‘Someone who’s been there lots of times,’ said Boyd. ‘Rebecca, that’s who. Who better than her to lead me to this little hidden valley of yours?’
Twenty-eight
‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’
Boyd was looking pleased with himself.
‘Reckon I’ll just take my time and follow her tracks. Shouldn’t be too hard in all this fresh snow. By the way, you can forget trying to call anyone on the radio or via e-mail. I already fixed the satellite mast.’
‘You’ll never make it by yourself,’ said Jack. ‘We’ll come after you.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ said Boyd. ‘I’ve been trained. You’ve no idea how much I can do by myself. And you may have noticed, I have a skill with this thing. I’ll be carrying a rifle too. That’s a rifle with a telescopic sight, and real bullets, not hypodermic syringes. I see one of you people coming after me, I’ll blow you away. ’Sides, I already thought of a way to keep you all in here. Short of killing you all, that is. Only first I gotta show our hairy friends the way out of here.’
Stepping back into the airlock door, he threw open the outer section to reveal sunshine and a blue sky.
‘Whoooa,’ he said, taking a deep, almost euphoric breath. ‘Get a lungful of that air. Looks like it’s gonna be a nice day.’
Holding the gun at arm’s length, Boyd came back into the clamshell and approached the squeeze cage.
‘Nobody try anything,’ he said, stepping over Jameson’s body. ‘Unless you want to cuddle up to your friend on the floor. If you want to feel heroic, sing the Stars and Stripes. C’mon, back up all of you.’
‘D’you think it’s a good idea, just letting a wild animal loose in here?’ said Cody. ‘It could be dangerous. Remember what happened to Jack.’
‘I’m the one with the gun,’ said Boyd, drawing the bolts on the cage. ‘Remember what happened to Miles.’
He opened the door and then moved away.
‘You know, I hate to see a beautiful animal in a cage.’
For a moment Rebecca remained seated in the corner of the cage, eating mouthfuls of muesli and feeding Esau, and showing no inclination to escape from her captivity. But gradually she became aware that something had changed in her circumstances and, pressing her infant dose to her breast and grunting gently, she stood up.
‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’
‘That’s the girl,’ said Boyd. ‘Time you took a little walk around the yard. Cheetah.’
Slowly Rebecca emerged from the squeeze cage. She stared apprehensively at Jameson and, squatting down beside him, wiped some blood onto her finger and then into her mouth. The taste brought a frown to her features, as if she recognized that something was wrong. She prodded Jameson for some signs of life and, finding none, uttered a quiet whimper and then walked fearfully toward the open doorway. Swaying one way and then the other, like a caged elephant, she looked around, as if she half expected someone to try to stop her from leaving.
‘Oh-keh! Oh-keh!’
Swift met the yeti’s penetrating stare and nodded.
‘Okay,’ she said, and raised her hand in farewell. ‘Okay.’
Rebecca turned toward the door, already uttering an increasingly loud series of hoots. Then she was gone.
Boyd nodded with satisfaction.
‘There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? I don’t think she’s dangerous at all.’
He followed her to the doorway.
‘Like I say, don’t anyone think of leaving the clamshell. Not unless you think you can stay one step ahead of a speeding bullet.’
Swift started to curse him and then checked herself as she saw a sudden ray of hope. Standing outside the clamshell, apparently unseen by Boyd, and armed with a pistol, was Ang Tsering.
Tsering must have heard the gunshot that killed Jameson, must have seen Boyd holding a gun on them. Swift thought he must have found a gun somewhere in Boyd’s lodge and that he would surely shoot or attempt to disarm Boyd as soon as he could. Even when the assistant sirdar was only a few feet behind Boyd, Swift still expected him to step forward and hit the American smartly over the head; right up until the moment that Boyd started speaking to Tsering without even turning around, as if he had always known the Nepalese was there. As if he didn’t need to worry about him. As if they were working together.
‘The yeti is already moving up toward the ice field,’ said Tsering.
‘Good. Okay, you know what to do. Any of them steps out from under the clamshell, shoot them. You should be comfortable enough in here,’ said Boyd, and with a final cheery wave, zipped up the airlock door behind him.
‘Goodbye,’ he shouted, and then dropped the outside flap to seal the entrance.
The sirdar turned immediately to Jack, brought his hands together in a namaste, bowed, and said, ‘I am sorry. Jack sahib. How it is happening, I don’t know. I thought Ang Tsering was good man, good assistant sirdar. I pick him. Yo saap. Yo bhiringi. It is my fault, Jack sahib. Malaai ris, Jack sahib. Malaai dukha.’
Jack shook his head.
‘Forget it, Hurké. It’s not your fault. The question is, what are we going to do about it? Do you think he’d really shoot if one of us went outside now?’
Hurké Gurung moved his head from side to side in an expression of uncertainty.
‘I am not sure at all,’ he said finally. ‘It is a terrible thing to do murder in my country. Tsering is not a very religious man. For him to kill someone, I think he would require very much money. Enough perhaps to leave Nepal for good. He has always wanted to go and live in America, I think.’
‘Boyd’s certainly not short of money,’ said Jack. ‘And his people could probably fix something with the State Department.’
‘Ke garne, Jack? What is to be done?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Perhaps, I am thinking he would kill one of you bideshi, because you are foreigners. He is a most resentful fellow I think. Always he has been most troublesome for more money, and for more equipment, always more. A real saaglo. But me? Perhaps he will be having more respect for me, because I am sirdar. For him, I am maalik. He will have to have maanu for me. And maybe more than a little fear too. Like some pahelo cowardly fellow.’
Jutta picked up Jameson’s jacket and covered the dead man’s face. Then she stood up and shook her head.
‘I think you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘I think I’m the one who he would find hardest to kill. After all the help I’ve given him—’ Jutta checked her irritation.
‘The memsahib is right, of course,’ said Hurké. ‘Perhaps if the memsahib was to engage Ang Tsering in conversation, then I might come at him from behind.’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ sighed Swift. ‘There’s only one way out of this damned tent. And it’s made of Kevlar too. Not exactly your average tent material.’ She punched the wall experimentally. ‘Not even a snow leopard could tear through this. This stuff’s virtually bulletproof.’
Hurké Gurung dived into his rucksack and came up with his Nepalese knife, the boomerang-shaped khukuri. He drew the eighteen-inch-long hatchet blade from its hard leather scabbard and hefted it confidently.
‘Pardon for contradiction, memsahib,’ he said. ‘But this will do the job. Maybe bulletproof, yes. But bulletproof not knife-proof. Khukuri. From when I was a Gurkha. Cut through anything. Very sharp. Even cut through Boyd sahib’s clamshell.’