None of them seemed like they believed him, but they didn’t want to stare, so they transitioned back into uneasy conversation amongst themselves. Slater lowered his damaged forearm underneath the table so no-one else could press him on it.
Then he sat there thinking.
About bodyguards, and porters, and black-operations coordinators, and secret presidential campaigns, and Maoist splinter groups, and special risks insurers, and professional negotiators, and severed fingers, and swollen eyelids, and slashed forearms, and twisted ankles, and sweat, and blood, and toil.
It all tied together — somehow, some way.
He was dull and unfocused. He could admit that. The mind and the body had their limits. There was only so much willpower to go around. Right now all he could focus on was his compromised physical condition, and his efforts to downplay them. There wasn’t a whole lot of mental processing power left over to connect the dots. If he was back home in a warm bed, uninjured, full of energy and vigour, he’d solve the puzzle in a heartbeat. But he was here, hanging onto his sanity by a thread in the mountains of Nepal, wondering how King was even going to get out of bed in the morning.
If he can walk tomorrow, then we have a chance.
If not…
He’d never backed out of an operation, and although they’d never explicitly discussed it, he figured King was in the same boat. It’d disrupt their identity, ruin the momentum they’d spent their whole lives building up. You put doubts in someone’s head one time, and it festers like an infection. It spreads fast, and Slater had no doubt that if he quit out here, soon enough he’d be finding all sorts of excuses to get out of future operations.
No, it was all or nothing in this game.
And tomorrow, it would be all or nothing too.
The food came out, mostly fried rice and eggs and toast, heaped high on plates. Slater accepted it with a smile and carted it upstairs. King was in the same position, unwavering, staring at his inflamed ankle, willing it better.
Slater said, ‘Has the ibuprofen kicked in?’
King didn’t react.
Slater said, ‘King.’
The man looked up.
Discomfort creased his features.
‘It’s not doing much,’ King said.
Slater couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a flicker of doubt on his comrade’s face.
He handed him the plate of food and said, ‘Eat. Try not to think about it. We’ll assess it in the morning.’
‘How’s your arm?’
‘I’m trying not to think about it.’
It hurt.
A lot.
They ate on their beds, and then Slater went downstairs and refilled their water bottles. He came back up and dropped iodine tablets into them, and when the twenty-minute wait was over he added BCAAs and they both sucked the fluids down with greed.
Then they settled onto their beds and lay in mutual silence.
Trying not to think.
Trying not to worry.
Both more exhausted than they even thought possible.
‘We have a lot of ground to cover tomorrow,’ King said softly.
‘We do.’
‘You think they’ll come for us tonight?’
‘I don’t know why, but I trust the owner.’
‘So do I. Still… he might not have a say in it.’
‘We were discreet enough. There weren’t exactly a whole lot of witnesses when we first walked in here. I think we’ll be okay.’
‘You’d hope so. Seems like neither of us could mount a resistance even if we wanted to.’
‘Maybe we should concede this time.’
King looked over, and Slater could see his pupils were hazy and unfocused. ‘You think?’
‘Let’s sleep on it,’ Slater said. ‘We’ll figure it out in the morning. I can’t think straight right now.’
‘They know we’re on the trail,’ King said. ‘So what’s the point of walking anymore? Violetta can fly reinforcements over and send them in by chopper.’
‘Can she?’ Slater said.
Silence.
Slater said, ‘Anything they try now will be too late. Kidnaps don’t drag out for weeks, especially not in an environment like this. It’s us, or nothing. They think by heading further up the mountain they’ll exhaust us, and they’re right. But it’s one more day. We can do anything for one day. And then we’ll be right there, and we can get her back.’
‘Her, and Perry or the porter if they’re innocent.’
‘The girl is the priority.’
‘I know.’
They settled back into the quiet, but before they drifted off Slater said, ‘I guess it doesn’t matter if we get ambushed tonight, does it?’
‘And why’s that?’ King mumbled.
Slater lifted the P320 out of his waistband.
He said, ‘Because for the first night since we touched down in this country, we have guns.’
42
King cracked an eyelid open.
Light filtered in through the open curtains.
It was morning.
He swung his legs out of bed, still desensitised by the numbing effects of deep sleep. He’d drifted off somewhere around eight in the evening, and now it was a touch before six in the morning. He found his smartphone and cancelled the impending alarm, set to go off in a few minutes’ time. Across the room, Slater slept undisturbed.
King took a deep breath, steeled himself, and touched his bad foot to the wooden floorboards.
Twang.
Painful, for sure.
But manageable.
He nearly sighed with relief. Then he shrugged it off, recognising that this was no victory. The real test would be what happened later in the day, when he racked up the miles and wore down his body. His stride would get less controlled, sloppier, more prone to error. He could picture himself putting his foot down on a sharp descent and feel his ankle exploding, which would happen if…
If.
The key word.
No amount of hypotheticals really mattered, because right now he could get out of bed.
He roused Slater, who opened his eyes calmly, as if he’d been faking sleep all along. That was the reality of a combatant accustomed to black operations — you had to be completely alert in a heartbeat. There was no time to stretch and yawn and shuffle around under the covers. Everything had to happen now.
‘How is it?’ Slater said.
‘I can walk.’
‘Then let’s get this done.’
They took turns in the shower, opting not to go through the hassle of
