and trucks that made the VW look like a brand-new Ferrari. Motorcycles and mopeds whizzed everywhere. Further down the food chain, bicycles and rickshaws did their best to compete against the motorized vehicles. Yaks and other beasts of burden meandered along like they owned the place. Flocks of geese were driven in all directions. There seemed to be no traffic regulations. The rule was every yak for itself.

  To four teenagers who had never left the United States, Kathmandu was an eye-opener. Dilapidated hovels stood next to modern hotels and Buddhist temples. The air reeked of car exhaust, incense, and manure. The food smells were positively bizarre. The general din was a mixture of unmuffled motors, religious chants, animal lowing, and rock music. Orange-clad monks walked the streets side by side with businessmen, panhandlers, and Western tourists.

  At the hotel, the SummitQuest group met up with Andrea Oberman, the expedition doctor, and Lenny “Sneezy” Tkakzuk, the cameraman who would be recording the ascent for the Summit Athletic Web site. Both were top-notch climbing guides.

  That completed the team — four adults and four teens. If one of the young climbers succeeded in reaching the summit, he or she would b
reak the record currently held by the Z-man, Ethan Zaph, and become the youngest human ever to conquer Everest.

  An expedition survives on its supplies. That was Cicero’s job while in Kathmandu — to make sure SummitQuest had all its material and personnel in place when the climbers arrived at Base Camp eleven days later. Everest Base Camp had nothing — no year-round inhabitants, no stores, no conveniences. Everything there was shipped from home, sent by yak train from Kathmandu, or purchased in one of the villages on the trek.

  As the guides set about seeing to the arrangements, Cicero had this warning for his young team: “I’m not going to be a hypocrite about this. If I can trust you to take on Everest, I can trust you to kill a few hours in Kathmandu. Don’t talk to strangers, stay close to the hotel, and keep out of trouble.”

  Sammi sprung up from the lumpy couch in the hotel lobby. “Time to see the world.”

  Cicero looked disgusted. “Can you at least wait till I’m out of the building before you completely disregard everything I say?”

  “Come on, who’s with me?” Sammi persisted.

  “There’s nothing to see in Kathmandu,” Tilt assured her. “This town is a sewer.” And he headed for the hotel’s seedy basement rec room to play video games.

  In the end, Sammi headed out alone. Dominic left, too, but in a different direction. He wandered for a long time, barely noticing the wild and noisy activity of the city streets. He saw only the footsteps of legendary climbers on the worn cobblestones. Most of the great Himalayan expeditions had started right here.

  His reverie was interrupted by a half-demented scream. “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”

  Sammi flashed into his field of vision and right out again, a blur on rented Rollerblades. He could follow her progress down the sloped street, not by watching her, but by noting the pattern made by people jumping out of her path.

  Dominic allowed himself a small smile. That was Sammi. She was not so much a pure climber as an all-purpose daredevil. Everest appealed to her because it was, as she put it, “extreme.”

  He found what he was looking for right where the guidebook said it would be — a small Buddhist temple sandwiched between a dry cleaner and a shop that sold junky souvenirs to tourists. He stepped into the tiny courtyard, and the sounds of the city seemed to fade away. Himalayan climbers had great respect for the traditions of Buddhism, the religion of their Sherpa guides.

  This was not a large temple or even an important one. But it was close to the hotel district and had been mentioned in some of the books Dominic had read. Cap Cicero had come here before his first Everest ascent. So had Sir Edmund Hillary.

  He slipped off his shoes and approached the prayer wheels. Spinning them was thought to release the blessings heavenward. He hesitated, unsure of what was expected of him. He didn’t want to do something stupid and offend an ancient religion.

  A quiet voice behind him said, “You just turn them. There’s no right way or wrong way.” A tall figure came into view and stood beside him.

  Dominic recognized the face instantly. “You’re Ethan Zaph!”

  The young man looked surprised. “Do I know you?”

  “I followed your climb last year inch by inch on the Internet! I kept a scrapbook with all the pictures from the paper. When you hit the summit, my brother and I were going nuts!”

  Ethan grinned. “Me, too. You guys climbers?”

  “Big-time!” Dominic exclaimed. “My brother’s climbed with you. Chris Alexis?”

  Ethan nodded. “Oh, sure, I know Chris. He’s here, right? With the Cap Cicero expedition? I was almost on that team.”

  “Chris isn’t here,” said Dominic in a subdued tone. “He didn’t make the cut.”

  Ethan was shocked. “Chris Alexis is the best climber I know! Why would Cap cut him?”

  “When you quit SummitQuest,” Dominic explained, “Summit decided to go for your record. Chris is too old to beat your mark, so they filled the team with younger kids — like me.” He held out his hand. “I’m Dominic.”

  Ethan made no move to take it. “Like you? You’re going up that mountain? How old are you — ten?”

  “Thirteen,” replied Dominic, a little defensively.

  “Has Cap gone crazy? Is everybody on the team like you?”

  “I’m the youngest,” Dominic admitted. “And the smallest. But Cap knows what he’s doing.”

  “Does he?” Ethan challenged. “That’s a mean mountain! When I summited, I came back twenty-three pounds lighter, dehydrated, and with three separated ribs from coughing!”

  Dominic took a half-step back, his shoulder brushing up against the prayer wheels. “It’s really nice meeting you. I hope we get the chance to climb together someday.”

  It was Ethan’s turn to retreat. “Listen, I’m sure you’ve got talent. It runs in the family. Just do me one favor, okay? Go slow, and be honest with yourself about when it’s time to quit. There are a lot of dead people up there. You don’t want to be one of them.”

  At six o’clock the next morning, the Summit-Quest team piled themselves and their luggage inside the Volkswagen bus.

  “Hold it.” Dr. Oberman took a close look at Sammi. She had a swollen lip and a nasty scratch across her chin. “What happened to you?”

  Sammi shrugged sheepishly. “You should see the other guy.”

  Cicero jumped on this. “You got into a fight in Kathmandu?”

  “I was Rollerblading and I hit a yak,” Sammi confessed.

  “Those things are tougher than they look,” put in Babu, who was munching on an Egg McMuffin and holding two more in reserve.

  Soon they arrived at a small military airfield outside of town. There, waiting on the tarmac, was a decrepit-looking army surplus helicopter from the Korean War. Parts of it were held together with duct tape.

  “That,” said Tilt, “is never going to get off the ground.”

  It did, though, promptly at seven, with a roar that threatened to jar Tilt’s back teeth loose. The pilot, who spoke no English, had handed out cotton balls for them to use as earplugs. No one had bothered. They were bothering now.

  There were no seats. Tilt perched on his duffel bag, hanging on to a frayed leather strap on the wall.

  God, this country is a sinkhole, he raged inwardly. And this had to be first class, because Summit always paid for the very best. Pity the poor saps who were doing this on the cheap.

  But you’re here, he reminded himself. And every day takes you closer to the summit.

  The chance to conquer Everest had become the center of Tilt’s universe. The others were hobby climbers; for Tilt this was serious business. Ethan Zaph was famous, with six figures in his college account, thanks to last year’s expedition. Well, if Ethan could get rich from an ascent at fifteen, then it stood to reason that Tilt could get even richer at fourteen. He’d endorse ice axes and crampons in climbing magazines. His face would appear on cereal boxes. His future was sitting there, just waiting to be claimed. All he had to do was get up one mountain.

  Not that he was going to get any help from his teammates. Cicero had a big name, but he was past his prime. And anyway, it would take all his talents just to keep the others from killing themselves. Dr. Oberman was all doctor, no climber. Sneezy cared about his video camera, period. And Babu? Hah! Baboon would be more like it. The guy was 90 percent lard. He couldn’t get up Everest unless someone told him there was a pizza waiting at the top!

  The country they were passing over was green and hilly and dotted with tiny villages. To Tilt, they all looked like a few miserable shacks arranged around a gas station that had long since gone out of business.

  The farther they got from Kathmandu, the more primitive the construction became — mud huts. This place was like something out of The Flintstones!

  While the helicopter always seemed to be the same distance from the ground, it was pretty clear that the general direction was up. Tilt could tell from the popping of his ears and by glances at Perry’s three-thousan
d-dollar climber’s watch — another gift from his rich uncle, along with his place on this team. They had started at 4,120 feet, and now the altimeter was approaching nine thousand.

  The flight lasted two earsplitting hours. Their destination was indistinguishable from all the miles they had passed over — a depressing, dingy, dirt-poor village amid acres of terraced barley fields.

  Five minutes later, they were standing with their knapsacks, holding their ears as the chopper roared away. Sneezy videotaped it disappearing over the bleak horizon.

  Perry looked around. “Where’s Mount Everest?”

  Cicero laughed in his face. “Fourteen hours on a plane, but I guess nobody had any time to read the material I handed out. Everest is like Disneyland, Noonan. This is where we wait for the courtesy van to take us to Base Camp.”

  Perry kept his mouth shut. How had it come to this? He was on the wrong side of the globe and soon he would be on Everest itself! And all because he didn’t have the guts to disappoint Uncle Joe.

  Joe Sullivan. Was it that the man always got what he wanted because he was a billionaire? Or was he a billionaire because he always got what he wanted? It didn’t matter. Right now he wanted his favorite nephew up Mount Everest. What that nephew wanted was apparently much less important.

  Perry sighed. He hadn’t expected to make this team, so he had done no Himalayan research at all. The Disneyland explanation was clearly not the truth, but he had no way of knowing what was.

  Dominic, who had read every word he could get his hands on about Everest, pointed to the northeast. “If this village is Lukla, then Base Camp should be about thirty-five miles that way.”

  “But how do we get there?” asked Perry.

  “We walk,” Cicero replied.

  Perry just stared.

  Dr. Oberman took pity on him and explained. “The problem isn’t the thirty-five miles; it’s the altitude. We’re now at nine thousand feet, and Base Camp is almost twice that. If you go up too fast, the changes in atmospheric pressure and the thinning of the air could make you sick and even kill you. At minimum, it would scuttle your chances of ever attempting the mountain.”