End of the Road (34 page)

“
I’d like to, if you don’t
mind. I haven’t been to that part of town in some time. Don’t
worry, I’ll watch the monkeys while you have your
meeting.”

Two buses later, they found themselves
entering the western end of the Swayambhu temple complex.

Emily spotted him before Yesh did, monk’s
robes bedraggled from running. He was out of breath by the time he
reached them.

“
Michi-
didi
,” he spluttered out.

“
Nawang, what is it?” she
asked, now beginning to feel the panic inside him.

“
It’s Sonam, the
Sherpas…”

“
What’s
happened?”

“
He didn’t come back from
school. The Sherpas, they took him… Michi-
didi
, they might…”

“
Calm down, Nawang,” she
said. “Do you know where they took him?”

The young monk bent over to catch his
breath.

“
What’s this all about?”
Yesh asked.

“
It’s a little boy I look
after sometimes.”

“
Sherpas took him? Why? And
where?” he asked

Nawang stood upright, breathing a little
easier and gave directions to an address just outside Thamel, the
tourist district.

“
Let’s go,
Michi-
didi
. We have
to hurry,” he said.

“
You’re not going there,
are you?” Yesh asked. “What are you supposed to do, negotiate with
gangsters?”

Emily ignored him and looked at Nawang. “You
stay here. Go, tell Rinpoche where I’ve gone.”

“
This is crazy,” Yesh
exclaimed as she turned to go. “You can’t do this.”

“
Don’t worry about me. Wait
here.”

“
Wait. You don’t even know
the way… Fine. I’ll come with you.”

“No,” she called over her shoulder, already
starting to run. “Stay here.”

~~~~~~~

The address Nawang gave her turned out to be
just another unprepossessing building, like so many others in
Kathmandu. A blank front face, one imposing door, but no first
floor windows—an alley way on the left seemed to beckon to her. A
few seconds later, Yesh caught her up, chest still heaving from the
run.

“
Mrs. Kansakar wasn’t
kidding,” he said between breaths. “You do run way too
much.”

As Emily looked at him, it occurred to her
that whatever might happen, it was likely to be much more dangerous
than he had bargained for. This was definitely not his errand. “I
shouldn’t have kissed him,” she thought. “Now I’ll never be rid of
him.”

She guided him over to a stoop across the
street where he could sit down.

“
Wait here.”

A slight curve in the alley made it
impossible to see the far end from the street. Emily remembered
what Rinpoche said about one last lesson Sonam could learn from
her. After all her talk about the evils of fighting back against
bullies, what could she teach him now, just when unleashing all
manner of destruction on his tormentors might turn out to be
necessary?

The other end of the alley opened onto a
courtyard with three blank, whitewashed walls. A door next to a
curtained window on the last wall led into the main building. A
dozen or so young men lounged about carelessly, some gambling, one
cooking over an open fire, two others engaged in some form of horse
play, all of them unaware of the new pair of eyes sizing them up.
They seemed older and harder than the teenagers who made up the
Manange gang. These were men, stout and sturdy, not callow
adolescents. But none of them looked to Emily like a leader.

“
I’m here for Sonam,” Emily
announced in a loud voice from the alleyway, and then took two
steps forward.

A few of the men turned to look. None seemed
impressed. One walked over and eyed her rudely, sneering in her
face.

“
We may have a job for
you,” he said with a suggestive leer.

“
Where is Sonam?” she
shouted.

“
Tenzing,” one of them
called into the window. “You have a visitor.”

The sounds of a scuffle came from the
window. A moment later a small man, coarse and scruffy, stepped
into the doorway.

“
Look who Deepak sends for
his boy,” he said to his men. “Is he afraid to come
himself?”

“
Deepak didn’t send me. I’m
here for Sonam. Where is he?”

“
Who’s the Newar?” he
asked.

Emily turned to see Yesh step out of the
alley. “Great. One more person to worry about,” she thought. Her
angry stare was intended to tell him to go back while he still
could, that he shouldn’t have followed. He shrugged.

The man in the doorway signaled to his men.
The one with the leer grabbed Emily from behind. Two others grabbed
Yesh, one yanking him to his knees by the hair. He protested to no
avail. Another voice spoke from inside, not Nepali or Hindi. She
recognized it as Chinese.

“
This is not your lucky
day, sister,” Tenzing said.

“
I’m here for the boy,” she
replied defiantly.

“
He will be the last thing
you see. Lobsang, bring the boy.”

A large man emerged, struggling to hold a
squirming child.

“
Michi-
didi
,” Sonam cried and tried to run to
her.

The man holding him squeezed a wrist until
he cried out. He pushed the boy to the ground.

“
Lobsang, give him the
knife,” Tenzing ordered, and gestured to what Emily recognized as
a
khukuri
, or
Gurkha knife, on a nearby table. At almost eighteen inches long,
the heavy, curved blade probably weighed a few pounds. The inner
edge was sharpened, while the outer was thick and blunt.

“
Hit them in the neck,”
Lobsang said, placing the knife in Sonam’s hand and pointing at
Emily and Yesh. “Kill them or we’ll kill you. You want to live,
don’t you?”

He guided Sonam over to Emily. The man
holding her twisted one arm behind her back and pushed her shoulder
down, forcing her to crouch close to the ground—roughly the height
a small boy would prefer for a decapitation. She saw tears in
Sonam’s eyes when she looked up. He wailed out something
incoherent.

“
Don’t worry,” she said to
him in a quiet voice. “I’m here for you. Stay close to
Yesh.”

Her voice seemed to have soothing qualities,
because he stopped crying as he looked at her, and then nodded his
head. The knife clattered on the ground.

“
Fine,” Tenzing barked.
“Kill all three of them.”

Lobsang slapped the boy aside and picked up
the knife. Sonam lay on the ground rubbing his face, too terrified
even to cry. The man holding her from behind pulled Emily up.

“
I’m here for Sonam,” Emily
announced in a loud voice one more time. “But I am also here for
you, Tenzing Sherpa.” She paused to let that remark sink in, and
then continued. “And for you, Lobsang, and you, too Ming-ma.”
Turning her head to look at the men on the other side of the
courtyard, she went on: “And for you, Dorje, and Pemba, and Rinzen
and Sangye. Gyaltsen, Jangbu, Dawa and Tschering, I’m here for all
of you, too.”

The effect was unnerving. She could see they
were all wondering how she knew their names. The man behind her,
Ming-ma, tightened his grip on the arm he held twisted up between
her shoulder blades. It’s a common misconception that this hold
gives secure control.

Emily took a deep breath
while the men digested her words. She saw how the entire scene
would play out as she exhaled. As Ming-ma pushed her head forward,
she would lean just a little further, pulling him off-balance. A
tiny pivot of her right foot would create just enough space for her
to slip a high side-kick under Ming-ma’s chin, crushing his
windpipe. He’d want to release her wrist to clutch at his throat,
but she wouldn’t allow it, grabbing under his wrist and twisting
him around. He’d crash into Lobsang before he could bring
the
khukuri
around.
Releasing Ming-ma, she’d pivot again, bringing her left foot around
in a roundhouse kick to the back of Lobsang’s elbow, snapping it as
she controlled the hand holding the knife.

Dorje would let go of
Yesh’s hair to lunge at her. With an easy twist she’d wrench
the
khukuri
from
Lobsang’s now limp hand and strike Dorje across the face with the
blunt side, stunning him. A quick crossover step and side-kick to
the center of his chest would send him crashing into the
wall.

With each breath, the
contents of their hearts opened to her, and the sequence of moves
and responses expanded until she saw it all. One last breath
brought it all to clarity. Once she was done with Lobsang, with
the
khukuri
in her
hand, she’d slash through the gang like a spinning saw blade,
hacking tendons, slicing throats. Soon enough, they’d want to flee,
but it would be too late for the Sherpas, and for the Chinese
security agents concealed inside the building.

Tenzing seemed frozen, staring at her this
entire time, the time of a few breaths, not more than three or four
seconds.

“
This is who I am, once
again,” she thought. “Is this the lesson Rinpoche thinks I have for
Sonam? But what else can I do? Surely not let the Sherpas harm him…
or Yesh. At least he’ll know how ugly the spirit of violence is.
And he’ll finally know who I really am. This is how he will
remember me.”

Emily shuddered at the design now fully
formed in her heart, both for what it said about her, and for what
it would mean as a legacy for Sonam. A sharp word from behind the
window curtain broke the spell for Tenzing.

“
If Deepak didn’t send you,
then who are you?” he asked. “Tell me your name before he cuts your
head off.”

Slowly, deliberately, Emily surveyed the
scene. She turned to look at Sonam and Yesh, both of whom were
strangely calm at this otherwise terrible moment.

“
My name is Tenno Michiko,”
she said. “My friends call me Em.” Then turning back to Tenzing,
she continued, “but you may know me as Kali.” She smiled as she
said this name.

When all was done, the only living things
left in the courtyard looked at each other. Sonam cringed to meet
her eyes and threw himself into Yesh’s arms, and perhaps this was
for the best. Surprisingly, Yesh was still able to look at her with
affection, not horror. A glimmer in the corner of his eye caught
her attention, and his broad smile brought the warmth of human
feeling back to her heart. Then she saw it peeking out of one side
of his mouth, one of his canine teeth was broken, and she
recognized him for who he really is.

Emily whispered a little prayer under her
breath: “Thank you, Granny, for sending the god of obstacles to
me.”

The next morning, she boarded a flight that
would return her, after several changes along her complex route, to
Annapolis and the Naval Academy, and soon-to-be Ensign
Hankinson.

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The High Road to the Mountain Gods
is the latest installment in
The Emily Kane Adventures
. Look for
these other full-length titles from the same series:

Girl Fights Back, Girl
Punches Out,
and
Girl Takes Up Her Sword.

And connect with the Author Online:

Twitter:
Jacques
Antoine

Jacques Antoine
and The Emily Kane Stories

Chapter
27

The Frozen Truth

By Shirley Bourget

“
No freakin’ way Brad! You
have
got
to be
kidding me!” I screamed.

“
No Mandy, I told you this
was a dry cabin. There’s no running water and NO indoor plumbing! I
thought you knew that! And I thought you said you’ve camped out
before?” I could tell by his tone that he was getting angrier by
the minute.

“
Yeah, I’ve camped out
before! But never
this
OUT! My family always rented cabins with electricity and
plumbing. Not stone-aged piles of logs in the middle of nowhere
Brad. I didn’t know places like this even existed! Who in their
right mind would stay in a place like this?” I threw my hands into
the air in frustration.

This was supposed to have been a romantic
getaway weekend, a chance for us to work on our differences, and
already Brad and I were arguing! The drive to the town of Clear,
where we rented our machine and the snowmobile ride up to the cabin
had been heavenly, even if it was freezing outside. I had been
anticipating a nice warm, cozy fire and being able to take a long,
hot shower before dinner. I had even planned a special dessert for
Brad to indulge in after our evening meal. I wanted to show him
that I was willing to start over if he was. That if we could figure
out a way to communicate better, I was willing to give our
relationship another chance.

Now he’s telling me that
there isn’t a bathroom in this place! That if I have to pee, or
worse, I’ll have to trek down the hill to an outhouse and sit in a
sub-zero refrigerator! And despite the fact that he keeps insisting
that he told me before coming here that there was no bathroom, I’m
pretty sure he left that little detail completely out of any plans
we made for this trip! Why would he think that taking me
anywhere
without a
bathroom would be romantic?