by Mike Bond
“Who knows?” Cohen squeezed Alex's shoulder and turned back to Stihl. “Paul and Goteen can lead. You and Eliott with the Tibetans. Alex and I take up the rear.”
Paul and Goteen led the ten porters out of Changtshang and up the precipitous canyon path, Stihl and Eliott behind with the Tibetans and the ponies. Alex crouched waiting with Cohen on the cliff edge, pulled a leather bag from under his shirt and removed from it a small convoluted brass pipe and a plastic bag. He tucked a thumbful of ganja into the pipe, lit it with a waxed match that he tossed over the edge. Cohen watched the match diminish, fluttering feather-like in the wind, and vanish into the rushing Kali Gandaki. Alex inhaled deeply and passed the pipe. “Remember last time in Bangkok, that girl I met by the Great Temple, our last night?”
Cohen chuckled. “I can remember several.”
“Dark-haired, golden tits?”
“They all have dark hair and golden tits.”
“We did it seven times, that night.” Alex took another hit, waited. “I'd like to marry her.”
“Has she accepted?”
“I've known a lot of women, Sam – we've both been lucky that way, but to me she's the first one who's impeccable. You know the word ‘unique,’ how meaningless it is?”
“That's what advertising does, ruins all words.”
“Well, she's unique, in the way that word was meant, in the way she made me feel. Not in love or any of that shit, but at peace, at peace in myself, in the world. For sixteen hours I was with her – her eyes, the way she would look at me, without fear or embarrassment – her way of holding herself …” Alex shook his head. “She has some deep level of self-respect – not egotism – self-respect, I've never encountered before. After all I've done, why go home and marry an American girl? I want to live in, be part of, the whole world. Christ, I think about her all the time on the trail. The last time, I was so sore but she did it all with her lips.”
“You're horny. Besides, how many guys has she fucked?”
“A thousand, probably. But how many girls have we fucked, back in the glory days? I don't care. There was absolutely no distance between us. That night – it was like we'd been together forty years. Even if she never loves me, her extraordinary decency would be better than most people's love.”
Cohen inhaled from the pipe, his shoulder against Alex's as they crouched side by side. “We're going to have to get you out of the mountains,” he exhaled. “I fear for the goats.” He hugged him by the neck, passed the pipe. “So did you feel the earth move?”
“With her? We were on her houseboat so I couldn't tell. But we sure made that boat move.” Alex relit the pipe. “You never think of being married, having kids?”
“Not any more. Too many lovely women in the world to live with just one.”
Alex stepped downwind and took a leak off the edge. “Bullshit.”
“She's been dead three years, Alex. I'm over it.”
“Maybe.” Alex stepped up onto the trail. “But you miss caring, don't you?”
“If I were married I'd miss the mountains.” Cohen took a last glance down at Changtshang. “With the money we're making from Stihl we can fuck ourselves to death in Bangkok and still have plenty to pay for the funeral.”
Alex reached up and banged his knuckles on Cohen's head. “Knock on wood.”
“When I fell off that bridge,” Cohen said, “I had a moment when I didn't care – live or die.”
“Like I said, you're missing something. Me too. Emotional neutral, that's where we are. It's easy for Paul, he's got Kim. They love each other and she's right here waiting in K'du. But you and I got nobody.”
Alex put away the pipe. “Ever since Nam I've been outside looking in. Or sometimes not even bothering to look in. Hating the human animal.”
“Shit, man, don't make it hard on yourself.” He hugged Alex as they walked. “So tell me about this woman in Bangkok. I might want to fuck her myself.”
“She wouldn't touch you, Cohen.”
“I been thinking of maybe soon going back to Paris. If I can face that place I can face anywhere. And it's my home, really.” Cohen plucked a grass blade, began to chew it. “You really want to marry her?”
“I want her with me. I want to see her face every morning, have babies with her. Want to feel her back and shoulders inside my arms.”
“Maybe I need that too.”
“Remember how it goes – time wounds all heels.”
“You'd know.”
“The drag about takin’ up the rear is all this horse shit between my toes.”
“Growing up in Montana I learned horses always shit more on the uphill. One of the seven immutable laws of the universe.”
“With those loads it's no wonder. It's Nam all over again.”
“What are they?”
“Mostly M16's. A few grenade launchers – which means the grenades must be somewhere, on some lucky horse. Hard to tell beneath the canvas.”
“Fuckin’ CIA. Don't they ever get tired of war?”
“Big business, war. The biggest. You know, one of the poorest kept secrets about Nam was we got into it to protect the CIA – their drug smuggling rings out of the Golden Triangle.”
“No, I don't believe that.”
“You ask any guy who worked in Air America, the CIA freight line, in the sixties, and he'll tell you about the tons of heroin they shipped out every month, out of Laos and Cambodia and South Vietnam – Hell, on river patrols we'd sometimes bring a boatful of the shit right down the Mekong. The CIA put it on planes and sent it Stateside, kept the locals high and mellow and made the CIA billions of bucks they spent on actions Congress or the generals wouldn't go for.” Alex kicked a stone from the trail. “When we split Nam, the CIA lost its major source of funding, baby.”
“You're a conspiracy freak, Alex.”
“If so, my fears're based on what I seen, what I know.” Alex slowed to look at the trail where it narrowed ahead of them and began to climb the cliffside. “Landslide territory, with the rain, those heavy horses.”
“For me that was the final turnoff, about the States…”
“What?”
“That we're a society based on war, that we can't exist economically or psychologically without someone to hate.”
“That's why we invented the good old Commies. Those folks I was fighting in Nam had never even heard of Communism. They were defending their homeland from aggression, same as any American would.”
“Before them we hated the Germans and Japs, and before them the Spanish, the Mexicans. Before that, the English.” Cohen paused to pull a thorn from his sole. “Some day we'll be friends with the Russians and hate the Italians and the Dutch, or the Samoans and Madagascans.”
“Don't let it eat at you. Hate only leads to more hate, like war only leads to more war. Here we are in these magical mountains, not back in the States. Forget those assholes at the Pentagon and the taxpayers who feed them, and enjoy what we have.”
“We've got trouble, that's what we have.” Cohen ran forward as a pony slipped on the trail edge and fell to its knees, a front and rear leg over the cliff. The others tied in front and behind it reared against the sudden yank on their ropes. The pony tilted sideways and dropped with a scream toward the Kali. Two behind and one in front peeled off the trail after it. A Tibetan leapt forward and with a sharp flash of his saber cut the rest free as the fourth slid off the edge.
Cohen and Alex dashed from the trail to a ledge dropping to the river. One of the Tibetans had fallen with the ponies; he was yelling and waving his arms as the river twirled him about and sucked him away.
Cohen pelted through the shallows toward a pony lying broken-backed over its load. He tugged its halter up to raise its head above water. Its nostrils and eyes were wide; its fore-feet thrashed erratically. Its load had burst open and he could see the black sparkle of rifles through the flitting water.
“Sam!” Alex's yell was almost inaudible over the Kali's roar. Cohen ducked a flying ho
of and knelt to shove the pony's head up onto his shoulder, skidding barefoot on the riverbed. “Sam!” Alex was wildly waving him over. He shook his head, pointing to his pony. Two Tibetans were inching down the cliff; others were running back down the trail to the ledge Cohen and Alex had taken to the water. Alex screamed his name again; Cohen released the moaning pony and struggled up-current to the knee-deep rapid where Alex stood beside a pony with splintered legs. “Look!”
Cohen bent down and saw a gray metal object, perhaps part of a pump or compressor, cylindrical, less than three feet long, in the shallows where the pony's load had opened. Alex crouched in the water, trying to feel along one side of the object. He reached beneath it.
“What is it?” Cohen yelled.
“Bomb!”
“Get away from it! Jesus Christ!” He grabbed Alex's arm and shoved him toward the bank; Alex stiff-armed him and broke free, ran splashing to the bomb and knelt beside it.
“Alex!” Cohen ran at him, shaking him. The river under-cut him and slammed him downstream, banging his knees on boulders. He scrambled to a stop and waded angrily upstream. Alex was running ashore. The first Tibetan splashed in and waded past him into the current. Alex yanked Cohen up on the ledge. “Gonna die unless we run. A detonator!”
“A what?”
“Plutonium detonator. For an atomic warhead.”
Cohen nearly fell, stunned. He turned and ran behind Alex up the ledge to the trail and past the ponies standing silent in the hands of the other Tibetans. Stihl and Eliott were edging between the cliff face and the last pony. “Clem,” Alex yelled, “got to get rope – pull out the horses.”
Stihl blocked the trail. “Are there guns?”
“Who knows?” Alex shoved past him.
They reached the porters. “Bad men,” Alex gasped at the lead porter, pointing at the Tibetans. “They'll kill you all. Leave your loads, run into the hills. Run!”
Goteen and Paul were scrambling downhill toward them. “Go back,” Alex screamed.
Paul, panting, held out his big palm. “Slow down, baby! What's up?”
“Down there's a detonator for a nuclear bomb.” Alex caught a breath. “The rest of the bomb's probably on a couple of other ponies.”
“Who says?”
“Naval ordnance – Vietnam – had to be able – take them apart – know by heart. Stihl's in it. They'll kill us. Christ, we're all gonna die.” Stihl was clambering from the river, waving at the Tibetans with the ponies. One Tibetan flicked out his saber and slashed the canvas from a pony load.
Ahead of them the trail snaked up the canyon wall, without cover. Behind them the porters had slipped past the horses and were running toward the bend in the canyon leading to Changtshang. The Tibetan pulled a rifle from the pony pack.
Alex shoved Cohen into a narrow defile in the canyon wall as high, fast popping exploded downslope. Goteen screamed and Cohen grabbed for him but he dropped backward off the trail, face spattering red. Alex tumbled onto the trail, blood spilling over his chest.
Cohen tossed Alex over one shoulder and ducked into the defile. He grabbed the rock face lefthanded, his right hand clutching Alex's body, his legs pumping, Paul shoving them up.
2
THE DEFILE DIED OUT in steep talus sheering up an avalanche chute. Cohen put down Alex's body and wiped bubbly gore from the bullet's exit hole in his chest, shattered ribs staring uprooted from the pink flesh.
“He's dead, Sam.” Paul's voice seemed far away. “Time to go.”
He could not see, turned to go down after them, to kill them now, here and now, but Paul grabbed him. “Later!” Paul screamed, driving him upward. The avalanche chute soared northward up the canyon wall, sheltering their climb, the Tibetans’ voices ascending invisibly beneath them. Halting breathless on a ledge, Paul dug a chunk of rock from the wall and twisted round.
A Tibetan appeared in the chute, climbing fast, two hundred feet down. “Throw!” Cohen hissed, fingering the wall behind him for a rock.
Another Tibetan appeared, a rifle on his shoulder, Eliott behind him. Paul's arm zipped; the rock accelerated downward and smashed Eliott's head, his body hurtling outward and down. Seconds later its rattling thump echoed up the chute. Bullets hammered the underside of the ledge.
Cohen edged up a sidewall, Paul following. They traversed again to the chute, then cut back in a vertiginous gulley that led them to a windy notch atop the canyon.
Paul hurled another rock, missing. “They're closing in,” Cohen panted, “both sides.”
“They'll bring up the horses. Split up and one of us might make it.” Paul's voice was calm. “Me through Thorungtse and Braga, you back down the Kali, over to Pokhara.” He ducked back as a bullet smacked off the edge, whined into space. “Meet in K'du, my place, five days?”
Bullets drummed the cliff. “A backup!” Cohen said.
“Where?”
“The Serpent – Paris!” He sprinted along the cliff edge, up a brushy gully, thorns tearing his legs and feet, across a goat pasture, through a juniper grove, up a raveled creek bed, and along a buffalo trail bending southward high above the canyon, the river flashing somber far below. From an oxbow in the trail he looked back but saw only five dark figures approaching fast, a half mile behind. He turned and ran hard for several miles, but they stayed close.
Above Jamosom the river was joined by a broad, crashing tributary that drained the high peaks to the east, forcing him to run down its darkening canyon as the last daylight dispersed in the west. He hesitated, wanting to follow its streamside trail plunging toward the Kali Gandaki, but fearing other Tibetans were already there, on horses. He waded the icy current and clambered up the opposite canyon wall under cover of darkness as voices and the clink of guns descended behind him.
At the top of the canyon he stumbled and fell, legs quivering, lungs gasping, pulse hammering his brain. Below, five shadows crossed the white rapids of the stream. Can't lose them. He ran cursing his rubbery legs, falling over rocks, forcing himself to remember the years of running that had conditioned him to climb, that had given him the physical and mental will to win where others lost. With the passing miles his legs grew weaker, his mind more confused. More and more often he looked back. Can't lose them. I'm dead. A dream, this. Dead and don't realize. “Dead and don't realize,” he panted, over and over, until the words fell into cadence with his stride, pacing him across the rubbled hills like a metronome.
In the starlight he could see nothing, hear nothing over the thunder of blood in his head. Head down, palms on knees, he inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled. No matter how tired always go farther. No matter how hurt, one more step. With each step, force out one more step. Head high, thinking one more step, one more step, he stumbled on till his breathing again deepened, and in the clarity of pure exhaustion ran steadily southward under the cold light of the stars.
Hours later he halted on a bluff above terraced rice fields, seeing nothing behind. Slower but still rhythmically he ran, midnight air sharp in his lungs, all thoughts lost in the throbbing ache of his legs, arms, and chest, the mantra “I'm dead – don't realize – I'm dead – don't realize” his only awareness. Ten miles further he circled a village where a pai dog caught his scent and barked listlessly. Beyond the village he drank from the coolness of a flooded paddy and took a buffalo trail southeast, under the high Himalayan front, toward the steep ridges above the canyon of the Mristi Khola.
At the first ruby tint of dawn over the eastern crests he cut a quarter mile uphill to a clump of junipers creviced in the hills, and collapsed. Minutes later he woke and glanced round the pungent brush expecting to see Alex, Paul, and the others snoring peacefully beside him in the crowded, malodorous dung-brick shelter of a trailside butthi.
He reached out in the darkness to comfort Alex. Go deep. I was always telling you go deep. For a moment the old feeling, Alex blowing downfield past the cornerback and cutting for the post, his long light legs soaring over the choppy grass, Cohen seeing him over th
e thrash of helmets and waving arms, throwing the ball so hard and impossibly far in front of him, the ball arcing in the late afternoon sun, drawn magically downward into Alex's distant hands. And now you've gone so deep I'll never find you.
Gone deep. To the end of the world. Beyond. Every bird, blade of grass, child's laughter, woman's love. Gone from you. You who were a magic universe are not. They killed you. They'll kill us all.
Hallucinating. Crazy. Come out of it now. See, all's fine. He sat up and looked around, rosiny cypress tickling his lip, sharp branches tinted from the lightening east. Been hit, Paul said. Walk it off.
“Alex?” he whispered. He fingered the ground prickly with dry needles. “Alex!”
It's true. He cupped his legs in his arms, face on his knees. It's true. “Paul!” he cried, sparking a bird's call in the brush. A bomb. On its way to Tibet on horseback like a stone age weapon. Delivery from the CIA? Who do I tell?
Now what to do? Don't give up. Outrun them. Be waiting for Paul. Tell the Embassy. Paul – are you dead? Oh God poor Kim. Oh Christ Alex don't be dead.
AS A MOTH to a flame his mind reverted once more. “Stay in touch,” Eliott had said, cocking an eyebrow at Cohen in the early spring evening outside the Peace.
“I'm always in touch,” he had countered, annoyed by the inherent command.
“We've a trek going in a couple weeks,” Stihl had smiled – always a thin smile. “Might be looking for assistance. With good pay.”
“There's five million Nepalis out there. All but a hundred of them are hungry.” Cohen had begun to step away.
“I mean weathered climbers. Who know the ropes, parlay the local gibberish. Who can put together some porters, Sherpas.”
“Some Yugoslavs just tried Kanchenjunga. Ask them.”
Stihl had picked at an incisor with a slim fingernail. “We prefer our own kind.”
“What kind is that?”
“People we can trust.”