The Tiger Warrior (45 page)

Pradesh folded up the stove and stowed it in his rucksack. “Time to saddle up, boys.”

Costas swung his legs out of the jeep. “I don’t know where you get these expressions from, Pradesh.”

“U.S. Army Engineer School, Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Six month secondment last year.”

Costas stopped and peered at him. “Really? Did you come across Jim Praeder?”

“Submersibles technology, seconded from the Naval Academy? I did his course.”

Costas looked at Jack, and jerked his thumb toward Pradesh. “We really need this guy. Big-time. Permanent IMU staff.”

Jack flashed a smile at Pradesh, then got out of the jeep and stood up, stretching. He was wearing his own kit brought in the plane, his beaten-up leather hiking boots, a fleece with a green Gore-Tex outer shell, a cherished blue woolen cap he had been given as a boy by one of Captain Cousteau’s team. He pushed his old khaki sidebag until it was comfortable, feeling the shape of the holster inside. It was reassuring, but they needed more than handguns. He squinted up the path, and saw the Afghan figure with Katya and Altamaty leave them, bounding up another path and disappearing out of sight. He took a deep breath and said a silent prayer. Altamaty had been up here before, twenty years earlier, and he had known where to go. He and Katya both spoke the main Dari language of Afghanistan, and they both knew the Pashtun code. It was better for them to make the first contact. Too many westerners had come here promising help and peace, but bringing only betrayal and death. Jack knew they already had one sniper to contend with, and if they antagonized the local warlord as well they stood no chance of making it out of the valley alive.

He reached back into the jeep and picked up Wood’s
Source of the River Oxus
. He opened the old volume where he had bookmarked it, and saw the faded notes made by John Howard, his great-great-grandfather, and then the neat notes on an interleaved sheet by Rebecca, his own daughter. There seemed to be a flow between them, a continuity, and the book seemed to bridge the generations. He glanced at the text, at the sentence that had been in his head when he had nodded off
After a long and toilsome march we reached the foot of the Ladjword Mountains
. Ladjword he knew was the old Persian name for the place where the lapis lazuli was mined. They were there now, where Wood had been, at the end of the road, at the farthest point they could reach by jeep. From here on in they would have to go by foot, just as Howard and Wauchope must have done if they really did make it this far. Jack closed the book and pushed it into his bag. He thought of Rebecca with the dive team on Lake Issyk-Kul. His dream of her a few moments ago was still visceral, sharp in his mind. He remembered what Katya had said about dreaming up here, on top of the world. Dreams were harder to distinguish from reality, as if you were always halfway in a dreamworld. She had said it was the thin air, the restless slumber. Jack shook himself, and concentrated on Katya and Altamaty as they came down to the jeep. It was time to focus on hard reality.

Katya was bundled in a thick down climber’s coat but seemed in her element. “Okay. Here’s the score. The good news is that we made contact with Altamaty’s old friend.”

“The mujahideen guy who captured him during the Soviet war?” Costas said.

Katya nodded. “His name’s Rahid, Mohamed Rahid Khan. Word had already passed up here that we were on our way, a film crew. He knew your name, Jack. He knows who you are. He even knew there were Kyrgyz among us. Amazing how information travels here, in a place almost barren of people.”

“Has he seen anyone else?” Pradesh said.

“I didn’t ask. He’s got other things on his mind. Earlier this morning the Taliban attacked a village in the next valley to the north. It was some act of vengeance dating back to the time when the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, before 9/11. Vengeance against Rahid’s cousin, a schoolteacher. You don’t want to know the details. Rahid’s sent all of his men with most of his weapons, and he’s leaving himself in less than an hour.”

“So no backup for us after all,” Costas said.

“There might be. I told him what Jack wanted. I didn’t tell him our real reason for being here, but he’s no fool. Jack Howard doesn’t come to a war zone to make a documentary film. But these people know when not to ask questions. With the Pashtun, you talk around intentions, guess at them, size each other up first. He said there are a few people living in the valley, and it’s always possible there might be Taliban sympathizers. Where there’s one attack, like this morning, there’s a general simmering, and the sight of any foreigners might be provocation. He said we should keep to the high path, avoid the valley floor. When I told him what you requested, Jack, he asked whether there was anyone among us who could handle a Lee-Enfield rifle. I told him about you, the Canadian rangers. You told me once.”

“Jack?” Pradesh said.

“When I was a teenager,” Jack replied. “My father was a painter, and we spent a couple of summers in the Canadian Arctic. The Canadian rangers are militia, mainly Innu and Inuit. They’re armed with the Lee-Enfield rifle. They use it to hunt. They taught me to shoot.”

“They taught you to be a sniper, Jack,” Costas said. “I’ve seen it.”

“I’d never claim that in front of an Afghan warlord,” Jack murmured. “The Pashtun can shoot before they walk. Anyway, Pradesh will be familiar with the Lee-Enfield too. It’s still used in India. He’s probably a better shot than me.”

“You’re our leader, Jack, and he knows it,” Pradesh said. “A Pashtun chieftain is only going to respect a leader who can do the killing himself.”

Katya looked at Jack. “He’s in a cave complex about twenty minutes away, up the slope where you saw him disappear. We don’t want to miss him. Let’s move.” She turned and led them back up the path. They rounded a corner, with the rocky valley spread out below them. Almost immediately they were among wreckage, large twisted fragments of metal, sections of fuselage, a rotor collapsed like a giant wilted flower. The fragments bore flaky paint that had once been a khaki camouflage, and in two places a dull red star could be seen. “Altamaty’s Hind helicopter,” Katya said quietly. “The one he was shot down in when he was eighteen, during the Soviet war. He was the only one who walked away. Two others were still alive, but were shot by Rahid.”

“You mean the friendly guy we’re about to meet?” Costas said.

“That’s what it’s like up here,” Pradesh said. “No quarter expected, none given.”

Jack watched Altamaty make his way through the wreckage, saw his eyes unswerving, looking beyond the shattered fragments to the rocky path ahead. Somewhere far away there was a rumble, the sound of low-flying jets roaring through a distant valley. Then the noise was gone, and they had left the wreckage behind, and all they could see was the steep, narrow trail ahead of them, nothing but bare rock and scree. The war being waged now could have been any war of living memory, the wars fought by the British, the war with the Soviets, wars that trawled and smashed their way through the lowlands but left the mountains unscarred, barely changed since the day John Wood came searching for the mines in 1836. Up here, humans seemed tiny, inconsequential, and even the cultivation and settlements of the valleys looked ephemeral, as if they could be washed away in the blink of an eye. Pradesh had said the same thing about the jungle, about the Godavari River. The jungle and the mountains were both places that gave no quarter, places that humans could never master.

Jack scrambled up the slope ahead of the others. The path became less obvious as the slope steepened, but the route was clear from the shiny patches of rock, handholds, footholds, where many had made their way up here before. The rock was schist and dolomite, hard like the rock of north Wales where Jack had learned to climb. He relished it now, moving with speed over outcrops where he needed to use his hands, enjoying the cold, biting air in his lungs, feeling cleansed, revitalized. Mountains were places where he felt comfortable, at ease, as he did underwater. After about twenty minutes he came to a ledge that stuck out above him, close to the summit of the ridge. He paused to catch his breath, and looked up. A man was standing there, a few meters away. He was wearing a turban and an Afghan robe, and over it a thick sheepskin jacket. He stared at Jack with piercing green eyes. His face was dark and craggy, and his beard was streaked with gray. Jack guessed the man was about his own age, but his face had a timeless look about it, like the mountains that framed him. Jack scrambled up and reached out his hand. “Mohamed Rahid Khan.
Salaam”

“Salaam
. Dr. Howard.”

“You’ve heard of me.”

“We get the History Channel too, you know,” Rahid said, with a wry smile. “I was at boarding school in England, before the Soviet war brought me back here. My father was a minister in the old Afghan government. Since his murder, I have ruled here.”

“I know you don’t have much time.” Jack pulled the copy of Wood’s
Source of the River Oxus
out of his bag, and handed it over.

“I have read this book.” Rahid opened it with care, and perused it silently for a moment. “But I have never seen it annotated like this. I think you are not only following Lieutenant Wood, Dr. Howard. I think you are following in the footsteps of someone else.”

“Two British officers, in 1908. Retired officers, on a quest. One of them was my great-great-grandfather. We think they came here, up this valley.”

“Then our paths have crossed before. Your ancestors and mine.”

“I know.”

“There is an ancient proverb about this valley.”

“This one?” Jack paused, then spoke:

“Agur janub doshukh na-kham buro
Zinaar Murrow ba janub tungee Koran
If you wish not to go to destruction,
Avoid the narrow valley of Koran.”

Rahid raised his eyes at Jack. “How do you know this?”

Jack jerked his head back. “A friend from Kyrgyzstan.”

Rahid watched Altamaty coming up the slope. “He remembers well.”

“You gave him the ring?”

“Did he tell you why we’ve come?”

Rahid narrowed his eyes. “My grandfather remembered the day, a century ago. Our tribesmen knew they had come, and saw those who pursued the two travelers up the valley to the mines. Afterward my grand father went up there. He said he had seen something terrible, that the upper shafts were haunted, that no one should ever go. Only I was brave enough, as a boy.”

“We think there’s someone else now. Following us. Watching us. Already up there, waiting.”

Rahid pursed his lips, then looked out across the valley. “This land is like my skin. I feel when vermin are crawling on it. Your enemy is my enemy.
Inshallah
. But today, my men are at war. We will have vengeance.”

“Your enemy is my enemy.”

Rahid peered at Jack, holding his gaze for a moment, then nodded. He reached into his coat and pulled out a photograph. “Do you have children?”

Jack nodded. “A daughter.”

“This is my daughter.” Jack looked at the picture of a smiling Afghan girl, unveiled, her black hair falling to her shoulders. “If I do not fight them, one day they will do to my daughter what they have just done to my cousin. They will whip her for going unveiled. They will mutilate her for reading books. And they will rape her because they are animals.”

“These are not men. They have nothing to do with Allah.”

Rahid curled his lip. “The Taliban? Al-Qaeda? The Wahabists have been here since the time of the British, trying to stir us up. They have nothing to do with Afghanistan. And now their recruits come from the west. They go to so-called training camps, young Muslims who think they have learned to shoot by playing video games, and spraying rounds at a hillside while chanting holy verse. Stupid boys, fat boys, with eyes too close together. They even make poor target practice. They die too easily.”

Katya and Altamaty came onto the ledge, and Costas jumped up behind. He took off his mitt and shook Rahid’s hand, his voice breathless. “Costas Kazantzakis.”

“Ah.” Rahid bowed slightly. “The submersibles expert with the Navy Cross.”

“Jack has been telling you?”

“I read the newspapers.”

Jack shot Costas a look. “Rahid and I have been discussing the Taliban. Our enemy.”

“We’re on the same side, I take it.”

Rahid’s eyes bore down on Costas. “When a Pashtun is being shot at, he kills the person who is shooting at him. When the British came, we killed them. When the Soviets came, we killed them. And now the Taliban have come, and we are killing them.”

“And yet, twenty years ago, you spared Altamaty,” Costas said.

“We occasionally took hostages. And he was Kyrgyz, not Russian. But perhaps I should have killed him.”

“Well, now’s your chance,” Costas said.

Rahid curled his lip. “I can’t. He brought me a sheep’s head.”

“What?”

“That bag, over there. When he came up here with the woman, Katya.” Rahid pointed. Jack suddenly realized. That explained it. He had suffered the smell throughout the flight, then in the jeep. Thank God they had no time to boil it now. “When we captured him during the Soviet war, this is what I gave him to eat. And coming here again now, he remembered.”

“That’s why you spared him, back then,” Costas said. “When you captured him, you sized him up. You knew he’d bring this, if he ever came here again.”

Rahid looked at Jack, then gestured at Costas. “I like this man.”

“It’s the same in Greece,” Costas said. “Where men are men.”

“Men,” Katya murmured, “are fools.”

Rahid put away the photograph of his daughter. “Enough of this. I have to go soon. Come with me.” He led them behind the ledge to a cave in the hillside, concealed behind a jumble of rock made to look like natural scree. They passed through a door into a corridor carved out of the rock. “This was a natural cave, then my ancestors chiseled it out as a refuge at the time of the first British war in the 1840s. The men who made it worked in the lapis lazuli mines, so they knew what they were doing. We lived here during the Soviet war. We’ve got our own generator, solar-powered. The Soviets tried to destroy the cave from the air, but they didn’t have bunker-busting bombs. They tried ground assault, over and over again. That’s what Altamaty was doing here. But the whole hillside is booby-trapped. Even now, you only made it alive up that path because I knew you were coming.” He pushed open a sliding steel door at the end of the corridor, switched on a light and unplugged a dehumidifier that had been throbbing in the corner. “This room is our arsenal. My men have taken our modern weapons, but there’s enough left here for what you need.”