“Surely they wouldn’t just shoot Shan,” Yates interjected.
“Of course they would,” Jomo said impatiently, gesturing them up the road. “They will shoot you both and rejoice to be rid of outsider pests.” He seemed eager for Shan and Yates to leave.
Shan let the America pull him away as he studied the Tibetan in confusion. After a long moment he grabbed Yates’s binoculars and studied the roadway ahead, spotting the fresh mound of rocks he had piled over the dog’s grave less than a hundred yards away. He was looking for a place to hide the truck when a frantic cry from Yates caused him to spin around. Jomo was standing on a ledge above the road. He had taken off his coat. Under it he was wearing a maroon robe, no doubt one of those Shan had found in the old underground chapel. Yates threw off his pack and ran.
Jomo was doing a little jig by the time Yates reached him, first toward the descending road, to get the attention of those below, then toward the American to evade Yates’s desperate efforts to pull him down. As Shan reached the Tibetan, shards of rock exploded from boulders at either side.
“The fool!” Yates shouted in English as he grabbed Jomo’s arm. “He wants them to think he’s one of the monks!” When Jomo squirmed out of the American’s grip Yates lowered his shoulder and slammed into the Tibetan, knocking him down, pinning him as Shan lifted the binoculars and ventured a glance over the ledge. Less than half a mile away two of the heavy highway trucks, shed of their trailers, blocked the road. At least two of the men beside them held rifles. Their attention was riveted on the rocks where Jomo had appeared. They had not noticed the second cloud of dust behind them. Even if the knobs had orders to find Shan, they could not ignore men with illegal firearms.
Shan looked back at Jomo’s beloved old Jiefang truck, then studied the straight stretch of roadway before the curve where the heavy trucks sat, above one of the many high cliffs along the road.
He gazed at Jomo, who sat on the ledge, his arms behind him, locked in the American’s grip. “They will kill you Jomo. They will kill you with as much thought as swatting a fly. And when they see you don’t have the right gau, they will kick your body and move on.”
“They’ll have to catch me,” Jomo shot back.
“Can you outrun a bullet?” Shan asked. He walked along the truck, his hand on its body, then considered the straight road below them, cut through the living rock so that much of it was flanked on both sides by stone. “I’ll need your help,” he said to Jomo.
Jomo gazed in confusion for a moment, then followed Shan’s gaze as he turned back to the truck. “Noooo-oooo!” he cried in a mournful tone. “Not her!”
“Do you want to help the monks?” Shan asked.
As the Tibetan nodded Yates released his grip and the two men listened to hear Shan’s plan. As Jomo stripped off his robe then turned the truck to face downhill, Shan and Yates frantically collected rags, cargo covers, even clumps of heather, then ripped Jomo’s robe in three pieces as Jomo began working with a rope around the steering wheel. They quickly produced three dummies seated in the cab, their shoulders wrapped in the maroon of monks’ robes, hats pulled low. If Shan’s scheme worked no one below would have time for more than a quick glance. They would see what they had come for, three monks making a desperate last stand. With a satisfied nod he turned to Jomo, who was scrubbing tears from his cheeks.
“You said she was a battle junk,” Shan reminded him. “This is what they did, ram their enemy to destroy their ships.”
“She never failed us,” Jomo said in a cracking voice, with a hand on the rusty fender.
“She never failed us,” Shan repeated. He rummaged in his pocket and found a cone of incense which he lit and placed on the dashboard. “The spirits will find her,” he observed as the smoke curled around the wheel and gearshift.
Jomo insisted on starting the engine himself, which groaned and sputtered one last time before finally coming to life. He wedged a stone on the accelerator and jumped out as the truck began rolling downhill.
As the figures below darted onto the road, guns at the ready to stop the fugitive truck, first one then another spun about. Soldiers had materialized behind them.
The old truck gained speed quickly, the engine’s backfire like a battle cry. The bounty hunters and soldiers scattered as they saw it was not slowing down. It smashed into the first semi cab with an explosion of metal and glass, knocking it on its side, sparks flying as the combined vehicles, locked at bumpers, careened into the second truck with a glancing blow that shoved it onto the road below the curve. As it reached the curve, the first truck knocked away the small boulders guarding the cliff below, then disappeared over the edge. Jomo’s old Jiefang seemed to hesitate, as if sensing its fate. Then the weight of the first truck, still attached to the bumper, jerked it forward and the old blue junk sailed out into the void.
No one moved, not even at the sound of the explosion, not until a dense column of smoke reached the top of the cliff. The stunned bountyhunters offered no protest as the soldiers relieved them of their guns. Shan studied the short column of men as they were led away. The two tall Manchurians were not among them.
Jomo watched the smoke with a stricken expression as Shan and Yates pulled on their packs.
“She will have a new life,” Shan offered to the mechanic. “I think,” he added after a moment’s thought, “that she will be a jet airplane.”
The words shook Jomo out of his melancholy. He nodded slowly and turned to Shan with a sad grin. “You can’t go back, Shan,” he warned. “Yesterday I saw that Madame Zheng sitting at Tsipon’s desk, waiting for him.”
“Waiting?”
“He wasn’t there. He must have come later. They’re planning something against us.”
Shan paused to consider Jomo’s news. It was hard to believe that Zheng would seek Tsipon’s counsel on anything. “I don’t want you going back either,” Shan replied. “Not until we return. Go up to the base camp.”
“In my depot tent,” Yates offered, “there is a cot you can use. Take it for the night.”
“I’ll come up with you,” Jomo suggested.
“No,” Shan said. “Go to the base. Stay away from the soldiers who will be on the road today.”
Yates pulled a T-shirt from his pack, one of those with his expedition company’s name. “There. You’re one of my sherpas.”
“But tomorrow morning,” Shan said. “We’ll need a ride back to town. Be at the big rocks ahead.”
Jomo did not hesitate. “I’ll be there before sunrise with one of the company trucks. I’ll sleep in it if I need to.”
For several desperate moments Shan thought he must have been wrong in assuming that Dakpo had watched from the hidden trail as he buried the dog, but then he saw a single hoof-print, several days old, then another, and another angling upward. The trail was barely discernible at first, so faint Shan climbed as much by intuition as physical signs. After half an hour of steady ascent they reached a small sheltered plateau where soil had collected, giving life to tufts of grass and heather. They walked slowly about the edge until at last Yates pointed to a large hoof-print, perhaps a week old, made by an animal climbing upward. Shan knelt and recognized it immediately.
“The mule,” he said, and without looking back quickly followed a second, and third print into a narrow channel between two high ledges. Soon the trail widened and its packed soil became obvious. They frightened a flock of mountain sheep as they lay on an outcropping, stopping to admire faded paintings of a protector demon on squared boulders that marked what Shan knew must have been the crossing of a pilgrims’ path.