BLOOD GURKHA: Prophesy (James Pace novels Book 5) (19 page)

Whereas the Segway had two solid, knobbly wheels, this snow version's wheels had the appearance of BMX wheels devoid of tyres. Built on titanium-reinforced aluminium, they had twelve spokes and their metal rims were edged with thirty metal spikes, each an inch long, designed to dig into snow and ice, bite and hold. Additionally, a small tractor drive, similar to those that powered the rear of a snow mobile, sat directly underneath the rider's feet, below the platform. Designed to move freely, on a series of clever arms and linkages, it did not adversely affect the vehicle's necessary automatic stabilisation properties and provided the additional grip, and power, that produced the Sledgeway's additional speed and endurance.

Finally, a set of three titanium arms, equipped with small skis at their ends, added stabilisation to the Sledgeway so it could easily perform on heavily undulating terrain, unlike the Segway which had been designed for smooth, hard surfaces only.  Forming a triangle, one ski rode the snow directly in front of the machine; about two feet ahead of the wheels, while the other two straddled the wheels; again about two feet out from the spinning spokes. As a final touch, everything had been painted white.

'The snow has been very heavy so far this winter,' Hammond said, noting the clouds beginning to form above them. 'You'd better get going, James. You won't be able to fly if it suddenly closes in on you, no matter how good your piloting skills.'

'You trying to get rid of me?' Pace smiled. 'I know, your toys are waiting a field test.' He could see Hammond; ever the adventurer, needing to get his Sledgeway up and running.

'We should be able to use these for most of the way,' Rachel stated emphatically, already climbing up onto her Sledgeway. She had never ridden a Segway before but she was confident it would not be too hard. 'Are you coming?'

Hammond shot Pace a parting glance of encouragement. 'We'll be back here, at these coordinates, in five days. Make sure you don't forget about us and try,' he added conversationally, 'not to get eaten by some gigantic, hairy monster. I do not want to be stuck out here, with her.' He dropped his voice to a sudden whisper, feigning a helpless expression.

'Are you fully equipped? Got everything? Food, phone…guns?'

Hammond patted beneath the left armpit of his white snowsuit, where his Beretta 9mm sat snugly in its holster, invisible beneath the insulating material. 'I lost my AK,' he said.

Pace did not need reminding about that. Relieved to have been pulled into the submarine alive, he was still upset that the Zodiac had sunk into unknown depths, carrying his beloved Sten gun with it. 'But Parry was able to find me a suitable replacement.' He glanced over to where a rifle holder had been so thoughtfully built into the Sledgeway's platform. Pointing skywards, the barrel of an AR-15 was about the only black-painted object in a sea of white.

The wind chose that moment to gust, hard across the plateau, kicking up a fine cloud of surface snow. Pace knew he could not delay any longer.

'Five days. I'll be here. Watch yourself and I hope you manage to find out what happened to Barbara.'

'I intend to find her, save her and bring her home,' Rachel cut in quickly. Pace nodded his understanding and watched as Hammond threw the last of their bags up onto the machines; shared out equally between the two, before stepping up onto his Sledgeway. It made the foot plate a little cramped but there would still be enough room to their feet.

Both power units were fully charged and they were ready to go.

Sidling up next to Rachel, Pace fixed her with a thoughtful stare. This time, oddly for her she struggled to meet his gaze and felt her heart sink as his eyes bore into her own.

'I am going to say this once, and never again,' he began slowly. 'Max is going with you and, knowing him, he'll put his life on the line at the drop of a hat to save you, Barbara Balvenie, or any other innocent person you may stumble across,' Pace explained. 'I don't trust you. I don't know why Doyle is trusting you but I promise, if you come back and Max doesn't?' He stopped, leaving the threat hanging clearly in the sub-zero air.

'You'll kill me?' She couldn't actually blame him. If their positions had been reversed, she would doubtless be issuing the same warning. 'I wouldn't worry,' she said, frowning as she slipped on a set of tinted ski goggles. 'If anyone's not coming back, it will be me.'

'That attitude won't help,' Pace snapped, suddenly furious. 'You screwed up, royally, and now you're getting your chance to make amends. That's great but you need to do so carefully, with real caution. Flying off, gung-ho, with a martyr's perspective will just get both of you killed. Understand? Rachel?' He used her first name to hammer home his point. 'If you're going to succeed, you both need to be at the top of your game. No unnecessary risks and definitely no self-destructive choices.'

'Is the lecture over now?' Rachel's voice turned as icy as the rising wind around them. 'I've been in this business a lot longer than you have, and I'm bloody good at it. Yes, I fucked up and, no, I have no wish to commit suicide. If you'll step away, I'd appreciate it. Wouldn't want to run over your feet with these wheels,' she said.

Then, with the hum of the electric motors, the two Sledgeways headed off across the plateau, towards a valley nestling between two soaring, snow-covered mountains.

With no reason to hang about, Pace had the Lynx back in the air within a few minutes, adjusting for the tug of a wind, before setting a course for their own destination. Pouring on the speed to beat the rapidly approaching snowstorm, he planned to get there within thirty minutes, despite his need to navigate through several valleys and keep as close to the ground as he could. Several times he lifted the old aircraft up and over smaller peaks, hoping that his dangerous proximity to the rock and ice would keep him hidden.

Hill, never a lover of small aircraft; still feeling very sorry for himself after his encounter with his pilot's fists, gripped his seat hard several times when Pace had to wheel around, or turn sharply to avoid colliding with a mountain. His repeated requests for a slower speed were resolutely ignored.

Pace made it clear that time was of the essence and then refused to discuss it again.

21

As night fell, Pace resolved himself to his task. There was no avoiding it any longer. He worked for McEntire and he'd been given this annoying job to do, for whatever reason he did not know. It would have made more sense to stay with Hammond; to help him and Rachel, instead of babysitting an obnoxious archaeologist, indulging him in his odd project.

The Lynx was parked in an open clearing, surrounded by thick broad-leaf forest, on a thick ice crust that had taken its weight without the skids digging in more than a few centimetres into the thin surface layer of fresh snow. Now hidden, and protected, by a thin, white nylon sheet, stretched completely over it and pegged down at multiple points around the edges, from above it would have appeared that the snowy clearing was empty. It also served to keep any snow from building up on the control surfaces; the whole thing could be pulled off, complete with any accumulated snow, in time for a rapid exit.

The snowstorm that had threatened, like so many in the mountains, had been confined to a small area. Here, surprisingly, the night sky was crystal clear and bejewelled with a million pinpricks.

Although the cover was tightly pegged down, it was still possible to lift the edge of the taut material and slide underneath. This meant they had no need to pitch a tent, or build an igloo; they simply settled down for the night in the rear of the Lynx.

'Coffee?' Pace offered Hill a mug of steaming black liquid, quickly knocked up in a small saucepan, on top of an old cooking stove someone had thoughtfully built into the back of the helicopter's empty cabin.

'Thanks,' replied Hill, adding a couple of sugar cubes from a plastic bag, pulled from his backpack, stirring with a pencil that had somehow appeared from behind his ear.

The atmosphere was surprisingly cordial. Neither man had mentioned the earlier incident because they both knew there was a job to be done. Pace, already concerned for Hammond's foray into Chinese territory and for Sarah's continued recovery back in London, knew he needed to focus properly. They were in a wilderness area, far from the nearest settlement, with no record that humans had even set foot in this particular zone for one hundred years.

'So,' he started conversationally. 'Why was this village abandoned? Disease? Famine?'

Hill smiled. 'Too many villagers kept disappearing,' he said. 'Especially when they moved the yak herds up through the narrow mountain passes to graze. In one year, they lost twelve of their men and five young boys. For a small village, it was too much to take. They did not have the people left to physically continue. Not enough men for the women to marry, or re-marry. That meant no children, no workers, no food.'

'What killed their people?' Pace knew the response he would get.

'The Yeti, according to the reports at the time. The final straw was a direct attack on the village, by several of the creatures, which claimed the lives of several of the women and two elders. That had never been heard of before so the elders, who survived, brought the remaining villagers down a few thousand feet and moved across to a more populated forest valley about forty miles from here. They abandoned their animals, fearing for their lives. They just fled.'

'That was a long time ago.'

'It was, and it was the very same village; Bruk, where two British ex-soldiers were attacked and killed by a Yeti a few years earlier. The press had already decided that this particular part of the mountains was awash with mythical creatures, feasting on human prey, so the final abandonment of Bruk came as no surprise to anyone.'

'Tell me more about it, please.' Pace was genuinely interested to find out what had caught the archaeologist's interest in this particular story.

Hill took a swallow of his drink and settled down into a lecturing style of speech; laconic and relaxed.

'These two guys were both on their last chance,' he started. 'They'd worked hard in the army, in the time when it still held sway in India, but never made anything of themselves. They dabbled in adventuring and treasure hunting but, like so many of their peers, ended up flat broke after they left the military.' Pace listened intently, sipping at his own mug of sugarless coffee. 'They had tried their luck in Nepal before but failed. Purchase records dug up by the newspapers at the time suggested they had used every last penny and were hoping to trap a Yeti.'

'Even back then, all those years ago, this myth was luring people to their deaths?'

'Of course. Though no serious scientist has ever believed they exist, at the time several of the more prestigious natural history museums were running competitions for the first person to bring in a specimen, dead or alive. It was all a showpiece, mainly paid for by the newspaper owners of the time, but serious money was on offer.' He dug into the dusty archives of his memory, chewing on his lower lip absently as he did so. 'I think there was a reward of three thousand pounds being offered around the time the unfortunate explorers were killed, by the Natural History Museum in London. It would have made them both very wealthy, let alone given them the fame they probably craved.'

'Do you know any more about them?' Pace pressed him further, hearing the wind begin to pick up mournfully outside. They were stuck in there for the night and neither man was sleepy yet. A good tale would help pass the time, as well as give him a better idea of what they were hoping to find, in Bruk, if they even found it.

'I do my research, Mr Pace.'

'James, please. Call me James. Do you think they were really killed by a mythical beast?'

'First things first,' said Hill. 'The men were good soldiers, and very close friends. Arthur Braithwaite and Jonathon Ferrier. They did not have the money for guides, dogs or sledges. It was just the pair of them and whatever they could carry on their backs. Don't forget,' he added, draining his coffee and placing the empty mug down on the worn, rubberised flooring of the cabin, 'in those days, British soldiers were used to walking miles at a time, carrying huge loads of personal kit. They would have been fit and well able to cope with the terrain. Expert shots and hunters too, when they needed to be, I have no doubt.'

Pace wondered about these men, calling him from behind a misty veil of time, shrouding their faces and their stories. Had they just been another pair of wandering treasure hunters who ran into a sticky situation they could not find a way out of.'

'You said they did not have much money?' Hill nodded. 'Did they owe anybody? Was there any reason that it might be better
not
to come back, unless they had a Yeti?'

Hill saw his angle and shook his head solemnly. 'If they were going to get in debt, they would have been far better equipped than they were. I think this was their last shot at doing it themselves. If they'd have lived, perhaps they might have ended up borrowing money for another try but they didn't make it. I don't think they just decided to skip out, fake the incident, and head off into the sunset. Their egos, for one thing, wouldn't have allowed it.'

Dead end, damn, thought Pace. Still, it all helped build a picture of the past. He poured them each a fresh coffee, before pulling another old friend from a long case, tied to the side of his own backpack. The highly polished rifle that he pulled out, cradling it across his knees, was almost as old as Hill's story, though not quite.

Especially with his Sten now lost at sea, Pace glanced lovingly down at the Mauser 98; picked up on his last adventure to the Antarctic before pulling out a cloth and beginning to buff it carefully.

'What are our chances of finding the village?'

'Oh, excellent. We'll find it, I have no doubt. The maps, even in those days, were fairly good. Locals made detailed drawings of the valleys, crevasses and mountain trails and there was quite a bit of trade between the towns and the upper villages in those days.' His certainty surprised Pace and Hill chuckled as his expression. 'It's not like we're digging in the dirt for a Roman temple,' he explained. 'I had hoped to pick it up on a satellite map, or even Google Earth, but the forest is still thick at the height we're heading up to. The trees would have reclaimed much of the village since it was abandoned. Finding it from the air will be nigh on impossible but, if we follow the old trail, we should walk straight into it.'

'That easy? Really?'

'Well, I suppose that depends on whether hordes of blood-thirsty
Bun Manchi
are waiting there to gobble us up.' He laughed again, this time deeper and more genuine. 'That's what the locals sometimes call the Yeti,' Hill added quickly.

'You let me worry about them, Professor Hill,' Pace promised. 'You get us there and find whatever it is you need to find. I will make sure we both get home in one piece, and the faster the better.'

'Mr McEntire is funding me for a fortnight,' Hill protested, a little too quickly, slopping hot coffee over his hand and cursing his luck. 'I won't be rushed, James.'

'Nobody's going to rush you but we only have five days before I need to pick up the others, you know that. I would prefer it if we have everything we need by then so we don't end up having to hike up to Bruk, and back, twice.

'Fair enough,' conceded Hill. 'We have quite a trek ahead of us. Even back then, the trail was used infrequently. The fear of the Yeti has kept people away for so long, I have no idea what remains of it, or how stable it will be.'

'Especially as we get higher,' offered Pace. 'More snow and ice will make the going harder.' He had been on enough military manoeuvres during his time in the RAF, and even a couple of deployments to the Arctic, to know what he was talking about. 'Soup?'

Using the little cooker, Pace heated up a pan of Heinz tomato soup, which they also drank from mugs. The familiar taste, and blast of delicious heat, was enough to quell the rest of the conversation.

For the last half an hour, Pace stripped the Mauser down, cleaned and oiled it, before reloading it with one of its five-bullet stripper clips of 7.92 x 57mm cartridges. This particular rifle was accurate, rugged and fitted with iron sights, packing a lethal punch even by modern standards.

It was a very old, trench model. It had been designed with a long barrel to take a bayonet, ready to charge at the enemy. At forty-nine inches, it had proved itself too unwieldy at close quarters so the Second World War variant had been greatly shortened.

Satisfied, Pace completed the cleaning ritual by pulling his recently acquired bayonet from another part of his pack and slipping it onto the end. As a stabbing weapon, or rifle, it would offer them formidable protection as they moved through dense forests known to have healthy populations of tigers, snow leopards and bears; though he hoped the bears might have already started their hibernation cycle at the onset of the winter snows.

The wind outside had risen steadily but the tight cover acted as a perfect shield and they felt hardly any movement. With the stove left on a minimal heat, to warm the cabin overnight, the two men eventually settled down to sleep.

'I'll take the first watch,' said Pace. 'I'll wake you in four hours, okay?'

'What are we going to watch?' Hill asked reasonably. 'All we can see is the inside of a dark helicopter. Is it really necessary?'

Pace knew Hill was probably right. Nothing was likely to spot them, especially under a white cover, in the middle of a snowy clearing but, as always, his instincts were to be safe rather than dead.

'Just in case one of your,' he paused to remember the words, '
Bun Manchi
comes around, looking for a midnight snack.' Both men broke into a smile.

'Okay, I take your point. There could be local wildlife that will come and check us out. I don't think they will come anywhere close enough to bite but I'm happy to take a watch.' He rolled over onto his side and fell asleep faster than anyone Pace could ever remember.

'Let's hope he wakes up just as fast,' Pace grumbled to himself, snuggling down inside his own white snowsuit, still resting the Mauser across his legs. The only parts of him that felt at all cold were his fingers. He knew that he would not be able to get a finger around the rifle's trigger if he wore them, so he left them off. The background heat from the stove kept the cabin air just above freezing, helped by their breath. He pulled up his hood but did not tie the draw strings too tightly – he needed to be able to hear clearly.

Four hours later, when he nudged Hill awake, he was pleased to report that nothing had come near. Hill completed his own watch without incident too, distaining the rifle or the offer of Pace's Webley revolver; which had survived the ocean dunking because it had been strapped inside its holster all the way. Hill did not hate guns but he'd never used one and wisely had no intention of accidentally shooting his companion, and their only pilot, in the dark.

The morning broke cold and clear, with a persistent wind that kicked at their heels as they left the Lynx, after a breakfast of coffee and a Mars bar each. With the sky still milky and the sun remaining largely below the crests of the surrounding peaks, the valley into which they headed sat silently; watching them trudge through the snow with the disinterest of all rock towards living things.

According to the GPS, programmed with the best information Hill possessed about Bruk's last know location, they had a full day's hiking ahead of them. Far too wooded to try flying up there and, having already considered the difficult terrain they'd be crossing, Pace had already decided against using Sledgeways, like Hammond and Rachel, preferring to rely on old-fashioned brute strength.