Inca Gold dp-12 Page 50

  Sarason recovered quickly at the sight of Giordino and jerked one foot free to maintain his balance. Because Giordino made no attempt to rise to his feet, Sarason immediately perceived that his enemy was somehow badly injured from the hips down. He viciously kicked Giordino, hitting one thigh. He was rewarded by a sharp groan as Giordino's body jumped in a tormented spasm and he released Sarason's other ankle.

  "From past experience," Sarason said, regaining his composure, "I should have known you'd be close by."

  He stared briefly at the derringer, knowing he had only one bullet left, but aware there were four or five automatic weapons lying nearby. Then he glanced at Pitt and Amaru who were locked in a death struggle. No need to waste the bullet on Pitt. The river had taken the deadly enemies in its grip and was relentlessly sweeping them downstream. If Pitt somehow survived and staggered from the water, Sarason had an arsenal to deal with him.

  Sarason made his choice. He stooped down and aimed the gun's twin barrels between Giordino's eyes.

  Loren threw herself at Sarason's back, flinging her arms around him, trying to stop him. Sarason broke her grip as if it were string and shoved her aside without so much as a glance.

  She fell heavily on one of the weapons that had been cast aside, lifted it and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She didn't know enough about guns to remove the safety. She gave a weak yelp as Sarason reached over and cracked her on the head with the butt of the derringer.

  Suddenly he spun around. Gunn, remarkably come to life, had tossed a river stone at Sarason that bounced off his hip with the feeble force of a weakly hit tennis ball.

  Sarason shook his head in wonder at the fortitude and courage of people who resisted with such fervor. He almost felt sorry they would all have to die. He turned back to Giordino.

  "It seems your reprieve was only temporary," he said with a sneer, as he held the gun at arm's length straight at Giordino's face.

  In spite of the agony of his broken legs and the specter of death staring him in the face, Giordino looked up at Sarason and grinned venomously. "Screw you."

  The shot came like a blast from a cannon inside the cavern, followed by the thump sound of lead bursting through living flesh. Giordino's expression went blank as Sarason's eyes gazed at him with a strange confused look. Then Sarason turned and mechanically took two steps onto shore, slowly pitched forward and struck the stone floor in a lifeless heap.

  Giordino couldn't believe he was still alive. He looked up and gaped at a little man, dressed like a ranch hand and casually holding a Winchester rifle, who walked into the circle of light.

  "Who are you?" asked Giordino.

  "Billy Yuma. I came to help my friend."

  Loren, a hand held against her bleeding head, stared at him. "Friend?"

  "The man called Pitt."

  At the mention of his name, Loren pushed herself to her feet and ran unsteadily to the river's edge. "I don't see him!" she cried fearfully.

  Giordino suddenly felt his heart squeeze. He shouted Pitt's name but his voice only echoed in the cavern. "Oh, God, no," he muttered fearfully. "He's gone."

  Gunn grimaced as he sat up and peered downriver into the ominous blackness. Like the others who had calmly faced death only minutes before, he was stricken to find that his old friend had been carried away to his death. "Maybe Dirk can swim back," he said hopefully.

  Giordino shook his head. "He can't return. The current is too strong."

  "Where does the river go?" demanded Loren with rising panic.

  Giordino pounded his fist in futility and despair against the solid rock. "The Gulf. Dirk has been swept toward the Sea of Cortez a hundred kilometers away."

  Loren sagged to the limestone floor of the cavern, her hands covering her face as she unashamedly wept. "He saved me only to die."

  Billy Yuma knelt beside Loren and gently patted her bare shoulder. "If no one else can, perhaps God will help."

  Giordino was heartsick. No longer feeling his own injuries, he stared into the darkness, his eyes unseeing. "A hundred kilometers," he repeated slowly. "Even God can't keep a man alive with a broken wrist, cracked ribs, and a bullet hole in the shoulder through a hundred kilometers of raging water in total darkness."

  After making everyone as comfortable as he could, Yuma hurried back up to the summit where he told his story. It shamed his relatives into entering the mountain. They fabricated stretchers out of material left by the army engineers and tenderly carried Gunn and Giordino from the river cavern up the passageway. An older man kindly offered a grateful Loren a blanket woven by his wife.

  On Giordino's instructions, Gunn and his stretcher were strapped down in the narrow cargo compartment of the stolen NUMA helicopter abandoned by the Zolars. Loren climbed into the copilot's seat as Giordino, his face contorted in torment, was lifted and maneuvered behind the pilot's controls.

  "We'll have to fly this eggbeater together," Giordino told Loren as the pain in his legs subsided from sheer agony to a throbbing ache. "You'll have to work the pedals that control the tail rotors."

  "I hope I can do it," Loren replied nervously.

  "Use a gentle touch with your bare feet and we'll be okay."

  Over the helicopter's radio, they alerted Sandecker, who was pacing Starger's office in the Customs Service headquarters, that they were on their way. Giordino and Loren expressed their gratitude to Billy Yuma, his family, and friends, and bid them a warm goodbye. Then Giordino started the turbine engine and let it warm for a minute while he scanned the instruments. With the cyclic stick in neutral, he eased the collective pitch stick to full down and curled the throttle as he gently pushed the stick forward. Then he turned to Loren.

  "As soon as we begin to rise in the air, the torque effect will cause our tail to swing left and our nose to the right. Lightly press the left foot pedal to compensate."

  Loren nodded gamely. "I'll do my best, but I wish I didn't have to do this."

  "We have no choice but to fly out. Rudi would be dead before he could be manhandled down the side of the mountain."

  The helicopter rose very slowly less than a meter off the ground. Giordino let it hang there while Loren learned the feel of the tail rotor control pedals. At first she had a tendency to over control, but she soon got the hang of it and nodded.

  "I think I'm ready."

  "Then we're off," acknowledged Giordino.

  Twenty minutes later, working in unison, they made a perfect landing beside the Customs headquarters building in Calexico where Admiral Sandecker was standing beside a waiting ambulance, anxiously puffing a cigar.

  In that first moment when Amaru forced him beneath the water and he could feel the jaws of the current surround his wrecked body, Pitt knew instantly that there was no returning to the treasure cavern. He was doubly trapped-- by a killer who hung on to him like a vise and a river determined to carry him to hell.

  Even if both men had been uninjured, it would have been no contest. Cutthroat killer that he was, Amaru was no match for Pitt's experience underwater. Pitt took a deep breath before the river closed over his head, wrapped his good right arm around his chest to protect his fractured ribs and relaxed amid the pain without wasting his strength in fighting off his attacker.

  Amazingly, he still kept his grip on the gun, although to fire it underwater would probably have shattered every bone in his hand. He felt Amaru's encircling hold slide from his waist to his hips. The murderer was strong as iron. He clawed at Pitt furiously, still trying for the gun as they spun around in the current like toy dolls caught in a whirlpool.

  Neither man could see the other as they swirled into utter darkness. Without the slightest suggestion of light, Pitt felt as though he was submerged in ink.

  Amaru's wrath was all that kept him alive in the next forty-five seconds. It did not sink into his crazed mind that he was drowning twice-- his bullet-punctured lung was filling with blood while at the same time he was sucking in water. The last of his strength was fading when his thrash
ing feet made contact with a shoal that was built up from sand accumulating on the outer curve of the river. He came up choking blood and water in a small open gallery and made a blind lunge for Pitt's neck.

  But Amaru had nothing left. All fight had ebbed away. Once out of the water he could feel the blood pumping from the wound in his chest.

  Pitt found he was able, by a slight effort, to shove Amaru back into the mainstream of the current. He could not see the Peruvian drift away in the pitch blackness, observe the face drained of color, the eyes glazed in hate and approaching death. But he heard the malevolent voice slowly moving into the distance away from him.

  "I said you would suffer," came the words slightly above a hoarse murmur. "Now you will languish and die in tormented black solitude."

  "Nothing like being swept up in an orgy of poetic grandeur," said Pitt icily. "Enjoy your trip to the Gulf."

  His reply was a cough and a gurgling sound and finally silence.

  The pain returned to Pitt with a vengeance. The fire spread from his broken wrist to the bullet wound in his shoulder to his cracked ribs. He was not sure he had the strength left to fight it. Exhaustion slightly softened the agony. He felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life. He crawled onto a dry area of the shoal and slowly crumpled face forward into the soft sand and fell unconscious.

  "I don't like leaving without Cyrus," said Oxley as he scanned the desert sky to the southwest.

  "Our brother has been in tougher scrapes before," said Zolar impassively. "A few Indians from a local village shouldn't present much of a threat to Amaru's hired killers."

  "I expected him long before now."

  "Not to worry. Cyrus will probably show up in Morocco with a girl on each arm."

  They stood on the end of a narrow asphalt airstrip that had been grooved between the countless dunes of the Altar Desert so Mexican Air Force pilots could hold training exercises under primitive conditions. Behind them, with its tail section jutting over the edge of the sand-swept strip, a Boeing 747-400 jetliner, painted in the colors of a large national air carrier, sat poised for takeoff.

  Zolar moved under the shade of the starboard wing and checked off the artifacts inventoried by Henry and Micki Moore as the Mexican army engineers loaded the final piece on board the aircraft. He nodded at the golden sculpture of a monkey that was being hoisted by a large forklift into the cargo hatch nearly 7 meters (23 feet) from the ground. "That's the last of it."

  Oxley stared at the barrenness surrounding the airstrip. "You couldn't have picked a more isolated spot to transship the treasure."

  "We can thank the late Colonel Campos for suggesting it."

  "Any problem with Campos's men since his untimely death?" Oxley asked with more cynicism than sense of loss.

  Zolar laughed. "Certainly not after I gave each of them a one-hundred-ounce bar of gold."

  "You were generous."

  "Hard not to be with so much wealth sitting around."

  "A pity Matos will miss spending his share," said Oxley.

  "Yes, I cried all the way from Cerro el Capirote."

  Zolar's pilot approached and gave an informal salute. "My crew and I are ready when you are, gentlemen. We would like to take off before it's dark."

  "Is the cargo fastened down securely?" asked Zolar.

  The pilot nodded. "Not the neatest job I've seen. But considering we're not using cargo containers, it should hold until we land at Nador in Morocco, providing we don't hit extreme turbulence."

  "Do you expect any?"

  "No, sir. The weather pattern indicates calm skies all the way."

  "Good. We can enjoy a smooth flight," said Zolar, pleased. "Remember, at no time are we to cross over the border into the United States."

  "I've laid a course that takes us safely south of Laredo and Brownsville into the Gulf of Mexico below Key West before heading out over the Atlantic."

  "How soon before we touch down in Morocco?" Oxley asked the pilot.

  "Our flight plan calls for ten hours and fifty-five minutes. Loaded to the maximum, and then some, with several hundred extra pounds of cargo and a full fuel load, plus the detour south of Texas and Florida, we've added slightly over an hour to our flight time, which I hope to pick up with a tail wind."

  Zolar looked at the last rays of the sun. "With time changes that should put us in Nador during early afternoon tomorrow."

  The pilot nodded. "As soon as you are seated aboard, we will get in the air." He returned to the aircraft and climbed a boarding ladder propped against the forward entry door.

  Zolar gestured toward the ladder. "Unless you've taken a fancy to this sand pit, I see no reason to stand around here any longer."

  Oxley bowed jovially. "After you." As they passed through the entry door, he paused and took one last look to the southwest. "I still don't feel right not waiting."

  "If our positions were reversed, Cyrus wouldn't hesitate to depart. Too much is at stake to delay any longer. Our brother is a survivor. Stop worrying."

  They gave a wave to the Mexican army engineers who stood back from the plane and cheered their benefactors. Then the flight engineer closed and secured the door.

  A few minutes later the turbines screamed and the big 747-400 rose above the rolling sand dunes, dipped its starboard wing and banked slightly south of east. Zolar and Oxley sat in a small passenger compartment on the upper deck just behind the cockpit.

  "I wonder what happened to the Moores," mused Oxley, peering through a window at the Sea of Cortez as it receded in the distance. "The last I saw of them was in the cavern as the last of the treasure was being loaded on a sled."

  "I'll wager Cyrus handled that little problem in concert with Congresswoman Smith and Rudi Gunn," said Zolar, relaxing for the first time in days. He looked up and smiled at his personal serving lady as she offered two glasses of wine on a tray.

  "I know it sounds strange, but I had an uneasy feeling they wouldn't be easy to get rid of."

  "I have to tell you. The same thing crossed Cyrus's mind too. In fact, he thought they were a pair of killers."

  Oxley turned to him. "The wife too? You're joking."

  "No, I do believe he was serious." Zolar took a sip of the wine and made an expression of approval and nodded. "Excellent. A California cabernet from Chateau Montelena. You must try it."

  Oxley took the glass and stared at it. "I won't feel like celebrating until the treasure is safely stored in Morocco and we learn that Cyrus has left Mexico."

  Shortly after the aircraft had reached what the brothers believed was cruising altitude, they released their seat belts and stepped into the cargo bay where they began closely examining the incredible golden collection of antiquities. Hardly an hour had passed when Zolar stiffened and looked at his brother queerly.

  "Does it feel to you like we're descending?"

  Oxley was admiring a golden butterfly that was attached to a golden flower. "I don't feel anything."

  Zolar was not satisfied. He leaned down and stared through a window at the ground less than 1000 meters (less than 3300 feet) below.

  "We're too low!" he said sharply. "Something is wrong."

  Oxley's eyes narrowed. He looked through an adjoining window. "You're right. The flaps are down. It looks like we're coming in for a landing. The pilot must have an emergency."

  "Why didn't he alert us?"

  At that moment they heard the landing gear drop. The ground was rising to meet them faster now. They flashed past houses and railroad tracks, and then the aircraft was over the end of the runway. The wheels thumped onto concrete and the engines howled in reverse thrust. The pilot stood on the brakes and soon eased off on the throttles as he turned the huge craft onto a taxiway.

  A sign on the terminal read Welcome to El Paso.

  Oxley stared speechless as Zolar blurted, "My God, we've come down in the United States!"

  He ran forward and began beating frantically on the cockpit door. There was no reply until the huge plane came to a
halt outside an Air National Guard hangar at the opposite end of the field. Only then did the cockpit door slowly crack open.

  "What in hell are you doing? I'm ordering you to get back in the air immediately--" Zolar's words froze in his throat as he found himself staring down the muzzle of a gun pointed between his eyes.

  The pilot was still seated in his seat, as were the copilot and flight engineer. Henry Moore stood in the doorway gripping a strange nine-millimeter automatic of his own design, while inside the cockpit Micki Moore was talking over the aircraft radio as she calmly aimed a Lilliputian .25-caliber automatic at the pilot's neck.

  "Forgive the unscheduled stop, my former friends," said Moore in a commanding voice neither Zolar nor Oxley had heard before, "but as you can see there's been a change of plan."

  Zolar squinted down the gun barrel, and his face twisted from shock to menacing anger. "You idiot, you blind idiot, do you have any idea what you've done?"

  "Why, yes," Moore answered matter-of-factly. "Micki and I have hijacked your aircraft and its cargo of golden artifacts. I believe you're aware of the old maxim: There is no honor among thieves."

  "If you don't get this plane in the air quickly," Oxley pleaded, "Customs agents will be swarming all over it."

  "Now that you mention it, Micki and I did entertain the idea of turning the artifacts over to the authorities."

  "You can't know what you're saying."

  "Oh, I most certainly do, Charley, old pal. As it turns out, federal agents are more interested in you and your brother than Huascar's treasure."

  "Where did you come from?" Zolar demanded.

  "We merely caught a ride in one of the helicopters transporting the gold. The army engineers were used to our presence and paid no attention as we climbed aboard the plane. We hid out in one of the restrooms until the pilot left to confer with you and Charles on the airstrip. Then we seized the cockpit."

  "Why would federal agents take your word for anything?" asked Oxley."

  "In a manner of speaking, Micki and I were once agents ourselves," Moore briefly explained. "After we took over the cockpit, Micki radioed some old friends in Washington who arranged your reception."