Through the clouds, Rose caught a flash of white: the blinding glare of sunlight on snow. And it was getting closer.
‘Brace yourself!’ Rose shouted.
The spire was slipping sideways on its ancient footing and its summit smashed into the lip of the roof opening. Rock splintered under the onslaught. Chunks rained down, splashing into the rising lava lake below.
Rose fought to see through the clouds. The spire was still moving, grating around the roof opening, tearing rock and ice loose with a sound like the end of the world. As well as sinking to the side, the rising level of the lava below was pushing the spire upwards.
‘Get ready!’ Rose shouted as he judged the surges from below. ‘We’re going to have to jump for it.’
Tej and the others crouched with him, clinging onto the bucking mountain. Suddenly a cliff of ice loomed towards them. An explosion below lifted the spire and the ice flashed past them.
‘Now!’ Rose shouted, and leaped. He landed rolling in powder snow and scrambled to his feet. Behind him a huge cone of rock reared up, sheathed by a column of steam and towering above Tej, Khamas and the Major as they scrambled to safety. The black tip of the spire hung in the air for a second like a whale breaching through some arctic breathing hole. Then it sank back into the cavern in a splash of molten rock.
Rose staggered away from the opening on shaky legs. The heat rising from the lava below was ferocious and there was still the chance that the floor might collapse under them and pitch them into the lake of fire.
They were on top of the dome: a minor peak in the saw toothed ring that surrounded the glacial cirque. Rose trudged to the edge of the slope that angled steeply down into the bowl below. The helicopter was gone: at least McCarthy had made it. He hoped that Frank Marinucci had had the strength to hold on until they reached civilisation. He would. Rose was sure of that. The thought gave him some solace.
Behind him two huge columns of steam rose into the clear Himalayan sky. One of them—rising from the lake cavern they had just escaped—was already growing fainter as the water of the lake boiled away. The other marked the spot of Garrett’s sacrifice. A giant scoop had been taken out of the mountainside where tonnes of rock had simply been vaporised. A new volcano in an old mountain range that had thought itself past such excitements. The bottom of the crater would bubble for a good while yet.
The heat was already having an effect on the glacier. Sheets of ice, weakened already by the spring thaw, ripped away from the rock with deafening cracks that echoed around the cirque like thunder. The ice tumbled onto a glacier that was undergoing its own transformation.
‘It’s melting,’ Rose said to Tej who joined him at the lookout. ‘Pretty soon it’ll all be gone. The plane, the bodies we left behind, everything. The water will seal the cracks, refreeze, and there will be nothing to say that anything ever happened here.’
‘What about that?’ Tej asked, pointing towards the ruined mountainside behind them.
‘A volcano,’ Rose replied. ‘People understand volcanoes. Sure it’ll be front page news for a while. But they’ll tire of it. It’ll certainly be a damn sight easier to explain than what really happened.’
Rose slumped to his knees, exhausted, totally spent.
‘We’ve made it!’ said Khamas as he collapsed next to him. ‘I never thought we would, but we actually made it!’
‘We made it alright,’ Rose replied. ‘Right out of the frying pan and into the freezer.’
A bitterly cold gust of wind swirled around them, cutting straight through the heat radiating from below. Its bitter touch reminded them all of their soaking wet clothes and the heavily insulated jackets they had left behind, now buried forever.
‘We have to keep moving,’ Khamas said. ‘There must be somewhere we can reach. After all we’ve been through we can’t give up now.’
‘I’m afraid Captain Rose is right,’ said the Major. ‘If we tried to climb down there we would be dead within two minutes. We must stay here. The lava will keep us warm for a while.’
‘But for how long?’ Khamas asked.
‘Such a big mass of lava will take years to solidify completely. But the crust will cool within hours.’
It seemed impossible. Having just escaped immolation in the fires of the earth, it seemed they were to freeze to death.
Another gust of wind picked up a flurry of snow. The white powder settled on bare rock where only a few minutes ago it would have instantly melted. More followed as the chill wind swept in from the north.
‘The wind is picking up,’ Khamas noted.
It did seem to be getting stronger. At any moment Rose expected a belch of superheated steam to come shooting up from the cavern below, the final exhaust gasses from the titanic explosion that had taken place in the depths below finding them at last.
But ther was no such eruption, and the swirling icy wind seemed to be coming from above them.
'Katabatic wind,' Rose said. 'Night must be falling'
‘Maybe not,’ Tej replied. ‘Look!’
Rose looked up, and found himself squinting into the downwash of an Indian helicopter. The side hatch was open and Rose thought he could make out a familiar figure supporting his squat frame against the bulkhead.
Frank Marinucci heaved a rope ladder out of the open hatch and Rebecca McCarthy brought the big chopper closer until Rose was able to snag the ladder and hold it taut for Tej, Khamas and the Major to clamber up. Finally Rose began to climb, McCarthy already seeking the safety of higher altitude even before he was in the cabin. He rolled onto his back in the helicopter's cabin as Tej slid the hatch closed behind him.
Frank was propped against the bulkhead, bandaged and bloody but grinning from ear to ear.
'He wouldn't let me leave,' McCarthy shouted from the cockpit.
'Didn't want to miss the show,' Frank replied. 'Never saw an antimatter explosion before. Wanted to tick it off the bucket list.'
'Frank, you're the most stubborn man I've ever met,' said Rose. 'Thanks for waiting.'
'Don't thank me just yet. I think we used up most of our fuel waiting around for you lot. This could be a real short trip.'
'Don't worry, I'll get us to Gilgit, provided there's no more interference from our mythical friends down there?'
'The Asuras? They're history,' Rose said. 'Take us home, Mac.'
◆◆◆
The helicopter took in one long lap of the cirque before it left, carefully avoiding the thermals that rose from the new crater that pockmarked Nanga Parbat’s ancient hide.
It flew over the glacier. The short-lived lake was already beginning to freeze around its edges. The rugged surface of cracks and ice boulders had melted to glass-smooth perfection. Only the ripples from the chopper’s wash disturbed the pristine surface.
Everything they had seen was gone. Either entombed in molten rock, or sunk and drowned. Soon the glacier would freeze again, preserving the last resting place of Flight PA-403 for all time like a crushed insect caught in amber.
None of the helicopter’s passengers were under any illusion as to the reception they would get at their destination. Most of the general public would be incredulous. A few people in the halls of London, Islamabad and Delhi would think that they knew better, but even they would never know—or never let themselves believe—the full truth.
After completing its final turn the helicopter accelerated away to the north.
Behind them, on the cliff face below the lip of the cirque, two pairs of eyes gazed blankly after them. The statues of the Asura and its forgotten adversary stared out on the world below as they had done for millennia. Not all battles were remembered. Even the greatest hero faded into anonymity in time. But their deeds lived on.
THE END
Books By This Author
SNAFU: Last Stand
SNAFU: Medevac
SNAFU: Hunters
SNAFU: Black Ops
SNAFU: Wolves at the Door
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R P L Johnson, Asura
Asura Page 34