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Overview
In this thrilling novel from the bestselling author of Peak, mountain-climbing prodigy Peak Marcello faces his toughest challenge yet as he descends into Tibet and goes head-to-head with an old enemy.
Peak and his team need to descend into Tibet after surviving an avalanche on the remote and isolated mountain of Hkakabo Razi. The only catch is that Peak's famous mountaineering father, Josh, and climbing guide, Zopa, are both wanted by the Chinese government. As a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse ensues, making it off the mountain won't be the end of this team's struggles, only the beginning...
Heart-pounding action and political drama converge in this epic conclusion to the Peak Marcello's adventures by bestselling author Roland Smith.
This thrilling teen climbing adventure is "the perfect antidote for kids who think books are boring" (Publishers Weekly starred review for Peak).
Roland Smith's Peak Marcello's Adventures are:
- Peak
- The Edge
- Ascent
- Descent
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780358056027 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2020 |
| Series: | Peak Marcello Adventure Series , #4 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| Sales rank: | 81,964 |
| File size: | 10 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 - 17 Years |
About the Author
New York Times best-selling author Roland Smith is the author of nearly thirty young adult novels including Peak, The Edge, Beneath, Above, Sasquatch, Elephant Run, Zach’s Lie, Shatterproof (39 Clues), the Cryptid Hunters series, the I, Q series, and the Storm Runner series. His novels have garnered dozens of state and national book awards. He lives in Arkansas.
Read an Excerpt
Smoke
“What’s happening?”
I nearly fell off the ledge. Josh had come up behind me without a sound.
“Sorry,” Josh said, laughing. “I should have cleared my throat or coughed or spit or something. It would be a shame to lose you after the climb is over.”
He sat down next to me. I closed my journal.
“Your mom tells me you’re a pretty good writer.”
I shrugged.
Josh smiled. “Don’t go all Zopa on me.”
I laughed. “I’m not that good of a writer. Maybe someday. I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d catch up on my journal.”
Josh reached into his pocket and pulled out a small digital recorder. “This is how I keep my journal.”
He handed it to me. The battery indicator was full. “This is the only gizmo we have that has juice.”
“I haven’t had much chance to use it here, but there’s plenty of ramblings on it from my seven summits try.”
It wasn’t a try. He had smashed the world record for topping the highest peaks on all seven continents before showing up to climb Hkakabo Razi with me. I think one of the reasons he had climbed with me after that exhausting task was to confess his biggest secret. My dad, Joshua Wood, arguably the greatest climber in the world, could not read or write. Which explained why he had never responded to my letters. Something that had bothered me for years.
“So, what do you do with your ramblings?”
“Sometimes I listen to them, but mostly I file them away. I have thousands of hours of me babbling on. I guess, like a lot of climbers, I want to leave something behind in case I fall off a mountain, not that anyone would be interested.”
False modesty. He knew as well as I did that a lot of people would be interested. “I’m interested,” I said, playing along.
“I figured you would be. The recordings are stored on my laptop in Chiang Mai. When I get back home, I’ll send them to you.”
“I’d like that. And when you learn to read, I’ll send you my journals.”
Josh grinned. “Deal.”
I tried to give the digital recorder back, but he shook his head. “Nah, you keep it. We’ll call it a down payment on our sacred pact. And speaking of sacred things, where’s Zopa?”
“He took off.” I pointed at the green tangle at the bottom of the talus.
“Did you ask him where he was going?”
“Yeah. What do you think his answer was?”
“He shrugged.”
“More or less. He said he’d find us.”
“I’m sure he will,” Josh said. “I wonder why he brought us here.”
I reminded him that we weren’t able to return the way we had ascended because of the avalanche and the weather.
“Doesn’t matter,” Josh said. “Every step Zopa takes has a purpose. Something is up. I guarantee it.”
“What might be up is yours and Zopa’s arrest by the Chinese government. We’re in Tibet.”
Tibet was Tibet in name only. The Chinese had taken over the country in 1951 in what they called a “peaceful liberation.” The Tibetans have a different take on what happened, calling it “the Chinese invasion of Tibet.” The bottom line is that Tibet is now, for all intents and purposes, China, a country where both Josh and Zopa are wanted criminals for violating permit requirements on the northern side of Everest. They helped Zopa’s grandson, Sun-jo, summit Everest, making him the youngest person, and a “free” Tibetan, to top the mountain. The record has since been broken, but not before Sun-jo received several lucrative endorsement deals from climbing gear companies, making it possible for him and his two sisters to continue their education.
The permit violations were minor offenses. Josh and Zopa’s major offense, technically not illegal, was embarrassing the Chinese government. They were forbidden to set foot inside Chinese territory.
“No worries,” Josh said. “We’ll be gone before they know we’re here. As far as anyone knows I’m in seclusion at my house in Chiang Mai recuperating after my seven summits climb.”
Josh lived in northern Thailand in a big house with a private climbing gym in the backyard. I’d never been to his house, but I’d been hoping to go there on this trip. Looking down at the jungle, and the long trek before us, that didn’t look too likely now.
Jack came out of the cave, squinting at the bright sunlight.
“Morning,” he croaked.
He didn’t look very good. “Are you sick?”
“I don’t think so. Just tired. Didn’t sleep well. What’s the plan?”
I pointed downhill. “We head into the jungle, find a road, and if we’re lucky, some kind of transportation to a city with an airport.”
“Sounds good to me. Hopefully some food, too. Yash and Yogi are scraping together the last grains of rice for breakfast. Looks like we’ll get two spoonfuls each.”
It turned out to be three spoonfuls each, and we were picking our way down the loose talus within minutes of the pathetic meal. A cloud of insects engulfed us as we approached the jungle. We stripped out of our cold-weather clothes and stuffed them into our packs, where I found my machete. I couldn’t believe I’d hauled it to the top of Hkakabo Razi and down.
Josh laughed when he saw it. “The guy with the machete leads the way.”
“Fine with me. But which way?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Where did Zopa break through?”
I shrugged. “I guess I should have paid closer attention to where he was when he disappeared into the tangle.”
“No worries. Here’s just as good as anywhere else. But if we don’t find a trail or road in the next couple of days, we’ll probably starve to death.”
With that happy thought, I took my first swing at the Tibetan rainforest, which wasn’t much different from the rainforest on the other side of the mountain. Hot, humid, and sharp, but after our long trek through Myanmar, I was used to it, and was actually enjoying myself. Kind of.
An hour later Yash took over the machete, followed by Yogi, Josh, then me again. Jack was too busy gagging on insects to be much help with the slashing. It takes a while to get used to the jungle—in my case it took several weeks. There was no sign of Zopa. If he was close by, he couldn’t help but hear us. We sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants. How had he gotten through this mess without a machete? After several hours we stopped to rest, which is what the insects had been waiting for. They went into a feeding frenzy and we were the main course.
“I say we go back to the cave and just die there,” Jack suggested, vainly trying to keep the bugs from biting him.
It wasn’t a bad suggestion. There was no food in the cave, but there was water. We could live for a couple of weeks without food, but only a few days without water. And the cave was relatively insect-free. If we got desperate, we could always start eating pikas. In Myanmar, I had popped a mouthful of snake into my mouth, which made me puke, but a roasted pika might go down easier.
“It’s worth considering,” Josh said, spitting out several bugs.
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.” I wasn’t in charge, but I was probably the most acclimated to jungle misery. One thing that I had learned is that the tropical rainforest is always changing. You’ll be dragging yourself along, thinking your suffering will never end, then stumble into a clearing of staggering beauty with a pool of cool water and a refreshing breeze.
“We’re no more than a mile from the talus,” I continued. “I think we should push on a little farther.”
I’m not sure why I was so adamant about this, but I had a feeling that we shouldn’t give up quite yet, which made me smile. Maybe some of Zopa was rubbing off on me. He said he would find . . . no, he didn’t say that. He said: “You’ll find me.” A shiver went down the back of my neck like I had a big spider crawling there. I brushed at it. Nothing there but sweat and grime. Weird. I gulped some water, thinking that I must be getting a little dehydrated, then pulled my binoculars and compass out of my pack.
“I don’t think those are going to do you a lot of good here,” Jack said. “We can’t see more than ten feet ahead.”
“Yeah, I . . .” I looked up at the thick canopy. “I’m not using them down here. I’m using them up top. It’s time to climb a tree and figure out where we are.”
I had climbed dozens of giant trees in Myanmar, collecting samples for Nick the botanist—payback for guiding us to the base of Hkakabo Razi.
“You want company?” Josh asked.
“You’re welcome to tag along, but I’m going to fast climb.”
“I’m sure it will be difficult,” Josh said, sarcastically. “But I’ll give it my best.”
I grinned. “It’s harder than you think.”
We started up on opposite sides of the same tree. Josh was with me for the first hundred feet, but then I blew ahead of him. It’s easy to pick the wrong route. I’d lost a dozen tree races against Alessia and Ethan. And I was lucky in my tree pick. The top was a good forty feet above the canopy, which stretched to the north for as far as I could see without any visible gaps or signs of civilization. We still might have to return to the cave and eat pika snacks.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pikas. A peck of pickled pikas Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pikas, where’s the peck of pickled pikas Peter Piper picked?”
“What did you say?” Josh joined me on my swaying perch, sweating and scratched.
“Nothing,” I answered, a little embarrassed. I hadn’t realized I was talking to myself, which was happening more and more lately. It was disconcerting.
“The climb was harder than I thought,” Josh said, out of breath, giving me a bye on my slip of the tongue. “I had to detour around a big snake. Slowed me down. What do you see?”
I scanned the canopy with my binoculars. “Smoke,” I said. At least, I was pretty sure it was smoke. It’s hard to tell the difference between smoke and mist in the rainforest. I handed the binoculars to Josh and pulled out my compass. “North by northwest. Maybe a mile away.”
“I see it,” Josh said.
“It could be a village, or maybe a camp.”
“Or a forest fire,” Josh added.
“That too, but I think we should check it out.”
“Let’s do it.”
We battled the tangle for another two hours with little progress, but I didn’t give up. The feeling I’d had earlier wasn’t nearly as strong, but there was still a tingle that if I kept going I would find Zopa. I took a couple more machete swipes and stumbled into a small clearing with a well-trodden trail running through the middle of it.
“Boot prints,” Yash said. “Fresh.”
I wasn’t sure how fresh they were, but there were a lot of them headed in every direction. I wished Ethan were with us. He’d know exactly how old the boot prints were, how many people had made them, and which way they had gone.
“Hunters,” Yogi said. He was standing at the edge of the clearing, looking down at something.
It turned out to be a stinking pile of guts and bones, covered by about two billion insects, which swarmed us as we approached. We backed away quickly and the insects settled back down on their feast.
“What was it?” I asked.
“Takin,” Yash answered.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Takins are some kind of antelope,” Josh said. “But they look like a small musk ox. I’ve had takin stew a couple of times. It’s a little gamey, but tasty. Hunters get a pretty good price for the skins. Probably because takins are only found in godforsaken places like this.”
Jack had not joined us to look at the guts. He was sitting on the ground leaning against a tree with his backpack still strapped on like a tipped-over turtle. He looked like he had taken a shower in his clothes. His face was florid and pockmarked with nasty bites and scratches. If we didn’t get to a village or road soon, we were going to be dragging him through the forest on a litter. I wished I had some of that goop Nick had concocted for bites and stings. Jack was out of water. I gave him some of mine, then helped him to his feet. He wobbled.
“Are you going to be okay?”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
I had an idea of what it might be. “Are you taking antimalarial pills?”
“I was, but I ran out before we got to Myanmar. You think that’s my problem?”
“I don’t know, but you’re kind of acting like Alessia did when she came down with it.” I didn’t mention that Alessia had been taking her pills and came down with it anyway.
I dug my pills out of my pack and gave him a couple. I didn’t know if it would help, but I didn’t think it would hurt. If nothing else they might act like a placebo and make him feel better.
“Are you okay to walk?”
“What choice do I have?”
“None.”
I led the way down the trail in the direction I thought the boot prints were heading. After about a mile I started to smell smoke and, more intriguing, meat cooking.
There were at least a dozen people in the camp: several men, a few women, and a handful of children. Animal skins were hanging on racks, drying in the last of the afternoon sun. The hunters didn’t seem surprised to see us. That was because Zopa was sitting next to the smoky fire eating food out of his begging bowl. He had shaved his head and put on his orange monk robe. The only one of us who was surprised to see Zopa was Jack, who let out a feverish whoop of joy. He didn’t know Zopa as well as we did, and his uncanny, and kind of creepy, ability to appear in the middle of nowhere from out of nowhere.
“I can’t believe you’re here!” Jack said. “What are the chances?”
With Zopa the chances were extremely high, but Zopa only shrugged in reply to his question.
“I told Peak that he would find me,” Zopa said. “He did.” I looked at him questioningly. He didn’t acknowledge me. Instead, he looked at Jack and said, “You have malaria.”
“I’m not sure,” Jack said. “That’s what Peak thought.”
“Sit down.”
We all sat down. The hunters brought us water and bowls of hot, spicy takin stew, which was oddly cooling in the sweltering heat. The hunters explained that their takin hunt was over. Tomorrow morning, they would break camp and return to their village. They had been away for nearly three weeks. A supply truck stopped at their village once or twice a week. It would be able to give us a lift to the main road, where we could hitch a ride to Lhasa, the closest city with an international airport.
It sounded so simple. So easy. Like we were jumping onto a subway in New York to get somewhere. Right. I looked at Zopa to see if there was any indication of what he thought of this. Except for a slight smile, and a little shine in his dark eyes, he was giving nothing away. He held his begging bowl out for another load of takin stew.
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