Chapter 23

CHAPTER 23 The Hillary Step was a fifty-five-foot cliff in the sky— Mount Everest's last cruel joke on its exhausted, breathless, hypothermic climbers. At a lower altitude, it would have presented a minor obstacle to a seasoned mountaineer. But at nearly 29,000 feet— well above the summit of K-2, the world's second-highest peak— each tiny movement was a guided tour through a world of pain. The three bone-weary Holts watched in dismay as Ian Kabra's Sherpa team dragged their Lucian rival up the Step, literally carrying him as they ascended the tangle of fixed ropes left over from decades of expeditions. "No fair!" bawled Hamilton. What would normally have been a bellow barely made it past the plastic of his oxygen mask. "Lucian cheater!" panted Reagan.

Their Tomas strength had enabled the Holts to acclimatize for the Himalayan ascent in a fraction of the usual time. Yet they were still subject to Everest's merciless ravages. The three were exhausted, freezing, dehydrated, and oxygen starved. Ian, by contrast, was warm and comfortable in his space suit. And thanks to his Sherpa bearers, he probably wasn't even very tired. The summit ridge was blanketed in waist-deep snow from the recent blizzards. The Holts were swimming the mountain as much as climbing it. Reagan was now thinking enviously of her sister's hospital bed. She knew she couldn't go much farther. Eisenhower Holt let out a howl of pure emotion that started a small avalanche on the Step. They were not going to lose to those Kabras again! When he spoke, the focus of a champion athlete was unmistakable behind his crushing fatigue. "Kids, we don't get much respect from the rest of the family. But we're part of a great tradition, stretching back five hundred years to Thomas Cahill himself. Ham, stay with your sister. I'm

going to show the world what the Tomas can do!" He took off through the deep snowdrifts, a study in determination and raw power. He hit the ropes of the Hillary Step, climbing hand over hand without pausing for rest. Any mountaineer would have claimed it was physically impossible. There were no such words in the Holt vocabulary. At the top, he disappeared into the blowing snow, but they heard his booming voice: "Eat my dust, Kabra!" "He's ahead!" Reagan croaked. Hamilton nodded in admiration and pride. He'd spent most of his life thinking of his father as kind of a boob. But here on Mount Everest, Eisenhower Holt was the boob you wanted on your side. "No one can beat him to the summit now!" The Ecureuil/A-Star 350 climbed higher and higher into the thin air, soaring past altitudes far beyond the ceiling of any other helicopter in the world. For Amy and Dan, who had been through some

pretty terrifying experiences, this was the ultimate terror. The A-Star was so tiny and insubstantial that they felt completely unprotected, as if this were some demented theme park ride, out in the open, six miles above sea level. The brutal Himalayan winds buffeted the ultralight craft, tossing it around like a Ping-Pong ball in a hurricane. Amy and Dan clutched at each other because there was literally nothing else to hold on to. The closer they got to the mountain, the more defined Everest became from its neighbors— higher, massive, with a distinctive white plume streaming from its peak. "Is that a cloud?" Dan asked, shouting to get the words past his breathing apparatus. Their pilot provided the answer. "The top of Everest reaches into the jet stream," he called back. "What you see are millions of ice crystals blowing off the summit. I told you this was no sightseeing tour. Prepare for what you Americans call a bumpy ride." It was no exaggeration. The closer they got to

the summit, the more ferocious the gyrations of the A-Star became. "How are we going to land?" Amy shrilled in a panic. "We'll crash into the mountain!" The pilot's upper body shook, as if the controls were manipulating him rather than the other way around. Except for the turbulence, they were barely moving now, trying to hover over the peak. Suddenly, the world disappeared as they passed through the ice plume. They were flying blind at the very edge of the atmosphere. A sudden drop and bump drew screams from both Cahills. "What happened?" Dan wailed. "You wanted the summit; you are there," the pilot informed them. He indicated the altimeter: 29,035 feet. There could be no higher reading. Not on earth. "We— we made it?" Amy stammered. She had fully expected to be smashed to pieces far below. "Vite! Hurry!" he ordered. "We have five minutes at the most! I cannot shut down the engine for fear it will not restart!" With a pop, he

opened the bubble. Amy and Dan wasted precious seconds unclipping their belts and struggling out of the A-Star. They'd had a zero percent expectation of making it this far, so there was no concrete plan of what to do now. The search for the 39 Clues had brought them to some amazing places, but the summit of Mount Everest literally topped them all. The cold was indescribable, the wind an unrelenting onslaught. They had to crawl away from the chopper to get clear of the rotor blades. Even with supplemental oxygen from their masks, the effort left them gasping for air that simply wasn't there. Yet nothing could move Amy's mind from the magnificence of this spot. "Everything's down!" she exclaimed in wonder. "There's no up anymore! Even the clouds are below us!" The world's pinnacle! No amount of research could have prepared her for this spectacular place. Gargantuan peaks rose all around, but their perch was the highest of all, dominating the planet's loftiest neighborhood. Lhotse, at nearly twenty