There was no doubt that this was the doing of the meddlesome Bunji Lama. The minister of state security prayed to whatever gods still smiled upon China in these unsuperstitious days that the Tashi, chanting mantras in his seat and spinning his golden prayer wheel, would be recognized as a greater power than the white-eyes lama from the other side of the world. If not, the minister of state security was prepared to take measures not sanctioned by Beijing.
He would not lose Tibet. To lose Tibet would be to lose face . . . if not his head.
The turboprop dropped with sickening suddenness, and the minister forgot all about the Bunji Lama, Tibet and possible loss of face or head.
As he held the paper sack to his pale lips, all he cared about was holding in his breakfast.
WHEN THEY CAME within sight of the town of Gonggar, Remo Williams told his Khampas, "I want this place left the way we found it."
Bumba Fun shrank behind the driver's seat of the truck as if deflated. "No burning?"
"No nothing. We're making good time."
"But why, O Gonpo?"
"You burn the town, and you'll wreck the airport. I'm going to need the airport to get the Bunji the hell out of Tibet."
"That is a strange reason," Bumba Fun muttered.
"It'll be good practice for when we reach Lhasa."
"But we would not burn Lhasa. It is sacred to Tibet. We would burn only Chinese and their profane buildings."
"We've had enough burning. When we hit Lhasa, I want it done quietly."
"We will hit Lhasa as quietly as Khampas are able," promised Bumba Fun.
"Do better," said Remo. "After I haul the Bunji Lama's butt out of town, it's your show."
Perking up, Bumba Fun bore down on the accelerator like a Khampa possessed.
THE PLA HELICOPTER settled onto the mountain summit, kicking up a cloud of stinging flakes. The skids sank a foot into pristine snow cover.
"We are safe here," grunted Kula as he shut down the rotors.
The Master of Sinanju stepped out onto the frozen snowcap. The air was thin and very bitter to inhale. But it smelled of freedom, and so it was good.
He surveyed the valley below.
Lhasa's fantastical roofs shone in the harsh light of day. But other than the tiny figures in green, no people were about in the streets. Martial law had clamped down upon the ancient city cupped in the eternal mountains. And because the people of Lhasa accepted whatever befell them as preordained from the beginning of time, and the Chinese were many and possessed deadly weapons in plenty, there was no resistance. Mostly it was the latter.
Someone would have to rouse the people to the Bunji's presence in their midst. Only then would they come out of their homes and their hovels and retake the streets.
Only a Master of Sinanju was fit for such a dangerous task, thought Chiun. So be it. When darkness came and the Chinese slept exhausted in their barracks, he would venture down into the city to awaken the people of Tibet from their long nightmare of sleep.
Until then the Master of Sinanju could only wait and hope that no People's Liberation Army helicopter ventured over this particular peak.
AN F-70-CT HELICOPTER stood waiting at the end of the Gonggar Airport runway when the turboprop whined to a safe stop.
The minister of state security spit the last bitter taste of bile and his morning rice into the paper sack and rushed to the exit door. He waved toward the helicopter pilot, then made a circling motion over his head. The pilot engaged the main rotor. The droopy blades began to revolve to the accompaniment of a rising whine.
As he went back to prepare the Tashi for the short hop to Lhasa, the minister of state security thought to himself that the worst was over. He had made Gonggar without injury. And the helicopter was a variation of the Sikorsky Blackhawk specially equipped for high-altitude flying. The pilot would be the best the PLA had to offer.
It was just a matter of introducing the presence of the Tashi into the volatile situation in Lhasa now.
He stood at the foot of the stairs as the Tashi was helped down by his personal servants. The Tashi looked serene. His movements were graceful, delicate, almost sweet. He spun the gold prayer wheel in his left hand with a studied intent.
"The hour of your ascendancy draws near," the minister of state security told his charge when the Tashi's sandals at last stood on Tibetan soil for the first time.
Closing his small eyes, the Tashi merely nodded.
"In honor of this momentous event, I am pleased to present to you a gift worthy of your station," the security minister said, snapping his fingers once.
Out of the aircraft, a cadre came, bearing a prayer wheel almost as tall as himself.
The Tashi's attendants gasped at the sight of it. Turning, the Tashi himself went wide of eye.
It stood over four feet tall, the mahogany shaft as thick around as a shepherd's staff. Surmounting it was a prayer wheel the size and shape of a snare drum. It was made of rare woods, inlaid with silver, gold, jade and semiprecious stones.
The Tashi took it. Planting the staff onto the tarmac, he shook it until the wheel hummed, its red and blue and green stones making streaks of varicolored light.
"It is an auspicious augury," the Tashi said, smiling.
Together they glided toward the waiting helicopter. The Tashi allowed one of his attendants to bear the prayer wheel that had been looted from the Potala in the early weeks of the annexation of Tibet, more than a generation ago. It was too heavy for his small-boned form to carry.
When they were over Gonggar, the minister of state security noticed a line of military trucks and vehicles speeding toward the airport town. PLA reinforcements, obviously.
He took comfort in the fact that by the time they reached Lhasa, the stubborn difficulty of the Bunji Lama would be resolved.
TWO T-72 HEAVY BATTLE tanks stood guard on the street called Yanhe Donglu at the south approach to Lhasa proper. They sat stern to stern, 125mm Smoothbore cannon pointed menacingly in the direction of Gonggar.
There was enough space between them for a yak to pass-if the yak wasn't pregnant.
"Slow down," Remo told Bumba Fun when they came to the tanks.
"Do you not mean stop?"
"Slow down first. Then stop."
The truck drew to a halt not ten yards from the yawning Smoothbore muzzles.
"What do we do, Gonpo Jigme?" Bumba Fun asked uncertainly. "Those tanks block our path."
"Give me a minute," said Remo, stepping out.
"To do what?"
"Break the tanks," said Remo.
PLA TANK COMMANDER Yun Ting narrowed his eyes at the lone Khampa who stepped out of the lead truck of the unauthorized convoy. He watched the man approach, apparently unarmed. The way the Khampa walked was too casual to suggest a threat. Still, Yun Ting, seated up in the turret hatch, tripped the lever that controlled the turret's revolutions. The turret jerked left, the better to fix the Khampa with the terrifying maw of its cannon. It was a very intimidating action, designed to promote compliance.
The trouble was the Khampa with the silver-fox turban looked not at all intimidated. Not even when Yun's counterpart in the other tank adjusted his Smoothbore so that the Khampa was fixed in an annihilating cross fire.
The Khampa walked right up to the point where the cannon barrels were within easy reach. Ignoring Yun's shouted demand that he identify himself, the Khampa reached up with casual hands and cupped the lower rims of both barrels in his palms, like some brainless peasant ready to milk the teats of a giant goat.
He used his fingers to feel the hard steel, and Yun noticed they were too white to belong to a true Khampa.
The sound came like a thunderclap. For the rest of his days, Yun thought the sound came first. But he also clearly remembered, in the military prison where they threw him for dereliction of duty, seeing the hands withdraw and snap back in unison. The edges of the twin palms struck the hard rim of the Smoothbore together. And at once the long barrels cracked and split for th
e entire length.
The thunderous crack that jerked Yun Ting up in his hard seat came then. Not before. His shocked nerves only remembered it the other way.
The twin Smoothbores each fell to the hard asphalt in two sections, perfectly halved.
It was impossible. Unbelievable. And most of all, the insolent Khampa who had destroyed the peoples' property simply stood there in the middle of the road blowing on his fingers and polishing his white knuckles on the breast of his native costume.
His eyes, staring at Yun Ting, were insolent and mocking. They as much as said "I dare you to shoot me now."
It was a dare PLA Tank Commander Yun Ting elected not to take. He called for retreat. There was a machine gun mounted on his turret, it was true, but in his quailing heart, Yun knew it would be of no value against a being who could split the finest steel forged in China with what looked like a casual kung fu chop of each hand.
The T -72s belched noise and smelly exhaust as they jockeyed around, pointed their noseless turrets north and retreated into the city.
To the shamed ears of Yun Ting came the exultant shouts of the Khampas who now had a clear path into the city.
"Gonpo!" they cried. "Gonpo Jigme! Lha gyalo! De tamche pham!"
He did not know who or what Gonpo Jigme was. The rest was perfectly understandable Tibetan. "The Gods are victorious," the Khampas were saying. "The demons are defeated."
Yun Ting did not like being referred to as a demon, but he could not argue with the rest of it. Not when he was in full retreat before a single unarmed being who, for all he knew, was one of the long-banished gods of ancient Tibet returned.
Chapter 37
The last mountain peak shot away from under the PLA helicopter's skids, and the Lhasa Valley opened up like a great jewel box. Its grandeur, its roofs and the winding River Lhasa, dominated by the gargantuan Potala Palace, was almost enough to take the minister of state security's breath away had he not been busy with radio contact with the main PLA garrison in the city below.
The situation was strange. The Bunji Lama remained at large, although the city was being scoured to locate this personage. All Tibetans had been ordered to remain indoors. But the Bunji could not be found.
"There may be no need to find the Bunji," the minister of state security informed the ground. "For once the people of Lhasa know that the Tashi is in their midst, the influence of the Bunji clique will have been crushed."
As they were clearing him to land at the Dragon King Pool behind the Potala, the minister spotted the PLA helicopter resting atop a peak on the other side of the valley. He took a pair of field glasses from a door pocket and brought them to his eyes.
After a moment he spoke into his throat mike. "I have found the Bunji," he said without excitement.
There was no need for excitement. The Bunji and her clique of reactionaries were obviously stranded on the mountaintop. There would be no escape for them.
They had reached endgame.
THE MASTER of Sinanju watched Lhasa from his windy vantage point on the mountaintop, his hands tucked in the warm tunnel of his joined kimono sleeves, his parchment features troubled.
Below, the foolish dragonflies of the People's Liberation Army crisscrossed the city, flying low. They searched in vain, he knew.
Still, he considered, they were not the only ones afflicted with excessive vanity. He glanced toward the resting helicopter where the Bunji Lama sat fuming. It was good that he had taken her voice, for in the long hours that lay between this calm hour and darkness her shrill complaints and lamentations would surely have been unendurable. The Bunji grew impatient with every passing minute, and only the Master of Sinanju understood that to wrest control of Lhasa from the Han Chinese was a task possibly without a satisfactory end.
Abruptly a solitary helicopter breasted the mountains to the south. It dropped toward the city below. Just when it seemed that it would alight without causing difficulties, it rose again and climbed toward them.
Like male dragonflies scenting a female, the crisscrossing helicopters whirled up from their rooftop patrols and climbed after the solitary PLA ship.
Every helicopter bore on an unerring course toward their mountaintop position.
As he turned to warn the others, the Master of Sinanju understood that the odds of their taking the day had grown infinitely worse.
"BEHOLD THE CRIMINAL skyboats of the Chinese!" Bumba Fun shouted, pointing toward the northern horizon. "See how they flee the approach of Gonpo Jigme! They fear the dreadnought that has come down from Mt. Kailas to expel them from our holy land."
"I never heard of Mt. Kailas," said Remo, watching the helicopters strain toward the rarefied air of the mountains. Up ahead a security checkpoint was being abandoned as PLA cadres piled into jeeps and headed north.
"Lhasa is ours!" Bumba Fun exulted.
"Don't count your yaks until you have them by the horns," Remo warned, thinking that this was too easy. They were barreling up Dousen Galu, past the Working People's Cultural Palace, and no one had tried to stop them since he had maimed those two tanks.
Whatever was going on, he had a hunch that Chiun was somehow involved.
Along the way Bumba Fun and his Khampas called upon the citizens of Lhasa to turn out in support of their own liberation. Dull bronze faces appeared at windows like beaten gongs. But that was all. No one ventured out of doors. And when they began encountering pockets of PLA resistance, they were on their own.
"Buddhists," muttered Remo.
NO SOONER HAD the Master of Sinanju broken the dire news to the Bunji Lama and the others than the air was full of flying machines. They zipped back and forth in the thin air, rotors buzzing. There was no escape from them, except downward.
"We cannot remain here," Chiun said tightly.
"We will fight," said Kula. Lifting both AK-47s in his big hands, he peppered any helicopter that dared stray too close.
One, mortally wounded, spiraled down to blossom into a fiery flower far below. Another fired back, shattering the cockpit of their own helicopter. Kula directed his fire toward that ship. The twin streams of lead chewed off the tad rotor. It, too, fell from the sky, a wounded thing of complaining metal.
The Master of Sinanju allowed Kula his sport. When both clips ran empty, the big Mongol dropped his rifles in disgust and drew his silver dagger as if to reach out and snare a passing helicopter for gutting.
In the end they started down off the mountain, plowing through waist-high snow that concealed treacherous boulders.
Cadres in PLA green began rappeling down from their helicopters to places of ambush below the snow line. They crouched in waiting, weapons ready, hard eyes cruel.
Cadres below, helicopters above. And across the pastureland that separated Lhasa proper from the mountain on which they stood came column after column of tanks and jeeps and trucks.
Holding his black skirts before him like a plow, Chiun blazed a trail through the snow sufficient for the Bunji Lama, Kula and Lobsang Drom to follow safely. He grew grim of visage. It was possible to steal past the lurking cadres, possible also for one of his consummate skill to reach the relative safety of Lhasa and be spirited out of Tibet by guile and cunning. But to lead his charges to safety was another matter. Some would die. Perhaps all. All except for the Master of Sinanju himself, of course. He would refuse to die.
Surrender was the only reasonable option. Surrender, and then perhaps the advantage could be regained and the tables turned.
He turned to break the harsh truth to those who had put their trust in him.
Squirrelly Chicane couldn't believe her ears.
Surrender? she shouted. Except no words came out.
"I will never surrender to the Han," vowed Kula.
Attaboy! Squirrelly thought.
"I will surrender if it is ordained that I surrender," added Lobsang in a doleful voice.
You're a big help, Squirrelly thought.
"We must surrender if we are to leave this mountain
alive," Chiun insisted.
Never! Squirrelly screamed mentally. This was awful. The whole storyline is failing apart. I've got to get them back on track. They need inspiration. If only I could say something or sing a song. That's it! A song! I need an uplifting song. Their spirits will soar, and all this defeatist talk will end up on the cutting-room floor, where it belongs.
Squirrelly bustled up to the Master of Sinanju and tried to get his attention. She pointed to her mouth, made faces, did everything she could think of except kick him in the shin.
"The Bunji wishes to speak," Kula pointed out.
"She should be heard," Lobsang agreed.
So, reluctantly Chiun reached up to release her vocal cords.
"You may speak," he said.
"It's about time you did that!" Squirrelly complained. "I have a plan."
"The Bunji has a plan," Kula said excitedly.
"Tell us this plan," Chiun said suspiciously.
"Just watch!' And without another word, Squirrelly clambered up on a snowy crag within full view of the cadres below, the helicopters above and the tanks and military vehicles assembling at the base of the mountain and burst into song:
"I am the Buddha;
The Buddha is me.
I got my start
Beneath the bodhi tree.
I am the Bunji;
The Bunji is me.
Here I come,
To set Tibet freeeee!"
Squirrelly Chicane's voice lifted to heights never before reached on stage, screen or in real life. Her top note soared, held and soared even higher to unearthly realms of sound.
Every living thing on the mountain from man to snow leopard froze. They looked up toward the source of the arresting note.
And when she felt all the full and undivided attention of her audience, Squirrelly Chicane launched into the chorus.
Unfortunately no one heard a single note of the rest of her performance. They were too busy running from the rumble of sound that started way up above the snow line, grew to a roar and started cascading down the mountain, pushing before it tons of snow, ice and hard, punishing rocks.
Avalanche!
The word exploded in a hundred minds at once.
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