High Time To Kill

by Raymond Benson

  Chandra whispered back, “That’s easy!” He removed the khukri from its sheath, then neatly slit open the bag of rice. He did it so swiftly that it didn’t make a sound. The rice poured out onto the ground. The next thing he did flabbergasted Bond. The Gurkha unzipped his fly and proceeded to urinate all over the spilled rice. He grinned at Bond the entire time.

  “Hand me your knife,” Bond said, stifling a laugh. Chandra handed it over, still relieving himself. Bond slit open the other bags of food and poured the contents onto the pile of freshly sprayed rice. He took a stick and mixed it all up. Chandra zipped up, then removed the two tiny knives from the khukri sheath. He squatted down and rubbed the two blades together on the burlap sacks. A spark flew, then another, and another. After four tries, the burlap caught fire.

  “I think it’s time we run now, James,” Chandra said.

  A gunshot startled them, and they turned to flee. They heard several men shouting in Chinese. The flames grew in intensity as they climbed away from the camp. More gunshots whizzed past them, but by that time they were in the dark. The marksmen were firing blindly. Some of them retrieved torches and cast the beams over the hill, but they were ineffective. Bond could hear at least three men scrambling up the rocks after them. After more gunshots, the entire camp was up, running about and shouting. The Sherpas were busy trying to put out the fire, which had engulfed all their supplies. Bond and Chandra climbed back into their niche in the cliff and watched the chaos below. The pursuers had given up and returned to the campsite to help salvage what they could.

  It took them half an hour to extinguish the fire. Bond and Chandra had achieved their goal. The Chinese expedition was completely sabotaged. They could hear them arguing and shouting at one another. The Sherpas began to argue as well, and Chandra could pick up a little of what they were saying.

  “The Sherpas are very upset that the Chinese fired guns here. They say the gods will not be pleased and will bring misfortune on them. They refuse to go farther. They are now without any food. They are turning back in the morning.”

  The Chinese calmed down after an hour. Someone had apparently brought out a couple of bottles of alcohol, and that did the trick.

  Eventually, they crawled back into their tents, leaving just one man with a rifle on guard.

  Bond opened his North Face bivouac sack and secured it behind a large stone, where there was just enough room for him to stretch out.

  Chandra found a hole where he could curl up in his own sack.

  “Shuba ratri, James,” Chandra said quietly.

  When they awoke the next morning, the Chinese expedition had given up, packed, and left.

  EIGHTEEN

  TENSIONS RISE

  WHEN BOND AND CHANDRA SAW THE VILLAGE OF GHUNSA PERCHED ON THE side of a snow-covered peak, they breathed a sigh of relief. The ascent to 3,440 meters had taken its toll on them, and Bond found himself becoming winded quickly and having to stop and rest more often. Chandra, on the other hand, seemed to be unaffected by the altitude.

  There were some yak herders living there, and Bond admired how people could live this high in the mountains and make ends meet. The villagers stopped and stared at the two of them, more curious about the man who was obviously a Gurkha soldier than the Caucasian encroaching on their land.

  They rounded a bend and saw a campsite some two hundred meters away.

  “That must be us,” Bond said. “I hope lunch is ready, I’m starving.”

  They climbed up a slick wet rock face to a ledge. It wasn’t necessary to use climbing tools yet, but they knew they would be employing the ice axes soon enough. The trek from Ghunsa to the Base Camp was substantially steeper. The next two days would be more strenuous.

  Bond and Chandra turned to continue toward the camp, when a bullet whizzed past them and struck the snow. Both men instinctively dived to the ground. Two more shots hit the snow around them. Chandra rolled next to a rock for better cover. Bond crawled on his belly to a large tree stump that must have been hundreds of years old.

  “Do you see him?” Bond whispered.

  Chandra carefully raised his head and looked about. “I don’t see anything.”

  Bond looked up and saw a whiff of smoke on a cliff face overlooking the village. He pointed. “He’s up there. See?”

  Chandra squinted and nodded. “What do we do?”

  “I suppose we wait.”

  “Who could it be?”

  “Obviously someone who knows we’re here and doesn’t want us to rejoin our group.”

  “The Chinese?”

  Bond shook his head. “I don’t think so. There was no trace of them this morning. They went back the way they came.”

  Chandra took a good look at their surroundings and pointed to a ledge fifty meters away. “If we can make it to that ledge, we can climb down, go around the cliff here, and come up on the other side of the camp.”

  “Good thinking,” Bond said. “Let’s go together. It’ll give the sniper too many targets to aim for. On three. One … two … three!”

  The men leaped from their cover and scrambled toward the ledge. Two more bullets zipped into the snow at their feet. Chandra reached the edge first, squatted, put his hands on a sturdy rock, and hurled himself over the side. Bond did the same thing, although not as gracefully. Together they hung for a few seconds, then gained a foothold on the side of the rock face. Carefully, they inched down ten feet to level ground.

  “That was an impressive move,” Bond said, completely out of breath. He coughed, then collapsed into a sitting position.

  “Are you all right?”

  He coughed again. “Yeah, I’ve already got climber’s cough. You know how it is. I’m surprised I’m getting it so soon.” He took slow deep breaths for a few minutes.

  “Do you have a headache?” Chandra asked.

  “No, thank God. It’s not that bad. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Let’s go, dammit!” Bond was annoyed with himself. He wanted to be as resilient as his partner, but there was no competing with a native Nepalese, especially a Gurkha.

  They skirted around the cliff and found another place to ascend. They came up on the other side of the camp and wandered in, keeping an eye on the cliff where the sniper had been. There was no sign of any movement there now.

  Roland Marquis was deep in conversation with Carl Glass when he saw them coming and waved. “We were about to give up!” he called. “We have to make it to Kambachan before sunset.”

  “Christ,” Bond said. “How far is that?”

  Marquis shrugged. “Four and a half hours. Why? You’re up to it, aren’t you, Bond?”

  Bond coughed and nodded.

  “Sounds as if a night in a bivouac didn’t do you much good,” Marquis said. “Bad luck.” Bond noted that there was a certain degree of pleasure in the man’s voice. “What did you find out about our Chinese friends?”

  “They won’t be bothering us anytime soon. Is there anyone from the team missing?” Bond asked.

  “You mean right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Uhm, three or four people are in the village. They’re supposed to be back”—he looked at his watch—“any minute now. The plan was to leave at twelve-thirty. It’s twelve-fifteen.”

  “Who’s gone?”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind, Roland, just tell me!” Bond snapped.

  Marquis’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, Bond. Don’t forget who’s leader here.”

  Bond grabbed the man’s parka and pulled him forward. Chandra interceded, saying, “Hey, hey, stop it. Move back, commander.”

  Bond let go and stepped back. “Roland, you’re the leader, but you also have orders from SIS to assist me. Now, who went into the village?”

  Marquis relaxed a little, then said, “Dr. Kendall, Paul Baack, Otto Schrenk, and the American kid.”

  Schrenk, Bond thought. The sniper was Schrenk.

  At that moment Baack and Hope wer
e seen coming down the path toward the campsite. Baack was wearing a bright, distinctive yellow and green parka that he hadn’t worn earlier. Bond sat down on a collapsible stool and coughed some more. Hope approached him and said, “Hey, you already got the cough.”

  “Thank you, doctor,” Bond said. “I appreciate the diagnosis. Where have you two been?”

  Hope looked at Marquis and Baack. “You feeling all right, James?”

  Chandra said, “We’ve had a rough night and day, that’s all.”

  Baack said, “I was bartering with one of those yak herders for a gourd.” He held it up. “It’s supposed to taste like pumpkin. The good doctor appeared just in time. The old man must have had a thing for Caucasian women, for he went down in price when he saw she was with me.”

  Hope held up a necklace. “And I traded five packs of chewing gum for this. Not bad, eh? It’s probably worthless, but it’s pretty.”

  “Hey!” a voice called. They all turned to see Otto Schrenk running slowly toward them. He, too, was out of breath and had to stop every few steps. Finally, he got to the site and collapsed onto a tarp. He began to hack and it was several seconds before he got his wind back. Finally, he said, “The kid … he’s dead … he’s been shot.”

  “What?” Marquis and Hope said simultaneously.

  “Where?” Bond asked.

  Schrenk pointed to the cliff where the sniper had been. “Just below that cliff there. Come, I’ll show you.”

  As they walked toward the site, Bond wondered where Schrenk might have hidden his gun. It had to have been a rifle. Where in his gear could he have stashed it? Did he abandon it on the cliff?

  “The kid,” whose name was David Black, was sprawled on the path where snow had given way to mud. Blood was seeping onto the ground where he lay.

  Hope Kendall got on her knees to examine him. “Help me turn him,” she said.

  “Shouldn’t we leave the body alone?” Baack asked.

  “What, do you think the police are going to come and seal off the area?” Marquis said.

  “Actually, there is a Nepalese police post in Ghunsa. They will be coming to check our permits before long,” Baack replied.

  Bond helped her turn Black over. The bullet had entered the center of his chest.

  “This was done at point-blank range,” Bond observed. Hope nodded in concurrence.

  His eyes met Chandra’s. They both knew what had happened. David Black had most likely stumbled upon or had heard the sniper fire. He was eliminated because he had seen the sniper.

  The trek to Kambachan was called off and the team settled to spend the night at Ghunsa. Marquis was sullen and frustrated with the turn of events. Bond and Chandra took care of removing the body from the site and also spent some time on the cliff looking for evidence. Chandra found a 7.62mm shell and showed it to Bond.

  “This is from a semi-automatic. A sniper rifle. A Dragunov, maybe?” Bond surmised.

  “I fired an L1 A1 rifle once. It used ammunition like this.” The L1 A1 was the British version of the Belgian FN FAL, one of the most widely used modern self-loading rifles. It was gas operated and held a twenty-round magazine.

  “Chandra, I think you might be right.”

  “It has to be one of our team. No one living in Ghunsa would have this rifle,” Chandra said. “Should we search Schrenk’s belongings?”

  “We might have to. Come on, let’s make our report.”

  The team was bewildered and shocked that David Black had been murdered. When Bond announced that the killer was possibly one of their own, several of them protested.

  “Are you out of your mind?” a climber named Delpy asked. “Why would any of us want to do such a thing?”

  “Is there something about this expedition you’re not telling us?” asked Doug McKee, the sole remaining American on the team.

  “Calm down,” Marquis said. “We’re on a salvage mission, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Who would want to shoot at us, then?” Philippe Léaud asked.

  “The Russians,” Paul Baack answered. They all looked at him. “I just got word that their team will reach Base Camp tomorrow. Maybe they think there’s something up there at that plane.”

  Everyone looked at Marquis. “Is there?” Hope asked.

  “Just bodies,” he said. “British and American ones.” Bond considered the possibility that the Russians might be involved. Could their team be Union members? They had been known to deal with the Russian Mafia. What if that entire expedition was made up of Union criminals?

  “Are we in some kind of danger?” Tom Barlow asked. “I mean, danger from human beings, not danger from the elements.”

  “Of course not,” Marquis said, attempting to reassure them. “I think what happened to Mr. Black was some kind of freak accident.”

  “How can being shot at point-blank range be a freak accident?” Baack asked. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Me, too,” another said.

  “And me,” one more ventured.

  “Fine!” Marquis shouted. “Then you can all turn back. Look, you were hired to perform a mission and you’re being paid bloody good money for it! Now, tomorrow morning, I’m going on to Kambachan, and then I’m going to push to Lhonak so that I will be at Base Camp the day after tomorrow. I’ll be happy to lead whoever wants to join me!”

  Hope cleared her throat. “From here to Lhonak is an increase in altitude of a little over a thousand meters. That’s going to be difficult.”

  “We all knew this would be difficult,” Marquis said. “You all knew the risks. If anyone wants to turn back, he’s welcome. I for one am going on. Who’s going with me?”

  No one said anything until Bond raised his hand. “The way I see it, there’s altitude sickness, HACE, HAPE, avalanches, frostbite, snow blindness, and dozens of other catastrophes that could happen. What’s a little gunfire aimed in our direction?”

  A few people snickered. Chandra spoke up then. “In the Gurkha forces, we have a saying in Gurkhali: Kaphar hunu banda, marnu raamro. It’s our motto. It means ‘It’s better to die than be a coward.’ I shall go with you and Commander Bond.”

  “Me, too,” Hope Kendall said. “Besides, I have a feeling you’ll need a good doctor up there.”

  Paul Baack shrugged. “Hell, I’ve come this far. Why not?”

  The others ultimately agreed. Only Otto Schrenk was silent. They all looked at him, waiting for an answer. Finally, he said, “I’m in.”

  Keeping the murder from the Ghunsa police proved to be easier than they expected. Hope Kendall submitted a death certificate claiming that David Black had received a “puncture wound” when he fell on some equipment. Luckily, the police were accustomed to dealing with accident-prone westerners and allowed the team to take care of the matter without their interference. Permits were checked and the team were cleared to move on.

  The Liaison Officer volunteered to take David Black’s body to Kathmandu and attend to the appropriate bureaucracy involved. After he left with the corpse on a wagon, the Sherpas performed a token prayer service for the dead climber.

  As night fell, the entire team went to their tents in silence. They attempted to put the events of the day behind them, but there was no escaping the feeling that impending disaster was just around the corner.

  The trek grew more difficult after the overnight stop in Lhonak. Everyone on the team was feeling poorly. The ascent was overly ambitious, and even Roland Marquis was coughing and breathing heavily when they finally reached Base Camp, six days after leaving Kathmandu.

  It was located on the north side of the great mountain at 5,140 meters. Remnants of past expeditions were still there—broken tents, rubbish, puja shrines, and, most conspicuous, a few gravestones that had been placed to honor those who had perished on Kangchenjunga.

  The peak itself was massive, extending up into the clouds. It was a spectacular behemoth of rock, ice, and snow. Winds dangerously whipped around it. Billows of what appeared to b
e white “smoke” occasionally exploded off the upper regions. This was really snow and ice being thrown about by the high winds. From the base of the mountain, this phenomenon was beautiful to look at; but to be up there in it would be extremely hazardous. There, it would be a terrible blizzard. It was no wonder, Bond thought, that the Nepalese believed the gods lived at the top. The sight was so overpowering that his first instinct was to bow to it, proclaim himself unworthy to be in its vicinity, and then turn around and go home. The facts were well known to him—the mountain is eight miles in length and five in width, and its main summit is at 8,598 meters, or 28,208 feet, making it the third-highest peak in the world. Although Everest receives most of the attention in the Himalayas, Kangchenjunga is considered more difficult and “mightier.” Many people have attempted to summit the Kanch from the north side. It wasn’t until 1979 that three men made it to the top via the “north ridge,” bypassing the lower glacial shelves. The Japanese were the first to summit via the north face in 1980.

  “All in all,” Marquis said as they approached the Base Camp, “there have been over twenty-five expeditions up this mountain, using seventeen possible routes. I’ve never tried the Kanch. I’ve always wanted to.”

  “We’re not here to summit,” Bond reminded him.

  “If we get our job done and there’s time, I’m bloody well going to do it,” Marquis said with finality in his voice. “And you can’t stop me, Bond.”

  “Some of the Sherpas might.”

  “Besides, I’d like to see Hope get to the top. Not many women have done it.”

  Dr. Kendall overheard this and said, “Unh-unh. As much as I’d like to, Mr. Bond is right. We’re not here to set world records.”

  Marquis looked at them both with disgust and walked away from them.

  In three hours the camp was set up and operational. Ang Tshering organized it quickly and efficiently. A tent was erected for Girmi to store the food supplies and cooking equipment. Paul Baack was in charge of expedition HQ, which consisted of all his various communications devices, cots, lamps, and other supplies. A portable satellite dish was constructed just outside the HQ tent, and it wasn’t long before he was in communication with the outside world.