Valley of Death

by Scott Mariani

  Amal was huddled on the floor of the Pullman cabin, clinging to a door handle for support. He screamed, ‘Ben! Do something!’

  The truck loomed up right behind them. Point-blank fire pounded the car roof and raked its flanks. The driver-side mirror shattered and fell limp from its mounting. The firing paused. Ben thought maybe the giant had run out of ammo. But that was little consolation as Takshak opted for another strategy.

  The truck smashed into the back of the car. The wheel juddered in Ben’s hands. He very nearly let the vehicle go into a skid from which it would never have recovered. Then the truck hit them again, with a crunch that resonated through all twenty-one feet of the car’s length from stem to stern. Again, somehow Ben managed to get himself straightened up and jammed his foot down harder to try to widen the distance between the limo’s mangled rear end and the front of the truck.

  It wasn’t working.

  Then, just as he was thinking that things couldn’t get any worse, they did.

  One moment the car’s single remaining headlight had been picking out the curves and contours of the rocks ahead and the canyon wall to one side, all smoothed out by the passage of the long-gone ancient river. The next, the rocks and the canyon wall suddenly vanished, and the path ahead appeared to drop away into nothing, and the car’s headlight was shining its beam into empty blackness.

  The part of Ben’s mind that could rationally compute what was happening realised that once upon a time, thousands of years ago, the fast-moving river had carved this canyon out of solid rock on the approach to a giant waterfall. Now there was no water. Just a sheer edge as the river bed terminated without warning into a vertical cliff face.

  But in the milliseconds that the trillions of chemical synapses inside Ben’s brain had compressed all those logical conclusions into a flash of conscious understanding, it was already far too late to do anything but clutch the steering wheel in both fists and stare in horror through the windscreen as the nose of the car plummeted into a dizzying drop, and they went sailing over the edge.

  Chapter 63

  Down and down they went, the car slowly turning over and over as the blackness rushed up to meet them. Amal’s panic-stricken yelling filled the cabin. Ben was just trying to hold on, even as he knew there was nothing to hold onto that wouldn’t get pulverised and flattened at the precise same instant that the impact against the rocks below squashed his body into mincemeat. No point screaming about it. Of all the ways you could die, at least this was one of the quickest. And to have died trying wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Ben closed his eyes and waited. For how many more seconds, he didn’t know, but it couldn’t be many. They seemed to have been falling forever. How far down could the bottom be?

  Then it came. The massive bone-jarring crunch that knocked the breath from his lungs. Something hit his head and his vision exploded into a brilliant white starburst and all kinds of strange memories seemed to stream through his mind. He saw Brooke’s face smiling down at him through a drifting haze. Then her face broke up and became part of the blizzard of starry lights whirling around him. He was floating through space, or swimming through the deep water of an ocean. Now slowly bobbing up towards the surface. Consciousness gradually returning. He remembered the fall. It seemed to have stopped now. Telling him that they must have reached the bottom. Which would mean he was dead now. Making it all the stranger when he found that he could open his eyes, and could move, and breathe, and felt a jab of pain in his head and through his ribs where his body had thudded into something solid on impact.

  It was dark. Everything seemed oddly still and calm. He could hear the whistle of the wind and a trickle of cool breeze coming from somewhere below him. It took a few seconds longer for his dazed mind to begin to orientate itself. The solid object he’d hit with his chest was the car’s steering wheel, which he was lying sprawled on top of with his head and shoulders jammed into the V-shaped angle between the windscreen and the dashboard. Except, for some inexplicable reason, the V was pointing vertically downwards, the force of gravity pressing his head tight against the glass. He was aware of a peculiar rocking motion, like the cradle in the nursery rhyme, gently swaying in the breeze. It was a restful kind of sensation. Not actually unpleasant. He was able to stretch his left arm out to the side, feeling around him, and his hand brushed against the rough bark of the thick tree branch inside the cab.

  Tree?

  The surreal realisation was what jolted him back to his senses. What tree?

  He blinked a few times. It wasn’t totally dark inside the car. Some dim moonlight was shining through the windows, and as his wits returned and his night vision focused, he understood. His present reality was better than being dead. But only slightly, and possibly not for long.

  If Ben had been able to be present in this very spot thousands of years ago, he would have found himself at the heart of a massive torrent of water, endless tons of it crashing and foaming down the cliff as the mighty river surged over the edge of the drop. This land must have been a very different place then, lush and green and bursting with all manner of diverse life that could never thrive in the desert it had become now. Even after the water had dried up, the hardier varieties of flora had managed to cling on. And the tree that had sprouted from the side of the cliff, right where the gigantic waterfall had once been, was one of those. Its roots embedded deep into the sheer rock face, enabling the weight of its gnarled trunk to hang right out over the abyss, branches reaching upwards in search of light and rainfall. The tree had probably been slowly growing for a century or more. A fine nesting place for hawks and crows to raise their young, presumably, being impossible for egg-hungry predators to reach. And, in the extremely unlikely event of someone being foolish enough to drive a car over the edge of the cliff, the ancient tree provided a different kind of safeguard.

  The branch that had arrested the limousine’s fall had skewered the entire length of the limo, punching a hole the thickness of a man’s thigh through the windscreen and passing all the way to the back window. Now the Maybach was literally dangling in mid-air, gently rocking as its five-ton weight flexed the gnarly old limb with lot of creaking and rustling of twigs and leaves.

  It hadn’t missed Ben by a wide margin. Another eighteen inches to the right, its tip would have speared right through him. The falling car might just as easily have missed the branch altogether, in which case no further miracles would have been available to prevent them from plummeting the rest of the way down the cliff. If Ben and Amal had been cats, they could have reckoned on having given up at least seven of their nine lives, in one swoop.

  Ben struggled up off the steering wheel and managed to get himself turned upright. Automobiles became a somewhat more cramped and awkward space to move about in when they were hanging nose-down. He craned his neck upwards and saw Amal above him, lying wedged against the steel, leather and wood bulkhead that separated the Pullman compartment from the driver’s cab. The spearing tree branch had missed Amal by a wider margin than it had Ben; but all the same, it had been a close thing.

  Knocked unconscious by the impact, Amal was just now coming round. His good eye fluttered open and gleamed down at Ben. In a muted croak he asked, ‘Are we dead?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Ben said. ‘But I don’t think we should tempt fate by hanging around here too long.’

  As though to mark his words the tree gave a long, juddering groan and seemed to sag an inch or two. A small landslide of stones pattered down the rock face, pinged off the car’s bodywork and disappeared into the abyss.

  Ben was suddenly very aware of his movements. One sharp jerk, and the straining tree roots might just decide to tear free of the rock face. With great caution he unlatched the driver’s door and eased it open. It was blocked from opening all the way by a neighbouring branch thicker than the one that had speared the windscreen. But he was able to wriggle his legs gingerly out of the gap and place one foot on the branch. He peered downwards. The bottom of the drop was st
ill a hell of a long way below them, lost in darkness. He peered upwards and saw the lights of Takshak’s truck shining out over the edge of the cliff far above him.

  He’d almost managed to forget about that guy.

  Ben slowly, carefully, placed his other foot on the branch to test his full weight on it. It would hold him, but the tree was making an awful lot of dire creaking noises that warned him things might not remain that way much longer. ‘We need to get out of here,’ he hissed up at Amal, keeping his voice low in case he could be heard from the top.

  Amal’s broken arm was obviously causing him terrible pain, but he refused to make a squeak of complaint as he gamely lowered himself into the driver’s cab and slithered out of the door. Ben inched a little way along the branch to make space for him. ‘Not scared of heights, I hope?’ he asked softly as the chilly mountain breeze whistled around them.

  ‘Only of falling,’ Amal muttered in reply.

  ‘Then don’t look down,’ Ben said.

  Amal wasn’t a heavy man, lighter than Ben, but the extra weight on the branch made it groan ominously. Another reminder that this was no place to hang around for too long.

  Just then a strong torch beam shone down the cliff, searching back and forth. Takshak, trying to see where his quarry had ended up. The beam brushed the outer branches of the tree and then began probing closer in towards the rock face. It passed over the dangling car, hesitated and came back on itself, like a double-take. The light lingered over the crumpled bodywork and shattered windows, as though trying to find a way inside. Ben and Amal quickly sidestepped along their perch away from the car, hanging onto smaller branches for support.

  Ben had seen something in the torchlight. A rocky ledge close to where the tree trunk jutted from the cliff face. It was wide enough for them both. There seemed to be a path winding down from it, but he couldn’t be certain. The torch beam moved on and the ledge fell back into shadow.

  Amal’s broken ankle chain slithered over the rough bark. With only one arm and one eye, his movements were clumsy, and as he fumbled for support he lost his footing, teetered, and toppled off the branch.

  One instant Amal had been there at his side; the next he was gone. Ben saw it almost too late. He dived after him. For a breathless heartbeat, he thought Amal was lost. Then saw that he’d managed to grab hold of a thinner branch on his way down and was dangling from one hand, his legs kicking and wheeling in empty space. His eye was open wide and he was gasping in terror. Ben lay flat against the coarse bark and reached down to him. ‘I’ve got you.’

  ‘I can’t hold on. I’m going to fall!’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Ben said. He reached down a little further, straining his arm as far as he could. Not far enough. His fingertips were inches from Amal’s hand.

  The torchlight was suddenly on them. Ben blinked as the bright white beam shone into his eyes from high above. He heard the sound of faraway voices. Two men, or maybe three. Someone was laughing.

  Then a booming rifle shot cracked out and a high-velocity bullet kicked splinters from the tree branch just five inches from Ben’s shoulder. And another, which missed by a couple of feet and hit the side of the car. Takshak was taking pot-shots with his sniper rifle, but the angle was bad and the thinner branches above Ben’s body were obscuring his aim.

  Right now Ben had other problems. He could see Amal’s hand strength was failing. His fingers were giving up the fight and letting go. Ben gritted his teeth and wrapped his legs around the tree branch and clung on with all his strength as he reached down a few more inches and grasped Amal’s wrist. A second later, Amal would have lost his grip and gone plummeting to his death. Now his weight swung from Ben’s hand. His kicking legs were making him sway like a pendulum. The branch was creaking and groaning. It sagged another inch. More stones and grit came loose and tumbled down into the dark abyss.

  ‘Let me go, Ben,’ Amal gasped.

  ‘No chance of that.’

  ‘It’s okay. Really.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘We can’t both die. You can make it.’

  ‘You think I’d go back to Brooke without you?’

  ‘It’s you she loves,’ Amal said. ‘More than me. It’s always been that way.’

  There had been a lull in the shooting, but only a momentary one as Takshak switched his sniper rifle for the SLR. Its chattering gunfire echoed out over the valley, raked the branches of the tree and snipped leaves from twigs. Several bullets thunked against the bodywork of the car. From somewhere deep within the tree trunk there came a crackling, splitting sound and it sagged another two inches. The dangling Maybach bobbed like a huge black fish on the end of a line.

  The tree was going to rip out by its roots and give way.

  Ben’s hand was becoming numb and his arm felt as though it was pulling out of its socket. He said, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool.’ And with all the strength he could muster, and a little more besides, he hauled Amal upwards and managed to clamp another hand on his arm, above the elbow. Inch by straining, gasping, sweating, agonising inch, he dragged Amal up onto the branch. He felt the two pistols slip from his waistband, saw them tumbling into the darkness. Too late to save those, but he was damned if he wasn’t going to save Amal and bring him home to his wife like he’d undertaken to do. He would not fail.

  Ben had him. He scrambled breathlessly to his feet. Grabbed a fistful of Amal’s shirt and hauled him roughly towards the rock ledge just as another raking burst of automatic gunfire chewed up the tree bark and threw up a storm of splinters where Ben had been lying just moments ago.

  The tree was going. A deep plaintive groaning became a frantic whining and snapping as its fibres parted and the trunk began to split and the roots tore free from the cliff. Ben and Amal only just made it to the rock face before it gave way. An avalanche of stones and boulders ripped free with it, tumbling down the cliff with a roar. Ben watched as the tree, with the car still skewered to it, went cartwheeling down and down until the blackness of the abyss swallowed it up and it was gone.

  Chapter 64

  They heard the impact as the car hit the bottom, a long way down. The rending, crunching smash of five tons of metal against rock echoed up the side of the precipice and rolled all around the valley.

  Then silence. There was no more gunfire from above. Maybe Takshak thought that Ben and Amal had fallen to their deaths along with the tree. He’d almost been right.

  Ben and Amal remained motionless on the ledge. A minute passed. Then another. Ben craned his neck upwards and listened hard for any sound or movement from the top of the cliff. He could no longer see the truck’s headlights shining over the edge. The wind had picked up, a cold whistling breeze from the east. Over its sound he thought he heard the rattle of a diesel fading into the distance, but it was hard to be sure. He waited another three minutes, then five more. Nothing.

  All through that time Amal sat crouched in a slump with his back against the rock face, lost in his own sullen thoughts. Ben could see he was in a lot of pain, and still in shock after his near-fall, and didn’t try to initiate conversation.

  After a full fifteen minutes had gone by, Ben was certain that the men were gone. The stiffening breeze had scudded the dark clouds away from the moon, illuminating the valley below them in a silvery light and allowing him, as he crawled as close as he dared to the edge of their rocky shelf, to peer over the precipice and trace the line of the path winding down towards the bottom. Far below them he could make out the dull glint of the wrecked car. ‘I think we can make it,’ he said to Amal, who was too morose to make any reply.

  It was time to move on. Over the next two hours, working their way painstakingly slowly by the light of the moon, they followed the path’s snaking route downwards. Here and there were traces of hoof prints and animal droppings that suggested the track had been created by wild goats, or some such creature. Apart from the few desiccated bushes that sprouted from the rocks the animal tracks were the only sign of life to be seen.r />
  Amal was grimly taciturn as Ben helped him pick his way towards the bottom. It was a difficult trek, the pathway treacherous and extremely narrow in places and requiring all Ben’s concentration, so that with the passing of time the earlier threat from the top of the cliff had become a fading memory. He wondered what Takshak was doing now. Perhaps already on his way back to the city, planning on recruiting more thugs to bring back out here to resume his treasure hunt. Or maybe he was still hanging around the vicinity, suspecting that Ben and Amal were still alive and plotting ways to catch up with them. He might be busy working his way around by another route to head them off when they reached the bottom. That wasn’t a comforting thought, especially now that Ben had lost his pistols, along with all the spare weapons and ammunition that were still in his bag among the wreckage down there.

  The two of them were three quarters of their way down the cliff by the time the first red glimmers of dawn were beginning to creep over the eastern horizon. Ben was weary and aching, thirsty and very hungry. He could only imagine how his companion must be feeling. Amal was shuffling like a zombie, dragging his oversized boots in exhaustion and often tripping as the short length of chain still attached to his ankle snagged in crevices among the rocks.

  At last, they reached the bottom of the cliff, and were able to rest their tired bodies and get their breath. The foot of the ancient waterfall was a vast trench carved out of solid rock, smoothed like glass, dry as dust. Amal sat on a rock and nursed his broken arm. Ben left him to his silent suffering and hunted about in search of his fallen pistols, but all he found was a piece of splintered plastic grip panel from the Browning. His search led him to the twisted ruins of the car, which lay belly-up, its roof crushed flat, still snarled up in the remains of the tree at the foot of the ancient waterfall. There was no possibility of retrieving his bag. Their spare weapons and ammo, along with the sat phone, their only means of communication with the outside world, were hopelessly trapped inside. He’d have needed a cutting torch and a crowbar to get them out of there.