Drang came quickly down the steps. He paused at the bottom, craning his neck from right to left. Then he put his shoulder to the door, sending it flying back on its hinges. With his torch held out in front of him, he stepped into the darkness of the room, bolting the door shut behind him.
Shelving was arranged in several well-ordered lines before the door, filled with jars, boxes and crates. Drang moved stealthily down each row in turn, the sinewy muscles of his right arm visible in the torchlight, eyes darting ceaselessly from one object to the next.
Rounding the last line of shelves, he paused.
‘I’ve got you now,’ he whispered.
There was a whooshing sound as his torch suddenly flared into a fountain of flames. Fire rained down over his neck and the bare flesh of his arm, as the shoulder of his robe burst into flame. He dropped to the floor, screaming in surprise and pain as his hands raised instinctively to protect his face. He twisted on the floor, the flames leaping higher with each move he made, eating through the dry fabric of his clothes and into his flesh.
With a horrible gurgling sound, Drang’s hands clawed at his clothing, trying to pull it free from his body, whilst in the far corner of the room, the bolts on the door were quickly drawn back.
Norbu emerged from the storeroom, trembling with shock. His mind was numb, the enormity of what he had done paralysing him. The half-empty vial of candle oil he was holding slipped from his grasp, smashing on the flagstones.
Across the calm of the monastery, the sound of trumpets struck up once again. It was a brief wavering sound, fading almost as soon as it began.
Norbu started running down the corridor again. The Abbot was the only one who could stop Rega now.
Chapter 51
Smoke rose from the crooked line of pencil flares, glowing orange in the darkness. Chen worked slowly, double-checking each marking. Every twenty yards or so he would reach into a small canvas sack and strike the base of a flare on a nearby rock, triggering it to life. Sparks shot up into the night sky, bathing the vast slabs of rocks in their blood-red glow before settling into a long, steady flame.
For three hours he had been moving from rock to rock, searching for the next marking and leading the way through the Kooms. The entire SOF unit followed silently in his wake. They moved with their rifles slung across their backs, keeping their hands free for balance. Despite their training and experience in mountain warfare, none of them had ever experienced such relentless terrain.
Eventually Chen came to a huge boulder separated from the rest. He reached inside his bag, thumbed off the safety and sparked another flare. In front of him, a wide tract of deep snow was suddenly illuminated, sloping up into a gulley. He reached up to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Finally they were through.
In the main sweep of the gulley the snow was even deeper, forcing him to rock his body forward as he tried to move forward. To his left was a towering cliff, possibly two hundred metres high. Jagged buttresses were lined in vertical towers along it, sweeping round to where they finally joined with the snow gulley ahead.
Chen tilted his head up, letting his eyes trace the sides of the cliff. The scale of them was simply awesome. The mountain seemed to loom over him with an air of silent menace.
Suddenly he caught sight of a light. It shimmered somewhere high up towards the top of the cliff. He tried to focus on it, but the light blurred back into the darkness. He waited, eyes straining against the dark, but there was nothing. Then, just as he was about to turn back to the other soldiers, he saw it again — but this time there were two.
‘Sir, you need to see this.’
Zhu came to a halt, his eyes following the line of Chen’s pointing finger. Reaching into the front pouch of his webbing, he pulled out his Leica binoculars, swivelling the focus wheel impatiently. After a moment, he lowered them again.
‘It must be the Westerners,’ he said, then continued matter-of-factly, ‘take three men and lead them up the cliff in front. You’ll need to move fast to cut them off.’
‘Climb that? At night?’
Chen heard the shock in his own voice. He stared in disbelief at the towering cliff-face in front of them. Even during the day it would have been a formidable climb.
‘Capturing the Westerners should be your only concern, Lieutenant. You have ropes and harnesses. I suggest you use them.’
‘But, Captain, if we were only to traverse round up the gulley…’ Chen trailed off as he stared into Zhu’s black eyes, made blacker by the darkness. He knew there was no point in arguing. The captain would never back down.
Ten minutes later he stood at the base of the cliff with three of the SOF soldiers as the remainder busied themselves establishing a new camp on the edge of the snowline. As he explained the mission he looked into their faces, suddenly realising how young they all were. At most they were in their early-twenties. In the moonlight, he could see their frightened expressions. Fighting men was one thing. Fighting nature was something else.
Roped together in two separate pairs they set off, rifles slung across their backs. They climbed without gloves, the rock ice-cold to the touch, with pockets of drifted snow collected in the deep cracks. But the granite itself was solid, making their footing more stable and their handholds secure.
Above them the clouds began to disperse, scattering in thin wisps across the sky and allowing a wash of silvery moonlight. Climbing slowly, they could just make out the route ahead. Both pairs followed the edge of one of the main buttresses, pressing their right shoulder against the cliff-face as they clawed their way higher. With no bolts or friends to jam into the cracks for security, the two leading climbers fed the rope over outcrops of rock that they passed, hoping it would snag if one of them fell.
Chen stopped to catch his breath and stared down between his legs, watching the soldier below him force his way higher up the face. He could hear the laboured sound of the man’s breath and see the absolute concentration in his eyes. Chen pulled up some slack, looping it over a spur by his head, then turned and began climbing again.
They had chanced upon a good route and with each minute drew closer to the summit. Chen’s confidence began to soar as he saw the twinkling of stars beyond the top of the ridge. They were close now. No more than fifty feet.
From somewhere lower down he heard a scraping sound, then a long, panicked yell. Chen turned to see the lead climber from the other pair slipping down the cliff. His arms flailed desperately and his body twisted round like a spinning top, gaining momentum as he fell. For a split second, the rope between the two climbers caught on a spur, then the sheer force of the fall ripped it free, yanking the second climber from the face also. There was a long, petrified scream.
Chen watched both bodies fall the length of the cliff before thudding into the rock at its base. One of the rifles went off with the force of the impact, sending a booming echo across the entire mountainside as the bullet ricocheted off into some unseen distance. A silence followed that seemed to drag on and on.
Chen felt a pulse thundering in his neck. He could feel his hands shaking as he instinctively tried to tighten his grip on the rock. His eyes switched from where the two men had fallen and connected with the soldier beneath him, attached to his rope. They stared at each other, the same fear imprinted on both faces. Then, as one, they scrambled upward again, panic and adrenaline flooding their tired muscles.