Their traversal of this seemed endless. It was enlivened at the beginning by some shots fired, apparently at them, from far below. It seemed that the jihadists were probing southward, trying to avoid or to outflank Sokolov’s position by moving through the woods. An abandoned mining camp down at the bottom of the slope looked like it would provide lots of cover for the jihadists, if they could only reach it. But Olivia and Zula were far out of range, and Sokolov was continuing his policy of trying to pick off anyone who took shots at them, and so within a few minutes Zula had stopped worrying about gunmen and turned all her attentions to the project of just making it through the next hour or two. Part of the time they were able to ride the bicycles in their lowest gear, which was very low indeed, but for the most part it was more efficient to push or even carry the machines. Olivia insisted it was worth it, that the bicycles would come in very handy once they got through this part of the journey. Zula did not respond and hardly cared; she had descended into some numb and semicomatose state where all that was going on around her seemed to have been shone dimly onto a screen by a failing projector with a bad sound system.
But in time they made it to a place from which they could look down a clear and reasonably well-defined trail into a valley lined with dark green forest, and Zula remembered Uncle Richard’s story about how he had long ago happened upon Prohibition Crick after a miserable, hot slog across an exposed and sun-blasted slope. She felt she knew the way down out of some family instinct, and she ignored Olivia’s solicitous questions and polite suggestions that they stop for water and food. She threw a leg over the saddle of her bicycle and let gravity begin pulling her down into that valley, squeezing the brakes every second or two, making sure she didn’t run out of control. She could hear Olivia following her in like style. This trail had lots of switchbacks too, but downhill switchbacks on a bicycle were, of course, pure ecstasy compared to uphill on foot, and so she did nothing but enjoy the ride and feel her spirits rise and her energy return for the first few minutes. Then Olivia’s voice intruded on her awareness, warning her of something. She skidded to a halt and listened. Below them, an engine was snarling: not a chainsaw, but some sort of vehicle, a dirt bike or four-wheeler.
“That might be your uncles,” Olivia said. Probably the wrong advice for Zula, who responded by releasing the brakes and letting the bike run downhill at a speed that was on the edge of being out of control. She managed to slow it down just enough to avoid spinning out at the next switchback, got it fishtailed around, built up speed again, and then had to slam the brakes hard to avoid a head-on collision with a camo-painted four-wheel ATV coming up the other way.
Uncle Jake was driving and Uncle John was riding on the jump seat in back, and both of them were carrying rifles and wearing preoccupied expressions. The transformation that came over their faces when they discovered Zula blocking their path was, she hoped, something she would remember for the rest of her life and tell people about at the re-u.
RICHARD HAD, OF course, packed for the trip hastily, Jones following him around the Schloss aiming a pistol at him and telling him to go faster. There’d been no shortage of warm clothes to choose from. All of it had been skiwear; the Schloss was not about hunting. He was now wearing a yellow parka and red snow pants, with white gloves and a blue hat. Underneath were a green flannel shirt and blue jeans. So he could make himself slightly less conspicuous by shedding the outerwear, at the cost of freezing to death.
Qian Yuxia was wearing just what the doctor ordered for this sort of affair: head-to-toe camouflage. When Richard pointed out the disparity, more out of black humor than anything else, she immediately offered to swap with him. But this would have taken a lot of time; her clothes wouldn’t have covered much of his body; and it would have left her either freezing to death in her underwear or else a blaze of primary colors in Jahandar’s telescopic sight.
She then offered to take the gun, find a good place to hide, and blow Jahandar away when he happened by. Which Richard would not have taken seriously had it been proposed by certain other women of Yuxia’s age and stature. In her case, he found it entirely believable. But it would have been the first time she had ever fired a gun. She would only have one chance. She would have to wait until he came very close; if she misjudged the distance and fired too soon, she’d miss him, or just wound him lightly, and then he would tear her apart with high-velocity rounds while Richard watched helplessly from a hiding place. Not really the way Richard wanted to spend his last few minutes on earth.
They were running out of time, talking too much. Yuxia was becoming sort of a problem in that she simply would not be satisfied with anything less than an active role in the death of Jahandar. Faint rustling noises were sounding from down the slope, which could be explained in many different ways, but it was most prudent to assume that this was the approaching sniper.
They settled it like this: Richard moved downhill off their current switchback and crouched behind the root-ball of a huge tree that had toppled straight down the slope. The root-ball was at least twelve feet in diameter, a scraggly sunburst of enormous but shallow roots, interstices caulked with brown mud and with moss. It rose above him as an almost vertical wall. He could not have been more totally shielded from view; Jahandar could peer up the slope all he wanted, he could ascend the switchback that ran about ten yards below where Richard was crouching and never get any suggestion that Richard was there. By the same token, however, Richard couldn’t see Jahandar.
Yuxia meanwhile maneuvered to a place directly uphill of Richard where she could squat in some undergrowth and peer out, almost impossible to see from below. She had a panoramic view of the slope beneath her and could look Richard in the eye from a distance of perhaps fifty feet. She would wait and watch for Jahandar to pass just below Richard, and raise both hands in the air at the moment when the sniper was immediately below the root-ball, moving laterally along the switchback below it.
Richard waited, watching Yuxia’s face and listening to the sounds of the forest.
Ten minutes passed of what was very close to bliss, as far as Richard was concerned.
Zula was alive. He had seen her. But that didn’t explain the bliss. After all, Chet was dead. Moreover, there was a seriously injured chopper pilot awaiting rescue up on the ridge. Any happiness he felt for Zula ought to have been outweighed by sadness for them.
So that wasn’t it.