"C'mon, give me something to see," Rick Montana muttered under his breath. He peered intently out the windshield, as if he could burn a hole in the cloud cover with his eyes.

"Altitude eighteen-five," reminded Andy "Ace" McNally from the copilot's seat.

That meant they'd dropped five hundred feet in the last few minutes. Back home in California, that would be high flying, but up here ground level was around fifteen thousand feet. Up ahead, hidden from view, there were mountains upwards of twenty-five thousand. The plane's service ceiling was around twenty-two. That gave them a narrow window for maneuvering.

This was how it happened, Montana knew, how your number came up. He'd flown through enough mountainous terrain in his time. You broke through the clouds to come face to face with a mountainside, seconds from impact.

He could come down a little, hope to drop below the clouds. But that high plateau down there was anything but flat. There were ridges and hills and lakes strewn about, a labyrinth of obstacles to surmount before that magnificent mountain that was their ultimate destination.

"Mary, how long now?" he called back.

Mary Matsushita, seated directly behind Ace, quickly ran through the calculations again: the three hours and forty-five minutes since they'd left Lhasa, the heading, airspeed, and distance. There were no aeronautical charts of this area. They best they could do was a very general map of the region that Raleigh had provided from the Royal Geographical Society. They were flying over some of the most remote terrain on the face of the earth. "About fifteen minutes, maybe ten," she told Rick.

"I'm throttling back to one-eighty, buy us a little more time," Montana told his passengers. "And I'm dropping it to seventeen thousand. Everybody keep a watch out the windows. Let me know the second you see anything."

"Nothing to port," said Viktor Petrovich from the seat behind Rick.

"And nothing to starboard," affirmed Raleigh Royce, the only other one aboard. "Nothing out there but bloody pea soup."

Montana was at least thankful that the clouds hadn't closed in earlier. They'd spent two months preparing for this expedition, including setting up the refueling cache four hundred miles out on the plateau. This morning, if he would have had to rely on IFR-instrument flight rules-it would have been dicey indeed. Like Amelia Earhart missing Howland Island. He'd named the plane in honor of Amelia; it was a Lockheed Electra Model 12, the little sister to Earhart's Model 10. He made the adjustments and stared out into the cold white nothingness. A bit of irony came to him: that mountain they were going to climb, Kunlun, in the local language translated to "mountain of blinding darkness." But to approach it meant battling a blinding whiteness.

Rick felt the slight shudder in the wingtips. "Wind's picking up," he said. "Maybe it'll blow these clouds out for us." Indeed, the cover did seem to be lightening. Just for an instant, he thought he saw a hazy speck of blue.

As they edged to seventeen thousand feet, wispy tendrils began to alternate with clear sky. Then, one more nebulous mass, one more moment of flying blind, and they broke free . . . to come face to face with another airplane, passing from left to right, on a descending angle, dead ahead, seconds from impact. A swastika was clearly visible on the tail.

"Look out!" yelled Mary.

"Whoa, Nellie!" Rick took immediate evasive action, wheel and rudder hard left and throttled up. Amelia banked steeply, threatening to spill its occupants from their seats. "Hold on!" he called out.

"Crazy Germans," he said, as he evened the plane back out. "They got the whole Tibetan Plateau to land in, and they have to come down right on top of us?"

"Another question might be: what are they doing out here in the first place?" said Royce.

"Same thing we are," surmised McNally. "Looking for adventure in the farthest corner of the land."

"Somehow, I doubt that," piped up Petrovich. "I grew up in Berlin. I know the mindset of these Nazis."

With a midair collision narrowly averted and clear skies ahead, the vast wilderness of Tibet opened up before them. The land below was a rough patchwork of umber and sienna earth tones and the golden green of hardy grasses. A foreboding wall of rugged mountains, the Kunlun Range, scraped the heavens with its icy peaks. It formed the northern boundary of Tibet, separating it from the Gobi Desert, and at almost two thousand miles long, was second only to the Andes. The highest peak, Mount Kunlun itself, Liushi Shan, the Goddess of Kunlun, was their goal. Its glaciated approach was visible straight ahead. Small lakes were scattered about in the hollows between the rugged hills, reflecting the deep azure of the sky. A larger lake to the right marked their intended landing site, a smooth plain that sloped gently to the terminal moraine at the mountain's base, divided by low, rough ridges. The German plane was nowhere to be seen; presumably they had already landed.

"And here we are," said Mary, acting as navigator. "Right on schedule. What did I tell you?"

But the wind that had chased away the clouds now brought its own problems. The ever-changing currents that blew down from the high mountain passes and across the lakes and wild grasslands kept Montana on his toes, constantly adjusting the controls while keeping an eye on the altimeter as he lined up an approach.

Behind him, Viktor and Raleigh, never having flown with him, tightened their seat belts and gripped their armrests. Raleigh fingered his pencil-thin moustache nervously, but Ace and Mary took it all in stride.

“I haven’t had this much fun since our days with the Circus,” said Mary.

“This is fun?” asked Viktor.

"Well, I meant that with a touch of dark humor. But I've been known to do some pretty hair-raising things in my time."

"You'll have to tell me more about that circus of yours."

"If we get down in one piece," reminded Rick.

Up ahead, the clear visibility was proving to be short-lived. A dusty brown haze was kicking up, obscuring their landing zone. Whipped up by the relentless wind, in seconds it was upon them.

"Sandstorm!" said Montana and McNally together.

Rick took a bead on his landing site one last time before Amelia was engulfed by a swirling mass of yellow brown. He glanced at the instruments, aiming the plane as best as he could, and prayed they'd make it through before they hit the ground.

Amelia, the poor plane, was pummeled by a murky, gritty maelstrom that made control and navigation next to impossible. The sandblasting roar against the aluminum skin drowned out the sound of the engines. Rick worked the wheel and rudder frantically, trying to keep her in the sky until he was sure of his landing.

"Okay, I don't scare very easily," said Mary with a shaky voice, "but now I'm more than a little worried."

"This, coming from a girl who wing-walks upside down," remarked Ace.

"And this is crazier than anything we ever did in your barnstorming days."

"Crazier than last summer on the north wall of the Eiger," said Raleigh, referring to the incident that had brought them all together.

Viktor Petrovich said nothing more than a mumbled prayer in his native Russian, though he gave a curious glance in Mary's direction.

Rick Montana had saved them then, and if it was in his power, he would save them now. He thought he could see up ahead an expanse of slate blue. That should be the lake. Off to his left there was a darkness to the brown. That would be the ridge. If he kept this course and started coming in now, he'd make it. He cut his speed to one hundred forty and began his descent.

An agonizing squeal rattled the cabin, followed by a sudden lessening in the rumble of motors.

"We lost the right engine!" Mary yelled, her wide eyes glued to the motor that was no longer turning.

Ace's hands instinctively flew over the instrument panel. "Attempting restart," he said as calm as could be expected under the circumstances.

He flicked the starter switch and got nothing on the first try. On the second, the motor coughed once, twice, and then was silent. On the third attempt, the engine sputtered and belched out a cloud of smoke and dust, clearing its throat. Then it caught for a moment, roaring once again to life.

But only for a moment. Then the sand-fouled motor squealed in protest one last time, and succumbed to the dusty onslaught.

"I'll feather the prop," said Rick, adjusting the propeller control to rotate the blade pitch of the dead prop to nearly parallel the airflow, thereby reducing drag and greatly extending their glide distance.

Still, he had his hands full, fighting the change in handling, stomping on the left rudder to counteract the adverse yaw to starboard. It's now or never, he thought. As the airspeed dropped below one twenty, he dropped the landing gear, which helped to slow the plane even more.

The sandstorm either dissipated on its own accord, or they made it through, because visibility improved and the wind let up. Rick could see where to put down. But coming in with one engine snuffed out by sand was going to be tricky.

At one hundred miles per hour he lowered the flaps and let the plane glide down while keeping a nose-up attitude. He touched down at eighty, just as planned.

But working the brakes and rudder with one motor out taxed his ability to its limit, as he struggled to bring it to a controlled stop. The plane crab-walked sideways across terrain that wasn't nearly as smooth as it had looked from above. They skipped over sand and rocks, taking air and coming down again. A range of rocky hillocks ran directly ahead and the lake, dull gray at this angle, loomed dangerously close to the side they were slipping towards. They looked to be running into one or dropping into the other. Rick stayed focused on the tiny patch of safety in between.

Bam! The shock shook the cabin as the plane listed suddenly to the right.

"I think we just hit a boulder," said Raleigh Royce, who was seated right above the wheel well, and had felt the brunt of the damage to the starboard landing gear.

That action tipped the balance in Amelia's final course. Now that cold lake was coming up fast. They would nose in in less than a hundred feet.

The ground speed had dropped to something almost manageable, but they were still down to seventy-five feet by the time Rick had corrected his steering to allow for the shift in the plane's angle. A belly landing would be easier, he thought.

Fifty feet and the broken landing gear dug in, slowing the plane further, but hampering control.

Twenty-five feet. They weren't going to make it. Rick hoped the lake didn't just drop into the depths close to shore. He hadn't brought them all the way across Tibet to drown in a lake. Fall down a mountain maybe, but . . .

Fifteen feet. Bam! They collided with another rock. Rick leaned forward with the deceleration. They might make it after all.

Ten feet. The plane sloughed into the mud near shore.

Five feet. They came to a halt, with the nose hanging just above the water.

Rick shut down the remaining engine. Closing his eyes, he took a long breath, held it for a second, and released it slowly. He opened his eyes, unglued his fingers from the control yoke, and rose from the pilot's seat. Then, with hands that still weren’t steady, he zipped up his brown leather flight jacket, pulled his captain’s cap low over his eyes and stepped out of the plane.

As he began to assess the situation, the eerie quietude and stillness of the vast Tibetan Plateau settled over him, giving him an uneasy feeling in his gut. Though he was among friends, he had never felt so alone.

* * *

"Well, this is just swell," remarked Mary Matsushita, gazing not at the damaged plane or the imposing mountains in the background, but back the way they'd come, out over eight hundred miles of Tibetan wasteland. "What do we do now?"

Viktor Petrovich was standing next to her, sharing the daunting view. "How is it you Americans say . . . another fine mess?"

"Actually, I think Mr. Montana is to be commended," said Raleigh Royce. "This is twice now he's saved my life."

Rick and Ace were walking around Amelia, the injured Lockheed Electra, surveying the damage. Side by side they could be taken for hero and sidekick, with Rick's lanky six-one frame, wavy hair and Hollywood good looks contrasting with Ace's stocky build, a head shorter, and features more befitting an auto mechanic. In truth, they were equals, both as pilots and adventurers.

"You think she'll live, Doc?" asked Rick. To the others he added, "My buddy, Ace here, is a master mechanic. There's nothing he can't fix with a hammer, a couple of wrenches, and a roll of baling wire."

"Amelia is a bit more complicated than your old Curtiss Jenny biplane," Mary pointed out.

Ace McNally faced the worried passengers with an encouraging smile. "Just a little setback, folks. We wouldn't have flown into a place so remote if we didn't stand a chance of getting back out. We've got a flat tire and some damage to the retracting mechanism that I'll have to rebuild. Actually, on this model, the wheels stay slightly extended from the wheel wells even in the retracted position. That's for emergency landings if the gear won't go down. Plus, there's a bent bracket on the tail wheel. That'll be a cinch. I've got all the tools I need and a winch and jack to pull and prop up with. So, we'll be okay. Just takes a bit more time. The tricky part will be getting her turned around again. Can't take off into the lake, you know."

"So, what do we do now?" Mary asked again, this time looking up at the mountain that had been their goal.

Montana read her thoughts. "Adventure is what we came here for; adventure is what we've got. It's getting late in the afternoon. I say we set up camp here for the night, and go with plan A. Get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and go visit that Goddess up there. Amelia can wait till we get back."

He didn't have to remind them that the climb would be much more than just a visit. They'd likely spend a week or more working toward the summit that was over twenty-five thousand feet and had never been climbed. They'd already spent a week in Lhasa to acclimatize to the altitude on the plateau, and that was just their base. They knew their chances on the mountain were slim at best. For them, it wasn't the summit that mattered so much as the challenge of the attempt.

Raleigh was studying that mountain, and no doubt remembering his aborted attempt on the Eiger's Nordwand-North Wall-last year. The local name for that notorious route had a dark pun attached to it-Mordwand, the Murder Wall.

"This climb won't be so technical," he said. "No sheer cliffs. Snow, ice and altitude are the dangers here. And distance. Just hard hiking. Very hard hiking."

It wasn't long before they had a folding table and chairs set up and hot coffee and tea brewing and stew simmering on the camp stove. Viktor had taken a few photographs and then got out his sketchbook and was studying the terrain with an artist's eye. There was an austere beauty about this place. This close to the mountains there were rough brown foothills and lakes fed by springs and snowmelt. Farther out on the plateau tough, sturdy grasses eked out a brave existence. Rocks and boulders, from fist-sized to house-sized, littered the landscape, left behind by glaciers. Those glaciers led upwards to high, windswept passes of ice and snow. Cold white clouds trailed from the summits like Tibetan prayer flags blowing in the breeze.

Raleigh and Mary, both journalists in their respective countries, were writing notes for what they hoped would be the articles of their lifetimes, Mary giving an occasional glance at Viktor's sketches. Ace was relaxing in a chair with a book he'd brought along: James Hilton's Lost Horizon.

"Always the dreamer," remarked Mary. She'd known Ace her whole life.

"Never can tell," he responded with a grin. "There might be a grain of truth here. It's not just about the climb, you know. Who knows, maybe we'll find Shangri La up there."

"I've heard tell there's jade in them there hills, too," said Montana with a chuckle. "Personally, I'd be more worried about the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman."

"Ah, go on. You gotta have a dream," Ace retorted with a laugh, drawing his arm back as if to throw the book at his friend. "We'll see what's up there, for sure."

"I'm going to explore around the corner between those hillocks," said Raleigh. "See if I can find a private place to set up a latrine."

"Your tea's ready," said Mary. "I'll have a cup for you when you get back."

He was only gone a few minutes, when he came back around the huge boulder that marked the pass between the hills. "We've got visitors," he announced.

"Got to be the Germans," said Rick. "They must've landed just on the other side." He had completely forgotten about them.

The last thing Rick Montana expected to see stepping around the rock was a small Tibetan woman, wrapped up in a woolen shawl. But just behind her was a man of average height and build, with thinning, sandy hair, wearing a wool coat and wire-framed spectacles. And behind him was an imposing man with close-cropped, gray-flecked hair and stern features, in a full SS uniform.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" the man asked, as he stepped into their campsite. "Mind if we join you?"

His hand rested lightly on the Luger pistol in its holster. It had not been a question.