“See,” he said, licking his lips. “I told you I could be of some use.”
Yaqub looked at Ehmet, who shrugged. “I don’t care,” the younger brother said, before pushing his way through the rubble to a stunned Afaz, who now lay sprawled on his back. Ehmet bent over the Pakistani, kneeling close to his face. Without warning, he ripped into the flesh of the screaming man’s cheeks as if he were feeding. Blood covered the young Uyghur’s lips and chin when he finally looked up. It dripped from the corners of his mouth and ran down the front of his tattered prison shirt.
Surviving prisoners, guards complicit in the escape, and Jiàn Zŏu watched in disgusted horror as Ehmet Feng spat a grisly chunk of meat on the floor. He had torn the face off Afaz the Biter. Even Yaqub, who admitted to a mild disposition, felt a surge of pride at his brother’s ferocity. The story of the young Uyghur would be passed on for generations.
Ehmet turned to give Jiàn Zŏu a hard glare.
“You fought with us, you will come with us,” he said through bloodstained teeth.
Yaqub shot a glance toward Ehmet, nodding. People always looked to him because he was older and taller — but everyone now knew which brother was truly in charge.
“Kadir was our transportation out of here,” Yaqub said, looking at Jiàn Zŏu. “His men will give us a ride, but without him, we may need your contacts more than ever.”
The snakehead’s wispy mustache twitched under a pointed nose.
“You may be of some use after all.” Ehmet pointed a bloody hand toward the demolished wall. “Come. We have an appointment with a dragon.”
Alberto Moretti would die on the Savage Mountain. He’d known it for years — since he was sixteen. Sitting at the wobbly table in the glow of the command tent, he leaned a whiskered face against an open palm. Weary eyes squinted under the glaring hiss of lantern light. The chapped tip of his bandaged finger traced the route his team would take to the summit. He could envision each step — the different camps, the exact spots they would set ropes, the famous Bottleneck where climbers would traverse the face under a deadly serac — tons of hanging ice — before making their final push to the summit.
As an Italian, Moretti felt a special kinship with the naked chunk of rock and ice that loomed at the head of the valley. It was, after all, a team made up of his countrymen who had reached the summit first in 1954. Moretti had already climbed Everest — twice, the last time two years before, summiting on his thirty-fifth birthday. But all three of his bids to conquer K2 had ended in failure. The second highest and, arguably, the most deadly of the 8,000-meter peaks simply refused to admit him.
And Moretti was not alone. For every four climbers to reach the top, the Savage Mountain took a life. If you wanted the respect of the world, you climbed Everest. If you wanted the respect of other mountaineers, you climbed K2.
And climbing it was just what Moretti intended to do — if the rest of his group would ever arrive.
It had taken him the better part of a year to recruit a multinational team. Klaus Becke, a longtime climbing partner and friend, would be his second in command. The big German had radioed that he’d brought along a girlfriend. Moretti shrugged away any ill feelings over adding someone to the expedition this late in the game. Klaus was a showoff, but the most competent climber the Italian had ever seen. If he needed a pretty girl to cheer for him while he worked, Moretti didn’t care — so long as they made their weather window. July was going by awfully fast and K2 always seemed to grow angrier in August.
The porters had already made the five-day trek back down the trail to Askole, promising to return at the appointed time to help the expedition off the mountain. So far, eight members of the actual team had arrived in base camp — two Chinese climbers, two brothers from Wyoming, one Ukrainian, and the lone climber from Alberta, Canada. DuPont, the hulking Belgian, had wandered off again, doing whatever security professionals did in the wee hours of the morning. Considering the political climate in Pakistan, Moretti had not argued with the American brothers on the team when they suggested he hire someone to take care of security. Emile DuPont, a former legionnaire, if his story was to be believed, smiled more than Moretti would have thought for someone who was paid to have a fearsome look. Still, the Belgian was a huge man with a powerful military bearing and a sly smile that said he considered lesser men as food if the need ever arose.
And then there was Issam, the cook. He was a gaunt thing, stooped, with a dragging limp and a copper tint to his skin only slightly lighter than the Balti porters. Black eyes and a full beard made it difficult to pinpoint the man’s ethnicity. In broken English, Issam had introduced himself as a Moroccan. He generally kept to himself, but there was an air about the cook that put Moretti on edge, as if he was standing in the path of an avalanche. In truth, this dark man was much more frightening than their Belgian security guard.
Issam was, however, a dependable cook. Even now, when the Godwin-Austen valley was still cloaked in the indigo shadows of dawn, metal pots clanged and rattled in the adjacent cook tent where the Moroccan prepared breakfast tea and chipati, the thin, unleavened bread of the Karakoram.
The noise made Moretti hungry. He stood and stretched his back with the long groan of a man who’d spent half his life sleeping on the ice, then poked his head out the tent flap. The imposing pyramid of K2 dominated the northern landscape. The tip of its eastern summit was a brilliant orange with the rising sun.
A distant cry drew his attention back to the south, toward the Baltoro and the lower camps at Concordia. At first he thought it was an eagle, but the sound grew louder as someone in a bright yellow parka half ran, half staggered from the valley shadows toward the camp. Moretti realized it was a woman screaming for help.
And she was not alone.
Less than two hundred meters down the valley, nine men trailed her through the shadowed boulders like persistent ants. Green military uniforms stood out against gray rock and dirty snow. The men moved methodically, not wasting their breath. Soon, their quarry would reach the base camp — and run out of places to go.
Moretti nearly jumped out of his skin when the Moroccan cook began to bang on a tin plate with a metal spoon, rousing the rest of the camp.
The Italian turned in a complete circle, hand on top of his head, scanning the barren ice and rocky crags that surrounded him.
“Where the hell is DuPont with his gun?” His whisper escaped on a terrified gasp.
The woman in the yellow parka was surely Klaus Becke’s type. As she drew nearer, he could see that she was tall with long brunette hair and the gaunt features the German liked so much. Even in the high-altitude base camp, she increased her speed when she neared the tents and stumbled up to Moretti five minutes after her first screams carried into camp. She slumped forward, hands against her knees, speaking between wheezing gulps of thin air.
Other climbers in camp began to emerge from their tents.
“They… killed everyone,” the woman panted. “I’ve… never seen any… thing… like…” She cast her eyes around the camp. “Klaus said… you have… gun…”
“Klaus?” Moretti rolled his lips, fearing her answer.
“Dead.” The woman looked from tent to tent, then over her shoulder at her pursuers. Her voice was shredded, hoarse from her ordeal. “They… cut off his head. Please… tell me you have a gun.”