The Messiah Secret

‘This is the clever bit,’ he said. ‘The bumper’s been lowered by about three inches, which is hardly noticeable on a vehicle of this size, and a shallow tray’s been made to slide into the body of the jeep just above it. This is how you release it.’

He lifted up what looked like a pair of worn bolt-heads at the rear of the loading area, but when he’d extracted them from the floor, Masters could see that there was no thread on them – they were both completely smooth, like simple locking pins, which in fact is what they were.

Then Rodini took out a knife, slid the point into a tiny gap at the very edge of the floor pan and levered. A tray slid an inch or two out from the floor pan, and he reached down and pulled it out fully. It was the width of the rear bumper, and had been made to fit along the normal panel joint lines, so that it was effectively invisible. The tray wasn’t big. It was perhaps five or six inches deep and about three feet long, but almost five feet wide.

‘Neat,’ Masters said. ‘You could pack a lot of cocaine inside this.’

Rodini nodded. ‘And that’s exactly what they did. Unfortunately for the smugglers, they didn’t make the right pay-offs to the right people, and that’s why you’re now the proud owner of these two vehicles. Your weapons and ammunition will easily fit in there.’

‘Definitely,’ Masters replied, looking behind him where his men had assembled in a loose bunch, weapons and ammunition boxes and other gear scattered around them. ‘John,’ Masters called. ‘Bring a couple of the AKs over here, will you? And some of that sacking.’

A bulky, bear-like man, most of his face hidden behind a thick black beard, picked up two of the Kalashnikovs and ambled over to the back of the Land Cruiser.

Masters nodded his thanks to Rodini, spread the sacking on the bottom of the tray and laid the two Kalashnikovs on it. Even a casual glance showed that there was room for at least half a dozen of the weapons in the tray, as long as their magazines were detached.

‘That’s good,’ he said. Then, raising his voice slightly, ‘OK, you guys. Take the mags off the AKs and put them in these two trays. The Barrett, too. Pack the ammo around them.’

‘What about the shorts?’ the heavy-set man asked. ‘You want them in there as well?’

Masters shook his head. ‘No – we’ll keep the pistols on us, just in case we need some additional persuasion at some checkpoint.’

Rodini shook his head. ‘I would strongly suggest that you don’t get into a fire-fight with the Indian Army patrols across the border. I can almost guarantee that you’ll lose.’

‘Noted,’ Masters said. ‘But I don’t want all our weapons locked away and inaccessible, just in case we do run into any trouble.’ He watched as his men stowed away the weapons and ammunition, and closed the two secret trays in the backs of the Land Cruisers.

‘Now,’ Rodini said, ‘crossing the border. You all have your passports and Inner Line permits?’

Masters nodded. He’d personally checked the documents when Rodini had handed them back after the forgers had done their work, and he also had a set ready for JJ Donovan when he finally arrived.

‘We’re here.’ Rodini opened up a map, spread it out on the bonnet of the Land Cruiser, and pointed at a spot about ten or twelve miles from the border between Pakistani and Indian territory. ‘On the tracks that pass for roads in this area, the border’s about a half-hour drive down to the south-east. What I propose to do is quite simple. I intend to escort all of you down there under guard and then hand you over to the Indian troops.’

54

‘We’re still pretty high, aren’t we?’ Bronson asked.

They’d descended all the way to the bottom of the Khardüng La pass, and crossed the bridge over the Shyok, the river that ran along the bottom of the valley. At the T-junction on the other side of the fast-flowing waters, they turned left and again began descending, but this time more gently.

‘Yes,’ Angela replied. ‘This whole area’s at an elevation of about ten thousand feet.’ She glanced at her map. ‘Pretty soon we’ll come to another junction, and one fork of the road will go south, back across to the other side of the Shyok. We need to stay on this side, the east side, of the river, and we’ll keep on heading more or less northwest until we reach the town of Pänämik.’

In a few minutes they reached the junction.

‘Just pull over for a second, could you?’ Angela asked.

‘What is it? Something wrong?’

‘No, nothing,’ Angela said. ‘Just hop out and follow me.’

She climbed down from the passenger seat of the Nissan and waited in front of the vehicle as two other four-by-fours – a Land Rover and a Toyota – drove past them heading north-west, trailing clouds of dust behind them. She crossed to the other side of the road, Bronson following, and pointed over to the south-west, towards the river.

‘Over there,’ she said, indicating a wide stretch of the river, ‘is where the river Nubra – which is also known as the Siachen, the same name as the glacier that feeds it – and the river Shyok meet.’