Clive Cussler: Golden Buddha

“Thank you, sir,” the Dungkar soldier shouted.

“Good luck,” King shouted as a pair of hands from inside the helicopter reached for him and he stepped up onto the skid, then ducked down and climbed inside.

“How’s things?” Reyes shouted after the door was closed and the helicopter had turned back toward Gonggar Airport.

“You know what they say,” King said wearily. “We do more before lunch than most people do all day.”

43

“MR. Seng,” Cabrillo said, “excellent job so far.”

A cold wind was blowing from the north. It bore the scent of forests and glaciers, aviation fuel and gunpowder. Cabrillo zipped the leather jacket he was wearing tighter around his neck, then reached in his rear pocket and removed a carefully folded white handkerchief and dabbed his nose, which was running.

“Thank you, sir,” Seng said. “Here’s the most current situation report. Murphy and the contract pilot managed to get the charges placed and cause the avalanche at the pass. Any Chinese armor is now effectively immobilized. Even if they decided to ignore the Russian advance and try to return to Lhasa now, their only route would cost them at least forty-eight hours of transit time, and that is if the weather holds.”

“Problems with that operation?” Cabrillo asked.

“The contract pilot, one Gurt Guenther, was hit by small-arms fire,” Seng said. “The extent of his injuries is unknown.”

“You’ve dispatched backup?”

“A relief helicopter with Kasim aboard is en route,” Seng said, “but they made it to the fuel stop and managed to land, so Guenther might not be too critical. The way it stands now is that if Murphy’s team can fly themselves out, we can call back Kasim.”

“Good,” Cabrillo said. “We might just need him here.”

“Speaking of the weather,” Seng said, “we are going to catch a late spring storm this afternoon, then it will clear for tomorrow and the next few days. The estimate is two to three inches of snow, and for the temperature to go below freezing before a slow warming trend.”

“The weather has the same impact on us as on the Chinese,” Cabrillo said, “but it is a possible advantage for the Dungkar forces. We’ll score it in Tibet’s favor.”

From far in the east came the sound of an approaching helicopter. Cabrillo stared in the distance and tried to make out which type it was.

“That’s one of ours, sir,” Seng said. “It contains Reyes, King and Legchog Zhuren.”

“Excellent.”

The two men started walking closer to the terminal. Zhuren would end up there soon enough.

“We have managed to field an attack helicopter liberated from the Chinese and piloted by Mr. Adams. Also a cargo plane we modified into a gunship with Gunderson at the controls, as well as the rental Bells and the Predator.”

“An excellent air armada for the newly resurrected Tibetan military,” Cabrillo said.

“Everything else in the plan has taken place at the correct time,” Seng said, “but there is one problem that has arisen. I discovered it when questioning a captured Chinese lieutenant.”

“What?” Cabrillo asked.

“Because the Chinese troops in Tibet have always been outnumbered,” Seng said, “if they were overrun—and I mean a Broken Arrow situation, no hope at all—the plan called for them to gas the Tibetan rebels with an airborne paralyzing agent.”

“The drums must be marked with some symbols,” Cabrillo said. “We’ll just call Washington and receive recommendations for how to disable it.”

“That’s the problem,” Seng said loudly over the sound of the helicopter hovering to land. “The lieutenant doesn’t know where it was stored. He only knows it exists.”

Cabrillo reached into his coat pocket and removed a Cuban cigar. Biting off the end, he spit the plug to the side, then reached for a Zippo lighter with the other hand and did a single-hand light. He puffed the cigar to life before speaking.

“I have a feeling, Mr. Seng, it’s going to be a long day.”

MURPHY was angry. Gampo had left him alone in the tent with a weak and bleeding Gurt. If this was the way the feared Dungkar reacted to blood, they’d lose this war before it ever started. The Oregon was sending help, but even at the fastest cruising speed the Bell could fly, that would be hours away. Gurt, his friend and fellow warrior, was growing weaker by the minute. His skin was an ugly gray and he was drifting in and out of consciousness.

Just then the flap of the tent was pulled back and Gampo entered.

He was carrying a handful of long-bladed grass clippings in one hand and what looked like a wet dirt clod in the other, and under his chin was a chunk of meat from some unspecified beast.

“Where the hell did you go?” Murphy said.

“Stir the fire in the stove,” Gampo said quietly, setting down the grass and mud, “then add these to the fire,” he added, removing a leather pouch with powdered minerals inside. “We need a good amount of smoke inside the tent. Once you have that done,” he said, pointing to the meat, “cook that in with the tea and make me a meat broth.”

Murphy stared at Gampo as if he were crazy.

But the Tibetan was already busy cleaning and bandaging Gurt’s wound, so Murphy did as he was told. Two minutes later, the tent was filled with a smoke that smelled somewhat like cinnamon cloves washed in lemon. Three more minutes and Gampo stood upright and stared at Murphy. Then he motioned to help him prop Gurt up. The grass and mud had dried into a pair of oblong bandages front and rear. They adhered to his skin like plaster of paris laced with glue. Gurt’s eyes began to flicker open and he drew a few deep breaths.

“Give him the broth of the bear,” Gampo said. “I’ll go gas up your flying ship.”

JUST across the border of Russia and Mongolia, General Alexander Kernetsikov was breathing deeply of the diesel-smoke-tinged air. After leaving Novosibirsk, his tank column had blown through the Altai Region like a top-fueler down a drag strip. Kernetsikov was riding in the lead tank with his head out of a forward hatch. He was wearing a helmet with a headset so he could communicate with his other officers, and a uniform with enough ribbons to decorate a Christmas tree. In his mouth was an unlit Cuban cigar. In his hand was a GPS that he was using to track the column’s speed.

The distance to the Tibet border was five hundred miles. They were traveling at thirty-five miles per hour.

Kernetsikov stared overhead as a flight of fighters crisscrossed high in the air above. Then he called his intelligence officer over the radio to learn what was new. The weather was due to change to snow sometime in the next few hours. Other than that, all was the same.

IN Macau, Sung Rhee was reaching the end of his patience.

Marcus Friday had learned that his plane had been found and had ordered it to return to pick him up and fly him out of the city. Stanley Ho was still angry about the theft of his priceless Buddha. The later discovery that the one Friday had recovered was fake just added to his rage.

After the Chinese navy had realized that the cargo ship they had illegally stopped on the high seas had nothing to do with the incident in Macau, they had broadened their circle of observation and tracked the Oregon to Vietnam.

Po had made a few calls to a friend he knew in the Da Nang police department and learned that a C-130 had left Da Nang for Bhutan. A few more calls and some wired bribes had led him to a rumor that the group that had stolen the statue was on their way to Tibet.

Po was a Chinese police officer and Tibet was a Chinese region, so Po had decided to follow the trail. Flying from Macau to Chengdu, he had arrived on the last flight in Gonggar yesterday evening. By the time he’d arrived at the office of the Public Security Bureau, Tibet’s police force, it was closed. So he’d checked into a hotel and waited for morning.