by Alex Archer
He rang a small brass bell with a blue-painted porcelain handle. A yellow-robed lama entered carrying a scroll on a tray.
“As you no doubt guess,” Toshan said, “this is yet another transcription from General Pantheras’s journal.”
Pan accepted and carefully unwrapped it. Annja saw with relieved approval that he had pulled on a pair of thin gloves before handling the age-yellowed document. Either he had returned fully to the present or the habits ingrained by archaeological training and fieldwork transcended space and time. Whatever works, she decided.
His handsome face grew craggier in his concentration, despite the softening effect of the butter-bowl light. “It’s short,” he said. “He says he has been given directions to the cave shrine. He also mentions that the lamas say it is guarded by a hairy man-like creature.”
He looked up blinking. “That’s all. He doesn’t actually repeat the directions.”
Annja felt as if her heart had entered free fall. Stricken, she looked to Toshan.
He smiled beneficently. “Open your hearts, children, and you shall not leave this lamasery without the knowledge you need to complete your quest.”
Before either could say anything he clapped his hands. A young lama in a crimson robe entered and bowed.
“You are tired from your travails,” Toshan said. “Now you will sleep. Zonpa will see you to your chamber. Your possessions have been carried there for you.”
Throughout, he never stopped beaming at them as if they were his very favorite niece and nephew. Nonetheless, his tone was as final as the closing of the immense iron-bound gates of the lamasery itself.
Annja and Pan rose and followed the silent Zonpa. He led them out of the chamber, down stone hallways lit by torches, up several flights of stairs and along another corridor. This one had unadorned walls and was lit dimly by butter lamps guttering in infrequent niches.
Zonpa stopped and bowed them through an open doorway. They entered. It was a simple chamber with windows set high in the walls, illuminated by the inevitable butter lamps. Two pallets had been laid out side by side. Annja’s and Pan’s gear, rifles included, was stacked to either side.
Clearly the lamas didn’t care much about maintaining the appearance of propriety between their guests. Or its actuality. Annja glanced at Pan.
Kneeling, Pan went through his gear. “So our yeti guards the highest shrine,” he said thoughtfully.
She looked at him sharply. “What happened to your earlier hardheaded skepticism about yetis?”
He chuckled. “I saw one, to start with. So did you.”
“The visibility was bad. And we were fighting for our lives. It was just a bear, Pan,” she said.
“It didn’t look like any bear I’ve ever seen.”
She shook her head in annoyance.
“It didn’t really look like a man to me, either, Annja. Manlike, but not a man. And why do the natives all say the creature exists? They live here.”
She drew a deep breath and sighed it out. “This altitude is getting to both of us,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no point debating this.”
“No doubt you’re right, Annja.”
She knelt with hands on knees, looking at the bones of her hands where they stood out against the skin. The wind sighed and cried faintly. There seemed no place in the vast fortress-like lamasery where she didn’t hear the wind.
There was so much she longed to discuss with Pan. But suddenly the whole weight of the day’s events seemed to land on her at once.
She barely had the energy to unlace and remove her boots and crawl beneath the waiting blankets and furs before she dropped into a deep sleep.
28
Dressed in his black leather greatcoat, despite the fact it wasn’t as well insulated as the puffy, brightly hued jackets that tourists and even many locals wore, Enver Bajraktari stood with his arms folded as his enormous henchman, Duka, plunged an arm into the drift of snow the guerrillas had been excavating. The bodyguard was roped to another Kosovar who sat on the trail several yards above with feet braced against a rock, belaying him. A few yards farther down, past a rugged gray rock, was nothing but air.
Pushing with his uninjured leg, Duka grunted mightily and heaved. Up came a dark shape encrusted in snow. It was the hood of a furry mountain coat, with a man’s head inside.
Several of the up-country guerrillas—a different breed, Bajraktari knew, from the city-bred barroom commandos who accompanied Chatura—slid down the short slope, their legs raising white swells of snow. They pulled the man Duka had found the rest of the way from the snowbank and laid him carefully out on the slope. One held a canteen to the badly chapped lips surrounded by a fringe of grizzled stubble and dribbled water between them. The man sat up coughing. The hood fell back from his head.
“Why did you disturb me?” Major Jagannatha demanded.
“Left to my own devices,” Chatura said, “I wouldn’t have. But, it seems, you are too much the legend to be allowed to slip peacefully into oblivion. Even by my own men.”
“If it’s any consolation, Major,” Bajraktari called to him, “we thought we were recovering your corpse.”
Jagannatha looked up at him with red eyes and spit. His men helped him to his feet. He shook them off and trudged up to the trail unaided. At once he was surrounded by his own troops and men in green-and-black camouflage, cheering and clapping him on the back. Chatura stood to one side looking sour.
Bajraktari moved over beside the commissar. “Don’t be downcast, comrade,” he said. “We lost many men to the avalanche and the storm. Many of Jagannatha’s wolves died fighting the outlanders. This man is a seasoned warrior. I know the breed. We need his courage and his cunning. And afterward, when the treasure is ours, we can give him his desire to rest—is it not so?”
“I REGRET TO SAY that the Sherpas you brought with you have refused to proceed any further,” Toshan said over a plentiful breakfast. “They have opted to return to their villages.”
Sunshine shot into Toshan’s audience chamber through high windows. Its brightness bleached the colorful carved walls where it touched them. The iron stove cast its warmth. The wind muttered and occasionally boomed.
Annja paused long enough to swallow her mouthful of food. “I don’t blame them. We’ll carry on as best we can,” she said.
“Oh, you’re not to be left in the lurch, my young friends. No worries. Prasad has elected to remain with you. He is a good man.”
“He is,” Pan said.
“We have told him we will keep the body of his nephew until his return. Should he not return, we will give the body to you to deliver to his relatives in Baglung. If you do not return, we shall see him home ourselves.”
Annja nodded.
“As for Sherpas, we have arranged for men from the vicinity to carry such supplies as you will need.”
Annja looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t think there’d be many people up here.”
Toshan smiled his world-encompassing smile. “The White Mountain holds many surprises, my friends.”
OUT IN THE YARD they found a glum Prasad awaiting them. Annja went to him and hugged him briefly. He endured it stolidly. Pan gripped him on the shoulder.
They turned to look over their porters. A half dozen small sturdy men in heavy, fur-lined coats with big fur caps looked back at them curiously. To Annja’s surprise each man carried a bolt-action Enfield rifle slung over his shoulder.
Toshan came down the monastery steps behind them.
“Guns?” Annja asked.
He smiled. “Some of the bloodier episodes of the history of Tibetan Buddhism might surprise you, Annja Creed. We are not always men of peace. When pilgrims face peril from the unrighteous, it is certainly permitted that they defend themselves.”
“Pilgrims?” Annja said.
“I think he means us,” Pan said.
She glanced up at him. He had his head up and was looking at the great mountain looming above them. In the early-morning
sun his expression seemed composed and determined.
She looked back at Toshan. The fat monk stood with his plump, bare legs splayed wide and the wind whipping his scarlet robe around his calves.
“The shrine lies higher up the mountain, above the tree line,” he told them. “In your hearts you know where to find it.”
Annja looked at him in puzzlement. But Pan nodded. “I can find it.”
“Go with my blessings, then. And an old man’s wishes that you both attain that which your hearts truly desire.”
“Thank you, Toshan,” Annja said.
“You do us a great service,” he told her. “What we have done is the least we can do.”
She kissed him on his cheek. His skin felt smooth as a baby’s. Then she turned and led the way out of the Lost Lamasery and off across the swaying rope bridge.
THEY FOUND TRAILS along and up the mountainside. They were steep, and snow and ice made the footing treacherous, but the only real difficulty was the thinness of the air.
General Pantheras didn’t have oxygen bottles, either, Annja told herself grimly as they trudged up a broad rocky chute. The early-spring Himalayan sky, when she paused and pushed her goggles up her forehead, was clear. But she knew that everything could change in an eye blink at this time of year.
The trail led around the mountain’s flank. The path was relatively broad, the slope to their left relatively gentle. She knew that was deceptive; beyond the edge it was a long way down. The trail wasn’t as gut-churningly terrifying as the ones they’d threaded yesterday. But a moment’s inattention as her boots crunched through the snow could kill her just as dead.
Although she felt rested and fit, she knew that was partly illusion. The high-altitude climber’s rule was to sleep below ten thousand feet whenever possible. Above that the air’s meager oxygen density challenged the system and made it hard for the body to recover even with rest. The Lamasery of the Winds was at twelve thousand feet. She wished they could have overnighted in the old Italian base camp north of Pakabon, currently visible beside the riverbed almost directly below them.
And if wishes were wings we’d just fly there, she reminded herself.
She was seeing phantoms. Strange shadow shapes lurked at the corners of her vision. Twice already she had started, turning and preparing to call the sword into her hand, before realizing they were figments cast up by a brain whose oxygen hunger her deepest breath couldn’t fully assuage.
This was a usually well-traveled part of Dhaulagiri. Yet they’d seen no one the past two days but themselves, their pursuers and the monks. Toshan had told them over breakfast that word of an increase in the violence of the civil unrest was driving tourists off the mountain and indeed, many out of Nepal itself.
As the sun neared the zenith a cry floated back from the leading Sherpa, who walked well in advance with his Enfield in his thickly gloved hands. Standing on a trail that switched back above their heads he waved and pointed.
“He says he sees the cave,” Prasad said, trudging toward Annja and Pan.
He walked bent over, as if he still carried the dead-weight of his beloved nephew. Which in a sense he does, I guess, Annja thought. Her heart went out to him.
Pan straightened. His gaze was clear as he turned his face up the snow-bright slope toward the nondescript jumble of rocks the excited guide pointed at. But was it the clarity of sanity, she wondered, of being fully present in today and his real self?
A sound, shocking and bright as a raw red wound, snapped out from below. Spinning around with her heart hammering, Annja saw, strung out along the slope below, the dark sinister shapes of the hunters.
29
Echoes of the gunshot seemed to rush over them like smoke. Prasad shouted instructions to the men. Although strangers to him, they obeyed unhesitatingly. The monks had chosen well. As Pan unlimbered his own slung Kalashnikov, several Sherpas shed their packs and started fanning out to seek cover with their bolt guns.
As more gunfire crackled from below, Annja realized both Pan and Prasad were looking toward her. Prasad had also dropped his pack. She knew immediately what that signified—this would be the fight that decided all.
No bullets came near them. But Annja could see puffs in the snow below them where they fell short.
“We should press on,” she said. “The cave has to be more defensible than being out here on the trail like this.”
Prasad nodded instantly. Pan looked at her for a moment.
She remembered his promise to fight beside her. She didn’t know who had delivered that promise—Sergeant Pan or General Pantheras.
Pan nodded crisply. Gunshots began to thud from the men who had taken up blocking positions on their back trail. Annja led the rest up as fast as she dared go.
“Look,” Prasad called, pointing, just as they reached the switchback. Following his outstretched hand, Annja looked up the valley. Her heart sank.
Like a volcano’s deadly flow, a white mass streamed down the glacier.
“The storm will be on us in minutes,” Prasad said.
“It will help us,” Pan said, his voice seeming to come from unusually deep in his chest. “In the snow they cannot shoot at a distance. If we have a good defensive position, they will lose the advantage of numbers.”
Head around a switchback, Annja nodded. She was pleased to have a seasoned veteran—whichever one he was at the moment—second her own flash assessment of the situation. She knew her judgment was good. But it never hurt to have confirmation.
As she started up the next stage Annja heard the gunfire increase. She couldn’t see whom her men were shooting at.
Pan touched her arm. “There it is.”
She looked up the slope. Forty yards above and to their left a sliver of shadow showed dark beneath the slab that crowned the rock outcrop their point man had indicated. Without waiting for instructions, Prasad began to forge straight toward it, angling to avoid the sheer drop that fell from a little ledge before the cave. Annja and Pan followed, plunging instantly into snow up to their thighs.
She heard the crack of bullets passing. Five yards to her left a Sherpa grunted and dropped forward. The snow swallowed him, leaving only a hole to mark the spot where he fell.
Annja’s heart was already laboring. She looked back. The four men who had positioned themselves as rear guard suddenly shouted in alarm. Two of them leaped to their feet, spinning to point their rifles uphill. A shattering burst of Kalashnikov fire from above knocked them both down. The one positioned outside the trail fell down the slope, rolling over and over until he became cocooned in snow.
A hand clamped her arm. “Come on!” Pan shouted, pulling her toward the cave.
She hung back. “But we have to help them!” she shouted.
“We cannot. Jagannatha has flanked them. They’re caught in the kill zone.”
As Pan spoke the words, the other two men jerked and fell as bullets found them. One lay utterly still. The other continued to kick until a single shot cracked out. He spasmed and then he also stopped moving.
Annja turned and raced for the cave, churning through deep snow. It was like trying to run along the bottom of a swimming pool but even harder. She forced her way onward against weight and resistance.
As she neared the beckoning darkness of the cave mouth, Annja’s legs gave way beneath her. Pan seized her from the left, Prasad from the right. The two men hauled her up and carried her the last few yards with her legs dragging trails in the snow. When they reached the snow-covered stone ledge in front of the cave they laid her down carefully. Then they dropped to their knees, panting.
Without being fully aware of doing it, Annja found the metal-shod plastic butt of her rifle, pulled it tightly to her shoulder, the iron sights swimming before her eyes. Figures trudged up the mountain toward her, shockingly close. Some were small and carried submachine guns. Others carried broken-nosed AKs.
Annja laid the front sight on one of the taller forms and pulled the trigger. The man slumped
. She drew another breath deep to her belly, let some out, held it as she switched to the nearest target to her left. It was one of the Maoists. She squeezed the trigger and he fell.
She was sitting but not in anything that could be called a proper shooting posture. It didn’t matter, especially with the weapon’s weight and recoil as light as an M-16’s. Her world had narrowed to a sort of white tunnel with out-of-focus figures beyond. Only vague stirrings of motions at the fringes of her tunnel vision alerted her to more targets. She felt neither fear nor fatigue. She felt nothing at all. There was only deep-breathing meditation.
The meditation of death.
She shot two more attackers. Another two fell from shots that thundered from somewhere outside her narrow field of vision. Hands hauled her up until she got her boots beneath her. She stood and spun, then staggered into the cave under her own power as another burst of Kalashnikov fire cracked off the rock around her.
Above her, someone screamed. Her small brave party was already mostly gone.
Inside, the cave was still cold, but felt almost hot after the chill of the wind outside. It was dark. A greenish glow sprang up to fill the space as Pan cracked a light-stick.
The cave was smaller than Annja expected. There was no question it was artificial—the walls were flush, polished smooth and shiny.
It was also empty. Annja felt herself sag.
She heard harsh voices outside the cave. Dropping his light-stick, Pan spun and fired a burst from his hip. The muzzle-flash filled the tiny cave with angry, jittering orange glare. The sound in the tight confines was like jackhammers pounding not just Annja’s eardrums but her very skull. In the irregular glow of snow-whitened daylight that was the cave entrance, furry figures danced and fell as copper-jacketed slugs peppered them.
A waist-high bank of blue smoke, stinking of burned propellants and lubricants, filled the cave. So did the copper smell of blood. Prasad darted to the entrance and fired his own Kalashnikov until the heavy bolt locked back over an empty magazine.