Chapter 2 — Mist Peak Rescue Team

Vu A Tua's old tractor pulled into the yard of Heaven Gate station at nine fifteen, the wheels were still covered in red mud from the trail from Nam Tha village. He jumped down before the car could completely shut down. His figure was compact and his steps were quick without any excess.

"Miss Van," he called, his voice still panting, "I met those three people early this morning, when I set traps on the trail near T5. They asked me for directions to the spine of Cloud Dragon. I told them that the weather was not good this morning and advised me to turn back. But they still went."

Khanh Van is spreading a large topographic map on a wooden table on the porch, the four corners are pressed with four smooth pebbles. She looked up. "What do you see them wearing? What equipment do they have?"

"A thin wind jacket, not a thick waterproof one. A man was in the front, carrying a large backpack. A woman was in the middle, and a teenager was in the back, looking tired and panting a lot." Tua stopped, frowning as if trying to remember more details. "The woman carried a small cloth bag, which she wore across her chest and never took it off, even when climbing uphill."

Khanh Van recorded every detail in a notebook. The small cloth bag strapped to his chest was not loose — it could be medicine, it could be personal items, but any detail was worth noting when three people were somewhere in the thick fog in the mountains.

Luong Uyen Nhi walked out of the medical room, holding a pre-packaged emergency first aid bag, checking the zipper one last time. "In my first aid kit for hypothermia, I prepare three sets of insulating blankets, two bottles of warm water to keep the temperature, and basic emergency medicine. If anyone has hypothermia, we need a medical helicopter, this bag is not enough."

"Helicopters can only fly when visibility is over five hundred meters and wind is below level five," Dac Lam said, walking out of the command room with a printed sheet of the latest weather report in hand. "Currently both conditions are not met. If the situation is bad, we will have to bring people down by road ourselves."

Uncle Tong was sitting in the corner of the yard, stringing each keychain onto a braided rope. Without raising his head, he spoke: "The road from T7 to the nearest point accessible by ambulance is nearly six kilometers, through three steep slopes that require lowering the rope. If someone can't walk on their own, the time will double or triple."

No one spoke out loud, but everyone understood the calculation running through each person's head: the rate of hypothermia, the distance, the time remaining before it was completely dark — the darkness on the mountain during thick fog can make even an experienced person completely disoriented.

An old pickup truck braked suddenly in front of the station gate, sending up red dust. The car door opened, a woman in her mid-thirties jumped out and ran straight into the yard, her hair disheveled, her coat with one button askew.

"It's the rescue team, right?" She said, her voice broken. "My younger brother, Kieu Thanh Son, his girlfriend and my son — Nam — all three are up there. Please, I beg you, we must find them."

Khanh Van stepped forward and placed his hand on the woman's shoulder, keeping her standing more firmly. "Are you Kieu Thanh Hien?"

"Yes, yes, I'm Son's sister." Thanh Hien's eyes were red, but she tried hard not to cry out loud. "My son is sixteen years old, his first time trekking so far away from home. He insisted on going with you, I... I couldn't stop him."

"Sit down here, drink some warm water." Khanh Van led her to the wooden chair under the porch. "I need your help — tell me in as much detail as possible about the equipment of all three of you, and any health abnormalities that you know of."

Thanh Hien nodded, clasping his hands together. "Son is experienced, he has gone trekking many times, this trip he prepared quite carefully. But... Bao Anh, his girlfriend..." She hesitated.

"You keep talking, any detail is important."

"I'm not sure, but one time I heard Bao Anh talking to someone on the phone, mentioning about getting a heart check-up and having to have regular follow-up exams. She told me not to tell Son, saying it was a small matter and didn't want anyone to worry." Thanh Hien looked at Khanh Van, her eyes more panicked. "Is that dangerous, when she's on such a cold mountain?"

Khanh Van felt a cold current running down her spine, not because of the wind. She glanced at Uyen Nhi and saw that the young doctor had also stopped, his expression turned serious.

"If she has an undiagnosed heart problem, low temperatures and high altitudes could make the condition worse faster than normal," Uyen Nhi said softly, loud enough for Khanh Van to hear, but not for Thanh Hien to fully hear. "We need to find them as soon as possible."

Khanh Van nodded and turned back to look at the map on the table. A small cloth bag worn across the chest, never leaving the hand — now that detail has a completely different meaning. Could be heart medication. Maybe a handheld heart rate monitor. Whatever it is, it shows that the woman named Uong Bao Anh knows her condition better than she ever said.

"Dac Lam," Khanh Van called, "call the district hospital, ask if there is any medical history information on a patient named Uong Bao Anh. If she has heart disease, her survival time on the cold mountain is much shorter than the other two."

"Clear." Dac Lam had returned to the command room, the sound of urgent footsteps on the wooden floor.

Dieu Han walked out of the equipment warehouse, holding a stack of thermal vests and emergency sleeping bags in both hands, placing them next to the pile of prepared equipment. She looked at Khanh Van, somewhat timidly. "Miss Van, I heard... there was also an incident near here two years ago, right?"

The whole yard suddenly fell silent. Uncle Tong stopped threading the keychain. Khanh Van did not turn back immediately, his eyes were still glued to the T7 marker on the map, his finger moved slowly along the spine of the Cloud Dragon until stopping at a deep crack highlighted in red, with a small note next to it in faded handwriting: high danger area, do not approach when visibility is less than ten meters.

"Yes," she said, her voice still steady, but something about it had changed. "There's a case."

She did not say more. Dieu Han, sensitive enough to understand not to continue asking, silently turned back to check the pile of equipment. But Khanh Van knew she couldn't avoid that question forever — because the road they were about to take, sooner or later, would lead through that very place.

Dac Lam returned, holding a piece of paper that had just been printed from the old fax machine in the command room. "The district hospital doesn't have a record of Uong Bao Anh's name, but they said she might have been examined at a private clinic in the city, outside of their system. It can't be confirmed, nor can it be ruled out."

"So let's just assume the worst case scenario is correct," Khanh Van said. "A person with a possible heart condition that has not been adequately treated is exposed to cold at an altitude of more than 1,800 meters. Time is not as much as I originally thought."

She spread another sheet of transparent paper on top of the map and began drawing route options with a red marker. "Option one: go straight along the main trail to T7, this is the shortest route but passes right through the narrowest part of the spine of the Cloud Dragon. Option two: go around the west side, about forty minutes longer but avoids the narrow rocky section, safer when visibility is poor."

"Forty minutes is not a small forty minutes, when people are racing against hypothermia," Uncle Tong said, placing the finished coil of wire next to the pile of equipment. "But if we go with option one, if the fog falls halfway, we might not even be able to reach T7."

Khanh Van nodded. "So I will closely monitor the developments in the clouds, decide on the route right before starting, not in advance. Uyen Nhi, please review the medicine list, add an emergency dose of heart medicine to the emergency bag, in case you guess correctly about Bao Anh's condition."

"I have it ready," Uyen Nhi replied, still quickly arranging each tube of medicine in order of priority for use. "But if her heart really has serious problems, we need to take her down the mountain on a stretcher. We can't let her walk on her own. Even a short distance could be too much."

"Then I'll bring a stretcher quickly." Khanh Van looked at Dieu Han. "Mr. Tua and I prepared an additional set of lightweight folding stretchers, checked the joints, and made sure to set them up within five minutes."

"Yes, sister." Dieu Han immediately returned to the warehouse, her steps were agile, without any hesitation from the previous question.

Vu A Tua stood still for a moment, looking towards Sa Mu peak, which was fading behind a layer of gray clouds. "I grew up at the foot of this mountain, Ms. Van. The mist here is not like the mist elsewhere - it doesn't thicken slowly, but sometimes it's like someone pulled down a curtain in the blink of an eye. The villagers call that phenomenon 'mountain-swallowing mist'."

"How long does it take to pull a curtain like that?" Khanh Van asked.

"Maybe just three or four minutes, sister."

She remained silent, wrote down that number in the notebook, underlining it twice. Three, four minutes — short enough for a wrong decision about the start time to turn into disaster, and long enough for a well-prepared team to find shelter before everything disappears into the opaque whiteness.

Outside, the wind began to change direction, bringing colder air from the top of Sa Mu. In the sky, the thin strip of white clouds in the morning had now turned into a solid gray mass, rolling slowly but surely, like a creature slowly swallowing the entire mountain from the top down.