Neal Stephenson - Reamde

“Cliff” was too simple a word to denote the geological phenomenon rising above him. It was not a sudden vertical wall so much as a rapid increase in the slope of the ground that became fully vertical, and even developed into a bit of an overhang, twelve or fifteen feet above. And it was not a simple monolith, but a junk pile of boulders, tenacious vegetation, and packed soil that just happened to be really steep. Its top was out of view, but he knew it to be about fifty feet above. Anyway, it was now sheltered enough that he felt he could take a decent crap and so he hopped up and down several times, reversing his direction by degrees, and began to fumble with his belt.

A roll of toilet paper in a Ziploc bag struck him in the chest, underhanded by Jabari from perhaps twenty feet away, and bounced to the ground at his feet. “Thank you,” Richard said, stripping his trousers down. Jabari turned his back and retreated somewhat. Richard, looking at him through the tops of the shrubs as he squatted to obey nature’s call, saw the Egyptian raising both hands and waving cheerfully to someone back in the camp; apparently someone, probably Abdul-Wahaab, wanted to know what the hell was going on and needed to be reassured that all was well.

Richard was just in the middle of letting it all go when a dark object dropped out of the sky and thudded to the ground right in front of him. He assumed at first that it was a short bit of a stick that had tumbled out of a tree on the top of the cliff. But on a closer look he observed that it was neatly rectangular.

It was, he now saw, a pocket multitool—a Leatherman or similar—in its black nylon belt holster.

“THIS IS ALL about making a case,” Seamus said.

The automatic waffle machine emitted a piercing electronic beep, signaling it wanted to be turned over. Seamus reached out and flipped it. The Four were standing at the complimentary breakfast bar of their hotel in Coeur d’Alene. None of the others had ever seen an automatic self-serve waffle machine before, and so Seamus was giving them an impromptu demo of the best that America had to offer.

“I’m not sure how that phrase translates into Chinese or Hungarian,” he went on. “What I’m trying to say is this. We are going to see my boss, who happens to live on the other end of the country. We have to drive because I can’t get you guys on a plane without IDs. We happen to be in striking distance of a place where I think Jones might be crossing the border. Last time I logged into T’Rain—which was about half an hour ago—Egdod was still wandering across the desert, followed by a couple of hundred coup counters and curiosity seekers. Which supports my theory.”

“It does?” Yuxia asked.

“Okay, never mind the part about Egdod. You either believe it or you don’t. I happen to believe it. Anyway, I called this dude who has a chopper.” Seamus patted the brochure for the dude in question, which was sticking out of his back pocket. “He is willing to take me up there to fly over the area. I’ll only be gone for a couple of hours. We’ll be on the road by midafternoon. Chances are we can still make Missoula tonight. You guys can hang out here, see a movie, whatever. Just don’t get arrested or do anything that would call attention to your complex immigration status.”

“I want to come with you,” Yuxia said.

“There’s not enough room in the helicopter.”

“The brochure says it can carry up to four passengers,” Yuxia said, and pulled another copy of the same brochure out of her jacket pocket.

During the awkward silence that followed, Seamus happened to look up and see Csongor and Marlon gazing at him expectantly. The waffle seemed to have been forgotten.

“The big one can take four,” Seamus admitted. “I had my eye on the little one.”

“What is it exactly you think you’re going to be doing?” Csongor asked.

“Flying over the area I’m interested in. Taking pictures. Getting a feel for it.”

“How would our being in the helicopter prevent you from doing that?” Marlon wanted to know.

Seamus shrugged. “Maybe it wouldn’t.”

Yuxia asked, “Are you just lying to us?”

“Why would I lie to you?”

The waffle maker squealed again.

“You’re acting weird,” Yuxia said. “Are you expecting to, like, land the chopper and have combat with Jones?”

“No, I am not going to have combat with Jones. That is not what this is about.”

“Good,” Yuxia said, “because if that is your plan, you should warn the pilot.”

“YOUR WAFFLE IS DONE!” shouted a peevish breakfaster from across the room.

Yuxia elbowed Seamus out of the way, figured out how to open the waffle iron, and deposited its steaming load onto a plate. The squeal stopped.

Csongor wanted to try it now. He picked up a minicarafe of waffle batter and poured it into the appliance and watched broodingly as it infiltrated the valleys between the bumps.

“Of course,” Seamus said, “if I believed that there was any chance whatsoever of getting into a firefight with jihadists, it would behoove me to say so to the pilot.”

“Behoove it would!” Yuxia agreed.

“So it is totally safe,” Csongor said.

“As safe as flying around in a chopper can ever be,” Seamus agreed. He did not actually believe a word of this, but he had been cornered.

“Whereas if we stay here, there’s a chance that we’ll get into trouble,” Csongor pointed out. “You are responsible for us.”

“Alas, yes.”

“If the chopper has a breakdown, you get stuck up north, then we are here with no car keys, no hotel room, no ID…”

“Okay, okay,” Seamus said. “You can come with me and stare at trees from a great height all morning.”

RICHARD HAD SEEN that tool and its holster before. He was pretty sure it was the one Chet always wore on his belt.

It was about five feet in front of him. When he was finished emptying his bowels, he rolled forward onto his knees, then to all fours, stretched out, and coaxed it up off the ground with the tips of his fingers. Then he pushed himself back to a squat. He set the multitool down on the ground next to his foot, then picked up the Ziploc bag containing the roll of bumwad and pulled that open.

He could hear some of the other jihadists emerging from their tents in the campsite, a couple of hundred feet away. If they behaved true to form, they would begin the day by estimating the direction of Mecca, then kneeling on their camping pads and praying.

When he was finished using the toilet paper, he stuffed the roll back into the Ziploc bag. With one hand he wadded and rattled the bag, making noise that he hoped would cover the crackling sound of the Velcro on the Leatherman’s holster—for he was using his other hand to jerk that open. He pulled out the tool and turned it inside out, making it into a pair of pliers with built-in wire cutters. These would make short work of the zip ties while producing a characteristic sound—a crisp pop that Jabari would certainly recognize, if he heard it. The roar of the American Falls and the rapids downstream of it might cover some of that sound, but still Richard was careful to cut the zip ties with the bare minimum of force required, sort of worrying the cutters through the plastic instead of severing them explosively. He removed only the ties joining his ankles and the ones joining his wrists, leaving in place the ones serving as cuffs.

He then closed up the multitool and was about to pocket it when he realized that a knife might come in handy. The device had several external blades, files, rasps, and so forth. Richard found the one with the sharpest and most traditionally knifelike blade and opened that up until it snapped into the locked position.

He set it on the ground, rose to a half squat, pulled up his trousers, and fastened his belt. Remaining in a crouch, he picked up the knife and began to walk along the relatively clear space that ran along the base of the cliff. Until now he had not bothered to look up because he knew that all he would see was an overhang several feet above him. But as he moved along the cliff’s base he came into a zone only a short distance away where the overhang receded, and at that point he looked up, expecting to see Chet’s face gazing down at him.