Remi took a step forward; Sam halted her with a hand on her shoulder. He probed the ice in front of the gondola, found it solid, then began poking around what should have been its sides.
“There’s more,” Sam said.
They continued sidestepping left, paralleling the gondola, probing as they went, until they reached the end.
Sam frowned and said, “Curiouser and curiouser.”
Remi asked. “How long is it?”
“Roughly thirty feet.”
“That’s impossible. Aren’t most maybe three feet by three feet?”
“More or less.” He slid the probe over the gondola’s upturned bottom as far as he could reach. “Nearly eight feet wide.”
Sam handed her the probe, then knelt down and crawled forward, hands sliding through the snow along the gondola’s side.
“Sam, be care—”
His arm plunged into the snow up to his elbow. He froze.
“I can’t be entirely sure,” he said with a grin, “but I think I found something.” He laid himself flat.
“I got you,” Remi replied. She grabbed his boots.
Sam used both hands to punch a basketball-sized hole in the ice, then poked his head inside. He turned back to Remi. “A crevasse. Very deep. The gondola’s half straddling it diagonally.”
He took another peek through the hole, then wriggled back away from the crevasse and pushed himself to his knees. He said, “I’ve found the answer to how it got here.”
“How?”
“It flew. There’s rigging still attached to the gondola—wooden stays, some kind of braided cord . . . I even saw what looked like a fabric of some sort. The whole tangled mess is hanging in the crevasse.”
Remi sat down beside him, and they stared at the gondola for a bit. Remi said, “A mystery for another time?”
Sam nodded. “Absolutely. We’ll mark it and come back.”
They stood up. Sam cocked his head. “Listen.”
Faintly in the distance came the chopping of helicopter rotors. They turned around, trying to localize the sound. Standing beside the Bell, Hosni had heard it too. He stared up at the sky.
Suddenly to their left an olive green helicopter popped over the ridgeline, then dropped into the valley and turned in their direction. On the aircraft’s door was a five-pointed red star outlined in yellow.
The helicopter drew even with the plateau and slowed to a hover fifty feet from Sam and Remi, nose cone and rocket pods pointed directly at them.
“Don’t move,” Sam said.
“Chinese Army?” asked Remi.
“Yes. Same as the Z-9 we spotted yesterday.”
“What do they want?”
Before Sam could answer, the helicopter pivoted, revealing an open cabin door. In it, a soldier crouched behind a mounted machine gun.
Sam could sense Remi’s body go tense beside him. He slowly grasped her hand in his. “Don’t run. If they wanted us dead, we’d already be dead.”
Out of the corner of his eye Sam saw movement. He glanced toward the helicopter and saw Hosni opening the side door. A moment later he emerged. In his hands was a compact machine gun. He raised it toward the Z-9.