Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Colonel Lin reached out suddenly and pulled a baton from the belt of the nearest soldier. He stepped to Shan, who had fixed his gaze on the little pool of blood beneath Lhandro, then silently placed the end of the baton under Shan's chin and lifted his head with it. Their eyes met and Lin studied him for a moment.

"Han," Lin observed under his breath, like a curse. Lin was Shan's age, slightly shorter than Shan, with a metallic cast to his eyes. The officer hesitated a moment, as if wondering whether he saw challenge in Shan's face, frowned, dropped the baton, gesturing his sergeant forward as he turned to Lokesh. Lin examined the old Tibetan much more intensely than he had studied Shan. Shan barely noticed as the sergeant padded his pockets. He was watching the end of the baton, tensing his legs to leap and take the blow if Lin raised it to strike Lokesh. But the colonel took Lokesh's free hand by the wrist and turned it over to study the palm.

"Nothing," the sergeant spat.

Lin's eyes lit with an icy gleam as he looked back at Shan. "You have no papers?" he asked quietly.

"Just a brochure to teach me serenity," Shan said.

Lin seemed to welcome his defiance. A thin smile creased his face, and he pointed the sergeant toward the clipboard on the chair. "You will give me your name."

Shan looked back at the pool of blood.

Lin dropped Lokesh's hand and presented his raised palm toward the old Tibetan.

"Do you have papers, comrade?" Lin asked in Chinese.

What had he been looking for in Lokesh's palm? Lin was not looking for a piece of stone. He was looking for a specific person, a person with what on his palm: The calluses of a hard labor fugitive perhaps? Or not calluses? Scars? Did it mean Lin knew who had stolen his stone?

Instead of presenting his Lhadrung registration paper, Lokesh offered his lopsided grin, which seemed to amuse Lin. The colonel studied Shan again, then bent his head to gaze with interest at Lokesh's grizzled jaw, which obviously had been broken, as though he were a connoisseur of fractured jaws. He looked into Lokesh's eyes, then lifted up the old man's arm and pushed up his sleeve. Six inches up the arm, on the inside, was a tattooed line of numbers.

"Lao gai," Lin announced with a tone of satisfaction, and called out the number to the sergeant, now standing at his shoulder with the clipboard. "We asked his name," the colonel said to his sergeant, for Shan's sake, then sighed and lifted Lokesh's hat from his head, handing it carefully to the nearest soldier. He studied the crown of Lokesh's head and tapped the baton in his palm.

"My name is Shan," Shan said, watching the tip of the baton.

"A Han traveling with a Tibetan criminal," Lin observed in an accusing tone.

Lokesh's head shifted upward. Shan followed his gaze toward a line of birds flying low, approaching the village. A dozen bar-headed geese, bound, Shan suspected, for Lamtso.

As the colonel twisted his head and saw the birds his eyes lit with a new hunger and he snapped out a sharp syllable. A soldier ran to the first truck, opened the door painted with a fierce, leaping snow leopard, and retrieved a heavy gun, a long semiautomatic rifle. Lin grabbed the weapon, waited a moment, and when the line of birds was fifty yards away, no more than thirty high, he jerked the rifle to his shoulder and fired half a dozen rounds. Nyma cried out. Lokesh gave a small, disbelieving groan. Two of the big geese tumbled to the earth, a third somersaulted in the air, dropping low to the ground, but kept flying. Several of the soldiers cheered, and one darted away to fetch the dead birds. Lin returned the gun to the soldier who had retrieved it for him and turned back to his prisoners, his icy expression unchanged.

Lhandro was on his knees now, blood trickling down his cheek. As Nyma began to help him to his feet the soldier beside her pulled her away. When she resisted the soldier slapped her hard across the cheek. Shan watched in horror as the nun recoiled, then pushed back as though to strike the soldier, who lashed out with his hand again, grabbing her necklace, twisting it until it choked her, until it broke and the large gau it supported dropped free into his hand. He glanced at the amulet then slammed it against the rock wall. Nyma groaned and seemed about to jump for the prayer box, but froze as if she realized she should not draw the soldier's attention to it. She had once opened her gau to show Shan the treasure inside, covering her prayer. A photo of the Dalai Lama, with the Tibetan flag on the reverse.

Lhandro struggled to his feet, reached into his shirt pocket and with a shaking hand pulled out his papers.

Lin seized them before the sergeant reached Lhandro. "Yapchi," he read with sudden interest. "Yapchi," he repeated in a meaningful tone. His eyes flared, first with anger, then satisfaction. A murmur spread through his soldiers, several of whom raised the barrels of their weapons toward Lhandro. "Over fifty miles from your fields, farmer," the colonel observed, then surveyed Nyma, Shan, and Lokesh. "All of you from Yapchi?" He growled, his fingers clenching, the knuckles white. "Why here? Why so far away?" His lips curled to reveal a row of teeth stained with tobacco and Lin paused, as if relishing the moment. His eyelids seemed to droop. It was an expression Shan had seen in many such officials, a casual, patient cruelty hidden in a languid face.

"It's too early to weed our barley," Lhandro ventured weakly.

Lin gestured to the sergeant, who trotted to the cab of the first truck and marched back with an expectant gaze, holding a foot-long metal object in both hands.

"Have you been to Lhasa?" the colonel asked, gripping Lhandro's arm tightly. "Where's your bags? Your packs? I must see them!" The sergeant snapped his heels together and extended the object to Lin. Something frigid seized Shan's stomach. It was Public Security's favorite import from America, an electric cattle prod.

Nyma also recognized the instrument. She gave a high-pitched moan and stepped in front of Lhandro. Shan stared at the colonel in confusion. The prod was something the knobs used, seldom the army. It was for interrogation cells, not a remote roadside at the edge of the changtang. The colonel was desperate to extract information from his prisoners.

As Lin shot an amused glance toward Nyma and accepted the prod from the soldier a loud, bold voice rang out from the rocks.

"Yo, General, your majesty! My friends and I were having a peaceful picnic. No one invited the Boy Scouts." Shan turned to see the American at the split in the rocks. He spoke in Mandarin. His mouth was turned up in a grin but his eyes were cool, and fixed on the colonel.

The colonel's lips pursed in a silent snarl, and the officer stepped closer to the American. A green nylon rucksack hung from one of Winslow's shoulders. In his hand was a water bottle, from which he drank with a casual, unconcerned air as several soldiers closed about him.

"You've made a serious mistake," Colonel Lin growled. Lhandro's papers, still in his hand, disappeared into the pocket of Lin's tunic.

"Someone has," Winslow agreed, in English, and slipped his free hand into a pocket of his rucksack. The nearest soldier lifted the barrel of his gun. The American produced a thick carrot, leveled it at the soldier as if it were a weapon, then raised it to his mouth and loudly bit off the end. Several of the freed villagers, watching now from beyond the army trucks, laughed.

"You have no idea," Lin said icily. With a gesture of his hand two soldiers sprang into action, one leaping to each side of the American, pinning his arms behind him. The rucksack and water bottle dropped to the ground. The carrot flew through the air and landed at Shan's feet.

Winslow seemed not to notice the rough treatment. "Not much," he agreed, in Mandarin, grinning at Lin as the soldiers, still holding his arms, pressed him against the rock wall.