The thought galvanized him, made him urge the sun to hurry up. If he didn’t do what he had to do-grease Neal Carey-he might very well have to spend his remaining days here in this communist paradise. If Carey made it back to the States and slobbered about what the mean Mr. Simms did to him, the folks at the Company might notice the conflict with his job description. They might start asking some unfortunate questions. Then even those shit-for-brains might figure out that he was taking a regular paycheck from the Chinese. And that could get ugly. Probably even that stupid geek Pendleton had put it together.
He unzipped the long case and pulled out the rifle. The Chinese 7.62 Type 53 was by no means his favorite, but it would do. He favored bolt action, and the telescopic sight adjusted nicely. He sat down behind a large rock and screwed the sight onto the barrel. Then he hoisted the rifle to his shoulder, braced it against his cheek, and checked the sight out in the gathering light.
He spotted a band of monkeys in some bamboo about two hundred yards down the slope. He thought about his confrontation the day before with the fucking little bastards. I’ll show them an ambush. He centered the cross hairs on the chest of the largest monkey in the group, and squeezed the trigger. The shot threw high and to the left. He adjusted the sights accordingly, and aimed again. The monkey continued to gnaw on some exotic piece of fruit. The bullet slammed squarely into his chest and sent him tumbling down the hill.
Okey-dokey, Simms thought as he slung the rifle over his shoulder. He tried to force the excitement of imminent revenge out of his system, but every time he thought about struggling out of that fucking river, he got angry. He had damned near drowned, and he had sure as hell scraped the shit out of his legs crawling onto those rocks and pulling himself out. So, while revenge might be unprofessional…
He walked back to the old dining hall to find Peng and that other little slant. He’d probably need a crowbar to pry them from their rice bowls. He’d just about needed a gun to force them to walk in the dark last night, the little chickenshits. What did they think flashlights were for, the movies? Well, anyway, they’d picked up a couple of hours before packing it in for the night. Now it was time to get moving again.
Neal struggled out of the kang. Just turning to put his feet on the floor hurt, and bending over to put on his shoes was an exercise in advanced masochism. Lan wanted to do it for him, but Neal figured that if he couldn’t put his own shoes on, he damned well couldn’t climb the rest of the mountain.
Lan diplomatically withdrew as Neal winced with pain, and reappeared a few minutes later with two steaming bowls of porridge.
“What’s that?” Neal asked.
“Congee,” she replied. “Rice gruel.”
Neal ate the Chinese version of oatmeal gratefully-the thin cereal warmed his stomach in the early morning cold. He ate standing up; he didn’t want to put himself through the small torture of having to sit down and get up again. They finished their breakfast quietly, the tension between them palpable. The mountain’s summit would be the deciding point in their relationship, and they both felt it but didn’t want to talk about it. First they must get to the top of the mountain.
The trail started gently and led through a thick cedar forest. It was cold and dark, and Neal shivered. The altitude was starting to get to him, and he noticed that he was starting to breath heavily. He couldn’t help but notice; each breath stabbed his rib cage.
They walked for about twenty minutes to the far edge of the woods. Neal looked ahead on the trail and wished that he hadn’t; the steps ahead seemed to go straight up.
“Three Look Stairway,” Li said. “Pilgrims look at it three times before they want to climb it.”
“I’ve looked at it three times,” Neal answered, “and I still don’t want to climb it.”
The grade was so steep that his knees practically touched his chest with every step. He consciously pushed off the balls of his feet, trying to concentrate on his legs as his ribs burned and stabbed him. He had to stop after the first twenty steps.
Li turned around. “Please go back to the monastery. I will bring Robert down.”
“Right.”
“I promise.”
“I started out to climb the fucking mountain. I am going to climb the fucking mountain.”
“You are a fool.”
“I’m not arguing.”
She turned and started back up. He caught his breath and went after her. Yi, ar, yi, ar, yi, aaarrgh! His ribs threatened him. He felt the sun begin to beat on his hunched-over back. Yi, ar, yi, ar… yi… ar … yi… ar… yi… ar… yi. He stopped to rest again. He wanted to collapse on the stairs, to lie down and rest, but he knew he probably couldn’t get up again, so he forced himself to take another step. Wrapping one arm around his ribs, he took another step. The pain nauseated him. Another step. More pain. Another. Yi, ar, yi, ar. Another rest.
He started out again. The trail curved sharply and then opened out onto the edge of a cliff. To Neal’s right a sheet or rock rose as high as he could see. To his left-much to closely to his left-was a drop of at least a thousand feet.
Don’t look down, Neal warned himself. Isn’t that what they say in all the movies?
He peeked again. His stomach lurched and his head spun. That’s probably why they say not to look down, he thought. He felt as if he were hanging on to the edge of the world as he began his trudge up the mountain again. Yi, ar, yi, ar, yi…
Just focus on counting, he thought. Don’t think about the pain, don’t think about the fear, don’t think about Pendleton, or about her, and for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t think about the fact that they’re gaining on you. At this pace, they have to be gaining on you. Gaining fast. But don’t think about that. Think about yi, ar, yi, ar… yi… ar… yi… ar… for two solid hours straight up the hill.
Li was waiting for him on a broad landing.
She pointed up ahead of her. He could see a huge peak, shaped like a big nose, rising above the rest of the rocks.
“The summit,” she said.
“How far?”
“Four hours. Perhaps for you six.”
Perhaps for me death.
“Is it all this steep?”
“Most. One place is gentle, almost level. But, I am afraid, it is also very frightening,”
Swell.
“Why frightening?”
“The path is very narrow.”
“Over a very long fall?”
She nodded and frowned. Then she smiled and added, “But after that, it is a short climb to summit.”
Neal looked at the summit again. Fuck you, Silkworm’s Eyebrow! I’m coming and you can’t stop me! You took your best shot and I’m still on my feet, still climbing!
“Let’s get going,” he said.
Xiao Wu crossed the Bridge of Deliverance. The spray from the waterfall felt good. The day was very hot, even up here on the mountain, and his feet hurt. All he had to wear were his leather city shoes, and the blisters had already started to form the day before. Today they were raw, and he wished he could stop and dip his feet into the pool below the bridge.
But the American was setting an unrelenting pace. Even fat Peng was keeping up with it, so Wu thought that he had to do it as well. Besides, they were still angry with him for letting Frazier get away, and they only brought him along so he could point out exactly where the fugitive had started up the mountain.
Perhaps, Wu thought, I should have misled them. That would have been treason, of course, but why is the American carrying the rifle? Why is the American here at all? It doesn’t seem right.
They were going to kill Frazier, he knew that, and that didn’t seem right, either.
He forced the thought from his mind and picked up his pace.
Neal collapsed at the top of Three Look Stairway. He turned over on his back and gasped with pain and fatigue. He didn’t even try to stop the tears from rolling down his cheeks. His chest heaved and his ribs hurt like they were breaking all over again. He could barely hear Li walking back down the path toward him.