Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1)

by Chisnell, Mark

  “I can’t agree with you,” replied Lens, “but apart from that, I don’t think that Vegas is the type to make too much distinction between hitting men and women. I calmed him down this time, but ...”

  She looked over at him; in the darkness she couldn’t see his expression. “And what? I should be frightened?”

  “No, well, I mean ... It’s just that we’re all going to be together for a while, so we need to get along. And that means working a little harder at getting along with Vegas than some other people – most people, in fact – but the three of us have been working on this project a long time and there’s a lot at stake. So be cool and we’ll all be happy and have a good time, that’s all.”

  “Right,” she said, eventually. They finished the walk to the hotel in silence.

  Chapter 3

  Sam flicked open the waist harness, slipped her left arm out of the backpack strap and then eased the pack off her shoulder, sliding it onto a knee and down to the ground. The backpack kicked up a puff of dust as it hit the dirt, which eddied away down the trail. Thanks to some macho generosity, her load was ten pounds lighter than the others, but it was still damn heavy. She picked at her shirt between her shoulder blades, now exposed to cooler air and rapidly becoming clammy. Pete offered his water-bottle. She drank deeply before passing it on to Lens. Vegas had his own bottle open and was sitting on a rock five yards further down the track.

  “Go easy, it’s going to get a lot hotter once we’re down in the valley,” said Pete.

  “You keep saying that – still trying to justify getting us all out of bed at sparrow’s fart?” replied Lens, spitting out the nicotine gum.

  “I think the view is worth it,” said Sam. Pete and Lens followed her gaze to where the hillside dropped away behind them, stretching across rice paddies and fields of maize and sugar cane before revealing two giant snow-covered peaks in the far distance.

  “Hey, I was thinking,” said Sam to Lens. “I want to do some interviews with the guys for my story – background stuff, how they got into the sport, where they come from, why they do it. Maybe you should film it, it might be good for the movie, especially with a backdrop like that.” She nodded towards the mountains.

  “I normally just shoot the action, and some fly-on-the-wall stuff,” said Lens.

  “I’ve seen snowboard flicks with interviews,” said Pete.

  “Yeah, but it’s quick, snappy stuff – how much did you drink, who’d you bump nasties with last night, what’s your biggest jump, you know,” replied Lens.

  “It’s just an idea, no big deal. I want to do the interviews anyway, thought you might want to try something a bit different,” replied Sam.

  “I did different already, on Monster Drops, and lost a pile of greenbacks,” said Lens. “People want to see one thing and one thing only – the boys doing the business. Ski and snowboard films are to documentary-making what porn is to mainstream movies. Set the story up with the minimum of fuss and get down to the action – riding frozen water crystals on the gravity wave.”

  “Yeah, none of that chick-flick people stuff,” put in Vegas.

  “Well, we’re half the population, and we buy movies too,” replied Sam.

  “Board bunnies, Roxy chicks ...” said Pete.

  Vegas looked at each of them. Sam could see the wheels turning.

  “The man has a point,” said Vegas.

  “It’ll slow us up,” said Lens.

  “Not necessarily,” said Pete, “if we pick our moments, we don’t walk all day.”

  Lens shrugged. “I guess we could give it a go.”

  “Cool.” Sam moved to the edge of the path. “Come and sit here, Pete, so the mountains are in the background.” She patted the rock beside her.

  Pete looked at Lens.

  “No worries,” responded Lens.

  Pete inclined his head half an inch, and walked over to sit beside Sam. She quickly thumbed through her notebook to the questions she had jotted down after dinner the previous night. Lens began setting up the tiny lightweight camera and tripod. “How do you keep the batteries charged on those things?” she asked, arranging her hair.

  “I had some special long-life packs made up, cost an arm and a leg. We already stashed a few further up the trail. Once we get into the high country the cold runs the power down even faster, so I got a special harness to wear them close to the body. And I brought a couple of rechargeables as well to save juice when there’s a power supply.” He peered through the viewfinder, adjusted the focus and then added, “OK. I’m ready.”

  “So, talk to the camera, not me,” started Sam. “If you repeat the question, then Lens can cut me out of it if he wants to keep it short.”

  “You’re looking pretty damn hot at the moment, Sam, so I think we’ll be leaving you in the shot. Definitely isn’t going to hurt,” replied Lens. “And don’t worry if you want to pause to think, Pete, we’re only going to cut this to make you look good.”

  Pete nodded.

  “Rolling.”

  “Pete, we’re sitting here on the first day of our trek in to Powder Burn. So let’s rewind a little to your start in the sport, tell us how you began.”

  “First time I ever went snowboarding was with my old man. I was eleven. It was a big deal. I’d already done a lot of walking and climbing with him, but only locally in the North of England where I come from. You can’t ride much back home, but my mum had got some money when her dad died. She wanted to use it for something special, for me and the old man. And he’d always had this thing about wanting to go skiing. So we went out to the Pyrenees. It was just wicked.”

  “And after that, it couldn’t have been easy to continue with the sport back in England?”

  “No, it wasn’t, we used to get up to Scotland when we could, and there was an artificial slope down the road from home. And I got a skateboard, and practiced tricks in the air on a trampoline. I was pretty in to it. And then when I was eighteen I headed to the Alps for a season before college. I’ve just been traveling and working and trying to ride every mountain I can get to ever since.”

  Sam hesitated for a moment over her next question, and Lens jumped in. “Whoa, hold on, guys, let’s not blow the whole wad on the first date here,” he said, as he straightened from behind the tripod. “Let’s just do one or two questions each time at different spots as we walk in. Give a feel for the journey.”

  “Sounds good,” replied Sam.

  “Vegas?” asked Lens, glancing over his shoulder, back up the trail.

  Vegas was fiddling with his pack. He looked up. “Yeah?”

  “You’re up, buddy,” said Lens.

  Vegas stood slowly, tramped over to the rock that Pete had just vacated and sat heavily. Lens bent to the camera, asked Vegas to move to his right a fraction and then nodded.

  Sam watched Vegas settle, thinking that a particularly self-absorbed flick of the hair might indicate a vein of narcissism. When he was ready, she repeated her intro and asked the same question.

  “I guess the first time in the mountains was up at Tahoe, I was about sixteen. I was sponsored by a local skate shop and they’d just started to stock these Joyride snowboards. And they were looking for top skaters to try riding. They took me up there and I spent the day in the half-pipe, mainlining the vibe. Those dudes got me hooked, girl.”

  Lens looked up, switching off the camera. “Good.”

  “That’s it?” said Vegas.

  “Sam and I can talk about it a little, have a planning session while we walk, and we’ll do some more tonight,” said Lens, already pulling the camera off the tripod.

  Vegas nodded. “Cool.” Then he said to Pete, “Saddle up then, dude, let’s pile on some miles.”

  Sam looked up from her notes just in time to catch Pete smiling at her before he turned to follow Vegas. She watched them go, wondering if it was chance that Lens had found a couple of blue-collar snowboarding stars from such different backgrounds – whatever, it would make for a better story than
if they were a couple of trust-fund kids. Then Lens was beside her, gear stashed, pack on his back, as two porters crashed down the trail towards them – barefoot, and loads in big plastic buckets strapped to their backs.

  “Nice job in front of the camera, Sam, but if anyone asks – and I doubt they will – but if anyone asks, we’re just filming for our own use. The commercial filming permits cost a fortune, and we don’t have one, so in retrospect we need to be a little more careful where we do this, not such public spots, OK?”

  Sam looked at him, but he wouldn’t hold her gaze. Instead, he turned away and lurched down the trail just ahead of the porters. She watched him go, wondering just what kind of a film crew she’d hitched her wagon to – and whether it had been a good idea.

  Sam was fast running out of steam. She glanced at her watch – they’d been walking for four hours, and were now dropping steadily through steamy tropical forest. Pete hadn’t lied, and she was glad that they’d started in the cool of the predawn – it was stinking hot and her entire body was greasy with sweat and gritty with dust. She hated being dirty, it was the one part of these trips that she really struggled with. Vegas had charged out in front, setting a cracking pace which Pete had matched. Sam had been struggling to keep up, but had done better than Lens, who was always trailing behind.

  So she wasn’t last, and her effort to establish her usefulness and contribute to the team’s filming had gone down OK, if only after a sticky start. While she had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be best buddies with Vegas, Lens struck her as potentially good company. She had been tempted to drop all the way back to walk with him to talk about the interviews, but she’d rather prove to Pete and Vegas that she could cut the fierce pace. And she was, but that didn’t stop a little swell of relief when she saw Pete up ahead, buying a soda at a trailside hut.

  “Sweet. Jesus. It’s hot,” she said, as she peeled her backpack off before fishing out change to buy a drink. She had promised herself she would save the money and just consume the team’s supplies, but there was only so much lukewarm water you could swallow in a day.

  Pete swigged his soda. “Told you so ...” he said with a smile.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she replied as she nodded on up the trail to where Vegas was disappearing. “What’s his flying hurry?” she asked.

  “Oh, he just wants to get this done, I think, get back to his homies, or whatever.”

  “The spa bath, Playboy Channel and the ’67 Chevy?” said Sam, putting down the money for another soda and pointing at Pete’s.

  “I don’t know him that well. I only met him just before we came out here,” said Pete.

  “So what about you, you want to get home in a hurry too?” she asked, watching as the bottle was opened and then grabbing it, aware that Pete had almost finished his drink.

  “I’m in no rush, be nice to get to the snow and ride, but ...” He shrugged, and tipped back the bottle to finish it.

  Sam nodded. “Hang on, I’ll be quick.”

  Pete put the empty bottle back on the stand. It disappeared instantly – worth more than the drink that had been inside it. He dragged his pack off the floor as Sam downed the rest of hers and slammed the bottle on the counter. She stifled a soda-belch and lurched her backpack into place, and they were walking.

  “How far to go?” she asked, as soon as she could talk without fear of the soda coming back up.

  “It’s another couple of hours, there’s a pretty nice campsite in a wood up ahead.”

  “Cool, and is Powder Burn in those mountains up there?” She pointed to where the twin peaks had been visible earlier in the day.

  “Nope,” said Pete.

  The information wasn’t exactly flowing out. “So where is it?” she prompted.

  “Umm – that information’s on a need-to-know basis, and Lens thinks you don’t need to know just yet,” said Pete, turning to smile at her.

  “I’m walking there, I think I need to know,” retorted Sam, not smiling.

  “Honest, if it was up to me I’d tell you in a shot, but it’s Lens’s call, and he’s pretty twitchy, what with all the money he’s put up for this.”

  “Can’t you tell me anything?” asked Sam, more desperately than she intended.

  Pete thought for a moment. “Well, I guess the story about Powder Burn wouldn’t hurt, everybody knows that part. I first heard about it in Colorado a couple of years ago. Some blokes that had been out here trekking had talked to a climbing expedition. They told them about this wicked line they’d seen on the trip, but were totally vague about where to find the thing. I guess maybe they wanted to come back and ride it first – but the word got out, and even two years ago it was a legend already.”

  “So what’s special about it?” asked Sam.

  “Everything,” replied Pete, easing his backpack straps off his shoulders with his thumbs, and then arching his back. “It’s the consistent steepness, the length, the exposure, the terrain – it’s just styling, runs from a gulley, through some jumpable rocks and onto a ridge.”

  “So how did you find this place?” Sam was snatching at the words now, starting to breathe harder as she struggled to keep up. Pete’s voice remained nonchalant, as though he were sitting at a bar with a glass of Heady Topper in front of him – or whatever it was that they drank in England – rather than hammering through rain forest with sixty pounds on his back.

  “Lens reckons he spent a week on Google Earth and all those other satellite-image websites. It was easy to work out the possible routes the expedition had taken into the mountain, and there’d been plenty of talk about the line itself – but he got nada. He just couldn’t pick it out, there wasn’t enough detail. Then he saw this bloke on the TV news that had hacked into a US surveillance satellite. He tracked him down and talked him into having a look for Powder Burn. They downloaded a ton of high-resolution images and bingo – Lens spent days poring over the photos, but he cracked it. At least we hope so, we won’t know for sure until we get back and show people what we’ve ridden – but whatever, this is still one hell of a line.”

  “So how high is the top?”

  “We don’t have to go to the top. We reach Powder Burn by traversing across from the ridge at twenty thousand feet, then climbing up the run to about twenty-four thousand. But you and Lens will be going down to about eighteen thousand, that’s where he’s planning to film it from.”

  “No higher than Everest base camp.”

  “Piece of cake, nothing to worry about,” said Pete.

  “Except you two killing yourselves,” replied Sam.

  “I’m too young to die,” replied Pete, shaking his head with another smile.

  “And how old would that be?”

  “Twenty-nine next month.”

  “Oh,” she said, thinking, six years older. “We’ll have to bake you a cake,” she added. “What day?”

  “Twenty-fifth, probably not long after we get back to town.”

  “Then I promise to get you a cake, one way or another.”

  “It’s a lot of candles.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Sam fell silent. She was pretty sure he’d fancied her when they had first met in the bar, and given the amount of trouble it must have taken to find her and get her on this expedition, she’d half expected the treatment. Then Pete had left her to walk alone all day and she was starting to think that she might have been mistaken. Either he was playing it very cool, had changed his mind or ... maybe they really did just want her along for the article. In which case she’d better keep her mouth shut about her real journalistic credentials, while she worked on finding out where the hell they were really going – oh boy, this trip just gets better and better ...

  Chapter 4

  Tashi grabbed at the brim of his hat as a rogue gust started to lift it. The two of them had skirted two rows of the grubby buildings that marked the periphery of the small, dusty town and seen no one. The vicious, cold, gritty wind was keeping people off the street
s. He glanced up to check where they were, and looked straight into the lens of a surveillance camera. It was mounted on the wall of an ugly two-story concrete block. Tashi shrank under his hat and into his coat, but the building was the landmark he was looking for and he led Jortse down the left turn, under the camera’s watchful eye. They kept tight to the upwind side of the street. Only a hundred yards to go. He hoped his friends were at home.

  He jumped at the crunch of a badly selected gear, and looked up. Two army trucks were rumbling towards them from the town center, where he knew there was a small garrison. He hesitated mid-stride, and then, with a rush of panic, he started to about-face on his heel. Instantly Jortse’s hand was in the small of his back, propelling him forward.

  “Keep going,” Jortse whispered in his ear, “look like you belong or they’ll be all over us.” Tashi stumbled on, not glancing up as the first, and then the second, truck went past. There was a squeal of brakes and the clatter of a tailgate, the thump of boots hitting the dirt. Tashi didn’t look back. Jortse had drawn level with him, pushing the pace on, and he had to step up to match it.

  “Down here.” Jortse directed his elbow as he spoke, and a moment later the shout came from behind them. Tashi didn’t hear the words clearly, but he knew what they meant. And then Jortse was running. Tashi started after him, charging down the alley. It led into a huddle of ramshackle buildings – all that remained of the original old town. Jortse took another left, ducking into a gap no more than a couple of shoulder widths wide between two houses. At the end was open country – they had come full circle. The hill they had stashed their gear on was visible through the swirl of dust. And Tashi felt Jortse quicken as he recognized safety. Then two shadows – uniformed, armed – walked past the end of the alley and Jortse dived through a broken-down gate.

  Tashi followed him into the tiny walled courtyard of a traditional building midway through demolition. The first floor and roof were just piles of dusty rubble. But the remaining walls still defined rooms, and Jortse ducked through the nearest doorway. It looked as though someone had stabled a horse in the first room – desiccated dung was piled in one corner, and the smell had somehow lingered. Jortse glanced around and carried on through the next door into the back room. A piece of ceiling remained more or less intact across several roof beams, one end of which had collapsed to the floor.