Beth Calloway had shouted that their fuel was getting low, that they must turn back if they were ever to return to Lhasa. She wasn’t about to abandon her precious Corsair by having it run out of gas in this desolation. But then there was a flash and smoke from what almost seemed inside the earth, and the Americans realized they’d guessed right. The Germans must be inside a narrow canyon, trying to reach the valley beyond. And the Nazis had seen them and were destroying something in reaction, Hood bet. The race was to its final sprint.
It was the end of a long, wearying day of flying from Lhasa.
When he’d met Calloway and her plane outside the summer palace grounds in the Tibetan capital, Hood was honest. This was a woman he’d last seen when they were making love, and now she’d been asked to fly him off the edge of the map.
“Do you know who we’re going after?” he asked. Not what, but who.
“Your old lover and your old enemy.” She said it matter-of-factly. The Tibetans had been candid.
“And this is okay with you?”
“Shut up and crank the propeller.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“So I double my fee. To buy more shoes.”
“Beth, I didn’t expect to go after Keyuri again.”
“But you hoped you would.”
“She’s not what this is about.”
“Yes she is.”
“When we get back, we’ll sort all this out.”
“If you get back. I’m flying this crate, and I’ll be judging which of the pair of you is lighter.” She smirked, menacingly.
He hunted for the right words. “Your plane is the only chance to catch the Nazis.”
“The only chance after giving them time to find what the Tibetans want them to find. Right? The Germans are playing the Tibetans, and the Tibetans are playing us, and you’re playing me. Everyone’s got a bet in this fiasco, Ben, so don’t worry about stamping out medals. Let’s just do what we have to.”
“What’s your bet?”
She shrugged. “That your nun is unlikely to be alive by the time we get to her. Or as sweet as you remember. Or available.”
“But if she is?”
“I’ll save as many of our hides as I can. It’s what I do.”
They took off, the altitude forcing them to snake through passes instead of hopping over mountains to fly direct. The biplane followed the trace of dirt roads below, Hood watching for the Germans but finding only what he expected, herds of goats and caravans of yaks and oxen. The trade traffic thinned as they flew north and west of the city, and then nearly ended altogether. They followed the main trunk road that led west, a thread of connection in a vast plateau wilderness, the wind so biting that Hood almost wrapped his head like a mummy with the silk scarf Reting had provided in trade. Calloway had a khata of her own. The fabric hid her expression. Behind her flying goggles, he couldn’t see her eyes.
“At some point they’ll have to turn for the Kunlun!” he shouted.
“Watch for sign.”
An hour later, he saw it. A lighter scrawl of dust on a tributary track suggested a place where dirt had been kicked up by more than animal hooves. He pointed and she banked, nodding at the line of tire tracks. They turned north. The biplane bucked in the cold air.
A hundred miles on, a glint of metal confirmed they were on the Germans’ trail. It was the British motorcar, overturned, wheels up, slid down a hill. An accident? They circled twice, looking for bodies or survivors, but saw none.
“I think it broke down!” Hood said over the roar of the engine.
Beth nodded.
They flew on.
Three hours more and they came to an enormous crack in the crust of the earth. A huge canyon sat athwart the path, and the truck and trailer were beside it. A rope stretched across the chasm. Again, no sign of life.
“Pray they left the gas,” Beth said.
This landing spot was even rougher than the one with the shoot-out, but there were no bandits this time. No Germans, either. Nobody at all, just the sighing wind of an emptiness even the Tibetans didn’t want. Beth topped off her tank with the German spare fuel while Hood got more by siphoning the German truck dry. She put three canisters in the biplane’s storage compartment while he hid the rest behind a rock. If they survived, this was the only way they’d get back.
Then they took off again, the engine throaty as they clawed over the precipitous canyon. It was getting late.
There was a range of snowy hills they barely skimmed over, boot tracks in the snow, and then a barren basin. The Kunluns beyond were a frozen rampart that stretched as far as the eye could see. When they saw the river, Hood pointed and Beth nodded, following it. The waterfall was a white beacon miles away, and when they flew near, it seemed to be spurting from the cliff face. The canyon was a cleft too narrow to see into. Odd.
They circled. Down at the base of the waterfall, Hood spotted abandoned bundles of equipment.
“Go as high as you can! See if we can fly above the source of the river and get into the mountains!”
They pivoted upward like a climbing bird. There was a snowy saddle at the top of the cliffs that led toward white haze. A jagged black line represented the rift in the rock below. As they passed over it, he got brief glimpses of racing gray water.
Were the Germans somewhere in that chasm?
Beth rapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Several miles east, at the outer base of the Kulun range, there was a wisp of smoke. They saw a tracery of wall there.
Did someone live near the gate of Shambhala?
Then they saw the flash of the explosion, deep in the crack of the river.
“They’re here!” he shouted.
“Where?” She peered over the side. The crevice was narrower in places than her wings.
“They must be pushing through. See if we can fly over the saddle. It must be where they’re going.”
“We’re already at our limit.”
“Climb anyway.”
Shaking her head, she aimed where he pointed. “Pray.”
Mountain piled upon mountain. They skimmed the snow. The engine was laboring in the thin air, wheels dipping toward a crash… and then the ground plunged abruptly away, sheer cliffs again, and they popped out over a hidden valley.
Shambhala was like a well. The vale was shadowy, ringed by towering peaks with glaciers that fed the river. Yet at the bottom it also had an improbable wash of green, totally unexpected in October. Somehow the basin below must be warmer than the bitter norm.
Beth dipped and circled, rotating around the curve of the mountain bowl. There was a party of people down there, hurrying through a jumble of old ruins.
“Can you land?”
“Where? Look at that mess.”
“But the Germans must have blown the only way in.”
“One of the ways, unless your Germans and your old girlfriend don’t plan on ever coming back.” She glanced around. Everywhere, mountains higher than their maximum altitude, her biplane a fly in a cup. Pass a few miles in either direction and you’d never suspect this secret hole was here.
“Christ,” Hood cursed. “We can’t climb over those cliffs, either.”
“There is another way, college boy, but you ain’t gonna like it.” She kept them rotating. The party below had disappeared.
“What?”
“Jump.”
“I wish.” He looked down. If only he could step onto those snowy slopes, maybe he could pick his way
