As they emerged into a broad open field of gravel and low heather, Lokesh called out softly and pointed at a small flock of grouse-like birds, dappled with the white remnants of their winter plumage, that were browsing on the field two hundred feet away. "Lha gyal lo!" Lokesh called softly.
Then the birds exploded.
Gravel, plants, and birds burst into the air with a deafening blast. Chemi shouted and dropped to the ground. Tenzin grabbed Anya and pulled her behind a boulder as Shan pushed Lokesh in the same direction. The American did not move, but stood, cursing loudly in English as the rubble tumbled to the ground. As Winslow took a step forward, pulling out his binoculars, another patch of ground fifty feet beyond the first erupted with the same violence, blasting stones far into the sky. Winslow retreated to the rocks beside Shan, still cursing, and a third explosion ripped through the still afternoon air.
Abruptly, there was silence. Tiny bits of soil began to shower down on them, and three small columns of smoke drifted upward from small craters in the meadow. Three explosions, in a line, evenly spaced. Like the ones they had witnessed from the heights of the mountain that morning.
Chemi rose, terror in her eyes. Tenzin stepped to her side, his eyes upward, watching something white drift down toward them. It was a feather, and they all watched it in silence until it touched the ground in front of them. Lokesh began a mantra in a low, sorrowful tone.
"What would the army…" Chemi began, and rubbed her ears.
Shan realized his own ears were ringing. "Not the army," he heard Winslow say, as if from a distance, and the American pointed toward the far end of the clearing.
Several figures were emerging from the outcropping at the far end of the field. They wore helmets, but not the helmets of soldiers. Their helmets were red and silver, the kind construction workers sometimes wore. Shan motioned the others back into the rocks. He stepped hesitantly into the clearing and waited.
The fury of the man in the lead was evident. Even though he was still out of earshot they could tell he was shouting and pointing at them, pointing at the small craters, even turning to wave his fist at the small party that followed him. As he reached the crater nearest them the man halted and examined Shan, then removed his silver helmet and marched quickly forward, his hands clenched, his mouth curled in anger. For a moment Shan thought the man was going to throw the helmet at him.
"Just walking across the ground could have ruined the test!" he shouted as he advanced.
The stranger replaced his helmet as he reached Shan, as though to say he was prepared for violence. He was a Han, slightly taller than Shan, square-shouldered, with knuckles that bore the scars of having been laid open many times. He wore a green nylon coat that bore the emblem of a golden oil derrick on the left breast.
"We could have been killed," Shan said quietly.
"You could have ruined our test and been killed," the man shot back loudly, his eyes still blazing.
"You did kill some birds." Anya appeared a few feet behind Shan.
The words, or perhaps just the soft, disappointed way Anya spoke them, seemed to deflate the man. He frowned. "Walking in the test quadrant, so close to the charges, can distort the results," he growled, his anger seeming to ebb into frustration.
"How could we know?" Shan asked.
"Know? All you need to know is that the whole area was off-limits. Don't you read? Posters in every village below, with dates for testing in each quadrant. Only a fool would-"
As he spoke another man approached, a short man wearing dark glasses. His heavy cheeks and compact features had the look of a Mongolian. A number of instruments hung from his neck. A small, expensive camera. Binoculars. A compass, and a small black-cased device that may have been an altimeter. He wore a red nylon vest and, rather than a helmet, a red American-style cap with a broad front visor, that also bore the image of a golden derrick. The hair exposed below the cap was long, but trimmed and oiled. He looked surprisingly well-groomed for climbing the mountain trails.
"We didn't come that way," Anya announced.
Again her words seemed to take the strangers by surprise. The man in the sunglasses studied Anya, then Shan, and looked behind them. Chemi stood there, and Tenzin stepped out of the shadows. The man in sunglasses turned to the first man, who cocked his head as if suddenly very curious. He pulled a map from his pocket and studied it intensely.
"Which way then?" the man in the helmet asked.
"Sometimes sheep get lost in the hills," Shan interjected, taking another step forward.
"You have no sheep," the man observed.
"I said they were lost," Shan shot back.
There was a sudden mechanical clicking. The second man, with the sunglasses, was shooting photographs of them, rapidly pressing the shutter and winding as he aimed the device at each of them. An instant later a similar clicking and whirling answered the first, and Shan turned to see Winslow photographing the oil crew, answering each of the man's shots with one of his own. The man with the dark glasses lowered his camera and glared at Winslow; Winslow lowered his camera and the man saw the American's face. He straightened and stepped closer, then twisted about and ordered the rest of the work crew back, leaving only the man in the green jacket by his side.
"I am the foreman," the man in green hesitantly announced, looking to the second man as though for a cue. "Team leader for this field study. For the Qinghai Petroleum Venture." He looked from Shan to Winslow and back again, obviously uncertain which to address. "There must have been a misunderstanding." He studied Shan's frayed clothes and decided to look at Winslow as he spoke. "You should have been warned about the blasting zone."
"Why would you look for oil so high in the mountains?" Winslow asked in an offhand tone, taking off his hat and pushing back his hair.
"Not oil, not here. The blasting is monitored by seismometers positioned in the mountains and in the valley where the exploration is focused. These are very complex geologic formations. We need to record the way the vibrations travel through the rock to define the geologic structure, so we can understand how large the deposit of oil is, how economic it would be to extract."
"And?" Winslow asked, still in his disinterested tone.
"So far the results are inconclusive. It will depend on what the drilling strikes in the valley," the geologist said with a thin smile. "Our models suggest a strike big enough to justify at least a ten-year project here."
"Were you blasting three days ago, on the south side of the mountain? Or this morning?" Winslow demanded. "Have you been on the ridge on the far side of that big plain?"
The foreman glanced at his companion again. "No. We do not operate outside our concession area."
Winslow studied the two men. "Qinghai Petroleum," he observed, "has American partners."
"Italian," the foreman replied, "French, British. And American. We work with Americans on this project."
"So you know Melissa Larkin."
The geologist's expression froze, and he threw a pleading glance toward the man in the sunglasses.
"A horrible thing," the short man observed in an earnest tone. "Tragic, so far from home. So sudden." He removed his glasses and fixed Winslow with a steady gaze. There was sympathy in his words, but not in his eyes.