“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 fold 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.