Zero Hour

at a counter where Malisse had thought himself standing alone. “So unless there’s something more—”

Malisse snapped up his hand, a finger pointing skyward.

“Yes, my friend,” he said. “Yes there is! Bring me the humidor, a carton of Davidoffs to fill it… and have the whole package gift wrapped quickly, as I have a plane awaiting to carry me away from this cold city.”

The salesman’s eyebrows arched. His scorn transformed to surprise, he turned to bring the valuable goods.

Malisse watched him, guiltless about the decision that had struck him like a bolt out of the blue.

Sometimes, he thought, a man must not be rewarded only for success.

Sometimes just trying one’s best was worth a gift.

* * *

The seven dead bodies had been lined one beside the other on their backs, naked, stripped of their dog tags, their Indian army uniforms buried deep under the snow elsewhere on the mountainside.

Siphoned of emotion, Yousaf looked down at them. It was too late to second guess himself, yet he knew his decision not to radio out a message to his buyers had in all probability cost them their lives… and crushed his hopes of ending this night as a very rich man. While the border patrol uniforms the men had worn — and identification they’d carried — had gotten them past the Indians on the other side of the Line of Command, it had not stopped them from being ambushed by Ahmad’s scouts here on the mountain pass.

Cold and pale under the moonlight, they might have looked like their own ghosts had it not been for the single, red, seeping bullet hole Yousaf could see in the middle of each man’s forehead.

As far as he knew, bloodless spirits did not bear the marks of a gunpoint execution.

He turned toward one of the LeT scouts that had led him to the bodies, trying to maintain his presence of mind. “Tell me again when these whoresons were caught.”

The scout looked at him.

“Two hours ago,” he said, and gestured toward a nearby rock overhang. “We spotted them earlier. Came up the other side of the mountain and took them.”

“And you say it appears they had been waiting here for some time?”

“There are signs, yes.”

Silence. Several paces away, just out of earshot, a Bakarwal guide waited near his mule, holding the beast’s rope in his hand as it snorted steam into the icy night air.

Yousaf glanced over at him and thought a moment. The prospect of wealth might be lost to him, at least for now. But there was still more of the game to play, another deception he must turn to assure the scout’s suspicion did not instead turn his way.

“The nomads,” he said in a lowered voice. “It can only be that they betrayed us. Conspired with these troops so we’d be caught before making our rendezvous across the border.”

The scout continued to eye him.

“That might be easy for me to believe,” he said. “India’s government and military generals would pay a high price for the Dragonfly cannon.”

Yousaf nodded.

“Enough of a fortune to satiate even a Bakarwal’s greedy soul,” he said. “My intelligence is that only two complete units have been produced. That the other remains with our brothers in Americ—”

Yousaf became aware of someone stealing up behind him far too late to avoid the arm that had suddenly locked around his throat — and the cold press of a blade across it.

A harsh voice in his ear: “Judge no one else’s soul. Not when it was you who sent one of your own operatives to his death in the wastes between here and Chikar.”

Yousaf tried to shake his head in denial, felt the knife press more tightly against his throat, and stopped.

The scout in front of him, meanwhile, had taken several long steps forward.

“Did you think Ahmad would not have you watched from the beginning, little pig?” he said. “That he would not have eyes among the men in your convoy? A voice to inform him that you’d started across the mountains with another? Or can it be you’ve already forgotten your good companion Khalid?”

Yousaf swallowed silently and the steel edge of the blade met his Adam’s apple.

“Cast blame wherever you will, it was you who arranged for your mule train to encounter these troops… if actual troops they are,” the scout said to him, bringing his face close. “I suspect them to be something else. Khalistani fighters disguised as soldiers. Or Nagas. Or Punjabi rebels.” The scout’s face came still closer. “Brothers sometimes compete most fiercely, do they not? And there has been much competition for the weapon among our professed brethren in India.”

Yousaf swallowed again. The blade broke skin.

“Let me speak to Ahmad,” he grated in desperation. “I can prove you’re wrong—”

“Ahmad,” the scout repeated. A mocking grin had spread across his face. “Tell me, little pig… how can you be sure that my men and I are loyal to Ahmad? That we do not have our own buyers for the cannon? What makes you so certain of its destination — its intended targets — in a world of constant uncertainty?”

Yousaf looked at him, his mouth forming a circular grimace of surprise.

It had suddenly dawned on him that he had no answers. No answers to any of the scout’s questions. No answers to his own. No answers to anything at all.

Nothing, indeed, to take from the world but uncertainty as the scout looked past him at whoever had come up from behind, and made a slicing gesture with his hand, and the knife sliced deeply, deeply into his throat.