embankment she almost pitched over but instead slid on her butt, hitting the road shoulder in a shower of dirt and gravel. Her bare legs were a mottle of scratches and dirt. Jake was already crouched, peering up and down the lane.
“There.” He pointed.
It was a dusty black SUV, windows tinted, pulled off on the shoulder. Jake’s truck was out of sight, in the small trailhead parking lot.
“You think that’s their car?”
“I saw it before at Safeway.” He started toward the Explorer.
“What if somebody’s in it?”
“If they were, they’d already be out the door and in our face by now.”
He trotted up, chest heaving, and peered through the windows. Then he jiggled the handle. “Locked.”
“What are you doing? Let’s get out of here!”
“That is what I’m doing.” He began feeling the driver’s-side wheel well, and beneath the door. “Bingo.” He pulled out a magnetic case. “Hikers don’t like carrying keys.”
“You’re going to steal the Nazi’s car?”
“ We’re going to steal it, because I’ve got the key for my own truck and I don’t want Mr. Bow Hunter following us any longer. This ends, now. He can walk out to Marblemount. If Delphina Clarkson hasn’t finished him.”
“We go to the police?”
He unlocked the doors, jerked open the door, and climbed in, waiting for her to join him on the passenger seat. The rig still smelled new and had every bell-and-whistle accessory that Detroit could invent. Apparently, skinhead Nazis had money. Or they’d stolen the car themselves. The engine started with a roar.
“No way.” He shook his head. “We go to Tibet.”
34
Shambhala, Tibet
October 3, 1938
B eth Calloway had shot the German while hanging upside down from an airshaft that rose from the ceiling of the tunnel. A stone door had slid aside to reveal the chimney. Now she turned, tucked her smoking pistol into her belt, and dropped lightly down onto the big pipe running to infinity. She glanced in both directions.
“Any more of them?”
“Not yet,” Hood said.
“What’s down here, anyway?”
“Deviltry.” He held up the amber staff with his mutilated hand. Blood dripped from the bandage.
“No good on your lonesome, are you? What happened?”
“We were fighting over some kind of goddamn magic wand. SS cutlery is pretty sharp. Actually, Keyuri here finished the amputation.”
“She chopped off your finger?”
“With a kiss.” He grimaced.
“No wonder you’re smitten. She’s not dead, is she?”
“Not yet. Wounded, though.”
“You’re going to have to boost her up. There’re more nuns above.”
“Nuns?”
“There’s a nunnery outside the valley with tunnels into this anthill. The abbess gave me blood to unlock the booby hatch I just dropped from. She said they use blood like a key. Can you believe that?”
“Unfortunately, yes. My surgeon has already saved my finger for that quaint custom.” He bent under the pipe. “Keyuri, help has come. We’re going to patch you up, all right?”
The young woman groaned.
Beth stooped to examine her. “Wow, that’s bad. Okay, I’m going to use my flying scarf to bandage her up. Then we’re going to boost her on top of the pipe, I’ll get in the shaft that goes upstairs, and you lift her to me.”
“You’re saving her life, Beth. You probably saved mine.”
“Damn right, Professor. So let’s move, or do you want to spoil my track record?”
He looked up the hole she’d dropped from. There were torches flickering far above, and a halo of shaven figures peering down a well at him, clad in scarlet. The women’s eyes were wide and fearful.
As gently as they could, they lifted Keyuri atop the pipe and climbed up themselves. Then Beth leaped for a handhold in the shaft, hauled herself up, swung her head and arms upside down again, and braced to lift the nun. Hood felt awkward having the two women together. He’d made love to both of them. Keyuri, however, was going into shock, and Beth seemed intent simply on escaping.
Then the earth quivered slightly.
There was a clunk, a whine, and a pale illumination came on in the tunnel below. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the rocks and the air and the motes of dust, spangling the corridor.
Raeder was starting the machine again.
Hood called up to Calloway. “How did you find us?”
“After I put the biplane down I hiked up to that smoke we saw. Turned out to be this crazy nunnery. These nuns stand watch until the time is right, the abbess said. They were buzzing like a disturbed hive because no one had approached for centuries, and then those Nazis climbed in like human flies. When I told them you’d parachuted in, it was like announcing Herbert Hoover had snuck back into the White House. They went nuts. Then we heard this gawd-awful noise. What the hell do these Germans have? A Big Bertha cannon?”
“It’s a stick that shoots fire.”
“A fire stick? We’re Indians now?”
“In our technological understanding. There’s stuff down here that looks like it’s out of Buck Rogers, Beth. Heaps of bones, too. Something went terribly wrong.”
“I’ll say. Is your pal Raeder still down there?”
“Yes, I think he just started the big machine again. I think it reloads a fire stick. A magic staff like this one.” He held it up. “I don’t think we should let a man like Kurt Raeder have it.”
“I’ll say. Well, let’s start with Keyuri. I’ll drag her up to the nuns.”
Hood lifted the groaning, half-conscious Tibetan, watching her small, dangling feet disappear up the chimney. In the dimness, it was as if she were floating skyward. Then Beth dropped back down to the hole in the roof of Hood’s tunnel, holding out an arm. “You next.”
He shook his head.
“Thanks for coming back for me, but I was sent here to put a stop to this. I think Raeder’s going to try to take another one of those thunderbolt staffs back to Adolf Hitler. I don’t think I can let him do that.”
“How you going to stop him?”
“Just two krauts left, I think.”
“Then I’m coming with you, Ben. Even odds.”
“No. This isn’t your fight.”
“The hell it isn’t! That bastard dragged my biplane to the middle of nowhere.” She looked at him expectantly. Keyuri was shot, Hood desperate. This was a way to cement their partnership.
“No.” He shook his head decisively. “I might not make it. I want you to take this staff of mine to the surface. It’s too low on juice to fight with, but I think we need to show it to the American government. War’s coming.”
“We can leave it with the nuns for a minute. We get Raeder, and then we worry about the shaft.”
“No, Beth. I want you to fly it, and Keyuri, back to Lhasa.”
“I’m flying you to Lhasa!”
“Listen. There’s only room in the biplane for two. If I don’t survive, none of this matters if we can’t report what happened. Somebody has to get out alive. Somebody has to warn the Tibetans, so they can arrest Raeder if
