Philip Kerr - Esau

Hurké knew better than to argue. He selected a piece of plastic about the size of a paperback novel and demonstrated how to tamp the explosive and how to insert a detonator.

‘After you have placed the detonator in the plastic, sahib, be careful not to use your radio, as it could accidentally set off the explosive.’

Jack nodded and shouldered a coil of rope and his rucksack, into which he carefully placed the explosive materials.

‘Better to detonate from the air, sahib,’ said Hurké. ‘Safer, anyway.’

‘Okay.’

‘Be careful, Jack,’ said Swift.

‘I’ll be back before you know it.’

They watched him go down the ice corridor toward the rock face, and only when he had disappeared from sight did the sirdar suggest that they start back to Camp One. Swift let out a nervous sigh and went over to the front of the stretcher bearing Didier’s body. Hurké stood at the rear, and when Swift was ready, at his command, they picked up the stretcher and began to walk.

Neither of them said anything, and carrying the stretcher in a straight line made it almost impossible to look back. By the time they reached the helicopter. Swift’s stomach was knotted with worry and she was almost certain that Hurké felt the same way.

Seeing Hurké and Swift, Bishnu jumped up and helped to slide the stretcher onto the floor of the helicopter. Then, almost as an afterthought, he glanced around and asked where Jack was.

‘He’ll be along in a while,’ said the sirdar. He spoke with such assurance that Swift felt certain he must be right. She sat in the doorway of the helicopter, basking in the sunshine, trying to empty her mind of what concerned her most. Jack would be along in a while. Whenever he went away, he always came back again. That was how it would always be. But with each minute that passed, she became more and more certain that something must have happened to him. She stood and began to pace in front of the helicopter, her eyes straining to see along the corridor for his familiar figure. When she had seen Hurké smoke his eighth cigarette and Bishnu check his watch for the third time in five minutes, she could stand it no longer, and turning to the sirdar, she reminded him that an hour had passed.

The sirdar glanced coolly at his own watch and then nodded.

‘Maybe a while yet, memsahib,’ he said calmly. ‘Not to worry. Jack knows what he is doing.’

‘Can’t we radio him?’

‘Radio silence is necessary with explosives,’ said the sirdar. ‘As is patience.’

Another half hour passed, by which time even the sirdar was worried. Having run out of cigarettes, he stopped smoking and began on his thumbnails, which he chewed alternately, with hands clasped, as if he hoped to add some feeling to a difficult prayer.

The sound of a dull explosion brought Swift and Hurké immediately to their feet. Bishnu glanced anxiously at the sirdar, his jaw quivering nervously.

‘Garjan?’

The sirdar shook his head and stared up at the face of Machhapuchhare.

‘Pairo,’ he said quietly.

For a second or two, the huge mass of snow hung on the mountain before, slowly, it started to fall away like a great pile of papers toppling from a high desk.

‘Avalanche,’ he added, with more urgency.

Bishnu hardly needed prompting. He had already run around the far side of the helicopter to jump into the cockpit and start the engine, all the time shouting at the top of his voice. The engine added its own whine, and slowly the rotor blades began to beat the air, drowning out his panic-stricken demands that they get airborne as quickly as possible.

Her arm held tight in Hurké’s hand. Swift found herself hustled toward the door of the aircraft.

‘Please, memsahib,’ he shouted. ‘We have to go now.’

‘What about Jack?’ she shouted, twisting around to look back down the corridor. Jack was nowhere to be seen. ‘We can’t just leave him.’

The sound of the avalanche came closer, like an approaching thunderstorm, an icy wind the deceptive vanguard for the juggernaut of snow and rock that was on its destructive way to the Rognon. The sirdar guessed that it would be only a matter of a minute or two before the avalanche reached them, and he felt a surge of adrenaline through his body. If it caught them, they would all be killed. Not just Jack. He pushed Swift into the chopper and yelled at Bishnu to take off and hover about a metre above the ground, adding the threat that if he went any higher he would cut off the man’s hands. Fearfully, the pilot glanced over his shoulder at Hurké. Since it was well known that it was the sirdar who had cut off Ang Tsering’s hand, Bishnu did not suppose Hurké uttered the threat lightly. Uncertain if he was more afraid of the sirdar than of the avalanche now sweeping down Machhapuchhare, he did as he was ordered and lifted the chopper gently off the ground.

‘You can’t,’ screamed Swift. ‘He’s your friend. You can’t just leave him. He’ll be killed.’

‘We can only wait as long as we must,’ shouted the sirdar, pinning Swift’s arms at her side and nearly sitting on her to stop her from jumping out. ‘But we will surely all be killed if we are still landed here when the avalanche hits.’

Swift struggled to break free of the sirdar’s iron grip. She understood he was right, but after all they had come through, it seemed so unjust that Jack should be killed now. Given their decision to keep the existence of the yeti a secret, what was happening appalled her: It was almost as if the fates had decided that Jack had always been meant to die with Didier in the first avalanche all those months ago. She felt the chopper buffeted by the granular wind swirling around them and — uncertain whether this was caused by air blast from the avalanche or the whacking rotor blades above her — she yelled Jack’s name at the top of her lungs. And then saw him, running toward them, his knees as high as the stormproof suit he was wearing allowed.

‘There,’ she shouted. ‘There he is.’

Hurké followed the line of the arm that had broken free of his grasp to point down the ice corridor and saw that his friend would only just make it; not at all, if he was unlucky enough to fall. Now the sirdar felt real fear as, looking beyond Jack, he saw, gathering speed like an accelerating tidal wave, gaining on him all the time, a huge and angry cloud of snow that looked like the steaming hot breath of the Lord Shiva. It was as if they were being reminded that this was a holy, forbidden place and that they should never have come here.

Jack flung himself through the open door of the helicopter, hit the floor with the upper half of his body, and felt himself hauled aboard by his waist harness.

‘Jaanu,’ shouted the sirdar. ‘Jaanu, jaanu.’

The next second the chopper lurched steeply to one side, away from the mountain, and then toward the Sanctuary.

‘Hera,’ yelled Bishnu.

Machhapuchhare and the Rognon disappeared completely, as a deafening grey-white cloud enveloped the ancient helicopter like a blizzard, and the engine shuddered in its struggle to gain altitude. Swift caught Jack’s eye and saw him say something, but the words were drowned in the greater volume below them. She closed her eyes as, sickeningly, the chopper seemed to turn one hundred and eighty degrees in one direction and then the other, and for what seemed like several minutes she was sure they were going to crash. The helicopter shunted a little and then suddenly steadied itself, and they were heading smoothly back up the glacier.

Swift opened her eyes. For a second she thought that fear must have turned Jack’s hair as white as some old man’s — until she realized that he was covered in powder snow. They all were.