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him.
    Shin nodded in smiling approval and suddenly pointed at the two men heading the line. “You. Face each other. Hold hands.”
    The two did as ordered and Mao approached them, inclined his head and turned his back to them.
    “You carry Mr. Mao across water,” Shin ordered and the two mea crouched. Mao sat upon their clasped hands and was lifted clear of the ground. The smooth-faced gang leader rattled out a rapid stream of Chinese and Shin pumped his head in acknowledgment. “We go now. Mr. Mao say, you drop him you regret day mothers tell fathers okay. Okay?”
    The two men nodded emphatically and as Shin smiled in approval, they moved forward, splashing ankle deep into the icy coldness of the rushing stream. Flanked by the guards, the line of hostages followed. The passengers left on the train stared from the windows with wide-eyed concern as the prisoners and their captives waded through the sparkling water, the men at the front being forced to raise their burden higher and higher as the level of the water rose almost to waist level at the mid-way point.
    The quaking fear of most of the hostages was supplemented by shivering cold as they climbed up on to the opposite bank.
    Mao rattled out a further order and Shin smiled at the two men heading the line. “Mr. Mao thanks you.”
    They lowered their burden with sighs of relief, flexing their aching muscles. Mao whispered to Shin, who looked along the line, nodded, then strode towards the end. He halted beside Alvin and Beth. His smiling eyes lingered on the woman’s cleavage.
    “Mr. Mao asks that the lady walk beside him.”
    Beth’s sensuous features showed nothing of what she thought about the request. But anger broke through Alvin’s fear and his complexion darkened to a purple hue. He tightened his grip on the woman’s hand.
    “No!” he rasped, and his eyes pleaded with her. “Beth?”
    She managed to force a smile for him. “If it’ll keep us alive, dear,’ she said softly.
    Alvin hesitated, fear fighting fury behind his young face. Suddenly every shotgun was pointed at him.
    “Mr. Mao no like to be kept waiting,” Shin urged.
    Tension stretched like an invisible band around the group, threatening to snap with an explosion of sudden death. Edge’s words were like an escape valve.
    “She figures she can handle him.”
    Alvin read the implication behind the remark and spun around, seeking to vent his frustration on a man apparently as helpless as himself. But as his blazing eyes became locked on Edge’s ice cold stare he saw an enormous latent power and became hypnotized into immobility. Beth jerked free of his grip and stepped out of the line.
    “I’ll keep the guy company,” she said to Shin, the tone and her expression revealing the well-learned lessons of her former profession.
    “That good,” Shin replied, motioning with his empty shotgun.
    Her deportment was also a carefully calculated ploy and despite the danger of their situation, few of the male hostages could quell a stab of desire as they watched the woman’s swaying hips and thrusting breasts. When she halted alongside Mao, she smiled beguilingly at him and he bowed slightly from the waist.
    The line moved forward again, angling away from the stream and the railroad, towards a cleft in the side of the ravine. And they had not gone many yards before Mao unfolded his arms and laid a proprietary hand on Beth’s vibrant rump, the yellow fingers splaying before forming into a lustful claw.
    Alvin snarled, his head bobbing to and fro as he peered ahead along the line of marching prisoners.
    “You just got to admit it, Alvin,” Edge muttered to the boy. “Mao can’t lose any way it falls. He won it with the head. Now he’s got the tail.”

Chapter Five
    T HE troopers used only two of the houses offered them, and neither of these for sleeping. Rhett, Bell and Douglas joined Hedges; and Seward and Scott followed Forrest into the house next door. They were little more than cabins,