CHAPTER
14
THEY SPENT ANOTHER NIGHT OUTSIDEin the mountains, but Thura told them they would turn the horses in the next day and make the rest of the trip to Myitkyina on foot.
After Temple and Thura were asleep Amrita whispered to Nash. “You killed the soldier.”
“I didn’t even know it was a soldier. I thought it was somebody trying to steal our horses, or worse.”
“Here that does not matter. They will kill you. They will kill all of us.”
“I never intended for any of this to happen, Amrita.”
“You may get out of here alive because you are American. But I will not. They will find me and kill me.”
“You don’t know that.”
Amrita’s face flushed. “Idoknow this. Do not tell me what I do not know.” Thura mumbled in his sleep and she glanced anxiously at him before turning back to Nash.
“I know I told you to forget about me wanting to go to America, but now it is different. With the KIA dead it is all changed. So can you help me?” she said urgently. “Can you take me with you? You and your boss? I am smart. I know the language. I can help with your. . . business.”
Nash was about to say no, but then he noted the woman’s desperate expression.
“I’ll talk to my boss. Maybe we can work something out. But what about Thura?”
“For me he cares nothing, but he will take care of himself. You will talk to your boss? You promise me this?”
“I promise you,” he said firmly, but his thoughts did not match his tone. Nash had always been at his best when he could think things through. Ever since boarding Victoria Steers’s plane for the flight to Hong Kong, he had only had time to be reactive.
Amrita gave him a searching look and then turned away. A few minutes later he could hear her gentle snores.
Nash looked up at the hazy sky and wondered what planet he was actually on.
Because it no longer feels like earth.
* * *
The hike was long and difficult, and it left them at varying points covered in sweat or chilled to the bone. Nash could not imagine what it would be like during the monsoon season when the rain would fall in feet rather than inches. As he glanced at Temple, who was trudging next to him, Nash could tell his boss was feeling the full effects of the journey. But Temple’s grim expression also told Nash that the death of the soldier was probably also weighing heavily on him.
For himself Nash expected a chopper to roar over one of the mountain peaks and land with men holding automatic weapons pouring out of it, and his life would end either in a prison or with a wall of bullets.
He wondered if Thura had communicated to anyone what had happened. Had word reached Steers about the death of the soldier?
Even if we get back safely with her mother will she declare the deal null and void and kill us anyway?
These glum thoughts followed Nash until they made their last camp.
After a dinner that consisted of the remnants of their provisions and filled none of their bellies, Nash drew Temple aside and talked to him about Amrita and her request.
“Are you nuts, Dillon?” Temple had exclaimed. “It’s highly doubtfulwe’llget out of this alive, much less with a third wheel. It’s out of the question.”
All of this made sense from a logistical point of view, Nash knew. And also from a commonsense perspective. But when one threw empathy into the equation it was not so simple. However, he knew that Temple, as usual, was concerned only with his own survival. The man clearly had no qualms about what might happen to Amrita.
That night around the campfire Amrita positioned herself near him and Nash knew what was coming.
Around one in the morning she whispered, “Did you talk to him?”
“Yes.”
