The Chinese Agenda (12 page)

below. Searching back along the way for the aircraft, he found that he could not even find the running lights.

As Gillon turned his attention back to the ground, a bright flash of light caught his eye, imprinting itself upon his retina. He jerked toward the light to see it flash toward the peaks and for an instant he thought it might be a meteorite. Puzzled, and suddenly apprehensive, he swung wide, using the harness straps to turn the chute, but whatever it was, it was gone.

As he forced his attention back to the imminent landing, he knew that the flash could only have been the aircraft exploding prematurely. It had not lasted long enough to be a flare and too long to be a meteorite. And if it was the aircraft, then the wreckage would fall into the relatively accessible area well below the Dzungarian Gate, some twenty miles southwest. It surely would have reappeared on the Chinese radar screen in the interval before it exploded and its sudden disappearance would mean that search parties would be airlifted into the area immediately. That brought the chilling realization that the search parties could be at the wreckage within hours of dawn. Ruthlessly, he thrust those fears down for another time. If he did not concentrate on his landing, it might not make any difference to him whether the Chinese found the wreckage or not.

Their landing area, just west of the bend in the Agiass River, was relatively flat, although high, and formed a wide, but short plateau south of Musart Pass, through which they would reach the interior of the range. There was, he knew, an ancient lamasery less than two miles from their landing site on the northern edge of the plateau that supposedly had been abandoned for nearly one hundred years. They were to wait there for moonrise. A blur of white rushed to meet him and he had only enough time to will himself into relaxation before the amazingly hard surface of compacted snow slapped him. He collapsed on impact and rolled onto his side in the classic landing position that he had been taught so many Years before, surprised that he still retained the proper reflexes. He sprawled face downward and the wind

snatched at the chute and dragged him several yards before he managed to turn over onto his back and release the harness. The chute billowed for a moment in the wind, then, shorn of its balancing weight, collapsed.

Gillon got to his feet, gasping deep breaths in the relatively thick air of the ninethousand-foot plateau. The air was like liquid nitrogen in its intensity, almost as cold here as it had been at 18,000 feet. After a moment, he caught sight of a tiny point of light several hundred yards north of his position. He stripped off the chute harness and gathered up the canopy, wrapping it into a bundle with the shrouds, and started toward the point of light, his own flashlight glowing. Dmietriev had landed not more than two hundred feet away and Gillon detoured to help him with the chute. In less than ten minutes, the six of them had assembled around the pile of packs and duffle bags that Leycock had dragged into the shelter of a rock outcropping.

`The aircraft exploded before it should have,' Dmietriev said without preamble, speaking in short choppy sentences that betrayed his anger. 'Both Sergeant Rodek and I checked the explosives very carefully. One of the fuses must have been defective. However, that does not alter the fact that the Chinese will be able to find the wreckage now sooner than we had anticipated. I would guess that they will have reached the crash site by midmorning. By midafternoon, it is possible that they will have discovered that the bodies of four Causasians are missing. By nightfall they will be scouring these mountains for evidence that you parachuted to safety.'

Jones was half sitting, half kneeling on the pile of equipment, and, as he looked up at them and in the meager light from the torches, Gillon was shocked to see how worn and exhausted he appeared to be. Leycock saw it too and knelt down beside Jones.

`How do you feel ... ?'

Jones waved a hand in irritation. 'I feel perfectly all right. Stop fussing over me.' He looked down at the snow for a moment before speaking again. 'You can bet that when they do come, they won't confine their search

just to the air. They'll have ground parties out and in force.'

'Damn those fuses!' Stowe muttered. 'All right, Mr. Agency man, you are the fearless leader. Where do we go from here?'

Jones bit back an angry retort and GilIon turned to stare at Stowe. It was a good thing that he wasn't running the show, he thought, otherwise Stowe would be off to a very bad start . .. with a set of loose teeth.

Jones had apparently decided to ignore the comment, because he looked around in the darkness as if considering. 'We can't go stumbling around trying to climb the pass until moonrise. And we can't stay here without shelter.' As he spoke, the wind stiffened momentarily, as if to remind them of its presence.

'I think that we had better stick to the original plan and head up to the lamasery for a few hours. We could all use the time to adapt to the altitude anyway.'

Stowe started to say something and Leycock, as if guessing that it would he a smart crack, dug an elbow into Stowe's ribs to silence him. Stowe grunted in anger, but remained silent.

Jones waited for objections and, when there was none, heaved himself to his feet and picked up his pack. 'All right, open the duffle bags and pick out your weapons, then bury the chutes and bags.' The six men looked at one another, realizing the hopelessness of their position before they even began, but knowing that there was nothing else to be done.

'Well,' Jones snapped. 'What the hell are you waiting for? Get busy.'

Rodek cut the lashings and dragged the duffle bags out and zipped them open. Silently, he handed out the rifles, keeping the two AK-47s for Dmietriev and himself. Leycock scooped a hole in the glazed snow, broke through the thick ice crust with his knife and in a few moments had dug a pit in which to cram the parachutes and empty bags. Gillon glanced at his watch, noting that it was still set on Rome time. He mentioned it to Tones, who immediately ordered them all to reset at 2130, local time. They had at least four hours to moonrise and the remaining five to six hours of darkness should be enough to see them over the pass, he calculated. Staring about him at the ghostly pale peaks and the frozen landscape of the plateau, he agreed with Jones; this was no time to go stumbling about in the dark, risking turned or broken ankles.

The surface of the snow had been packed hard enough by the incessant wind that snowshoes were not needed. Since the route lay upslope, they strapped the carrying cases for the skis down the side of the packs and, with each other's aid, lashed the snowshoes on the back. Then, roped together to prevent straying only, since the slope was neither rugged nor steep, they started out, Jones in the lead, Gillon following, then Rodek, Stowe, Dmietriev and Leycock.

Jones had set an easy pace because of the altitude and the fact that there was no need to hurry . . . as vet. Their landing zone was approximately two miles below and to the north of the lamasery, and within forty minutes its forbidding black bulk was in view, silhouetted against the star field. Tones brought the party to a halt in the shelter of a jumble of boulders and untied the safety line from his waist. With a warning to Gillon to remain where they were, he trotted away to the right and disappeared into the darkness. Again, Gillon found himself impressed with the precautions that Jones was willing to take. There was less than one chance in ten thousand that the Chinese could be waiting in ambush for them, but apparently. those odds were too much for Tones. In view of every thing that had gone wrong so far, Gillon felt they were much too high for him as well. The wind was unbelievably cold. blowing nearly thirty miles an hour up the pass and added to the 0°F temperature. the wind chill gave an equivalent temperature of forty below zero. Gillon was beginning to think that his feet had frozen to the snow in spite of the heavily insulated boots and clothing when Jones reappeared. Àll tight,' he called, 'let's go in.' They went up the slope quickly. all of them anxious to get out of the fierce wind. Gillon had forgotten how

cold, cold could be. Two years in Africa and four years before that in Indochina were not the best way to train for mountain conditions, and he wondered if there was any truth to the old legend that your blood thins in warm climates.

As they came up under a great stone arch that had once surmounted the main gate, Dmietriev shone his torch along what remained of the old wall. The hewn rock glistened with its coating of frost. Gillon went closer to examine the construction with his flashlight and found that no mortar had been used, that the huge blocks of stone had been carved to fit one exactly onto the other. Frost had crumbled away the edges where the blocks met, but each had been fitted so closely that it would have been impossible to insert the thinnest knife blade between any two stones. Mortar would have been valueness, he realized. With the constant expansion and contraction of the rock caused by summer heat and winter cold, it would have crumbled away in a few years. Inside the walls, the squat shape of the lamesery itself loomed several hundred feet beyond the entrance. It was hard to discern details in the starlight, but it appeared that the roof had collapsed on one side of the building. The compound itself was empty and flat, the snow having covered all debris. Jones led them directly to the main building and up the long sweep of carved steps to the main doorway, gaping wide like a dead mouth. The doors had long since disappeared and Gillon, estimating the size of the doorway to be nearly twenty feet high by thirty feet wide and surmounted by a massive carved stone lintel, wondered how they had been carted away . . . or for that matter how they had been brought here in the first place.

Inside, the wind was reduced to a few eddies wending through the doorway and scattering the snow about into meager drifts. Jones took them down the ice-coated main hallway to a smaller room, where even the whine of the wind was lost.

'This looks like a good place to wait it out,' Jones said suddenly, startling them all. His voice echoed through the room. The heavy atmosphere failed to lift when Dmietriev lit and fixed a small candle into a metal reflector. The minuscule flame provided just enough light to see by, but at the same time, cast looming shadows on the far walls. Gillon took his flashlight and shone it around at the room walls. They were completely devoid of decoration, in contrast to the usual oriental penchant for intricate and colorful design. Dirt and frost stained the stone walls and piles of debris were scattered here and there across the floor, which was of the same carefully fitted stone construction as the walls.

Finding nothing of interest, he returned-to the others. Jones had pulled his sleeping hag from his pack and spread it on top of a foam pad. Gillon studied the pinched faces of the others. Already he could see the beginnings of altitude sickness in their blue lips and hollow cheeks. Rodek was moving slowly about the room, fixing his sleeping bag and arranging his backpack and rifle within easy reach. His every movement suggested the start of stomach cramps and lack of energy. Thoughtfully, Gillon dug the first-aid kit out of 'his pack and swallowed three aspirin tablets with a mouthful of icy water from his canteen. This was his preventive technique . . . or his superstition . . . he was never sure which, for preventing altitude sickness, the mild hypoxia that resulted from too much exertion at an altitude where the pressure of oxygen in the air was-too low to penetrate the arterial walls in the quantities to which the body was accustomed at sea level. It was a common malady in mountain travel and usually passed after a day or so, but its effects, until the body adapted, were a general feeling of languor, nausea, restless sleep and a gasping for breath, all of which combined to make the victim wonder why he had come in the first place and swear by everything he held sacred never to do so again. His theory was that the aspirin dilated the blood vessels, especially those feeding the brain, and the extra blood/oxygen capacity staved off or reduced the hypoxia. The best way to start a hard trip into the mountains was to sleep at altitude, thus allowing the body to begin its process of adjustment under conditions of the least exertion possible. Satisfied that every precaution possible had been taken, he climbed into his sleeping bag and in spite of the sleep on the trip from Rome and the long day of enforced relaxation at Ala Kul, he quickly fell asleep.

Gillon came awake with a start. Jones drew back and motioned for him to lie quiet. A moment later, someone moved across the room and the tiny candle went out, plunging the room into darkness.

'Get out there and see if he needs any help,' Jones called in a low voice. Gillon heard the soft sounds of booted feet trotting down the narrow hallway. Almost immediately, Leycock was back. 'All right, they are still a long way off.'

'Good. Get back out there and stay with Rodek then,' Jones answered.

'What's going on?' Gillon demanded.

'Get up and be ready to move. Rodek spotted something or someone coming this way.'

Gillon slid out of the sleeping bag as the candle was relit and slipped his cold boots on. With the ease of long practice, he shook out the sleeping bag, then shoved it into its stuff bag. He zipped his pack closed and lashed the bag to the frame, then picked up his carbine and loaded a cartridge into the chamber and flicked the safety catch on.

'Ho, boy. The soldier is ready and raring for action,' Stowe's voice was sarcastic.

'Shut up. Get your own stuff together and get out into the courtyard.' Jones toured the room quickly, checking to see nothing was left behind that would betray them.

'All right. Let's get out there and see what the hell is going on.'

The almost full moon was just pushing its way past a long ridge to the east, and through the main gate the snow gleamed in the pale flood. The growing moonlight had washed away the shadows that gave substance to the rubble-strewn yard and left a smooth, glistening sheet that stretched to the walls. The three men crossed the courtyard quickly to the base of the wall, where the rubble of years was piled. Gillon clambered up the broken steps, careful not to