Pietro’s fingers touched the dynamite. The fuse spluttered against his flesh, burning him, but he did not feel the pain. He got a firm grip then, still on the floor, squirmed around, hung on to a chair support and threw the dynamite and what was left of the fuse past Gianni overboard, then reached forward with his free hand and grabbed one of his friend’s legs, helping to drag him back. The other man slammed the door closed and the two of them, Pietro and Gianni, collapsed on the floor.
“Take her away, Scot,” JeanLuc said weakly.
The chopper banked and left the north face two hundred feet below. For a moment the crest was pure and stark and motionless. There was a vast explosion that no one in the chopper felt or heard. Snow spiraled upward and began to settle. Then with a mighty roar, the whole of the north face tumbled away, the avalanche fell into the valley, searing the mountainside with a swath a quarter of a mile wide until it had ceased. The chopper came around. “My God, look!” Scot said, pointing ahead. The overhang had vanished. Above the Bellissima rig was only a gentle slope, the site untouched except where the trailer and the single mud tank had already been carried away by the first avalanche.
“Pietro!” JeanLuc called out excitedly. “You’ve…” He stopped. Pietro and Gianni were still on the floor collecting themselves, Pietro’s headset vanished. “Scot, they won’t be able to see from their windows - go closer and turn so they can see!”
Excitedly, JeanLuc climbed back into the cabin and began to pummel Pietro, congratulating him. Blankly everyone stared at him and when they understood what he was shouting over the screech of the engines, they forgot their fears and peered out of the windows. And when they saw how perfectly the explosion had cleaned away the danger, they let out a cheer. Gianni embraced Pietro emotionally, swearing eternal friendship, blessing him for saving him, for saving their lives and saving their jobs.
“Niente, caro,” Pietro said expansively. “Am I not a man of Aosta?” JeanLuc stood over the stretcher and gently shook Mario Guineppa. “Mario! Pietro did it - he did it perfectly. Bellissima’s safe…” Guineppa did not answer. He was already dead.
Tuesday - February,13
Chapter 21
ON THE NORTH FACE OF MOUNT SABALAN: 10:00 A.M. The night was bitterly cold under a cloudless sky, stars abundant, the moon strong and Captain Ross and his two Gurkhas were working their way cautiously under a crest following the guide and the CIA man. The soldiers wore cowled, white snow coveralls over their battle dress, and gloves and thermal underwear, but still the cold tormented them. They were about eight thousand feet, downwind of their target half a mile away the other side of the ridge. Above them the vast cone shape of the extinct volcano soared over sixteen thousand. “Meshgi, we’ll stop and rest,” the CIA man said in Turkish to the guide. Both were dressed in rough tribesmen’s clothes.
“If you wish it, Agha, then let it be so.” The guide led the way off the path, through the snow, to a small cave that none of them had noticed. He was old and gnarled like an ancient olive tree, hairy and thin, his clothes ragged, and still the strongest of them after almost two days’ climbing. “Good,” the CIA man said. Then to Ross, “Let’s hole up here till we’re ready.”
Ross unslung his carbine, sat, and rested his pack gratefully, his calves and thighs and back aching. “I’m all one big bloody ache,” he said disgustedly, “and I’m supposed to be fit.”
“You’re fit, sahib,” the Gurkha sergeant called Tenzing said with a beam. “On our next leave we go up Everest, eh?”
“Not on your Nelly,” Ross said in English and the three soldiers laughed together.
Then the CIA man said thoughtfully, “Must be something to stand on top of that mother.”
Ross saw him look out at the night and the thousands of feet of mountain below. When they had first met at the rendezvous near Bandar-e Pahlavi two days ago, if he hadn’t been told otherwise he would have thought him part Mongol or Nepalese or Tibetan, for the CIA man was dark-haired with a yellowish skin and Asian eyes and dressed like a nomad.
“Your CIA contact’s Rosemont, Vien Rosemont, he’s half Vietnamese-half American,” the CIA colonel had said at his briefing. “He’s twenty-six, been here a year, speaks Farsi and Turkish, he’s second-generation CIA, and you can trust him with your life.”
“It seems I’m going to have to, sir, one way or another, don’t you think?” “Huh? Oh, sure, yes. Yes, I guess so. You meet him just south of Bandar-e Pahlavi at those coordinates and he’ll have the boat. You’ll hug the coast until you’re just south of the Soviet border, then backpack in.” “He’s the guide?”
“No. He, er, he just knows about Mecca - that’s our code name for the radar post. Getting the guide’s his problem - but he’ll deliver. If he’s not at the rendezvous, wait through Saturday night. If he’s not there by dawn, he’s blown and you abort. Okay?”
“Yes. What about the rumors of insurrection in Azerbaijan?” “Far as we know there’s some fighting in Tabriz and the western part - nothing around Ardabil. Rosemont should know more. We, er, we know the Soviets are massed and ready to move in if the Azerbaijanis throw Bakhtiar supporters out. Depends on their leaders. One of them’s Abdollah Khan. If you run into trouble go see him. He’s one of ours - loyal.” “All right. And this pilot, Charles Pettikin. Say he won’t take us?” “Make him. One way or another. There’s approval way up to the top for this op, both from your guys and ours, but we can’t put anything into writing. Right, Bob?”
The other man at the briefing, a Robert Armstrong whom he had also never met before, had nodded agreement. “Yes.”
“And the Iranians? They’ve approved it?”
“It’s a matter of, er, of national security - yours and ours. Theirs too but they’re … they’re busy. Bakhtiar’s, well, he’s - he may not last.” “Then it’s true - the U.S. are jerking the rug?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Captain.”
“One last question: why aren’t you sending your fellows?” Robert Armstrong had answered for the colonel. “They’re all busy - we can’t get any more here quickly - not with your elite training.” We’re certainly well trained, Ross thought, easing his shoulders cut raw by his backpack straps - to climb, to jump, to ski, to snorkel, to kill silently or noisily, to move like the wind against terrorist or public enemy, and to blow everything sky-high if need be, above or under water. But I’m bloody lucky, I’ve everything I want: health, university, Sandhurst, paratroopers, Special Air Services, and even my beloved Gurkhas. He beamed at both of them and said a Gurkhali obscenity in a vulgar dialect that sent them into silent fits of laughter. Then he saw Vien Rosemont and the guide looking at him. “Your pardon, Excellencies,” he said in Farsi. “I was just telling my brothers to behave themselves.”
Meshgi said nothing, just turned his attention back to the night. Rosemont had pulled off his boots and was massaging the chill out of his feet. “The guys I’ve seen, British officers, they’re not friends with their soldiers, not like you.”
“Perhaps I’m luckier than others.” With the sides of his eyes Ross was watching the guide who had got up and was now standing at the mouth of the cave, listening. The old man had become increasingly edgy in the last few hours. How far do I trust him? he thought, then glanced at Gueng who was nearest. Instantly the little man got the message, nodded back imperceptibly.
“The captain is one of us, sir,” Tenzing was saying to Rosemont proudly. “Like his father and grandfather before him - and they were both Sheng’khan.”