Ranjit wheeled the Jeep around, making a U-turn as he cut off three cars coming in the other direction. The canvas flap on Birgit’s side blew open, and I was treated to a sheet of rain in the face.

We picked up speed, now coursing west. But before we could reach Bombay and the coastal plain, we’d have to descend the ghats in a Jeep with a torn roof, bald tires, no seat belts, and no doors.

“Of course they might have had an appointment in Poona,” I said so softly I was the only one who heard.

Ranjit and Birgit’s attention was fixed on the road before them, on the cars and trucks they wanted to overtake before we reached the ghats and the real danger began. I tried to remember some of the prayers from my youth. But I’d been a rotten student at shul, at least until my atheist parents decided they didn’t want to get up early on a Saturday to take me to temple for something they didn’t believe in.

As with everything else, Ranjit was an excellent driver. He must have been well trained in high-speed pursuit as he passed at least a dozen vehicles in the next ten minutes. And it couldn’t have been easy, not in that sluggish Jeep.

I thought of Bikas. I’d only seen him behind the wheel once, and the only tricky driving he’d done that night was avoiding a herd of buffalo. Still, I couldn’t imagine he was a better driver than Ranjit. If Willy and company were heading for Bombay, we were surely gaining on them.

We began the descent. If I’d been terrified scaling the ghats with Sushmita, and then descending them with Shankar at the wheel, I was about to lose my mind sitting in the back of an Indian police Jeep, with no visibility, no heat, and little hope of survival. Ranjit leaned us into the curves, which grew steeper and sharper as the minutes passed. Blasting the horn liberally—Horn OK please, as the trucks all had painted on their bumpers—he tailgated the cars and trucks and buses in front of us, then slipped around them, barely missing oncoming traffic. The rain pounded on the canvas roof of the Jeep and, from where I was sitting, obscured any visibility through the windshield. The wipers simply couldn’t keep up.

Birgit faced forward and said nothing. She seemed more accustomed to such situations than I was. She was a pro. Ranjit steered and braked, accelerated and swerved. I closed my eyes and—hypocrite that I was—prayed.