Hell Is Above Us: The Epic Race to the Top of Fumu, the World's Tallest Mountain, Jonathan Bloom [best ebook reader TXT] 📗

name of this soldier, and this soldier was Ubugai’s son. Yuudai stood at attention, looking ahead while his father continued to talk. The father explained his climbing days were well behind him, and then paused as if he were holding back tears. Three generations of Ubugai men, he continued, had climbed and enjoyed considerable success. Yuudai represented the next generation. He had a moderate amount of climbing experience and was smarter than most.

Ubugai sat back down and looked directly at the catatonic Hoyt, who did not return his gaze. He looked at him for a very long time and then presented his demands. “You must bring my son with you to this Fumu and I fully expect he will accompany you all the way to the top. Once he arrives there, he will plant our nation’s flag alongside yours.” Yuudai’s stare broke for one shocked moment, his eyes darting over to his father’s. Then the old man continued. “I will have mercenaries retrieve him - dead or alive - on the docks of Calcutta at nine pm on the first of November.”

The prisoners did not know how to respond. His demand was, on its surface, not too difficult to meet. However, the moment one scraped back the rind, one was greeted with several problems. To begin, Yuudai was Japanese, and therefore anathema in the mind of the 1940’s American. The United States had not yet experienced the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, but it was already wary of the Japanese. They had aligned with Nazi Germany and were hell-bent on conquest. Although these Americans had little involvement or interest in the war, they were not fools. They likely knew consorting with the enemy in any way could threaten their futures once they returned to the States, no matter how hard they tried to cover up where they had been. Yuudai’s nationality also posed another problem. The members of a climbing expedition needed to work together like a family of acrobats, each one placing their life in the hands of the others. Trust was of the utmost importance. “How,” Ferguson wrote, “will the team be able to work with this man, let alone look at him if he is an enemy of our nation?” What is more, this man’s father had just killed Hoyt’s brother. How in the blazes would the two ever be able to work together? It is not out of the realm of possibility that some of the Americans were already considering abandoning Yuudai the moment the planes dropped them in Nepal. However, the Major-General had made it clear that Yuudai was one of them: A climber. There was an unspoken code among climbers that they look out for one another. William Hoyt had broken that code once before on Everest, and was not likely to do it again. No, Yuudai would not be abandoned.

Ubugai looked at them for a long time in the silence. “So? Do you agree or do I kill you all?” Hoyt was still silent. Wilde, who was unofficially second in command, agreed to the offer. This apparently made Hoyt look up at Drake, but only for a moment. He was then back to staring at nothing. The Major-General smiled and, in a Western gesture, put out his hand which Drake shook heartily without a moment’s hesitation. He then bowed, and knowing a little about Japanese culture, Wilde bowed lower.

Then Wilde had a moment of concern. “The Sherpa” he said. They were planning on meeting their Sherpa and porters in Rangoon. How would they handle this problem? Ubugai told them not to worry. He would send soldiers out to the mainland who would in turn pass the information along to spies. The spies would then catch up with the Sherpa in Rangoon and let them know where to meet Hoyt and his men. The soldiers would leave with the message that evening and the Sherpa would know within twenty-four hours. “You may have to wait several weeks for the Sherpa to arrive at Fumu, but they will arrive.”

The climbers were released long before dawn on the fourth day of their captivity. As they walked out of the giant cell, they looked back at the sailors, actors, writers, and directors. Ubugai had made it clear that the sailors were officially prisoners of war. They would not be going anywhere. Ubugai also pointed out that because the sailors’ mission had been secretive, the United States could not loudly respond to this as an act of war. The actors, writers, and directors were more of an issue. The burden of keeping all of them imprisoned was more than Ubugai wished to take on, not to mention their histrionics got on his nerves. They would be released in a few months and placed on the Auxesis.

However, in the months before they were let go, Ubugai chose to take advantage of the presence of the entertainers. Along with the best writers and actors in Japanese Shingeki theatre, Ubugai decided to give the Chinese a taste of their own medicine. Japanese soldiers in charge of sending messages via radio were given scripts and acting lessons. They could not use the “tsunami play” because the Chinese would be aware of the ruse and ignore it. Therefore, Ubugai himself oversaw the creation of a new script, one in which the United States unleashed a surprise attack upon Japan using a phalanx of “giant, amphibious war machines.” Each treaded behemoth was a thousand feet high and covered with spinning cannons, flamethrowers, and catapults throwing containers of mustard gas. The machines had risen from the depths of the South Pacific and had cut a swath of destruction across the island. The radio men speaking the information over the radio were sure to use voices laced with panic and terror. They shook as they read their lines into the microphones. They pleaded with others to check on their families in their homes towns. They cried openly. Then they continued the charade through choked up voices: Based