The billionaire pulled the oxygen mask away from his face to study the corpse.
“Adeline Smith died here, on the way down,” Jack said. He leaned over so his face was just inches from Paulson’s. “She’s warning us, Al. Getting to the summit means nothing if we can’t get back down alive.”
Paulson nodded, replaced his oxygen mask, and resumed his slow ascent.
At first light, Jack indicated they should stop for a breather at the base of a slight gully. He pointed with his ice axe toward the Southeast as the dawn illuminated Makalu, the world’s fifth highest peak. “You’re seeing some of God’s best handiwork, right here in the Himalayas.”
Paulson nodded, but didn’t bother to drop the oxygen mask and respond.
After climbing for what seemed like an eternity, Jack looked up to find the Hillary Step right in front of them. He leaned against his ice axe, breathing in deep gasps.
The Hillary Step, named after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to summit Mt. Everest, was a seventy-foot near-vertical rock face. On a good summit day, it created a natural log jam because climbers could climb through it only one at time. No one was waiting today, partly because Jack and Paulson weren’t climbing during high season and partly because the earlier storm had trapped what few climbers were on the mountain well below the summit.
“Stop here. I’ll climb to the top and belay you up.”
Paulson’s head drooped and his eyes looked glassy. His ass is kicked, Jack thought with a tinge of uneasiness. He pulled his oxygen mask down and looked the billionaire in the face. “Are you okay?”
Paulson’s voice was raspy and weak. “Never…felt…better.”
Jack gave him a pat on the back. He clipped into one of the fixed ropes and climbed his way to the top of the Step. Once there, he pulled down the oxygen mask and yelled, “Make sure you don’t get hung up on the lines.”
Paulson clipped on to the fixed line and slowly worked up the Hillary Step. He stopped halfway up, pulled down his mask, and coughed bloody mucus onto the ice.
Christ, Jack thought. The exhilaration of the extraordinary summit weather slipped away.
“It’s nothing,” Paulson croaked. “Dry throat.”
Paulson’s coughing subsided quickly, providing Jack a temporary feeling of relief.
Once the billionaire climbed to the top of the Hillary Step, they had one narrow section and then an easy slope that finished on the Summit. Jack decided not to tell Paulson how close they were to the top. No sense in allowing him to get careless. One missed step and it was 10,000 nearly vertical feet down.
After thirty more minutes of climbing, Jack slapped his client on the back. “You got this baby in the bag!”
“What?” Paulson lifted his head and shaded his eyes.
“A few more feet and you’re standing on the summit of Mt. Everest.”
The billionaire instantly appeared energized. A spring returned to his step, and he bounded up the slope toward the summit. At 10:26 a.m. local time, Alan Paulson stood at the highest point on planet Earth, alone in his victory. He raised the ice axe over his head and dropped to his knees.
Jack slowly inched out the final step to the summit, and the two climbers embraced. Tears ran down their cheeks. The release of emotion was nearly unbearable.
It’s always the same, Jack thought. Those who didn’t climb couldn’t know the feeling of total release and complete satisfaction the summit brought. It was like no other emotion.
Paulson pulled from his pocket a note that Candice had written. After reading it, the billionaire let it fly with the wind. It carried off the summit, swirling up in the building breeze.
Jack reached into his pack and removed two cameras: a thirty-five millimeter automatic and a smaller digital. He snapped pictures of Paulson standing on the summit and then stowed them deep in his pack.
“We’ve got to go,” he said, pointing down the mountain. “You know getting to the summit is just half the deal. We gotta get back to camp four and the oxygen bottles or we’re both dead.”
They made good time off the summit and soon found themselves at the top of the Hillary Step. “Let me check your air supply,” Jack said. The needles indicating the amount of oxygen remaining in the cylinder floated well into the red. “You’re running an empty bottle. I’m giving you mine, but you’ve got to conserve it.”
Jack had the strength to make it to camp four without oxygen, but the billionaire didn’t. He cranked the flow rate up to three liters per hour.
“I feel a hundred percent better,” Paulson said.
“Don’t waste it,” urged Jack. “Get a move on.”
The billionaire pointed down the slopes of Everest toward two small figures slowly making their way up from the South Summit. “We’ve got company.”
It was Nash, climbing slowly toward the Hillary Step. To Jack’s horror, he saw that Alex was “short roped.” Guides used “short roping” only during emergencies. Kent worked almost like a mule hitched to a wagon, pulling Alex up the mountain.
“Pay attention and get down the Hillary Step,” Jack said.
The billionaire turned around, faced the mountain and climbed slowly down the narrow pitch. He nearly made it down when one of the sharp points on his crampon caught his climbing suit, and Paulson fell the remaining ten feet to the bottom of the Step.
Jack slid down the fixed line, landing beside his client. He leaned down and pulled Paulson to his feet. “I told you to watch that footing.”
“Sorry,” Paulson wheezed.
Jack pointed down to the footprints in the snow they had made on the way up. “Use our footsteps exactly.”
Minutes later, Jack looked up from the ice and saw Nash climbing toward them. Alex Stein’s head jerked backward, like something out of a ‘50s black-and-white horror movie, with every step Nash made toward the summit.
“Hey, Jack,” Nash said. “Did you guys bag it?”
“Turn around,” Jack ordered. “He’s barely conscious and you still have a long way to go.”
Nash bent over and leaned against his ice axe. He shook his head before speaking. “I have to get him to the summit,” he said. “It’s worth an extra fifty grand.”
Jack struggled to keep his anger under control. “It’s not worth it. Alex isn’t making it.”
“Keep climbing,” said a raspy voice from behind Nash. “I’m not stopping now.” Alex Stein broke into a racking cough that nearly buckled his knees.
Nash smiled weakly between cracked and bleeding lips. “We’re going ahead. We’ll tell you all about it at base camp.”
Jack pointed toward Alex. “He’s your responsibility, Kent.”
Nash’s eyes hardened. “See you in base camp.”
Paulson kept up a good pace for nearly three hours but suddenly slowed again. Jack looked down the mountain, anxiously searching for camp four. They still had nearly a thousand vertical feet to climb down, much of it on steep, treacherous ice.
“Let me check your air.” Jack wiped at the gauge while Paulson bent over, his chest heaving with every breath. “Shit…. Empty.”
“I haven’t touched the setting,” Paulson said. “I swear.”
“Hose leak,” Jack said, swearing under his breath. “I can see where leaking oxygen froze on the regulator, maybe when you took that fall.”
“I’m tired, Jacky,” Paulson said weakly. “The climb down is killing me.” The billionaire used his ice axe as a crutch to help support his body weight. “I don’t think I can climb without the O’s.”
“We’ve talked about this a hundred times,” Jack said. “If you’re going to die on Everest, it’s on the way down, not on the way up.” He pointed down the enormous mountain. “It’s not far. You have to make it without the extra oxygen.”