‘Doesn’t look so terrible to me,’ Takshak said.
Hashim looked worried. ‘I don’t know. We beat him up pretty bad yesterday.’
‘We’ve been beating him up pretty bad ever since we took him back from those two morons. What’s new?’
‘I think we went a little overboard,’ Hashim said. ‘Reckon he’s got concussion. People can die from that. And if he dies …’ He shrugged. ‘That’s all I’m saying. Think I’d give a shit, if it wasn’t for the money?’
‘I’m beginning to think he’s not gonna be of much use to us anyway. If those two nicey-nicey amateurs hadn’t pussyfooted around so much, they might have figured out he knew nothing and saved us a load of trouble.’
Hashim still looked worried. ‘You might be right. Maybe he doesn’t know anything. Then again, he could still be holding out on us.’
‘Then what am I supposed to do, lay into him harder? You just said he was nearly dead already.’
‘Maybe we should have found another way to persuade him. Like grab his bitch and bring her along for the ride, too. We’d soon have found out if he knew anything.’
‘It’s too late for that now,’ Takshak said. ‘Anyhow, his bitch was with Hope. We couldn’t get to her without going through him. Tried that, remember?’
‘Yeah,’ Hashim agreed wistfully. ‘Shame. Could’ve had some fun.’
‘It is what it is,’ Takshak said. ‘We wait for the cops to leave, then we take care of the Brit.’ He pointed at Amal. ‘Then it’s his choice. Last chance. He doesn’t deliver the goods, he gets a bullet in the head. Which he’s gonna get later anyhow. Either way, I’m not leaving this place until I get what’s coming to me.’
‘What if he’s too fucked up to deliver the goods, even if he could?’
Takshak kicked Amal again. ‘I think he’s a tougher little bastard than he looks. He’ll be okay.’
Forty minutes later Kuldeep, the lookout, reported over the radio that the cops were finally getting ready to depart. Takshak asked, ‘Any sign of anyone else down there?’
‘Nothing’s moving,’ Kuldeep replied. ‘I can’t see a soul.’
‘Roger. Stay out of sight until I give the word.’
Soon afterwards, the sound of the helicopter taking off could be faintly heard from inside the cave. Takshak grabbed his rifle, and he and Hashim ventured cautiously outside and scrambled part way up the hill to watch the police flying away. The sun was fully up and bearing intensely down on the barren hills and valleys. It was going to be a long, hot day. And an eventful one, Takshak hoped.
The truck had more or less burned itself out by now, giving off just a wisp of smoke that was dispersed by the wind blast of the climbing chopper. The aircraft rose to fifteen hundred feet and banked around westwards to return to base. Takshak watched it through his rifle scope. Once he was satisfied that it wasn’t a ruse and they were really leaving, he clambered a little further up the hill, to a flat rock from which he could scan the spot where he’d seen the Brit go into hiding earlier. Just as Kuldeep had said, there was nothing moving. But that didn’t mean Hope wasn’t there.
Takshak rejoined Hashim and they scrambled together back down the hill. Takshak radioed Kuldeep and said, ‘Okay, get your ass back here pronto.’ Five minutes later, a breathless Kuldeep returned from his post. By then, Takshak had unpacked a fresh box of ammo from his Jeep and was in the process of pressing rounds into three spare magazines. Hashim came over and said, ‘All right, so what’s the plan? You want me to send three or four of the boys out there to search for the Brit?’
Takshak shook his head. ‘They won’t find him. But I will. And I’ll deal with him. Alone.’
Takshak was taking no chances. He stuck his spare mags into the pouches on his tactical vest, then thrust a fully-loaded pistol in his Kydex belt holster. He donned his mirrored aviator Ray Bans and strode out, rifle in hand, to search and destroy his prey.
The only problem was, his prey seemed to have well and truly vanished. After several long minutes observing Hope’s earlier hiding place from the hillside, Takshak was forced to conclude that he was no longer there. Swearing under his breath he made his way back down, and trekked across the arid plateau towards the river bed. The march took him several minutes. Now and then he glanced up at the sky behind him, in case the cops were doubling back. But mostly he was concerned that Hope was watching him from some new hiding place. ‘You think you’re so clever,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll show you who’s clever.’
Takshak reached the dry river bank and slithered down its rocky slope. No sign of the Brit. He walked the hundred yards to where he’d watched his enemy hide his car. It was still there. Some kind of crazy government limo, the kind of thing that was all armoured up against dumbass ideological assassination attempts. But no Brit.
It was as if the bastard had flown off in the chopper with the police, Takshak thought. For a moment he played with the idea that maybe he had, because maybe he was one of them. But nah, that didn’t make sense.
Takshak spent the next two hours traipsing all over the barren wasteland in search of his enemy. Zero. Zilch. Nothing. A total waste of time. Fuming, dusty and covered in sweat, he gave up and returned to base camp.
‘Well?’ Hashim asked. ‘Did you deal with him? I didn’t hear any shots.’
‘Fuck him. Let’s get on with what we came here to do.’
‘Whatever you say, boss. Where do we start?’
‘Back at square one,’ Takshak said. ‘And that benchod hostage had better come good for us.’
And so, the day’s work began. They reversed the trucks out into the hot sun and everyone clambered aboard except Takshak, who was riding in his personal open Jeep, and the semi-conscious and bleeding hostage, dumped in the load space and still chained to the back bumper in case he tried to escape. The three-vehicle convoy bumped and lurched over the difficult terrain, past the spot where the dacoits had attacked them. Takshak didn’t so much as glance at the bodies of his three men, now all mottled and bloated as they began to decompose in the heat. Then they hit the steep rise up towards the river bed where Takshak had patrolled on foot earlier. The trucks struggled and slithered and pattered all over the loose ground as their diesel engines snorted and rasped and their suspension creaked and their four-wheel-drive transmissions strained to haul themselves up the slope and everyone inside clung onto whatever support they could find.
At last, all three vehicles had made it back to the killing ground where Kabir Ray and his associates had been shot that day. Square one. Ground zero. Still the closest thing they’d found to X marks the spot.
Takshak jumped down from his Jeep and marched around to the back to interrogate the hostage. Hashim and a few of the others gathered around, clutching their weapons. The shovels and picks were still in the trucks.
‘This is it,’ Takshak snarled in Amal’s face. ‘Last chance. Where is it? You don’t start talking, my son, you’ll wish you had.’
Amal’s good eye blinked. He tried to speak, but all that came out of his torn lips was a croak.
Takshak pulled a face. ‘What’d he say?’
Big Samunder said in his sub-octave bass voice, ‘I think he said, “Go fuck yourself”, boss.’
Takshak stared at Amal for a second. Then he flung open the Jeep’s tailgate, grabbed Amal by the throat and dragged him violently out of the load space and threw him to the stony ground. The chain rattled. Amal hit the ground with a cry of pain. But then he did something that amazed them all. He staggered to his bare feet and stood there swaying defiantly.
‘See, I told you he was a tougher little bastard than he looks,’ Takshak said with a smile.
Slowly, painfully, turning around in small shuffling steps, Amal looked about him with his one usable eye. His gaze rested on the rocks of the river bank below where the remains of Kabir’s helicopter stood. Then he raised a grimy finger and pointed in that direction. He croaked again, paused to spit up a gout of blood and then said more cohere
ntly, ‘Over there. That’s where you need to start digging.’
‘Let’s find out, shall we?’ Takshak sneered. ‘You heard him, boys. Get to work.’
Chapter 56
Which they proceeded to do, relentlessly, for the next several hours, sweating under the searing glare of the sun. All that could be heard was the steady scrape and clang of steel against rock and the occasional grunt of effort as they toiled, while Takshak and Hashim leaned against the back of the Jeep and smoked cigars and the hostage slept on the end of his chain. It was back-breaking labour, virtually impossible without a mechanical digger. Big Samunder was the nearest thing they had to one of those, hefting up rocks that nobody else could lift with his massive hands and flinging them away with a roar. By early afternoon, the efforts of fourteen men pushing themselves to the brink of exhaustion had produced nothing better than a dry stony crater measuring eight feet deep by twelve feet wide. Like a large grave intended for several occupants.
Jarnail, the kid killer, stopped digging to wipe the sweat from his eyes. His hair was dripping with it. He leaned on his shovel and groaned, ‘This is fucked up, Takshak. There’s nothing here but rocks.’
Takshak blew smoke and said, ‘I’m paying you money to dig, so dig.’
‘Screw you. I’ve had it with digging.’
Takshak said, ‘Really? Give me your shovel, then.’ He flung away his stogie and stepped away from the Jeep, holding out a hand.
With a grin of triumph for having upstaged the boss, Jarnail handed the shovel over. It was a quality tool, with a long hardwood shaft and stainless steel blade, bought specially for the purpose from a hardware store back in Delhi. Takshak paused a moment to roll up his sleeves and rub spit between his palms. Then he grasped the shaft with both hands, hefted it like an axe and buried the edge of the blade deep in Jarnail’s frontal cranium.
Jarnail was clinically dead before his body had made it all the way to the ground. The idiot grin had never left his face, and now it was frozen there like a rictus.
Takshak turned to the rest of the crew. ‘Is anyone else tired of digging? Because if you are, now’s the time to step forward and be relieved of your duties.’
Everyone was suddenly as fresh as a daisy and perfectly happy to go on all day long. Takshak threw down the bloody shovel, returned to the Jeep and lit another cigar. The hostage went on sleeping.
Another three hours later, the utterly spent work party had excavated a hole the size of a house foundation. Their hair was white with dust, their clothes black with sweat, and the shafts of their picks and shovels were wet from burst blisters. They were earning their money, that was for sure. Nobody dared complain directly to the boss. Anyone who even thought about it only had to glance over at the body of Jarnail, still grinning at them through a mask of blood, and they’d quickly decide to shut up. But some of the guys were giving imploring looks to Hashim, as if to say, ‘Please, do something to make it stop.’
Just as Hashim was plucking up the resolve to say something, Takshak held up his hand and yelled, ‘Enough! Everyone, step away from the hole!’
There were groans of both relief and pain as the twelve stiff, aching workers climbed out of the crater. Sardar and Neeraj staggered no more than a couple of steps before they collapsed with fatigue. Kuldeep leaned hard on his pickaxe, panting as though he’d run a marathon. Even Samunder looked ready to drop.
Takshak strode over to the hole, stood at its edge with his hands on his hips and looked down. What he could see that wasn’t stones and boulders was a kind of sandy loam that they’d hit about six feet down. And a curled-up dead scorpion that Samunder had chopped with his shovel. And part of the exposed root ball of a prickly shrub growing nearby. No gold, no diamonds, no rubies or emeralds. Not so much as a clay cup.
Takshak went on staring at the empty hole. Everyone was watching him. They could see the strange light that had come into his eyes. Nobody spoke. Then Takshak turned away from the hole and went striding back towards the back of the Jeep, where the hostage was either fast asleep or comatose. Takshak drew out his pistol and pointed it at Amal’s head. Amal didn’t move.
‘I warned him. This was his last chance. Now he dies.’
Hashim could see that his boss was serious. ‘Whoa, wait. Boss, please.’
Takshak kept the gun pointed at Amal’s head. ‘He’s just messing with us. I’m sick of it.’
‘Don’t do it.’
‘No? Watch me put a bullet in his face.’
‘We can’t kill him yet. Just in case.’
‘Just in case of what?’
‘We can’t go away empty-handed.’
‘We got the map,’ Takshak said.
‘The map’s no good, remember?’ Hashim reminded him. ‘The geography’s all wrong. You’re the one who spotted it.’
‘So there’s a mistake on the fucking map, so what? Or maybe those fucking hills sprouted up since it was made. The archaeology asshole must’ve figured out this was the right place. He wouldn’t have come here otherwise.’
‘Yeah, maybe. And maybe he’d have led us to it, but we shot him. Which is why we need his brother.’
‘Assuming that the asshole told his brother.’
‘But we can’t assume that he didn’t. You said that too, remember? If we blow this guy’s brains out now, we’re totally screwed. Trust me, boss. Don’t do it.’
Takshak lowered the gun and let out a long breath. ‘I want this bastard dead so bad, it hurts.’
‘He will be. But this is not the time.’
Takshak nodded slowly. He turned to his men. ‘All right. Pack it up for today. Back to base for some rest and we’ll start over in the morning.’
‘I really, really wish we had brought the bitch along with us,’ Hashim muttered.
Thoroughly exhausted and demoralised, they heaved themselves back into the vehicles and returned to camp. Sixteen men had set out, only fifteen were returning. Their one consolation was that there had been no sign of the police coming back to hamper their efforts, so with no reason to keep the trucks hidden any longer, it was decided to leave them parked outside in order to make more space. Crates of beer and tinned meat and vegetables were unpacked, lanterns were lit, and for the next few hours the men sat around and ate, drank, smoked, rested their weary muscles and tried to relax. Samunder gathered up some twigs and enough handfuls of some kind of desiccated animal dung to light a small campfire whose glow flickered at the centre of the cave. The smoke drifted up to the naturally domed ceiling and escaped through a fissure that acted like a chimney.
But the atmosphere in the cave was tense. Nobody could openly mention what had happened to Jarnail, out of fear of the same happening to them. That didn’t stop the private mutterings that passed between the more disgruntled and resentful crew members. Such as the whispered conversation held by Neeraj and Sardar in a dark corner while the others were eating.
‘We’re working for a crazy ass nutjob psycho. You do realise that, don’t you?’ Neeraj said.
‘The thought had occurred to me, yeah,’ Sardar agreed.
‘And we’re not gonna find anything out here. It’s all bullshit. And you know what else I think? Even if we do, he’s not gonna cut us in for a penny. He’s gonna leave us out here to rot like Jarnail.’
‘I get you, man. But what can we do about it?’
‘I say we cut our losses before it’s too late. Knock’m on the head and get the fuck out of this—’ Neeraj broke off as he noticed Hashim lurking nearby. ‘Can’t talk here,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going for a piss. Count to thirty, slowly, then come and meet me behind the trucks. Make it look natural. I’ll tell you my plan.’
When Neeraj had left the cave, Sardar ticked off thirty seconds inside his head, then as nonchalantly as possible meandered out after him, casually picking up another can of beer on his way, joking to the guys, ‘This stuff goes through you, doesn’t it?’ Bad liars always explain too much.
It was dark outside. The moon was just a
pale sliver behind the clouds, and there was no wind. As evening had fallen, so had the temperature. Sardar shivered and peered about him in the darkness, eager to resume the mutinous plans he and Neeraj had started hatching.
He whispered, ‘Neeraj? Where’d you go, man?’ But there was no sound. No sign.
‘Neeraj?’
As Sardar hunted about in the darkness, he realised that something weird was up. He could have sworn that they’d parked all three of their remaining trucks outside the cave entrance earlier. But there seemed to be only two. He blinked and looked again. It was odd. Maybe he’d drunk too much beer.
He was still trying to figure it out when his foot snagged something heavy on the ground and he almost tripped, dropping his can. He swore under his breath, and crouched down to grope among the shadows where it had fallen.
That was when he realised what he’d tripped over.
Neeraj was lying sprawled on his back. His flies were undone. His open eyes glistened sightlessly in the soft moonlight. His head was at a strange angle to his body.
And there was something else, too. A small white rectangle lying across Neeraj’s chest. Sardar picked it up. It was a piece of paper. A page from a notebook, folded in half.
Sardar forgot all about his beer, along with his terror of Takshak and any idea of mutiny. He ran back into the cave, clutching the piece of paper and yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Neeraj is dead! Neeraj is dead!’
Everyone sprang to their feet in alarm. Takshak instantly appeared from the shadows, holding up a lantern. ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ Sardar blabbered. ‘He went for a piss and now he’s dead, just like that!’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Takshak demanded impatiently. He snapped his fingers. ‘Kuldeep, Jitender, go out there and see what’s up.’ The two men instantly snatched up their weapons and hurried out of the cave mouth into the darkness.
‘I think his neck is broken,’ Sardar said urgently. ‘And I found this.’ He held up the folded piece of paper to show them. ‘Think it’s a note.’
Valley of Death Page 28
