Act of Terror jq-2

by Marc Cameron

  The ramshackle outpost of Tashkurgan was little more than a faceless government building and a touristy hotel with a line of fake yurts. They would need a special permit to continue down the Karakoram to their ostensible destination of the Khunjerab Pass leading into Pakistan. Umar had assured them the police were used to letting people riding his motorcycles through. As it turned out, the three Chinese guards, who were barely out of their teens, offered to let Garcia get her picture taken wearing one of their hats for twenty U.S. dollars-each. Quinn gladly paid the sixty bucks and they were able to slip through as long as they promised to just “go and come back” to the Pakistani border.

  “Not a bad fee all in all,” Quinn said as they pushed the Enfields away from the concrete barricades and back on to the Karakoram heading south.

  “That wasn’t a fee.” Ronnie wrinkled her nose. “That was a bribe.”

  Quinn swung a leg over his bike. “You say tomato… We made it through without having to duct tape anyone and leave them in the closet. That’s what matters.”

  Thirty miles south of Tashkurgan, they cut right, leaving the relative comfort of the paved Karakoram Highway to head west on an old jeep trail toward the sixteen-thousand-foot level marking Wakhir Pass and Afghanistan. Luckily, they saw no other traffic at the diversion from their promised route.

  Garcia handled the rock-strewn road like Quinn had seen her handle everything in the short time he’d know her: by pretending she was an expert long enough that she became one. She was a strong woman, naturally athletic. Off-road motorcycling appeared to come easily to her.

  As Umar had promised, the Enfield Bullets thumped along the rutted trail without complaint. Quinn had expected some drop in performance as they climbed near six thousand meters, but the bikes took Gabrielle’s impossibly steep smugglers’ trail along a sheer rock wall like metal mountain goats.

  The only lag in performance was of the human kind. Both Quinn and Garcia were in excellent physical shape, but they were accustomed to living at sea level. By twelve thousand feet, even the act of horsing the motorcycles over gravel and dust forced them to stop for frequent breathers and sips of water. He’d read stories of ancient Buddhist monks who gave these places names like Big Headache and Nosebleed Pass. The throbbing killer at Quinn’s temples made him understand why.

  Garcia made no secret of the fact that she hated the dizzying heights, refusing to look down and urging Quinn to get going again shortly after they’d stopped. He was sure her knuckles were white under the thick leather gloves.

  Fatigue wasn’t their only problem. At thirteen thousand feet, they ran into a wall of blowing gray dust, ground fine as talc by the host of glaciers among the endless sawtooth peaks that stretched before them. The air was thin enough already and the dust made it nearly impossible to draw a breath.

  Used for centuries by Silk Road travelers who wanted no contact with government officials, the hidden trail rose quickly, jogging around slabs of rock the size of houses and fields of gray boulders that fanned from snowcapped crags on all sides. Finally battling their way above the dust storm, they were able to make good progress until they were three miles from the pass.

  Quinn saw the lone man from nearly a mile away, picking his way across a boulder-strewn side hill leading seven camels.

  Quinn motioned for Garcia to pull off the trail alongside him on an uphill swell of gravel and dismount. There was just enough room for both bikes. It took his breath away when she shook her thick hair free of her helmet. He looked away quickly, back at the approaching camel herder, hoping she hadn’t noticed his stares.

  The herdsman’s clucking and scolding could be heard for ten minutes before the little troupe crested the rise in the trail. Each camel had a barbed stick through its nose attached to a cord connecting it to the animal ahead. The man held a piece of rope from the nose of the lead beast. Only the baby trotted independently of the rest, even more knock-kneed and gangly than the adults.

  “You have your camera handy?” Quinn asked.

  Garcia tapped the chest pocket of her riding jacket. “Right here.”

  The copper bell on the baby’s halter clanged happily as it plodded closer over the stony path.

  “Go ahead and get it out,” he whispered, smiling at the approaching man. “It’s always some herder that trips you up… He needs to think we’re just tourists.”

  The herdsman raised his right hand to his breast, bowing his head slightly. He was young, still in his twenties with a flint-hard look in his eye the smile couldn’t conceal. A FAM, fighting-age male, he carried a paratrooper Kalashnikov with a folding stock hung on a cloth sling over his shoulder. The Wahkir didn’t see enough traffic for professional bandits, but if one smuggler happened to be better armed than another he met along the path, there was no honor among those in the black market. The collar of a wool suit jacket was turned up against the chill. The tail of his flimsy shirt hung out over stained khaki military trousers. Thin leather sandals did little to protect his cracked feet from the ravages of weather and stone.

  Quinn thought it best to play dumb and gave an awkward Chinese greeting.

  The camel man shook his head, grinning with a mouth full of indigo and snuff-stained teeth.

  “No Chinaman,” he said. He puffed up his chest. “Pashtu.”

  The herder eyed the Royal Enfields with a keen interest, dropping the rope to his lead camel. He patted the seat on Jericho’s bike. “You sell?”

  Quinn shook his head. It never surprised him when traders talked business in a whole multitude of languages. They might not be able to tell you the time, but they could barter, curse, and call you a cheapskate in the language of your choice.

  Quinn shook his head. “Not mine. Umar’s bikes. You know Umar?”

  The herdsman’s eyes went wide. He showed his blue-black teeth. “Umar’s bikes,” he repeated. He turned to stare at Garcia for a moment, took a deep breath, and stooped to pick up his lead rope.

  Without a word of good-bye he clucked at his camels and started down the trail toward the Karakoram Highway. His animals trundled along after him bawling and farting until they fell back into their traveling jog.

  “That was weird,” Garcia said tucking the camera back in her pocket.

  Quinn threw a leg over his Enfield, anxious to be moving again. “I’m pretty sure he was looking at you as much as the bikes.”

  Garcia paused. “What if he pulled the rifle?”

  Quinn pretended to act incredulous. “And that from a woman who just witnessed my physical prowess at not beating Umar the giant. Come on, we should get going. That fight gave us a late start. We need to make it over Gabrielle’s secret pass by nightfall.”

  “You afraid we’ll run into Chinese soldiers?”

  “Nope,” Quinn said, starting his bike. “The big problem on smugglers’ trails is smugglers.”

  Marc Cameron

  Act of Terror

  C HAPTER F ORTY-ONE

  T hey rolled through the gap between two great, guardian-like boulders and into Afghanistan an hour before sunset. There was nothing to mark the nameless pass but for a stone cairn topped with the skull of a heavy-horned Marco Polo sheep. A half mile in, they were met by a crude, hand-painted and weatherworn sign showing a human figure with his leg being blown off by a land mine. It was a notice to all to keep to the relative safety of the trail.

  Quinn stopped for a moment to check the map Gabrielle had drawn, comparing it to the topographic tour map Umar had supplied. The detail gave out thirty miles into Afghanistan. Quinn hoped that would be enough.

  The next forty-five minutes saw them descend six thousand feet. A camp at ten thousand feet would be uncomfortable for flatlanders, but it would be infinitely better than one at sixteen thousand. Quinn slowed, turning back to Garcia, two bike-lengths behind him. It was impossible to tell behind her full-face helmet, but her eyes said she was grinning.

  Ten minutes later they’d hidden both motorcycles behind a faded gray boulder, in a fol
d of the mountain of the main trail. Quinn removed his heavy armored jacket, setting up camp in the suspendered riding pants and a gray long-sleeved wool T-shirt. While cotton might be king in the south, growing up in Alaska had taught him wool was the way to go when things got wet and cold.

  Garcia still wore all her gear against the chill and donned a Nepalese wool beanie with earflaps and braided cords.

  “You’ve come a very long way from Cuba,” Quinn chuckled. He situated the aluminum poles of their mountaineering tent over the flattest patch of rubble he could find. They’d told Umar they were married as part of the cover story-he would have been unhappy sending an unmarried woman out alone with Quinn. Wanting to save space on the smallish Enfields, the big Ugyhr provided only one tent. Luckily, it was a three-person, which in mountaineering terms translated as “tight for two.”

  Garcia squatted opposite Quinn and helped him thread the poles into the sleeves of the bright orange fabric. “Must be old hat for you,” she said, teeth chattering. “I suppose this is a lot like Alaska?”

  “In some ways.” Quinn looked to his left at the sheer rock face that faded into a layer of clouds a thousand feet above. Fifty feet to his right an abrupt ledge fell away to nothingness for nearly a mile. Howling winds raced off hidden glaciers and the distant hush of a river whispered up from the valley floor. “Yeah, I guess it does remind me of home.”

  Quinn finished snapping in the last pole and looked up to see Garcia shaking her head and blinking as if she was dizzy.

  “We should feed you and get to bed,” he said.

  She smiled weakly. “Not tonight, honey. I have a headache.”

  He took her by the shoulders and led her to the base of a car-sized rock, where he made her a sort of nest with their bedrolls and sleeping pads. “You sit here while I whip us up my two-mile-high specialty.

  Garcia drew her knees to her chest, drawing her neck inside her jacket like a turtle and her hands into her sleeves. Only the pink tip of her nose showed above the collar of her coat.

  “Seriously,” she moaned. “I don’t want to be a whiner, but I feel like someone may be digging my eyes out with a spoon. I couldn’t eat a bite.”

  “It’s the altitude,” Quinn said. “I should have paid attention to it earlier.”

  “I’m a big girl, in case you haven’t noticed.” She let her head loll back against the boulder.

  “You rest. I’ll make supper,” he said. He thought: Oh, I’ve noticed all right.

  A couple of aspirin and Quinn’s mutton noodle soup worked miracles. Ronnie went from feeling like she’d been trampled by a camel to aching as though she’d just been dragged by one. The pain in her head down to a dull throb, she was able to concentrate on Jericho.

  “Hard to breathe up here,” she said, wanting to make conversation.

  “There’s this sign on the wall above the swimming pool at the Academy,” he said. “ The Air Is Rare.” He held a mug of soup under his chin. Steam curled around the stubble of beard that seemed twice as dark as it had only a few hours before. “We have an early start if we want to find the Kyrgyz camp tomorrow,” he said.

  The wind had died off with the sun. A thick layer of fog had settled in, rendering the orange tent almost invisible just a few feet away. They had to wear headlamps to keep from walking off the cliff.

  Quinn played his light toward the tent. “Sorry about the cramped arrangements.”

  “No problem.” She got up with a groan. “I’ve watched enough Bond movies to know this is the way things always work out. I only need to know if I’m the girl spy you end up with as the credits roll or the sacrificial one who has passionate sex with you, then dies halfway through the movie.”

  “Remains to be seen,” Quinn mused over his mug, blowing away a plume of steam.

  “Anyway,” she added, “you look too beat to try anything tonight, Mr. Bond.”

  “Sex is messy.” Quinn shrugged. “We’d probably knock the tent off the ledge-or your head would explode from all the exertion.”

  Garcia pursed her lips, thinking that over. She eyed him carefully. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to talk me out of or into sleeping with you…”

  “Oh.” Quinn grinned. “In Umar’s infinite wisdom, he believed a married couple should have blankets instead of warm down bags. We’re sleeping together all right. But that’s as far as it goes.”

  “Because of your ex-wife?” Garcia went out on a limb.

  “Maybe so.” Quinn shrugged. “But don’t necessarily expect the same resolve when I’m at altitudes below ten thousand feet.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.” She grinned.

  Garcia stripped down to her black wool long johns before kneeling to crawl in the vestibule door. Exhausted or not, she hoped Quinn was watching her.

  She wore the floppy Nepalese hat to bed. Using her rolled fleece jacket as a pillow, she tugged her side of the blanket tight around her shoulders as he maneuvered beside her. He piled the riding jackets over their feet but kept the blanket on his side turned down to his waist. Cuban versus Alaska blood, she thought. It made sense.

  “Why did your parents pick Jericho?” she asked in the darkness.

  Quinn sighed. He clicked on his headlamp and rolled up on his shoulder to stare at her. “I thought you were exhausted.”

  She batted her eyelashes, hoping she didn’t look too much like a silly cow.

  He snapped off the light and threw an arm across his forehead, seemingly oblivious to the cold. “My dad wanted to name me Gideon, but his sister stole the name for my cousin a month before I was born. I guess they figured Jericho was the next best name from the story… Gideon’s trumpet and all.”

  Ronnie couldn’t help but think he was in his element-hostile terrain in a hostile country.

  “What’s he do now? This cousin of yours.”

  “A big-shot banker in Anchorage,” he said. “Pretty wealthy, as a matter of fact.”

  “Banker or secret government agent… let me see…”

  “He’s home in a soft bed right now.” Quinn rearranged the blanket, trying to situate his body between the rocks under the tent floor.

  For a long moment there was no sound but distant wind and rivers.

  “You know this really sucks,” Ronnie said suddenly, not quite ready to give up Quinn’s company to sleep.

  “Why’s that?” he said through a long yawn. She could just make out the outline of his chest, rising and falling in the shadows.

  “Well, most couples have these sorts of sweet little conversations when they’re breathless and spent. You have to lie there and listen to me snore and pass gas all night without any of the… you know, fringe benefits.”

  Quinn yawned again, longer this time, shuddering. “Could be worse. You could have night terrors and wake up trying to kill someone.”

  She scrunched up next to him, stealing the warmth of his body. Smelling the musky odor of his skin.

  “Is that what you do?”

  “Only when I’m extremely tired…”

  Through the darkness, she thought she saw him smile.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Dawn took its time in the protected valleys of the High Pamir. The mist was gone, but the morning would linger gray and clammy-cold for hours before the sun finally peeked over the knife ridges high above. A brisk wind popped at the tent fly.

  Quinn stirred under the blankets, feeling the familiar aches in his shoulders and hips from too many nights on the unforgiving ground. His hands felt like claws from gripping the Enfield’s handlebars all day. The effects of the fight with Umar left him with a stiff neck and a wrenched knee that was sure to give him problems when he got older. He thought of the Chinese proverb: When two tigers fight, one is injured beyond repair-and the other one is dead.

  During the night Ronnie had rolled half on top of him. Her arm flailed across his chest, the warmth of a long leg draped over his thigh. Quinn lay still for a moment, feeling the moist, fluttering puff of her exhausted b
reathing against his neck.

  Bootystan, he thought. Jacques, Jacques, Jacques. If you could only see me now…

  Trying not to wake her, he wriggled out of the tent, stifling a gasp as he stepped into his chilly riding pants and stiff Haix patrol boots. He munched a piece of naan from his day pack-courtesy of Umar’s wife-and swung his arms trying to warm up. In the muted light, he could just make out the outline of a path he hadn’t noticed the night before. Likely a game trail used by ibex or Marco Polo sheep, it ran at an angle to a small plateau about a two hundred feet above the camp.

  “What do you see?”

  Quinn jumped at Ronnie’s voice behind him. She’d poked her head out the tent door.

  “I’m thinking I’d like to take a look at what’s up there. It might give me a glimpse of what’s ahead of us.”

  “Take the bike.” She yawned, catlike. “I’m awake. Anyway, a girl could use a little privacy first thing in the morning.”

  Quinn looked down at the Breitling. “Oh-seven-fifty Afghan time,” he said. “I should be back in twenty minutes.”

  “Sounds good.” She pulled her head back inside the tent. “I’ll heat up some of that goat’s head soup or whatever it was.”

  The trail up the mountain was strewn with baseball-sized rocks and steep enough Quinn had to keep the bike going forward or risk sliding back down. Umar had replaced the little bike’s stock Avon tires with decent enough Chinese-made Cheng Shin knobbies suitable for the washouts and gravel roads of the western frontier. It climbed without complaint.

  The trouble with the Enfield was that, being old-school, some parts were prone to break. The bolts that held on the muffler had sheared off somewhere along the way since they’d left Kashgar. Quinn knew he’d have to figure out a way to jury-rig the exhaust before it fell off or risk deafness and an avalanche from blatting engine noise.