Jack Higgins - Year Of The Tiger

Chavasse didn’t bother to reply because, suddenly, he found it was all he could do to keep to the ancient caravan trail they were following. It dropped down through a narrow ravine and its ruts were ice-bound and iron-hard.

The ravine widened and the trail dropped steeply towards a great gorge that cut its way through the heart of the rising mountain, and far below he saw a bridge.

He paused for a moment to examine the map and then engaged low gear and began a cautious descent. The cantilever bridge was a spindly, narrow affair supported by wooden beams on each side of the gorge.

He braked to a halt, jumped down to the frozen ground, walked out onto the bridge and stood in the centre for a moment. The river that splashed idly over great boulders was only about twenty feet below, but it was far enough. He turned and ran back to the jeep.

“Will it hold?” Hoffner asked.

“Solid as a rock,” Chavasse said, trying to make it sound convincing. “It would take a three-ton truck easily.”

There was only a couple of feet of clearance on either side as he drove slowly forward. He could feel the sweat soaking his shirt as the planks creaked ominously in the centre and then they were through and safe on the other side.

There was still one thing to be done and he braked to a halt, grabbed one of the stick grenades and walked back to the bridge. He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade out into the centre and turned his back as the explosion shattered the peace.

Pieces of stone and wooden girder lifted skywards and when he looked back, he saw that the entire middle section of the bridge had fallen in. He moved forward, waiting for the smoke to clear to get a better look. At that moment, two jeeps moved out of the mouth of the ravine on the opposite side of the river and started down the slope.

The first one carried perhaps half a dozen men and a light machine gun was mounted in the rear. He was aware of these things and his brain took account of them even as he turned and ran back to the jeep.

The wheels skidded on the icy mud and for a moment panic seized him, and then they were moving up out of the gorge. He recklessly changed to a higher gear and pressed his foot flat on the board so that the jeep bounded over the rim of the gorge, all four wheels leaving the ground as the machine gun chattered, kicking up dirt and stones to one side of them.

Once over the top, the track circled the base of a great pillar of rock. Chavasse accelerated and swung the wheel to take them round the shoulder and then Katya screamed a warning and he slammed his foot hard on the brake.

But he was too late. The track was washed out in a great sliding scoop that ran over the edge into space. The front wheels dipped into the hole and the jeep slewed towards the edge. He frantically tugged at the handbrake. For an instant, it seemed as if it might hold, and then the jeep lurched and one of the front wheels dipped over the edge.

They had only seconds in which to act. He jumped to the ground, turned and helped Katya down, then Hoffner after her, his black bag clutched firmly against his chest.

At that moment there was a protesting, shuddering groan and the jeep started to slide. Chavasse reached in, grabbed the machine pistol and the stick grenade and jumped back as the vehicle slid over the edge.

It hung there for a moment and then disappeared. There were three terrible, metal-wrenching crashes as it bounced its way down into the valley, and then silence.

Chavasse moved back along the track and peered round the edge of the bluff. The wind was beginning to sweep snow across the steppes in a great curtain, but he could see quite clearly the two jeeps parked on the other side of the bridge and the soldiers moving down on foot to cross the river.

He returned to the others. “It doesn’t look too good. They’re crossing the gorge on foot.”

Katya looked strained and anxious, but Hoffner seemed extraordinarily composed. “What do we do now, Paul?”

“According to the map, we’re only about ten miles from the border,” Chavasse told him. “If we leave the track here and cross over the shoulder of the mountain, we’ll come into the Pangong Tso Pass. About two miles along it, there’s an old Tibetan customs post marked. There may be soldiers there, of course, but we’ll have to risk that.”

“It’s impossible, Paul,” Katya cried, the wind whipping her voice into a scream. “I couldn’t walk a mile in this state. Neither could the doctor.”

He grabbed her arm and urged her up the slope. “We don’t have any choice.”

Hoffner took her other arm and they moved upwards, heads bowed against the driving snow. They paused for a moment in the shelter of some rocks and Hoffner turned suddenly, his face grey.

“My briefcase, Paul. I left it in the jeep.”

Chavasse stared blankly at him and then rage gripped him by the throat, threatening to choke him. Everything he had worked for, all the suffering of the past weeks – all for nothing.

Hoffner grabbed his arm. “It doesn’t matter, Paul. It’s all here in my head, that’s the important thing.”

“That won’t matter a damn if Colonel Li gets his hands on those papers,” Chavasse said. “Don’t you realize that?” He pushed the stick grenade into the old man’s hand. “Here, I know you aren’t much with a gun. If anyone comes at you, just pull out the pin and throw it at them.”

He turned, the machine pistol in his left hand, and slid back down the slope to the track. The slope continued on the other side and he went over without hesitation, glissading down to the wrecked jeep forty feet below, squeezed between great boulders.

He found the briefcase almost at once, wedged under the crumpled driving seat, and he pulled it out and started back up the slope. His heart was pounding and there was blood in his mouth, but he held the briefcase and machine pistol in his left hand and pulled himself up with his right.

He scrambled over the edge of the track and started across. He slipped and fell to one knee and as he got up, he heard voices shouting through the falling snow.

He turned and looked down the track quickly as half a dozen soldiers came round the corner of the bluff, bunched together. He dropped to one knee, braced the machine pistol across his arm and loosed the whole magazine in one continuous burst. He continued across the track and scrambled up the slope, his heart heaving like some hunted animal’s.

He heard the shouts of the men behind him as they started to follow and then the stick grenade he had given Hoffner sailed over his head down to the soldiers and there was an explosion. As it died away, he heard not the sounds of pursuit, but the cries of the wounded and dying.

He had no strength left. For a moment he lay there on his face, and suddenly the snow balled up around him, hiding the valley below.

He scrambled wearily to his feet as hooves clattered over loose stones and a horse moved down the slope to meet him.

The man who sat on its back wore a fur hat, the robe of a snow leopard and soft black boots. A rifle was crooked in one arm.

Chavasse stared helplessly up at him and then the brown, handsome face split into a wide grin.

The snow was a living thing whipped by high wind across the steppes, but down in the hollow between the tall rocks it was strangely quiet.

Chavasse sat with his back to one of the boulders and bared his arm so that Hoffner could give him another injection. Osman Sherif, the Kazakh chieftain, squatted beside him, rifle across his knees, and grinned.

“The ways of Allah are strange, my friend,” he said in Chinese. “It would seem we are fated to make the last stage of our journey together.”

Behind him beside the horses stood his wife, together with Katya. The chieftain’s two young children, heavily muffled in furs, were already mounted, one behind the other.