Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1)
Read Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1) Online
Authors: Mark Chisnell
Powder Burn
By Mark Chisnell
For
my first and favorite reader, Tina
All Rights Reserved
Mark Chisnell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
License Notes:
Thank you for downloading this ebook, it’s yours to enjoy – but this ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader.
The Defector
–
Janac’s Games #1 (originally published as
The Delivery)
“This is a remarkable thriller – chillingly violent, full of tension and with a very original ending.”
Publishing News
The Wrecking Crew
–
Janac’s Games #2
“A real ripping yarn ... begging to be made into an all-action film.”
Qantas in-flight magazine
The Fulcrum Files
“
This book satisfies sailing buffs, history fans, espionage addicts, and anyone else yearning for a good yarn.”
Huffington Post
– Present Day, Tibetan Plateau
The only light came from a single naked flame. The wind, unobstructed for hundreds of miles as it tore across the high-altitude plain, shrieked against the walls outside. Blasts of cold air struggled through gaps in the stonework, teasing the yak-butter lamp and casting flickering shadows on the Swordmaster, as he moved towards the long wooden box. Tashi Dorge exchanged a quick glance with Jortse Choedron, his companion on the long journey. A sputter of the lamp momentarily revealed the irises of Jortse’s eyes, a blue so pale that it was almost indistinguishable from the white.
Jortse turned back to the Swordmaster
, and Tashi followed his gaze with a little quiver of unease. The lid of the box opened on ancient hinges. The Swordmaster reached inside and brought out the sword, lying flat on his palms. The blade glistened, yellow light flashing off perfect polished steel as he bowed to present the weapon. Jortse reverently wrapped one hand around the hilt to lift it. He felt the weight, placed his other hand beside the first and then moved into a fighting stance. The Swordmaster stood back, and Jortse made two strokes: left, then right. The air barely noticed the blade’s passing.
“
The balance is remarkable,” said Jortse. “I don’t think I have seen anything like this, even in Japan.”
Tashi stepped forward to hand him the felt bag
that they had carried over thousands of dangerous miles. Jortse carefully slotted the weapon inside the internal bamboo scabbard, and then slung it across one shoulder and onto his back.
“
This will give you the power,” the Swordmaster told him.
Jortse bowed.
“It is a great trust that I and the generations before me place in you,” the Swordmaster continued, concern puckering his lined, craggy face.
“
I will not fail that trust, or the power. I will bring freedom to my people,” said Jortse.
“
The cost will be great,” said the Swordmaster.
“
The cost will be worth it,” replied Jortse.
Seven and a half thousand miles from home
, still unpublished, slightly hung-over and almost certainly broke, Sam didn’t see him at first. It wasn’t until he coughed that she lifted her gaze.
“
You don’t remember?” said Pete Halland in his soft voice, with its dreamy English accent.
“
Should I?” she replied, instinctively hard-to-get.
“
Last night?” He put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight onto one foot, his blue eyes flickering momentarily past her, around the soulless, empty internet café.
“
Oh, yeah.” She nodded now –
you can’t let men take anything for granted.
“
Remember saying you’d come with us?” he asked.
Her expre
ssion narrowed a little – did this mean they were serious? Maybe it hadn’t just been a pickup line. She looked back down to the screen and the single email in her inbox. She’d sent out twenty-five more query letters to different newspaper and magazine editors just after she’d arrived in Kathmandu. All with ideas for stories. Score to date: zip, zero, nothing from fourteen replies – they were all rejections. And the single email that glared back at her this morning? From her mother.
Two months in India, nearly a month in
Nepal and the Himalayas, and only one story sold: to
Altitude
magazine, a miniscule circulation, and the place where her mother job-shared as office manager with Penelope-with-triplets. It barely counted as published, never mind the searing, hypocrisy-busting investigative journalism of her dreams. The other stats were just as sad: her Facebook Fan Page becalmed on 21 Likes, just a couple of hundred followers on her Twitter account and a blog that – if she was lucky – got into double figures for its weekly views. And she’d told Pete Halland and his two buddies that if they let her come with them, she would write up their expedition for
National Geographic
magazine. She hadn’t thought they were serious. She had about as much chance of placing a story with
National Geographic
as she did of winning a Pulitzer. Less, probably, if
The Wire
’s
Season Five was anything to go by. Still, he wasn’t to know that. She glanced up and caught Pete’s gaze for a moment.
“
So do you want to come? You did last night,” he said. “It’s an awesome mountain, and the publicity from your article will really help out the film.”
“
Remind me – how long’s the trip?” she asked.
“
A couple of weeks each way to trek in and out, another four or five days on the mountain.” He hesitated. “You were pretty keen last night.”
No doubt,
she thought; this guy’s so cute she’d have agreed to climb Mount Mansfield naked, even before she’d started drinking.
“
The lads really want you to come,” he urged.
“
Yeah, I bet,” she said, stalling. There were two more of them, another snowboard, ski-bum type who went by the name of Vegas, although he was from LA. Go figure. While the filmmaker was an up-himself, Columbia School of Arts grad, with the even more ridiculous nickname of Lens. Then there was Pete, the only one she really liked, and if he wasn’t bullshitting her about how dangerous this was, then she had a great story in the making – a first-time ride down a big mountain. Still, a month-long expedition to nowhere, with three guys she had met for a couple of hours in a bar? And then there was the money.
She had an uncomfortable
idea that she hadn’t anything much left. With her ex working at the same newspaper, it had been too uncomfortable to hang around and save for the trip. There was only so much weeping you could cope with in the modern open-plan office. In the end, she’d left New York with what happened to be in her checking account at the time. Although it wasn’t a lot, she’d been confident that she’d sell plenty of stories en route. But this strategy had been looking shaky for some time. She really
had
to look to see how much was left. She shuffled upright from her slump. “Tell me a little more, what’s the deal, what’s it going to cost?” she asked, as she clicked onto her bank’s website and logged in.
“
We’ve done all the prep, stashed a load of food, fuel and gear on the route,” he explained. “We reckoned that if you chipped in six hundred bucks that would be fair. That’s all it’ll cost you for the whole month. We’ll be camping, and there’s no guide and no porters from here on, just the bus to the drop-off.”
Six hundred bucks!
Her account popped up on the screen.
Ommagod.
No. That can’t be right. Someone else must be using it.
She ran her eyes down the list of expenditure. It was right. She switched to her credit-card account. The red emergency light was flashing in her head. There was just enough money to buy a ticket home. Or just enough money to go on the expedition – that and an ice cream would take it over the credit limit. She frowned, swatted impatiently at a fly buzzing around her face. If she sent query letters off to editors now, and they wanted the story ... She could probably survive until she got paid, but it would be a bread-and-water kind of frugal.
“
I need some time to think about this, it’s a big commitment,” she said. If she didn’t sell the story, she’d be walking home.
“
Umm,” mumbled Pete, “kinda tricky, we’re leaving this afternoon.”
She took a deep breath and rele
ased it slowly. He was gorgeous ... but ... really, it was clear that any sensible girl would buy a ticket home and return to the loving arms of her mother while she still could. The numbers on the screen told the painful tale. She shook her head. “No ... no, I don’t think I can, it’s just too ...” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word –
risky
.
“
Really?” asked Pete, a little plaintively.
“
No.” She shook her head again, more definitely. “Really.”
He sighed, pushed his hands into his pockets.
“Well, if you’re sure ...”
“
I’m sure.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“All right” – he shrugged – “see you around, I guess. Make sure you buy the film when it comes out.” He walked towards the door.
She watched him go.
Buy the film?
She had a sudden image of herself sitting on a sofa and seeing what she’d missed. He reached the door, and the hinges creaked as he pulled it open. Another ten seconds and he’d be in the crowds that thronged the street outside
, gone forever.
“
No, wait!” She leapt to her feet as she said it, and her chair crashed onto its back. The woman behind the counter looked up from filing her nails, as Pete hesitated, the door ajar. “I’m in,” she said, with a rush of certainty, “what do I need to bring, where do I have to be and when?”
Pete
smiled the kind of smile that even a platinum credit card couldn’t buy. “Cool, we’re leaving from the bus park. You said you were staying around here?” He walked back and took up his station behind her monitor as he spoke.
“
Just up the road,” she said, picking up the chair under the frowning gaze of the attendant.
“
We’re in a hotel a couple of miles away, so it’ll be easiest to meet at the bus park, ticket window number ten. We were going to get there about four-ish, and get on the first one we can.”
She looked at her
watch; it was already past one. “I’ve got a bit to do to make that.”
“
No big deal, we’ll leave when you get there. You have a sleeping bag, backpack?”
“
I already did the trek to the base camp of Mount Everest.”
“
Yeah, right, sorry, I remember you saying. So you’ve got good clothing?”
“
Cold is not something I take any chances with.”
He
nodded. “We’ve got plenty of gear, so no girly shit, OK? You’ve got to carry your share of the main load.”
She considered several replies before settling for a withering look.
Pete’s gaze held hers. “Do you have a tent?”
“
No.”
“
You could rent your own, but it’d save weight if you share with me.” The blue eyes never left her face.
“
Sure ...” she found herself saying. Impossible to refuse.
Pete pulled his hands out of his pockets and leaned onto the table that separated them.
“You said last night that you could handle yourself in the mountains. That’s right, isn’t it? This is no teahouse trek, you know.”
She suppressed a smile.
“I was brought up in the Green Mountains of Vermont, hunting black bear and white-tailed deer in the backcountry with my father. And as I told you, I’ve just been to Everest, where I spent a week at base camp – so I’ve got some altitude acclimatization. I won’t let you down.”
“
OK.” He stood back, hands in his pockets again. “Good. We won’t be above Everest-base-camp altitude for long anyway. That’s about it.” He smiled.
“
Hang on,” she said, fumbling in her bag for a pen. “I have to email some editors – how big is this mountain?”
“
It’s a three-thousand-yard run at an average of fifty-seven degrees. The sickest line anybody’s ever heard of, never mind done. It’s awesome.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but this probably
wasn’t the moment to admit that. “What’s this place called?” she asked.
“
We call it Powder Burn.”
She frowned.
“That’s it? What’s the real name?”
Pete shrugged.
“No idea – all that matters is that we’re gonna be going so fast that powder will burn.”
She snorted.
“See you at the bus,” he said, with a final parting smile as he headed for the door.
The bang woke Lens with a deeply unpleasant suddenness, as the hotel-room door flailed open and crashed against the wall. He raised his head and watched Pete saunter in –
typical,
he thought.
“
Sorry,” said Pete, grinning, “pushed it a bit hard, you know how it sticks.”
“
Dude ...” moaned Vegas as he rolled over, face down into his mattress, his pillow on the floor.
Lens pushed himself up onto his elbows and watched Pete
flop onto a space that was more or less clear of the clothes and climbing hardware that otherwise covered the third single bed. Clothes also littered the floor where Vegas had unpacked by the effective, if disorderly, mechanism of turning his bag upside down and shaking it. In the midst of this mess was a flimsy coffee table strewn with the detritus of the modern entertainment industry – electronics, cameras, batteries, snowboard and girly mags – all liberally enhanced with coffee and beer stains.
Lens lowered his head back to the pillow. It felt like there was an axe implanted in his forehead.
“Where the hell have you been so bright and early?” he muttered.
“
It’s nearly two in the afternoon,” replied Pete, wrinkling his nose.
“
Goddamn, we’ve gotta get going,” said Lens, raising his head a fraction of an inch off the pillow again before slumping back down. He felt like hell. Several seconds of silence followed, which started to slide out towards a full minute. “I need a smoke, where’s my gum?” he said, eventually. He restarted the process of sitting up, and this time it wasn’t quite so bad. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, sniffed, scratched his crotch and then ran his hands back across the brush of stubble that these days passed for hair, before finally starting to pat the pockets of the various bits of clothing on the floor by his bed.
“
I don’t understand why you bother with that stuff,” said Pete, folding his arms. “Why don’t you just give up?”
“
Because,” said Vegas, looking over his shoulder at Pete and then rolling onto his side, “after two days he’d rip your head off and shit down your neck. I’ve been with him before when he tried to give up, and nicotine gum is the only thing that keeps him from going totally ape on yo’ ass.”
“
And it’s easier to carry than all the cigarettes, plus there’s no temptation, and so I thought it’d be a good time,” Lens contributed, coming up with the shiny green packet.
“
Again,” added Vegas.
“
So that’ll be fuck and off,” Lens said, politely, as he gave Vegas the finger. He slit the pack of gum with a neat nail and stuck a piece in his mouth, then asked, “How’d you go with that chick?”
“
What chick?” said Vegas.
“
Not you, him.” Lens nodded at Pete. “Is she coming?”
Pete nodded.
“I just saw her and she’s fully into it. I told her to meet us at the bus park.”
“
And she’ll do the article for
National Geographic
magazine?” he asked.