The Kingdom

“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.

“Ru

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.”

37

GOLDFISH POINT, LA JOLLA,

CALIFORNIA

“I have a translation for you,” Selma said, walking into the solarium. She walked to where Sam and Remi were reclined on chaise longues and handed Remi the printout.

“That’s fantastic,” Remi replied with a wan smile.

Sam asked Selma, “Did you read it?”

“I did.”

“Would you mind giving us the Reader’s Digest condensed version? Remi’s pain meds have left her a bit . . . happy.”

As it had turned out, Sam’s search for rescuers in the high Himalayas had, in fact, been a simple affair. In retrospect, given what they’d gone through to get this far, Sam considered it poetic justice. Without realizing it, they had crashed less than a mile from a village called Samagaun, the northernmost settlement in that region of Nepal.

In the dimming twilight, Sam had shuffled his way down the valley until he was spotted by an Australian couple on a trekking vacation. They took him to Samagaun, and in short order a rescue party was organized. Two villagers, the Australian couple, and Sam rode as far up the valley as possible in an ancient Datsun truck, then got out and walked the rest of the way. They found Remi where Sam had left her, in the warm glow of the fire.

For safety’s sake they placed her on a piece of plywood they’d brought along for that very purpose, then made their way back to Samagaun, where they found the village had mobilized on their behalf. A room with twin beds and a potbellied stove was arranged, and they were fed aloo tareko (fried potatoes) and kukhura ko ledo (chicken with gravy) until they could take no more. The village doctor came in, examined them both, and found nothing life-threatening.

The next morning they awoke to find a village elder had already sent word of their rescue down the valley via ham radio. Soon after Sam gave the village elder Jack Karna’s contact information, a more robust SUV arrived to take them south. In Gorkha they found Jack and Ajay waiting to take them the rest of the way to Kathmandu.

Jack had in fact reported them missing and was wading through the Nepalese government bureaucracy trying to organize a search party when word came of their rescue.