Sam closed his eyes, took a breath, and turned the key again.
The starter clicked over, the engine coughed once, then again, then roared to life.
Sam was about to shift into gear when they felt the Toyota lurch forward. Remi turned in her seat and saw water lapping at the lower edge of the door.
“Sam . . .” Remi warned.
Eyes on the rearview mirror, Sam replied, “I see it.”
He shifted into reverse and pressed the accelerator. The Toyota’s four-wheel drive bit down. The vehicle began inching backward, the quarter panels shrieking as they were dragged along the rock walls.
They were shoved forward again.
“I’m losing traction,” Sam said, worried that the rising water would drown the engine.
He pressed the accelerator again, and they felt the tires grab hold, only to give way again.
Sam pounded the steering wheel. “Damn!”
“We’re afloat,” Remi said.
Even as the words left her mouth, the Toyota’s hood was being shoved deeper into the slot. Nose-heavy from the engine, the vehicle began tipping downward as the tide shoved the rear upward.
Sam and Remi were silent for a moment, listening to the water rush around the car and bracing themselves against the dashboard as the Toyota continued pitching downward.
“How long would we last in the water?” Remi asked.
“Providing we’re not instantly crushed to pulp? Five minutes until the cold gets us; past that, we lose motor control and go under.”
Water began gushing through the door seams.
Remi said, “Let’s not do that, then.”
“Right.” Sam closed his eyes, thinking. Then: “The winch. We’ve got them on each bumper.”
He searched the dashboard for the controls. He found a toggle switch labeled Rear and flipped it from Off to Neutral. He said to Remi, “When I give the word, flip that to Engage.”
“You think it’s powerful enough to drag us?”
“No,” Sam replied. “I need a headlamp.”
Remi rummaged around the backpack and came out with the headlamp. Sam settled it on his head, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then climbed over the seat, using the headrest as a handhold. He repeated this maneuver until he was wedged into the Toyota’s cargo area. He unlatched the glass hatch, shoved it open, then, lying with his back pressed against the seat, mule-kicked the hatch until the glass tore free from its hinges and plunged into the water. He stood up.
Below, the water churned over the Toyota’s undercarriage. Icy mist billowed around him.
Remi called, “The engine’s dead.”
Sam hinged forward at the waist, reached down, and grabbed the winch hook with both hands. Hand over hand, he began taking up the slack.
The winch froze.
“Climb up to me!”
Remi scrabbled over the front seat, reached back, retrieved the backpack, and handed it to Sam, then used his extended arm to climb into the cargo area.
“No!” she cried.
“What?”
Sam looked down. The beam of his headlamp illuminated a ghostly white face pressed against plastic sheeting.
“Sorry,” Sam said. “I forgot to tell you. Meet the real Mr. Thule.”
“Poor man.”
The Toyota shuddered, slid sideways a few feet, then stopped, wedged tightly in the rock archway and standing perfectly upright.
Remi tore her eyes off the dead man’s face and said, “I assume we’re climbing again.”
“With any luck.”
Sam peeked over the tailgate. The water had enveloped the rear tires.
“How long?” she asked.
“Two minutes. Help me.”
He turned his body sideways, and Remi helped him don the backpack. Next, he flipped his right leg over the tailgate, then his left, then slowly stood up, arms extended for balance. Once steady, he shone his headlamp over the rock face beside the Toyota.
It took him three passes before he found what he needed: a two-inch-wide vertical fissure fifteen feet above them and three feet to the right. Above that, a series of handholds that led to the top of the cliff.
“Okay, hand it up,” Sam said to Remi.
She extended the winch hook toward him. He leaned down, grabbed it. His foot slipped, and he crashed onto one knee. He regained his balance and stood erect again, this time with his left arm braced on the Toyota’s roof rack.
“Go get ’em, cowboy,” Remi said with a brave smile.
Winch hook dangling from his right hand, Sam swung the cable like a propeller until he’d gained enough momentum, then let it fly. The hook clinked against the rock face, slid sideways over the fissure, and plunged into the water.
Sam retrieved the hook and tried again. Another miss.
He felt cold water envelop his left foot. He looked down. The water was past the bumper and was now lapping up against the tailgate.
“We’ve sprung more leaks,” Remi said.
Sam tossed the hook again. This time it slid cleanly into the fissure and bit down momentarily before coming free.
“Fourth time’s the charm, right?”
“I think the phrase is-”
“Work with me, Fargo.”
Sam chuckled. “Right.”
Sam took a moment to tune out the churning water and the pounding of his heart. He closed his eyes, refocused, then opened his eyes and began swinging the cable again.
He let go.
The hook sailed upward, clanked off the rock, and began sliding toward the fissure. Sam realized the speed was too great. As the hook skipped over the crack, he snapped the cable sideways. The hook snapped backward like a striking snake and wedged itself in the fissure.
Gently, Sam gave the cable a tug. It held. Another tug. The hook slipped, then bit down again. Then, hand over hand, he began taking up tension on the cable until the hook was buried up to its eyelet.
“Yee-haw!” Remi called.
Sam extended his hand and helped Remi over the tailgate. Water was sloshing over their feet and tumbling into the Toyota’s interior. Remi nodded toward the corpse of Mr. Thule.
“I don’t suppose we could take him with us?”
“Let’s not push our luck,” Sam replied. “We will, however, add him to the list of things Charlie King and his evil spawn have to answer for.”
Remi sighed, nodded.
Sam gestured grandly to the cable. “Ladies first.”
18
LO MONTHANG,
MUSTANG, NEPAL
Twenty hours after Sam and Remi climbed over the cliff top and left the Toyota to the waters of the Kali Gandaki, the pickup truck in whose bed they were riding coasted to a stop at a fork in the dirt road.
The driver, Mukti, a gap-toothed Nepali with a crew cut, called through the back window, “Lo Monthang,” and pointed at the road heading north.
Sam gently shook Remi awake from her curled position against a bag of goat feed and said, “Home sweet home.”
She groaned, pushed aside the coarse cotton, and sat up, yawning. “I was having the weirdest dream,” she said. “Something similar to The Poseidon Adventure, but we were trapped inside a Toyota Land Cruiser.”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Are we there?”
“More or less.”
Sam and Remi thanked the driver, climbed out, and watched as the truck turned onto the south fork and disappeared around the bend. “Too bad about the language barrier,” Remi said.
With only a smattering of Nepali words and phrases between them, neither Sam nor Remi had been able to tell their driver that he had possibly saved their lives. For all he knew, he’d simply picked up a pair of wayward foreigners who’d somehow lost their tour group. His indulgent smile suggested this was not a rare event in these parts.
Now, exhausted but thankfully warm and dry, they stood on the outskirts of their destination.
Surrounded by a tall wall of patchwork rock, brick, and mud-thatch mortar, the ancient capital of the once-great Kingdom of Mustang was small, occupying a half mile square in a shallow valley surrounded by low rolling hills. Inside Lo Monthang’s walls, most of the structures were also constructed from a mishmash of mud and brick, all of it painted in shades of white ranging from grayish to brownish and bordered with layered thatch roofing. Four structures rose above the rest: the Royal Palace and the red-roofed Chyodi, Champa, and Tugchen temples.