Andrew Britton: The Invisible

Beni managed to catch her eye, but she turned away before he could fix her with his usual lascivious stare. To cover her reaction, she hastily pulled her journal out of her Berghaus pack, undid the clasp, and started to scribble a few notes, catching up on the events of the past few days. It was hard to concentrate under the lean climber’s intense gaze. She’d done her best to make her disinterest clear, but her efforts had clearly been wasted. Although she was just twenty-three—the same age as Abruzzi—Rebeka had accomplished a great deal in her young life. For this reason, she tended to look down on many people her own age. She knew it was snobbish, but she couldn’t help it; she was a driven woman, and that meant things like men, sex, and partying didn’t figure high on her list of priorities. At the same time, she knew her looks had given her a considerable boost in her current career—that they would have helped her in any career. She took this in stride, though, and it didn’t change the way she viewed her success. After all, she’d seen the recent U.S. edition of Outside magazine, and her picture on the page of contributing journalists had not been any larger than that of the editor in chief, a decidedly unattractive Swede in his midsixties. This discovery had only confirmed what she already knew: that it was her talent—

not her looks—that had made her one of the world’s most soughtafter young photographers. She looked up, startled out of her reverie as the bus shuddered, the driver downshifting suddenly. Craning her neck, Rebeka saw a number of vehicles parked alongside the road up ahead, men milling about on the paved surface. As the bus rolled forward, the scene came into focus, and she saw something that chilled her blood. Rifles. Every man in sight was heavily armed, and there were plenty of men. Judging by the low rumble of voices in the surrounding seats, everyone else was just as confused and concerned as she was. Passports and visas were frequently checked on the KKH, but this wasn’t one of the scheduled stops. As far as Rebeka knew, they still had miles to go before they reached the next Pakistani checkpoint. Tensions between General Musharraf ’s government and that of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh had been rising steadily over the past few months, but this was the first time she’d seen any tangible evidence of the escalating situation. She only hoped she was right, that it wasn’t something else entirely. Bandits had always been a problem on the Karakoram Highway, though guarding against them was usually just a matter of taking the proper precautions, such as not traveling alone or after dark. As it stood, it was midafternoon, still light, and they were nowhere near the Line of Control—the heavily guarded border that separates the disputed territory between Pakistan and India. In short, these were about the best conditions a traveler on the KKH could ask for. The bus ground to a gentle halt, and the doors at the front banged open. The air in the vehicle seemed unusually thick, and no one was making a sound. Rebeka realized they were waiting to see what would happen, just as she was. But then a man appeared at the front, and the collective tension seemed to drain away. The man standing next to the driver and surveying the passengers was wearing the uniform of a Pakistani army captain. Rebeka felt her breath come a little bit easier, and she wasn’t concerned in the least when the captain asked them all to disembark and present their passports. Realizing that the soldiers might poke through their belongings, she slipped her journal under her coat. She wouldn’t be surprised to get back on and find some items missing from her pack, and while most of it was replaceable, the journal was the one thing she couldn’t bear to lose.

She was sitting near the back of the vehicle, so she had to wait for the passengers up front to disembark. As they began to line up on the side of the road, documentation in hand, Rebeka saw a rare opportunity and decided to take it. The soldiers seemed to be unusually wrapped up in their task, so she dug out her camera—a Canon EOS-1V with an 85mm lens already affixed—and carefully lifted it above the ledge of the window. She took a few quick shots with the flash disabled, hoping to capture her fellow passengers’ frustrated expressions. It wasn’t part of her assignment, but she happened to know a freelance writer who was doing a story on corruption in the Pakistani army, and she thought she might be able to get some mileage out of the photographs.

Once she’d fired off a half-dozen shots, Rebeka quickly lowered the camera and checked to see if anyone had noticed. It didn’t look like it, but either way, she had run out of time; the front of the bus was nearly empty, and a young soldier was striding toward the open doors.

Rebeka quickly ejected the film, dropped it into a spare tube, and slipped it into her pack. She had just gotten to her feet when the soldier reached the back of the bus and gestured toward the camera. Shouting something she didn’t understand, he grabbed her free arm with his left hand, then reached for her camera with the other. She pulled it away instinctively, but he leaned in and managed to knock it out of her hand. Then, as she watched in disbelief, he kicked it toward the back of the vehicle.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she shouted in English, tugging free of the soldier’s grasp. “Do you have any idea how expensive that was? As soon as we get back to Islamabad, I’m going to—”

She never got the words out. The soldier slammed a fist into her stomach, then slapped her hard across the face. Rebeka’s knees banged against the edge of the seat as her body followed the blow. She hit the plastic cushion hard, tears springing to her eyes as she struggled for air. Momentarily stunned, she didn’t fight as the soldier reached down and wrapped a hand in her hair, yanking her to her feet. Hunched forward and crying out with pain, she reached behind her head and frantically tried to pull his fist apart as he marched her to the front of the vehicle. Once they had reached the driver’s seat, he released her and shoved her hard down the stairs. Rebeka tumbled through the open doors. As she hit the ground awkwardly, something gave way in her shoulder with an audible pop. Although her head was swimming with confusion and fear, she instantly tried to prop herself up using her right elbow. It was completely instinctive, but it was also a huge mistake; her shoulder instantly screamed with agony, and she screamed in turn, collapsing onto her side. Ten seconds later, the young Pakistani stepped off the bus and walked past her, carrying the broken remains of her camera. Her fellow passengers were starting to resist, having realized that something was wrong. Shifting her weight to her left elbow, Rebeka managed to sit up and take in the scene, though her vision was still slightly blurred. She watched as Umberto Verga stepped forward and spat a few words in halting Punjabi to one of the guards, who immediately tried to push the hefty climber back into line. Verga barely moved, but his face turned red with indignation. Taking another step forward, he slapped aside the barrel of the Pakistani’s rifle. Rebeka watched in a daze as Verga repeated his question in English, and although he was standing about 30 feet away, he was shouting so loud, she could hear every word.

“What the fuck did you hit her for?” the Sicilian bellowed, spit flying out of his mouth. His heavily bearded face was just a few inches from that of the soldier. “Who do you think you are, you little shit? Do you have any idea what you’re starting here?”

She was vaguely surprised to see Umberto jumping to her defense, especially since he had never muttered more than a few words in her direction. But her surprise quickly turned to horrified disbelief when the Pakistani took two steps back, whipped the AK-47 up to his shoulder, and squeezed the trigger. A number of rounds punched into Verga’s barrel chest. The Sicilian took two uncertain steps back, then spiraled to the ground, shock carved into his weathered face. For a moment, there was nothing but stunned silence. Then the passengers started to scream, everyone running in different directions. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to go. Nothing but flat plains in every direction, all of which led up to mountainous peaks, and the soldiers had clearly planned for this possibility. They had arranged themselves in a semicircle around the bus, and they didn’t seem to panic as the passengers scattered. Instead, they fanned out to a greater degree. Strangely enough, nobody fired a shot. Above the panicked screams, a sonorous voice pleaded for calm in cultured English. Rebeka, still propped up on her left elbow, watched it all unfold in a dreamlike state. Part of her was hoping she was right, that it was just a dream, but she couldn’t deny what had happened to Umberto Verga, and she couldn’t deny what was happening now. A sudden noise caught her attention, and she realized the bus was pulling away, the rear tires kicking up a spray of crushed gravel. She felt pebbles stinging the right side of her face, then heard a highpitched whine as the vehicle shifted into second gear. A hoarse voice carried over the cacophony, giving a command in Punjabi. It was the same voice that had called out in English earlier, but it had taken on a different, harder tone. The next thing she heard was the sound of gunfire, immediately followed by splintering glass. There was a loud thump, the sound of a vehicle crashing into a shallow ditch. Then there was nothing, save for a few distant sobs and the steady hum of an idling engine.