Area 51: Excalibur-6 (23 page)

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When the beeper went off on our watches and we weren't at the top, we turned around."

"But you were within two hundred meters," Mualama said.

"That's how people die. Breaking the rules on the mountain. It's unforgiving. On the way back we were passed by two New Zealand climbers. They kept going. And they never came back down. When you die on the mountain, your body stays there, frozen forever. There are quite a few bodies up there."

Turcotte had the bouncer at a complete halt now. Morris's words and the sight in front of him were causing him to rethink his plan. He respected what the medic was saying about turning around no matter how close they had gotten. A plan had to be followed. But he also knew they weren't going to have the option of turning back.

Morris pointed. "That's Changtse to the left at seventy-five hundred meters high; Lho La between it and Everest at just above six thousand meters, then Everest, then to the right there, Nuptse at over seventy-eight hundred meters."

Turcotte didn't feel anxious to move forward. The mountain range intimidated him and he had a feeling it wasn't going to be as easy as flying the bouncer to the grid coordinate and picking up the sword. "Tell me about the mountain's history and climbing it," he said. He'd learned in his special operations career that knowledge was power and he had a feeling he was going to need all he could get to accomplish his mission. Also, if Excalibur had been up there so long, he wanted to know if anyone else had gone up after it and failed.

"I don't know about this stuff you've told me about Merlin and all that," Morris said. "As far as history records, the mountain was first mapped in 1590 by a Westerner. He was a Spanish missionary to the court of the Mughal Emperor 194

Akbar. The Brits were the first to identify Everest and make a calculation as to its height in 1856. But nobody got close to it for a while after that. It wasn't even so much the difficulty of the terrain, but rather politics. Tibet and Nepal, which bracket the mountain, didn't welcome visitors. The Brits had to get a special dispensation from the Dalai Lama in 1921 to send a team in via Tibet.

Up till then Everest was just a location on a map. No one really had any idea if it could be approached, never mind climbed."

"But we think Merlin and others climbed it well over a thousand years ago,"

Turcotte said.

"If they did, they never made it public," Morris said.

"Most likely because they climbed it," Turcotte said, "but only went up and never back down."

"Everest has claimed many." Morris was sitting on one of the plastic cases he'd loaded on the bouncer, his eyes on the mountains, his voice low, as if in respect for what nature had laid out before them. "Most climbers approach from the south," Morris said. "The north face is more technical. What's the location you were given?" Morris asked.

Turcotte hadn't had a chance to decrypt the coordinates. Letting go of the controls and leaving the bouncer at a hover, he took the sheet. Quinn had sent it in the only format that couldn't be decrypted even if intercepted using a onetime pad. There were only two copies of the pad. Turcotte had one, Quinn the other. They had been given to him by Colonel Mickell since they had no doubt any communications they had were being intercepted.

He matched up the correct date using a trigraph, which had three-letter combinations. He aligned the letter from Quinn's message, with the letter on his onetime pad, and used the trigraph to come up with the correct letter/number. It only took a few moments, as it was just a two-letter/eight-digit grid designator. Turcotte handed the result to Morris,

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who had a 1:50,000 map of Everest spread out on the floor of the bouncer.

"Damn," Morris muttered as hemade a small mark on the map with his pencil.

Mualama was looking over his shoulder.

"What do you have?" Turcotte asked, unable to see from the pilot's seat.

"North side. At the top of the Kanshung Face. That explains why no one's stumbled across it."

"Is that spot bad?" Turcotte asked.

"The first major attempt to climb Everest in modern times was by George Mallory and Sandy Irvine in 1924," Morris said. "They approached from the north because of politics. And when they did their reconnaissance of the area during the 1921

and 1922 trips, they kept moving up the mountain in that direction. They even made it as far up as the North Col in 1923. But even Mallory said the south appeared to be the more desirable direction to approach the mountain from and subsequent mappings and climbs have confirmed this."

"What happened to Mallory and Irvine?" Mualama asked.

"No one really knew for a long time except that they never came back down."

Morris shook his head sadly. "They were last seen alive disappearing into clouds just before the Second Step, which is high up on the north side. Mallory's body was found by an expedition in 1999." Morris ran his finger along the map. "Here.

Far below the second step. The body was in bad shape. They buried it on the mountain. Some say he might have summited and been on his way down when he fell.

Irvine's body has never been found."

"Curious," Mualama said.

"Others tried to climb the mountain over the years," Morris continued, "but the first true summit came in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa, Tenzig Norgay. Since then about seven hundred people have summited while several hundred have lost their lives attempting it." Morris looked at 196

the map once more. "This spot is not on any route, even the most difficult ones. I'm not surprised no one's seen Excalibur."

"What's the best route to the coordinates?"

Morris looked up. He pointed. "Let's follow the West Ridge, then go over it near the top."

SOUTH KOREA

General Carmody, Eighth Army commander, could hear his own breathing echoing inside his gas mask. He brought the panting under control, then picked up a headset off the firewall of the Blackhawk and slipped it on.

He was patched into the Eighth Army command frequency and could hear reports from his senior commanders over the secure network. The massacre in Seoul was being buried under frantic calls for reinforcements from forces in the Uijongbu Corridor, northeast of the capital city. The North Koreans and Chinese had used both nerve and chemical agents in their initial assaults, and while the American and South Korean military forces were prepared, the dual assault degraded their ability to defend.

The fact that it degraded the ability of the assaulting forces to be as effective as possible didn't seem to matter as four corps worth of PKA/Chinese troops poured across the border into the choke point where Carmody had planned to deploy his tactical nuclear weapons. Fierce fighting raged in the corridor, between the Taebak Mountain Range in the east and an estuary of the Han River.

The corridor had always been a major advance route for invaders, from Mongols and Manchus to the North Koreans in 1950 to the present.

Eighteen South Korean divisions along with the American

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Second Infantry Division were now engaged along the entire 151-mile-long border from coast to coast, but Carmody knew Uijongbu was the key.

And then he heard the voice of the artillery commander of the Second Infantry Division come over the net. North Korean soldiers were appearing behind his batteries by the hundreds, no thousands, the excited voice reported.

Carmody knew immediately what had happened. During the years since the signing of the armistice dozens of tunnels had been discovered being dug from north to south. But he knew, and his intelligence staff had briefed, that they would never find them all. Now one had obviously opened up to the rear of his frontline defenses.

"Alpha four," Carmody yelled, his voice carrying out of the mask, into the mike pressed against it.

The pilot twisted his head, appearing like a machine with his mask and helmet, not a single bit of skin exposed. "Sir?"

"Alpha four. Now."

"Yes, sir."

The Blackhawk banked, the other three carrying his staff following. Carmody knew all his forces were tied up and he had neither reserves to throw into the breach rior spare helicopters to do what needed to be done. As the helicopter flew to the destination he had ordered, Carmody accessed the computer bolted in front of him, bringing up a tactical display forwarded to him from Eighth Army's battle headquarters.

Images flashed across the screen, satellite photos from a KH-14 spy satellite in orbit overhead. He had never expected to be in this position, without the support of the Seventh Fleet. His options to stem the flow of forces he could see building up behind his artillery were limited.

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MOUNT EVEREST

The blades were struggling to find purchase in the thin air, just as the engine strained for oxygen to combust the fuel. Below lay the Rongbuk Glacier, a desolate stretch of ice, snow, and rock, caught between ridges. Directly ahead, Mount Everest blocked the horizon.

Neither SEAL glanced down as the helicopter passed over the desolate site of the Rongbuk base camp where most of those who attempted Everest from the north side made their first acclimatization stop. It was empty now, just a scattering of ruined tents and abandoned gear, as it was too late in the season for any sane person to attempt Everest.

The pilot yelled something in his native tongue, the fear obvious even if the words meant nothing to either SEAL. The engines were skipping slightly, a sign the helicopter could not go much higher. They were less than fifty feet above the glacier.

Olivetti pointed ahead with one hand, while jabbing the barrel into the pilot's ribs. From the information the guardian had given them about the traditional north route, it was a three-day march from the Rongbuk base camp, up the glacier, to the Advanced Base Camp that was at the foot of the north face of Everest itself. Every meter the helicopter gained up the glacier meant that much less time they would have to spend climbing.

On the right, Khumbutse appeared, and on the left, Bei Peak. The two mountains framed the north face, which was mostly hidden by blowing snow and clouds.

McGraw had a map out and was orienting it to the terrain. A thin red line was drawn on it, the route they were to take. He leaned forward between Olivetti and the pilot and pointed to the right. The pilot turned in that direction. Everest was now off to the left and a long, sloping ridgeline ascending toward it was ahead.

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The engine stuttered, went out for a second, then was restarted by the desperate pilot. McGraw pointed down, at a relatively smooth stretch of ice on the glacier. Gratefully the pilot descended quickly. They touched down hard, the impact jarring all on board. The pilot flipped switches and the loud whine of the engine was suddenly gone. The only sound now was the wind, the constant companion of those who came near Everest.

McGraw slid open the cargo bay door. The wind whipped inside, icy fingers clawing at any exposed skin. He tossed out their two heavy rucksacks of equipment. McGraw exited the copilot's seat and easily lifted one of the 180-pound packs, throwing it on his shoulders. The pilot was slumped in his seat, thankful to have made it that far.

McGraw went to the engine compartment and unlatched it. The pilot heard the noise and turned. Startled, he opened his door and came up to McGraw. The SEAL

put a finger to his lips, indicating for the man to shut up. McGraw reached in and removed a small piece of the engine. The pilot's eyes went wide and he shook his head, protesting.

McGraw stuffed the piece in his rucksack. He then faced the pilot and held up two fingers, then pointed at" himself, toward Everest, then back at the helicopter. Then he jabbed his finger in the pilot's chest and indicated the helicopter.

The pilot looked back down the miles of torturous glacier he had just flown up, knowing there was no way he could make it down on foot. Not dressed like he was.

McGraw took him to the cargo bay and pointed inside. There was a sleeping bag on the floor. Then McGraw once more held up two fingers. He then picked up his pack and put it on his back. Without a backward glance, the two SEALs set off up the last part of the glacier, heading toward the West Ridge. • • •

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"Most go that way on the northern approach." Aksu pointed through a narrow gap between Bei Peak and the ridge they were on to another ridge ten miles away.

"The West Ridge, via Rongbuk Glacier. It is safer, but it is slower. It is the way Mallory and Irvine tried so many years ago."

Lexina didn't say anything, a tall figure swathed in cold-weather gear, her face hidden behind dark goggles and a face mask. Coridan and Elek flanked her like sentinels, also silent. They were standing on a knoll on the Northeast Ridge, buffeted by the howling wind. Twenty meters below, a line of fourteen of Aksu's men made their way along a narrow track just off the knife edge of the ridge.

"I was the first to complete this route," Aksu continued. "It is faster, but more dangerous, especially if the wind picks up."

Lexina broke her silence. "How long?"

"We will make it to a camp spot I know on the ridge by dark. We will rest four hours. We will then depart at 0300 for the final assault to the location you have given me. It will require some technical climbing to get across the top of the Kanshung Face."

Lexina nodded.

"I must warn you," Aksu said, "that without acclimatization you will not last long on the mountain."

"Our blood—" Lexina began, then halted. "You need not worry about us." She then left the knoll, joining the end of the column. Aksu paused, looking to the southwest toward the mountain hidden in the clouds. The weather was bad, that was obvious to his experienced eyes. He could see a twenty-mile-long plume of snow coming off the top of the peak. If it was the same in the morning, they would not be able to make the attempt, as the Northeast Ridge was too narrow to chance with a strong wind. However, he also knew that Everest was 201

fickle. The weather could change in a flash. There was nothing to do but continue on for the moment.