Maybe he was wearing rose-tinted glasses, but he had hope.
Whatever obstacle landed in front of them, they’d find a way over it.
Or through it.
Finally the woman nodded and handed the phone back to King. Before she walked away, she said, ‘Breakfast?’
‘Please.’
‘What you want?’
Slater hurried over and they perused the menu before ordering stacks of pancakes and eggs and huge bowls of soup, with teas on the side for tradition’s sake. They weren’t worried about overloading on carbs — it didn’t matter when you were burning three thousand calories a day. She took their orders and headed straight for the kitchen, and King felt a deep respect as he watched her leave.
She should have kicked them out for bringing such chaos to her establishment. But she seemed to understand they had noble intentions. So she was persevering — even though it made her uncomfortable, even though she wanted to be dealing with anything but bloodstains.
She was an incredible human being.
When she was gone, King pressed the phone to his ear. ‘What have you got?’
Parker said, ‘It’s not good.’
‘I didn’t think it would be.’
‘They’re a Maoist splinter group. Like an extremist version of the typical communist guerrillas. Apparently there’s hordes of them up in the isolated regions of the mountains. They win the rural villages over by offering security and education that the government can’t provide. Their goal is to be celebrated as “freedom fighters,” when really all they’re after is control. They do that by promising radical change, and it works. Most of those villagers live terribly hard lives, and the communists offer them hope. The violence has been ramping up lately, Sejun tells me. The rebellion is alive and thriving.’
‘Which means there’ll be plenty of them looking to line their pockets with a little extra cash.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So whoever’s behind this has all the guerrillas on their payroll?’
‘I doubt it. They must know the area well if they’re managing to coax Maoists into doing their dirty work. They must have connections.’
King paused, reading between the lines. ‘You’re trying to tell me it’s not Perry.’
‘Do you think it’s likely that Perry knows how to contact and coordinate guerrillas?’
‘Anything sounds likely right now. If it’s the porter trying to raise funds for the communists by kidnapping your daughter, then what does he want with the laptop?’
‘I don’t know. Any update on that?’
‘None so far. We’re about to set off. I’ll keep you posted on any new developments.’
Across the room, Slater looked up.
He gave King’s ankle a worrying stare.
King mouthed, I’ll be fine.
Slater didn’t look like he believed him.
King said, ‘Thanks for getting that sorted. It’s good to know who we’re dealing with.’
‘Sejun says to be careful if it’s the insurgents. They don’t usually go anywhere near the tourist trails, but they must have made an exception for the right price. They need to fund their revolution, after all. So if someone wanted to take advantage of well-trained militants, they could. There might be an army heading your way.’
‘We’ll keep an eye out.’
‘How many men have you killed?’
‘Seven so far. Around the same amount before we met you, too.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Just another day at the office, Aidan.’
King ended the call, then turned to Slater and said, ‘Did you collect the—?’
Slater nodded.
He produced the two handguns he’d found on the rebels’ bodies. They were Sig-Sauer P320s. Serious firepower. Full-size models, chambered with .45 ACP rounds. State-of-the-art, put into production only a few years ago, manufactured by the U.S. branch of Sig Sauer.
Just one of the many reasons to suspect Oscar Perry’s involvement.
Who was arming rural guerrillas with state-of-the-art American-made weaponry?
For now, they didn’t talk about that.
The handguns would be more than satisfactory for the rest of their travels. The Kalashnikovs were reliable, but they were big and cumbersome and impossible to hide on the trail. It was fundamentally useless to carry assault rifles with them when they could be more precise and more discreet with the P320s.
Slater handed over one of the handguns and said, ‘I found eight spare magazines. We’ll split them four apiece.’
King nodded, and hid the gun from view as the owner came back into the dining room.
He said, ‘I have a request.’
35
Slater stood at the mouth of the trail, duffel bag on his back, dressed in hiking gear.
He winced at King’s stupidity.
King hobbled down off the patio, his ankle strapped up with nearly an entire roll of duct tape. The teahouse owner had fished the tape out of a storage room and given it to them for free, somewhat hesitant to see King try and continue. But he’d quashed both their protests and Slater had watched him yank the tape around the swollen joint over and over again.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Slater had said.
‘Compression.’
Now King let out a subdued grunt with every second step, but he was making progress all the same. He shuffled ten feet along the dusty gravel, and then seemed to catch a wave of momentum. Each step from then on grew progressively larger, until he was striding it out at close to the same pace they’d maintained yesterday.
Slater caught up to him, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this. You might be causing permanent damage.’
King turned back, his face white, the corners of his forehead beading with sweat. He said, ‘I told you I just needed to warm up. It’s not broken.’
‘I know it’s not broken, but—’
King held up a hand, cutting him off. ‘There’s a fourteen-year-old kid in the possession of some madman right now, and you’re worried about my ankle?’
‘Yes. If it ruins your ability to operate down the line.’
‘Let’s worry about that when we get to it. For now, we walk.’
Slater didn’t say another word.
Partly because he knew King wouldn’t listen.
But mostly because he understood.
Pain was nothing to them. It’s everything to most people, who shy away when it crops up in their lives. But both he and King had made a career out of going directly toward the pain, toward the suffering, in hopes of a better
