Catacombs (27 page)

Erika realized that he could only be another hallucination, this avenging angel; yet he seemed more real than the cutthroat now rompering her, laboring with a monotonous broadside of balls against her exposed nates to achieve his mean little spasm.

She watched in fascination as the angel seemed to fly, low to the ground, arriving in a frenzy at the shoulder of the startled Albert, who barely sounded his cry before he was whacked solidly across the chest by the sharp edge of the angel's wing. Erika gasped in admiration; there was no immediate evidence of injury but the black man's arms fell helplessly. The muscles which enabled him to raise his arms had been cut in two. The rifle dropped but before it touched the ground the angel was off again, heading her way in a series of powerful leaps and bounds, and she observed that he had no wings, only a
panga
with a blade some two feet in length.

In the background Albert was running in agonized circles, weeping, his useless hands flapping at his sides. And behind him, the wounded hornless rhino, survivor of enough gunshots to kill half a dozen men, burst into the clearing.

The angel, with a drawn-out cry of retribution, flew again, over Erika and the hunched back of Lex Pynchon. Timothy reeled away from a savage back-handed blow with the flat of the
panga
, and for two seconds, at most, all their business was in suspension.

Erika looked up at the bandaged but familiarly dusty face of Oliver. His good eye was distorted with rage and Erika quailed, certain that he was more angry with her than her attackers, that his next blow would be aimed at her throat.

Instead he glanced at the rhinoceros, which had come to a momentary halt while sniffing out its victims in the clearing. The rhino rounded on the unfortunate Albert, who had fallen and was awkwardly trying to get to his feet.

Oliver snatched Lex up by the back of his shirt. Lex dangled a few inches above the ground, his penis, like a plucked chicken's neck, at a twitching right angle to the rest of him.

Oliver pointed with his
panga
.

"Get up!" he shouted at Erika. "Run!"

Then he turned and sized up the squirming man he held. He brought the
panga
down in a smart chop, discarded Lex with a contemptuous heave and returned his attention to Timothy.

Erika rose shakily to her feet, hearing a ghastly trampled scream from Albert. She looked around as the beast trotted a few feet beyond its victim and stood snorting bloodily, trying to distinguish with its poor eyes the shapes milling near the fire.

Timothy had picked up a glowing brand with which to defend himself. Oliver, demonstrating the adroitness of a Russian dancer, sprang at him in a stylish crouch and circled, feinting, weaving, his
panga
swishing too fast for the eye to follow. The befuddled Timothy began falling to pieces like a badly made clay statue.

Lex was up and running, half cocked, toward the Land-Rover. Oliver leaped to intercept him, then heard the rhinoceros coming; he changed direction to snatch Erika out of the way. The rhino, for all its wounds, was almost as quick on its feet as the black man.

Oliver, shouting, tried to distract the animal, to draw its second charge away from Erika; but it was Erika, naked, her pale backside gleaming, who received all of the rhino's attention. She ran straight for the woods in a panic, not the best strategy for eluding a charging rhino.

If this one had been healthy and of sound wind, it would have overrun her. The best it could manage, as she plunged into barbed brush, was a blunt toss of its hornless head that caught her in the buttocks and hurled her against a tree.

Her arms absorbed most of the impact. Erika fell in a heap, the bones in her right wrist cracked, the breath knocked out of her, and -lay still.

When she disappeared from its path, the rhino promptly forgot about her, took a few drunken stagger steps to one side, then continued to bull its way between the trees, growling in rage, terrifying what was left of the resident night life, until it reached the plain again.

Dimly Erika heard the sound of the Land-Rover's engine at high speed. Moments later there were shots, but the Rover kept going.

"Erika!" Oliver called, a little after that.

She tried to rise. The pain in her back wouldn't permit it. Her back muscles wouldn't work at all. She nearly fainted and lay still once more, panting, bleeding, utterly helpless, as Oliver continued to call and beat the brush in his search for her.

WARSHIELD RANCH

Silverpeak, Colorado

May 13-14

R
aun Hardie had been moved from the hospital at Talon Mountain several days after her run-in with the fanatical Zola and her hopped-up confederate, and the next morning at five fifteen Jade was at the side of her bed in one of the guest rooms at the ranch, his blue eyes gleaming in the faint light of dawn; he was all business.

"Time to get started."

"Wha?"

"Dress warm. Sweater and jacket. I'll see you outside in five minutes. Don't disappoint me."

Raun pushed the hair out of her eyes and focused on him, but by that time he was on his way to the door. She looked at the windows, at a thick rime of frost on the glass, shuddered, and thought about ducking under the covers again. But then she remembered, with a twinge of exhilaration, that because of Matthew Jade she was alive and free. And, more than anything else, she wanted to remain free. So she thought she'd better humor him, go along with his plans. Something he'd said about getting into shape...

Just five minutes later she was on the long roofed front porch of the log ranch house, yawning hard enough to crack her jaws, struggling to run the zipper of her too-tight jeans all the way up. If the jeans had belonged to his wife then she'd been a petite woman, with the bones of a fledgling. The sun was just coming up, there were patches of snow everywhere, it couldn't have been more than thirty-five degrees out. She tried a smile (might as well be friends), and then, looking more closely at Jade, she saw that he was barefoot. It was her first intimation that he was more than just an eccentric, he was a little crazy.

"Where are we going?"

"Little hike. That way." He pointed toward the mountain peaks to the west, now tipped with morning gold.

"Oh. Well, couldn't we have some coffee first? I'm f-freezing."

"Later," Jade promised. He smiled slightly. "You'll warm up on the trail."

He started off at a pace that was just short of a jog, went about a hundred yards, then looked back at Raun as if he couldn't believe she wasn't keeping up with him. She was still standing on the porch but, determined to be a good sport, she hastened to join him.

"How much later?" she asked, already breathless.

Five miles later, almost all of it uphill. When they reached the high grove of aspen where Lem Meztizo was cooking breakfast over a fire, Raun was half frozen, nursing blisters and a black curse in her heart.

Jade
 
had walked her and Jade had run her, over short stretches, and he had waited patiently, without expression, his silver-gray bulldogger's Stetson tipped forward almost over his eyes, while she picked herself up several times after collapsing from exhaustion. His apparent indifference to her suffering was bad enough, but he came to seem inhuman: He had feet like horseshoes and the tireless lope of a wolf.

Often he would become bored with her slow progress and go off and leave her; at least she would lose sight of him through the sapling forests and, feeling discouraged and abandoned, limping, her lungs like a furnace, she would fall down, unable to move. But the power of his steady gaze always aroused her; she would look around until she located him, sometimes in a tree, sometimes mounted on a stack of leaning rocks like the prow of an old schooner, and with only a slight upward tilt of his chin he would have her, witlessly, on her feet and staggering forward.

Lem fetched a blanket for Raun; she wrapped herself tightly and huddled by the fire. The purity of the air she was breathing had given her a fierce headache. She was trembling so badly she couldn't hold the cup of coffee which Lem offered. He had to hold it for her while she sipped. He said nothing, but she felt his kindness and concern and was grateful.

Lem Meztizo the Third was a mixed breed of cowpuncher and, apparently, Matthew Jade's only confidant. In contrast to the other two hands who worked the Warshield's five thousand acres and were typical of their kind–the squint watery gaze, the scuffed-to the-bone look–Lem Meztizo had a certain brilliance, the style of an eccentric grandee. He was big enough to match the wild elegance of his Arabian gelding.

His teeth were lined with gold and he had long peroxided hair, gathered into a ponytail by a mummified tarantula partly entombed in precious stones. Though he carried a paunch he was not a soft-looking man, and he was as light on his feet as a roller-skating bear.

Raun drank more of the coffee and through her stuffed nose sorted out the odors of a range breakfast steaming over the fire: wheat cakes and eggs and sausage and spicy scrapple. She came slowly alive to the undeniable charm of a wilderness at seven thirty in the morning, sighed in appreciation when Lem placed a heaping plate in her lap.

She was astounded at her appetite; she couldn't pack the food in fast enough. But her feet were still sore and the curse remained, intensifying whenever she glanced at the oblivious Jade, who was attending to a bump he'd found on a fetlock of one of the cow ponies Lem had brought with him to the high country.

Raun knew, or thought she knew, what she was in for. She'd blackmailed Jade and of course he resented it, so out of simple malice he would try to break her, make her quit. She stared at the fire and thought that the Irishman who had said "Don't get mad; get even" was her kind of philosopher. She felt a weak stirring of the pride that had been all but forgotten during her months in prison.

No, she wouldn't quit. Her revenge would be all the richer for this unnecessary torture–and for those desperate years in hiding, the demeaning trial and sentence by the government of the United States. She could handle anything Matthew Jade decided to throw at her.

"Y
ou want me to do what?"

Raun looked up in shock from the second breakfast she'd been enjoying; across the fire Jade was hunkered down intent on his own meal, eyes on his plate. He didn't look at her.

"I said we need to work on your legs, build them up. From the photos I've seen we'll be parachuting onto rocky ground."

"From a plane? Are you crazy? I don't even like to fly!"

Jade cleaned his metal plate with half a biscuit, popped it into his cheek, and shrugged.

"It's the only way. But if you have some training, the odds are more in your favor. We'll try to get in half a dozen practice jumps before we leave here."

Raun put her plate aside and got slowly to her feet. Her knees wanted to buckle. Her lips were white. She looked at Lem, who was frowning, obviously sympathetic to her plight. It was also obvious he was not in a mood to contradict his friend Jade.

"My father and I didn't get there by parachute. Now look. You'll just have to be reasonable. I'm game for almost anything, but jumping out of airplanes? There has to be another way!"

There wasn't.

A
t five o'clock that evening, the end of a day which to Raun already seemed two weeks long, she and Lem Meztizo met with Jade in his pine-paneled study.

Raun collapsed into a chair covered with sheepskin while Lem pulled the drapes and Jade put a cassette into the Betamax. On the screen, Landsat images from the EROS Data Center of the U.S. Geological Survey appeared. They formed a mosaic of that part of Tanzania called the Makari Peninsula, a mountainous area jutting into Lake Tanganyika.

The western slopes were heavily forested, teeming with animal life, but the summits of the mountains were barren. Along the landward approaches to the peninsula there was almost nothing: no roads, no trees, no signs of human habitation except for a small military post that must have been there for punishment duty. With regard for the difference in temperature, the Makari was Tanzania's Siberia.

"The easy approach is from Kalemie, in Zaire," Jade explained. "That's just across the lake, by helicopter or boat. But we can't use Zaire as a staging area because of the current regime."

"A Land-Rover can make it easily," Raun pointed out. She was too tired to sulk.

"Even if the three of us could pass ourselves off as tourists in Tanzania–which we can't; the borders are closed–we'd never be able to justify our presence in a restricted area. As it is we'll have to dodge patrols most of the day. The Tanzanian Air Force has helicopters and light planes overflying the peninsula."

"Why? What's so important about the Catacombs? And what's the hurry getting there?"

"The rates go up after the rainy season," Jade said. Raun lapsed into an unfriendly silence, but her mind was busy.

She didn't like Jade but she knew the man was no fool; and the U.S. government would not have acted so quickly to have her released if they were not vitally interested in something that was to be found in or near the Catacombs. Urgent plans had been formulated based on meager and ( apparently she was the only one who knew this) false information. It was a farce, a comedy of errors–but parachuting onto African hardpan, risking a broken leg or worse, would be no joke.