Twelve thousand feet above Pänämik, the Israeli-built Searcher II UAV described a lazy circle in the sky, a near-invisible speck, its engine completely inaudible. Then the craft straightened up and started flying towards the south, anchored to the slowly moving Nissan Patrol by the electronic tether of the signal from the tracking device.
56
‘So where are we now?’ Donovan asked from the back seat of the leading Land Cruiser. He’d flown in from Cairo the previous day, and joined the group at the military airport at Hushe in Eastern Baltistan, just before the vehicles left for the Indian border.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ the man in the front passenger seat muttered under his breath, then glanced behind him. ‘We’re about here, between Lhäyul and Gömpa.’ He pointed towards the map in his lap.
‘How soon before we reach the road junction?’
Donovan had asked the same question at least four times already. He clearly wasn’t enjoying the bucking and lurching ride.
‘It’s about twenty miles away, so maybe forty minutes on this kind of surface. You still sure that’s where these two Brits are going, boss?’
Masters, sitting beside Donovan in the back seat, shook his head. ‘Right now, I’m not sure of anything. But according to the guys who followed them to Pänämik, they’re going cross-country and it looks as if they’re heading towards the road that runs from Arann out to the east and then goes up and over the Saser Pass. So that’s where we’re going too.’
The border crossing had been much easier than Masters had expected. Rodini’s plan had worked just as they’d expected, and all the Americans had had to endure was a vitriolic tongue-lashing from the senior Indian Army officer there.
Now they just had to locate Bronson and Angela Lewis, after which they should be able to wrap up everything quickly. They’d whistle up Rodini’s chopper and get the hell out of India and back into Pakistan, where they wouldn’t have to sneak around quite so much. And once they got there, they could finally hand over the relic to Donovan, who could load it into the back of his private jet. And then they would collect the balance of their money.
Masters settled back in his seat. Good organization, that was what it was all about. Attention to detail. If all went according to plan – his plan – he’d be back in New York by the end of the week.
If they’d thought the pot-holed and dusty roads in Ladakh were any kind of a preparation for travelling cross-country, they were wrong. Bronson had tried to pick the smoothest route but, no matter what he did, the jeep lurched and bounced, throwing them from side to side.
‘I’ve had about enough of this,’ Bronson muttered, as the front wheels of the jeep left the ground completely and smashed down on to the rutted surface a split-second later, shaking the whole vehicle.
The good news was that they weren’t leaving much of a trail of dust, because the ground was rocky. Bronson was reasonably sure their progress would be invisible to anyone watching from Pänämik.
‘I’m checking everywhere,’ Angela said, ‘but there are no signs of any Indian Army patrols anywhere ahead of us. Or behind us, for that matter.’
‘I guess they just put up roadblocks and patrol the roads. They probably think nobody would be stupid enough to try to drive cross-country anywhere around here. And they’ve got a point,’ Bronson added, as the Nissan lurched particularly savagely.
They were right – there were no Indian Army troops closer to them than the roadblock they’d already seen on the north-bound road out of Pänämik. But they weren’t quite alone on the mountain. Nearly a mile behind them, a dusty grey Land Rover was plodding along steadily, not following exactly the same route as Bronson’s jeep because the driver didn’t need to. The tracking device, securely clamped to one of the chassis members, ensured that they knew exactly where Bronson was. That had been done the first night in Leh, after Bronson had collected the jeep from the vehicle hire company and parked it outside their lodging.
‘How much further?’ Bronson asked, the quaver in his voice caused by the car’s violent jolting.
‘No more than ten miles,’ Angela replied, trying to sound upbeat about the remaining distance. ‘We’ve already covered five.’
Nearly an hour later, Angela spotted a faint horizontal line on the side of the mountain right in front of them.
‘That’s got to be the road we’re looking for,’ she said, checking her map.
She looked over to the left and pointed. ‘I think those must be the outskirts of Arann.’
About ten minutes later, Bronson swung the Nissan on to the road and heaved a sigh of relief.
‘I vote we go back from here on the road. I’d rather try to crash through a bloody roadblock than do that again.’
‘You might not feel that way when we end up in jail,’ Angela said. ‘Now we head east, but take it slowly. We’re looking for anything that looks like a couple of pillars.’
