The Killing Game
Authors: Toni Anderson
The Killing Game
By Toni Anderson
Also by Toni Anderson
Coming August, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Toni Anderson
Cover by Kimberly Van Meter
ISBN-13: 978-0991895809
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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For my dad, Neil Beddow, who served in the Parachute Regiment during the 1960s and raised me on a diet of military history and healthy skepticism.
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea…
THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND
JAMES ELROY FLECKER
PROLOGUE
Present Day
Dmitri chewed a piece of dried meat, then swallowed a lump of gristle. Camp was a cave in the mountainside, three hundred meters above the valley floor. Rain dripped past the entranceway, and cold snaked through layers of cloth and bit into his flesh like the metal teeth of a gin trap. He heaved on his heavy sheepskin jerkin, the muscles across his shoulders burning from wear and tear. Skin itched where coarse wool met his neck. The sun had risen but the world outside remained as empty and barren as his carved-out heart.
Charcoal boulders merged with steep scree slopes, forming an impenetrable wall of bleak granite. He drained his coffee and cleaned out his cup with a small splash of river water he’d carried up the narrow path yesterday. He checked the homemade receiver and GPS unit and picked up his hunting rifle. Cautiously he peered from his cave and raised his whiskered chin to the sky, testing the clouds for any hint of pity for an old man’s bones.
And found none.
Dmitri grabbed his water canteen and filled his pocket with ammunition. He pulled his pakol hat low over his brow and stepped into the murk of the day. He wore the clothes of local herders, though up-close his fair hair, towering height and distant blue eyes betrayed a different heritage. He walked cautiously along a path made by goatherds and yaks. The snow was gone from the lower gullies, the grass beginning to ripen and green. Perhaps the weather would aid his cause. Perhaps not.
He checked the receiver again and froze. The target was close. Very close. He used a large boulder for support, sank to his knees, and scanned the countryside. He flipped the safety off the rifle and waited. Less than a minute later one of the most beautiful creatures in the world padded into view.
The snow leopard’s tread was silent. Blue-gray eyes and smoky coloring blended perfectly into the landscape. Even though Dmitri knew the animal was right there in front of him, it was still hard to pick out. He held his breath in awe. Then the image of his grandson’s sallow face filled his mind, and his finger stroked over the trigger. For one split second the leopard met his gaze and his tail snapped taut. Dmitri exhaled and pulled the trigger.
Percussion pounded the rocks, and a smattering of shale clattered down the hillside behind him. Dmitri checked his shoulder but it was just a small rockslide, nothing to worry about.
He picked his way carefully to the valley floor. His aim was true. The animal was dead. His stomach churned. Thirty years ago, he’d stopped his own men from shooting these beautiful beasts, prevented uneducated pigs from raping the land. But he’d been one man in the giant Soviet machine. Now he was performing his own desecration—not for sport or out of anger, but for cold hard cash and desperation born of need.
He sank to his knees beside the carcass. Dug his fingers into the luxurious fur on the leopard’s neck and popped the animal’s radio collar. Then he began his trek. Laying down bait. A mile or more, up, and over the ridge, onto the top of a high sheer cliff that overlooked the plains below. He stood, breathing heavily, on the edge of the rocky escarpment, and flung the collar with all his might through the fragile mountain air.
Permanent winter cloaked the Pamirs in the north. His homeland. The home of his heart.
Time was slipping through his gnarled fingers. So many years wasted, so little time left. His grandson was dying. Sergei’s son, dying. And the only person willing to save him was Dmitri Volkov. Defector. Betrayer. Child killer.
CHAPTER 1
It looked and felt like the dominion of Gods.
Special Air Service trooper Ty Dempsey had been catapulted from a rural English market town into the heart of a colossal mountain range full of pristine snow-capped peaks which glowed against a glassy blue sky. Many of the summits in the Hindu Kush were over five miles high. The utter peace and tranquility of this region was an illusion that hid death, danger and uncertainty beneath every elegant precipice. No place on earth was more treacherous or more beautiful than the high mountains.
He was an anomaly here.
Life was an anomaly here.
Thin sharp needles pierced his lungs every time he took a breath. But his prey was as hampered by the landscape as they were, and Ty Dempsey wasn’t going to let a former Russian Special Forces operative-turned-terrorist get the better of an elite modern-day military force. Especially a man who’d shockingly betrayed not only his country, but humanity itself.
They needed to find him. They needed to stop the bastard from killing again.
The only noise in this arena was boots punching through the crust of frozen snow, and the harshness of puny human lungs struggling to draw oxygen out of the fragile atmosphere. The shriek of a golden eagle pierced the vastness overhead, warning the world that there were strangers here and to beware. Dempsey raised his sunglasses to peer back over his shoulder at the snaking trail he and his squad had laid down. Any fool could follow that trail, but only a real fool would track them across the Roof of the World to a place so remote not even war lingered.
But the world was full of fools.
As part of the British SAS’s Sabre Squadron A’s Mountain Troop, Dempsey was familiar with the terrain. He knew the perils of mountains and altitude, understood the raw omnipotent power of nature. This was what he trained for. This was his job. This was his life. He’d climbed Everest and K2, though the latter had nearly killed him. He understood that there were places on earth that were blisteringly hostile, that could obliterate you in a split second, but they held no malice, no evil. Unlike people…
He relaxed his grip on his carbine and adjusted the weight of his bergen. None of the men said a word as they climbed ever higher, one by one disappearing over the crest of the ridge and dropping down into the snowy wilderness beyond. With an icy breath Dempsey followed his men on the next impossible mission. Hunting a ghost.
***
The small plane taxied down the runway at Kurut in the Wakhan Corridor, a tiny panhandle of land in the far northeast of Afghanistan. Thankfully the runway was clear of snow—a miracle in itself.
Dr. Axelle Dehn stared out of the plane window and tried to relax her grip on the seat in front of her. She’d been traveling for thirty hours straight, leveraging every contact she’d ever made to get flights and temporary visas for her and her graduate student. Something was going on with her leopards and she was determined to find out what.
Last fall, they’d attached satellite radio collars to ten highly-endangered snow leopards here in the Wakhan. This past week, in the space of a few days, they’d lost one signal completely, and another signal was now coming from a talus-riddled slope where no shelter existed. This latter signal was from a collar that had been attached to a leopard called Sheba, one of only two female snow leopards they’d caught. Just ten days ago, for the first time ever, they’d captured photos from one of their remote camera traps of the same leopard moving two newborn cubs. If Sheba had been killed, the cubs were out there, hungry and defenseless. Emotion tried to crowd her mind but she thrust it aside.
The cats might be fine.
The collar might have malfunctioned and dropped off before it was programmed to. Or maybe she hadn’t fastened it tight enough when they’d trapped Sheba, and the leopard had somehow slipped it off.
But two collars in two days…?
The plane came to a stop and the pilot turned off the propellers. The glacier-fed river gushed silkily down the wide, flat valley. Goats grazed beside a couple of rough adobe houses where smoke drifted through the holes in the roof. Bactrian camels and small, sturdy horses were corralled nearby. A line of yaks packed with supplies waited patiently in a row. Yaks were the backbone of survival in this remote valley, especially once you headed east beyond the so-called
road
. People used them for everything from milk, food, transportation and even fuel in this frigid treeless moonscape.
It was early spring—the fields were being tilled in preparation to plant barley in the short but vital growing season. A group of children ran toward the plane, the girls dressed in red dresses with pink headscarves, the boys wearing jewel-bright green and blue sweaters over dusty pants. Hospitality was legendary in this savagely poor region, but with the possibility of only a few hundred snow leopards left in Afghanistan’s wilderness, Axelle didn’t have time to squander.
Her assistant, a Dane called Josef Vidler, gathered his things beside her. She adjusted her hat and scarf to cover her hair. The type of Islam practiced here was moderate and respectful.
“Hello, Dr. Dehn,” the children chimed as the pilot opened the door. A mix of different colored irises and features reflected the diverse genetic makeup of this ancient spit of land.
“
As-Salaam Alaikum
.” She gave them a tired smile. The children’s faces were gaunt but wreathed in happiness. Malnourishment was common in the Wakhan, and after a brutal winter most families were only a goat short of starvation.
Despite the worry for her cats, it humbled her. These people, who struggled with survival every single day, were doing their best to live in harmony with the snow leopard. And a large part of this change in attitude toward one of the region’s top predators was due to the work of the Conservation Trust. It was a privilege to work for them, a privilege she didn’t intend to screw up. She dug into her day pack and pulled out two canisters of children’s multi-vitamins she’d found in Frankfurt Airport. She rattled one of the canisters and they all jumped back in surprise. She pointed to Keeta, a teenage girl whose eyes were as blue as Josef’s and whose English was excellent thanks to some recent schooling. “These are
not
candy so only eat one a day.” She held up a single finger. Then handed them over and the children chorused a thank you before running back to their homes.
Anji Waheed, their local guide and wildlife ranger-in-training, rattled toward them in their sturdy Russian van.
“
As-Salaam Alaikum
, Mr. Josef, Doctor Axelle,” Anji called out as he pulled up beside them. The relief in the Wakhi man’s deep brown eyes reinforced the seriousness of the situation.
“
Wa-Alaikum Salaam
.” They could all do with a little peace
.
The men patted each other on the back, and they began hauling their belongings out of the plane and into the van.
Axelle took a deep breath. “Did you find any sign of the cubs?”
Anji shook his head. “No, but as soon as I heard you were on your way, I took some men up to base camp to set up the yurts, then came back to get you.” Although only a few miles up the side valley, it was two bone-rattling hours of travel on a barely-there gravel road to their encampment. During winter, they did their tracking online from back home at Montana State University. In summer, they took a more hands-on approach.