CRO-MAGNON (57 page)

Calder filled the stove with fuel and started to stand, only to stop halfway as pain shot through his knees. He grimaced.

Blaine’s face blanched. She took the cup away from the now sleeping Zinchenko as Calder sank back down.

“
Bends, already?”

“
Just a twinge.”

But it was more than that. Calder gritted his teeth and forced his body upright, the hot pain easing as his knees straightened.

“
We need to look for more G18 mags for the Glock. Then we better change to our regular clothes and get started.”

#

Calder leaned on the spear with each new step as Blaine led the way up a narrow valley southwest of the lake, a pair of grain sacks slung over her shoulders. The nitrogen bubbles now affected all his joints, and he had taken to walking stiff-legged. He knew he was slowing them.

The moon was high and the air had grown steadily colder as they gained altitude. The same sprinkling of stars shown down from the same crystal sky as when he and Ayni had come this way on their hike-and-shoot outing, but the wind was not as fierce. He wished the sky would cloud.

Caitlin was following a trail in the relatively fresh snow, probably left by Ayni on his previous rounds. As long as they stayed on it, they would leave no identifiable trail of their own. But Calder knew that the game warden’s trips were roughly circular within the nature reserve and that eventually the track would veer east or west, leaving them on their own. Their footprints would probably be discernible from the air, and tomorrow they would be easy pickings for Salomon’s military helicopter.

Calder remembered from Ayni that the border was fifty kilometers as the crow flies, but farther over the winding trails. Not that he could walk fifty clicks in his present condition. Or probably even ten.

They needed to hole up for the day and hope the bubbles dissolved before they crippled him permanently. Thinking about the small cave Ayni had showed him, he squeezed past one of the snow-packed burlap sacks slung around Blaine’s neck and struggled to pull ahead.

Blaine glanced sideways, her fur parka framing her worried face. “I shouldn’t have made you wait while I went by Murzo’s cabin.”

He forged ahead, stilting along and watching for the crouching-leopard formation Ayni had pointed out. “If you remember, it was my idea.”

“
A bad one,” she said. “We already had our sleeping bags and pads.”

“
But not our DVDs, with most of our data.” He stumbled, and she lurched forward and steadied him. “Plus, we needed to see if I could raise the American consul in Dushanbe on Ayni’s radio.”

“
We gambled and lost,” she said. “Considering your bends, we should have struck south.”

Calder gritted his teeth as pain lanced his right knee. “Coulda, woulda, shoulda.”

The dubious leopard formation appeared on his right, barely recognizable in the wan moonlight, and he stooped to lay the Neanderthal’s blood-stained spear across the trail, the flint tip pointing along the barren ridge that led to the cave in the mountainside. One more job, he thought, for the prehistoric weapon.

He tottered onto the rock spine that led to the ridge and halted to rub his aching knees. Lucky the cave was near, he thought, because he wouldn’t be walking much farther tonight. Or tomorrow either, judging from the increasing pain in his joints.

Behind him, Blaine said, “The trail’s straight ahead, Ian. Where are you going?”

He stepped onto the ridge, slipped on a spot of ice, and managed to right himself. “Hotel Pamir.”

#

Blaine was relieved to reach the cave. She’d had to support her companion for the final yards of the steep climb. Now she glanced around. Dawn was beginning to break, and enough light filtered in that she could make out a few details. The grotto was about ten feet deep, with a low ceiling, sheltered both from the wind and from prying eyes in the sky. She was delighted to see a backpacker stove, a tin of fuel, and a food sack. It wasn’t Motel 6, she thought, but it would do.

Setting the two sacks of prehistoric heads on the floor, she helped the barely mobile Calder to hobble to the rear wall, where she noticed a small ledge holding a prehistoric hand ax, a blunt-edged knapper, and an array of stone spear points.

So the cave was somebody else’s twice over, she thought. Unstrapping Calder’s backpack, she set the Glock and two spare magazines beside the stone implements and seated the incapacitated man against the granite wall.

“
Sorry, no vibrating recliner. How do you feel?”

“
Like I just finished an exhibition match with John Cena. Take me to your chiropractor.”

She untied his foam pad and helped him onto it. “Seriously.”

“
I was serious.” She saw him grit his teeth. “I don’t think it’s finished getting worse.”

As soon as she’d helped him into his bag, she rummaged in the food sack by the wall and came up with a tin of unspecified Russian meat. No sense using their own small ration, when they might need it later. Soon she had the little stove hissing, and the rich aroma of frying fat filled the little cave.

The meat was greasy but satisfying. After she helped Ian to eat, she placed her sleeping pad next to his and zipped their bags together.

His head lifted. “What are you doing?”

Even in the meager bluish light from the stove, she could see the effort it cost him as she eased him onto the bag. Slipping into the now-doubled bag and Velcroing the top quarter, she squirmed behind and under him and snaked her hands around to his thighs, forcing him into a reverse Trendelburg position in an attempt to prevent brain edema.

She tried to keep her voice perky. “One Swedish—oops, Tajik—massage, coming up.”

He managed a rictal grin. “By any chance, does this establishment offer extra services?”

She ran her hands down his straightened legs, feeling the swollen knees. “Certainly not tonight, my friend.”

She had heard that massage could be beneficial. Her fingers began to knead the ligaments on the sides of his kneecap. As a diver, she knew that any degree of bends was excruciating, and that without a decompression chamber, recovery could be slow and unpredictable. It might take hours, days, or forever. Glancing at the four snow-packed lumps in the burlap bags, she berated herself for her single-minded determination to recover the prehistoric heads from the lake bottom. If only Ian had not made that last deep dive . . .

But she knew he would have gone after Fedor, anyway. Of course, the camp master wouldn’t have been down there if she hadn’t insisted on the final dive to the cave to retrieve the severed heads.

Were they worth it? Was she obsessed to the point where she could no longer function in the real world? What if Fedor didn’t pull through, or Salomon murdered him? What if she and Ian died, out here in the back of beyond, because of her pigheadedness?

She kept kneading. The flesh around his knees felt mushy, and she imagined she could feel bubbles shifting beneath her fingertips. She knew that everything depended on the severity of his decompression sickness. From what she could determine, the undissolved nitrogen seemed to be concentrated mostly in his knees, perhaps because of incipient damage from his extensive cross-country skiing. But she worried about his heart, other organs, and neurocirculatory system, and she wondered if he would suffer permanent impairment.

If he did, how would she get him out?

So far, he did not exhibit the confusion that often accompanied decompression sickness, and that was a good sign. She sensed that his allusion to “extra services” had not been entirely in jest, and knew she that should keep his mind off the pain. She cast about for an ambiguous response.

“
Services-wise, you know you have to walk before you can crawl.”

He kept his eyes down. “And after that?”

As she felt their body heat begin to merge, she dug deeper, trying to break up the crippling bubbles. “Let’s deal with one thing at a time.”

He started to speak, then fell silent. Gradually he slumped against her chest, his head lolling.

She kept kneading.

My fault,
she thought.
My fault.

Chapter 25

The ripping sound of Velcro brought Blaine out of a cozy slumber. The sunlight slanting into the small cave told her it was late afternoon. She and Ian had snuggled in the double bag all day except for the two times she had cooked. He had writhed with the bends all night and had thrown up his breakfast of powdered eggs. By noon, however, the nitrogen bubbles had begun to dissolve into his blood, and he had crawled out of the bag and eaten a double portion of mystery meat and brown rice.

Afterward he had tried a few stretching exercises but had to quit because of the pain, which worried Blaine because she knew they should start for the southern border at dark. She didn’t have a clue which course to take through the mountains. But she knew that if they stayed here, Salomon would have time to bring in more searchers and they’d be trapped.

Heaven help them if Ayni didn’t show, she thought. And even if he did, would the forest ranger be willing to go against Salomon and, by extension, the powerful Evgenii Delyanov?

Two hours ago, a helicopter had flown up the valley from the direction of Lake Achik, the chuff of its blades reverberating off the canyon walls. She knew it must be Salomon. He would not have had time to evacuate Zinchenko and return, so his first priority must be to find the two scientists and whatever genetic samples they had taken from the frozen cave. She worried aloud about the Neanderthal’s spear that Ian had left, but he convinced her it would look like a branch from the stunted birch trees that hugged the canyon walls along with juniper shrubs. Anyway, they had had no choice but to wait out his recovery.

Now she felt him sit up. Opening her eyes, she saw Teague’s machine pistol in his hand, looking smaller since he’d detached the automatic magazine for easier transport. He peered toward the cave entrance as he scrambled out of the bag.

“
What is it?” she whispered.

“
Thought I heard something.”

Hobbling forward, he crouched in the mouth of the cave. She noticed that his movements, though stiff, looked more natural than they had when he’d gotten up to pee at noontime. Of course, that wouldn’t be of much use if a search party found them. She was now certain that as soon as Salomon got what he wanted, she and Ian would be as dead as Teague.

Squirming out of the bag, she hitched at her twisted clothing. “You don’t suppose Salomon spotted the spear after all, and sent a party?”

Calder put his finger to his lips, crept forward another foot, and reared upright, pistol at the ready. Then he stepped back.

“
Took you long enough,” he said.

“
I stopped to smell the blossoms,” Ayni’s voice said, and Blaine saw the tall Tajik step into view.

He stooped to enter the cave, and she saw him glance at the evidence that she and Calder had occupied the prehistoric cave for some hours. “I guess something has happened.” If he made anything of the doubled sleeping bag, he was too polite to say so.

“
Several somethings,” Calder said. “That message you relayed to Zinchenko—we believe it was Rolf Mathiessen’s helicopter that went down while crossing northern Afghanistan en route to Dushanbe. We suspect Salomon arranged it because he suspected Caitlin and me of crossing him, and Rolf of siding with us.”

The ranger slipped out of his pack, looking thoughtful. “This is not a big surprise. I sensed that your relations with Mr. Salomon might go down the hill.”

Calder grimaced. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“
You and Caitlin convinced me that you are in the right. That is why I agreed to listen for Dr. Mathiessen.” Ayni glanced at Blaine, then back at Calder. “You said several things happened.”

“
Salomon, through Teague, issued an ultimatum regarding the genetic samples. Caitlin and I told Fitrat what was really going on. We think she ordered Teague to leave the valley.”

“
I do not think that was wise.”

“
You’re right. Teague killed her.”

Ayni’s jaw sagged. “Does Fedor know?”

“
Yes. He couldn’t do anything, because Teague had hidden his gun.”

“
Fedor and Gulnaz were . . .” The forest ranger waggled his mitten.

“
We know. Caitlin and I decided to make a night dive and bring out the heads of the prehistoric people.”

Ayni glanced at the twin sacks, looking bemused. “Their heads?”

Blaine said, “I believe that my team and I can extract the brain contents, clone the bodies, and upload the memories.”

The Tajik stared at her, his mouth falling open. He turned to Calder.

“
Don’t ask,” Calder said.

“
She can do this?”

“
I know it sounds bizarre, but she’s just about convinced me.”

Ayni continued to gape. “But why?”

Blaine said, “Prehistoric people, both Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, possessed genes that have been lost to the human race. My findings show that some of them might greatly benefit mankind.”