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“You were talking about the border cordon near the mountain,” someone turned to the Indian general.
“The distance is long. We are thinking over this option.”
“Don’t we have any possibility to send a special team there?” Igor Komarov stepped in.
“Shall we send another helicopter there when the weather is even worse than in the morning?” The Nepalese general asked. “We are definitely not going to do that. We are trying to get a rescue team as close to the quadrant as possible. But the area is very difficult.”
Jean-Jacques Dordain stood up and thanked the young man from the airport.
“Gentlemen, I suggest we take a short break until our colleagues have some concrete information.”
Jean-Jacques Dordain was approached by his assistant and said something in his ear. He nodded and pointed to the screen behind him.
“Gentlemen, we have an update on the weather conditions.”
An image appeared on the screen. The large bright spiral of clouds, captured from the satellite, looked dreadful and fearful.
“Just above Kanchenjunga a cyclone about one hundred and fifty kilometers wide is now unfolding. Let’s keep this in mind in our plans,” said Mr. Dordain.
People began to rise from their seats.
In a minute several people had gathered around Jean-Jacques Dordain’s table: Igor Komarov, Charles Bolden and others.
Charles Bolden began:
“We have checked the signal quality and determined that this is definitely a recording from Voyager 2. This is it.”
“Okay,” reasoned the head of the ESA aloud. “We have a signal that we sent into space to inform about our location.”
“But the signal is coming from the Earth,” added Igor.
“On the frequency of space transmissions,” Charles nodded.
“A weather anomaly, an electromagnetic flare…” Jean-Jacques Dordain pondered. “We need at least something. Some kind of clue.”
Monsieur Dordain’s young assistant couldn’t take it anymore:
“Perhaps our message has been received,” he hesitated, “and now it has been sent to us using some device that exists on the Earth.”
Everyone turned to the assistant.
“A little more realistic, Francois,” said Monsieur Dordain grudgingly.
At the other end of the hall, Bernard Bajolet was sitting at his desk, dialing Jean-Pierre’s phone for the third time. “The mobile phone you are trying to call has been switched off, Please Try again Later.” He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. Then he called the accounting department.
“Good afternoon, this is Bernard Bajolet, please find me the phone number of my assistant’s wife, Jean-Pierre Biro,” he paused. “As quickly as possible.”
Part 2 – Chapter 22
Debby listened intensely. She searched for something to latch onto in the surrounding sounds, but found nothing. All she could hear was the wind rubbing against the hull of the plane. It sounded like a whistle or a hum. Debby closed her eyes and felt her rib cage rise and fall heavily. She listened to her unnaturally loud breathing. Someone ran to the door and stopped. She heard Jean-Pierre shouting outside in English:
“Hurry, we’re here!”
He ran inside, out of breath, but with burning eyes. His face said, “we are saved!”
“There are people! They are coming to us!” he swallowed. “How do you feel?”
Debby closed her eyes and exhaled, her lips expressing either a smile or despair. The pain didn’t stop for a moment, but she felt joy. Now they were going to get help. Consciousness, clouded by pain, suddenly sank into euphoria.
Jean-Pierre looked out again.
“We are here!” he shouted, calling out to the people.
Debby began to listen to what was going on outside. She could hear several people approaching.
Two Nepalese military men, a tourist, an elderly man, and a girl approached what was left of the tail section of the plane. Jean-Pierre raised his hand up, examining their clothes. He strained to think what could be the reason for such a combination of civilians and military, people of different nationalities, and in the middle of the mountains, where not a hint of civilization was visible. Jean-Pierre saw that the young man was carrying a hiking backpack on his shoulders, while the others were not even wearing warm clothes. The Frenchman tried to push the thoughts away. Somewhere deep inside there was a doubt, “They can’t help.” The group came closer to Jean-Pierre, and a civilian who was older than the others stepped forward.
“Hey, what happened?” Dr Capri asked briefly in English.
“Hi, I’m Jean-Pierre Biro. I was on a Paris-Tokyo flight. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the tail of our plane fell off and we…”
“We? Who’s with you?”
“There’s a woman here who needs help. It looks like a closed leg fracture,” Jean-Pierre pointed to the ajar door of the toilet.
Dr Capri began to translate Jean-Pierre’s report into Nepali. Yulia and David moved toward the mangled part of the plane, Jean-Pierre guiding them.
David looked at the massive steel tail that was wedged between two huge blocks of rock, assessed the slope of the mountain with doubt, and shifted his eyebrows. “Some sort of mystery. Two plane crashes in an hour. What’s going on here?” He followed Jean-Pierre and couldn’t believe the man in front of him was a plane crash survivor.
Debby saw shadows outside. Strange faces peeked into the room. When Debby saw Yulia, she stopped feeling pain for a second.
“Oh!” she let out a relieved shout along with a smile.
Yulia walked in and took her hand. She stood awkwardly, half-bent, in the confined space.
“Hi,” David said, standing behind Yulia. “We’ll help you. How are you feeling?”
Debby was relieved to see Yulia and David, but instantly she was tired, and somehow she felt sleepy. She felt almost safe.
“Hi,” Debby said to both David and Yulia, and to all the people who looked through the doorway of the toilet room one by one.
She saw Jean-Pierre’s face and felt like she’d known him almost all her life.
“I’m fine, but I can’t move my leg,” Debby added.
The helicopter captain and Dr Capri tried to approach Debby. To do so, they had to push Yulia and David outside. They sat squatting near Debby’s legs, which were lying in the doorway.
“Yes, it’s a closed fracture, she needs to go to the hospital right away,” the helicopter captain said in Nepali, examining Debby’s leg.
“What can we do, the helicopter is broken, right?” looking at Debby, Dr Capri asked the captain.
“We have to get the helicopter working and take her to the nearest town with a hospital,” said the captain, “otherwise… based on the blue toes on her leg…” he paused again. “We need to try to get the helicopter up, or find a village nearby.”
“Can you get a helicopter up here?” Dr Capri asked.
“If we can take off,” said the captain as he stood up, “but it would be better to take her to the helicopter.”
They moved away from the room, making some space for Yulia and David. Jean-Pierre approached them to discuss the plan. They agreed that the girl had a closed fracture and many bruises, and they needed to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible.
“It’s amazing how you survived,” Dr Capri shook his head. “Surviving a plane crash.”
“Now we need to help the American girl and send rescuers to search for the plane,” concluded Jean-Pierre.
Captain Shah nodded:
“Yes, and as fast as we could.”
He put the first aid kit he had taken from the helicopter in front of him and pulled out a painkiller. He put the liquid in a syringe and went into the tail section of the plane to give Debby the injection.
Dr Capri looked around at everyone standing outside.
In the middle of the beautiful mountain landscape, standing next to the wreckage, were people who shouldn’t have been here at all. And the doctor understood that very well. He knew this country, he knew what was possible here and what was not. What he saw in front of him in no way fit into his already complicated plans for the day.
He looked at Yulia, who did not fully, but certainly understood the complexity of the whole situation better than anyone else. She knew for a fact that the helicopter would almost certainly not take off. She knew for a fact that the plane had crashed for the same reason that their helicopter. And so David’s phone went crazy for the same reason. And it all started with that signal they detected in Kathmandu. And the source of that signal is somewhere near here.
The doctor shifted his gaze to David, who emerged from the remains of the plane. He was sitting beside his backpack, opening it and taking out his goods. Captain Shah showed him to keep the girl warm. And David got the sleeping bag for that.
The doctor shifted his gaze to the Frenchman, who was standing beside him, looking questioningly straight at him, trying to figure out what was going on. The man seemed to see right through the doctor. There was doubt and disbelief on his face.
The doctor felt a gust of cold wind and saw dark clouds coming toward them from behind the mountains. They were spreading across the sky and growing larger as they swallowed the air. The sunlight began to change, as if it were sunset. A sharp gust staggered those who were standing on their feet.
“We can carry her in the sleeping bag,” David suggested.
“We need something solid,” Jean-Pierre pondered. “A stretcher.”
The captain came out of the wreckage and nodded to the doctor. Tulu-Manchi stepped inside and leaned over to Debby.
“We have a helicopter. It has everything we need to help you,” he looked at Yulia and back at Debby. “We need to get you to the hospital, and the sooner, the better.”
“Where can we find a stretcher?” David asked Jean-Pierre.
“How far is your helicopter?” Jean-Pierre asked.
“About twenty minutes from here,” answered the doctor briefly.
Jean-Pierre felt the snowflakes start to touch his face. He looked around at everyone. Yulia was wrapping Debby in the sleeping bag. David was handing her warm clothes out of his backpack. The doctor was standing next to the military, discussing something. Anger began to grow in Jean-Pierre’s chest. He was eager for action and realized that every second of delay was a risk to Debby’s life. “If the storm starts, we’re stuck here.”
Jean-Pierre walked over to the plane and looked through the doorway. He clenched his fist, looking at Debby, then shifted his gaze to the black clouds. Then paused, staring ahead of him in thoughtfulness. A sharp gust of wind hit him in the shoulder.
The tail of the plane rattled and staggered. The people inside shrieked briefly. Jean-Pierre grabbed at the hull, trying to hold the huge wreckage in place with his own strength.
“Get out!” shouted Jean-Pierre.
“How are we going to get Debby out?” Yulia answered loudly.
Dr Capri and the military ran up to the tail; they rested against the steel plating and began putting rocks under the underside of the plane to stop it from moving. The tail of the plane froze in place.
“Hold it!” shouted Jean-Pierre to the military outside, making his way to the lavatory.
He took hold of the ajar door and began swinging it from side to side. The top edge had already been broken off, and under a few pulls the door gave way and fell off.
“Help me put her here,” Jean-Pierre commanded, pushing Yulia aside and turning to David.
David hesitated for a second, but then, remembering how easily the plane gave way to a gust of wind, reached over to Debby’s head. Her feet lay outside the toilet. Jean-Pierre carefully slid the door under Debby, David took hold of her shoulders. They slowly began to lift Debby up, and she pressed her lips together with a premonition that she was about to feel a sharp pain. Jean-Pierre and David slowly placed the American woman on the door.
“Quickly!” Yulia shouted outside.
Without collusion, David and Jean-Pierre abruptly lifted the door and took a step to the ground. The plane groaned again. Dr Capri stood beside it, with his hands resting on the hull, while the military threw rocks under the belly of the hulk. The doctor saw everyone out of the plane and stepped aside. The giant wreck tilted on its side, and the rocks began to roll from under it. The wind howled again sharply and the plane jumped a few centimeters. Then it rolled for a few meters and flipped on its belly. David and Jean-Pierre breathed nervously as they stared at the scene.
“This is going to end very badly,” Yulia said quietly in Russian.
Dr Capri looked at the military, who were also, out of breath, staring at the flipped tail. Captain Shah turned to the doctor.
“We won’t get the helicopter up in this weather, we have to find shelter nearby.”
Dr Capri relayed this to everyone else. Jean-Pierre nodded. He looked at Debby, she was losing her composure: her eyes were rolling and her breathing had become quite heavy.
“Let’s go,” Jean-Pierre nodded again.
“We will go forward and try to find shelter, move to that rock over there,” said Captain Shah and pointed to the elevation.
The military ran up the slope. Dr Capri took David’s backpack, which lay on the ground:
“Follow them. Yulia, hold Debby’s leg; I’ll walk ahead, so we don’t lose the soldiers.”
Yulia inhaled loudly and exhaled. She had felt like her limit had been reached the moment she had boarded the helicopter in Kathmandu. By now, she had forgotten herself and was simply obeying her instincts and Dr Capri.
The wind hit the rocks in sharp gusts and lifted small stones. They shuffled the ground and complemented the rumble of the wind with a crackling sound. Debby cried softly and Yulia ran up to her. She took her hand and squeezed it tightly. Dr Capri walked forward and shouted, addressing Jean-Pierre first.
“Follow me!”
“Go!” Jean-Pierre commanded and followed the doctor.
Part 2 – Chapter 23
“I can’t see them!” the doctor shouted. “Hurry up!”
Tulu-Manchi walked ahead and shouted back without looking. He gazed anxiously into the dim space in front of him. He was almost running, doubting every step. Torn between rushing forward and losing the porters behind him, or hesitating and condemning them to the fate of a mountain storm.
