The Kingdom

“Does this remind you of anything?” Sam asked Remi.

“Absolutely.”

The plateau bore a striking resemblance to the paradise valleys they had spotted during their helicopter search of northern Nepal.

Beneath their feet was a carpet of moss, ranging in color from dark green to chartreuse. Here and there, the landscape was dotted with granite boulders speckled with lichen. Directly across from them stood a wall of thick jungle, unbroken save a few tu

Jack and Ajay walked over to where Sam and Remi were standing. Karna said, “Thankfully, our search area is limited. If we split into two groups, we should be able to cover a lot of ground.”

“Agreed,” Sam said.

“One last thing,” Karna said. He knelt beside his pack and rummaged inside and came up with a pair of snub-nosed .38 revolvers. He handed one each to Sam and Remi. “I’ve got one, of course. And as for Ajay . . .”

From a holster at the rear of his waistband Ajay pulled out a Beretta semiautomatic pistol, then quickly replaced it.

“Are we expecting trouble?” Remi asked.

“We’re in China, my dear. Anything can happen: bandits, crossborder terrorist groups, the PLA . . .”

“If the Chinese Army shows up, these popguns are only going to make them mad.”

“A bridge we’ll cross if need be. Besides, we’ll likely find what we’re looking for and be back across the border before nightfall.”

Sam said, “Remi and I will head east; Jack, you and Ajay head west. We’ll meet back here in two hours. Any objections?”

There were none.

After checking their portable radios for reception, the group split up. Headlamps on and machetes in hand, Sam and Remi chose one of the paths and started in.

Ten feet inside the jungle, the light dimmed to quarter strength. Sam slashed clear some of the vines growing across their path, then they paused to take a look around, pa

“The yearly rainfall here must be mind-boggling,” Sam said.

“A hundred ten inches. About nine feet,” Remi replied, then smiled. “I know how you love trivia. I looked it up.”

“I’m proud of you.”

A few feet over their heads, and on both sides, was a tangled mass of vines so thick they could see nothing of the forest itself.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Remi said.

“No, it doesn’t.”

Sam jabbed the tip of his machete through the canopy. With a clang, his arm jolted to a stop. “That’s stone,” he murmured.

Remi swung her machete to the left and also got a clang. The same to the right. “We’re in a man-made tu

Sam unclipped the radio from his belt and pressed the Talk button. “Jack, are you there?”

Static.

“Jack, come in.”

“I’m here, Sam. What is it?”

“Are you on a trail?”

“Just started.”

“Swing your machete off the path.”

“Okay . . .” Clang! Jack came back: “Stone walls. Fascinating development.”

“Remember your hunch about Shangri-La being a temple or monastery? Well, I think you’ve found it.”

“I think you’re right. Amazing what a mille

“Okay. See you then.”

Now aware they were inside a man-made structure, Sam and Remi began examining their surroundings for architectural telltales. Vines and roots had infiltrated every square foot of the complex. In the lead, Sam tried to swing his machete in short arcs but couldn’t avoid striking the stone walls occasionally.

They reached an alcove and stopped.

“Shut off your headlamp,” Sam said, dousing his.

Remi did. When their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, they began to see slivers of dim sunlight through the foliage-covered walls and ceiling.

“Windows and skylights,” Remi said. “This must have been an amazing sight in its day.”

Sam and Remi started climbing a set of steps and soon reached a landing where the steps doubled back and rose to a second floor. Here, through an archway, they found a large open space. A patchwork of roots and vines arced above their heads to form a vaulted ceiling. Spa

Headlamps pa

“Those are tubs,” Remi said.

“They look like graves.”

She knelt beside one and tapped the inside walls with her machete. She got back the familiar clang of steel on stone.

“Some more over here,” Sam said, crossing to the other side.

They found a semicircle of stone benches enclosing a round basin wider than Sam was tall. Remi repeated her routine but could not touch the bottom. Sam found a chunk of stone that had fallen off a nearby bench and dropped it into the basin.

They heard a muffled thump.

“About ten feet deep,” Sam said.

He crouched and shone his light down the shaft but could see nothing through the web of vines and roots. “Hello!” he called. There was no echo.

“Too much vegetation,” Remi guessed.

Sam found another rock and prepared to drop it.

“What are you doing?”

“Indulging my curiosity. We didn’t see any sign of this shaft on the floor below, which means it was behind a wall. It has to have a purpose.”

“Go ahead.”

Sam leaned over the shaft, angled his arm, then hurled the stone. Unseen, it thumped against the bottom, then again, then clattered against a hard surface.

Remi said. “Good call. It’s got to lead somewhere. Do you want to-”

Sam’s radio crackled to life. In between bursts of static, faint staccato voices came through the speaker. The snippets were hurried and overlapping.

“I think it’s Gupta and Ajay,” Remi said.

Sam pressed the Talk button. “Ajay, can you hear me? Ajay, come in!”

Static. Then Jack’s voice: “Sam . . . Gupta . . . has spotted a . . . is taking off.”

“He’s leaving,” Remi said.

They turned and ran down the stairs, Remi trailing with her slight limp. They crossed the den and headed down the tu

Remi called, “What do you think he spotted?”

“Only one thing I can think of that would panic him,” Sam replied over his shoulder: “Helicopter.”

“I was afraid of that.”

An oval of light appeared ahead. Sam and Remi skidded to a stop before reaching it and crouch-walked the last few steps. In the clearing, the Chetak’s rotors were spi

His voice burst through Sam’s radio: “Sorry, I will try to return. Try to hide. They may go away.”

Gupta then lifted the collective, and the Chetak lifted straight up. At thirty feet, it banked, nose down, and zoomed from view.

Out of the corner of their eyes Sam and Remi saw Karna and Ajay step from a tu

Preceded by only a few seconds of thudding rotors, an olive green helicopter rose into view at the far edge of the plateau. Sam and Remi immediately recognized the nose cone and rocket pods: a Chinese PLA Harbin Z-9.