"Yes. Tamang asked but it's no-go. They're sending an entire regiment of troops to guard the pass, and they don't want a pair of CIA agents with eyeballs on the scene, even ones they've invited into the country."

  “Have the Chinese crossed the border?”

  “Unclear.”

  Jana’s heart leapt. “So there might be an invasion?”

  “Unclear. There aren’t any reports of other attacks on the border.”

  “Strange.”

  “Yeah. Not sure what’s going on. Tamang will keep us in the loop. So do you want to go to the excavation?”

  “Detective Gurung has already arranged for a helicopter. He’s picking us up in fifteen minutes.”

  Jacob nodded. “I like these guys. They’re on their toes.”

  "They're going to have to be. We're getting into a whirlwind of drama, and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon."

  Neither said anything more as they got dressed.

  ***

  Three hours later, Jana stood at the edge of an archaeological excavation in a remote valley inhabited by a lone Sherpa village, fifty miles from the nearest highway. She was trying very hard not to vomit.

  Bodies littered the field site, lying sprawled on the ground all around. A cluster of them were huddled in the furthest trench from the road, obviously having hoped they could hide there from their attackers.

  They had been found and slaughtered where they crouched.

  Several soldiers and rural police stood guard. A crowd of local villagers stood at some distance away, staring at the terrible scene.

  The local police sergeant spoke to Jana with Detective Gurung as translator. Jacob had come, but Agent Tamang had stayed in Kathmandu to monitor the situation with the Chinese border incident.

  "A witness says a Land Rover and a truck came up to the excavation right about there on the road, and men piled out with guns and opened fire without provocation. Then they appeared to have gone into that dig house over there and took most of the artifacts. It's nearly empty."

  The police sergeant led them over to a shed. They had to wend their way between the bodies, Canadians and Nepalese side by side on the ground where they had once worked together. Jana kept her eyes averted, although it felt like a betrayal somehow. With all her dealings with the CIA, what if someone had targeted one of her excavations? Maybe it was good she had taken a break from archaeology.

  But these people hadn’t been CIA. They had been regular researchers, like she used to be.

  One glimpse inside the shed told her the sergeant was right. Crates lay in disarray everywhere, empty or with their contents strewn on the floor. The gunmen had left behind the potsherds and various smaller items but seem to have taken much more. She didn’t know what because the notes seemed to be gone too. They’d have to do a thorough search of the site and the camp to make sure.

  Jana left the shed and looked around the excavation. Something strange caught her eye.

  She walked over. The wall stood three courses high, high enough that at least the uppermost blocks would have been above ground and visible from the interior of the monastery when it was still in use. Indeed, from the baulk wall of the trench she could see the tamped earth floor of the monastery as a thin, hard line between layers of softer soil.

  Three of the stone blocks had been pulled out of the upper course of the stone wall. She could tell because the edges of the surrounding stones were clean and unweathered.

  Jacob came up to her. “Find something?”

  He was already looking at the fresh hole in the wall.

  “The attackers took something more than just the artifacts.”

  Jacob nodded, looking confused. “Maybe some art or an inscription?”

  In several spots there were religious paintings and writing on the inside of the wall. They had all been covered by tarps to protect them from the elements, but those tarps had been torn away.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Jana replied.

  A police officer came up and said something to the local sergeant. Detective Gurung translated.

  “We have a witness to the shooting. The only one who was close enough to have seen clearly what happened.”

  “Let’s go see him.”

  “Her. A little shepherd girl who was tending her flock on the hillside over there.”

  Jana winced. A child saw this massacre?

  They walked over to the crowd of villagers. A Sherpa man stood in front, his hands on the shoulders of a trembling barefoot girl clutching a puppy.

  “She looks terrified,” Jana said. “Detective Gurung, let’s you and me just go up. The rest of you hang back.”

  “All right,” the detective said.

  The two of them went over to the girl and her father. Jana leaned over and smiled at her. The girl’s bottom lip trembled. It was obvious she had been crying. Her father said some soothing words and stroked her hair.

  “I’m Jana. What’s your name?”

  “Pemba Yanjee.” The answer came out as such a soft whisper Jana barely heard her.

  “How old are you, Pemba?”

  When Detective Gurung translated, she called her Yanjee instead of Pemba. Jana noted the cultural difference for later use.

  “Ten.”

  “That’s a nice puppy. Can I pet it?”

  “All right.”

  Jana petted the puppy. “She’s cute. What’s her name?”

  “Carol.”

  “What did you see, Yanjee?”

  The girl burst into tears. “They killed my friends!”

  It took some time for the father to calm the girl down. Jana stood there, helpless, her eyes filling. Once the father had soothed her for a while, Yanjee went on.

  “I was tending my sheep and watching the excavation.” Jana blinked when she said the last word in English. “Some men came up in a truck and a Land Rover and shot everybody!”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  “I ran. After a while I looked back and none of the archaeologists were moving anymore.” Yanjee said the word ‘archaeologists’ in English. “I saw the men going through their bags and pockets, and then they searched all around the excavation squares.”

  These last two words were also said in English.

  That’s when the penny dropped. Yanjee had obviously been visiting the field crew and learning English. She meant it when she said they were her friends.

  “Did you see what they took?”

  "They took something from everybody's pocket, and took some things in the bags too. Then one let out a cheer and pointed to that wall over there." She pointed to the wall where some blocks had been removed. "They were very excited. A bunch of the men rushed over there and broke something off. They searched all around the trench, and that's when I decided to run back to the village and call for help. I didn't see anything else."

  “Did you see what it was they were so interested in?”

  The girl shook her head and held the puppy closer to her.

  “No. I was too far. There are a lot of pictures on the walls. Maybe they took one of those.”

  Smart girl.

  “Do you remember what kind of picture was over there?” Jana pointed to the broken wall.

  “No. They excavated that yesterday, just before … before … ”

  She buried her face in the puppy’s fur.

  “Thank you, Yanjee. You’ve been very brave.”

  Jana gave her shoulder a squeeze, nodded a thanks to her father, and walked away.

  "The sergeant tells me the other villagers only saw the shooting from a distance," Detective Gurung said. "They confirm that it was a Land Rover and a truck coming up from the other end of the valley. Witnesses from other villages along this road confirm that the two vehicles came from the highway fifty miles away. They didn't stop anywhere along the route, and we got no clear descriptions of the passengers."

  “I wonder what they were searching in their pockets and bags for?”

  “The sergeant already discovered the answer to that. All of their phones are missing.”

  Jana took in a sharp breath. “And you’ve found no cameras either, have you?”

  The detective nodded. “Whatever was on that wall, they didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “But how could they have known it had been excavated that very same day? Oh! They had an insider.”

  “That makes sense. But all the crew are accounted for, so unless it was one of the villagers, which the testimony of the girl seems to refute, then the gunmen killed their informant.”

  “I’ve seen that before,” Jana said with a sigh. “We need to do a thorough search of the site. Look under the bodies. Look in the tents. Hell, look in the latrine. When there’s a major find on a dig, everyone gathers around and takes pictures. We need to find a phone. The gunmen didn’t stay long. Maybe they missed one.”

  “Good idea. The sergeant was planning on doing so after we get photos of the crime scene. We’ll hurry that process along and get to work.”

  Jana looked around the scene of the massacre and shuddered. She remembered all the digs she'd been on. The hard work interspersed with joking around. The easy camaraderie of a group of people thrown together to do a tough job in a remote location. The romances that bloomed, and all the petty rivalries. All those things made memories that people carried with them for the rest of their lives.

  For all that to end so violently, so needlessly …

  “I’ll find out who did this,” she whispered to the field of corpses. “I’ll get you justice.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back in Kathmandu that evening, Jacob had a meeting with Agent Arjun Tamang, the local CIA operative. They met at the U.S. embassy in a soundproofed room. Not that they feared the Nepalese government spying on them, but the Chinese had built their brand-new embassy suspiciously close.

  “There’s been a development,” Tamang said. “One of my contacts is a smuggler and he has a contact within the Nepalese People’s Liberation Front. The Communists make much of their money by smuggling drugs like a lot of insurgent groups do.”

  “Liberating the people by getting them hooked?”

  “Something like that. Anyway, he knows a guy in the group who’s been rattled by the theft of the Royal Vajra and the border attack. The announcement this morning hit the nation like a nuclear warhead. Everyone’s hating the Communists right now. Some people think that it was them who attacked the border post, since the Chinese deny involvement and they actually haven’t crossed the border.”

  “How likely is that?”

  “It’s impossible to tell without investigating the battlefield, and the government isn’t allowing anyone in and they’re not saying anything. In any case, this guy is all rattled and thinks the whole crew is going to be rooted out and so he’s made a deal. He’s been granted immunity and a U.S. visa in exchange for telling us the location of a Communist cell right here in Kathmandu.”

  “Us, as in the Americans?”

  “Yup. Didn’t trust his own government not to throw him in prison. The deal hinges on his information being correct, and I’d like to check it out.”

  “Without telling the Nepalese security forces.”

  "It would only muddy the waters, and the guy won't cooperate if we do. If we find out anything useful, we can tell them afterwards."

  “They won’t be too happy about us performing ops in their territory.”

  “They’ll be happy we took out a terror cell and, hopefully, got them some useful intel. You got to understand the government here, Jacob. They’re ruling an impoverished and underpopulated nation stuck between two huge regional superpowers. While they want to appear to do everything themselves to maintain their dignity and votes, they’ll take any help they can get. Their invitation for you to come here and go around armed is a tacit approval of any action that helps them. Within reason, of course.”

  “Speaking of weapons, we never had time to get any yesterday.”

  “I got you an MP5 and a 9mm automatic. I heard those are your favorite weapons. Plus we’ll take some stun grenades along on this operation. We’ve got a closet full of helmets and Kevlar for you to try on. I can fit out Jana as well.”

  “She’s still with the cops. They found a phone underneath a pile of bodies the gunmen had missed. Now they’re coming back to Kathmandu to crack it.”

  “Do they need our help with that?”

  “It’s one of the worker’s phones. It’s not encrypted. Any cell phone store will be able to crack it. The police won’t have any problem.”

  “Good. Our informant gave us a sketch of the terrorist safe house. It’s on the edge of town in a residential area. Let’s move in late at night when they’re asleep. There’s only supposed to be five of them, lightly armed, so if we get the drop on them, we should be able to subdue them easily enough.”

  “Sounds like a plan. You have combat experience?”

  “I fought with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan. You ever get over there?”

  Jacob shifted in his seat and tried desperately to maintain a poker face. He had been a Ranger in that theater, and when his unit perpetrated a massacre in an Afghani village where they had been ambushed, Jacob had cracked and killed several of his own men. He had gone rogue, feral, killing Taliban and any U.S. troops sent to capture him.

  He couldn’t remember much of those days. At last, the U.S. had sent their best operative to take him out.

  Aaron Peters, Jana’s father.

  Aaron stalked him for days and watched as Jacob took out a group of Taliban fighters. Then one day a shepherd boy had taken a potshot at him. Jacob didn’t remember this, but apparently he had jumped the boy, disarmed him, and let him go.

  That act of mercy told Aaron that there was still some humanity left in Jacob Snow, and so instead of killing him as per orders, he incapacitated him, brought him home and, after months of therapy, convinced his superiors in the CIA to give him a new identity and a new job.

  And now he was Agent Jacob Snow with the CIA.

  Tamang, a fellow veteran, was still waiting for an answer.

  “Yeah … I was there.”

  Tamang gave him a sympathetic look that made Jacob squirm.

  Arjun probably thinks I went through some trauma. He has no idea how much trauma I inflicted on others.

  “It’s in the past, buddy,” the Nepalese-American said. “Let’s get on with the current mission and do some good.”

  Do some good. Yeah. I still have a lot of bad to balance out.

  ***

  The Communist safe house stood on an acre of open land at the outer edges of Kathmandu's residential district, a spot where there were still many empty lots and the traffic was sparse. Many of the buildings were working-class apartments where the residents had to walk a long way to the nearest bus stop. The lucky few with cars kept them in locked garages. Streetlights only lit the main roads, and most streets, including the one where the safe house was located, only got ambient light from the other buildings.

  The Communists had chosen property well. Jacob doubted they saw many police patrols in this area.

  It was nearing midnight, and the streets had been quiet for a while now.

  Except for the dog chained to the safe house front lawn. It barked at anything getting close, whether it was a stray cat or their car when they had driven slowly by.

  “Don’t worry,” Arjun Tamang said as he parked two blocks down the street. “The informant told us about the mutt. I got something that will shut it up.”

  “You’re not hurting a dog on my watch.”

  Tamang patted a plastic shopping bag on the seat next to him.

  “I got a steak here laced with a sleeping drug.”

  “I thought Hindus don’t eat beef.”

  “Dogs aren’t Hindus, dumbass. Unless he was a really bad Hindu and got reincarnated as a dog.”

  “What are you going to be reincarnated as?”

  “I shudder to think. Hope that stuff doesn’t turn out to be true. Let me go around the block and toss this to Rover. Stay here. You stand out here too much, white boy.”

  “Right.”

  Tamang turned off the lights and let the engine idle. When he left, Jacob slid into the driver’s seat and pulled out a pair of binoculars.

  Focusing them on the house, he could see the narrow, three-story concrete structure had all its shutters closed and a bright exterior light shining on the front door. He couldn't make out if there was a security camera. Hopefully, they put enough faith in that dog to warn them of any prowlers. That dog sure liked to bark.

  Liked it too much. That made it unreliable as a watchdog. The Communists had probably gotten so sick of its yapping they didn’t pay much attention anymore.

  Arjun strolled down the dimly lit street with the shopping bag, looking like any other resident making his weary way home. He was still a block away when the dog ran to the length of its chain and started barking at him. Without breaking stride, Tamang reached into the bag, pulled out the steak, tossed it onto the lawn, and kept on going.

  The dog pounced on it and stopped barking.

  Tamang strolled past the house, made a right turn, came around the block, and got back in the car with Jacob.

  “Nice work, Arjun. Nobody looked out the windows.”

  “Now we just got to wait. Let’s get on our gear.”

  The two men struggled into their Kevlar vests and helmets within the cramped interior of the car, elbowing each other and cursing. Once finished, Jacob looked through the binoculars again.

  No one was at any of the windows. The dog stood listlessly in the middle of the lawn. After a minute, it curled up and appeared to go to sleep.

  “Nice work,” Jacob said.

  “It should be out for a couple of hours.”

  Jacob checked the car clock. It had just passed midnight.

  “Let’s go.”

  Without turning on the lights, they drove to the opposite side of the street from the safe house and parked. Then they looked around, saw the coast was clear, and got out. Jacob carried his usual MP5 submachinegun and a 9mm pistol, while Tamang had a heavier M4 carbine assault rifle and a 9mm. Each man had three stun grenades. The plan was to get captives, not a body count.

 

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