For a couple of decades around the turn of the century, the barracks had been little used. During that time the army had hired a local guy, a Tibetan, to go up there every so often and look after the place. Major Raju had found that guy, and that guy had supplied the information that there was a coal hole. Most people nowadays would identify it as a manhole and would guess that it led down to a sewer or electrical vault. This thing had been set into the pavement right next to an otherwise featureless stone wall on the down-valley side of the barracks so that coal could be dumped from a truck down a chute into a sub-cellar that contained the boiler. The last of the coal had been burned twenty years ago, and the boiler long since devolved into a pile of rust. If the Chinese volunteers had any sources of heat at all, it must be from propane they’d brought with them.