The Red Guard

by The Red Guard (fb2)

  The General did not come. The six men were there, huddled to one side and talking among themselves. The horses were saddled and ready, full of spirit and anxious to go.

  Killmaster began to fret. What was keeping the old man? They were on a very tight schedule. The plane from Sikkim would be at the landing field at 2:00 A.M. — it would wait exactly ten minutes, no longer.

  The General did not come.

  Nick waited another five minutes. Then he told the girl, "I'll go see what's keeping him."

  He knew where the old man's quarters were and he was nearly there when a thought struck him. He did not like the thought, but the pull of it, the intuition, was so strong that he changed course and retraced his earlier steps. Past the carp and lily pond to the court of the black pagoda. He had to feel his way across the court, but the door of the pagoda opened easily to his touch. It was filled with soft light, some of the candles burned low, guttering in the chill wind as he entered.

  He went at once to the divan, knowing that he had been right. The General was dead.

  The old man lay on the divan with the mummy of his wife. As close to her in death, Nick thought, as he must have been in life. Fifty years ago.

  General Teng's eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. Nick closed them, guessing what had happened. The old man had lain down for a «talk», as he must have done so many times before. This time his heart had stopped. Just like that.

  Nick went back to the gate, wondering what in hell he was going to do now.

  But it was all right. The General, it appeared, had summoned a servant to the pagoda and had given orders.

  The leader of the little group bowed to Nick. "We go now, sar?"

  He did not tell them the General was dead. He took out his compass, the needle glowing in the dark, and said: "We go now."

  The plane from Sikkhn would set down at two. They were on the last leg.

  When they were well away he and the girl dropped back. He told her that Teng was dead.

  Fan Su did not look at him. She stared straight ahead, over her mount's head, and said: "Life is only a procession toward death."

  Chapter 10

  The dawn came clear and cold into the valley. Here they were shielded from the wind, snug in a cave against the western side. It had been snowing a little as the plane dumped them, in black chutes, into the long slit in the massive plateau. Now the snow had stopped, leaving only a thin silt of sugar coating on the gray, barren rock.

  Fan Su was curled in her sleeping bag, watching as Nick studied the mosiac maps with a flashlight By now he knew them by heart. He saw, with pleasure, that the old General had known what he was talking about The valley they were now in was roughly parallel to the narrow entrance of the Chumbi. A half-mile inside the Chumbi entrance, according to the satellite pictures, a gallery ran from an open cut into the solid rock of the west façade. It was in that gallery, or so said both CIA and AXE experts, that the monkey business was going on. Here the ChiComs were building what the CIA chose to call Prop B… the biggest hydrogen bomb in the world.

  Killmaster was smoking one of his gold tips now. There had been a carton in the pack along with two bottles of Scotch. The booze would have to wait until the mission was completed, but never had a cigarette tasted so good. He hummed to himself as he went over the maps again and again, hardly daring to believe his luck. If his calculations were right, all he had to do now was go two hundred feet up — straight up — then a quarter of a mile over rough terrain with good cover. Then another two or three hundred feet down — straight down — and he would be in the Chumbi, within a few hundred yards of that gallery entrance.

  His glance strayed to his explosives kit, a small neat package of polyethylene. It contained conventional dynamite, detonators and timing devices, a ball of plastique this all for targets of opportunity. The real murder was a single little bomb that looked like a grenade: It was a miniature atomic bomb. Hawk believed in fighting atoms with atoms.

  Killmaster stared at the kit with great respect The bomb was miniature only in a relative sense — when it went it was going to take most of the Chumbi with it. That was the idea: They didn't want to accidentally detonate the ChiComs' bomb; all they wanted was to bury the tunnel, and the bomb or bombs, and the scientists and technicians and Red Army men. Bury them under a few billion tons of dirt and rock.

  Nick tore his eyes away from the kit and back to the map. If their bomb went — if they were so far along with it that it could go — it would take half of Tibet with it Nobody, but nobody, would get out.

  The girl said, "Nick."

  "Umm?"

  "Have you noticed the smell?"

  He had He had noticed it from the very first but had not mentioned it. She had turned sullen and withdrawn again, jittery, and he did not want to make it worse. The smell was bad. It was everywhere. It was here in the cave now.

  He could not exactly place the smell, or describe it, except that it was foul and somehow frightening. It was a dung smell, yet it was more than that. A death-and-dung smell was closer, he thought and yet that did not exactly describe it.

  "I smell it" he said. "Forget it. Smells can't hurt us."

  "But what can it be?" Her face twisted in disgust. "It's horrible! Like — like some terrible corruption. And it's all over the valley — did you notice that?"

  Nick had noticed that also, and in a way it pleased him. He had an idea that the natives hereabouts, and that would include Chinese soldiers, avoided this place like the plague. He couldn't blame them. The odor was enough to make you believe in demons.

  He stood up, stretched, and began to assemble gear. "Come on," he snapped at her. "Let's go find that stair up the cliff — before you start believing in Yetis. So it isn't exactly Shangri-La. So what? Let's get on with the job. We might as well black up now, faces, metal, everything." He was gruff and meant to be. Her moods were becoming more and more difficult She had, he thought now, lost a lot of her old fire.

  She blacked his face and then he worked on hers. While she was blacking any metal that might glint and betray them, Nick went to the mouth of the shallow cave and studied the valley with powerful binoculars. He did not think this valley was overlooked — the plateau was high and towered over the Chumbi Pass to the west — but he flattened himself among the massive slabs of rock around the cave entrance.

  The valley was forbidding enough, even without the foul odor that hung over it. Nothing more than a rock-filled gash that had been scooped out of the massif. There was a moonscape bleakness about it relieved only by a small, meadowlike patch of lichen and stunted grass near the middle of the long slot Nick breathed a little easier when he saw that A helicopter could get down. Otherwise it would have been a hover pickup, and that was tricky in the dark. As it was, he could plant his flares, four of them to make a square, and guide the pilot in. That would happen exactly at midnight — if it happened at all.

  Nick began a slow and meticulous sweep with the glasses. The sheer cliffs were forbidding. There had better be stairs — it would take hours to climb any of the rock faces. He alone. He would never get the girl up.

  He spotted a number of cave openings across the valley, dark spots in the base of the cliffs. This place was honeycombed with them. At one time, he supposed, the valley had been inhabited by primitive man. An archeologist could have a ball in here. The Chinese scientists were missing a bet. Maybe they could find out what caused the smell. Nick wrinkled his nose. Ugh! That whiff had smelled like animal excreta that refused to decay, that lay ripe and stinking in the sun.

  He moved the glasses around to study the northern rim. Here, through a shallow scallop, a little saddle in the rock, he could see a faint, peekaboo glimmer on the far high horizon. Sunlight glinted on a silver spike. He knew it was Mount Makalu. Everest was just beyond. With the superb glasses and in pellucid air he was seeing nearly a hundred miles.

  On one of the nearer mountain slopes he could make out a tiny village hanging like a bird's nest. There wa
s smoke and the flutter of what must be prayer flags. Near the village brown dots moved in a field — yaks plowing?

  The village did not worry him. There was not much chance of anyone there having powerful glasses. It was possible to move about in the valley without much fear of detection. Nick put the glasses away, rolled over on his back, stared at the sky and lit a cigarette. The smoke helped a little against the smell.

  Their luck, he considered, had been phenomenal. Too good! By the law of averages something had to go wrong soon. Meantime, though, they were in clover. The General was dead and couldn't be made to talk. The servants and the villagers, the "soldiers," they could be made to talk but they didn't know anything. The authorities would find out about the planes, of course, and about the two strangers who had come and vanished, but there too the luck was holding. Chances were good that the Chinese would think the two were after the secret airfield the General had mentioned.

  Fan Su came out of the cave carrying the two rifles. She smiled at him and he smiled back. Her mood had switched again. She kicked his foot. "Daydreaming? That won't find the stairs — if there are any stairs."

  Killmaster flipped away his cigarette and got up. He took a rifle from her. "Let's see. And you might pray a little, because if the old boy was lying I'm going to have to leave you here while I do the job." He pointed at the cliff overhanging them and added wryly, "Unless you're a good rock-climber?"

  The girl glanced around. Her smile faded. "I'll get up the cliff somehow. I'm not going to be left in this place alone!"

  Nick went into the cave for his climbing gear. They began a slow, careful search of the cliff base, making their way through heaps of huge rocks and boulders that might have been strewn by a careless giant hand. They passed another cave mouth.

  Behind him she said, "That smell — have you noticed? It's stronger when we get close to a cave."

  Nick had the glasses out again, minutely searching the rock face ahead of them. "Forget it," he said. "Probably just bad plumbing. The cave dwellers weren't much for sanitation."

  He heard her mutter — "Hai p'a." I am afraid. The. words she had uttered during the nightmare in Los Angeles. Anger flared in him, not so much at the girl as at circumstance. God damn it! Things were tough enough without this sudden, inexplicable breakdown of a girl who…

  The stairs.

  There they were, beginning in a crevice notched out of the rock face. Nick hastened forward. "They're here, baby. By God, they're here!"

  The first faint groove in the stone was about waist high. Nick stared at it. It was shallow, roughhewn, a bare six inches wide and an inch deep, but beyond doubt the work of men. Centuries had eroded the chisel marks into smoothness, but they were still discernible.

  Nick traced them upward. They marched straight up the cliff face for about a hundred feet, then sidled to the right to avoid an overhang. He could not see beyond that point. He turned to Fan Su. "Ill go up and scout a little. I think it's going to be fairly easy. For me, anyway, and I'll fix up the rough spots for you. You ever do any rock-climbing?"

  "Never."

  "Nothing to it," he said with an assurance that was not altogether genuine. "The big thing is to keep your nose against the rock face, don't look down and only look up as far as the next hold. And keep moving — don't freeze."

  Fan Su was gazing up the cliff. "It looks impossible," she said. "Like the side of a building — the Empire State. Maybe I can't do it, Nick."

  "You'll do it, honey." He laughed at her. "I'm talking about real rock-climbing — this is practically an escalator."

  On this first trip he took only his climbing gear, the Luger and the stiletto. He slung the thick coil of nylon rope over his shoulder and put a rock hammer in his belt, from which dangled a pouch containing various types of pitons. The fur boots were not the best for climbing, but that could not be helped.

  It was easy going to the first overhang. He glanced down. She was staring up at him, not shielding her eyes from the rock glare, and he realized with a little shock that there was no glare. The sun had gone. The wind seemed a little suffer. They might be in for a little bad weather. That was all he needed.

  Just above the overhang the steps had eroded into mere scratches in the stone. She would never get past this stretch. He hammered a piton into a crack beside the last full step, cut the line to an estimate, and began to inch up the cliff toward the next good step about a dozen feet above. This was very nearly the real thing, and for the last hand-hold he had to take off his mittens and hold them in his teeth while he searched for a crevice. As he found it his foot slipped, and for the space of a second he hung dangling by his finger tips. He sought with his toes again, cursing. That had been too close. He was out of practice.

  He reached the next good step and hammered in another piton, belaying and knotting the line and dropping it. He would tie it into the lower piton on his way down.

  Nick was now about halfway up the cliff face. The steps began to slant, to sidle crosswise over the cliff. Whatever primitive man had cut them had been intelligent enough to chose the easiest going. It would, he thought, have taken them years to cut these steps with their primitive tools.

  The going was fairly easy now. As he climbed, Nick began to think ahead. Timing was going to be important They must come up the face he was now climbing and cross a quarter of a mile of rough terrain to the Chumbi. He planned to do it just at dusk, when the light would be in their favor. They would have to reach the rim of the Chumbi before it was completely dark. Going back — if they did — would be easier because they would have some knowledge of the terrain and they could use flashlights. He did not care much if the enemy discovered him after he had planted the explosives.

  He glanced at the sky. It was a dull battleship gray, and tiny flecks of snow were dancing in the rising wind. Hell! Nothing to do but hope the storm held off until he had done his job.

  As he neared the top he grew increasingly conscious of fatigue. When he finally pulled himself over the rim he was gasping. Even here, at this comparatively low altitude, the Tibetan air was thin. You did not notice it until some violent exertion. He rolled over on his back, breathing hard. Two snowflakes clung to his face, melting. Directly over him an eagle circled on great pinions. I hope, he thought with a sour little grin, that you are not a Chinese eagle.

  When he was breathing normally again he wriggled to a buttress of rock and scanned with the binoculars. He nodded. The CIA maps and scaling were pretty damned accurate. Give them that. The distance from where he lay to the far rim of the table, where it dropped into the Chumbi, was just about a quarter of a mile. Far enough, considering that they must crawl it on their hands and knees.

  The terrain slanted gradually downward, away from him. It was rough, much like the floor of the valley, but with occasional stretches of smooth snow. Hidden crevasses? Nick shrugged. Just have to chance that He began to work out the best way over the expanse, using all the available cover but still making as straight a line as possible.

  The wind was getting up now. It was blowing directly in his face, from the west, and he could hear a low humming sound coming from the direction of the Chumbi. The wind fell, and the sound stopped. The wind came back and he heard it again. Finally he identified it. A generator. It must be a whopper. He couldn't have asked for a better beacon to home in on.

  Nick went back down the cliff. When he got to the overhang he stopped to consider. The girl could get up by the line and the pitons, with him to help her. Going down might be trickier. They just might be in a hell of a hurry.

  Nick found a crack and drove in a ring piton. He fastened a line to it, then worked his way out to the overhang, put in another ring piton and led the line through it. She was watching him from below, her quilted coat dotted with snow.

  He tossed the line down to her. "Catch."

  When he got down he belayed the end of the line around a tall slab of rock jutting some twenty feet away from the cliff. He explained. "Going up you do it the
hard way. Following me. Coming down should be easy until you get to that overhang. You'll be leading me down. When you get to the overhang you can cut loose and rappel down. Just wrap your arms and legs around the line and slide. Okay?"

  She did not smile. "Okay, Nick. If you say so. What is it like up there?"

  He told her as they went back to the cave. She listened, nodding now and then, her eyes somber. The stench was worse, if anything. Nick lit a cigarette against it and offered her one, but she refused. Her dark eyes roved constantly up and down the valley. The snow was beginning to thicken now.

  As they entered the cave she said, "I think we're in for a storm. They can be very bad up here, even this early in the season."

  He was taking flares out of the pack. "I know. A little storm is all right, might even help us. I can do without a blizzard."

  Fan Su made tea, scalding hot, on the little pressure stove. They ate from cans and Nick had a slug of Scotch. One drink. She did not join him.

  After he had eaten, Nick took his flares and went to the little barren spot in the center of the valley. He planted them to make a square, a landing pad for the big helicopter that would pick them up. He hoped. The 'copter would be belly-riding in under a B52 and would have fuel enough to make it back to Sikkim. He glanced at the sky and listened to the rising howl of the wind. Again hoping. A lot of things could go wrong.

  When he got back to the cave, she was in her sleeping bag. He was headed for his own when she said, "Nick. Please. Come in with me. No — I do not want lovemaking. I just want to be near you. I want you to hold me."

  He squeezed his big body into the bag with her. He held her and whispered, "Get some sleep. And stop worrying — it's going to be all right. We've caught them with their trousers down — they don't know we're within a thousand miles."

  She nodded and clung to him. "I know — it isn't that. It's just that I feel so funny, Nick. I'm frightened and I don't really know why. This isn't like me — this really isn't me at all. I'm so nervous and tense I feel like screaming. I think it's that awful smell, mostly. It… it's like…"