The Doomsday Testament

XLVII

Tenzin reacted instantly. He broke right towards the hills a quarter of a mile away where the boulders offered more cover than the open trail. Chiru, the youngest of the guerrillas, attached himself to Jamie’s shoulder and shepherded him away from danger, all the time darting wary glances back to where the paratroops were now deploying in loose formation. The Tibetans formed a protective circle round the two outsiders, but Jamie knew it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed. Against six, even six of the Chinese élite special forces, they would have had a chance, but not against four times that number. They were hopelessly outgunned.

A rock formation in front of Jamie shattered and a heartbeat later he heard the distinctive ripsaw clatter of a burst of automatic weapons fire. As a storm of lead savaged the air around them the man to his left gave a sharp cry and fell to the ground. Without thinking, Jamie picked up the fighter’s rifle and stripped him of his ammunition while Chiru checked the fallen man for signs of life. The boy shook his head and they ran together to the base of the hills where Tenzin had set up a defensive perimeter among the rocks, with Sarah, who looked dazed and sick, at its centre.

‘What now?’ Jamie demanded.

‘We can hold them here for a while, I think,’ Tenzin said, his dust-coated hawk’s face creased in a frown of concentration.

Jamie saw he was right. The Chinese paratroop commander now faced the choice of attacking over the open ground the Tibetans had just crossed or a long flanking movement to the east. The first would cost him casualties, the second might give the beleaguered insurgents a chance to escape. It all depended on just how determined he was to kill them.

A sustained burst from a dozen assault rifles on fully automatic signalled his decision. Jamie curled into a foetal ball as the rocks around him exploded. For the first time in many days he thought of his grandfather. This combination of exhaustion and sheer terror was the life Matthew Sinclair had lived for six long years. The knowledge lit some spark in him and he raised his head and sighted the Type 56 carbine on the open ground just as a dozen green-clad soldiers broke cover and rushed forward, shooting as they ran. All hell broke loose around him as the Tibetans opened fire and Jamie joined in with short controlled bursts that set the rifle shuddering in his hands. The man who had found Matthew Sinclair’s journal would have fired warning shots over the attacker’s heads. The man who had read it and fought for it took deliberate aim at the chest of the leading attacker. His first shots flew high and he automatically sighted lower, watching as the shots kicked up dust among the charging men. First one went down, spun by a burst that caught him in the upper chest, then a second who dropped like a stone. In an instant, the landscape was empty, the survivors melting into the dusty ground.

Tenzin called out an order and the firing died away, apart from a few desultory single shots from the Chinese four hundred yards off on the far side of the track.

Jamie turned and saw Sarah struggling to get to her feet. He ran to her at a crouch and pulled her down. ‘Do you want to get your bloody head shot off?’

‘Hey, Saintclair,’ she mumbled, ‘I can look after myself.’

Jamie lifted her chin and wiped flecks of vomit from her lips. Her eyes were dilated. His heart sank as he recognized the signs. Altitude sickness. The longer they stayed at this height the worse it would get. Unless he could get her out of here and down to the foothills she could die.

‘Sure you can, tough guy.’ He matched the words with a reassuring smile, but she wasn’t fooled.

‘Screwed, huh?’

‘’Fraid it looks like it, love.’

‘We gonna surrender?’

‘I’m not sure they’ll give us the option.’

A soft plop like a bubble of mud bursting in a hot spring punctuated the sentence and he threw himself on top of her.

‘Christ, Jamie—’

‘Mortar!’

The explosion twenty yards to the right sent razor shards of shattered stone whizzing through their refuge and Jamie cried out as he felt the sting of something slicing across his brow.

Sarah reached out and touched his head and her fingers came away red. ‘You’re hurt?’

‘It’s just a scratch,’ he insisted, because it was, but for a moment he felt like a bit-part actor in a cowboy movie and the thought almost made him smile. Tenzin and Chiru were huddled in conversation behind a nearby rock and as Sarah dabbed ineffectually at his forehead with her sleeve, the Tibetan leader crawled to where they lay.

‘There may be a way to get you out of here, it will be dang—’ The next mortar blast was much closer and to their left. Tenzin frowned. ‘Ranging shots. You know what comes next. Chiru will lead your way; with him you have a chance, stay and…’

Jamie knew what staying meant. The next round from the two-inch mortar, or the one after that, was going to land in the little circle of rocks and kill or disable them all. It was the simple arithmetic of war. Two or three ranging shots and one in the bull’s-eye. But there was something else. ‘What do you mean he will lead us? What about you and the others?’

Tenzin’s amber eyes were lit with the same inner glow as the night he had burned the juniper leaves over the fire. ‘We stay. The Ghosts of the Four Rivers will cover your retreat.’

Jamie shook his head. ‘But—’

The Tibetan was already moving. ‘There is no time for buts, Mr Saintclair. If you go, it must be now.’

‘No,’ Sarah gasped. ‘We can’t leave you.’

Tenzin gave a sad, almost embarrassed smile. ‘But you must, Miss Grant. Only you can ensure that the Sun Stone is never used for what Walter Brohm intended. Please.’ His voice was urgent now. ‘Go now. You have your job to do; I have mine.’

Chiru plucked at Jamie’s jacket, and the Briton took Sarah by the arm, but there was still one thing he had to do. He unwrapped the King’s College scarf from his neck and placed it formally round Tenzin’s.

The monk’s eyes softened and he bowed. ‘Now go,’ he hissed.

Chiru led them away to the left, hugging the base of the hills and staying low among the boulders. The slight figure of the young Tibetan seemed to merge with the rocks around him and he moved silently over stone and scree. Jamie, with his arm supporting Sarah’s weight, struggled to keep up. When they had gone thirty paces the gunfire resumed and he knew that Tenzin was drawing the attention and fire of the Chinese. His mind counted down the seconds to the inevitable explosion and it came half a minute later, but the bomb must have fallen short because the shooting continued without pause. Chiru hissed at them and he guessed the boy was telling them to hurry. He risked one last look backwards but all he could see was rocks.

He knew that back in the clearing, Tenzin would be issuing his orders to his guerrillas. In his mind he saw the young men check their weapons. This day was always going to come. In some ways it was a comfort to them to be dying in the company of their friends. Better this than to die in the cold on some bleak mountainside with only prayers for companionship. He waited for the inevitable, saw the bomb arcing towards them, a black blob against the blue sky, first slow, then incredibly fast as it passed the top of its flight and plummeted down. His body cringed as he heard the blast and imagined the carnage in that confined space among the rocks.

This time the explosion was followed by silence and Jamie had to force himself to keep moving and not think about what was happening behind them. Sarah seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness. Her body was almost a dead weight and combined with the weapon he carried made it almost impossible to maintain pace with their guide. Chiru moved out of sight around a buttress projecting from the hill and he resolved to call the young Tibetan back to help out. By the time he dragged Sarah to the corner Chiru was forty paces ahead. As Jamie opened his mouth to shout, a figure in grey-green camouflage rose silently from the left of the path and took aim at the Tibetan’s back. Jamie brought up the assault rifle and dropped Sarah in the same movement. The Chinese commando heard the sound of her outraged protest and half turned as the gun kicked in Jamie’s hands, a four-round volley that stitched the soldier from belly to chest and threw him back among the boulders. Chiru turned, his face pale, and ran to where the man lay groaning by the path.

The boy looked at Jamie and called something in Tibetan. When the Briton didn’t move he retrieved the commando’s spare magazines and threw them towards him. Jamie picked them up and stuffed them in his belt, then pulled Sarah to her feet. Her eyes rolled like the numbers in a slot machine and it was clear she barely knew where she was. Chiru took her other arm and they set off without another word.

The mortar blast threw Tenzin against the base of the hill in an eruption of heat and flame and his ribs cracked as he hit the rocks. For a few seconds he lay stunned, but when he looked up at least one of his men was still firing. He struggled to his knees as the staccato clatter of the machine guns rent the air. His padded jacket was torn in several places and blood and body parts painted the area where the bomb had fallen. The Tibetan was only alive because two of the guerrillas had taken the brunt of the explosion. One more was dead, and two others too badly wounded to fight, but a second man dragged himself to his feet and began firing at the commandos. Tenzin crawled to one of the men and filled his pockets with the Chinese-manufactured grenades he carried. Then he picked up his rifle and set off after Jamie.

Jamie had no idea where Chiru was leading them, all he could do was put his faith in the Tibetan. The firing resumed, which meant at least one of the guerrillas had survived the latest mortar blast, but he doubted they would last long against a sustained Chinese attack. The commando he had shot must have been one of the original group who had been tracking them, possibly sent ahead while the rest dealt with the two-man ambush Tenzin had set. That meant the others would be coming this way. Tenzin had said Chiru knew a way out, but if they didn’t find it soon it would be too late. The young Tibetan pushed ahead without speaking, dragging Sarah’s arm, but gradually he slowed and Jamie understood he was looking for something. Chiru searched the rock at the base of the hill with a puzzled frown.

‘Christ, don’t tell me he’s looking for a cave.’

Sarah’s eyes focused on him for a moment. ‘What?’

‘I think he’s looking for a bloody cave.’ Jamie heard the hysteria in his own voice. ‘It’ll take them about five minutes to find us.’

She muttered something before her head slumped forward again. He smoothed back the hair on her brow. ‘What did you say, Sarah?’

The eyes were dimming quickly and though her next words were only the slightest whisper, he understood them.

‘Trust him.’

Chiru glared at him. ‘Tshur log pa.’

‘What?’

The Tibetan gestured back the way they’d come.

‘Tshur log pa!’

‘You mean back?’

‘Tshur log pa.’

Jamie closed his eyes. ‘There must be easier ways of getting killed.’

It took them another few minutes to find the opening. It wasn’t a cave, or a tunnel. It was a fissure. A simple crack in the rock caused by God only knew what geological combination. Even Chiru’s sharp eyes had missed it, because the entrance, if the narrow cleft could be graced with the word entrance, was dappled with shadows that were as good as a coat of camouflage paint against the bare stone of the hill. The opening was barely wide enough to accommodate one person at a time and to Jamie it appeared like the entrance to Hell. After the tunnels of the Hartz bunker complex he could hardly be accused of claustrophobia, but this was pushing luck to the limit. The crack split the hill in two, but no light reached its jagged depths and he had a horrible feeling that just the slightest tremor in the mountains would be enough to close it again. That feeling was reinforced as he pushed Sarah after Chiru. A few feet into the rock the young man turned to him and made a calming motion with his right hand. Or maybe he wanted them to get to their knees? No it was definitely a calming motion, which he reinforced by raising his eyes upwards. Jamie followed Chiru’s gaze — and froze. Above them, like a pile of money in one of those fairground games that looks as if it needs just one more penny to make it fall, were tons, maybe hundreds of tons, of loose rock and scree. Jamie’s eyes met Chiru’s and they exchanged a sickly smile. He nodded, slowly, so as not to disturb the air, to show he understood.

‘Where the hell are we?’

Sarah’s shout sounded like a bomb blast in the enclosed space and Jamie automatically wrapped a hand across her mouth.

‘MMM mm MMMMmmm mm.’

He turned her head towards him and looked into her eyes. With his free hand he put a finger to his mouth. ‘Shhh.’

‘Mmmm?’

He nodded and pointed upwards, allowing her to ease her mouth free.

‘Jesus, Saintclair,’ she breathed, ‘you sure do know how to show a girl a good time.’

Chiru led them on, one painstaking step at a time. They moved silently, because they understood they were a knife-edge from destruction. Sometimes the crack narrowed so that they were forced to turn side-on to continue and Jamie had to drag the assault rifle behind him, but, gradually, they made their way through the hill until it widened and they could see daylight ahead.

Chiru halted at the exit, and slipped out of sight to one side. Jamie managed to squeeze past Sarah into the gap.

‘Fuuuuck!’

He tried to merge with the rock as he teetered above one of those towering, limitless voids only the Himalayas can produce. The vertiginous nothingness below drew him like a magnet, altering his centre of gravity and dragging him towards oblivion. All of India seemed to be laid out in front of him, the vibrant green of the foothills finally giving way to the hazy ochre of the faraway plains. The only thing between Jamie and the rocks a thousand feet below was air, and air had never seemed so insubstantial. He turned to go back, but Chiru, who perched comfortably on a foot-wide ledge to one side of the entrance, grabbed his arm. They stared into each other’s eyes and Jamie was ready to rage at the younger man for leading them into this trap, but the look on the young Tibetan’s face froze the words in his mouth. The desperate appeal required no translation. There was no other way. Jamie looked again into the depths below. Behind him, Sarah stirred restlessly.

Chiru pointed to a second, wider ledge that must have been a hundred feet below them, and signed to Jamie to follow his finger across the cliff. He had to look twice, but it was there, not even solid enough to be called insubstantial. A path. A fractured formation of stone perches fit only for mountain goats, but a path just the same. If they could get there, the Tibetan appeared to be saying, he could lead them to safety down that path. But how to get there?

Chiru read the look on his face and nodded. He slipped past Jamie on the sheer face and edged his way another six feet along the ledge to where a thin seam of scree split the cliff face. A dusty stream of frost-shattered rock and small rounded stones that led directly to the second ledge. At first glance, it looked vertical. Look again and there might be five or six degrees in it. But close enough to vertical to make it part of the cliff.

Chiru pointed down, grinned and stepped straight off the ledge.

‘No!’ Jamie grabbed at his arm, but it was too late.

At first it seemed Chiru must plummet down that awesome drop, but by some miracle his feet found enough purchase in the scree to support him. He slid swiftly down the river of stones in a cloud of thick dust, his body almost perpendicular to the cliff face. The soles of his designer sports shoes surfed the scree and controlled his speed and an inbred sense of balance kept him upright. Jamie watched him, waiting for the inevitable moment when the Tibetan stumbled and the controlled descent turned first into a tumbling rush before hurtling him into the abyss. But the moment never came. Chiru had lived and breathed these mountains for the seventeen years of his existence. The cliff paths and the scree slopes were his highways and he was as much in charge of his destiny as any civil servant walking down Whitehall. He glided to a halt as he reached the ledge and looked back towards Jamie and waved for him to follow.

For a moment, Jamie felt utterly abandoned. He realized Chiru hadn’t deliberately left them; the Tibetan was a hill man, brought up in the harshest environment on the planet and taught from birth to be utterly independent. The show was designed to give them the confidence to follow him. But Jamie looked at that thin river of stones and experienced stark, paralysing terror. Would he have the courage to take that final step even if he didn’t have Sarah to look after? And with her? No, it was impossible. The only thing they could do was turn back. He had already made the decision when he heard the rattle of machine gun fire echoing through the passageway. The Chinese would be here in moments.

No time to consider the consequences. Sarah was leaning against the side wall of the cleft only barely conscious and with her eyes closed. Jamie pulled her on to the ledge beside him and led her cautiously to the top of the scree slide. When they reached it, he dropped down to sit with his legs over the lip of the void and somehow manoeuvred her on to his lap. He placed the rifle by his right side and wrapped his left arm across her chest. She mumbled quietly and tried to turn her head towards him and in his terror he cursed her to stay still. The sound of gunfire grew more intense.

‘Trust me,’ he whispered in her ear. He closed his eyes and with a final plea to the God he only consulted in the direst of emergency he allowed himself to slip off the edge.

That first second when gravity took control was probably the most terrifying of his life. It seemed certain their combined mass must throw them out into the emptiness and carry them away to the rocks half a mile below. Instead, he found the scree scoring his back and his feet automatically seeking purchase among the stones. He slid toes first with his head forced back and he could feel the knife-edged rock ripping at his scalp. Sarah’s weight forced his body into the scree, compounding the agony and slowing them still further. It was comforting that they weren’t repeating Chiru’s headlong rush, but Jamie knew that if they slowed too much it would be just as fatal. If they stopped, they would never get going again. He pushed with his arm to maintain their momentum. Strangely, after that first adrenalin surge of fear, he never felt in any danger until Chiru’s hands lifted him to his feet and he had to open his eyes again.

Sarah sat groggily among the loose stones at his feet. ‘That was fun. Can we do it again?’

He resisted the urge to throw her off the edge and exchanged a nerve-shattered grin with Chiru.

They were still grinning at each other when the solid thud of an explosion shook the earth beneath their feet and Jamie looked up to see dust and smoke vomit out of the passage where they’d emerged.