Page 75 of What Remains

This just snowballs.His head was pounding. Between lack of sleep, the altitude and the stress, he was running on fumes. How could they possibly get everyone out of that mine?

Maybe we can’t, and then no one ever gives me a chance to bring Roni back.

“Yes.” Shahida’s voice was watery. “Whatever we do, I no leave my boys there. I go back with or without help.”

“Yeah, that’s a great plan.” Driver, surly. “A suicide run.”

“You have better idea?”

“No,” Driver said, “but I kinda don’t think ending up dead will help.”

Ending up dead…A sudden spark of inspiration flared. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”

Everyone, even Poya, turned. “What?” Driver asked.

“What you just said. About ending up dead.”

Driver and Shahida looked at one another, and then Driver said to John, “Are you volunteering?”

“No, but if they want a corpse,” John said, “let’s give them one.”

PAWNS

1

Their arrival wasn’t a surprise.They made sure it wouldn’t be. No point in being gunned down until Amu delivered his terms.

There were two ways up from the camp. One was the wide road used by truck. Even walking, the time to the mine would have been cut by half.

There was another way: a narrow path hacked from stone. Taking that would gobble up most of the day. Which, naturally, is the path John proposed they take: the path ofmostresistance. Because appearances mattered. They shouldn’t look to be in any particular hurry. Twilight, John said, was their friend.

Sarbaz’s men knew they were coming. The mine’s entrance was not at the summit, but several hundred feet below at a staging area large enough for trucks to rumble in empty and rumble out full. Anyone standing guard at the mine would have a pretty clear view of them for most of their journey.

That was important, too.

The path was sinuous, slow and steep. Given the westerly wind, the trip up was also brutally cold because there were no true breaks, no way to get part of the mountain between you and that wind. Instead, the path went up and up and up, with switchbacks that went back and forth and back and forth as ifstitched into the mountain in broad loops. There was only one switchback where a person could really pause to rest and get out of the wind. More than midway to the mine, the path was partially obstructed by a rock fall. No one at the mine had ever bothered to clear the fall, possibly because the drop from there into the valley was nearly vertical, with no ledges or anything would stop a fall. Slip there, and it was a long way down. There also was no way to avoid the rockfall either, which probably accounted for why the rockfall remained where it was.

Still, it was a good place to stop. Just not for too long.

They didn’t go unarmed. That would be stupid. Worse, not taking rifles would probably raise Sarbaz’s antennae. But Amu’s rifle was in a pannier strapped to the yak’s flank and Kur carried his in sling on his back.

Amu also made sure that spareunito which he’d tied a strip of white cloth was visible at all times. Surrender had the same meaning in any language. An interesting word, too,Poya thought. A person mightsurrenderand withdraw from a fight. But a person could alsobesurrendered, the way a chess player might sacrifice a pawn to guard a king or gain an advantage. A person could bepawnedoff, sacrificed in much the same way: this for that. Pawns were useful only insofar as their deaths served a greater purpose.

Shahida was a pawn. So was the lumpy man-sized bundle, stained with rust-colored splotches, lashed to the yak’s flanks.

And now, so was he.

2

“A trade?”Amused, Sarbaz tilted his head to one side and then the other, like a dog trying to make sense of what its master was saying. The man’s dark gaze flicked from Poya to Shahida, slouched on the yak. Her hands were bound. Another rope was looped around her waist, tethering her to the animal’s back so she wouldn’t fall. Or jump down and run away.

“You’re a brave man, Amu, I’ll give you that,” Sarbaz said, “but I don’t know why you think I’d be interesting in bargaining with you. I could kill you and your clansmen right now.”

This was true enough. They had strength in numbers, after all. Four guards against Amu and Kur. Only Kur had leveled his rifle. Amu’s AK was in its scabbard which was yoked to the one yak they’d brought and out of reach. Kur’s rifle was steady enough, but Poya didn’t think he could take out four men before they took him out.

Even if Kur was that fast, Sarbaz had a very large, very black pistol in a paddle-holster. Poya knew the make, too: a Glock. He even knew why Sarbaz might like that style of handgun because Baba had a good collection of American movies featuring police. A Glock, Baba once explained, had no safety, which was why somany police liked them. Keep a round chambered, then point and shoot.

Poya hoped no one was twitchy or, as the Americans would say, trigger-happy. That’s all they needed: people to start firing. There was no place to really run and hide here except into the mine, and he wasn’t doing that. Chances were excellent, therefore, he’d get caught in the crossfire and they would all die for nothing.

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