To the shamed ears of Yun Ting came the exultant shouts of the Khampas who now had a clear path into the city.
"Gonpo!" they cried. "Gonpo Jigme! Lha gyalo! De tamche pham!"
He did not know who or what Gonpo Jigme was. The rest was perfectly understandable Tibetan. "The Gods are victorious," the Khampas were saying. "The demons are defeated."
Yun Ting did not like being referred to as a demon, but he could not argue with the rest of it. Not when he was in full retreat before a single unarmed being who, for all he knew, was one of the long-banished gods of ancient Tibet returned.
Chapter 37
The last mountain peak shot away from under the PLA helicopter's skids, and the Lhasa Valley opened up like a great jewel box. Its grandeur, its roofs and the winding River Lhasa, dominated by the gargantuan Potala Palace, was almost enough to take the minister of state security's breath away had he not been busy with radio contact with the main PLA garrison in the city below.
The situation was strange. The Bunji Lama remained at large, although the city was being scoured to locate this personage. All Tibetans had been ordered to remain indoors. But the Bunji could not be found.
"There may be no need to find the Bunji," the minister of state security informed the ground. "For once the people of Lhasa know that the Tashi is in their midst, the influence of the Bunji clique will have been crushed."
As they were clearing him to land at the Dragon King Pool behind the Potala, the minister spotted the PLA helicopter resting atop a peak on the other side of the valley. He took a pair of field glasses from a door pocket and brought them to his eyes.
After a moment he spoke into his throat mike. "I have found the Bunji," he said without excitement.
There was no need for excitement. The Bunji and her clique of reactionaries were obviously stranded on the mountaintop. There would be no escape for them.
They had reached endgame.
THE MASTER of Sinanju watched Lhasa from his windy vantage point on the mountaintop, his hands tucked in the warm tunnel of his joined kimono sleeves, his parchment features troubled.
Below, the foolish dragonflies of the People's Liberation Army crisscrossed the city, flying low. They searched in vain, he knew.
Still, he considered, they were not the only ones afflicted with excessive vanity. He glanced toward the resting helicopter where the Bunji Lama sat fuming. It was good that he had taken her voice, for in the long hours that lay between this calm hour and darkness her shrill complaints and lamentations would surely have been unendurable. The Bunji grew impatient with every passing minute, and only the Master of Sinanju understood that to wrest control of Lhasa from the Han Chinese was a task possibly without a satisfactory end.
Abruptly a solitary helicopter breasted the mountains to the south. It dropped toward the city below. Just when it seemed that it would alight without causing difficulties, it rose again and climbed toward them.
Like male dragonflies scenting a female, the crisscrossing helicopters whirled up from their rooftop patrols and climbed after the solitary PLA ship.
Every helicopter bore on an unerring course toward their mountaintop position.
As he turned to warn the others, the Master of Sinanju understood that the odds of their taking the day had grown infinitely worse.
"BEHOLD THE CRIMINAL skyboats of the Chinese!" Bumba Fun shouted, pointing toward the northern horizon. "See how they flee the approach of Gonpo Jigme! They fear the dreadnought that has come down from Mt. Kailas to expel them from our holy land."
"I never heard of Mt. Kailas," said Remo, watching the helicopters strain toward the rarefied air of the mountains. Up ahead a security checkpoint was being abandoned as PLA cadres piled into jeeps and headed north.
"Lhasa is ours!" Bumba Fun exulted.
"Don't count your yaks until you have them by the horns," Remo warned, thinking that this was too easy. They were barreling up Dousen Galu, past the Working People's Cultural Palace, and no one had tried to stop them since he had maimed those two tanks.
Whatever was going on, he had a hunch that Chiun was somehow involved.
Along the way Bumba Fun and his Khampas called upon the citizens of Lhasa to turn out in support of their own liberation. Dull bronze faces appeared at windows like beaten gongs. But that was all. No one ventured out of doors. And when they began encountering pockets of PLA resistance, they were on their own.
"Buddhists," muttered Remo.
NO SOONER HAD the Master of Sinanju broken the dire news to the Bunji Lama and the others than the air was full of flying machines. They zipped back and forth in the thin air, rotors buzzing. There was no escape from them, except downward.
"We cannot remain here," Chiun said tightly.
"We will fight," said Kula. Lifting both AK-47s in his big hands, he peppered any helicopter that dared stray too close.
One, mortally wounded, spiraled down to blossom into a fiery flower far below. Another fired back, shattering the cockpit of their own helicopter. Kula directed his fire toward that ship. The twin streams of lead chewed off the tad rotor. It, too, fell from the sky, a wounded thing of complaining metal.
The Master of Sinanju allowed Kula his sport. When both clips ran empty, the big Mongol dropped his rifles in disgust and drew his silver dagger as if to reach out and snare a passing helicopter for gutting.
In the end they started down off the mountain, plowing through waist-high snow that concealed treacherous boulders.
Cadres in PLA green began rappeling down from their helicopters to places of ambush below the snow line. They crouched in waiting, weapons ready, hard eyes cruel.
Cadres below, helicopters above. And across the pastureland that separated Lhasa proper from the mountain on which they stood came column after column of tanks and jeeps and trucks.
Holding his black skirts before him like a plow, Chiun blazed a trail through the snow sufficient for the Bunji Lama, Kula and Lobsang Drom to follow safely. He grew grim of visage. It was possible to steal past the lurking cadres, possible also for one of his consummate skill to reach the relative safety of Lhasa and be spirited out of Tibet by guile and cunning. But to lead his charges to safety was another matter. Some would die. Perhaps all. All except for the Master of Sinanju himself, of course. He would refuse to die.
Surrender was the only reasonable option. Surrender, and then perhaps the advantage could be regained and the tables turned.
He turned to break the harsh truth to those who had put their trust in him.
Squirrelly Chicane couldn't believe her ears.
Surrender? she shouted. Except no words came out.
"I will never surrender to the Han," vowed Kula.
Attaboy! Squirrelly thought.
"I will surrender if it is ordained that I surrender," added Lobsang in a doleful voice.
You're a big help, Squirrelly thought.
"We must surrender if we are to leave this mountain alive," Chiun insisted.
Never! Squirrelly screamed mentally. This was awful. The whole storyline is failing apart. I've got to get them back on track. They need inspiration. If only I could say something or sing a song. That's it! A song! I need an uplifting song. Their spirits will soar, and all this defeatist talk will end up on the cutting-room floor, where it belongs.
Squirrelly bustled up to the Master of Sinanju and tried to get his attention. She pointed to her mouth, made faces, did everything she could think of except kick him in the shin.
"The Bunji wishes to speak," Kula pointed out.
"She should be heard," Lobsang agreed.
So, reluctantly Chiun reached up to release her vocal cords.