False Horizon (7 page)

Despite being out of the direct path of the wind, Annja could still hear it howling around the mountain outside of the cave. If we’d stayed with the plane, she thought, we’d already be dead.

Mike lay next to her. He was feverish and Annja was extremely worried about his injury. If the storm didn’t break before morning, she doubted that any rescue party would ever find them. As it was, they were already quite a distance from the plane wreckage. And no one had any idea where they were.

But morning was still hours away. And they needed to get through the night first.

She felt Mike’s head and checked his pulse. His heart rate seemed to have increased. At least he wasn’t hypothermic. On the other side of Mike, Tuk lay on his back, perfectly still in the dark. His breathing seemed deep and level.

Annja thought about his sudden appearance earlier. Seeing him topple out of the back of the plane was a shock. She almost thought that Tsing might have stashed someone else aboard with a more evil agenda.

But Tuk had proven handy. He’d saved their lives by spotting this cave. Annja wasn’t sure she would have been able to find the place on her own. And it was less likely she would have been able to get both the gear and Mike to the cave before the snow buried them.

The simple fact was that they owed their lives to the diminutive Nepali man.

The question that plagued Annja was very simple. What was he doing on their plane?

The excuse he’d given didn’t hold up. Annja had a great nose for booze, and if Tuk had been drinking heavily the previous night she would have smelled it all over him, especially when he got back from his scouting mission. He was sweating so much that any booze in his system would have scented him like a perfume.

And yet, there was nothing about him that reeked of alcohol.

Which meant the little guy was lying.

But why?

Annja frowned. A stowaway on a plane that happens to crash who then saves their lives was a bit too much coincidence for her. And Annja wasn’t big on believing in such things in the first place.

But Tuk seemed almost completely harmless. Almost. Annja knew better than to accept the notion that his small size meant he was a pushover. He’d already demonstrated his incredible drive to accomplish finding the cave. And he’d then come back, grabbed two bags and led them to the safety of this shelter.

Most people wouldn’t be able to do that, she thought. But Tuk had accomplished it easily enough. It was almost as if his determination carried him along when physical strength did not.

And that made the little man dangerous. Or, at least, potentially so.

Annja took a breath and exhaled. She could just make out a bit of the breath as it frosted the air in front of her face. Her muscles slowly loosened from the earlier push to reach the cave. And the stress over Mike’s injury had subsided somewhat, as well. He was resting comfortably and there was nothing more to be done for him at the moment. Mike wasn’t out of the woods yet, but Annja needed sleep. Her body craved it like a drug, and mercifully, Annja felt the cloak of slumber reach for her and pull her into its embrace.

A
NNJA TRIED TO RESIST
the urging of her body to come back to a more conscious state. She wanted to stay asleep. Things were warm and happy there.

But she could sense movement. Maybe it was Mike needing some help.

Annja allowed one eye to open and glance around.

The interior of the cave was absolutely dark. She could see nothing. But she could feel something.

Mike was moving.

She rolled over and felt for him in the darkness. Her hand found nothing.

Annja sat up.

“Mike?”

She sensed another source of movement. “Tuk?”

“Yes?”

Annja relaxed a little bit. “Is Mike with you?”

“No. He’s lying next to— Wait.” Annja heard Tuk rustling around and then the flashlight beam cut into the darkness, illuminating the surrounding cave.

Mike was gone.

Tuk scrambled to his feet and shone the flashlight all around the cave. Annja was on her feet, as well. “Where the hell did he go?”

Tuk looked down at their improvised bedding and shook his head. “I don’t see any fresh bloodstains. That’s at least a good sign.”

“Yes, but he’s gone,” Annja said. “And that’s not a good thing.”

Tuk looked around. “He was right next to me.” He looked at Annja. “Forgive me. Ordinarily, I would have remained alert. But I’m afraid the exertion from my trek earlier quite exhausted my ability to stay awake.”

“You deserved the sleep,” Annja said. “I should have been on watch. I didn’t think we’d have anything to worry about with such a crazy storm outside.”

Tuk shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense. If Mike is gone and we cannot find him—”

Annja frowned. “How far back did you search the cave earlier when we got here?”

“Almost as far as I could go. The roof converges and the walls actually get much closer. I don’t think there’s any way that Mike could have gotten out back there.”

Annja grabbed the flashlight and headed toward the back of the cave. Tuk followed along behind her. “Annja? I don’t think he went this way.”

“Then where did he go? Outside? That would be suicidal. And Mike’s not the type to do that.”

Tuk cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to sound cold, but perhaps he was worried that he was weighing us down. That if we were concerned about him, then we might all die. Perhaps he thought—”

Annja flashed the light back on to Tuk. “Stop it. I don’t believe that for a second.”

“It was just a thought.” Tuk clamped his mouth shut.

Annja shook her head. “Sorry, it’s just that I know Mike and he wouldn’t think of doing that. There would be another way to solve the problem. Besides, Mike was too fixated on the purpose of our mission.”

“And what was that?”

Annja smiled. “We’re searching for Shangri-La.”

Tuk nodded. “Really?”

“You don’t seem surprised.”

Tuk shrugged. “You’re not the first foreigners to come looking for it. The lure of an idyllic world isolated from the rest of the earth is a powerful one. Many people have come to Nepal looking for it.”

“Do you believe it exists?” Annja asked.

Tuk shrugged. “I believe in only what I can control—my own future, until recently.”

Annja reached the back part of the cave and frowned. Just as Tuk had said, the cave roof and walls all converged at a point that made any more progression in that direction impossible. Unless you had a drill or the means to pass through solid rock.

Annja had neither.

She supposed that the sword might be able to penetrate the rock at least for a few inches. But what was the point of that? she wondered. Unless there was a hidden route through the rock, it would be a useless gesture.

She glanced toward the front of the cave. As much as she hated the idea that Tuk might actually have a point with his suggestion that Mike had gone out into the storm, she had to at least satisfy herself that he hadn’t.

She looked at Tuk. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Outside.”

Annja scooped up the jackets and tossed one to Tuk. “Put it on. I’m almost one hundred percent certain that he wouldn’t do this, but in his feverish state, who knows how his mind might operate.”

She zipped up the parka and watched as Tuk did the same. “You ready?”

He nodded. Annja held up her hand. “I’ll keep the flashlight, if you don’t mind.”

Tuk nodded and watched as Annja swept the heavy beam over to the opening of the cave. “Here we go.”

Tuk watched her scoot down through the thin opening. He followed her out into the storm.

Annja gasped as the first punch of cold wind knocked her sideways. The air outside the cave couldn’t have been ten degrees. And the snow slapped her exposed skin like sharpened lead bullets.

She flashed the light along the ground and saw nothing. No footprints led away from the cave. And there was no way Mike could have left the cave without leaving some sort of sign.

Unless he happened to fly away.

Annja shook her head and turned to Tuk, shouting to be heard over the storm. “He’s not out here.”

Tuk nodded and gestured for them to return to the safety of the cave. He ducked back inside.

Annja took another second to look around, shining the flashlight in all directions. But the snow and wind combined to make the beam of the flashlight ineffective even out to twenty yards.

He’s not here, Annja thought. He’s got to be inside the cave.

Somewhere.

She ducked back through the opening and took a breath as she got herself out of the storm. Tuk had already ditched his coat and was jumping up and down to get his blood circulating.

“No one would last in that weather for more than ten minutes,” he said a moment later.

Annja clapped her hands to herself, trying to warm up. “Agreed. But that still leaves us with the question of where Mike could have gone. If he’s not outside, then logic demands that he’s somewhere inside.”

Tuk frowned. “We’ve seen all of the cave, at least as far as I can tell. And from what we know, it is also impossible that Mike is in here with us.”

Annja shook her head. “I don’t think he would have gone outside. But he’s somewhere. People don’t just disappear.”

“I’m open to hearing your theories,” Tuk said. “I must admit I have none at the moment that could explain this.”

“Neither do I,” Annja said.

Tuk sat down on the blankets. “What if there is another way out of here that we don’t know about?”

“That’s the only thing that makes any possible sense,” Annja said. “But where? We’re in the main cavern and then there’s that back portion. Beyond that, I don’t see any other spaces.”

Tuk frowned. “Then there must be something that we have not noticed. Our perspective does not permit us to see what may be directly in front of our faces. Yet it would still exist.”

“We have to search for it,” Annja said. “Mike’s life might well depend on it.”

“Where do we start?” Tuk asked.

Annja pointed to the back wall of the cavern. “At what looks to be the dead end. If there’s nothing there, then we’ll work back toward the cave opening. But somewhere, there’s got to be something. There has to be.”

Tuk got to his feet. “And what happens if we search every bit of the cave and still don’t know where he is?”

Annja bit her lip. “Then I’ll have to accept the possibility that Mike has vanished off the face of the earth.”

Tuk took the flashlight from her and aimed it toward the back of the cave. “Well, we’re not there just yet. Let’s see if we can maybe find a logical explanation for his disappearance before we write him off entirely.”

Tuk set to check the back of the cave with Annja working over to his right side. He started pressing his hands into every inch of the rock, trying desperately to find some type of hidden spot that they couldn’t see with their naked eyes.

He watched as Annja worked on her own section of the cave. She ran her hands up and along every bit of rock she could find. The worry on her face was apparent and Tuk frowned. He had to keep her focused but less frightened.

“How long have you known Mike?”

“Huh? Mike? I’ve known him for years. We did some graduate school work together. I always thought he wasn’t serious enough. You know, because he played football and always seemed to be much more interested in sports than in anything to do with science and history.”

“You were mistaken?”

“It’s like what you were saying about perspectives just now. Sometimes what’s right in front of our eyes can’t be seen simply because we look at it from only one perspective. Mike was like that. And when I stopped seeing him as a football player, and instead looked at him as someone interested in many of the same things that grabbed my attention, then all of a sudden he became a great friend.”

“How many times have you worked together?”

“On again and off again. It’s how it happens in archaeology. You get together with some people for one thing and others for something else. Mike’s teaching now and then takes long sabbaticals to go off and pursue those things he’s really interested in.”

“Shangri-La being one of them,” Tuk said. He’d had no luck with any part of the cave so far. He ran his hands along the cave wall.

“Shangri-La is really the thing that drives him hardest,” Annja said. “As long as I’ve known him he’s always had a thing for lost lands and places that seem to defy convention.”

“I guess Shangri-La is all of that. How long has he been searching for it?” Tuk asked.

“When we were in school, he wrote a thesis on its existence, which promptly got him laughed out of the first board. It taught him a valuable lesson about his passion.”

“And what was that?”

“That sometimes people don’t care how much you love something. If it doesn’t look right or sound like something they want to hear, you may as well be the village idiot. There tends to be an acute lack of respect for passion in our society these days.” Annja paused. “Well, unless it makes money.”

Tuk nodded. “I think people fear their passion.”

Annja looked at him. “Do you?”

He nodded. “Certainly. Passion for something means you don’t care what anyone else thinks about it. You know in your heart that it’s right and that’s all that really matters. You’re unstoppable in your love for something. Not a lot of people are confident or comfortable enough in their own skin to even acknowledge that emotion.”

Annja smiled. “You’re an interesting guy, Tuk.”

“Thank you.”

“And I never thanked you properly for saving our lives earlier,” she said.

Tuk held up his hand. “Don’t mention it. If I hadn’t found this place, we’d all be in the same situation.”

Annja turned back to the cave wall and kept pressing at the rock. Tuk watched her for another moment before doing the same. As the edges ran under his skin, he wondered what they could possibly be looking for. A hidden doorway? A trap floor compartment? There had to be something. As Annja said, Mike couldn’t just simply disappear.

Tuk thought about the phone in his pocket and had the sudden desire to call the man who had hired him. He could let him know about their situation. Perhaps he had some ideas of his own about where Mike might have gone.

He frowned. That was foolish. How in the world would the man know anything about Mike’s condition aside from what Tuk had told him earlier.

No, the time to talk to him would be in the morning. Hopefully when he was confirming that he was arranging the rescue for them.

“Annja?” Tuk asked.

“Yeah?”

“Am I right in saying that a missile brought the plane down this afternoon?”

Annja nodded. “Sure seems to have been a missile. Yeah.”

“But who would have fired it? I mean, why bother with us at all? It doesn’t make sense.”

Annja shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Tuk. All I know is the first missile barely missed us and then the second one took off our wing and we crashed as a result.”

“But there’s something else I don’t understand.”

“What’s that?”

“Whoever shot us down doesn’t seem to be around here.”

Annja stopped and looked at Tuk. “What are you getting at?”

“Don’t you see? We were shot down. Presumably because someone wanted us dead. Well, you and Mike, anyway. But then as soon as we went down, there was no follow-up.”

Annja frowned. “You mean no one came to see that the job was done?”

Tuk nodded. “It’s not like they didn’t have time to do it. The weather hadn’t gotten that bad yet. And unless we went down far away from where the missile was fired, they should have been able to get to us easily.”

“And they would have killed us,” Annja said.

“Exactly my point. Why didn’t they follow up?”

“Maybe they didn’t know where we went down.” Annja shook her head. “I don’t know that I have an answer for that one, Tuk. Except to say that we’re obviously several times lucky today.”

“Just strange, is all,” Tuk said. “Sort of a half-finished job. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but then again, it’s probably beyond me.”

Annja laughed. “If it makes you feel any better, it’s seeming a bit beyond me, as well.”

“You find anything?” Tuk asked.

“Not a damned thing.”

Tuk looked back at the cave wall. He’d worked his way around to the left and was now about ten feet from where he’d started. He ran his hands from the floor to the ceiling and back again. But he found nothing of interest. And there seemed absolutely no way for someone to have passed through the wall to whatever lay beyond.

Annja had also moved farther from her starting point, and she was roughly in line with Tuk as they worked their way toward the front of the cave.

Tuk could still hear the storm raging outside. He wondered how much snow would fall and a brief worry gripped him. “I hope all that snow doesn’t bury us in here.”

Annja stopped working again. “You mean by covering the entrance?”

“Yes. If enough of it falls, we could get sealed up in here. It would become our tomb.”

“Now you’re making me worried. Please stop.”

“Sorry.”

Tuk went back to examining the wall. Where could Mike have wandered off to?

He had a sudden alarming thought. What if Mike hadn’t wandered off at all?

What if someone or something had grabbed Mike?

Tuk glanced at Annja. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for theorizing anymore. She intently scanned the rock in front of her and kept pressing her hands into every crevice, searching for something that would give them some sort of clue as to Mike’s whereabouts.

Tuk wasn’t sure what to think anymore.

He felt a breeze on the back of his neck and shivered. Even though they were working fifty feet from the front of the cave, the wind could reach inside and touch them. It was a reminder of how utterly harsh and merciless nature could be. Tuk shook his head and gave a silent prayer of thanks for finding the cave.

He wondered what would make the Americans come over to Nepal, so intent on finding a place such as Shangri-La. Why would they leave the comfort of their lives in order to look for something that might not even exist in the first place? What was the point?

Were they that unhappy in their lives that they craved something exciting and mysterious like this? Tuk sniffed and remembered that his own life until recently had been pretty unhappy, as well.

Better not to make judgments on people who sought excitement, he thought. Just let them do what they feel they need to do in order to be happy.

He thought about his own life and the retirement he was looking forward to getting under way. With the promise of the man’s money, Tuk would be able to relax and enjoy his own life.

He wondered what that would be like. He’d spent so many years scraping a living together, hoarding his money and never living beyond his means.

But what was happiness to him, anyway? Tuk frowned. He wasn’t even sure he would recognize it if it happened upon him.

And that felt pretty sad, he decided.

If we get out of here, he thought, I’m going to change that. I’m going to make sure I appreciate everything and go after what I want.

“How are you doing?” Annja asked.

Tuk realized several minutes had passed without either of them saying anything to the other. He cleared his throat. “Pretty much the same as you, Annja. Nothing.”

Annja stopped working and turned around. “What are we missing here?”

“What do you mean? We’re trying to do everything we can to find Mike and make sure he’s safe.”

Annja pointed at the wall. “We’re missing it, I just know it. I can feel it. There’s something here and we aren’t seeing it. We could keep doing this all night and all day forever and we’d never find it, simply because we’re not looking at it the right way.”

Tuk frowned. “I’m not sure how else I can look at this. I’m trying to see it from every possible angle. It’s not helping.”

Annja nodded. “And yet…” Her voice trailed off and she suddenly frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you smell that?”

Tuk started to speak but stopped. He caught a whiff of something on the breeze that seemed to circulate through the small cave.

Perfume? How could that be?

He shook his head and looked at Annja. The flashlight battery seemed to be waning and he could scarcely make her out, standing across the cave from him. “What is that?”

“It smells like perfume,” Annja said. “Floral.” She paused. “Gardenias?”

Tuk shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know my flowers so I can’t say.”

He heard something.

Annja heard it, too.

And then Tuk saw something he didn’t expect to see. There appeared in Annja’s hands a sword that glowed and cast off a dull glow in the cave’s interior. Tuk gasped. It was the same sword that cleanly sliced through the fuselage of the airplane earlier when Tuk tumbled out of the back compartment.

“What in the world is that?” he asked.

Annja held up her hand. “Stand behind me, Tuk.”

“What for?”

“Because that smell doesn’t belong here. We would have noticed it earlier. That means there’s something else in the cave with us.”

Tuk moved behind Annja and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Can you see it?”

Annja shook her head. “No. Not yet. But I can feel something. Something is in the cave with us.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Could it be Mike?”

Annja shook her head. “I don’t think so. Mike doesn’t wear perfume.”

Tuk felt her suddenly move forward to the front of the cave. She was headed toward the opening.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he whispered.

“I’m not sure of anything anymore, Tuk.”

Tuk felt himself drawn along. At least Annja had the sword. But how well would it work in the close confines of the cave? Tuk had to ask himself another question. If they really were in danger and couldn’t fight, where could they run?

They were trapped.