The first few miles were gentle, past rich green fields, trees-the valley on one side, villages peeking through the trees on the other. But as soon as they neared the Braldu River, the trail veered sharply upward.
With the sun beating down it was boiling hot, but when afternoon clouds moved in, the temperature quickly dropped into the forties. Dark clouds sped across the sky.
This is the easy part, Crocker thought.
After a long day of trekking, the Americans stopped to set up their tents. While they hammered spikes into the hard ground, the porters called out evening prayers to Allah. The sounds collided and echoed into the valley.
As Crocker watched, the porters, bickering and laughing, created a communal shelter behind three-foot-high rock walls, which they covered with a plastic sheet. For warmth they huddled together, wrapped in thin blankets and woolen shawls while the cook prepared a dinner of daal (a bland stew made from dried beans), chawal (rice with kidney beans), and achar (spiced Indian pickles), which all the men shared. Then they slept.
Two days of trekking later, the team reached the Baltoro Glacier, which slowed them down considerably. Most of the slow-moving ice river they traversed was covered with rocks, sand, and dirt, giving it a grayish aspect. The parts exposed to the sun were slick and especially treacherous.
Crocker led the way, looking to avoid ice ridges and crevasses. To his left, sharp granite peaks covered with snow and ice stabbed the sky.
He wished Holly was with him to see this. She was a government operative like him, also a black belt in karate and an accomplished runner and cyclist. Fit and beautiful, too. Their friends and family called them Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
He wondered what she was doing, and how she was getting along with Jenny. As much as he loved them both, he preferred the excitement of training with the team and missions to the comforts of home.
His first wife could never understand that. But Holly did. Crocker knew that he was lucky to have found her-a woman who appreciated what he did and didn’t try to change him. He gave her total credit for making their marriage work.
He pushed ahead, picking his way through an endless maze of giant boulders, all the while thinking he had to track down Abu Rasul Zaman. Shoot the bastard in the head.
One of the Balti porters told him the glacier moved so fast that the route was different every two or three weeks. Sounded a bit like his own life.
Eventually they reached a path that wound a thousand feet up from the glacier to the next campsite, perched high on a hill. It was a slippery, near vertical climb.
“How much farther?” Akil shouted.
Turning to look over his shoulder, Crocker saw Mancini lose his grip on the ice, flip in the air, and slide ten feet before he could perform a self-arrest by sticking his ice axe in the frozen snow and stopping his momentum.
Shit!
He was down, squirming, trying to pull the axe out from underneath his body.
Crocker shouted: “Is he okay?”
Davis, by Mancini’s side, shouted back: “The blade went into his thigh. He smashed his knee and ribs.”
“Let me see.”
A light rain started to fall as they arrived at the permanent camp. Multicolored tents covered a broad grassy slope three hundred yards above the glacier, which formed an enormous granite backdrop, like a giant rippled curtain. As the porters sang and banged out an intricate rhythm on blue plastic drums, Crocker bandaged the ugly slash to Mancini’s right thigh. Then he fitted him with an elastic knee brace and handed him a couple of Motrins.
He felt for damage to his ribs, kneecap, and ligaments. “You might have bruised and possibly fractured a couple of ribs. The knee looks bruised, not cracked. If that’s the extent of your injuries, you’re lucky.”
“That’s the same knee I smashed playing football,” Mancini said.
“You’re probably gonna have to stay off of it awhile.”
“Fuck me.”
“How’d it happen?”
“I was feeling a little light-headed,” Mancini said. “I started imagining the smell of my wife’s lasagna. Then I thought I heard her talking to me.”
The long hours in the thin air were known to play tricks on people’s brains.
“Breathe deeply, stay hydrated, and don’t lose focus,” Crocker warned his men.
When word reached the Americans that members of a Norwegian team had invited them to drinks and dinner in a nearby tent, Mancini and his battered body chose to stay behind.
Crocker, wrapped in his parka, stepped past a group of porters who were roasting a goat on a spit and bent over to fit through the opening in the Norwegians’ North Face tent. Davis and Akil entered behind him.
Fluorescent camping lanterns lit the tight, warm space. Half a dozen fit, scruffy men sat around a portable table, drinking, eating, smoking cigars. The air was thick with smells.
All eyes ogled the plates of mashed aloo-potatoes and chili peppers fried with onions and spices-daal, and chawal.
A tall man with a full face covered with reddish brown stubble saluted them with a tin cup of brandy.
“Are you the Americans?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Here’s to cowboys, apple pie, and cheerleaders,” he said.
A man wearing a black ski cap turned to face them. “Would any of you happen to know Chief Warrant Officer Tom Crocker of the U.S. Navy?”
Crocker did a double take. “Why?”
“I heard from my embassy that he was climbing in the area and would like to speak to him.”
“Crocker. That’s me. Who are you?”
“Mikael Klausen,” the Norwegian said, extending his hand and clearing a place beside him. “I work in my country’s foreign office.”
“Nice to meet you, Mikael.”
He probably was the foreign national Donaldson had told him about. But Crocker wanted to make sure.
“Who told you I was here?” he asked.
“A man from your embassy named Mr. Lou Donaldson.”
“How do you know Donaldson?”
“I was introduced to him through Ambassador Connelly. Your ambassador and my ambassador to Pakistan play poker together.”
“And you trekked all the way up to look for me?”
“I have a proposition for you from my king.”
Chapter Six
There’s no school like old school, and I’m the fucking headmaster.
– RocknRolla
Wind smacked the side of the oval tent, sounding like a machine gun, as Mikael refilled Crocker’s mug with Teerenpeli single malt whisky poured from a tin flask. Then the Norwegian slipped the flask into his sleeping bag next to his iPod, water bottles, and other items he wanted to keep from freezing.
The Teerenpeli went down smoothly. Rich and old, its distilled essence of earth warmed Crocker’s body.
Several other Norwegian climbers slept in sleeping bags behind them, snoring and occasionally passing gas-which became more of a problem the higher one climbed, according to Boyle’s law (pV = K). Mancini had explained earlier that for a fixed amount of a gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional. In other words, once you lower the atmospheric pressure the gas will escape.
One of the sleeping Norwegians called out the name Berit. Whoever she was.
The rest of Crocker’s team had returned to their tent, where their team leader hoped they were resting for the climb ahead.
He and the Norwegian spent hours comparing backgrounds and sharing stories about their children, tastes in food, music, and women, the economic states of their respective countries. All prelude.