The Mountain (A James Shaw Mission Book 2)

by Richard Turner

  “What’s going on?” Bruce asked Amrit, quietly.

  “It’s called a Puja ceremony.”

  “What do we do?”

  “When I tell you, walk over with your axe and receive a blessing from the monk,” replied Amrit.

  When the monk stopped chanting and raised his hands to the sky, Amrit nudged Shaw and Bruce. They walked forward with their axes held out in front of them. With a flourish of his hand, the monk blessed them and their equipment. Amrit followed and received her blessings. She then stepped back beside her companions, and together they watched while Choling and his men were blessed.

  “Now we eat the offerings to the Gods,” said Amrit as she smiled at the monk. A second later, she walked over, picked up a piece of cake and then handed a small portion to Shaw and Bruce.

  “Nice bit of fruit cake,” said Bruce, nibbling at his food.

  Shaw stood watching Amrit as Sangdrol smeared her face with gray dust. As soon as he was done, with a respectful bow to Shaw, Sangdrol walked over and rubbed the dust on Shaw’s cheeks.

  “What’s going on?” asked Bruce.

  “It is a symbol of hope that we will all live to see each other again when we are old and gray,” said Amrit.

  “Oh, that’s ok then,” said Bruce, just before Sangdrol rubbed the dust across his face.

  Shaw saw that all of the Tibetans, except for Choling, were happily laughing and joking with one another. If they thought that climbing a mountain to face an enemy who outnumbered them and was better armed was tantamount to suicide they did not show it.

  With the sun creeping up on the horizon, Shaw knew that it was time to go. He told Choling to get his men ready.

  Shaw walked back over to MacDonald, who was standing off to one side with a troubled look on his face. “If our luck holds, we should be back in a week to ten days. If it doesn’t well, then you and your men must stop Adler from getting past you,” said Shaw, his voice measured and determined.

  “Good luck,” said MacDonald, holding out his hand for Shaw to shake.

  As he shook MacDonald’s hand, Shaw saw a look of regret in the man’s eyes. He wondered if it was because he was too old to come with them or because Amrit still harbored bitter feelings towards him. Shaw knew that there was no time to dwell on such things; they had to get a move on.

  “Here you go,” said Bruce, dropping Shaw’s backpack at his feet.

  Looking over at Bruce, Shaw saw that he had changed some of his clothes for the climb. On his head, he wore a soft cap with a peak on it to block the sun; around his neck hung a pair of green tinted goggles. Snow blindness was a real threat, and Amrit had insisted that everyone wear them. He also wore a woolen shirt and pants. On his feet were his leather boots. He had wrapped dark-blue puttees around the bottom of his pants. All of Bruce’s heavier clothing was all stashed way in his pack for now.

  “Captain, I suggest you get changed before we step off,” said Bruce, looking at Shaw’s mix of western and Tibetan clothing.

  Quickly changing his clothes for the climb, Shaw made sure that he dressed appropriately. The last thing he wanted was to overheat during the first day’s climb. Shaw, Bruce and Amrit carried their extra clothes, sleeping bags, crampons for their boots, and some food in their packs. To keep their hands free for the climb, all three had strapped their weapons tied onto the back of their packs. The Tibetans, more attuned to the hardships of living and working in and around the mountains, carried everything else. The tents, additional food, rope, climbing gear and the oxygen they would need to survive higher up was split up among Choling’s six hardy, handpicked men.

  With one final blessing from the monk, Shaw led the group out from their camp and towards the mountain and their rendezvous with destiny.

  For the first couple of hours, they walked at a steady pace out of the rocky valley and up along a grassy ridgeline that pointed like a finger towards a glacier at the base of the mountain. Amrit, as the most experienced climber, soon took the lead with Shaw and Bruce trailing close behind her. Choling and his men followed. As they approached the first real slope of the day, running beside a jagged ice field, Shaw was amazed to see a forest of ice pinnacles sticking out of the ground like the massive white teeth of some enormous long dead prehistoric beast. The pinnacles varied in height from a few feet to several times taller than he was.

  Shaw, using his climbing poles to steady himself, followed Amrit as she began to walk up a steep moraine, a rocky debris field left over from a glacier that was long gone. She led them towards a spot chosen as their first base camp a quarter of the way up the rocky elbow that she had earlier described. All the while, the sun seemed to hang over their heads, making everyone thirsty and hot.

  After walking for some time, Shaw checked his watch and was surprised to see that six hours had already passed. He called for a short halt, sat down on a piece of flat ground, removed his rucksack and dug out his canteen. He took a long swig of water, opened up a pouch on the side of his pack and pulled out a tin of hard candy. After popping one in his mouth, he handed the tin to Bruce, who smiled, took one, and passed it along to Amrit.

  “How far are we going to climb today?” asked Bruce, sounding fatigued.

  “At this pace, perhaps three or four more hours, we don’t want to overextend ourselves too early,” replied Amrit.

  “Well, if it’s all like this, it shouldn’t be too bad,” said Bruce.

  “Only for a couple of days; after that, we’ll be on ice more than rock,” replied Amrit. “It’s also going to get a lot steeper and colder before too long as well.”

  “Swell,” muttered Bruce to himself.

  Shaw suddenly stood, his gaze fixed on a spot further up the mountain. “Bruce, hand me my binoculars,” he said, his tone sharp and serious.

  Bruce quickly rummaged through the top of Shaw’s pack, found the binoculars and handed them to Shaw.

  Shaw focused the eyepieces on a section of ice thousands of feet above them. He grinned, and then said, “Well, if it isn’t Herr Adler and his merry band.”

  “Where?” said Amrit and Bruce together as they stood.

  Shaw handed Bruce the binoculars and then pointed to a spot on the side of the mountain.

  “Jesus, it’s them all right,’ said Bruce. “I count sixteen in total.”

  “You’ve got sharper eyes than I,” said Shaw. “They look like a line of black ants crawling up the side of the mountain to me.”

  “May I?” asked Amrit. Taking the binos, she looked up to where Shaw had been pointing. Her heart leapt into the throat when she saw Adler’s team pushing their way up the side of the mountain. Until that very second, she had half-thought that he had turned back or had met foul play en route to the mountain. However, seeing them there perhaps a day and a half ahead of them brought her back to reality.

  Shaw whistled for Choling to move up and take a look.

  “At the pace they are climbing, we’ll be lucky to catch them at all,” said Choling, as he lowered the binoculars. “If you let my men and me race ahead, we could cut them off before they reach the cave.”

  Shaw shook his head. “Your grandfather was quite direct; he told us that we have to stay together. If I thought you could stop them on your own, I might be tempted to let you go, but your grandfather is right, we need to work together to stop them.”

  Choling let out a resigned sigh and handed the glasses back to Shaw.

  “Even though Adler and his people are focused on the summit, there is no need to advertise our whereabouts,” said Shaw. “From now on there will be no lighting of the propane stoves in the dark and no use of flashlights either. They’d see us for sure if they happened to be looking in our direction. We’ll stop early enough every day to cook our evening meal before it gets dark.”

  Choling nodded his head and then headed back to brief his men on what was happening.

  “Five more minutes and then we’re on the move,” said Shaw to Bruce and Amrit as he packed away his binoculars.
/>
  Three hours later, Amrit stopped at a relatively flat spot and announced that they would stop there for the night. Shaw and Bruce helped Choling and his men to quickly set up the three tents they carried with them. They gathered as many loose stones as they could and built walls around the shelters to block the wind that had picked towards the end of the day, plummeting the temperature to near freezing. Shaw saw that the tents looked like ordinary three-man military-style pup tents; however, they had a silk lining sewn onto the interior walls to keep the frost off the people sleeping inside.

  Amrit placed her propane stove behind a tall rock so she could light it in the wind. The instant the stove lit, she placed her pot of canned beef, peas and rice over the flame. She knew that they only had so much propane with them. She couldn’t afford to waste any of it, or they would be eating cold food long before they made it off the mountain.

  Ten minutes later, sitting down behind the rock wall around their tent, Amrit, Shaw and Bruce heartily ate their meal. From some of the Tibetans sitting nearby came a boisterous chuckle.

  “What’s up with them fellas?” asked Bruce.

  Amrit smiled. “They’re laughing at you two.”

  “Why?” asked Shaw.

  “Because they are wondering how I ended up with two husbands to sleep with,” replied Amrit.

  “I guess with only three tents, we’re kind of forced to bunk together,” said Shaw.

  “It’s all right; none of us will be stripping down very much,” said Amrit. “With the temperature dropping by the minute, I suspect that we’ll be sleeping with a fair bit of our clothes on from now on.”

  “I’m gonna fire up the stove and make some tea,” said Shaw to his friends. “Hand me your thermoses and I’ll fill them up as well.”

  Bruce stood up and looked about. “I don’t mean to be indelicate during supper, but where is the loo up here?”

  “Wherever you want,” replied Amrit. “Just don’t do your business too close to the tents, you don’t want to inadvertently step anything you left behind in the middle of the night.”

  “Make sure you find a spot out of the wind and you’ll be ok,” said Shaw.

  “Wonderful,” muttered Bruce. He found some toilet paper and looked around until he saw a spot a couple of dozen yards away that would do. As Bruce walked over, he realized that he would never complain about going outside when it was cold to use an outdoor toilet ever again. He was almost there, when he saw something that looked out of place. Bruce’s heart began to race when he saw a bloodied and torn leg sticking out from behind a tall boulder. He cautiously looked behind the rock. Bruce felt his stomach knot when he realized that he was looking down at the frozen corpse of a man. His chest had been ripped open and his guts spilled out onto the ground.

  “Captain, get over here!” hollered Bruce.

  Shaw ran over beside Bruce. He looked over at his friend and saw that the color had completely drained from his face. He turned his head and was stunned to see a mangled body lying on the frozen ground. Shaw bent down to examine the remains. The corpse looked like a powerful animal had torn it apart and gnawed on some of the bones.

  “He’s one of Adler’s Afghans,” said Bruce, his voice shaky and scared.

  “How can you tell?” said Shaw.

  “The uniform, or what’s left of it, is the same one worn by Kalakani’s guards back in India,” replied Bruce.

  Shaw looked again. Bruce was right. He could just make out the gold braid on the man’s collar.

  “Oh my God,” said Amrit as she peered over Shaw’s shoulder.

  “There’s no need for you to see this, lass,” said Bruce.

  “Please, Duncan, this is not the first dead body I have ever seen.” Amrit moved around Shaw and got down on one knee to examine the remains. She carefully lifted the frozen pieces of the man’s jacket aside and studied the injuries for a minute before standing back up.

  “What do you think happened?” Shaw asked Amrit.

  “He’s been eaten by an animal,” replied Amrit. “Most likely a snow leopard or a bear. They still roam this part of Tibet and Bhutan. What I can’t tell is if the wounds to the body were caused before or after he died.”

  They had all been so fixated on the body that none of them heard the Tibetans making their way over to see what all the fuss was all about. Suddenly, an excited murmur ran through the new onlookers. One man pointed to the corpse and said something that Shaw couldn’t understand. The other men quickly repeated the word. As one, the Tibetans all turned their heads and looked nervously up at the mountain as if looking for something.

  “What did he say?” Shaw asked Amrit.

  “He said that the Demon of the Snow must have attacked and killed this man,” replied Amrit.

  “Tell them that you think that a leopard or a bear did this,” said Shaw.

  “I’d be wasting my breath, James,” said Amrit. “I told you, these people are very superstitious. They are going to believe what they want to, and no amount of reasoning is going to convince them otherwise.”

  “Well, we can’t leave him out here like this. We should bury the poor bugger,” said Bruce.

  It took the men twenty minutes to cover the remains with rocks.

  Sangdrol walked over, placed a small prayer flag under a rock and then bowed his head for a couple of times before leading the rest of the Tibetans back to their tents.

  Bruce said, “I don’t like the look in their eyes. If Choling wasn’t here, I bet some of them would make a run for it the middle of the night.”

  “Perhaps,” said Shaw, looking up at the summit of the mountain. Already the sun was beginning to dip behind the peak. “Come on, let’s get back to the tent; it’ll be dark soon.”

  Shaw and Bruce crawled into their tent and saw that Amrit had already rolled out their sleeping bags and lit a small candle to light up their home for the evening.

  “You left the stove on, so I filled up the thermoses,” said Amrit to Shaw.

  “Sorry about that,” replied Shaw.

  “It’s all right, but we must learn to conserve what little propane we have left.”

  Shaw sat down on his sleeping bag, undid his boots, and slid them off his aching feet. Massaging his toes to warm them up, he wondered how bad the weather would get in the next few days. The colder it got the more the leather boots on their feet would become a liability.

  “You both should drink some tea before turning in,” said Amrit.

  “I’m not sure I want to. It’ll only make me want to go outside to relieve myself,” said Bruce.

  “If you don’t drink, you’ll become dehydrated and that could be life-threatening the higher we climb,” said Amrit.

  “Bloody hell, it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t dilemma.”

  “Drink some tea and learn to control your bladder,” said Shaw.

  A few minutes later, they were all settled comfortably in their sleeping bags.

  “You know, Amrit,” said Shaw, “I’ve always been curious about your last name. It’s English but your first name is clearly Indian.”

  “There’s really nothing to tell. My grandfather was an English soldier who was wounded fighting in Afghanistan. He was brought back to India to recuperate. During his convalescence, he met an Indian woman and fell in love with her. He was eventually mustered out of the service for his injuries. They were married the very next day. He settled down in India and had five children, all of whom lived to adulthood. He had four daughters and one son, my father, who became a successful businessman exporting tea to Tibet. That’s how my family ended up in Gangtok. But enough about me,” said Amrit. “Tell me where you are from and how you ended up in the war.”

  For the next hour, they traded stories until Shaw looked at his watch and said that it was probably best if they got some sleep, as they would need their rest for the long day ahead of them.

  Outside, snowflakes began to descend from the sky, quickly, blanketing everything with several inches of s
now.

  In the dark, a shape moved warily towards the snow-covered pile of rocks marking the final resting place of the dead Afghan. It bent down and smelled the ground around the rocks. With a low growl deep in its throat, the shape raised its head and looked over towards the row of tents sitting silent in the night. It turned its head slightly and looked back up the mountain to where Adler’s camp was established.

  It had found more intruders.

  The darkened form stepped back from the rocks, took one more long suspicious look over at the tents and then decided that it had to rejoin the others. In seconds, like a spectral figure, it vanished from sight in the falling snow.

  Chapter 20

  Mount Naraka

  With the approach of dawn, a golden light crept down along the side of the mountain as the sun rose higher in the eastern sky.

  Carlos Adler brushed the snow from his pack, his breath hanging in the frigid early-morning air. He watched while his men packed up their tents and made ready for another day’s climb. He could tell that they were moving more slowly this morning than they had the day before. Several Afghans complained to Adler that they had been unable to sleep during the night. He knew that from this day forward, he and his men would have to pay more attention to the Afghans as some of them were showing the first signs of high altitude sickness.

  “Here, Patrón,” said Hugo Silvas as he handed Adler a cup of hot tea. Steam rose from the cup into the frigid morning air.

  “Thanks,” said Adler, taking the tea. He was greatly impressed with Silvas’ strength, considering he was the shortest man on his team. Silvas effortlessly carried a load on his back that would have stopped anyone else in their tracks.

  “We lost another one last night,” said Silvas.