Shortly before sundown the Chinese set up camp not far from Kyapra. They pitched tents and were settling down for the night. Bond and Chandra took up a position above them, nestled in an array of rock formations surrounded by a few trees.
“Well wait until dark, when they’re asleep,” Bond said. “Then we’ll see what there is to see.”
Chandra grinned. “I haven’t had this much fun since Bosnia.”
“Bosnia was fun?”
“Yes, sir! Any kind of action is better than sitting in England twiddling our thumbs. I’ve been to Zaire. The Gulf War was interesting. I had never been in that part of the world. I’m still waiting for the chance to use my khukri the way my ancestors did.”
“You mean that you haven’t killed anyone with it yet?”
“That’s right,” Chandra said. “I’ve chopped plenty of fruits and vegetables with it, but no enemy necks. Someday I make a good tossed salad with heads, and I don’t mean lettuce, eh, James?”
“You Gurkhas have a morbid sense of humor, did anyone ever tell you that?”
“All the time.”
“Chandra, if you’re part Buddhist, how is it that you could kill if you had to?”
“That’s a good question, James,” the Gurkha said. “Buddhists are not supposed to kill any living creature. However, I am a soldier and a Gurkha. We are here to preserve the dignity and freedom of man. I know it’s a contradiction in terms, but the Gurkhas have been a contradiction in terms for nearly two hundred years!”
Nightfall finally came, and they waited until the last embers of the Chinese campfire died. Then, slowly and silently, they crept down the hill toward the site. Bond had observed the group carefully so that he could pinpoint which tents held humans and which ones only equipment and food supplies. The portable kitchen, similar to their own, was built near there. The Sherpas were sleeping in tents close to this area, and Bond knew that they would probably be lighter keepers than the Chinese.
Using a penlight, Bond found sacks of rice and lentils. Another group of bags held tea. There was a sack of dried figs and other fruits.
He whispered to Chandra, “They seem fairly ill equipped, wouldn’t you say I’m afraid we have to play a dirty trick on them and contaminate the food somehow Then they’ll have to turn back to resupply themselves, and by then they’ll be too late to catch up. Got any ideas?”
Chandra whispered back, “That’s easy!” He removed the khukri from its sheath, then neatly slit open the bag of rice. He did it so swiftly that it didn’t make a sound. The rice poured out onto the ground. The next thing he did flabbergasted Bond. The Gurkha unzipped his fly and proceeded to urinate all over the spilled rice. He grinned at Bond the entire time.
“Hand me your knife,” Bond said, stifling a laugh. Chandra handed it over, still relieving himself. Bond slit open the other bags of food and poured the contents onto the pile of freshly sprayed rice. He took a stick and mixed it all up. Chandra zipped up, then removed the two tiny knives from the khukri sheath. He squatted down and rubbed the two blades together on the burlap sacks. A spark flew, then another, and another. After four tries, the burlap caught fire.
“I think it’s time we run now, James,” Chandra said.
A gunshot startled them, and they turned to flee. They heard several men shouting in Chinese. The flames grew in intensity as they climbed away from the camp. More gunshots whizzed past them, but by that time they were in the dark. The marksmen were firing blindly. Some of them retrieved torches and cast the beams over the hill, but they were ineffective. Bond could hear at least three men scrambling up the rocks after them. After more gunshots, the entire camp was up, running about and shouting. The Sherpas were busy trying to put out the fire, which had engulfed all their supplies. Bond and Chandra climbed back into their niche in the cliff and watched the chaos below. The pursuers had given up and returned to the campsite to help salvage what they could.
It took them half an hour to extinguish the fire. Bond and Chandra had achieved their goal. The Chinese expedition was completely sabotaged. They could hear them arguing and shouting at one another. The Sherpas began to argue as well, and Chandra could pick up a little of what they were saying.
“The Sherpas are very upset that the Chinese fired guns here. They say the gods will not be pleased and will bring misfortune on them. They refuse to go farther. They are now without any food. They are turning back in the morning.”
The Chinese calmed down after an hour. Someone had apparently brought out a couple of bottles of alcohol, and that did the trick. Eventually, they crawled back into their tents, leaving just one man with a rifle on guard.
Bond opened his North Face bivouac sack and secured it behind a large stone, where there was just enough room for him to stretch out. Chandra found a hole where he could curl up in his own sack.
“Shuba ratri, James,” Chandra said quietly.
When they awoke the next morning, the Chinese expedition had given up, packed, and left.
EIGHTEEN
TENSIONS RISE
WHEN BOND AND CHANDRA saw the village of Ghunsa perched on the side of a snow-covered peak, they breathed a sigh of relief. The ascent to 3,440 meters had taken its toll on them, and Bond found himself becoming winded quickly and having to stop and rest more often. Chandra, on the other hand, seemed to be unaffected by the altitude.
There were some yak herders living there, and Bond admired how people could live this high in the mountains and make ends meet. The villagers stopped and stared at the two of them, more curious about the man who was obviously a Gurkha soldier than the Caucasian encroaching on their land.
They rounded a bend and saw a campsite some two hundred meters away.
“That must be us,” Bond said. “I hope lunch is ready, I’m starving.”
They climbed up a slick wet rock face to a ledge. It wasn’t necessary to use climbing tools yet, but they knew they would be employing the ice axes soon enough. The trek from Ghunsa to the Base Camp was substantially steeper. The next two days would be more strenuous.
Bond and Chandra turned to continue toward the camp, when a bullet whizzed past them and struck the snow. Both men instinctively dived to the ground. Two more shots hit the snow around them
Chandra rolled next to a rock for better cover. Bond crawled on his belly to a large tree stump that must have been hundreds of years old.
“Do you see him?” Bond whispered.
Chandra carefully raised his head and looked about. “I don’t see anything.”
Bond looked up and saw a whiff of smoke on a cliff face overlooking the village. He pointed. “He’s up there. See?”
Chandra squinted and nodded. “What do we do?”
“I suppose we wait.”
“Who could it be?”
“Obviously someone who knows we’re here and doesn’t want us to rejoin our group.”
“The Chinese?”
Bond shook his head. “I don’t think so. There was no trace of them this morning. They went back the way they came.”
Chandra took a good look at their surroundings and pointed to a ledge fifty meters away. “If we can make it to that ledge, we can climb down, go around the cliff here, and come up on the other side of the camp.”
“Good thinking,” Bond said. “Let’s go together. It’ll give the sniper too many targets to aim for. On three. One . . . two . . . three!”
The men leaped from their cover and scrambled toward the ledge. Two more bullets zipped into the snow at their feet. Chandra reached the edge first, squatted, put his hands on a sturdy rock, and hurled himself over the side. Bond did the same thing, although not as gracefully. Together they hung for a few seconds, then gained a foothold on the side of the rock face. Carefully, they inched down ten feet to level ground.