High Time To Kill rbb-3

by Raymond Benson

  An hour after the others left, the wind began to pick up.

  Bond was looking on the far east side of the plateau for any traces of the missing men, when his cell phone rang. Digging it out of the parka pocket with the gloves was clumsy, but he managed to get it open.

  “James, I think I found them!” It was Chandra.

  “Where are you?”

  “Where I said they would be. In a crevasse. Come down and look.”

  The plateau was large enough that it would take him an hour of strenuous walking to cross it. “All right, I’m on my way. Mark your position and meet me at the top in an hour.”

  It was midafternoon when Bond got to the slope that Chandra had pointed to earlier. The Gurkha was waiting for him, bundled up like a polar bear. The wind was stronger now, and dark clouds were forming in the sky. They hadn’t much time left.

  Chandra led him a hundred meters over one crevasse to a second one that had a natural ice bridge at one end. Fifty feet down, wedged in tightly, were two bodies.

  “Chandra, I could kiss you, but I don’t think I can find your face,” Bond said. “We’re going to need some help getting them out of there.”

  Bond got on the phone to Marquis and Leaud, who arrived on the scene just as the snow started falling. With the windchill, the temperature dropped to eighty degrees below freezing. Bond pointed out the bodies to them, and Marquis said, “You had better wait until tomorrow, after the first storm passes. Paul said we should have ten to twelve hours of clear weather between the two storms.”

  “I’m going down now,” Bond said. “We have at least an hour. Help Chandra belay me.”

  “You’re mad, Bond, but all right. I’m as curious as you are at this point.”

  It took Bond forty-five minutes to get down to the bodies. They had set up a Z-pulley system, which offers a three-to-one mechanical advantage through the use of two pulleys. The result was an ingenious method of hauling heavy objects safely on what could possibly be unstable ice.

  Bond had his back flat against one wall of the crevasse, and his feet pushing against the opposite one. He inched down to one of the bodies and used the ice ax to free it enough to turn it over. It was the corpse of the third hijacker. The other body was five feet below. Chandra gave him more slack as he inched down into an even tighter squeeze. When he got to the body, Bond had to work for another twenty minutes chopping ice away from around the head and shoulders so that he could pull it up.

  “The wind is getting stronger, Bond,” Marquis said over the phone. “You had better come up.”

  “I’m almost finished,” Bond said. “Five minutes.”

  Finally, he tore away the frozen blanket covering the man’s face. It was Lee Ming.

  “All right, I got him,” Bond said into the phone. “I’m going to fasten the harness around him.” Since Lee was dead, Bond didn’t have to worry about fashioning a comfortable harness. He wrapped the rope around the man’s shoulders and arms and tied a Prusik knot.

  The storm hit with frightening strength just as Lee’s body was near the top of the crevasse. Marquis, Chandra, and Leaud were pulling as hard as they could, but the wind proved to be a formidable opponent- Getting Bond up was much easier, as he could help by using his crampons to “walk” up the side of the crevasse as they pulled.

  “We have to get into the tents as quickly as possible!” Marquis shouted. He could barely be heard over the howling wind.

  They threw Lee’s body onto a plastic sled, then all four men fought their way to the camp. They were in a full-scale blizzard now, and they could barely see where they were going. Bond directed them to his tent, where they laid down the corpse on a sleeping bag. Hope Kendall had provided Bond with some sharp instruments and tools, although she didn’t know what he needed them for.

  “I’ll stay in here,” he told them. “You all go back to your tents, and hurry. Chandra, keep the phone handy.”

  Marquis nodded and the others left the tent. Bond closed the flap, but the noise outside was so loud that he could barely hear himself think. He didn’t particularly relish the thought of spending the night with the corpse, but he didn’t want to take the chance that the Union operative might get to the body if he left it alone.

  The cadaver was frozen solid. Bond lit the Bibler stove, which generated a little heat. He took the standard-issue chemical hot packs, normally used when activated to treat frostbite, and placed them on Lee’s chest. He lit them, melting away the ice that held the man’s clothes in a solid straitjacket.

  In ten minutes Bond was able to cut away Lee’s shirt and expose his chest. The skin was cold and hard. He carefully examined the area above Lee’s breast and found the pocket of skin where the pacemaker had been inserted. It was still intact. Now all he had to do was wait awhile for the skin to thaw

  The storm raged outside. To pass the time, Bond took a snow shovel, opened the tent, and spent fifteen minutes clearing the entrance. It was quite common for climbers to find themselves buried inside their tents by huge snowdrifts after a big storm. Anyone caught inside without their shovel might never get out.

  Bond came back into the tent and examined Lee’s skin. It was now a bit like rubber, not totally fleshy, but soft enough to cut.

  He took a scalpel from Hope’s tools and began to carefully cut a square out of the man’s chest. It was tough, almost like cutting leather. Once the square was outlined, he used scissors to grasp a corner and pull it up, revealing bluish pink inner flesh and a gold- plated pacemaker.

  Bond breathed a sigh of relief. He removed his oxygen mask so that he could get a better look. He snapped the leads with the clippers, then, with his bare fingers, wrenched it out of the now-pliant, liquidless flesh.

  He had it! It was in his hand! Bond clutched the device triumphantly, ready to pick up the phone and call Chandra. He dialed his number and started to speak, when he felt a sudden sharp, heavy blow on the back of his head. The tent spun chaotically as everything went black.

  Bond fell forward on top of Lee’s mutilated cadaver, dead to the world.

  TWENTY-TWO

  LOVE AND DEATH AT 7,900 METERS

  OTTO SCHRENK HAD watched bond’s projected shadow from the outside of the tent, waiting until it was in the ideal position. Not wanting to kill him yet, Schrenk used a stone to knock Bond unconscious. He then tore open the flap, crawled in, and squatted over the two bodies. He rolled Bond off Lee, pried open the clenched fist, took the pacemaker, and reached for his mobile phone.

  “You there?” he spoke into it.

  “Yes,” came a voice from the other end. The storm made the connection tentative.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at our agreed rendezvous. Where else would I be in this storm? Do you have it?”

  “I have it.”

  “Good. Make sure Bond doesn’t wake up.”

  “Ja.” Schrenk rang off, put the phone away, and drew the Nazi dress dagger from the inside of his parka. He grabbed Bond’s black hair and pulled his head back, exposing his neck. Schrenk placed the blade against Bond’s neck and was about to slit his throat, when a bullet shot through the tent.

  Schrenk’s blood and brain matter splattered over Bond’s body as the German slumped over to the side.

  Roland Marquis crawled into the tent, lowered his Browning 9mm, then wrenched the pacemaker from Schrenk’s hand. He put it in his pocket, then aimed the gun at Bond’s head.

  The phone that Bond had dropped suddenly spurted to life with a burst of static. “James? Are you there?” Marquis thought it sounded like Chandra’s voice, but it was difficult to tell because of the noise. “If you can hear me, I’m on my way!” the voice said.

  Damn, Marquis thought. He quickly put away the gun, covered his head, and left the tent.

  Chandra, fighting his way through the blizzard, pushed forward toward Bond’s tent. He never should have left him alone. It was a good thing he had been watching with his Common Weapon Sight, which greatly intensified images. H
e had seen a figure enter the tent, followed by another.

  He plowed ahead, barely able to see even through his goggles. There was a dark shape ahead, and it was moving toward him. It was a person. Chandra moved closer until they were face-to-face. He recognized Roland Marquis.

  Chandra started to speak but saw that Marquis was pointing a pistol at him. He reacted quickly, turning away just as the weapon flashed. The bullet caught Chandra in the shoulder and spun him around. He fell to the snow and lay still. Marquis looked around to make sure he wasn’t seen, but everyone was safely in tents. The gunshot was muffled by the intense sound of the wind.

  Chandra felt the cold snow on his face and opened his eyes. He could just see Marquis’s silhouette turn and walk away from the campsite. The Gurkha managed to pull himself off the ground. His quick defensive move and the thick layers of clothing had luckily helped to deflect the bullet so that it hadn’t entered his chest. Nevertheless, he was in an immense amount of pain. Chandra breathed deeply from his respirator, savoring the oxygen contained in the canister on his back, then began to follow Marquis.

  “Wake up, damn you!”

  The slaps came hard and fast on his face. Bond’s vision was blurred and his head was pounding. Someone was crouched over him, and the voice was decidedly feminine.

  “James? Wake up!”

  He groaned, felt a rush of nausea, then rolled to his side and stopped himself from vomiting. After a moment he turned on his back and looked up at Hope Kendall, who began to wipe his face and forehead with a cloth.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “You were out cold. You have a nasty bump on the back of your head. Answer me!”

  Bond nodded. “I think I’m okay.”

  “Can you sit up?”

  He did so, slowly. His hand went to his head and felt a lump there.

  “I was afraid you were dead. Everyone else is!” she said. He realized there was pure terror in her voice.

  “What did you say?” She was terribly upset and in tears.

  “Everyone—Philippe, Tom Barlow, Paul Baack, the sirdar—well, I can’t find everyone, but there are six people dead up here. James, they’ve been murdered! Their throats were cut! And look at him—” She pointed at the body of Otto Schrenk. “He’s been shot in the head!”

  The news brought Bond out of the fog. The years of experience and living on the edge had long ago honed his ability to shake away pain and discomfort and focus on the matter at hand.

  “Who’s missing?” he asked.

  “Roland, Carl Glass . . . I’m not sure who else, I’m not thinking straight,” she said.

  “What about Chandra?”

  “I haven’t seen him, either.”

  The storm was still raging outside. Bond peered outside the tent. It was night, and there was absolutely no visibility. He turned back and surveyed the scene in the tent. Lee’s body lay where he had left it. Schrenk was crumpled up next to him. The Nazi dagger was lying by his side. There was a bullet hole in the tent.

  “I think I know what happened,” he said. “Schrenk. He hit me with something from outside the tent. He got the pacemaker.”

  “The what?”

  “Something I need,” he said. “He got it but was shot by someone else. Whoever shot him took the pacemaker.”

  “What pacemaker? What are you talking about?” she asked.

  He pointed to Lee’s body. She lifted the bit of clothing covering his chest and recoiled.

  “Christ,” she said. “Someone dug a pacemaker out of this guy?”

  “Yes, I did. That was my whole purpose for being on this expedition. You might as well know. Some classified military information was hidden inside it. I have to return it to England. Come on, let’s make some more room in here. Help me get rid of these bodies.”

  He began to drag Schrenk’s corpse toward the opening. She got hold of the legs and helped push the cadaver out into the snow. They did the same with Lee, making the tent comfortable enough for two people.

  “We’re going to have to wait until morning,” Bond said. “The storm is too severe to go out. At least we can stretch out now.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “What was in this pacemaker?”

  “Military secrets. The entire reason this expedition was put together was for me to retrieve them.”

  “You mean—this whole thing, I mean, this ‘salvage operation — was just a cover story?”

  He nodded.

  She sat back and folded her arms. “You son of a bitch,” she said. “Why the hell am I here? I’m lucky I’m not dead, too! You mean to tell me that you risked the lives of all these climbers and Sherpas just so your government could get hold of these so-called secrets? Are you out of your mind?”

  “Look, Hope,” he said. “I’m a civil servant. I do what I’m told. I’ve always thought it was a crazy, almost suicidal mission. Sometimes I’m ordered to do some very unpleasant things. Often there are other lives at stake. I’m sorry you got involved.”

  She was flabbergasted and, Bond thought, possibly in shock. She sat there, shivering, despite the layers of clothing she had on.

  “Now tell me about the dead people,” he said. “Start at the beginning.”

  She took some breaths from her oxygen canister, coughed, then began the story.

  “After you and the others brought back the body of that guy from the plane, Roland told us all to get into our tents, use a tank of oxygen and try to sleep through the storm. So that’s what I did, except I didn’t go to my own tent. I went to the supply tent, where I had set up medical HQ. I got into the bedroll there, mainly because it was warmer in there with all that stuff than my own tent. I think I got about two hours of sleep, but I woke up restless. I decided to go out and grope my way to Roland’s tent. I found it empty”

  “Who was he sharing the tent with?”

  “Carl Glass. He was gone.”

  “Go on.”

  “I then went over to Philippe and Tom’s tent, and that’s where I found them. They were both dead, their throats cut. I don’t know, I guess I panicked. I went to the next tent, the Sherpas’, and found them dead, too. Same thing, throats cut. All of them. Paul Baack was lying in his tent covered by that parka of his . . . blood all over the place. Then I came here and found you. I thought you’d been killed, too, until I examined you. You have a slight nick on your neck, there’s dried blood there. Then I noticed the bump on your head.”

  “It’s a good thing you weren’t in your own tent,” Bond said. “You might be dead now, too. Have you tried reaching anyone by phone?”

  “Yes, and it’s impossible to make a connection in this storm. All I get is static on all channels.”

  Bond considered the story. Had Schrenk committed the murders? He examined the Nazi dagger and saw that there was dried blood on it. Schrenk had most likely been in the act of slitting his throat when he was shot, but by whom? Could it have been Marquis? Was Marquis working against all of them? If so, which of them was Union? And if one was Union, whom was the other working for?

  He then noticed his own mobile phone lying in the corner of the tent, still switched on. He picked it up, made sure it was working, dialed Chandra’s number. A message appeared on the digital display that read “No Connection.

  “I told you that you’ll never get anything in this weather,” Hope said.

  “I had to try,” Bond said. He put it away and closed his eyes. His head was throbbing.

  “How important is that thing you’re after?” she asked.

  “Important enough for it to be essential to keep it from the wrong hands. It contains technology that could upset the balance of power.”

  “War stuff,” she said.

  “I suppose.” There was silence for several long moments.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked softly.

  The absurdity of the question caught Bond off guard, but he was too weary and cold to laugh. Instead, he simply nodded.

  “I should have k
nown,” she said. “I did know, instinctually, I guess. It’s why I found you attractive.”

  “You’re attracted to killers?”

  “That’s not what I meant. Is there any water in that thermos?” She pointed to one in an open sack. Bond shook it, heard a splashing sound, and handed it to her. She took a long drink, then said, “Remember I told you that I like to see how far a human being can go? Killing is related to that. I’ve always wondered how someone can kill another human being. You see, in my career, I try to save lives. We all lose patients, of course, but I vividly remember a particular one. It was a Maori woman, a mother who died during childbirth. She was brought into the emergency room at the hospital where I worked. She had an ectopic pregnancy. I did everything I could to save her. The baby lived, but she died. I always blamed myself for her death.”

  Bond put his hand on her leg and said, “It wasn’t your fault. Surely you know that?”

  “Of course, but still . . . Actually once I knew that she wasn’t going to live, I used her to satisfy something in myself. I was so goddamned curious about her condition. I wanted to see it. Remember I told you that I look at the human body as a machine? I wanted to see if I could fix it. What I tried didn’t work. She would have died anyway, but I think I might have helped her along. And to tell you the truth, I was horrified and saddened, but at the same time excited by the thought that I had that power. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She took a breath of oxygen from the respirator hanging over her shoulder. She coughed a couple of times, then continued talking. Bond thought she might be exhibiting shell-shock symptoms.

  “When I think of us up here where God never intended humans to be, the concept of life and death becomes such a trivial thing. Any one of us could die quickly and suddenly. Some of us already have. In the grand scheme of things, we’re just like bugs. Are we ants that wandered too far from home? I mean, here we are, stuck in this tent, sitting under God’s microscope—a male and female of the species. What kind of experiment is waiting for us? What kind of test?”

  She looked at him and laughed, but it quickly turned into coughing. She grabbed the respirator again and took some deep breaths of oxygen. Then she said, “I’m babbling. Don’t pay any attention to me. Hey, you know, it’s medically advisable that one snuggle with a partner to keep warm at high altitude. Would you like to do that?”