Arabian Storm by George Wallace

Author:George Wallace [Wallace, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn River Publishing
Published: 2020-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

The full moon provided some meager illumination for Bill Beaman and Abdul Yusufzai as they made their long and perilous descent down the slopes of Solomon’s Throne and then across the Wyeze Kar, an intermittent stream that, fortunately, was now mostly dry. Other times it could be a torrent as it fed into the Shahbadin Wahai. That would have caused more problems than either warrior wanted to deal with on this particular night.

Playing the inveterate tour guide, Abdul pointed out that the Shahbadin Wahai had some of the finest freshwater fishing in all of Asia. Beaman only grunted at this tidbit of information. He still preferred the bath-water-warm, emerald green waters off the Bahamas where he now spent most of his time since retiring from the Navy two years before. From the front door of the Peace and Plenty Bar, which Beaman now owned and operated—and only when he felt like it—it was precisely seventy-two unhurried paces west to the head of the pier at Dexter’s Bait and Charter. And there was always a boat captain there looking for an extra deck hand. No pay but cold beer stowed on the ice in the fish hold and all the grouper or snapper the big ex-SEAL wanted to carry back to grill or fry for supper.

But at 0300, after eight hours of grueling descent and with an equally taxing climb looming in their immediate future, fishing was not high on Bill Beaman’s list.

The moon had just set behind the slopes to the west when the pair started the near-vertical ascent up the Obasta Tsukai. The sun would not peek over the high ridges to the east for several hours yet. Only the faint alpine glow gave proof that a sun even existed somewhere over there. The forced march was exhausting, even for the retired SEAL and his Pashtun partner. They scrambled over the scree and loose boulders, grabbing a foothold or a handhold to laboriously pull themselves up the mountainside. Gradually, at a snail’s pace, the valley floor receded far below them. However, the mountain’s upper reaches were still hidden by the clouds skirting the peaks much higher up.

Then, just as Bill Beaman was worrying that they would never reach the rendezvous point, his GPS light suddenly flashed. They had arrived at the coordinates that he had recorded the previous night from the other side of the valley, the spot where the helicopter hovered and picked up some of the fighters. The place was singularly indistinguishable from anywhere else on the mountainside. Then he spotted the wrapper from a piece of Amrus candy, the traditional Pakistani sweet, snagged by a crevice. A human being had been at this spot. And when he looked up, he could just make out a very narrow trail winding further up the mountain. To an experienced tracker, the trail revealed barely visible signs of recent use. A rock kicked over. A shrub with a tiny broken branch. Just a hint of a boot print in a dusting of sand.

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