Hypoxia: A Thriller, page 2
“Wow,” Kate replied.
“Anyway, as soon as you’re up there, your body starts dying, essentially,” Sky continued. “You’re breathing just a fraction of the oxygen that you get when you’re at sea level. And things start shutting down…no human body is equipped for this type of environment. So we have to get in and out of the Death Zone within forty-eight hours…or it’s all over. I mean, basically, you’re at the altitude of a…”
Damnit. She was going to say jetliner. Marty was making her trip over her words now.
“— the altitude of over twenty-six thousand feet.”
"Right," Kate said quickly, listening patiently to her earpiece. "Sounds like that would be a real struggle. What are the symptoms of oxygen deprivation?”
“Uh, you know, just your garden variety tingling, nausea, light-headedness, fatigue, heart attacks and then death,” Sky replied sarcastically, started to giggle. “Actually, I’d really rather not talk about it.”
“That’s right! We heard you’re suspicious!” Kate laughed.
Oh God. This newscaster was on her last nerve.
“Yup,” Sky replied. “I’ve already been to see a monk and received a blessing for my trip.”
Kate was listening to her earpiece again.
"Right," she said quickly, clearly receiving instructions for her questions. "Oh, and the nickname Sky! Where did that come from?"
Sky launched into the official explanation. "Well, it was because my friends were saying that I was climbing so high I would touch the sky soon, or something to that effect. And, you know, it just stuck."
It was a lie. The nickname had come from being "sky high" in a different way—Sky had picked up a rebellious marijuana habit during her late teens, when she’d sworn off mountain climbing for a few years. On a daily basis, she was thankful for the fact that this had happened before the explosion of social media. None of her fans knew her to be anything but pure.
Obviously, the real explanation would not satisfy her core audience—those who bought her books, attended her speaking engagements, and clung to the memory of the sweet fourteen-year-old girl atop the world with her parents.
“Well, I think it’s a fabulous name!” Kate said, her caffeinated voice starting to irk Sky.
“Thanks.” Would this interview ever end?
“All of us here are wishing you the best of luck during your summit bid, and we hope you’ll talk to us on your descent.”
Not if I can help it, Sky thought.
She hoped Marty would spare her the indignity of another one of these.
“Thanks so much for your wishes, and I’ll let you know when I get to the bottom,” Sky smiled thinly.
“And…that’s a wrap!” Jacob grinned broadly, as the rest of the crew burst into spontaneous applause.
He turned off the monitor with a flourish, and Sky sank down into her chair, pressing her temples with her hands. She’d been strangely unprepared for the question about the divorce. They’d “gone their separate ways,” as Ron said. Sometimes she wondered if he had ever loved her at all, or if she had just ticked off all the boxes…before he realized that having a mountaineer wife wasn’t really conducive to his lifestyle.
Sighing, Sky looked up towards the summit and offered a silent prayer that the mountain would treat her kindly this time around. The newscaster had chosen an interesting turn of phrase—“conquer Everest”—which made her recoil.
No one ever conquered Everest. Not for a second. She wasn’t religious at all, but she actually was superstitious. And she knew that the mountain would never be conquered, regardless of how many people made it up the Hillary Step and to the summit.
The mountain allowed some fortunate souls to scale it unscathed. But those were few. Rare was the climber who escaped Everest’s clutches with zero damage.
Broken limbs, pulmonary edema, hypoxia, altitude sickness, frostbite…There were a cornucopia of ailments that could slip in and attack when least expected.
Sky had been lucky in her prior bid for the summit, but she was fully prepared for the possibility that the mountain could decide to strike this time. She knew that she was only mortal, although some in the village below doubted it. Some of them called her “the girl with the copper hair”—one of the village legends was that the mountain Sagarmatha had loved her so much that it took her parents in a fit of jealousy.
Chapter Three
3
New York City
Set of “Morning Coffee Break”
Kate Sullivan switched back to her trusty teleprompter after the Sky Burke interview.
“And more news today about the shocking allegations of NSA whistleblower Ryan Baker. Baker’s revelations about the NSA’s independent use of drones have cast a dark shadow upon the embattled organization, with many Americans voicing concerns about privacy, asking just how much influence the agency should be able to wield in a democratic society. Up next. Stay with us for the story.”
After they cut for a commercial break, Kate inspected her jacket for lint. She’d discovered that the new wardrobe lady wasn’t really up to par, so it was best to be vigilant about these things. Also, she never knew when her backstabbing co-host, Garth Simpkins, would point something out, just to be an asshole. He’d even done it on the air before.
Garth hated her. It didn’t matter to him that his annual salary was ten times higher than hers—a cool twenty million. He was jealous that she had risen up in the ranks so quickly. At only twenty-nine years of age, Kate Sullivan was the youngest morning news anchor on the air. It had taken Garth much longer to achieve this status, and he made no bones about the fact that he was jealous. Kate was tall, blond, and beautiful, with a melodious voice. She was smart and inquisitive, but still lacking in experience. Garth, who considered her a lightweight and a threat, openly resented her.
Not that she cared most of the time. Kate was accustomed to jealousy—it came with the territory when one had been as lucky in life as she had. That was the simple, sad fact of being a human being. In this particular instance, the only thing that threw her off was that the jealousy was coming from a man. That was a first for her.
And it wasn’t like he was at the top of his game. Garth had called in late again that morning, so the first hour of the show would be on her shoulders. She figured that he was probably worn out from another night of doing cocaine and cheating on his wife—two of his favorite hobbies. Not that Kate was judgmental. It was a free country, after all. She would have been totally accepting of a friendly cheating cokehead. But Garth was not that.
One of the benefits of being approachable was that numerous interns and people on the crew liked to fill Kate in on gossip. The network was pretty good at keeping Garth’s indiscretions out of the news, but the New York media world was a “small town” of its own, and blogs would sometimes buzz with stories about him. Kate believed in the power of information. And she knew that Garth was actively trying to get her fired.
Sometimes she fantasized about pitching a special series on cocaine to her producer, just to watch Garth squirm while she detailed the evils of coke. She would make sure that the segments focused on upscale professionals who couldn’t get enough of the “demon white powder.” The thought of it never failed to make her smile, even though it was only five in the morning and she’d been up since three drinking lots of coffee.
Formulating revenge fantasies about Garth never got old. It was one of her coping mechanisms for working with the openly nasty man. And for having to wake up so early in the morning. She’d always been more of a night owl, so the early call times for the show were brutal.
The stage manager motioned towards the camera.
“In five…four…” He mouthed the rest of the countdown, and then the glowing red light went on. Kate dropped her smile immediately, leading with the day’s grim news.
“Good morning. We bring you sad news at the top of the hour. Yet another commercial airliner appears to have crashed. Rescue crews have been dispatched to the Pacific Ocean, where Liberty Airlines Flight 203 is believed to have gone down late last night. The flight was carrying 227 passengers and six crew members. Pilots alerted air traffic controllers of a cockpit electrical fire before all contact was lost. This is the third such incident in recent months, prompting lawmakers and aviation experts to call for more stringent probes of airline safety records.”
The b-roll showed the investigation radius, while Kate patiently tapped her manicured nails on the news desk.
“With us today by Skype, we have former NTSB investigator and author of the book, Flight or Fight: The Conundrum of Modern Air Travel, Randall Gibb. Randall, welcome to the program.”
Randall, a tired-looking man in his late forties, nodded. “Thanks for having me, Kate.” He had already done two talk shows that morning.
“Randall, in the span of just a few months, we’ve had several high-profile commercial airliner crashes. First we had Atlantic Jet Flight 606, crashing off the coast of Ireland. For that flight, debris and some human remains were recovered, but no black box. Then we had Island Air Flight 309 go down right outside the much-discussed Bermuda Triangle area, and in that case no wreckage has been recovered yet. And now this. Like many people who fly, I have to ask the question: What the heck is going on here?”
Randall nodded sympathetically, the way the media coach had told him—supposedly, it would make him more relatable, and therefore more likely to be called upon during these tragedies.
“I know, Kate. It seems like just yesterday I was on the show discussing Flight 309, and here we are again. Unfortunately, I think it’s just a string of bad luck, combined with poor safety protocol on behalf of the airlines. As you know, the crash of Flight 606 was believed to have been caused by an issue with the vertical stabilizer, and Island Air has been attributed to pilot error while encountering bad weather. So we’ve got equipment failures and pilot error, and it appears that this one may have been caused by yet another equipment failure.”
“A fire in the cockpit, right?”
“That’s correct,” Gibb replied. “Right now, reports seem to indicate that First Officer Jack Briganti radioed Air Traffic Control that he was experiencing trouble. Now, it appears that there was some sort of fast-moving electrical fire that obliterated their control systems. The indicators did not reflect that the plane was in this sort of peril, but obviously, if this were a complete system failure of some kind, the mechanism that operates the sensors could also fail. So we really don’t know the exact cause at this point, but we have a better idea than in some of the other accidents you mentioned.”
“So sad,” Sarah shook her head. “You know, when you hear that something like this is preventable, it just makes you even more frustrated.”
“Absolutely,” Randall agreed. “As I describe in my book, a lot of these failures are systemic, and until we start to aggressively pursue the people responsible for upholding airline industry standards, we will continue to find ourselves in this position.”
“Very true,” Kate agreed.
Then Randall decided to add a touch of wisdom. This had been another suggestion from his media coach.
“Also, the thing to remember, Kate, is that we’re dealing with machines. And machines break. It’s very unfortunate, but true. I don’t think it’s off the mark to propose that perhaps we’ve been spoiled by a few very good years of air safety, and maybe we’re just not used to dealing with these sorts of risks anymore.”
Kate and Randall chatted for the remainder of the segment, making sure to impart the proper amount of grief combined with indignation. Once the producer gave Kate the go-ahead in her earpiece, she happily dismissed Randall Gibb and waited patiently for a few seconds while they ran more coverage of the accident.
Randall wasn’t the most exciting guest, but he was the best they could do on such short notice. Kate was more excited for her interview the next day. It was with Mimi O’Halloran, the widow of doomed Liberty Airlines Flight 203 pilot Ted O’Halloran. And the producer had described the widow as “belligerent” and “furious at the airline.” It would make for excellent ratings—that much was guaranteed.
They were going to cover the Baker story again that day. The public had an insatiable need to find out where the embattled ex-NSA hacker was at every moment. Recent reports had placed him in Switzerland.
Garth usually laid claim to all of the segments on Baker, but his tardiness was putting him in danger. Sometimes when he was late, their producer liked to punish him by giving Kate the plum stories. She smiled at the thought.
Chapter Four
4
Mount Everest
South Col Route
Khumbu Icefall
Altitude 17,999 Feet
Sky set out early in the morning with Pemba and the rest of the sherpas. They would be working on the ropes and the ladders for hours. More people working on it meant that the job would be finished faster. And the Icefall was one of the most treacherous parts of every South Col expedition.
Over a mile long, the area had to be outfitted with the safety ropes and ladders that made climbing Everest possible all season long. Their group would be climbing during the most favorable part of the year, when the jet stream wasn’t pummeling the mountain with hurricane force winds. But there were still plenty of dangers during this safer time on Everest.
The faster they finished, the faster everyone could summit. And descend. This time around, all Sky cared about was survival. But survival became more unlikely with each trek through the Icefall. And each climber would have to pass through it multiple times in order to acclimatize. For this reason, Sky had suggested that the team apply for permits on the northern side of the mountain. Although the northern side was considered a more difficult route for climbing, Sky had figured that the team would be more likely to survive if they avoided the Icefall and the intense winds on the southeast ridge.
And, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, Sky would have preferred to switch up the route because the South Col brought back too many memories of the doomed expedition with her parents.
But then they hadn’t been able to secure the permits for the Tibetan side. Or perhaps the producers of the show were looking to film some more dramatic footage, evoking the parallels between this trip and the one that had taken her parents. Sky suspected the latter. There was something more TV-friendly about taking the South Col route anyway. It was the Nepalese side of the mountain, the route that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had taken during the very first Everest summit over sixty years prior. Regardless of the reason, everyone on the expedition now had to deal with the reality of the Icefall. Several times.
There was more responsibility now, with the film crew following her. More people to look out for. She wouldn’t rest until everyone had gotten back down the mountain safely.
They had started working on the Icefall in the very early morning hours. This was the safest time to be there. When the warm afternoon sun made its appearance, the blocks of ice would become much more prone to cracking, and even falling apart. Many a climber had experienced an unfortunate demise on the Icefall. Sky didn’t want herself, or anyone on her team, to suffer the same fate.
“I’ve never met an American like you before,” Pemba said as they worked quickly.
“Let me hazard a guess…” Sky smiled. “Most of the Americans you’ve worked with have been obnoxious and entitled. We’re really not as bad as we seem. I swear!”
“Obnoxious…” He tried saying the word, which sounded funny to him. “I don’t know if obnoxious…but different. You like to help us.”
Sky grinned as she glanced down at the ladder they had just set down. It bridged a huge crevasse. One false move, one misstep, and a climber would go tumbling down to a brutal death.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence. That means a lot to me, Pemba.”
“I hear stories about you when I grow up in the village,” he continued. “They say that you are most loved by the mountain.”
“Ha! Well, I certainly hope that’s true. God, I hope that’s true this time,” she replied.
“This is what they say!” Pemba exclaimed. “The mountain loves this girl, the one with hair the color of copper. When you survive your parents, some even say you have special gifts.”
Sky cackled, gasping for some more air. “If only…I could use some special gifts on this trip. That’s for sure.”
Her first Everest climb had attracted a lot of attention. Many of those in the mainstream American media were saying that it was child abuse, that Sky shouldn’t be allowed to climb, that her parents were just trying to make money off of her. For once, the eastern and western views were somewhat in line. The sherpas all agreed that it was irresponsible of her parents to let her go with them, this young slip of a thing, so skinny and new to climbing.
Now that he was working with her, Pemba could see why Sky had survived while her more experienced parents had perished. She was a natural. Her body took to the environment exceptionally well. There were some things in life that couldn’t be taught. Especially on Everest.
“We almost finish,” Pemba said appreciatively. “Thanks to your help.”
“Alright, let’s radio back to the rest of the group and then let’s blow this clambake,” Sky said, looking up towards the top of the mountain.
There was just eleven thousand more feet to climb, she told herself. If only she could will the glacier to stay whole. All it took was one piece to calve off, one section the size of a bookcase…or a car. Or a four-story building. Their fates were completely in the hands of the mountain, and that fact never ceased to terrify and amaze Sky.
“What’s a clambake?” Pemba asked.
“Oh, it’s just a silly expression,” Sky smiled. “Means that we should get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Yes, definitely,” Pemba agreed.
There had been small avalanches in the Icefall practically every two days since they’d been on the mountain. Setting up the route was a fool’s errand in itself, a highly dangerous, twisted game of chance.
