Slater said, ‘Any symptoms yet?’
‘No,’ King said. ‘But it’ll be hard to tell until it hits us properly. I’m so focused on my ankle … everything else is taking a back seat.’
‘Same with me and my arm,’ Slater said.
But it wasn’t really his arm. It was his heart. Maintaining such an extreme pace over this terrain with less and less oxygen to work with was gruelling, and the smartwatch on his wrist told him he’d been averaging 175 beats per minute for the entire morning. He’d been ignoring it as much as he could, but it was finally starting to take a toll, especially as the oxygen decreased with each passing hour.
And it was only going to get worse.
He tried to force it out of his mind, but it was difficult.
How was he supposed to rescue Raya from a horde of Maoist rebels if he could barely use his muscles when he got there?
That turned his attention to something else, and as they strode up through Namche, he said, ‘What exactly is the plan when we get there?’
‘I’m waiting on word from Violetta,’ King said. ‘If there’s no more intelligence to work with, we’re just going to have to keep our eyes peeled. I’d say it’s a comprehensive operation to move Raya and any other hostages from teahouse to teahouse along a populated trail. We’ll be able to spot anything suspicious if we’re looking for it, and then we follow it to its conclusion. But we need daylight to do that, so…’
‘We need to keep moving,’ Slater finished.
King nodded, his face ghost-white. ‘We keep moving.’
They paused for a few minutes in one of the bakeries to load up on carbohydrates, ordering nearly everything in the window and chowing it down between swigs of water. They didn’t even take a table. Then they swung their packs back over their shoulders and continued up to the peak of Namche Bazaar, passing open-air markets and endless teahouses and, surprisingly, an Irish pub.
The buildings fell away after that, replaced by barren plains dotted with handfuls of trees. This landscape was a world away from the forests they’d hiked through earlier in the morning. Slater took his mind off his throbbing arm and managed the odd look over his shoulder to admire the astonishing view of Namche and the endless mountains and valleys behind it.
‘We’re just a couple of dots,’ King said at one point, awed by the scenery. ‘We’re nothing.’
Slater couldn’t help but agree. It made them insignificant, their goals wholly unimportant, their grievances not the slightest bit concerning compared to their gargantuan surroundings. Somehow, it gave him strength. He treated the pain as nothing, the discomfort as miniscule. He kept walking, and didn’t stop, and didn’t even consider taking a break.
Neither did King.
Together they pushed all the way up to thirteen thousand feet, and when they finally reached the peak of the next mountain they stared out at a plummeting descent of nearly fifteen hundred feet, spiralling its way down into a forested valley.
They stood at the edge of a small settlement, sporting a single teahouse and little else. Slater’s pulse pounded in his ears, his breath wheezed in his throat, but overall he was okay.
Mentally, he was prepared for the final stand.
One last battle.
But does it ever go the way you think it’s going to?
He said, ‘Have you seen anything?’
Wordlessly, King shook his head. ‘We’ve only passed trekkers. I’m sure of it.’
‘Same.’
‘Then they must be ahead.’
‘They were spotted just above Namche yesterday. Which means they can’t be more than a day’s journey ahead. What we could effectively cover in half a day. What’s the time?’
King checked his watch. ‘Nearly five p.m.’
‘Shit.’
Neither of them said a word.
They knew what it meant.
They weren’t going to catch them before the sun went down.
44
King sat down hard on the nearest rock and pulled the satellite phone from an easily accessible compartment in his duffel bag.
Violetta answered quickly enough. ‘You got her?’
‘No.’
‘You found her?’
‘No.’
‘Where are you?’
‘The map says we’re at the settlement of Long-Ma. It’ll be dark in an hour. I need to know if you want us to push through in the dark.’
‘How tired are you?’
‘We’re fine.’
‘You sound like you’re barely staying awake. I’ve never heard you talk this slow.’
‘We’re okay.’
‘I don’t believe you. The answer is no, I don’t want you to push through in the dark.’
‘Violetta, this is our—’
‘You’ve made incredible progress, Jason. You and Will have covered more miles in three days than I thought humanly possible. But you can’t fight them in the dark in their own backyard. They’ll see you coming from a mile away — there’s no chance you’re trekking through the night without using your headlamps. You’ll be sitting ducks.’
‘It’s the only way…’
‘No, it’s not. The only way you pull this off is to get as much sleep as you can and reach them by the middle of the day tomorrow.’
‘How are you so sure?’
‘Because they were spotted at lunchtime.’
King sat up, ramrod straight. ‘Where?’
‘Well, Raya was. At the Phorste Thanga guest house, which is—’
King stared down the mountainside and added, ‘Just down there.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who spotted her?’
‘A couple of civilian American hikers we managed to get in contact with by posing as their trekking company. We tried not to let on that she was a person of interest, but they figured it out. They saw her around the back of the guest house. The guy went out to take a piss because he didn’t want to use the drop toilet, and caught a glimpse of her face in the tree line. He thought he’d been sprung, so he went back inside and didn’t tell anyone about it until we forced it out of him. It’s only when we spoke to him that he realised she might have been tied up.’
‘And the rebels?’
‘He said the guest house was teeming with Nepali people — dozens, he claimed — and he joked that he
