Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

‘I bet you’re glad you opened that fortune cookie.’

Mike began to say something else but Sabrina never heard it. A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and pulled her off the horse. As she hit the ground she was punched on the ear.

There was sudden light. On both sides of the road kerosene flares were lit and Sabrina saw the turbaned men who held them.

More bandits she thought. This country is all bandits …

She saw Mike. He was rolling away from two men who tried to hold on to him. Sabrina was already into the same manoeuvre. As her shoulders were grabbed she ducked her head and somersaulted, making the hands lose their grip.

Men shouted. Sabrina rolled twice and jumped to her feet. At a sound behind her she shot out her arm and swung left, chopped a man on the upper lip and felt the bone crack.

‘Eight!’ Mike shouted. ‘Eight of them!’

That was something she could learn from him, the ability to calculate while he was defending himself.

‘Check!’ she shouted back.

A man howled as Mike leapt in the air and kicked him in the belly. Another man screamed as the torch he was swinging was pushed in his own face.

‘Two down!’ Mike yelled.

Sabrina ran ten paces, braked and turned, arms extended and fists clenched. She hit two men. One of them dropped to his knees and she chopped him on the throat.

‘Three!’ she shouted.

The other man came at her, waving a knife. She ducked, heard the knife whistle past her ear, clenched one hand around the other and slammed them into his face. He dropped without a sound.

‘Four!’

Mike had commandeered the fallen torch and was swinging it like a fiery claymore. The flames roared in the faces of the remaining four bandits as they tried to consolidate into a phalanx. Sabrina paused to kick a man in the chest as he tried to rise, then threw herself at the four trying to surround Mike.

‘Geronimo!’

She caught one by the ear and ran sideways, pulling him off balance, making him scream and flail his arms. The other three scattered, confused. Mike grabbed one by the arm and twisted it. The shoulder cracked and the man fell, howling.

‘Two left!’ Sabrina shouted.

‘And running!’ Mike yelled.

He picked up a fallen torch and held it above his head. Two bandits were running off into the scrub land. The other six, in various stages of injury and semi-consciousness, were strewn along the road.

Mike looked at Sabrina and grinned. ‘Geronimo?’ he said.

‘It just came out.’

Mike wiped his brow. ‘We showed ‘em. They’ve got a lot to learn about dirty fighting.’

Sabrina threw back her hair and pointed as something glinted in the flickering torchlight. ‘They have transport.’

Mike picked up another torch and handed it to Sabrina. They walked across the scrub and took a look. Parked behind a clump of bushes was a battered Ford truck.

‘Hallelujah,’ Mike said quietly. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

He got behind the wheel, located the key and turned it. The engine started and turned over with a powerful hum. He revved and the note rose to a whine.

‘Hallelujah again. It’s been souped.’

‘It’s vibrating kind of wildly,’ Sabrina said.

‘It’s been abused,’ Mike shouted. ‘What can you expect from bandits? It should hold up for us, if we take it easy.’

Sabrina went back and surveyed the damage. Three men were on their feet. They backed away as she approached. The three on the ground were not moving. Sabrina pointed to the horses. ‘They’re yours,’ she said. The three men backed off some more. ‘Ride them in good fortune.’

From the road she picked up an old Webley .38, a knife and a leather pouch, then went back to the truck. As she got in beside Mike she shook the pouch in his face. It jingled.

‘Currency,’ she said. ‘Breakfast.’

Philpott met Ram Jarwal for lunch in the sunny, fragrant garden of the Tao Café in Srinagar. The food on the menu was mainly Chinese. Both men ordered chow mein, with spring rolls for starters. Ram’s manner seemed subdued; Philpott, who had never met him before, assumed that was how he was.

‘Coming here was something of a snap decision for me,’ Philpott said. He explained that his original intention had been to investigate the black market in charity aid. ‘Then I found myself sidetracked. I had planned to talk it over with Mike, Sabrina and Lenny.’

When they talked on the telephone earlier, Ram had explained that the ambush had failed and that Mike, Lenny and Sabrina had stayed behind after the team of police marksmen had left.

‘I have to bring you up to date,’ Ram said now. ‘I spoke on the phone to Mike less than an hour ago. He and Sabrina are making their way back in a truck they took from a gang of rural bandits …’

‘Life’s an endless adventure for those two.’

‘The sad bit is, Lenny Trent’s dead.’

‘Oh, God …’

‘He was shot. I don’t know any more than that.’

Philpott shook his head. ‘That’s terrible. Terrible. He was such a fine, lively chap …’ He drummed his fingers absently for a moment. ‘What about his remains? Surely we need to make arrangements?’

‘Mike told me the body’s at the railway station in Jerrida,’ Ram said. ‘I’ve already made arrangements through UN Information and Services. They’ll contact Drugwatch International and the body should be flown back to the States within twenty-four hours.’

‘Well.’ Philpott sat back and clasped his hands in his lap. ‘That’s taken the shine off the day.’

‘The whole thing was a fiasco,’ Ram said. ‘The ambush failed, then Mike and Sabrina were taken prisoner by the very bandits they were hoping to ambush, and to top it all, it turns out the American bandit leader isn’t what Mike thought he was.’

‘Even so, Mike had good reason for following the lead,’ Philpott said. ‘I’ve no doubt about that. An agent can’t pass up a possibility just because there’s a chance of it leading nowhere.’

‘That’s like something Lenny Trent said, the night before they left. In his business, he said, failure is part of the motif of success.’

‘Wise words,’ Philpott said. ‘Take a close look at our successes, especially our big ones, and you’ll see they’re bedded in flops and wrong turnings.’

‘So.’ Ram, anxious to lift the gloom, made himself sound brighter. ‘Do you want to talk about your unexpected sidetracking?’

‘Indeed I do.’

Philpott told Ram about the smallholding and how he had gone there looking for signs of black market trading; instead, he appeared to have uncovered part of a drug-trafficking organization.

‘It has to be worth following up,’ he said. ‘It could be a factor in the trade Mike and Sabrina are trying to uncover.’

Ram cleared his throat delicately. ‘We know about the farm, Mr Philpott.’

‘What – the drug-trafficking side of it?’

‘That’s the only part we do know about. If there’s a black market link, we don’t have any intelligence so far to back that up.’

‘So what goes on at the farm?’

‘It’s a place where mules are kitted out and sent on their way. We’ve already sent an agent through there. What he gathers in the way of intelligence could form the basis of a case against the traffickers. It might even help us find out where the trade originates. The problem with the farm is, if we show a heavy-handed interest in that quarter, they’ll simply move the operation somewhere else.’

Philpott was staring at his plate. ‘Well don’t I feel the idiot. I really thought I’d stumbled on to something nobody knew about.’

‘I know a little bit about the black market trade in these parts,’ Ram said. ‘They move their centres of operation whether they’re being investigated or not. They are a different animal. Nothing gets established with them, they don’t believe in laying down patterns.’