Operation Snake

Chapter I

I looked down and winced as the airliner flew low over the top of the world. Mountains, huge, forbidding, frightening, fantastic peaks garnished with ice and snow. Sheer sheets of ice dipped down into mist-shrouded glaciers, and the cold reached up to grab me through the plane's windows. The top of the world was a good phrase for the place. On maps it is called Nepal, a small, independent kingdom, a tiny monarchy of isolation, a paradise for mountain climbers, a stretch of land between Tibet and India, and a thumb stuck in the mouth of the Chinese dragon. I recalled how Ted Callendar, an AXE agent who'd spent some years there when it was under British domination, described Nepal: "A place where the certain is uncertain. Where the probable is improbable. It's a land where faith and superstition walk hand in hand, where delicacy and brutality share the same bed, where beauty and horror live as twins. It's no place for Western man who believes in logic, reason and probability."

Ted had been gone long ago but his words came back to me as the Nepalese airliner, an old DC-3, was carrying me to Khumbu, in the heart of the Himalayas, under the very nose of the towering Mount Everest, 29,000 feet high. By special arrangement, the airliner was going to land me at Namche Bazar where an area had been cleared for another plane that was due to pick up a man I had to see, Harry Angsley. After seeing Angsley, I'd be leaving the Khumbu area, though I felt like leaving the whole damned place right now. Even the stewardess, a well-stacked, friendly Indian girl in a trim uniform, did nothing for me. I was angry at being here, angry at Hawk, angry at the whole goddamned business. I was Agent N3, all right, chief AXE operative with the rating of Killmaster, and I was always on call, any time of the day or night. That was part of the job, and I knew it and had lived with it a long time, but every so often, I wanted to tell Hawk to go shove it. I had sure as hell felt like it twenty-four hours ago. It seemed like a month now.

Damnit, she was stark naked, waiting for me, stretching out that gorgeous, milk-white body, calling to me with every movement of her hips. It had taken me three baskets of fruit, four boxes of candy and two tickets for a hit show matinee. Not for her, for her mother. Donna had been ready and willing the first time we met at Jack Dunket's party but her mother, the dowager Philadelphia doyenne of the Roodrich clan, watched her debutante daughter like a scorpion watches a grasshopper. There wasn't going to be any ivy-league lothario screwing her choice little daughter, at least not if she could help it Of course, the old dowager never realized what Donna's gray-mist eyes told me right away, and what her lips confirmed at a later date. After various softening-up sallies with the old lady, I managed to get her and a friend off to a matinee for an afternoon. Donna and I went straight to my place, tossed off two martinis and our clothes, and I was just looking down at her eager, straining body when that goddamned blue phone began to ring in the study.

"Don't answer, Nick," she breathed huskily. Her hips were undulating and her arms were reaching to me. "I'll be right back," I said, hoping that maybe he wanted something that could be put off for a few hours. Looking out the airliner window at the ice-capped peaks, I remembered how cold I felt standing naked and arguing with Hawk on the phone.

"It's nearly three-thirty," he had started in his crisp, no-nonsense manner. "You can easily catch the six o'clock shuttle flight to Washington."

I cast around wildly for something to say, some reason that would be logical and reasonable.

"I can't, Chief," I protested. "Impossible. I… I'm painting my kitchen. I'm in the middle of it."

It was a great reason, or it would have been for anyone else. The eloquent silence at the other end of the line attested to that, and then the old fox answered, dry acid in his voice.

"N3, you may be in the middle of something but it's not house painting," he said in careful tones. "Come now, you can do better than that."

I had plunged and I had to play it out. "It was a sudden idea on my part," I said quickly. "I can't get all cleaned up, changed and get the six o'clock plane. How about the first flight tomorrow morning?"

"You'll be on your way somewhere else tomorrow morning," he said crisply. "I'll expect you by eight I suggest you zip up your paintbrush at once and get moving."

The phone clicked off and I swore out loud. The old buzzard could read me like a book. I went back to Donna. She was still on the bed, her back still arched, lips parted, waiting.

"Get dressed," I said. "I'm taking you home."

Her eyes snapped open, and she looked up at me. A cloud passed over the gray-mist eyes. She sat up.

"What are you, some kind of nut?" she asked. "Who the hell was that on the phone?"

"Your mother," I answered crossly, putting on my trousers. That shook her up but only for a moment.

"My mother?" she echoed incredulously. "Impossible. She's still at the matinee."

"Okay, so it wasn't your mother," I said. "But you're still going home." Donna got up and practically flew into her clothes, her face tightly set, her lips a grim, angry line. I didn't blame her. She knew only that I was in some kind of government work and I wasn't about to go into details. I grabbed my bag, always packed and ready to go, and dropped Donna off at her apartment building on the way to Kennedy International.

"Thanks," she said bitingly as she swung out of the car. "Say hello to your psychiatrist for me."

I found myself grinning at her. 'Thanks," I said. "He'll be touched." I paused for a moment to watch her stride furiously into the lobby, past the doorman. I promised myself I'd give her an explanation when I got back. It wasn't my angry mood alone that stopped me from giving her one now. Training, experience and strict orders all played a part in it. In this business one had damned few friends and hardly any confidants. A loose lip was a certain ticket to death, and you never knew what, where or how little bits and pieces of information found their way into the wrong hands. Embarking on a job, everybody was a stranger. You had to remove the word trust from your vocabulary. It became a word you used only when there was no other choice, an emotion you indulged only when unavoidable.

My thoughts were brought back sharply as I felt the airliner begin to set down carefully in the late afternoon sun. I could feel the wicked crosswinds tug at the plane as they whipped upwards off the mountain peaks. Our landing spot would be a narrow airstrip cleared of snow and ice. I sat back, closed my eyes and let my thoughts wander back again, this time to Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., AXE headquarters. I had indeed made it by eight, and the usual complement of security people passed me along to the night receptionist ensconced outside Hawk's office.

"Mr. Carter," she smiled, looking up at me with wide-eyed interest She had my file out on her desk already and had obviously been reading through it. It had a lot of fascinating information in it, not only about my past work but about my other qualities, such as winning the Nationals in Star Class sailboats, being licensed to drive Formula I cars and being black belt karate. She, in turn, was a cute, round little blonde. For someone who always frowned so on my social life, the old man always seemed to get himself eye-filling dishes at the outside desk. I made a mental note to ask him about that sometime.

"Glad you made it, N3," he said as I walked into his office. His steel-blue eyes told me he damned well expected I'd make it. His spare, New England frame rose and walked over to a movie projector facing a white screen in the center of the room.

"Movies?" I commented. "What an unexpected surprise. Something avant-garde, foreign and sexy, I hope."

"Better than that," he grunted. "Candid camera. A short glimpse behind the scenes in the mysterious kingdom of Nepal, courtesy of British Intelligence."

My file-cabinet mind instantly turned to the page indexed Nepal. It was part of our training to develop such a mental filing case, full of assorted bits of information. I saw a strip of land roughly 500 by 100 miles, a land where roads were considered a luxury, a buffer state between China and Chinese-controlled Tibet, and India. Hawk turned down the lights, snapped on the projector, and my mind cut off.

The first shot was a street scene, men and women, some robed and skirted, others wrapped in brilliant sari-like gowns, mingled with children driving yaks through the crowd. The old men had faces like ancient parchment, the younger people smooth skinned with black, fast-moving eyes. The buildings were pagoda-like in architectural style and the first impression I got was a land which hinted at many other lands. Plainly, both India and China intermingled their influences in Nepal. Genetically, the faces I saw, while reminding one of both the Indian and Chinese peoples, had a character of their own. The camera panned across the scene and picked up a tall man in the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk. His head was shaven, his arms powerful and bared and his face the wide-cheeked, tight-skinned countenance of the Nepalese. But his face had nothing of the ascetic, nothing of the Holy Man in it. It was an arrogant, imperious face, impassive with an intense impatience shining through it. He walked through the people who gave way to him like a monarch not a monk. Hawk's voice cut in.

"His name is Ghotak," he said. "Memorize that face. He's a monk, developer of a separatist cult, out for personal and political power. Head of the Teeoan Temple and of the Snake Society, a strong-arm group he has assembled. Ghotak claims he is an inheritor of the spirit of Karkotek, Lord of All Snakes and an important figure in Nepalese mythology."

The camera panned across the street scene again and from the way it was handled I knew the operator was an amateur. The picture cut to a shot of a stone figure with the typically almond-eyed visage of Buddhist statuary. The figure wore an ornate headdress fashioned of hundreds of serpents, and other snakes coiled about its wrists and legs.

"A statue of Karkotek, Lord of All Snakes," Hawk explained. "In Nepal snakes are sacred, and it is forbidden to kill them except under certain clearly defined, religiously oriented circumstances. To kill a snake is to risk incurring the wrath of Karkotek."

The camera switched to two figures, a man and a woman seated on twin thrones topped by a golden nine-headed serpent.

"The King and Queen," Hawk said. "He's a good man, trying to be progressive. He's hemmed in by superstitions and by Ghotak. Tradition is that the King can never appear to be receiving help or his image will be tarnished."

"Which means?" I asked.

That to help him you have to walk on eggs," Hawk answered. The camera switched again and I was looking at an elderly man in a Nehru jacket over a white cassock-like robe. White hair formed a crown over a distinguished, thin face.

"The patriarch Leeunghi," Hawk said. "He sent these pictures. A friend of the Royal family, he's carrying the ball against Ghotak. He has surmised Ghotak's real motives and intentions. He's the one sure friend we have on the spot."

Hawk snapped off the camera. "That's the principle cast of characters," he said. "Ghotak has pretty well convinced the people that he is possessor of the spirit of Karkotek and is guided by the god's wishes. He's guided, all right, but it's by the Red Chinese. They're trying to take over Nepal by flooding in 'immigrants' as fast as they can. But further, effective migration depends on a bill before the King, opening up land to the immigrants and officially welcoming them. Once the people sign a petition to the king to this effect, hell have no choice but to sign the bill."

"And this is what Ghotak is pushing for, I take it," I interjected.

"Right," Hawk said. "The Lord of All Snakes, Karkotek, wants the newcomers admitted, Ghotak tells the people. That's persuasive enough but he backs it up with two other things, his Snake Society strong-arm boys and the legend of the yeti, the abominable snowman. The yeti slays those who oppose Ghotak."

"The abominable snowman?" I scoffed. "Is he still around?"

"He's always been a big part of Nepalese life," Hawk said. "Especially among the Sherpas, the mountain people of Nepal. Don't knock it until you can prove something different"

"No pictures of the yeti?" I asked innocently. Hawk ignored me. "Where do we fit into this?" I went on. "You mentioned British Intelligence."

"It was their chestnut but their man, Harry Angsley, took seriously ill and they called on us for help" Hawk said. "They're very short-handed as it is and, of course, they didn't need to sell State or the War Department on the strategic position of Nepal. In Chinese control, it would be a direct pathway to India. In friendly hands, it could be a very tough nut for the Chinese to crack. It's vital we keep it friendly, or at least neutral. Ghotak is exerting terrible pressure on the King to sign the immigrant decree. He's getting up a final people's petition in a matter of days."

"Which accounts for all the rush," I sighed, thinking back for a moment to Donna Roodrich. "Will I get a chance to contact Angsley?"

"He's in the Khumbu region, at Namche Bazar, waiting to be flown out and to brief you on details," Hawk said. "The flight connections for you have been cleared right through by special arrangement Military jet the first part of the way, and then you switch to commercial airliner in India. Get moving, Nick. A matter of days stand between us and the Red Chinese picking up all the marbles."

Under the left wing of the airliner I saw a cluster of houses perched on a small plateau in the midst of the towering mountains, as though a giant hand had placed them there. The plane was heading for them and I could make out the narrow strip of cleared land running alongside the edge of a cliff. Snake gods, power-mad monks, superstitions and abominable snowmen. The whole thing had the flavor of a third-rate Hollywood scenario.

When the plane landed, I went directly to the small and somewhat primitive hospital where Harry Angsley waited for the plane that would take him back to England. Propped up in bed, I saw a man who was little more than a living skeleton, a hollow-eyed, sunken-faced apparition. The nurse on duty, an Indian girl, told me that Angsley had been stricken by a very severe attack of the awahl, the malarial fever that is often fatal, and rampant in the lowland swamps of the Terai area bordering India. But, with typical British courage, he was alert and willing to tell me all that he could.

"Don't underrate the place, Carter," he said in a voice barely above a whisper. "It comes at you in a hundred different ways. Ghotak holds all the cards. Frankly, I think there's bloody little chance to pull this out. He's got the people all wrapped up."

A fit of coughing interrupted him and then he turned to me again, his eyes searching my face.

"I can see you'll push on with it, though," he whispered. "Sorry I can't work with you, Carter. Heard of you. Who in this bloody business hasn't? This is the plan for you. You're to slip into Katmandu and then appear as a friend of the Leeunghi family."

"I understand I'm to start out alone, camp in the Tesi Pass where a guide will meet me tomorrow night and guide me in past Ghotak's Snake Society strong-arm squad."

"Right," Angsley agreed. "That means you'll need heavy-weather equipment. Danders Trading Store here in Khumbu is the only place you can get it. It's off-season, but I hope he can outfit you. You're bigger than most who come this way. You'll also need at least one high-powered big-game rifle."

"I'll get down there right away. I nearly froze on the way here from the airport," I said.

"One last thing," Angsley said, and I could see the man's energies were failing fast. "The Sherpas, the mountain people, are fantastic guides and mountaineers. Like all Nepalese, they are full of superstitions, but they stay open minded. Convince them, and you can win them over. I've been having most of my trouble with a countryman of mine, a journalist from England who tailed me here. You know that breed. When they smell something hot, they're bloody bird dogs. Publicity at this time would wreck everything."

"I'll handle it," I said grimly. "I'll stop by tomorrow before I leave. You lie back and take it easy now."

The visit had done nothing to erase my grim, angry mood. Danders Trading Store turned out to have little that could fit me. From bits and scraps, he rounded up enough in my size to outfit me. Yak-hide and fur-lined boots, a heavy fur-lined parka, gloves and snowshoes. He had one good gun left and I took it, a lever action Marlin 336.

"I'm getting in new stock next month," Danders said to me. "I'm about cleaned out now, as you can see. But if you're coming back this way next month I'll have anything you want."

"Not if I can help it," I answered, paying him and loading everything into the heavy bag he furnished. I was walking out the door when I collided with a figure in a bright green nylon parka, the kind one sees on the ski slopes of the Swiss Alps. From under a furred, Tibetan hat, two bright and active blue eyes met mine. Pink cheeks set off a straight, thin nose on a pretty, frank face.

"Hello, Yank," she said in a very British voice. "I've been looking for you. I just left our friend Harry Angsley. My name's Hilary Cobb, Manchester Journal and Record."

Angsley hadn't said his journalist nemesis was a girl and a damned attractive one, as much as I could see. She wore slacks, which can hide a multitude of sins, but her legs were long and her breasts swelled the parka, an accomplishment of sorts. I watched her eyes rove over the purchases I was lugging out of the store.

"Going mountaineering?" she smiled, falling into step beside me. "I think we'd best have a little talk, Yank. I'd like to help you if you cooperate with me."

She was, I quickly saw, one of those active, aggressive British girls who torpedo their attractiveness by their bulldog determination to be completely unfeminine. I was in no mood for anything bothersome, and I decided to set her straight fast.

"I would forget all about me, honey," I said. "Make like you never saw me."

"The name is Hilary," she said crisply.

"Okay, Hilary," I said. "See how agreeable I am. Now you be agreeable. If I get a story for you, I'll tell you when I pass back this way."

"Don't be childish," she said snappishly. "Your being here is a story already. Besides, I've been around too long to buy that land of put-off. Something big is going on here. We figured that when we learned Harry Angsley had been sent here. So don't put on that big, fierce bear routine, old boy. Hilary doesn't scare off."

There was a hostility about her that bugged me at once. I've always disliked hostile women. They were always fighting the war between the sexes, usually inventing imaginary slights to fight over.

"I strongly suggest you cooperate with me," she said, flashing a dazzling smile. She had a pretty face despite her annoying attitude.

"That sounds like a threat, doll," I commented, trudging on through the snow-covered streets.

"Advice," she smiled again. "I could get in your hair in lots of ways, and I will unless you let me in on the ground floor, as you Yanks say. I can be thoroughly disagreeable."

"You're proving that, already," I growled. "Now, I'll give you a bit of advice, doll. Get lost."

She stopped and I walked on, feeling the glare of her eyes at my back. I always felt a sense of waste when I met a girl with her face and her attitude. Under other conditions, I would have tried changing that hostility into something warmer. Here, I was too generally annoyed to bother with anything but getting a room at the local inn. Angsley had told them to have one ready and they did, a small cubby with a square window. The inn was not much more than a large, converted stable but it was warm and a place to eat as darkness fell. I put the gear in my room and went downstairs for a bite, stepping over two chickens squatting on the lower step of the wooden stairway.

A fire leaped in the large fireplace to one side of the room. I had yak steak, which left a lot to be desired, and some of the Nepalese staple, good old-fashioned potatoes. The local brew, a warmish beer called chang, did little to excite me, and I switched to tea which was at least strong. I was midway into dinner when I saw her come down the staircase and head toward me. There were about twelve rooms at the inn and I should have figured she'd be in one of them. She wore a light-blue, wool sweater which her breasts pushed up and outwards sharply, and her legs were full but well shaped. Her hair, previously hidden by the hood of the parka, was ash blonde and short. I watched her approach and let my glance take her in, unabashedly lingering on the full swell of her breasts as she halted at the table.

She waited, eyes narrowed, coolly watching me, lips pursed.

"Finished?" she finally said.

"Nice equipment" I commented, between bites of my yak steak. "Too bad it's not on some other girl."

"You mean on your kind of girl."

"What's that?" I asked, smiling up at her.

"The kind that wants to stare into your bright, blue eyes and feel your muscles and be impressed," she said. "The land that caters to your ego by being willing to fall into bed with you at the drop of a hat."

"Make that trousers," I said.

"Have you thought about what I said?" she asked coldly.

"Not for a second, Hilary, honey," I said-

"You're going to remain uncooperative, I take it."

"You take it right, sweetie," I answered.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," she said, turning and striding off.

"Hilary," I called after her. She halted instantly and turned around. "Don't talk like that," I grinned. "It scares me so I tremble. Notice?"

Her lips tightened and she stalked off. She did have good equipment, I reflected, watching her rear wiggle off. I wondered if anyone ever used it. I struggled through the rest of my yak steak, and was just finishing tea when I saw a kid enter and walk to the desk. The Nepalese there pointed in my direction and the kid came over to me. He thrust a note at me. I flipped it open quickly.

I handed the kid a quarter, bundled up, and went into the night. The wind tore into me at once, and I watched a line of Sherpas moving into the village, their snow-crusted clothes evidence that they'd just come down from the mountain passes. At the hospital, the English-trained Nepalese nurse told me that Harry Angsley was asleep. I showed her the note and she frowned.

"Impossible, sir," she said. "Mr. Angsley's been asleep for hours. He's had no one here to take a message for him. In fact, the medication we give him after dinner usually sedates him through the night"

Now I was frowning, and a sinking feeling had seized the pit of my stomach. I ran all the way back to the inn, my lungs burning from the cold air as I reached my room. I flung open the door and the sinking feeling Sunk deeper. All the equipment I'd purchased was gone. Heavy parka, snow gear, boots, rifle, everything. Without it, I wouldn't stand a chance getting through Tesi Pass, where I was to meet the guide from the Leeunghi family. Without it, I wouldn't be going anywhere. Harry Angsley's words leaped up in my head. Don't underrate the place, he'd said. It comes at you in a hundred different ways. It was neat, even clever. No rough stuff, just a neat job of fencing me in. I looked at the door to my room. It was such a simple latch that a child could pry it open. Through the square little window I saw that it had started to snow. Shoving a heavy chair against the door, I went to bed. I'd pay another visit to Danders' store in the morning, but it was extremely unlikely he'd have a thing I could use, and I had to be on my way into that pass by noon. Maybe Angsley would have an idea.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to sleep, which wasn't that hard. On the bed beside me I'd placed Wilhelmina, my 9mm Luger that was a part of me, always strapped into its shoulder holster. Hugo, my pencil-thin stiletto, lay in its sheath along my right forearm. I had taken no special equipment on this job. There hadn't been time, as Hawk had said. The call from the British was urgent and entirely unexpected. On this one there would be just Wilhelmina, Hugo and me. Maybe I wouldn't need either of them. One could always hope.

I slept well. It was a trick I'd taught myself long ago. The morning sun was filtering coldly through the little window when I awakened, and I was at Danders Trading Store as he opened. As I feared, he hadn't a damned thing I could even make fit. I was on my way to the hospital to see Angsley when Hilary Cobb intercepted me. I was in no mood for more of her foolishness.

"Buzz off," I growled, brushing past her.

"Suppose I could help you," she said. "I heard you were robbed last night."

I paused, turned and gave her a long look. I had told the desk clerk at the inn, and he could have relayed it to her, but suddenly my sixth sense told me that wasn't so.

"How could you help me?" I asked quietly. She was very casual and self-controlled.

"I might have some equipment that would fit you," she said airily.

"Such as a heavy-weather parka?" I asked.

"Yes," she said casually.

"And boots that might fit me?"

"They just might," she smiled.

"Maybe you have a rifle, too?"

"I just might," she said smugly. She didn't read the deadliness in my voice. She was too busy being smug and enjoying her own cleverness. "Of course, you'd have to cooperate with me," she added cutely.

You little bitch, I said inwardly to myself. It was obvious what had happened. She'd sent the note, slipped into my room, and made off with my things. I looked at her and silently called her a host of names. Among them was the word "amateur." She was so pleased with her little caper. I decided to teach her a lesson.

"I guess I'll have to cooperate with you," I smiled. "Where do you have my… this equipment you can let me have?"

"In my room," she smiled smugly. I returned her smile and once again she failed to see the deadliness in it Amateur, I said to myself again. "Then you'll cooperate properly?" she questioned again. "Promise."

I smiled, putting some sheepishness into it. "I'll cooperate properly, I promise," I said. "Let's get the stuff. I've got to be on my way."

"We'll be on our way," she corrected, starting off for the inn. I wore a proper air of resignation mixed with reluctant admiration, and she went for it like a fish for a worm. "I guess I underestimated you," I said respectfully, watching her lap it up.

As she opened the door to her room I quickly swept the place, seeing that my stuff was all there. It was neatly piled into a corner. On the bed there was an open traveling bag, and I watched her take off her parka. She was just turning toward me when I had her by the back of the neck, holding her with one big, angry hand. I slammed her face down on the bed, yanked her sweater up and off and tied the sleeves around her, pinning her arms behind her back. She tried to scream but I turned her over and slapped her once, just hard enough to make her teeth rattle. I yanked her to her feet and then slammed her down in a chair. With a stocking I snatched from her open traveling bag, I tied her to the chair and stepped back. Her breasts spilled over the brassiere and her eyes were no longer complacent and smug but full of terror.

"What… what are you going to do?" she stammered. "Please, I… I was only trying to do my job."

I unhooked the bra and whipped it from her. She gasped as though she'd been struck, and I saw tears well up in her eyes. Her breasts were beautifully peaked, full and taut with the flat nipples of the virgin.

"You… you louse," she said through her tears, gasping out the word. "You promised you'd cooperate with me properly."

"I'm cooperating with you properly," I said. "I'm fixing it so you won't have to trudge through all that ice and snow and maybe get into more trouble."

I reached one hand down and cupped it around one breast, full and firm with smooth, youthful skin. She tried to shrink back and shivered. Tears filled her eyes again but her anger fought through them.

"I'll fix you for this, I swear it," she breathed. "You leave me alone, do you hear?"

"I hear," I said, running my thumb over her nipple. She gasped again and tried to pull away. "Now you hear. I could do anything I wanted to do with you," I said, stepping back. "I could teach you what it's like to be a girl or I could just embarrass the hell out of you. Or, I could drop you off a cliff and nobody'd much know or care here. In short, Hilary, honey, you're operating out of your league. You're playing and I'm serious. That's your first lesson. The second one is never trust anyone you've just zinged."

"Give me my clothes," she said, defiance fighting through her fright.

"No dice," I said. "You'll work yourself loose by late afternoon and you can get dressed then. All you'll have is a slight case of chillblains. And one last thing. You're lucky. I can be a much bigger louse'."

I walked out and looked back at her. Her anger had taken over, now that she was sure I wasn't going to rape her. I enjoyed watching her turn different shades of red as I lingered to explore her breasts with my eyes.

"As I said, nice equipment," I commented with a grin. "Go back to Manchester and try using it."

I closed the door, taking my gear with me. Not more than ten minutes later I was suited up and on my way. I'd been given a rough map of the Tesi Pass through the glaciers. The rest was up to me. The cluster of houses grew smaller and more inviting as I struck out down a glacial slope, pack on my back, the Marlin 336 slung over one shoulder. "Hilary Cobb," I said into the wind. "You don't know it but I've done you a helluva favor."