Going to the Sun

GOING TO THE SUN

MAY 1999 AND NOVEMBER 2023

In 1999, when he was twelve, John and his family went on a cross-country camping trip. This was in May, about a month after Columbine. One place his family visited was Glacier National Park, an enormous, million-acre wilderness along the northern border of Montana.

They were early enough in the season that snowpack lingered at the higher elevations, though the Going to the Sun Road was open. His parents were hot to drive this because, as their dad explained, the road went over the Continental Divide, which separated the Atlantic and Pacific watersheds. They would even, his dad said, be able to see Glacier's Triple Divide Peak. From the top of that mountain, water goes to the Atlantic, the Pacific, and up to Hudson Bay. His father had beamed. Kids, you'd have to go to frigging Siberia to see another place like this.

As John recalled, he and his older brother, who was almost fifteen, said something like Okay, cool but, being essentially teenagers, thought, Sure, Dad, whatever.

The Going to the Sun Road has two lanes. The road is very steep and also very narrow, snaking and coiling along the flanks of enormous mountains. This becomes even more of a problem when that car is towing a camper, even a small pop-up. On the side opposite these flanks, there is frequently nothing but air and pretty views of high mountains and deep, forested valleys.

There are also no guardrails. All that stands between a car and thin air is a line of large, but very low rectangular stone blocks.

A ranger they met at St. Mary Visitors Center explained why the road could be rough and the reason for those stone blocks. Regular guardrails wouldn't work.

"Hit one at speed, and the metal just crumples." The ranger had a laconic, back-country, almost Southern drawl, the kind that cloaked sarcasm with a cloying, saccharine turn of phrase. Any second, John expected the guy to say, Well, bless your heart. Which, John knew, often meant, Really, just go to hell already.

"Or you flip. Same difference." In fact, the ranger confided that you could always tell when there was a newbie on the road. "Cuz of the smell of burning rubber, on account of them stomping the brakes instead of shifting to a lower gear to control their speed." The ranger shook his head. "Worse, if they're towing a camper. On account of sometimes the camper outruns the car and then you jackknife. Which is hard cuz the road's too narrow to turn around."

This all sounded to John like an excellent reason to avoid this road.

"And slides," the ranger went on. "You gotta watch out for those. Real common during spring thaw on account of the ice. Snow gets in those cracks and crevices and then it kinda compacts and turns into ice and ice, you know, that expands and rock splinters. Only then it melts in the thaw and then…" The ranger shrugged. "Nothing holding that rock to the mountain, you catch my drift . "

On the other hand, this same guy claimed the Park Service did regular patrols and closed the road if the event of a slide. "So, you folks don't have anything to worry none about that." Yawning, the ranger dug at the scruff under his chin. "Don't let your camper run away from you, is all," he said, inspecting his nails then flicking something away with a thumb. "And stay away from them grizzlies."

They had the road to themselves. Their tires hummed on asphalt. Though this was mid-May, the air was chilly enough for his father to have cranked up the car's heater. Something country burbled, rhythmic and mournful, from the radio. The sun was bright enough for the snow dazzle to cut tears. Meltwater coursed down the mountainside to their left and streamed from platters of stone topped by evergreens. The view on his right—deep forested valleys edged by craggy, snow-covered mountains—was both beautiful and terrifying. His mother oohed and aahed and took pictures. John's brother, who sat behind their father, had his eyes closed and a pair of headphones for a portable CD player snugged over his ears. Over the hum of the car's tires on asphalt, John still caught the faint, tinny clash of something raw and angry. Nine Inch Nails, probably. The kind of music that made John's ears feel as if they were bleeding. Every time his brother spun up something like this on his player at home, their dad hollered up the stairs for him to turn that crap down before it drove him crazy, fer chrissakes.

John sat behind his mother. He had been reading Catcher in the Rye for school but had lost interest in Holden Caufield's problems. Because, seriously, he had plenty of his own at the moment.

Like the way his dad was driving. John was going nuts watching his dad's head swivel right and front, right and front, right and front as he steered and peered, steered and peered. The worst was when he steered, peered then took his right hand from the wheel and exclaimed, Look at that! Or Wow, isn't that something? The car always jerked a little to the right—to the valley side—when he did.

"Dad," he said, "we could pull over at a turnout, you know?"

"Too short with the camper." His black eyes glared at John from the rear view. "I know what I'm doing."

Maybe. But maybe not. Even his mom stopped oohing for a second and said, "There's no one coming. If you want, we can stop and switch places so you can look and then it won't be as dangerous?—"

"The only danger is you arguing and your son yakking. I got this!" his dad snapped.

"It's okay, Mom," John lied. The last thing he wanted was for his dad to lose his temper ten trillion feet above sea level.

His mom shut up. John shut up. His dad went back to his swiveling. John's brother only switched out Nine Inch Nails for Mayhem .

Man, they were going to die. John chewed the inside of a cheek. His dad, a film-and-TV nut who had just about every DVD and VHS known to man, had decided John was finally old enough to see Thelma and Louise about a month or so before their trip. John liked the movie, although it was hard to like something where women like his Aunt Jess and his mom got beat up by their husbands or bad boyfriends or whatever. Like, the way his dad sometimes yelled so hard, his eyes went all buggy and the cords stood out on his neck…did that count? What if Mom got fed up and ran away? So far as he knew, his dad never smacked her. Those, he reserved for him and his brother. (Open palm, mostly. Stung like all get-out. Worse was having to try and explain at school or to his baseball coach how he had run into a wall in the middle of the night. Sometimes his mom even grabbed a slipper and came after him or his brother, but they just laughed and danced away. Even those times she caught them, she hit like a girl. No big deal.)

But, boy, his dad could really let go with both barrels. John's Uncle Dare said it was on account of Vietnam, but that was, like, ancient history. And, anyway, Uncle Dare had been in Vietnam, too, and he didn't yell. Dare also didn't live near other people, though, and only folks from the cities...Houston or Austin...ventured out to the lake where Dare lived in a cabin he built. So, there was that.

Anyway, what really stuck with John: when ol' Louise stomps on the gas and that '66 Thunderbird hurtles off that cliff. He remembered being relieved the film stopped then; he could almost believe that Thelma and Louise kept on flying, like angels. (Of course, he knew that couldn't be true. He might be a kid, but he wasn't stupid. Like, that hubcap coming off and beginning to fall? That kind of destroyed the illusion right then and there. He had cried, too, but later and under the covers so no one could see.)

On this road, with these bends…he couldn't stop thinking of that last scene. He was convinced that was going to be them , but with no freeze-frame to catch them in mid?—…

" Whoa! " Their dad stomped on the brakes so hard and fast John's head jolted forward and then back with enough force that it was some kind of miracle his skull hadn't popped right off his spine. There was a high scream as their tires burned rubber. If they hadn't been wearing seat belts, John would've smashed into the back of the front seat. The car rocked on its chassis; the engine sputter and died. Their luggage pounded against John's back as suitcases slid suddenly forward in the trunk and piled on top of one another, and then there was a flash of silver out of the corner of John's right eye as their camper, still rolling, tried racing past their car and then his father was cursing and wrenching the wheel as their car, tires still screeching, twisted and torqued almost ninety degrees—and stopped.

For a second, no one said anything. The only sound was the tinny leakage from his brother's headphones.

Then John said, "Dad?" at the same moment their mother put a hand to her mouth and said, "Oh my God."

Rocks, big and small, were strewn over the road. The asphalt had buckled in the center to form a huge crater in which a boulder as big as their camper was buried halfway. To John's twelve-year-old eyes, the mountainside looked as if a giant had hacked off a thick slice with an enormous cleaver.

He remembered the crisp snap of his father turning off the radio. He remembered his brother stopping his cassette. The car was quiet. His mother's face was the color of bone. Even his dad had paled.

"Up there." His brother aimed a forefinger to a point high up the mountain, which was on his side of the car. There was a gigantic raw, black gash in the rock face where ice and expansion and then water had forced enormous stony chunks away from the mountain. "You can see where the rocks came off. Pretty recent, too. Rocks on the road are still wet."

"Oh." His mother put a hand to her mouth. "If we'd been going faster…"

"But we weren't, and we're fine." Popping his car door, his father said, "Let's get busy."

Fast-forward twenty years to the mountains of Tajikistan:

John thought the old adage about things changing yet staying the same was true. The only differences were the road, the country, and the fact that he was freezing his ass off because, you know, winter .

After a night spent in the van—a miserable experience in the cold—they'd started out bright and early with an eye toward dropping straight south and making it to Khorog, a biggish city for these parts. Depending upon when they hit Khorog, they'd either jog southwest to the crossing at Ishkashim or call it a day and spend the night in town before heading to the border. John was rooting for spending the night which, at their current pace, seemed likelier than not.

They came on their fifth rockslide of the day two hours past the highest point on the Tavildara Pass, which had been marked by a white shelter decorated with Russian graffiti. This time, neither he nor Davila even groaned. The slides were almost old news because they seemed endless on this downhill stretch. Several slides, piled high with snow at the foot of the jagged gray mountains on their left, had clearly been there a while.

The fresh slides were the problem. Any and all had to be cleared by hand, the rocks picked up one by one and tossed over the side, which, in itself, was dicey. The only way of knowing where the unpaved road was were from yellow metal markers set at erratic intervals or the deep gouges in snow that their driver, Parviz, said were from yaks or donkeys. So long as they stayed inside the outermost set of tracks, they could be relatively certain of not going tumbling off the edge.

"Where do the yaks come from?" Sucking down another lungful of air, John squatted and slipped his gloved hands under another basketball-sized rock. "Haven't seen any…" He had to try twice before hefting the stone with a grunt. His knees shrieked with the effort as he slowly duckwalked to the edge. "Any places…people actually…live." Or people, for that matter, though they'd seen long-abandoned homesteads: deep snow piled high on flat roofs, no curtains, no sign of habitation, no smoke trickling from a central stovepipe.

"Below," Parviz said. Seeming content to let his passengers do the literal heaving lifting, the driver made a sling from the front of his tunic into which he carefully selected stones, most no bigger than large hen's eggs. "Most live valley," he said, scuttling to the edge and bouncing stones from the sling.

"Makes sense, since we're above the tree line." Cradling a rock the size of a medicine ball, Davila hurled the boulder over the edge with an underhanded granny toss. Dusting his palms, he headed back to the debris field in long, powerful strides. "Only a few more, and we can go around."

"Unh," John wheezed, his breath clouding in the chill air. His own rock was half the size of Davila's. His muscles shivered from the effort. Sweat oozed between his shoulder blades; his pits were sodden. Shuffling to the road's edge, he settled for simply dropping his rock which bounced twice and then came to rest against a pileup of other boulders with a soft clack.

"Hey." Davila was balancing a boulder the size of a watermelon on one shoulder. "You good?"

"Just breathing." He turned back to the valley, which was so choked with clouds that the bowl seemed filled with cotton candy. He couldn't see the valley floor at all or the mountains opposite. A brief flicker of memory edged with terror: him as a stringy twelve-year-old terrified that, by venturing close to the edge, he'd somehow slip and hurtle, screaming, all the way down with no freeze-frame to save him.

He was about to turn away—when he stopped dead.

"Hey." The word came in a thin wheeze. Clearing his throat, he tried again. "Hey, Davila?"

"Yeah?"

"Come here." He didn't want to take his eyes from the spot. How had they not noticed this to begin with? Why had Parviz not warned them?

"Problem?"

Oh, you could say that. "Just come here." When Davila's footfalls drew near, he pointed with a shaky finger to a spot about ten feet from the edge. "Look at that. Tell me what you think it means."

A yellow sign with red Cyrillic lettering lay partially buried by snow. Enough was visible to see that someone had used the sign for quite a lot of target practice. Which would've been interesting at some other time and place because he hadn't seen any signs of any kind along the way. But it wasn't the bullet holes that had made all John's spit dry up.

For a long moment, Davila was silent. A sough of wind gushed past; to their right, John could hear the crunch of stones under Parviz's boots and then the driver said, "There is trouble?"

"You tell us." Davila hooked a thumb downslope. "What the hell is that?"

Brow furrowed, Parviz planted his hands on his knees, leaned forward, squinted then spat and turned with a shrug. Shrugging seemed to be the go-to in-country. "Is sign?"

"We see that," John said. "The thing is what the sign's about. Like, it's yellow, and yellow mean pretty much the same thing world-over."

"Be careful," Davila said.

Like...warning, Will Robinson. "And, in this case," John continued, "I think we're supposed to pay attention to those words done in big red letters."

"And the exclamation points," Davila put in.

"Two of them," John added. Although the words were in Cyrillic, he'd been able to dredge up a few characters from memory. Opas... something. Didn't matter. A person would have to be a little brain-dead not to get the message from the accompanying diagram.

"So, Parviz," Davila said, "help me understand this. You got this person here, this stick figure done in black, right? Getting knocked back from that black, exploding pyramid-shaped thing, which is exploding, right? Which is why you got all these jagged red lines?"

"Meaning ka-boom ?" John added.

"As in anti-personnel land mine kaboom?" Davila said.

"Oh, yes." Parviz grinned, his half-rotted pegs appearing in all their glory. "Say bombs in dirt. "

Yeah, like Davila said. "There are land mines buried on the hillsides?" John asked.

"Most no." Parviz made an equivocal gesture, tilting his flattened palm from side to side: maybe yes, maybe no. "From Russia. Big boom." The driver sketched a mushroom cloud in the air with his hands. "No go off path."

John and Davila tossed a look between them, and then Davila said to Parviz, "You do understand that throwing a very big rock onto a mine will make it explode, right?"

"No mines here." Parviz was shaking his head. "No worry."

"How do you know?"

"Because," Parviz said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world, "all boom done." He held up two fingers. "This many since last boom."

"Years?" Davila asked.

"No, month." Gesturing for them to follow, the driver turned away. "Come, we drive."

They stared after Parviz's retreating back for a few seconds before Davila said, "Did that make you feel better?"

"No." John studied the sign again. "Tell me what else bothers you about that thing."

"You see something?"

"I don't want to prejudice you. Just look. Tell me what you see. "

"Sign warning about Russian landmines," Davila recited. "Snow, rocks all around the sign...none that seem to have done anything. I mean, there's no crater." Davila shook his head. "What are you seeing that's got you worried?"

"Two things." He ticked off the first with a thumb. "How'd the sign get there to begin with?"

"As a warning. The Russian Army," Davila began then broke off when John shook his head. "What?"

"You're not getting it. I understand what the sign says. But how did it get onto the slope? Someone had to put it there, right? Bet if we searched along the road up there, we'll find the metal pole sawed in two."

"Okay, so someone tossed it there..." Davila winced as the van's engine coughed then gave what sounded like a very wet splutter before grumbling to life. "So, what? Maybe they decided there's nothing to worry about."

"Maybe not about mines, but..." Parviz gave a short blat of the van's horn, which John ignored. "Take another look. What's there that shouldn't be?"

He saw from the way Davila's face smoothed that he had finally seen what John had spotted.

"Okay," Davila said, "this could be a problem."

They walked in silence back to the waiting van. Even with the windows shut, John heard the thump of heavy bass. Parviz had exactly three tapes. Tajik rock band , the driver said. After two days of the same three cassettes over and over, though, John was surprised his eardrums hadn't started to bleed.

"He's not careful," Davila remarked, "he's going to start another slide with that stuff."

John let out a short bark of a laugh. "Dibs on the back this time."

"Be my guest," Davila said, one foot on the running board. "You know the music's only just a little bit softer back there, right?"

"I got AirPods," John said. As he trotted around to the driver's side, he flicked a look at the mountain slope. Something gnawed at the base of his skull, a sense that he was missing yet another thing that ought to make him worry. He wasn't sure what he was expecting to see. In retrospect, he understood that his subconscious had snagged on something well before his conscious mind caught up and just wouldn't quit nagging.

Whatever the case, though, he did look—and then thought, Hunh.

And realized they might have another problem.

"So, Parviz !" Davila had to practically shout to be heard over the music blaring from the driver's speakers. "Mind if I ask a question?" Leaning forward, he dialed the volume to something that didn't send vibrations shuddering throughout the vehicle. "Your English," he said, at normal volume. "It's pretty good. Where did you learn?"

"American television." Parviz beamed. "I do for tourists. Most English come other way, from Osh. Way far." He flapped a hand. "In Kyrgystan. I drive them from there."

"You get a lot of tourists?"

"Used to be many. Big tourists." Parviz threw his arms out wide. " Huge ."

Why was John suddenly thinking of Julia Roberts? "And now?"

"Not so big because of war." Parviz made a face. "Then not so big because scared Taliban and nobody go Wakhan. Now, never no getting big because bandits here."

About whom, John recalled, Ustinov had warned them. "They hang around in winter?"

"No, but—" Parviz both shrugged and blew a raspberry simultaneously. "Never too careful."

Which might also explain why Ustinov had given them those secured money pouches that could only be opened with the correct thumbprint. Of course, all a bandit had to do was cut off either his or Davila's right thumb. Or kill them first. Saved on the screaming, he guessed.

"What do they do when they're not robbing people?" Davila asked.

"Go Russia for work." Parviz nodded then patted his chest. "Me go, too, Russia. Good for talking, yes? Know Tajiki, Persian, Russian, Uzbek, English." Parviz counted off on his fingers. "Mandarin getting better."

"Chinese?" John was surprised. "Why?"

"Business," the driver said, as if that should be self-evident, then gestured at the mountains. "Come see rocks."

Come to see rocks? Then he remembered what Ustinov had said about the Wakhan. About tahktapat. Which made perfect sense. The Chinese would be very interested in any lithium deposits they could get their hands on. The U.S. must know about this, too, and be just as hungry for that mineral wealth. But we left, and now it's open season in Afghanistan.

He was about to ask Parviz how many Chinese he'd met recently when the driver said, "Speak pretty good Pashtun, too."

That snagged his attention more than the revelation about Chinese businessmen. "Really? You spend time in Afghanistan?"

Parviz opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it then offered a shrug. "Little bit. Back, forth during war."

Uh-huh. "So why aren't you in Russia if work is so scarce?"

"Hate Russians." Parviz spat. "Russians no like us. Give bad jobs. Build tunnels, roads. But no jobs in Russia, bad or good because wrong season. Too cold. So come back here."

"Have bandits stopped you?" John asked.

"Me, no." He said something in a language John didn't understand and then, in English, "Bicycle."

"Bicyclists?" Davila asked.

Parviz's head bobbed up and down. "Hit with car."

John blinked. "They run them down?"

"Yes, then…" Parviz raised his arm up and down in a motion that John thought would've looked at home during the shower scene in Psycho.

"They stab them," Davila said.

"Is that why you wanted a new gun?" John asked.

Parviz's head moved in a vigorous nod. "Maybe okay we wear new guns?"

"Why?" Davila said. "We haven't passed or seen anyone else, and the clouds are thick. No one's going to wait in this, hoping that someone will happen by."

Parviz opened his mouth, closed it then said, "Next slide, we need wear. "

"And I ask again, why?"

"If next slide close to Khorog, means we close to people."

"You mean, a setup," John said. "Block the road then rob us. But even if that's true, shouldn't the priority be clearing the rocks and getting out of Dodge? You really want to tie up a set of hands to stand guard?"

"Next slide, one guard," Parviz's tone was adamant. "Two work then switch. And use gun no rifle."

"Still leaves us with one weapon holstered, though," John said. "So, what's the point?"

"I'll have the AK," Davila said.

"Which you'll strap on half the time to clear rocks."

"But we will be nearer people, and if Parviz is right about bandits..." Davila punctuated with a shrug that put Ustinov to shame. "I think it's a good plan."

"Yes, good. Good plan." Parviz's head bobbed along with his music. "We use weapons next place."

"If we even have to," John said. "May not be another slide."

"Sure, sure," Parviz said and turned his music up high enough that John felt the bass shuddering into his butt. "If have to."

A half hour later.

Parviz's sudden desire for them all to suddenly carry felt…off.

Eyes closed, AirPods screwed in, John lay on his back and thought about that. Claiming fatigue, he'd moved to the back of the van, hoping for a nap. But his mind wouldn't stop.

Because why now? Why have us locked and loaded now as opposed to this morning or yesterday? He was certain Ustinov would've suggested they keep their weapons close. Yet he hadn't.

The image of that mountainside swam onto the black screen of his eyelids. A problem there...maybe. As he remembered, the jumble of rocks they'd just cleared had only a thin layer of snow. Which meant the slide had been recent except...was it his imagination or was there no place on the mountainside that had looked as if a section had sheared away, leaving behind an enormous gash similar to what he'd seen when he was twelve and on the Going to the Sun Road? He didn't think there had been.

You should check. If you're right...

Beyond the closed curtain, the music entered into a stretch that he knew was loud, raucous, and—most importantly—long. Rolling onto hands and knees, he eased over to the gun cases at the very back of the van.

The cases containing the Glocks were squared alongside their respective rifles: one next to Parviz's Kalashnikov and another alongside his Mk22.

Closing his eyes, he rewound the moments right before they left the airport in Dushanbe: how he had fiddled with a loose tongue of duct tape wrapped around his water bottle; how he'd field-stripped his Glock then replaced it and reached for the case that held Parviz's weapon, actually had it in his hand and was snapping the catch?—

And that's when Parviz came around and said we had to get going.

That was also the moment he'd put Parviz's Glock to the right of the Mk22 and settled the case with the Glock he'd field-stripped next to the driver's AK.

Opening his eyes, he turned over Parviz's gun case.

He stared a good five seconds, long enough for the music to shift to a drum riff which vibrated through the van and shivered into his thighs.

There was nothing on the case. Not even a speck of dust.

Maybe it fell off. Reaching for the case he'd laid next to his Mk22, he turned it over—and thought, Okaaay.

Because there was something on this case: a tiny bit of duct tape which he'd torn from his water bottle. He'd thumbed on the scrap so he would know which Glock he'd field-stripped and then replaced that case next to Parviz's rifle.

Because he had noticed something important. Something that might have been a mistake. But facts were facts.

Someone had switched the cases. The Glock he'd checked out was, once again, snugged next to his rifle case.

Who? Ustinov? Parviz? Might have been either: Ustinov when playing with the slider or Parviz while fussing with the items in the back of the van or even while he and Davila took potty-breaks.

And...why? Why switch the cases?

He thought he had a pretty good idea about that, actually. He didn't want to be right, but he thought he was—and that was bad.

Fishing out the Glock he'd not examined, the one Parviz was meant to have, he jacked out the magazine, quickly opened the slide to check for a round then slid the pencil Ustinov had given him into the barrel. Turning to his left, he squeezed the trigger.

The pencil jumped from the barrel.

So far, so good. Clicking the slide back into place, he reseated the magazine and nested the gun back into its carrying case. Then he turned to the case by his rifle, the one marked with duct tape. Taking out the weapon from its foam insert, he repeated the process: jacking out the loaded magazine, opening the slide, and slipping Ustinov's pencil into the barrel.

Then, finger on the trigger, he aimed for the side of the van and squeezed.

And, a half-second later, thought, Okaaay.