Borrowed Time Page 15

  ‘Mild septicaemia,’ she diagnosed aloud, feeling the density around her absorb the sound, muffling it. ‘All I need.’

  Something rustled and moved across her boot. She jumped aside and saw a snake, over a metre long, yellow-and-black-banded. It slithered away under the back wheels.

  ‘God …’

  She had never seen the species before but she knew what it was: a krait, relative of the cobra and highly venomous, capable of killing half the people it bit, whether they had antivenin or not.

  ‘You’re supposed to be nocturnal,’ she told the retreating reptile. ‘You’re supposed to live in open country, too.’

  Her heart was thumping and now she was aware of darkness at the edges of her vision.

  ‘Not-so-mild septicaemia,’ she muttered.

  She sat on the step of the vehicle and put her head between her knees. The blood pounded harder and her temples began to ache, but the shadowing on the perimeter of her sight disappeared.

  Slowly she stood up, reached under the driving seat for her rucksack and pulled out the scrambler radio. She pressed the button and waited until a green light showed she had an encoded line.

  ‘Sabrina to Mike or Lenny, come in.’

  A couple of whistles and Mike was on the line. ‘Where are you, Sabrina?’

  ‘More or less on top of map reference B.’

  ‘You’re in the forest.’

  ‘Just far enough in to still see daylight. It’s extremely eerie and a krait just slithered across my foot.’

  ‘They’re supposed to live in the open.’

  ‘I told it that.’

  ‘Is everything as expected?’

  ‘Tomb-like,’ Sabrina said. ‘I only called to make sure the radio’s working.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Recce north of here, then south. After that, if it’s all clear, I think I’ll get myself nested into the rocks above the stretch Seaton and his gang were on when I took the pictures. I’ll buzz through every hour until you leave.’

  ‘Sounds OK to me,’ Mike said. ‘I’ll see you.’

  The helicopter took off from a field twenty kilometres north of Srinagar at 3:10 p.m. local time. On board were Mike Graham, Lenny Trent, and ten weapons-and-tactics marksmen drawn from police forces in Srinagar, Anantnāg and Nunkum.

  As they flew south across the border, passing over the sprawl of Delhi, Lenny pointed out six or seven areas where he had worked, or had helped co-ordinate offensives against dope peddlers.

  ‘I look down at them all,’ he said, ‘and I realize that now we’ve moved on, the trade is probably as strong as ever.’

  ‘You have to keep trying,’ Mike said, shouting above the noise of the rotor.

  ‘I know, I know. My only regret about the job is that there’s no place for a sense of achievement. Not ever.’

  As they drew within a hundred kilometres of the target zone the pilot took a sweeping route south-east. He continued in a wide sweep and came back north-west, avoiding passing over the mountain track. He finally landed in an area southwest of the forest where the Range-Rover was hidden.

  From the rounded cleft of two craggy rocks Sabrina watched through binoculars as the police marksmen, led by Mike and Lenny, made their way up the mountainside, heading for the eastern perimeter of the forest.

  It was cool up there in the rocks, but Sabrina was sweating. She lowered the binoculars and saw the sheen of perspiration on her arms and on the backs of her hands. A couple of times as she climbed to this eyrie, she had slipped and bumped the injured leg; now the wound was too tender to touch.

  She could hear her breathing, shallow and tremulous, and when she shifted her position between the rocks a dull pain seized her stomach, like a cramp. In the space of five seconds the pain went from dull to sharp, and became so intense she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out.

  ‘Gastric involvement,’ she whispered, past caring now whether she talked to herself or not. ‘Take counter-measures.’

  The rucksack was at her feet. She opened it and unzipped the medical pouch. Among the foil-sealed packets she located six tablets of activated dimethicone with aluminium hydroxide. After some fumbling she managed to break the foil around two tablets and push them into her mouth. She sat chewing them, promising herself she would never again delay seeing a doctor when she knew she needed one.

  The stomach pain subsided. Sabrina began to feel calm again, though not entirely in control of herself. She looked to the right suddenly as a scarlet bird landed on the rock less than two metres away. It was an amazing creature, long-legged like a wader, with a similar hooked beak, but it was all in miniature, the entire bird standing no higher than a pigeon.

  ‘Look at all that red …’

  The feathers resembled scarlet velvet, and the eyes were like pale amethysts.

  ‘What are you, birdie?’ she whispered, trying not to disturb it. ‘I never saw anything like you before.’

  There was a sound down near the edge of the forest, a faraway click like one stone shifting against another. Sabrina picked up the binoculars and looked. One of the marksmen had lost his footing and had slid a little way down the mountainside. Two others were helping him back up. Sabrina moved the binoculars to look at Mike. Even at that distance she could see how annoyed he was.

  She looked at the bird again. Her heart thumped. It was still there, but now it was green. Bright emerald green with orange eyes. Sabrina touched her forehead and felt the wetness. It was as if someone had doused her with warm water. She was aware that she was having selective hallucinations, the kind that inserted themselves into reality. The pain in her stomach was coming back.

  ‘More dimethi-whatsit,’ she muttered.

  She reached for the tablets, noticing the bird had gone, if it was ever there. She took the packet between both hands and shakily tried to burst the foil blister covering one of the tablets. She pressed too hard and the tablet shot out over the edge of the rock. She tried again. This time the pressure was just right. She slipped the tablet into her mouth and began chewing.

  ‘One more,’ she panted.

  As the plastic bubble split, a hand landed on Sabrina’s shoulder. The tablet fell at her feet. She turned her head and looked at the strong brown fingers pressed into the material of her shirt.

  This was real, she decided. She was not imagining it.

  The operation to get the marksmen in position along the mountain track took more time than Mike had expected; it was already late in the afternoon by the time they were all tucked down out of sight. They were deployed in two groups of four, with a pair of men wielding long-range rifles stationed to the rear of the others in case of a retreat. Mike and Lenny, armed with revolvers, lay in a natural rain trough facing north, a metre down the mountainside from the road and twenty metres from the nearest marksmen.

  ‘They’ve all been warned not to put a mark on Seaton,’ Mike said.

  ‘So you can mark him yourself.’

  ‘So I get to interrogate him straight away. Men lying in hospital get time to set up their defences. I want him picked up off the road and bundled straight into that helicopter, no delay. I want to keep him off balance all the way back to Srinagar and then I want to grill him until he tells me everything. My customary compassion,’ he added, ‘will not be activated on this occasion.’

  Lenny was watching the sun. It had sunk visibly in the ten minutes they had lain there. ‘I’m getting a leery feeling they’re on to us,’ he said.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Mike snapped irritably. ‘Is that you playing opposites? Say it ain’t going to be so, which is sure to make it happen? Is that what you’re doing?’

  Lenny sighed. ‘Ease up, will you? I know you’re anxious to get your hands on Seaton. I’m just saying I have a feeling —’

  ‘From where?’ Mike was glaring, unwilling to face the possibility that the bandits wouldn’t show. ‘Have you got some special sixth sense? Or a seventh one to back up the sixth? Hu
h?’

  ‘I’m going by the time of day,’ Lenny said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’ll be dark in an hour. Hill bandits are timetable creatures. It’s part superstition, part sticking to what they know works. They’re late. That’s what I’m saying, and on that fact I’m basing my suspicion that they’re not coming.’

  ‘Let’s just wait and see.’

  ‘Sure,’ Lenny said. ‘Nothing much else we can do, really.’

  Twenty minutes later there was still no sign of bandits. Mike decided to raise Sabrina on the radio. He got no response.

  ‘It’s not turning out such a swell day,’ Lenny observed.

  Mike said nothing.

  An hour before dusk, on a hot stretch of road fifteen kilometres from the Kashmir border with China, a man riding a noisy moped jumped off his machine as it stalled and began shouting at it. There were few people around to see him, but those who did were amused. He was a comic-looking figure, white-bearded, dressed in an eccentrically large turban, flowing yellow shirt and blue pantaloons. He was furious, calling his bike an ingrate, a traitor, a worthless assemblage of junk held together with rust.

  Then he stopped shouting and wheeled the moped to a patch of rough ground by the roadside. He put the machine on its stand, crouched by the side of it and started pulling off pieces of the engine.

  Even at close quarters, nobody would have been able to tell that this was Ram Jarwal, steeped in his latest role, thoroughly enjoying himself as he tore off excess parts of bike engine and peered crazily at each one before he dropped it on the ground.

  Several of the bits hitting the ground actually came from a pocket in the folds of Ram’s vast shirt. When he had finally reversed the procedure and put back all the pieces he had pulled off his machine, there was one visible item on the ground that had not been there when he arrived. It was an oval flat stone, like thousands of other littered about the roadside.

  At his third attempt to restart the engine it fired and he jumped on. The bike tore off and in less than a minute Ram was out of sight.

  It was nearly dark when Amrit Datta came striding along the same stretch of road, his sack dangling from his shoulder. At roughly the spot on the corner where the moped had stopped Amrit began limping.

  He stopped and bent down beside an oval stone with a notch chipped cleanly out of its edge. In the gathering darkness he appeared to remove a pebble from his sandal and adjust the strap; in fact he lifted one side of the stone, uncovering a hole in the ground. The hole had been put there by Ram as he fussed with his engine parts and deftly used their natural digging edges — each one time only — to prepare a receptacle in the earth.

  It was too dark for Amrit to see what he was taking out of the hole, but he could identify the items easily by touch. There was a replacement amulet for the one he would leave under the stone, and under that was his gun.

  As he began walking again a few moments later, he patted the gun where it now lay, in the waistband of his baggy trousers, the metal cool against his skin.

  He began to smile, and after a few more minutes he started to whistle. It took so little, he thought, to make him feel really sure of himself again.

  19

  The bandits didn’t show.

  ‘You’re entitled to say you knew this would happen,’ Mike told Lenny.

  ‘You know I don’t do stuff like that.’

  ‘Yeah. Ignore me, I’m just sore. Very sore.’

  A call had come through from Srinagar to the helicopter pilot five minutes earlier. The assistant to Commissioner Mantur told the pilot that he and the marksmen, who were now running into overtime, had to return to base without delay.

  As the men began filing silently down the mountainside to the tiny plateau where the helicopter sat, Mike grabbed Lenny’s arm. ‘I’m staying,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I don’t feel like I’ve tried. Going now is just defeatist.’

  ‘Staying can’t help that. They won’t be along tonight. It’s getting dark, they’ve obviously changed their schedule. We can come another time.’

  ‘Now what are the real chances of that happening? Who’s going to give us the leeway after this bummer?’

  ‘Mike, what are you hoping to do?’ Lenny peered at his face in the dusk, trying to get a pinch of reason past the impulsiveness. ‘It’s going to get very dark soon. You’re all alone up here …’

  ‘Sabrina’s around somewhere.’

  ‘You don’t know that. Her radio was out. She probably took off when she realized she couldn’t make contact. That would be the drill, right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mike sighed, ‘that’s the drill.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t care. I’m staying. I’ve no idea what I’ll do, but I know I don’t want to go away from here empty-handed — not without really trying.’

  ‘You’ve no resources.’

  ‘I’m good at commandeering. And stealing.’

  ‘OK,’ Lenny said. ‘I’ll stay, too.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘When you’re back in New York bragging about how you hauled in Paul Seaton single-handed, I don’t want to have to skulk out of the room in case somebody asks me where I was at that moment.’

  ‘We’ll have to rough it,’ Mike said.

  ‘That won’t put me off. I bet I’ve roughed it more times, and worse, than you ever did.’

  They caught up with the others and explained what they were doing. The pilot, a tall bearded Sikh, told them they were crazy. ‘But I wish you luck, nevertheless. If by some miracle you ever get back to Srinagar, look me up and I’ll buy you a beer. Your story should be worth hearing.’

  Mike and Lenny took their padded windcheaters from the helicopter and stepped back, watching the others get on board. They stood and waved as the craft rose vertically for fifty metres and then swung away towards the north.

  ‘It’s going to be quiet around here with the boys gone,’ Lenny quipped.

  Mike was gazing up at the ridge of rocks above the mountain path. ‘I hope Sabrina’s OK,’ he said.

  They moved up the incline along the eastern side of the forest and sat down on the edge of the road, facing west.

  ‘Might as well catch the sunset,’ Lenny said.

  They watched orange light fan out across the western horizon. By swift stages it turned to gold, red and purple as the sun dropped halfway below the dark margin of rock and mountain.

  ‘It never disappoints,’ Mike said.

  They both turned at a sound to their right. Coming from the perimeter of the forest were six men, their faces dark amber in the fading blaze of sun. They all carried rifles, all of them pointing at Mike and Lenny.

  ‘One of us has to run for it,’ Mike said, lips scarcely moving, his voice no more than a whisper.

  ‘You go,’ Lenny grunted.

  It was the rule. If two agents were cornered, and the prospects for survival looked slight, then one agent must try to escape.

  ‘No. You go.’

  ‘You’re a top UNACO man, for God’s sake …’

  As they stood up, their hands in the air, Mike shoved Lenny violently with his shoulder, knocking him over the edge of the road. Lenny could do nothing but run.

  ‘Go like the wind!’ Mike yelled.

  Lenny ploughed down the mountainside, arms flailing as he galloped over stones, leapt boulders and ran headlong through thickets and under overhanging trees.

  Five of the bandits formed a circle around Mike. The sixth man went to the edge of the road and got down on one knee. He steadied his elbow and took aim with his rifle.

  ‘No!’ Mike yelled at him. ‘No, you bastard!’

  A single shot rang out. Mike saw Lenny stumble and fall. The gunman stood up, walked down the mountainside a distance, then fired again. When he came back he gave his companions a thumbs-up.

  Mike threw himself at the gunman but didn’t get past the two in front of him. They each hit him once, on the ears with clenched fists
, deafening him, making his skull hurt so badly he had to clamp his hands over his head.

  He was pushed and pulled towards the forest and marched through the trees in almost total darkness. After five or six minutes he began to see light, and as they marched forward, threading their way, he could hear the hum of a generator.

  All at once they were on the edge of a clearing and he could see bright electric lights, mounted high on tubular metal stands. There were tents, cooking fires with spits mounted over them, and horses tethered in a long line by a wooden trough.

  As Mike was shoved forward into the wide circle of light he saw a woman tied to a pole near one of the guttering fires. Her head was bowed and he saw blood caked on the front of her shirt. Drawing nearer he realized it was Sabrina. He jerked forward, making the men holding his arms stumble.

  ‘Sabrina! Sabrina honey! Are you OK?’

  Somebody slapped him on the neck. Mike’s head jerked round, ‘You goddamned scum!’

  He pulled an arm free and punched the nearest bandit on the chin. As the man fell Mike spun and kicked the one on the other side.

  ‘Vermin! Woman-beaters! You’re filth! Filth! I’ll kill every last one of you!’

  For a moment he was out of their control, free, moving to his own rhythm while they bumped into each other trying to block him. He put his hands on the shoulders of a barrel-shaped man and head-butted him on the nose. The sound of cracking bone gave Mike fresh energy.

  ‘Get out of my way!’ He slipped his hand under his jacket and pulled out his gun. ‘Back! Get back!’ He thumbed the hammer as men scattered. ‘Sabrina! Wake up!’

  He turned to the pole where Sabrina was tied. A bandit behind him waited with his rifle raised until Mike lined himself up. In that split second the rifle butt came down with flashing speed and struck Mike’s head. He stopped moving for a moment, staring at the pole and Sabrina’s sagging body. Then he fell over on his face.

  20

  His first recollection when he came round was that Lenny Trent was dead. Through his pain and immobility he felt a terrible distress. There was a kaleidoscope of tumbling images, all of Lenny, all the pictures bright, full of energy and laughter.