The chief barked some angry words at Ono and Cassidy, and they immediately lowered their little pistols.
“What’d he say?” Wizard whispered.
“He says that we cannot leave,” Cassidy said. “He says that I am his, that he owns me. When this is all over he says he will teach me a lesson in his bedroom, and that he will thrash Ono to within an inch of his worthless life.”
Cassidy glared at the chief.
“There will be no more lessons in your bedroom,” she said flatly, defiantly, just as she whipped up her pistol and fired it twice—expertly—into the foreheads of the two royal sons.
Both men dropped, the backs of their skulls bursting with blood, dead before they hit the ground.
Stunned, the chief whipped up his own shotgun, only to find himself already staring into the barrel of Diane Cassidy’s pistol.
“I’ve been waiting five years for this,” she said.
Blam!
The bullet went through the Neetha chief’s nose, breaking it on the way into his brain, causing a massive geyser of blood to splatter all over his face.
The fat ruler collapsed onto the steps of the temple-fortress, his body sliding down them, his cracked-open skull oozing brains.
The King of the Neetha was dead.
Diane Cassidy stared down at his body with a mix of disgust and bloody triumph.
Wizard scooped up the fallen chief’s shotgun and grabbed Cassidy’s hand. “Come on! Time to go.”
THE DRAWBRIDGES AND THE TOWER
WIZARD’S GROUP hurried through the temple-fortress of the Neetha priesthood.
It was like running through a Gothic freak show.
Bloody skeletons hung from torture devices, steaming pots of foul liquids simmered, ancient inscriptions lined the walls.
They hurried up some stairs and came to a long drawbridge that led to the central tower out on the lake. A second matching drawbridge stretched out from the tower itself, meeting with their lowered bridge in the middle.
“This way!” Ono said, rushing out onto their drawbridge.
The group raced across it.
But when they were halfway across, a call stopped Wizard dead in his stride.
“Epper! Professor Max Epper!”
Wizard turned…to see Wolf standing down near the Fighting Stone, looking directly over at him.
“We found you, Max! You knew we would! You can’t win this! My son couldn’t, so how can you?”
Wolf held up something for Wizard to see:
A battered and worn fireman’s helmet, bearing the badge: “FDNY Precinct 17.”
Jack’s helmet.
Beside him, Wizard heard Lily gasp as she saw it.
“I watched him die, Epper!” Wolf called. “My own son! You’re all out of heroes! Why keep running?”
Wizard instinctively clenched his teeth. “Not completely out,” he said softly, taking Lily by the hand and racing into the tower.
On their side of the lake, Zoe and Alby were also heading for the central tower inside the priests’ enclave.
They were rushing along a narrow lakeside path toward a small fort nestled up against the ravine wall when a new wave of Wolf’s men entered the ravine, this time from the north, from above the waterfall.
They came abseiling down the cliffs there on drop ropes, two dozen Congolese and American troops, covered by one of the Black Hawks.
Alby was gazing up at this new wave of attackers when suddenly a Neetha warrior-monk popped up into view on the roof of the little fort in front of him and fired—of all things—an Angolan RPG up at the Black Hawk!
The RPG hit its mark, and hovering above the lake, the Black Hawk exploded, blasting apart. Bleeding smoke, it nosedived into the water, landing with a massive splash not far from the tower.
“Jesus, I think these Neetha guys have kept every weapon they’ve ever found,” Zoe said.
As the Black Hawk crashed, the warrior-monk who’d fired the rocket ducked from sight, probably to reload.
His disappearance gave Zoe and Alby the opening they needed to race to the cliff-side fort, dash inside it, and climb its internal stone stairs.
One floor up, they came to a stone half-bridge stretching out from the fort toward the central tower. Mounted on several stone columns, this half-bridge was designed to meet the island tower’s eastern drawbridge when it was
