“What’s the problem?” he said fuzzily.
The driver shot him an annoyed look.
“See for yourself,” he said.
Khalid jerked himself erect in his seat. Perhaps fifty or sixty meters up ahead on his right, he could see a string of electric warning flashers along the roadside, where snowbanks were piled high against the slope. They led toward a portable wooden barricade, casting bright red reflections off the inches-thick sheets of recently fallen cover on the blacktop and overhanging rock ledges. A pair of soldiers wearing combat helmets, hooded dun coats, and winter boots stood in front of the barricade, assault weapons slung over their shoulders. Angled crosswise behind it were three jeeps. They idled with their lights on, exhaust wisping from their tailpipes. There were more soldiers inside the vehicles, shadowy outlines in the silver moonlight.
“Maader chud,” Khalid swore. His eyes had popped wide open. “Do you think they’re regular infantry?”
“Look carefully. Those rifles should give you an answer.”
Khalid stared out his windshield at the soldiers and muttered another curse. The submachine guns were the H&K G3s issued to border-patrol units.
“Rangers,” he said.
“So it seems.”
They rolled on in silence a moment
“This could be something routine. A spot check,” Khalid said, sounding none too confident. “In any event, Yousaf, we have the proper documents.”
The driver inwardly dismissed his weak reassurances. Chikar was twenty-five klicks from the restricted zone encompassing the western boundaries of Kashmir’s Muzaffarabad and Poonch districts, with their military outposts and heavily guarded refugee camps. It was, furthermore, twice that distance from the Line of Control. In the relative quiet that had held across the frontier over the past six months, Yousaf ’s team had made runs to the area many times without encountering rangers this far from their forward posts.
The coal trucks rumbled toward the barrier, their tires pressing wide tread imprints into the snow. Yousaf saw the two standing guards move into the middle of the road and wave phosphorescent wands over their heads to bring the procession to a halt.
He tapped his hydraulic brakes and the truck slowed with a hiss.
Khalid lurched in its passenger seat. He, too, had grown increasingly sure of imminent trouble. And wasn’t it a fair expectation in these times of bottom-dollar loyalties? His country’s president was nothing more than a bharway, a pimp, his regular army a stable of debased whores — now on their knees for the Americans, now raising their bottoms to let the Indians have a poke at them. For Khalid and his confederates it had been the ultimate shame when even the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate began turning itself out for the greenback. Praise be to God, there were yet a few who refused to cheapen themselves.
“Make certain the others are ready,” Yousaf ordered now, tilting his head back toward the trucks at his rear. “Use only the beep code.”
Khalid looked at him across the cab.
“You think those men can break our encryption?” he said.
Yousaf shrugged, his hands on the wheel.
“Who knows what brought them here,” he said. “If they’re going to pick up anything, let it be meaningless noise.”
Khalid grunted. Again, he saw the wariness on Yousaf’s features. And again he understood what was at its root. It wasn’t only the army they had to worry about — their Hindu bedmates across the LoC were especially skilled at radio intercepts.
He took his cell phone from inside his coat, switched on its walkie-talkie channel, and used the tone pad to transmit a short series of beeps. A moment later he heard a response sequence in the earpiece and slipped the radio back into his pocket.
Yousaf brought the truck to a full stop as one of the soldiers approached his door, glanced at the painted company name on its exterior, and then motioned for him to roll down his window. He lowered it halfway with his right hand, noticing that the second guard had walked around the front grille toward the passenger side.
“It’s a hideous night to be out, my brother,” Yousaf said, leaning his head out of the cab. “Has there been some sort of local disturbance?”
The ranger ignored his question, his bearded face showing no flicker of expression. His eyes skimmed the inside of the cab, lingered on Khalid a second, then returned to Yousaf.
“I see you’re with Daud Fuel and Energy out of the capital,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Headed where?”
“The power station at Chikar,” Khalid said.
The ranger’s eyes were steady on him.
“I’ll have a look at your papers, if you please,” he said.
Khalid had them ready on a clipboard. He leaned over and passed it out the window.
“Is it not late for a delivery?” the guard said, flipping through the permits and manifests
Yousaf had kept his left hand on the steering wheel. Now he flapped it in a gesture of long-suffering resignation and let it drop onto his seat near the floor-mounted stick shift.
“In winter our rail shipment from Dera Ghazi comes when it comes… and what can we do but wait for our pickup?” he said. “Today a storm in the valley put them — and us — three hours behind schedule.”
Silence. The wind blew across the snow-decked summits and ledges of the vast mountain range, swirling shrouds of powder into the air. They drifted under the moonlight and sprinkled crystalline glitter onto Yousaf’s hood and windshield.
He glanced into his rearview mirror and watched the second border guard continue down the left side of the truck toward its flatbed. He’d expected the rangers would not leave well enough alone, although his answers to the questions posed him had been verifiable. The shipment’s destination, his explanation for its lateness… that was all true as far as it went. Daud was a legitimate coal and petroleum company, and nine times out of ten its trucks to points out along the country’s eastern and western territories carried only their declared cargo.
Yousaf doubted it was any coincidence that this stop had occurred at the odd trip out. Someone had been clued to something. Presumably something vague and largely dismissed, though. Otherwise there would have been more than a token military presence out on the road.
“Respectfully, might we be allowed to get underway?” he asked. “The drivers are tired, and we still have a distance to travel.”
The ranger looked at him.
“I’ll let you go as soon as possible,” he said. “But my men will need to inspect the back of your trucks.”
Yousaf made a surprised face, eased his left hand down into the space between the driver’s and passenger seats.
“To what purpose?” he said, and felt his heartbeat quicken. In a moment, he knew, the soldier would radio the jeeps. “Each is carrying upwards of forty-five thousand kilos of coal. It will be this time tomorrow before you’re finished.”
“Relax, I didn’t say we’d have to shovel it all onto the road.” The ranger started to pass the clipboard back through the open window. “You have your job, we have ours.”
And that was the regrettable catch, Yousaf thought.
With the ranger’s arm still inside the cab, holding out the clipboard, Yousaf grabbed his wrist with his right hand to pull him forward and off-balance. At the same instant he brought his knife up from the space behind the clutch with his other hand, swept it in front of and across his own chest, and plunged it into the ranger’s throat under the angle of the jaw to penetrate the trachea, sharply turning its serrated blade in the wound, then jerking it to the right to cut a wide horizontal slit that severed both carotid arteries.
The ranger’s eyes rolled and he emitted a barely audible sputtering sound. His hot blood steaming in the cold night air, pulsing over Yousaf’s hand and arm from the ragged gash in his throat, he slumped forward as Yousaf held on to his wrist to keep his body pressed up against the side of the truck a little longer.