Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1) (15 page)

They set out to intercept Lens. Sam had to force back the bubble of questions and concentrate on picking her steps amongst the rocks. A twisted ankle now would be a disaster. It didn’t take long to travel the few hundred yards to get above Lens. “See anything?” she asked, as she pulled up beside Pete.

He pointed to where a couple of the ambush party were still visible, silhouetted against the skyline.
“Just those two, Vegas isn’t up there.” He turned to look down at where Lens was struggling towards them. “We might as well go to him, it’ll put some more distance between us and those guys.”

Maybe Vegas
is waiting for Lens behind one of those remaining rocks,
she thought, as they set off again and the distance closed. It wasn’t a very convincing argument though, and a terrible fear of the alternative was blossoming.

“
Lens!” called Pete.

The filmmaker had his head down, apparently locked into his own ordeal, but he stopped dead in his tracks at Pete’s call and looked up.
“Holy crap, how did you get there?” he gasped, as Pete and Sam scrambled towards him.

“
Never mind us, where’s Vegas?” asked Pete.

They knew immediately
, the worst confirmed as his face collapsed. Pete and Sam jumped the final yards down to where he had buckled onto the snow, dumped their packs and knelt in front of him.

“
What happened?” said Pete, gently.

“
Powder Burn,” Lens managed to reply.

“
How?” asked Pete.

Lens looked up at him, both hands balled in front of his mouth.
“He went off the cliff, lost it on a turn. You should have been there, Pete, he was so slow getting to the top. I tried to tell him not to do the run on the radio, that it was too late in the day.” A deep shaky breath. “But I don’t think he could hear me, the batteries were shot. And it took him so long to get up there, something had to be wrong. If you’d been there you could have stopped him ...” Lens doubled up to his knees, hugging himself, rocking backwards and forwards as the suppressed grief and tension poured out.

Sam didn’t really grasp the full implication of the words
– the accusation – just that Vegas was dead. She leaned forward and put her arms around Lens. The rocking slowed and he sank into her, shoulders shaking. She felt a hand on her arm and looked up, as Pete knelt beside her. Jortse was a few feet away, staring up the slope, arms folded, hat brim tipped down.

“
Tell us what happened, from the beginning,” said Pete.

Lens nodded, pulled away from her and snuffled himself into some kind of composure. The others listened in silence until he described the agonizing wait for Vegas to call and say he was at the top.

“Didn’t you have a schedule for him to check in with his progress on the ascent?” asked Pete.

“
We didn’t think of it, he was just going to call when he got up there. That’s why you should have been with us. I knew you’d have thought of that. If you’d been there none of this would have happened –” said Lens.

“
That’s out of order,” interrupted Sam. “We’re all upset, Lens, and I understand what you’ve been through, but you can’t throw around accusations like that. Pete doesn’t need you dumping your guilt on his shoulders. He was doing the right thing, trying to save Tashi –”

“
Where is Tashi?” It was Lens’s turn to interrupt.

Sam took a deep breath.
“He didn’t make it through the storm last night.”

“
Damn it, I told you he needed proper help, that you were wasting your time. If you hadn’t –”

“
It was not their fault that we didn’t save him. Perhaps if you had remained with us, both Tashi and your friend would now be alive,” said Jortse, without looking round. His tone didn’t invite a response, and there was a long, unhappy silence.

Finally, Pete said,
“I want to hear from Lens what happened next.”

Lens lurched back into his story, words slow and flat. He continued uninterrupted through a description of the radio conversation, what he had seen of Vegas
’s last run and the slide over the cliff. “I’ve got it on a card,” he added, “but I couldn’t watch it.”

“
So it didn’t avalanche or anything, sounds like the snow condition was OK. Maybe he just pushed it too hard,” said Pete. Sam could hear in his voice how much he wanted that to be true.

“
I don’t think he was quite right, he was so slow getting up there, chances are the altitude was affecting him,” responded Lens.

“
Could just have been a tougher climb, harder technically than we’d expected,” suggested Pete.

“
Didn’t look it,” mumbled Lens.

“
What did you do after that?” asked Sam.

“
Well, I stayed there for a while. I just couldn’t think ... And then this helicopter turned up.”

“
The Demagistanis saw you?” demanded Jortse.

Lens nodded.
“Someone must have seen him fall, and they came to check it out.”

“
A patrol searching for me ...” said Jortse.

“
But I gave them the slip,” Lens continued. “I got through the notch and all the way down the other side in the dark. Then the storm blew in and I holed up in a shelter most of yesterday, started around sunset and walked through to this morning. The storm will cover my trail.”

“
So you’ve done the whole route from the bottom of the notch-hill in one go? In that weather?” said Pete. “That’s a bloody good effort.”

“
It wasn’t too bad in the valley. Getting across the ice cliff the night before was the worst of it. I started in the wrong place, on a section that was too wide for the rope length. I had to untie for the last few yards. It was so freakin’ scary.”

“
So how did you retrieve the rope?” asked Pete, after a moment’s hesitation.

Lens was silent.

“You didn’t,” said Pete.

“
So you left a marker for the Demagistanis?” said Jortse, the soulless eyes locking on to Lens. 

“
I had no choice,” retorted Lens, quickly.

“
And now they are here,” said Jortse, waving imperiously upwards.

“
What?” said Lens. “They can’t catch us now, we’re as good as across.”

“
It’s not quite that simple,” said Pete. “There was a welcoming party. They ambushed us when we got to the top.”

“
And you’re the reason why they’re there,” Jortse accused Lens. “The reason why they have men stationed on the border to stop us getting across.”

Lens stared at him.
“So ... I did hear shots?”

Pete nodded.
“Jortse stepped up and took on five blokes, scary dudes, all wearing these big cloaks. Two of them were armed with rifles,” he said. “Old ones, bolt-action, but still, they couldn’t hit him from six yards away.”

“
It was like he was swatting the bullets away with the sword,” said Sam. Her tone was flat, as she watched Jortse. He didn’t take his eyes off the skyline, and remained expressionless.

“
You fought armed men with a sword?” said Lens, incredulously.

“
He did, just like a samurai,” said Pete. They were all looking at Jortse.

“
What are they waiting for up there?” Sam asked him when he didn’t say anything.

“
Treating the wounded man, perhaps trying to decide if someone will stay with him,” he replied.

“
You hurt one of them?” said Sam.

“
Not badly, just enough to slow them down, make them think a little. Don’t worry, they will come. In fact” – he finally turned – “here they come now.” Four figures were heading down the hill towards them.

“
Let’s go,” said Pete, getting to his feet.

“
I don’t think I can run,” said Lens. “I’m done in. Maybe they’ll just send me home. They’ll take the camera, but I can’t use the film I’ve got anyway ...” He slumped into a defeated heap, voice still burred with a potent mix of emotion and exhaustion.

“
No you’re not, and no they won’t,” said Pete, grabbing his backpack. “Firstly, we’re all going home together – no more splitting up. Secondly, the reason they want Jortse so badly is because he’s leading a rebellion. It was supposed to be peaceful, but he killed one of the Demagistanis. And now they think we’re CIA and we’re working with him – although how the hell they got that idea we don’t know.” He glanced at Jortse as he finished.

“
I thought ...” whispered Lens, “I thought I was home and safe.”

“
We all did,” said Pete. “And we will be – we just have to stick together.” He held out a hand to pull Lens to his feet. The cameraman accepted it, softly moaning as joints clicked and unlocked.

“
We reckon if we go east there’ll be another spot somewhere that we can sneak back up and across the border, perhaps after dark,” Pete told Lens.

Lens nodded, sullenly.
“From what I remember, if you go far enough that way down this valley there’s a forest, the only land at or below fifteen thousand feet in Shibde. When you get there, this valley meets another, a river valley running north to south. The river has cut a really steep gorge through the mountain-ridge and across the border.”

“
Tashi knew this part of the country, I’ve not been here before,” said Jortse, “but if we can get them to follow us down onto the valley floor, then we can out-climb them back to the top and escape across.”

Pete nodded.
“That’s a good enough plan to be going on with, let’s go.” He turned, already at Lens’s elbow to start him moving.

It was an hour later when Sam pulled up at the top of a long
, gentle slope. She had been leading the group to this point since spotting it half an hour before. They’d had to pick their way slowly through difficult rocky terrain to get to it. Looking back, she could see that their pursuers had visibly closed the gap – but now was their opportunity to open the distance right back up. She dumped her pack onto a flat rock at the edge of the snow and turned to Pete.

“
Nice work, Sam, this is going to make a huge difference,” said Pete, peeling his board off his backpack again. “I’ll go first with Jortse, you come with Lens. I’m going to try and get as far as that little stream.”

Sam nodded
. Lens wasn’t far behind; it seemed that fear had improved his fitness. It was an easy ride down to the stream, even with two of them on the board. They ran out of slope just short of Pete and Jortse, and trudged the rest of the way through soft snow to join them. The ride had easily doubled their advantage over the pursuit. Would it be enough? Those men were almost certainly fresher.

“
When they get to the valley floor, to our height, we’ll start looking for a place to climb back up to the border,” said Pete, as he packed his board up.

“
Holy crap!” said Lens, pointing. They all turned – five men, not much more than dots, but all apparently wearing the same dark, calf-length cloaks, coming down from the border, shutting off their escape route to the east.

“
We’re trapped,” said Sam. There was a moment’s silence.

“
We have to go up the other side,” said Pete.

“
Is that all of them? See any more anywhere?” asked Sam.

They all scanned the valley.
“There’s no one else that’s out in the open, anyway,” said Pete.

“
They must have been stationed at intervals along the border,” said Jortse.

“
I can see one pretty decent route up this other side of the valley,” said Pete. He glanced at his watch. “Unless those guys are superhuman, they won’t catch us before dark ...”

“
Speak for yourself,” muttered Lens.

Pete looked over at him.
“How you feeling?”

“
Like death.”

“
Let’s split the loads up a bit better,” Pete replied. “Jortse, why don’t you take Lens’s gear, give him your bag and bedroll, they’re a lot lighter.”

Jortse started, as if to object.

“You can fasten the sword on the back of the pack with his snowboard,” Pete added.

Jortse still hesitated, but then nodded and started peeling the bags off his shoulders.

“Lens, grab his kit and get going with Sam up that hill, keep to the left of the stream to start with. We’ll sort out this stuff and be right after you.”

“
I can only see the nine of them that we already know about. They’re pretty lightly equipped, so they’re not expecting a long chase,” said Pete. He sat on a rock, looking back down the climb that they had just completed. Sam, Lens and Jortse all lay against their bags and packs a few feet away. She was almost too exhausted to care anymore. Pete continued to examine the lower slopes with the binoculars. “And I reckon we’re about forty-five minutes in front of them,” he added. He glanced at the sun, which was swooping towards the horizon, plunging the temperature towards zero as it did so. “They might just make it to the top before it gets dark, but the wind has packed this snow so hard that, with a bit of care, we can avoid leaving tracks. We’ve got a good chance of losing them here.”

Sam forced herself to make the effort, to offer some support. She struggled to sit up and look to the west. The path eased steadily downhill through a landscape of rocky outcrops and bare patches where the wind had scoured away the snow.
“That way’s downhill,” she said before turning to check the alternative. To the east the land rose in three big steps, each with a flat section that was effectively hidden from the one beneath it. It would provide great cover, but ... “And that way’s uphill.”

“
Yeah – but we know that the downhill route ends at the cliff above that trashed monastery,” said Pete. “I had a pretty good look while we were there, and there’s no way we could all climb down. It’s a dead end.”

More uphill
,
she thought, feeling the burn in her thighs.

“
And we certainly don’t want to go north,” he continued, “further into Shibde – but the risk is that we have no idea what lies to the east. The satellite photos we brought with us don’t show more than a couple of miles beyond the point where we originally crossed the border. It could be a dead end too ...”

“
But we don’t have to go far, do we? Just far enough to lose these guys, dart down, cross the valley and get up the other side to the border at the first opportunity,” she said.

Pete smiled.
“It sounds so simple when you say it like that.”

“
I’m trying to be a glass-half-full kind of girl,” she replied.

Pete slid off the rock and put his arm around her.
“You’re all right, you know,” he said.

She
leaned into him, felt his arms close around her and the warmth from his body. They hung on to each other.

“
Get a room, you two,” muttered Lens.

“
Good to see you’re still with us,” replied Pete, “because we’re moving out.” He stood, Sam rising with him.

“
What’s the plan?” asked Lens.

“
Go east,” Pete told him. “We should just about get to the top of that second step, we can find some cover there and watch them. Hopefully they’ll go west or north, or at least split up so the fight’s a bit more even, then we go a bit further until we find a good spot to nip down, cross the valley and get up the other side to the border.”

Sam carefully gathered snow in the aluminum pan, ready to melt it for water to rehydrate a meal. This could be the only chance they got to eat for a while, and they’d need hot food to keep them going as the temperature dropped after dark. Then she sat side by side with Pete, facing opposite directions as she watched the stove while he scanned below them with the binoculars. They had made it to the top of the second step, and now waited to see what the pursuit would do.

“
It’ll never boil if you keep lifting the lid to look at it,” said Pete, as she checked the water for the second time in less than a minute.

“
Thanks, Einstein,” she replied. She took the opportunity to re-lace her boots, pulling her socks smooth where they had sagged under her heels. It was hard; as soon as she took her gloves off her fingers started to get cold, numb and awkward – but the last thing she needed was blisters. One thing was for sure, another full day of walking hadn’t improved her condition. She could almost smell the tiredness wafting up from her clothes, and there wasn’t a decent night’s sleep anywhere in the future she could see.

“
At least there’s going to be a good moon and not much cloud,” he said. “It’s going to help us move quietly without torches.”

“
What I don’t understand is why they haven’t called in help,” she replied. “Where are the helicopters and the reinforcements?”

Pete lowered the binoculars and looked at her.
“What are you trying to say?”

“
Demagistan isn’t the USA, and those aren’t Marines – but they must have radios and we know they’ve got a chopper. So why haven’t they called in the cavalry to cut us off at the pass?”

“
Maybe they have and we just don’t know it yet,” said Pete.

“
Ever the optimist ...”

“
Or maybe they don’t want all those people and their hardware so close to the border? I mean, those guys looked like they’re from Shibde, but no one is going to think anyone but Demagistan owns a helicopter.”

“
Maybe. Or maybe those guys actually are from Shibde.” Sam glanced over her shoulder as she finished speaking. Lens was lying on his side a few yards away, using Jortse’s bedroll for a pillow. Jortse sat beside him, knees tucked up to his chest, arms folded around them. The pale, dead eyes were watchful – but he didn’t appear to have heard her. She turned back to Pete and said softly, “What if we’ve stumbled into the middle of some internal fight? What if Jortse has got involved with the CIA to try and get the Demagistanis out of Shibde, and some of his countrymen don’t like it? They hate foreign interference, right?”

Pete considered her for a long moment before he spoke.
“Why would Jortse lie to us?”

“
He knows I’m a journalist, he’s hardly likely to fess us to working with the CIA. And he needs us, we have the snowboards, we have a map –”

“
Had a map,” said Pete.

“
OK, had a map, but you can’t deny that the four of us are stronger than he would be on his own.”

“
No, you’re right – so do you want to ask him about it?”

“
Not while he’s got that sword.” She hesitated. “There’s something else. Just before Tashi died he told me about a sword –
the sword, stop him, stay in Shibde
– those were his words, more or less. It didn’t make any sense at the time, and I thought he was raving. But now I’m starting to think it might be Jortse that he wanted to stop. It’s possible that Tashi had changed his mind about whatever it was that Jortse was planning.”

Pete was silent for several moments.
“Well, the only way I can see to find out what the hell is really going on is to let them catch up with us, and I’m not sure that’s too good an idea.”

“
Huh, I guess that’s true,” replied Sam. The water started to boil, rattling the pan lid.

“
I think we’ve finally got company,” said Pete. Flaming torches were flickering in the gloom. “Better get that burner off,” he added, “and we should get ready to move fast.”

“
Copy,” she murmured, reaching for the freeze-dried food that she had pulled out of her pack. “We’ll have to share these, there’s only enough water for two packs.” She worked quickly, leaving one bowl with Pete to finish mixing, taking the other to Lens. She shook him by the shoulder. “Shhh ...” she whispered as he stirred. “They’ve reached the top. They haven’t moved since they got there, trying to figure out what to do probably. But we need to eat and get ready to go now, it’s almost dark.”

Lens sat up without saying a word, and took the meal.

“How are you feeling?” she added.

Lens just shook his head, a barely discernible movement in the growing darkness. She sat down beside him, watched him eat a couple of mouthfuls before he said in a thin, hoarse voice,
“I think I’m done ... it’s just hit me ... I’ve lost it ...”

“
The food will help, you’re running on empty.”

Lens didn’t respond.

“We’re just going to move along the top of this ridgeline of hills a little,” she told him, “and get a healthy distance away while it’s dark, so we can start looking to see if there’s somewhere easy to head back down.”

“
I don’t think I can move.”

“
I’m not sure that’s an available choice,” she said, glancing at Jortse. “We can’t get split up again, we’re not going to leave you.”

Lens was silent.

Sam said nothing and let him eat for a while, tugging the zip on her jacket pocket silently up and down. She felt Pete tap her arm with the bowl, and accepted the half meal he passed her.

“
Leave some for Jortse,” she said to Lens, as he was also about halfway through. He stopped eating and handed the bowl to Jortse, who took it without a word, then moved off and joined Pete at his lookout post.

“
Tell me about your wife,” said Sam, as she spooned in another mouthful of her meal.

“
Hmm?” Lens looked up at Sam. “My wife?” He shook his head. “Josey.”

“
What’s she like?”

“
Wonderful ...” He trailed off. “We met at film school, she came in to act in a buddy’s production. She’s got jet-black hair like yours, straighter though, not so wavy.”

“
She know all about this?”

“
Yeah ... well, maybe not the Shibde bit.”

Sam let the words settle, and in the end it was Lens that spoke again.

“It’s not been that good for a while, money’s been pretty tight after she gave up work when Natasha was born. What with the films not doing so well and then me being away a lot – we traveled together before Natasha came along, now it’s hard.”

“
Natasha, that’s a lovely name.” Sam scraped out the final morsel, and put the bowl down in front of her.

“
She’s a great kid, sharp as a tack, you know?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
It’s hopeless though,” said Lens.

“
What?”

Lens waved his right arm around him.
“All this.”

“
It’s not hopeless, it’s going to be fine, we’ll just slip away from them in the dark,” she said, as reassuringly as she could.

“
No ... it’s not. I mean, even if we get away, what am I going to do? I’ve lost everything, the film’s useless – I can’t sell a shot of Vegas dying. And Josey won’t put up with any more. When she goes, she’ll take Tasha with her.”

There was a frightening resignation in his voice. She had to be very careful about what she said next.
“Maybe it’s not so bad, wouldn’t it be good to do a memorial tape for Vegas? You have some great footage from the trek, when he was cheerful, at his best. You could cut it with archive stuff of his world-title performances, maybe other interviews from before. And, I don’t know, maybe even finish with part of the Powder Burn run. See what the pictures look like, but you could cut it somewhere when he’s going well. He’s still the only person to ride it. You’d need to ask, but I’m sure that’s how his family would like to remember him.” She could feel Lens examining her as she finished.

“
Not his family. I went down to meet him in LA one time, and he was hanging there with all his bros ... A whole crowd of them that just grew up together, looking out for each other, parents were AWOL, most of them in more trouble than the kids. I don’t think he’s seen his father or mother in ten years.”

“
For his buds then, maybe you could put some of the profit to a charity, help some of those LA kids where he came from, just keep enough to get you back on your feet.”

Lens was silent, then he finally said in a soft voice
, “It’s a good idea, Sam. Thank you.”

“
Anytime,” she said.

They sat quietly, as the night gathered around them. After a while, Sam said,
“We should get going. It’s dark enough now. You ready?”

Lens nodded, and Sam looked over her shoulder. Pete was creeping up to them, his pack on his back, Jortse behind him.
“They haven’t moved down there,” he said. “So we’re going to get going as quietly as we can – stick close to the person in front and feel out every step. We’ve got a real good chance to slip away here. I’ll lead, then Lens, Jortse and Sam on the tail. Let’s go.” And with that, he turned and started towards the slope.

Sam packed her gear and t
hey were soon climbing again. The slope was only about a fifty-yard climb, but it was steep, the snow hadn’t settled and the rocky surface was broken and unstable. She heard the loose stone let go ahead of her, and bent down to try to save it – only to feel it scrape past her fingers. Its next contact was with another rock about a yard further down the trail, which was also loose. It started to roll, took another couple with it, and very quickly a minor slide was rumbling downhill. It didn’t have far to go, but it was far enough to make plenty of noise. And the response from their pursuers was immediate. Excited cries reached them through the still air.