‘We need to get off the trail,’ King muttered.
‘Here?’
‘Just as good as anywhere else.’
They stepped off the hard-packed dirt and up into the tree line. King tested his ankle against the forest floor and found the surface springier then the trail. Relief flooded him — it might not have to be a long and painful night after all.
Or so you think.
He didn’t have to remind himself of the man’s warning.
There are still rebels in these hills.
Out of nowhere, Slater whispered, ‘Make sure you keep your headlamp off.’
Explaining the obvious.
‘No shit,’ King said.
The twilight turned to night. King had only ventured ten feet into the tree line before he could no longer make out the sight of his hand in front of his face. He waved his palm a couple of times to test, but came away with no visual stimuli.
They were literally walking blind.
‘I can’t do this,’ he whispered, his voice barely audible. ‘Let’s just bed down here. I’ll turn an ankle if we go any further.’
‘Suits me.’
King heard the rustling of a pack, and then the soft muted thump of Slater’s rear end hitting the forest floor.
‘That’s a relief,’ Slater whispered. ‘Feels good to rest.’
King sat, too, and his eyes began to adjust to the dark. He made out the faint silhouettes of the trees in front of him, and then the short stretch of trail, and then a plummeting drop that swept across the mountain ranges. As soon as they stopped, the main issue became clear. King started shivering in the evening chill, and beside him he heard Slater’s teeth chattering.
They were still close to thirteen thousand feet in altitude.
Out here, the weather was as hostile as the men they were chasing.
He fumbled blindly for his pack, finding the zip after a solid minute of searching. He paused to make sure there were no foreign sounds nearby, and then ran the zipper along its tracks.
It grated in the silence.
King winced.
But then his pack was open, and he found his balled-up sleeping bag in its cover and undid the clasps and rolled it out. His ankle was somewhere in the dark, stretched out in the soft undergrowth, and when he lifted it up it burned hot like an invisible molten orb. With a wince he slipped it into the sleeping bag, followed by the rest of his lower body. He pulled the bag up to his waist, and packed on a couple of extra jackets he found at the bottom of his bag.
Then there was nothing to do but rest and recover.
And watch for signs of insurgents.
For reassurance, he tested the weight of the P320 in his palm.
Slater’s soft voice trickled through the darkness. ‘Have you got easy access to your gun?’
‘Yeah. You?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So now we wait?’
‘Now we wait.’
‘We should take this in shifts.’
‘I’m not in too much pain. I can tell you are. I’ll take first watch.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t slip up.’
‘I can’t afford to.’
‘Alright.’
King rolled onto his side, nestled down into the sleeping bag liner, and drifted away in seconds.
47
Slater didn’t waver for close to an hour, and then everything steadily went downhill.
It started with a numb ache in his muscles. Not specific regions in particular, but all of it at once. His entire frame, throbbing and lethargic and heavy. It came out of nowhere, and he almost didn’t realise what was happening until it seized him completely. He adjusted his position, convinced he was cramping from sitting at an awkward angle.
Then it got worse.
The heaviness swamped him, like his muscles were made of lead, and his heart rate skyrocketed as soon as he moved an inch. It thudded against his chest wall, spearing up into his throat, drawing all his attention
He put it together in an instant.
His heart was working overtime to oxygenate his muscles. That was the crippling downside of having the physique of an Olympic sprinter at high altitudes. It meant there was a whole lot of oxygen required to satiate his body, and at thirteen thousand feet there simply wasn’t enough in the air.
The beginnings of altitude sickness were setting in.
He tried not to panic. There was little to do but sit in the dark, regulate his breathing, and conserve his energy. As he adjusted to the new baseline, he realised it wasn’t as bad as he initially thought. There’d been a lot of initial anxiety to overcome, but it wasn’t anything worse than a dull ache all over. He felt slightly more lethargic than normal, but that wasn’t much different from the rest of the trip. And if he could silence the worry over his elevated heart rate, he’d be in the clear.
But to put that into practice proved a lot harder than he thought.
He focused on breathing deeper, a vain attempt to inhale more oxygen, but it didn’t help. He ended up practically hyperventilating, and struggled to suppress the sound of laboured breathing. The rasping would carry through the night if he allowed it.
Then something else carried through the night.
Another twig snapping.
Clunk.
Slater had heard it before, so even though he froze up he didn’t assume the worst.
Then, at the very edge of his hearing, he picked up the faint muttering of a curse in a foreign language.
In the distance someone lit up a torch, and the white beam played across the trail.
Slater sat very, very still.
His heart thudded faster.
Faster…
Faster…
Dangerously fast.
He couldn’t take his mind off it. His muscles were screaming for oxygen, and to amplify the problem his adrenaline reserves kicked in. His vision narrowed to a tunnel and he fixated on the beam of light, only for his body to silently protest.
‘King,’ Slater mouthed.
He only allowed a sliver of sound to escape his lips.
No response.
‘King.’
Silence.
The beam of light drifted closer. Then a second one materialised right beside it, and together the beams swept through the trees further up the trail. Slater narrowed his gaze and thought he could make out a cluster of silhouettes behind the light, hunched over, barely illuminated.
Coming down the mountain.
Getting closer.
‘King.’
A little
