Asura

by R P L Johnson

  Frank remembered the three basic rules of survival. The average person could survive three minutes without air, three days without water and up to three weeks without food. But the big Scot was anything but average: he was young and strong. Chained up within reach of the sulphurous waters of the underground lake, Campbell would take a very, very long time to die.

  ‘We’re not leaving him,’ he said.

  ‘Why not? What the hell do you think he’d do if the tables were turned? He’d leave us in a second. That’s if he didn’t gut-shoot us all first.’

  ‘No one’s getting left behind,’ Marinucci insisted. ‘He’s coming back to face the music.’

  Carver looked away from their prisoner for a second and fixed Marinucci with a cold stare that almost made him physically shiver. The woman’s dark eyes, so out of place in her milk-fair complexion, seemed as lifeless as the coal eyes of a snowman. Maybe they had once been living tissue, but years of pressure had condensed them into something hard and dead.

  Then her smile returned. ‘Okay, Frank,’ she said. ‘We’ll do it your way.’

  Somehow Marinucci wasn’t reassured.

  ◆◆◆

  Rebecca McCarthy hauled herself another few feet up the rope. The technique was exhausting—like climbing a twisting rope ladder using only one arm and one leg. McCarthy had always considered herself to be in good physical shape, but hours of exertion in the thin mountain air were proving her wrong. She was exhausted, spent, running on nothing but thin, cold oxygen and adrenaline.

  But that was enough.

  She looked below her dangling free leg at Rose and Yvonne as they hung, stranded away from the face of the cliff.

  What do I do? They didn’t have much time.

  Gritting her teeth, she hauled herself up another step. She was almost up to the level of the rock bolt that held her lifeline. She needed to think.

  With another lung-bursting effort she brought herself level with the stainless steel rock bolt. Her rope, the thin vector that defined her one dimensional freedom up and down the face of the cliff, looped through and eye and carabiner assembly fixed to the screw.

  This was it. This was as far as she was going to get. Now what?

  About six feet above her to the left, steel glinted in the middle of a patch of hard-blue ice. It was Rose’s ice screw from which hung the double weight of both Rose and Yvonne. Although the screw was rated for the impact of a falling climber, any fixing was only as good as the material in which it was set and McCarthy could see that the ice around the screw’s bolt-like head was frosted with fine cracks.

  Bracing one boot against the cliff to keep from spinning, McCarthy reached out as far as she could.

  It was no use. She was at least a metre short. What was she going to do anyway? Hold on to the rope? Tie their lifeline to her own and triple the weight suspended from her anchor?

  She looked around for anything that could help. Her gaze traced the route that Yvonne had taken just before she fell: across the face of the mountain and towards—

  She saw what had caught Yvonne’s eye. Away to her left further up the cliff was one of the most unusual sights she had ever seen. A pair of icy protuberances flanked a rock ledge. Each was about three metres tall and craggy with wind-sculpted ice. The tremor had shaken some of the ice loose and from the nearest buttress a human head stuck proudly above the cloak of opaque ice that shrouded the rest of its body.

  McCarthy had seen similar sights many times during her time in the Hindu Kush: shrines and idols carved out of the bare rock at the side of the road. Ancient waypoints on some long-forgotten pilgrimage trail. But she had never seen one sculpted so exquisitely out of the side of a mountain face thousands of feet above sea level.

  The head was larger than life—almost twice life size—but apart from the scale every detail had been captured with photographic accuracy. It was adorned with an ornate piece of headgear, somewhere between a helmet and a crown, which was carved in such detail that McCarthy imagined that she would be able to lift it off the statue’s graven brow. But that was only an illusion created by the artist’s skill. In reality she knew that the ornate helm would be firmly fixed to the rock.

  Firmly fixed to the rock!

  Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She wedged her booted feet into the gap between two rills of fluted ice and took the weight off her improvised blanket sling. The rock was cold and smooth with only large, rounded features to provide any kind of hand hold. She could feel the cold seeping through her gloved hands as the mountain leached the heat from her body, but for the first time that day she was not just pulling herself up a rope, she was climbing!

  She forced herself to release one hand’s hold on the mountain and work at untying her lifeline from the ice screw in front of her. Working with only one hand and her teeth, it took a full minute to untie the knot, but eventually she got the rope free and clamped it between her teeth.

  Damn it was heavy.

  Fifty metres if ice-encrusted nylon pulled her head forward and the muscles at the back of her neck started to scream within seconds.

  She would have to ignore it.

  Unclipping the blanket sling from the ascending device, she wriggled free until it dropped down to her feet like an over-sized nappy. Carefully she shook it off her legs one at a time and it was instantly whipped away by the wind.

  There was no going back now. She was free-climbing on one of the most dangerous mountains in the world. There would be no second chances.

  Quickly, before either her fear or the cold could paralyse her aching muscles, she found another foothold and climbed half a step upwards. She tried to move smoothly, precisely, as she had seen Rose do. She only ever released on hold at a time, keeping her other three limbs tenaciously planted at all times. She started to tire almost immediately, but she would not have to keep up her effort for long. If she didn’t make it in the next few minutes, she may as well not make it at all.

  Slowly, she edged closer to the statue. She kept her eyes fixed on it, seeing nothing else but her goal and the next hold she would take towards it.

  The statue was only twelve feet away...

  Then ten...

  Then—

  She could go no further. Her path was blocked by a sheet of featureless ice as big as two billiard tables. Without crampons or an ice axe, she was stuck.

  She looked in vain for any way around the expanse of featureless ice. The only thing that offered any purchase was the great stone head itself some ten feet away.

  It might as well be ten miles, she thought grimly.

  She only had one chance. Releasing one precious hold on the mountain, she pulled up a length of her dangling rope. The muscles of her neck and jaw rejoiced in the temporary release from their burden, but she didn’t have time to savour the feeling. Working as quickly as she dared in her precarious position, McCarthy tied a loop in the end of the rope and gathered in a good couple of metres of slack.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ she said aloud and flung the makeshift lasso at the head.

  She missed by miles.

  She gathered in the loop of rope, clamped the free end back between her teeth and tried again.

  She was closer this time, but the throw made her overbalance and she threw her weight onto her left leg to compensate. The additional force was more than her friable foothold could take and it crumbled underneath her.

  She gasped and clutched instinctively at the cliff face and the rope fell away from her in sinuous loops like a snake fleeing down the mountainside, and with it went all hope.

  She was stuck.

  She couldn’t save the others and lacked the strength or skill to make the rest of the climb on her own. It would only be a few minutes before the cold and exhaustion claimed her. Her options were limited and stark. She could either wait until the cold sapped the last of her strength and she fell from the mountainside, or she could wedge her cramping limbs into some nook and freeze solid where she was.

  ‘Di
d you lose something?’

  She looked down. Below her a solitary figure was climbing up the mountain. It was Muhammad Khamas! He must have seen McCarthy and understood her plan. He had his own rope tied securely to his belt and another—McCarthy’s—draped across his shoulders.

  Well, third time’s the charm, she thought.

  Rose and Yvonne clasped each other like lovers as they hung from their twisted rope. The wind had picked up again and its icy fingers strummed the rope like a guitar string. Even through the vibration Rose thought he could feel the tell-tale signs of the ice screw giving way above them.

  He tried in vain to reach the cliff face but it was no use. They were completely helpless. All he could do was hang there and wait for the ice screw to work itself loose. Every crystalline flake that swirled down from above was another grain of sand through the hourglass that measured their last minutes.

  He could almost hear the crystalline plink of cracking ice as their support started to tear free.

  Then something appeared at the corner of his vision: a rope swinging towards him, its free end weighted down with not two but four ascending devices. Enough for both him and Yvonne.

  ‘Well don’t just hang there!’ McCarthy yelled from above. ‘Grab the bloody rope!’

  ◆◆◆

  Frank McCarthy shivered in the cold air away from the geothermally heated lake as he changed clothes with one of the dead Indian soldiers. Carver had been strangely insistent about being given privacy to change.

  Women, thought Marinucci as he pulled the white snowsuit over his long johns. You could never tell what they were thinking. One minute she was butchering commandoes as if she’d bee born to the task, and the next she was as prissy as a fifty-year-old spinster.

  Something about that woman bugged the hell out of him.

  ‘Security consultant, my arse,’ he said aloud.

  Marinucci couldn’t remember when they had decided to follow out Carver’s plan. There had been no real debate: the woman had just assumed that her companions would go along with it. And, to be truthful, Marinucci couldn’t see any other way of getting off the mountain. But that still didn’t make him trust the woman.

  He carefully folded his clothes and placed them next to the pile of equipment from the Supacat although, one way or another, he knew he wouldn’t be coming back for them. Looking down at the stacked gear, Marinucci had an idea. He suddenly saw his insurance policy.

  CHAPTER 19

  Marinucci clung to Tej’s back as they sped through the gathering storm on the Indians’ snowmobiles. The wind had picked up. It swirled around them, catching the snow torn up by the caterpillar treads of the snowmobiles and enveloping them inside their own personal blizzard.

  The helicopter they were heading towards was little more than a shadow on the back of the wind-driven snowstorm. Behind them, Carver driving the second snowmobile hovered on the edge of visibility. Campbell was trussed up like a steer and strapped onto the pillion, more luggage than passenger.

  Tej slowed as a wraith-like figure appeared in front of them, gaining solidity as they drew closer. The figure raised a hand in greeting but the radio stayed silent. Marinucci flicked through the channels but found nothing but static.

  The figure’s hand dropped to his rifle and Tej swung the snowmobile away and gunned the engine

  The sentry shouted after them before unleashing a volley of shots at their backs.

  Marinucci cursed fluently into the folds of the scarf wrapped across his face. He flicked his rifle over to full automatic and sprayed back towards the lone guard. In the driving snow it was impossible to tell if he’d hit anything. The wind swirled around the cirque and he found it almost impossible to keep his bearings. He couldn’t even be sure that they were still headed towards the helicopter that had loomed out of the whiteness a few seconds ago during a temporary dip in the wind. He hoped that Tej at the controls of the speeding snowmobile could see where he was going.

  ‘What happened to sneaking in?’ Marinucci shouted over the roar of the engine. ‘I liked that idea.’

  ‘Suspicious lot, these Indians,’ Tej replied. ‘The radio was silent, they must have switched frequencies.’

  Another burst of gunfire whistled past them. Marinucci fired back along their path, but he was firing blind.

  ‘How the hell can they see us?’

  ‘They can’t. But they can surely hear us.’

  As if to prove his point, another burst of automatic fire slammed into the snow around them.

  The black shape of the helicopter loomed out of the blizzard ahead. They were almost at their goal, when suddenly the long-fingered, orange star of a rifle’s muzzle flash appeared out of nowhere, right in front of them. Bullets shattered the snowmobile’s windshield and tore through the fibreglass fairing into the engine compartment.

  Tej yanked the motorcycle-style handlebars to the left and turned them out of the line of fire. They were now heading away from the helicopter.

  ‘Shit!’ Marinucci cursed. ‘What do we do now?’

  Tej was tight-lipped as he guided the snowmobile around in a wide circle.

  They sped through a cluster of white pyramids: the Indian camp. Tej swerved violently to avoid ploughing into the camouflaged tents, almost invisible in the driving snow until the very last second.

  ‘Where are the soldiers?’ Marinucci shouted.

  Through a break in the snow, Marinucci saw the wreckage of the crashed Fairchild. The nose was just visible inside a deep pit in the snow. The rest of the plane was burried in the crevasse below. As he watched, half a dozen white-suited figures swarmed from the pit like soldier ants protecting their nest.

  Tej saw them too. ‘Close it!’ he shouted.

  ‘How?’

  Tej pivoted on one of the snowmobile’s foot pegs and spun around behind Marinucci like a wrestler. He pushed him forwards along the snowmobile’s long saddle to the handlebars.

  ‘You drive: I’ll show you!’

  Marinucci grabbed the handlebars and wound on the throttle as Tej unslung his rifle and—steadying it on Marinucci’s shoulder—emptied the magazine at the Indian soldiers.

  Two were cut down by the firestorm while they were still in the deep trench that led to the plane’s buried fuselage. Their white-clad bodies blossomed with crimson rosettes as the high velocity rounds punched bloody exit wounds through them.

  The four remaining soldiers scattered into the storm.

  Turning his attention to the plane, Tej pumped a grenade into the launcher slung under the barrel of his rifle. As Marinucci sped past the pit, Tej fired the grenade almost point-blank into the hole.

  The explosion blew a fountain of snow twenty feet into the air and shook the snow under the speeding snowmobile. The sides of the deep pit slumped in against the exposed cargo door of the buried plane. Nobody else would be coming up that way anytime soon.

  Millicent Carver raced across the snow at the controls of the second snowmobile. Things were not going well at all. That idiot Ghurkha had ruined everything—speeding away like that and drawing fire from what sounded like half the platoon. She had been forced to follow suit or be riddled with bullets where she sat.

  This was going to make her job exponentially more difficult.

  She rode the speeding vehicle one-handed with her SCAR rifle resting on the fairing to one side of the windscreen, pointing forward at an angle like the lance of medieval knight.

  Bullets thudded into the snow around her with a muffled whumpf. To her left the staccato starburst of a muzzle flash exploded out of the featureless white. She ducked low on the saddle and squeezed off an answering burst. She was rewarded by a short-lived cry of pain.

  At that moment and explosion ripped through the storm from the direction of the crashed plane.

  This was definitely going to make the negotiations more complicated.

  Marinucci and Tej sped along between the tents with Marinucci at the controls. Tej stood up on the rear foot pegs with his rif
le at his shoulder like a human gun-turret.

  Frank could hear the noise of the second snowmobile and the occasional burst of gunfire, but it was not enough to home in on Carver.

  There were still at least half a dozen Indian commandoes out there—camouflaged by their white snowsuits and the fierce storm. It wouldn’t be long before the soldiers figured out their plan and re-grouped to defend the helicopter. Whatever they were going to do, they had better do it fast.

  Suddenly a hail of bullets tore into the snow around them. Tej returned fire to their front quarter but to no effect and suddenly Marinucci saw why. Ahead of them, two Indian soldiers had dug a shallow foxhole in the snow: Tej’s fire was going right over their heads!

  Marinucci gritted his teeth and urged the snowmobile to still greater speeds. Ducking down as low as he could behind their shattered windshield he set a course straight towards the Indians.

  ‘Hang on!’ he shouted.

  The Indians tried to scramble to their feet, suddenly very aware that their shallow trench would not protect them from being rammed by the speeding snowmobile.

  At the last minute one rolled to the side, but the second took the full force of the impact. The carbon-fibre skis at the front of the vehicle all but decapitated the unfortunate soldier and the snowmobile leapt into the air as if propelled off a ramp.

  When it landed, it thudded back into the snow, buckling a suspension strut on the left ski and digging in—hard! Marinucci had to fight with all his strength just to keep the little vehicle from flipping over.

  Eventually he regained control and risked a quick look over his shoulder. There was no sign of the man he had hit; he was somewhere back in the swirling snow.

  There was also no sign of Tej. The Ghurkha was nowhere to be seen.

  Tej hit the snow at over thirty miles an hour. The sudden impact ripped his rifle from his grasp and it went spinning into the distance.

  Instinctively he rolled through a couple of somersaults before coming to his feet, balanced and ready to fight, with his pistol already drawn from its holster and his kukri glistening in his other hand.