Forget them,
he willed himself. He tried hard to forget, but it always seemed there was someone or something to remind him.
You could have done better,
the voices whispered. Sitting alone on the rock, he felt himself reeling backward into a time tunnel.
Jack Baker and his team had pushed through the Balcony, at 27,500 feet, to the Hillary Step, at 28,800 feet. The Hillary Step, a seventy-foot rock step, is named after Sir Edmond Hillary who, in 1953, along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, became the first to summit Everest. The Hillary Step, which is climbed with fixed ropes, often becomes a bottleneck, as only one climber can climb at a time. The margin of safety is razor-thin on a mountain like Mount Everest. Many hazards, such as thundering avalanches, freak storms, and hidden crevasses, are beyond a climber's control.
Once the climbers ascend the Hillary Step, they slowly and laboriously proceed to the summit at 29,028 feet. The Everest summit sits at the top of the world. Though not the closest place to the sun due to the earth's curve, it is the highest peak on earth. Due to the decreased air pressure, the summit contains less than one-third the oxygen as at sea level. If dropped off on the summit directly from sea level (impossible in reality), a person would die within minutes from the decreased oxygen level.
Baker and his nine climbers were in a region known as The Death Zone. Above that altitude, not only could human life not be sustained, it deteriorated with terrifying rapidity. Even using supplementary oxygen, no one can remain in the Death Zone for very long. Climbers who venture into this zone cannot escape the potentially deadly effects of oxygen deprivation; they can only attempt to minimize and control what breathing the thin air at high altitudes does to their bodies.
That day, Baker's group stalled because of one climber's faulty oxygen canister. The man was inexperienced and Baker could see he was in rough shape. "Just a little farther," he told him. Baker gave the climber his oxygen, and then addressed the others.
"I'm going ahead and set some ropes for us. Stay put until I signal for you."
He would later remember telling the media. "There was absolutely no noise, it was very disturbing. We only had time to swerve to the right before being mowed down."
And mowed down they were.
The accident occurred when a huge storm blew in and a wind shear snapped an ice pillar, breaking the ropes on the area of the peak known as Bottleneck, just below the summit. As the gigantic chunk of ice flew by Baker, he unsnapped his carabiner to keep from being swept away. "Look out," he screamed to the team below. But it was too late.
Baker spotted the first two men gazing toward the top until the clouds perpetually swirling around Everest engulfed them.
Then they vanished.
Even more frightening was seeing the huge chunk of ice strike the other team members with unimaginable force, nearly dismembering two of them. It dragged them all down the mountain a thousand feet and into a crevice where they were pancaked atop one another. Two of them didn't survive.
In all, five people had died and authorities accused Baker of compromising his clients' safety to achieve his own ambitions. Baker, they said, reached the summit of the world's highest peak before his clients, rather than waiting to assist them, and endangered them by making the final exhausting climb without the aid of bottled oxygen. Many who knew Baker and had climbed with him for years attempted to rebut the criticism, saying he did not use oxygen because of his personal climbing ethics and he climbed ahead of his clients to set ropes for them. They also sited the fact that he went out into the storm that night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. There was a lateral blow of snow, and little visibility. He made two forays out into 60- to 70-mile-an-hour winds in sub-zero temperatures. This, they said, "was not about his heroism, he cared deeply about those climbers."
Baker's mind was in shock when he finally got off the mountain, replaying slowly through the events of the last hours of the storm. After they helicoptered him out, they took him to a hospital in Islamabad where he stayed for a week before returning home. That was the last trip the adventurer would ever take....
That was three years ago. Now the reluctant hero found himself right back in the same position under a different set of circumstances.
Hammond is right,
he thought. He shouldn't be responsible for leading them off this island.
A
HEMISPHERE AWAY
,
A COURIER
driving a non-descript white van stopped in front of Gem Biotech in Rockville, Maryland. Having escorted the package all the way from mainland Australia, the courier was red-eyed and weary from the seven-teen-hour flight.
When he arrived in the lab and handed the package over to an official at the company, there was little exchange of words.
As he paused at the door, before leaving, he did say
one
thing.
"Be careful."
"J
ACK
." T
RACY
M
ILLS
'
VOICE BECKONED
. "Jack, it's all right. It wasn't your fault."
Jack stood, Tracy's voice pulling him from his painful reverie. The two men had followed her.
Hammond was silent for a moment, and then looked at Baker.
"I'm sorry, Jack. I spoke out of turn."
Whiting inhaled silently. "It seems to me, and please forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, I have to say I think you owe Mr. Baker a debt of gratitude. For if you only knew what you were dealing with, the mere fact that he got you this far is indeed a miracle."
Hammond swung his attention to the doctor. "And just what are we dealing with, Dr. Whiting?" he asked.
After they set up camp, Hammond and Whiting sat by the fire roasting some grubs they'd scavenged from a dead tree stump.
"So let me sum up what we have so far," Hammond said. "This GenSys was doing research in immunobiology until three years ago. Then they're purchased by this Prince somebody--"
"Prince Habib."
"Yes, whoever. Anyway, at that point they hire you and some other scientists to resurrect a...."
"Thylacine," Whiting filled in.
"Right, a Thylacine. So you are bringing this thing back because it's supposed to be some miracle cure for everything. However, before it's finished, you find some flaws. Flaws that cause awful mutations. When you bring it to their attention, they have you killed... or at least they thought they did. Meanwhile, the things grow at an unprecedented rate, escape from the lab, and proliferate on this island. I have to say that seems rather hard to believe, Dr. Whiting. I mean, I like a good science fiction yarn as much as the next guy, but come on. If that really happened, why didn't you notify the authorities when you discovered these mutations?"
Whiting stopped chewing for a moment. "Let me ask you a question, Captain Hammond. If you were the
authorities
and I came to you with this story, what would you say?"
Hammond nodded. "I see your point. Still, how did you survive your assassination attempt and yet, make them think you're dead?"
"I had some of the formula with me when they dumped me on the island. I put it on my wounds. When I regained consciousness, they were healed."
Whiting pulled up his shirt. Four round scars were scattered across his abdomen. "Believe me now?"
At that moment, a howl cut through the air. Whiting wheeled around. "Come on. We need to move now!"
P
ETER
C
ARLSON STOOD STARING AT
Ellen. Her presence of mind and determination had impressed him. Now, however, he was wondering if she'd gone too far.
"What do you mean,
they're gone?"
"I went to the storage tanks--"
"Are you crazy? If Tibek caught you in there, there's no telling what he'd have done."
"I opened the tanks. The embryos are all gone.
All six of them.
He must've taken them, who else could it be? He's been acting strange for days now."
Peter was silent for a minute. Ellen's newest revelation left him deeply troubled. Her accusation, though staggeringly bold, had just opened all kinds of new doors, and got him thinking in a completely new direction.
If Tibek did take them... was it for corporate or scientific espionage? What did he stand to gain?
A darker thought crept into his mind.
How far would he go?
"You're quiet," Ellen said, beside him.
Peter glanced over. For an instant, in the muted lighting of his quarters, he saw a softness in Ellen's eyes he had not noticed before. Shaking off the thought, he gave her a tired sigh. "I can't believe this. It seems to get worse with every passing hour. Sometimes I wish I hadn't signed on for this."
"That makes two of us."
"What if this whole thing is a sham? What if the Prince has just put all of us here to--"
"To what?"
Peter's words came faster now. "I hate to say it, but I think there's much more going on here than what we've been told.
By the Prince and everyone else."
* * *
Peter paced in his room. Ellen had left and now his senses were tingling. He didn't know which was more discomforting--Ellen's news about the missing embryos or his vain attempts to contact Prince Habib.
The Prince didn't answer.
When his cell phone rang, Peter quickly ran through his mind what he was going to say to the Prince. When he flipped open the phone, he was surprised to hear a stranger's voice on the other end.
"Dr. Carlson?"
"Yes. Who is this?"
"Who I am is not important. What I'm calling about
is.
Listen carefully. I work for Gem/BioTech. We received a package that came from your..."
Peter heard a
pop... pop
... on the line, followed by static.
Then the line went dead.
Along with whoever was on the other end of the call,
Peter surmised.
J
ACK AND THE GROUP MADE
slow progress, slogging through mud and thorny vines. They'd decided that if they were going to find the lab, they needed to get to higher ground in order to survey the landscape.
"There's a waterfall somewhere near here. I've seen it before," Whiting said, "if we can get there by morning, we can see across the island."
An hour later, the roar of a nearby waterfall grew louder, gradually drowning out the sound of the large beetles that crackled in the night air. The vegetation grew thicker, becoming nearly impenetrable. A cool mist from the falls settled on their faces and hair, the moisture creating a welcome micro-climate, vastly different from the sauna-like heat of the day.
"There's something up here," Whiting whispered from ten feet ahead. Jack caught up with him, his flashlight illuminating a large dugout canoe beached at a calm eddy.
Whiting knelt in the moist mud and examined the footprints. The tracks headed inland for a few yards before hugging the shore again, disappearing in the direction of the falls.
"Aborigines, "Whiting said.
"They've got to be close," Jack said.
They walked for five minutes, each yard becoming more treacherous. Mud gave way to long slabs of wet sandstone. The constant misting from the falls provided a perfect habitat for moss and lichen, which made the rocks as slick as an oily garage floor. Tracy stumbled twice, scraping her knees against the rough rock. More disconcerting, they could no longer see any tracks.
As they neared the top of the falls, they realized a slip now would be disasterous. The rocks in front of them dropped off to a sandstone floor. While it was nothing compared to the magnificent waterway at Victoria Falls, Jack knew passing the hundred or so feet of rushing water, cascading down to smash into the swirling pool below, required extreme caution.
He stopped abruptly and surveyed the scene. The falls were so loud, Jack felt confident speaking again. "We can't go any further. It's too risky. A slip here isn't a bruised knee or cut shin."
Hammond heaved a smile. "But I dragged my ass over two miles."
"You always hated exercise," Tracy said.
"I hate exercises in futility."
"I can make it," Tracy said, looking at the expanse. "I can jump that ravine over there and scout ahead a ways, then come back."
Jack shook his head. "Are you crazy? We can't let you go out there."
"Jack, I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."
Whiting chimed in. "She might have a point, Jack. We are on the other side of the island now. Those things have their colony set up on the far side. If she can get across, she should be safe."
"That's a big
if
, Doctor."
Tracy peered at her intended path. "Don't worry, Jack. I'll be back. And don't forget. When we get out of here, you owe me."
A
T THE SIGHT OF HIS SON
, Prince Habib was shocked by his appearance. Although he had not thought it possible, Khalid looked even paler than he had the day before. His eyes were visibly sunken into their sockets and were surrounded by circles so dark, they looked like he had black eyes. The rank smell of fresh vomit hung in the air.
Habib wanted to hold his son, but he couldn't move. The agony of his inadequateness held him back, although the boy lifted his arms to him.
His disease was too powerful, and he still had nothing to offer his son. Even his vast resources couldn't fix this nightmare. Time was running out, and every minute that passed felt like a knife in the Prince's side. He had hoped he would be able to save his son, but without the formula, it was hopeless. Habib resigned himself to the idea that his son was not going to get better. All the palliative treatment in the world wouldn't stop the inevitable progression of this disease.
Without any warning, the boy retched. His slender body heaved, and heaved until there was nothing left to expel.
The Prince felt a wave of anxiety wash over him as a nurse ran in to the room and cleaned the boy's face.