The Navajo waited for Shan to cross the ladder bridge first, then began his transit, upright this time. He was nearly at the far end when he froze. An owl, the biggest Shan had yet seen on the mountain, came flying straight at him, nearly touching his scalp with its talons as it swooped by, then wheeled and returned in the direction from which it had come. Hostene began to lose his balance, his arms flailing the air, his body swaying, the flashlight flying out of his grip.
Shan darted back onto the ladder, grabbing Hostene’s arm an instant before it seemed he would surely fall onto the sharp rocks below. But as he did so, the dry old wood began to crack under their combined weight. When they reached the end of the ladder Shan pushed Hostene forward and leaped onto the rocks.
Hostene soon assumed the lead again, moving more rapidly, as if he sensed a destination close ahead. When they emerged from the cleft in the rock wall, the sky had taken on a bright predawn blush, lighting three lanky shapes lurking at an outcropping fifty yards away. The wolves were hesitant to leave, not reacting to the first stone Shan threw at them, only trotting away when both men moved closer and began pelting them with gravel.
As Shan watched, the animals stopped and looked back with fear in their eyes, not at him, but at the shadows beyond the outcropping.
It wasn’t fear Shan felt as he saw what lay behind the rocks, it wasn’t fear that sapped his strength so quickly that he fell to his knees. It was the black mood that had seized him the night before, his bleak despair now redoubled, hitting him like a club, roiling his stomach, numbing him.
Thomas had a slight grin on his face, frozen in place, as if he thought his assailant had been joking with him. His eyes stared vacantly into the dawn sky. A stream of blood trickled from his scalp, though it seemed unlikely the blow to the head had killed him, for the large pools of blood at the ends of his outstretched arms and the stains on the adjoining rocks showed that his heart had still been pumping when his hands were severed.
Chapter Eight
Shan meant to stop Hostene from entering the little rock-walled chamber but he was unable to make his body act. The old Navajo stood beside him uttering an anguished moan then, staggering, dropped onto a rock. When Shan was finally able to move, he looked up to see Hostene staring at the corpse, a single tear rolling down his cheek.
“Abigail,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“This time,” Shan said, “I think the killer did take her.” He gestured into the shadows where a pack of hair ties, a small battery, and a toothbrush lay on the ground. Someone had tipped over Abigail’s pack.
Hostene wiped his cheek. “We have to follow, quickly.”
“There will be no trail. And if he wanted her dead, she would be lying here beside Thomas. Can you find that cave again, Rapaki’s cave?” Hostene nodded. “Then you must go there and bring back Yangke, as fast as you can. But if you see any miners you must hide.”
Hostene nodded again. Before he left the rock circle he picked up Abigail’s toothbrush and pocketed it, then surveyed the sky, wary not of killers but of owls.
Swallowing his despair, Shan studied the scene, retracing the two sets of boot prints that led from the passage to the cluster of rocks. Abigail and Thomas had stopped, taken several small, shifting steps as if undecided about something, then walked straight to the rocks, as though someone had called them. While the killer was performing his grisly work, what had he done with Abigail? She owed Thomas a debt. Shan did not think she would have fled if she had seen him attacked. Had the killer knocked her unconscious, then bound and gagged her? Or had she been bound and gagged but awake, forced to watch as the killer stretched out each of Thomas’s arms and butchered him?
Shan fought down another wave of nausea, then forced himself to study the bloody stumps at the end of Thomas’s arms. The left had been taken off with one clean chop, the right with two, leaving an uneven line on the bone where the blade had stopped the first time. The edge of the blade had been chipped, which probably meant it was made of either cheap steel or old, brittle, forge-worked metal. The tight pattern of blood reached across the ground onto a rock five feet away, leaving no doubt that Thomas had been alive when his hands had been amputated. But even with such ghastly injuries, a youth in prime health might have survived. Shan bent over Thomas’s head, noting for the first time the burst capillaries in his corneas, the discoloration around his mouth. With another chill Shan looked back at the hair ties and the battery on the ground. He remembered seeing them in the granary. They had been in a plastic bag. The killer had been patient, proceeding as if he had all the time in the world. He had covered Thomas’s head with the bag and waited for the unconscious, bleeding youth to suffocate.
Shan’s legs became weak twigs. He lowered himself onto the ground, staring, unfocused, at the boy. Thomas had been so alive, so full of defiance and ambition, much like Shan’s own son. He had been beaten down, had reacted by fleeing, escorting his new American patron to the deadly side of the mountain. Only the day before his uncle had told him he was finished with his childhood.
When Shan finally found the strength to rise, he walked in ever-widening circles around the site of the murder, eventually finding the plastic bag tucked into a crack in a large boulder. Except for a few drops of blood in a line leading up the slope there were no tracks, no evidence of the direction the killer had taken, no sign at all of Abigail Natay. Thomas and Abigail had been doomed the moment they had stepped out of the narrow passage. But how did the killer know they were on their way through the passage? No one should have expected them, they were meant never to return to the western slope again. But the miners had been prowling, filled with blood lust. A miner from Little Moscow could have been there, waiting for Shan and Hostene. Thomas might have been his poor second choice, when his intended targets did not appear. But the hands! Even if a miner seeking revenge had severed the hands, surely he would not have taken them away.
The ledges of rock would have afforded an untraceable route for anyone leaving the scene. The short line of blood, probably drops from the severed hands, led upward toward the miles of rugged, undulating terrain that rose toward the summit.
Gravel rattled behind him. Shan spun about to see Yangke, slowing from a frantic pace, bent over, hands on knees, panting.
“You have to go to the village, to Chodron,” Shan said.
“I’d rather seek a pack of wolves.”
Shan’s reply was to gesture toward the outcropping. “The bridge ladder is gone. Even if it were still there, we couldn’t carry a body across it.”
Yangke’s eyes filled with pain. Shan did not follow him into the circle of boulders but waited, watching the slopes, wondering what reason a man could have for collecting human hands on Sleeping Dragon Mountain. When the Tibetan finally reappeared his face was drained of color. He walked as if the canque were on his neck once more. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Gao boy. This is the end of everything. The army will take over both sides of the mountain now.”
“Go. Tell Chodron who the victim is. Tell him to send four men with a blanket and two poles, for a stretcher. Tell him to reach Professor Gao on his radio, but only Gao, no one from down below. Gao should bring a helicopter to Drango in”-Shan did some quick mental calculations-“six hours’ time. I will go to the cave for Lokesh.”
Yangke glanced forlornly back toward the body. “There’s no point. You should run. Get your friends and flee. I remember hearing about a Chinese prince, centuries ago. He was murdered in a village somewhere. The emperor couldn’t tell who was responsible so he had everyone in the village killed. Whoever murdered Thomas has killed us all.” Yangke looked longingly toward the wild mountains to the south, where a man could lose himself, then back at Shan. He began to trot down the trail toward Drango village.