Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [156]
Sometime later—it might have been minutes or hours, for she had lost track of time—as Jane was rounding a corner, Ellis caught up with her and stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Look,” he said, pointing ahead.
The track led down into a vast bowl of hills rimmed by white-peaked mountains. At first Jane did not understand why Ellis had said Look; then she realized that the track was leading down.
“Is this the top?” she asked stupidly.
“This is it,” he said. “This is the Kantiwar Pass. We’ve done the worst part of this leg of the journey. For the next couple of days the route will lie downhill, and the weather will get warmer.”
Jane sat down on an icy boulder. I made it, she thought. I made it.
While the two of them looked at the black hills, the sky beyond the mountain peaks turned from pearl gray to dusty pink. Day was breaking. As the light slowly stained the sky, so a little hope crept into Jane’s heart again. Downhill, she thought, and warmer. Perhaps we will escape.
Chantal cried again. Well, her food supply had not gone with Maggie. Jane fed her, sitting on that icy boulder on the roof of the world, while Ellis melted snow in his hands for Jane to drink.
The descent into the Kantiwar Valley was a relatively gentle slope, but very icy at first. However, it was less nerve-racking without the horse to worry about. Ellis, who had not slipped at all on the way up, carried Chantal.
Ahead of them, the morning sky turned flame red, as if the world beyond the mountains were on fire. Jane’s feet were still numb with cold, but her nose unfroze. Suddenly she realized she was terribly hungry. They would simply have to keep walking until they came across people. All they had to trade, now, was the TNT in Ellis’s pockets. When that was gone they would have to rely on traditional Afghan hospitality.
They were also without bedding. They would have to sleep in their coats, with their boots on. Somehow Jane felt they would solve all problems. Even finding the path was easy now, for the valley walls on either side were a constant guide and limited the distance they might stray. Soon there was a little stream burbling alongside them: they were below the ice line again. The ground was fairly even, and if they had still had the horse they could have ridden her.
After another two hours they paused to rest at the head of a gorge, and Jane took Chantal from Ellis. Ahead of them, the descent became rough and steep, but because they were below the ice line the rocks were not slippery. The gorge was quite narrow and could quite easily get blocked. “I hope there are no landslides down there,” said Jane.
Ellis was looking the other way, back up the valley. Suddenly he gave a start, and said: “Jesus Christ.”
“What on earth is the matter?” Jane turned and followed his gaze, and her heart sank. Behind them, about a mile up the valley, were half a dozen men in uniform and a horse: the search party.
After all that, thought Jane, after all we went through, they caught us anyway. She was too miserable even to cry.
Ellis grabbed her arm. “Quick, let’s move,” he said. He started hurrying down into the gorge, pulling her after him.
“What’s the point?” Jane said wearily. “They’re sure to catch us.”
“We’ve got one chance left.” As they walked, Ellis was surveying the steep, rocky sides of the gorge.
“What?”
“A rockfall.”
“They’ll find a way over or around it.”
“Not if they’re all buried underneath it.”
He stopped at a place where the floor of the canyon was only a few feet wide and one wall was precipitously steep and high. “This is perfect,” he said. He took from the pockets of his coat a block of TNT, a reel of detonating cable marked PRIMACORD, a small metal object about the size of the cap of a fountain pen, and something that looked like a metal syringe except that at its blunt end it had a pull ring instead of a plunger. He laid the objects out on the ground.
Jane watched him in a daze. She did not dare to hope.
He fixed the small metal object to one end of the Primacord by crimping it with his teeth; then he fixed the metal object