Riders of the Pale Horse (16 page)

The guard chose that moment to shift his bulk around. Wade tensed his muscles to still the trembling, lifted the syringe and ampule, and after two tries managed to fit the needle into the opening. He plunged the needle into the man's thigh, released the placebo injection of vitamins, and swabbed the
place with alcohol, all the while fearing that at any minute the guard would notice the thundering beat of his heart.

But no alarm was sounded. Wade collected his articles, forced his legs to carry him aloft, and steeled himself to meet the guard's hostile gaze. “You must take great care that he eats only food that is fresh and cleanly prepared and drinks only twice-boiled water from a clean cup. He cannot survive a second illness.”

The guard nodded. “And for payment?”

“Come and see me at the truck compound tomorrow,” Wade replied as Robards had directed. “I have not yet calculated the cost of the medicines used.”

As Rogue had predicted, the guard's gaze turned contemptuous. Here was a Westerner who cared so little for money that he put off payment, and thus could be easily taken. “It will be as you say.”

The blast, when it came, lit the entire northern sky.

Following Robards' directions, Wade had remained on guard duty by the trucks. The compound rocked to its typical night-time revelry. A band of Gypsy musicians played beside a great fire, their music rising into the chill night air along with sparks and shouts and drunken laughter.

From his post atop the truck cabin, Wade looked down over the heads of the gathered throng to where two lambs roasted on slowly revolving spits. The meat glistened golden brown in the flickering light, the tantalizing aroma drifting up past the smell of diesel fumes and road dirt.

But Wade's nerves left no room in his belly for food.

Occasionally men and women whom Wade had helped approached, offered the formal greetings of highlanders, and invited him to join them. Wade declined with quiet thanks. They did not press. There was understanding among such as these for people tending watch. And even more for people who sought the solitude of night.

Then the first flames leapt toward the distant heavens, and all revelry ceased with a series of shouts and cries.

The explosion was not loud, yet even from that distance it pushed at Wade with a powerful
whoof.
Then a great orange ball rose with deceptive slowness, illuminating the entire northern end of town before gradually dying out.

Before the light had faded, a second explosion followed. Shots rang out, sporadic at first, then a long automatic ripping sound. Then a third explosion. A fourth. And a final, larger than all the others combined. The shots continued, and Wade worried for the man who preferred to take such risks alone.

By then the entire compound was moving. People leapt from trucks, grabbed for weapons, pointed, shouted orders, scooped up children and hustled them to safety, took up guard positions, or scrambled toward the slowly fading explosion.

Wade stayed where he was and doubted seriously that his heart rate could manage a single beat faster.

After what seemed an eternity, yet by his watch was only forty-five minutes, Robards came trotting into view. Wade resisted the urge to race up, grab his arm, and ask what happened. The big man stopped in front of Wade's truck, turned, and pointed back toward the darkened distance. “You see the fireworks?”

“How did it go?” Wade demanded quietly.

“Let's pretend,” Rogue replied, his arm still pointing into the distance. “I'll play like I'm filling you in on the light show, and you play like it's all great fun.”

Wade stood on the massive front fender and shielded his eyes as he searched the invisible distance. “I feel like a hood ornament.”

“Better to play the fool than arouse suspicion,” Robards said. “Never can tell when there are watching eyes.”

“So how did it go?”

“Without a hitch,” Rogue answered. “Long as I can wash off the smell of gasoline before anybody gets too close.”

“Can I get down now?”

“Sure. How did it all look?”

“Like that whole side of town was being fire-bombed.”

“Biggest Molotov cocktails I ever made,” Rogue said with a satisfied grin. “Like to have singed my eyebrows with that last one, though. Didn't make the rag long enough, and the bang was bigger than I expected.”

“You smell like a filling station.”

“Yeah, gotta wash this off. Come on around back.” Behind the truck Robards peeled off his shirt. “Your Ossetian buddies sure know how to follow directions. The gasoline canisters and the rags were right there at the back of the empty corral, which ain't no more, in case you're interested. I set the canisters about thirty yards apart in a sort of semicircle around the front of the hut. Good thing that house was set out there by itself.”

He poured soap and water into a basin, used his shirt to wash off his upper body, then stripped and doused all his clothes. “After lighting the last rag I skirted around back and watched the guards go blazing away at the night.”

“I was worried when I heard the shots,” Wade confessed.

“Aw, they were just shooting at smoke,” Rogue said, slipping into his dry clothes, “and so blinded by looking straight at those exploding canisters they couldn't have seen me even if I'd walked up and shook their hands. I placed the second and third to either side of the porch. The bombs did just what they were supposed to—sort of invited the guards out into the night before they had a chance to think what was going on.”

“The Russians got out all right?”

“Yeah,” Rogue said and allowed the satisfied smile to emerge again. “When I made my way round to the back of the hut, those Ossetians stood there like great bearded giants, lifting out these three scrawny dudes, then pushing the wall back inward, making it look like all the work was done from inside.”

“Just like you said,” Wade offered.

Rogue nodded. “Might help us make a getaway in one piece, having it appear like they made it out on their own.”

“So where are they now?”

“Somewhere safer than they were before, I expect,” Rogue replied, rubbing his hair dry. “Where don't matter, long as they're at the pickup point tomorrow.”

9

The weather was still with them the next day. Barely. By the time the light solidified enough to be truly called another day, it revealed a sky blanketed by heavily laden clouds. The temperature did not rise as it had in mornings past; instead, the air held a biting, metallic feel. Neighboring peaks were lost beneath coverings that threatened to release their dangerous white loads at any moment.

Now there was a different quality to the compound's growing activity. Talk was muted. Men gathered and searched the sky with worried expressions. Children stayed close to their camps. There was none of the casual banter or easy loitering over breakfast fires. Gear was packed and stowed. Movements were purposeful, swift, pressured by what was clearly coming.

The scarred soldier and three of his fellows arrived soon after the dawn. They wore crossed bandoliers and fierce expressions. Two of the men stopped in front of the trucks, arms at the ready. The other pair walked back to where Rogue, Wade, and Mikhail were finishing a breakfast of bread and tea.

Wade stood to greet them. “You will take tea?”

“We will take what is ours,” the man snarled in reply.

The old man rose in carefully rehearsed offense at the threat in the man's voice. “My friend has done you a service, and this is how you reply?”

A whistle from the front pair swung the scarred man around. Wade followed his gaze and was surprised to find a delegation of perhaps a dozen armed men walking toward them. An elder whose child Wade had treated two days before for a strep infection called out, “All is well with you this dawn?”

“Thank you, Uncle,” Wade called back. “All is well.”

“The clouds herald a change for the worse,” the elder went on, drawing closer. “Which way does your course take you?”

“Over the pass and down to Tbilisi,” Wade replied.

“Then a swift departure is advised,” the elder counseled. “Even a dusting of snow is enough to turn the cursed road ahead to something from your worst nightmare.”

“I am grateful for your advice,” Wade said.

The elder nodded and turned to face the scarred man square on. In an even voice, he announced simply, “These men are friends.”

The scarred man faltered. “I came only to pay for the healer's services.”

“Strange that it takes four armed men for such an errand,” the elder replied.

“We...” The man hesitated, then continued. “We are missing something of great value. The healer was the only man who approached our house.”

“And what might this thing of value be?”

The scarred man gestured toward Wade. “He knows.”

Wade turned to Robards and forced his voice to remain even. “He is accusing us of having stolen something from him.”

Rogue made an issue of carefully searching the sky before shrugging his unconcern and saying, “They can search the trucks if it'll speed things up any.”

Wade turned to the scarred man and said, “The weather presses us. Even so, you are welcome to search our trucks if it will ease our departure.”

“There is no need,” the elder said, his eyes fixed on the scarred man.

“We have no objections,” Wade replied, “if it will help maintain the peace.”

The scarred man faltered, then motioned for his men to climb aboard.

“My clan will ensure your honesty,” the elder warned. He
gestured for several of his own men to move forward and keep watch.

“I thank you,” Wade said solemnly.

“My child is much improved,” the elder replied. “It is a duty for friends to share the road's burdens.”

Within a few minutes the four men were again gathered at the back of the first truck. The elder demanded, “Did you find what you seek?”

“There was nothing,” the scarred man muttered, his gaze smoldering. He started forward, beckoning for his men to follow, only to be stopped by the elder and his clansmen.

“There is now the unsettled matter,” the elder said, “of payment for the healer's services.”

Past winters had chewed great hunks from the road, leaving potholes of ominous depth and edges that were ragged and crumbling. The trucks climbed in an unending stream, grinding abused gears and belching streams of black smoke that rose to join the clouds hovering overhead. Razor-edged peaks jutted aggressively to every side.

They had long since left behind the last sign of green. On either side, in place of trees, loomed piles of crushed rock and scrabble, careless waste heaps dropped by departing glaciers. Their brethren glinted gray white and ominous upon neighboring peaks, and watched the passing of men with timeless silence. This was their world, cold and harsh and as forbidding as the load that weighed down the clouds.

Wade spotted Mikhail's arm emerging from the truck window ahead to point them both into a turnout. They passed two round-shouldered buses disgorging weary streams of passengers. In the distance the River Terek poured a milky white waterfall between two great daggerlike sentinels and down into a chalk-colored pool. The water was almost lost beneath the thundering spume.

Rogue halted his truck beside a battered farm wagon pulled
by a muttering tractor. Wade followed his lead and eased in close to the tractor's other side. He joined the pair at the pool's edge, and wondered at the calm with which both Mikhail and Robards looked out over the creamy waters.

Mikhail pointed far in the distance toward the two greatest peaks in the Caucasus range, twin edifices that rose and rose and were finally swallowed by the clouds. “Together they are called Elbrus,” he said, “the king and queen of the Caucasus. Five thousand six hundred meters. The highland Balkars lived at the base there since the dawn of time. But they were all shipped to Kazakhstan by the butcher Stalin, may his name be erased. They are now trickling home in twos and threes, with fifty years of bitterness to unleash on those who now occupy their ancestral homes. Today the area belongs to the Kabardino-Balkaria Autonomous Republic and is a part of Russia. For how long, as the Balkar numbers grow once more, is in the hands of fate.”