“Shit,” he hissed, releasing the guide. “Sorry, man. Really sorry. You caught me in the middle of a nightmare.”
They’d made good time to Camp One, but without any sleep at all, they had all agreed that they needed at least a few hours of shut-eye before they continued their climb. Now Adam’s head felt full of cotton and his eyes ached from tiredness. Sometimes a little sleep was worse than none at all.
Feyiz wheezed and massaged his throat. “Damn it, Adam…”
“Really. I’m sorry. It’s like I was still dreaming for a second there.”
For a moment it looked like Feyiz might be pissed, start a fuss about Adam’s violent awakening, but a change came over his face. Whatever reason he had for coming into the tent and waking Adam took precedence.
“Olivieri’s team is passing us by,” Feyiz said. He cleared his throat. “Meryam sent me to wake you.”
Shaking off the last mists of a nightmare—in which long, withered arms had reached out from behind the pendulum of a grandfather clock—Adam slid from his sleeping bag and dragged on his boots. The cold mountain air whipped through the open tent flap and he shuddered as he grabbed his jacket. Scraping at his bristly beard, he thought of his first trip to Alaska. It was cold here, but compared to that journey, the predawn morning on Ararat felt nearly tropical.
“Bad dreams,” Adam said with a shrug.
Feyiz nodded. “We all have them.”
True enough, but the unease left behind by his nightmare lingered. Adam pushed through the flaps and exited the tent. An inch of snow had fallen on the grassy pasture that made up Camp One and a few stray flakes eddied in the air overhead. The rock formations that jutted from the pasture made this a perfect spot for the camp, allowing tents to be erected behind natural windbreaks. For most of the year, it would be quite comfortable up here, but now winter had begun to knock on the door and the weather would be unpredictable on the best days.
Meryam and Hakan stood about twenty feet away, sipping coffee from thermoses. They had set up a camp stove and used water from the small stream that ran beside the camp—higher up they’d have to melt snow for water. Right now, the camp stove seemed an indulgence they could not afford, not when another group of climbers was passing right by the camp instead of stopping to rest. He counted a dozen heads, half of the group on horseback and the others leading mules laden with equipment. The third rider was a burly man with a prematurely gray beard and goggles on his forehead that Adam knew had the same prescription as his eyeglasses. Armando Olivieri was the kind of man who came prepared, and once Adam had learned about those goggles they served as a constant reminder of the professor’s determination.
Olivieri spotted him by the tent and waved as the parade went by. Worried and irritated, Adam strode toward Meryam and Hakan. The two of them had ignored each other on the hike up to Camp One the night before and they didn’t seem exactly chummy now, but for the moment it was clear they were on the same side.
“What the hell does Olivieri think he’s doing?” Adam asked.
Meryam glanced at him. “Moving on to Camp Two, I assume.”
Adam laughed softly. After the trudge to Camp One, it would have been smart for the professor’s team to stop and rest, but he could see skipping that step, considering they were in competition. The next step would be to ascend to four thousand meters or higher—about the same elevation as Camp Two—and then come back down to allow for acclimatization, avoiding the risk of altitude sickness. A night’s sleep would follow before the typical climber would rise in the small hours of the morning and make the much steeper trek to Camp Two, stopping there for another night before the last part of the ascent. If they’d been climbing to the peak, that would be another six hours up and then a much more rapid descent, but of course they weren’t heading for the peak.
“You really think they’re going to try straight for Camp Two and stay there?” Adam asked. “No acclimatization?”
Hakan grunted. “What choice do they have?”
Meryam turned toward them. “If Olivieri wants a crack at the cave, he has to beat us there.”
“Shit,” Adam rasped. He turned to shout for Feyiz but saw that the man had already moved the gear out of the tents and started breaking them down. At least he seemed to understand the need for speed.
“We’ll overtake him,” Meryam said. “Fifteen minutes and we go. Pack up, have a wee, and get your camera ready. Another day, another adventure.”
“You can’t pretend you expected them to catch up this quickly. We only slept four hours and here they are—”
“With no sleep,” Meryam added. “And without Feyiz and Hakan for guides. Twelve people, most of them not used to climbing. Odds are some of them will get mountain sickness if they attempt it. Neither of us has ever been prone to it. If we need to skip acclimatization, I think we’ll be okay, but Olivieri’s got two tweedy Arkologists and a sixty-year-old rabbinical scholar on his team. They’re going to need to acclimatize. They just are.”
Adam nodded, telling himself it all made sense, but something niggled at the back of his mind. “What about those guides? Who the hell are they?”
He turned toward Hakan, who took a long drink of his steaming coffee, then poured the rest out on the fire and began kicking dirt and freshly fallen snow over it.
For the first time, Meryam seemed unsure of herself. Adam loved her for her confidence, but she didn’t always think things through. He turned to see Feyiz zipping up a backpack.
“I thought your family had cornered the market up here.”
Feyiz frowned and studied his uncle. “Uncle Hakan and his cousin Baris are not in agreement on who ought to be giving the orders. The family is split on this subject. A final decision has not yet been made.”
Meryam swore, spinning on Hakan. “You let us think no worthy guide was going to help the Arkologists up the mountain, that you had them all under control!”
Hakan went and nudged Feyiz aside, knelt, and began to unzip and repack the backpack, a silent assertion of control. He knew better, he was telling them all. Feyiz might be a passable guide, but he was in charge.
“The silent treatment again,” Adam said. “Perfect.” The mountain wind whipped around him and he shivered, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets. “So Baris is helping Olivieri. And if they reach the cave first—”
“It is not only your professor friend who will find victory there,” Hakan said. “The family will think my cousin more capable and he will become the chief guide. The argument will be settled by achievement. Baris will not worry about altitude sickness. If several become ill, he will have one of his men descend with them.”
Meryam handed Adam her coffee thermos. “This is the only thing that’s hot. There’s some bread and honey. Eat fast.”
Adam didn’t want to bother eating anything, but he knew he would need some food in his belly. He turned toward Feyiz, who had begun to break down the second tent.
“Wait,” Hakan said, digging a plastic bottle out of the inside pocket of his coat. He twisted off the cap and began to tap pills out into the palm of his glove. “Take these first. Two different pills, take one each.”
Meryam didn’t hesitate, plucking the medications from Hakan’s hand.
Adam examined the pills, brows knitted. “I assume one of these is Diamox. What’s the other?”
“Procardia,” Hakan said. “For blood pressure. It should prevent…” He turned to Feyiz and said something in the language they shared.
“Edema,” Feyiz translated.
“These medicines are no guarantee,” Hakan continued, “but take them and drink a lot of water, and with luck we will not have to carry you off the mountain.”