In the hills above Pearl Harbor, members of a few Special Forces A-Teams and a couple of SEAL squads crouched in the jungle and observed, radioing reports back to both the fleet and the United States. The reports were intercepted by the alien forces, and squads of infected Marines began to spread out from Pearl Harbor, searching for the teams.
In the harbor itself, the nanovirus did find one ship of the line, albeit not in working order. That, however, was more of a challenge than a problem. The nanovirus began constructing nanomachines that went to work on the submerged ship.
McGraw and Olivetti arrived in the middle of the night, the F-14 Tomcat landing on the main runway at Tribhuvan International Airport exactly as programmed by the guardian. Their incisions were healed with the aid of the nanovirus and the adjustments that had been made to their bodies had been adapted to. As the plane came to a halt, the two SEALs saw the headlights of a vehicle approaching. They slid back the canopy and stiffly climbed out of the aircraft.
McGraw had an MP-5 submachine gun and as a pickup truck pulled up the plane, he slid back the bolt, loading a round into the chamber. A man got out of the truck, yelling something in Nepalese, obviously not pleased with the middle-of-the-night arrival. McGraw shot him through the forehead.
The two SEALs pulled their gear out of the plane and threw it in the back of the pickup. There didn’t appear to be any other activity at the airfield given the late hour. McGraw slipped on a set of night-vision goggles as he got behind the wheel of the truck. He turned the headlights off and the goggles on as Olivetti got in the passenger side.
McGraw scanned the airfield, then spotted what he was looking for: a pair of helicopters parked near a hangar. He drove the truck over to the choppers. One was a vintage Russian-made MI-17, a large cargo chopper. The other was more modern, a French-made Ecureuil AS350B.
The two men paused, looking at the two for a moment, then they loaded their gear in the back of the Ecuruil. McGraw went over to the hangar and broke in. He found an office in one corner. Searching the top of the desk, he found a list of phone numbers and names. He ran his finger down until he found the Nepalese word for pilot.
He dialed the number and when a confused voice answered, he simply said the Nepalese word for airport, then hung up.
Twenty minutes later, headlights cut through the night, approaching the hangar.
A door opened and an angry man stepped out, yelling in Nepalese and looking about in the darkness. Olivetti stepped up next to the man, shutting him up by the succinct method of slamming the barrel of the MP-5 across the man’s mouth, smashing teeth.
The pilot dropped to his knees, hands going to his mouth, blood gushing out. Olivetti put the muzzle of the submachine gun next to the pilot’s head, finger on the trigger. McGraw knelt in front of the pilot, spreading a map on the tarmac, shining a flashlight on it.
“Sagamartha,” McGraw said, tapping a spot on the map. The man looked up, confused.
“Sagamartha,” McGraw repeated, then pointed at himself, Olivetti, then at the helicopter, and finally at the pilot. Then he pointed to the northeast.
The pilot shook his head, a movement that was cut short by Olivetti jabbing the muzzle sharply against the man’s temple. The man said something in Nepalese. When the pilot realized they didn’t understand, he thought for a moment, then pointed at the helicopter, indicating he needed to get something.
McGraw gestured and Olivetti let the man get up. They walked over to the helicopter and the pilot opened the door, then pulled out a logbook. He flipped through until he came to a certain page. He shoved it in front of McGraw, his finger on a certain part. A number and letter: 6100M.
Then the pilot put his finger on the map, at the same point that McGraw had pointed to. “Sagamartha,” the pilot said, and tapped the number: 8848M. He then waved one hand horizontally and shook his head.
McGraw’s expression didn’t change. He ran his finger along a road that ran east out of Kathmandu, then turned to the north, crossed the border into Tibet, then looped around again to the east. His finger came to a halt north of Everest.
The pilot frowned, started to say something, then realized the situation and his mouth snapped shut. McGraw pointed toward the helicopter, then jerked his thumb up. Olivetti added emphasis by jamming the muzzle of the MP-5 into the pilot’s ribs hard enough to cause him to double over. Cursing, the pilot climbed into the pilot’s seat and strapped himself in, as the two SEALs climbed in and shut the doors. The pilot started the engines.
A cold wind blew from the south across the stone veranda that faced the army barracks. It was always cold there and the air was thin at over a mile-and-a-half-high altitude. The barracks overlooked the small village of Pethang Ringmo, where less than a hundred hardy souls lived. The village was at the end of an often-washed-out track that could be negotiated in good weather by a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
Despite centuries of self-rule, Tibet was occupied in 1950 as Communist China sought to expand its sphere of influence. For nine years an uneasy peace existed in the land as the Dalai Lama tried to rule in conjunction with the invaders. That changed in 1959 when the country rose up against the interlopers. Thousands of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama escaped, seeking asylum in India.
It’s estimated that since that time, over a million Tibetans who were left behind have died as a result of the occupation and the attempts by China to make it a Chinese province. It is believed that these efforts at genocide and repopulation have succeeded to the point where there are a million more Chinese living inside Tibet than natives. Of the six thousand monasteries that existed prior to the occupation, only twelve remain, the rest destroyed, many as a result of target practice by Chinese artillery. Reports had filtered out that the Chinese were sterilizing Tibetan women and also dumping nuclear waste in the country.
All those things meant little to a Chinese major who stood on the barracks’ stone balcony. He had been stationed in Tibet for another reason altogether. At the moment he was staring at the three people in front of him, then down at the orders he’d been faxed from Beijing. The fax was signed by the president himself, so there was no doubting whether he would comply. The people had arrived via helicopter less than ten minutes ago. The major, who only went by one name in the climbing community — Aksu — was a short wiry man with leathery skin. He had summited Everest twice, once from the south and once from the more difficult northern approach, blazing a new trail in from the northeast, rather than the accepted northwest route. According to these orders, he was to take these people up the northern route.
Even here, far from the capital, word of the fighting in Korea and Taiwan had reached the major’s ears. He wasn’t certain how these strangers fit into all of that, and the fax explained nothing. It grated on the major that the three were obviously foreigners with their pale skin, red hair, and eyes hidden by sunglasses. Even more than that, though, what truly rankled him was the fact that he could tell they weren’t climbers. And their leader was a woman.
“Everest is no place for amateurs,” he brusquely informed them. Lexina nodded. “I know.”
Aksu spit into the gravel that lined the runway. “One of five who go up, die.” “We only need one of us to come back,” Lexina said.
“Why do you need to go?”
“We need to recover something from the mountain.”
“What?”
“I cannot tell you that.”