More of the rock they were seeing was composed of nonglowing material. Then all trace of the luminescent rock disappeared and the path in front of them darkened. Karla turned the flashlight on, and its dim beam caught the tails of the mammoths. The creatures had no trouble navigating the darkness. Karla guessed that their eyes must have adjusted to the lack of light in the same way their bodies had shrunk to accommodate a diminishing supply of food.
Then the flashlight went dead. They followed the herd by listening to the scuffle of the many feet, and the chorus of grunts and snorts. The complete blackness assumed a bluer cast that slowly changed to dark gray. They could see the furry rumps about fifty feet ahead. The animals seemed to have picked up their pace. The grayness turned to white. The path made a right, then a left-hand turn, and they were out in the open, blinking their eyes against the sunlight.
The mammoths rambled ahead, but the two humans stopped and shielded their eyes with their hands. As their vision acclimated to the change in light, they looked at their surroundings through narrowed eyes. They had emerged from a gap in a low bluff and were at the edge of a natural bowl several hundred yards across. The mammoths hungrily grazed the short grassy vegetation that covered the bowl's floor.
'This is quite amazing,' Karla said. 'These creatures have adjusted to two worlds: one of darkness, the other of light. They are miracles of adaptation as well as anachronisms.'
'Yes, very interesting,' Schroeder said in a disinterested voice.
He wasn't being rude, only practical. He realized that they were far from safe. Their pursuers could be on their heels. He scanned the wall of massive, blackened boulders surrounding the natural basin and suggested that they make their way to the perimeter to look for a way out.
Karla was reluctant to leave the herd of mammoths, but she climbed with Schroeder up a gradually ascending hill to the edge of the boulder field. The rocks ranged in size from some as big as cars to others nearly as big as a house. They were tumbled in heaps more than a hundred feet high, in some cases. Some of the massive rocks were piled so tightly together that it would have been impossible to slip a knife blade between them.
There were openings in the rocky ramparts, but the breaks only went in a few feet or yards. As they made their way along the impenetrable wall, Karla became discouraged. They had escaped the fire only to wind up in a very large frying pan. Schroeder, on the other hand, seemed to have been revived by the fresh air. He ignored the pain his ankle, his eyes darting along the face of the wall. He disappeared into a gap, and after a few minutes let out a yell of triumph.
Schroeder emerged from the opening and announced that he had found a way through the barrier. He grabbed Karla's hand as if he were leading a child, and they plunged into the mass of monoliths. They had only gone along the path a few steps when a man stepped out from behind a boulder. It was Grisha, the leader of the murderous ivory hunters.
31
Austin looked down into the yawning caldera as the paraglider soared like a condor through the notch in the rim. The road they had been following up the side of the volcano went through the low spot and descended a gradual slope to the midpoint of the caldera, where it ended in a low bluff. On the opposite side of the crater, the rim dropped almost vertically to a boulder field at the bottom. A patch of green roughly shaped in a circle was sandwiched between the bottom of the slope and the field of black boulders.
Austin put the glider into a lazy spiral into the crater and looked for a good landing site.
'What's that down there?' Zavala pointed to the base of the slope where the road ended. 'Looks like a herd of cows.'
Austin squinted through the lens of his goggles. 'Too furry to be cows. Maybe they're yaks.'
'I could use a few yaks after all we've been through.'
Austin cringed at the pun, but his mental pain was short-lived. Zavala called his attention to another section of the green area.
'I'll be damned,' Austin said.
The group stood near the edge of the boulder field. As the paraglider drifted lower, Austin saw someone club another person to the ground. A third figure rushed to the aid of the fallen figure but was jerked away. The paraglider was low enough for Austin to see a flash of blond hair.
'I think we just found Karla Janos,' Austin said.
Grisha's thin lips were peeled back in a grin that revealed his bad teeth. He spoke in Russian, and his murderous cohorts appeared from behind the rocks where they had been hiding.
Schroeder quickly sized up the situation. While he and Karla pursued a zigzag path through the city, Grisha and his men could have come straight through the central boulevard and stumbled on the way out.
Grisha motioned for his prisoners to go back the way they had come. As the Russians and their captives broke out of the rocks into the open, Grisha saw the woolly mammoths.
'What are those?' he said. 'Sheep?'
'No,' Schroeder said. 'They're butterflies.'
He was unprepared for the fury of Grisha's response. The Russian didn't like being humiliated in front of his men. He let out a feral snarl, raised his gun like a club and slashed Schroeder across the face with the barrel. As Schroeder crumpled to the ground, the last thing he heard was Karla's scream.
Zavala had been watching the drama unfold below. 'Looks like she's in bad company. How do you want to handle this? Hawk on a mouse or OK Corral?'
Zavala was asking Austin whether they should make a stealth approach or go in with guns blazing.
'How about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?'
'That's a new one, but anything works for me.'
'Hand me your gun and take over the controls. We'll come in from behind. The sun will be in their eyes.'
'Wyatt Earp could have used one of these rigs against the Clanton boys.'
'As I recall, he did pretty well without it.'
Zavala slipped his Heckler amp; Koch from its holster. Handling the weapon with great care, he passed it to Austin, and placed his hands on the controls. They were descending rapidly. Austin positioned himself like a gunfighter, with a weapon in each hand.
Grisha had one arm around Karla's neck, his fingers entwined in her hair. The palm of his other hand was pressed against her face so that she could hardly breathe. With a simple twist, he could have broken her neck. He was angry enough to kill her, but his greed was stronger than his more violent tendencies. She was worth more alive than dead.
But that didn't mean he and his men couldn't have some fun with the beautiful young woman. He removed his hand from her face and pulled down the zipper of her jacket. Frustrated by the layers of warm-weather clothing underneath, he cursed and knocked her to the ground. One of his men shouted.
Grisha glimpsed a shadow moving on the ground and he looked up.
His mouth dropped in amazement.
A two-headed man was swooping down on him from out of the sky.
When the distance narrowed to a couple of hundred feet, Austin started blazing away with both handguns. He aimed off to the side to avoid hitting Karla. Her captors ran for their lives.
With Karla out of the way, Austin was free to aim at his fleeing targets, but it was difficult to get a clear shot while he was moving. Zavala yelled at Austin to get ready to land. He tucked one gun into its holster, the other in his belt.
They attempted to land on their feet, but they had come in too fast. They hit the ground and lurched forward onto their hands and knees. Luckily, the vegetation cushioned the impact. They quickly unstrapped the power unit. While Zavala rolled up the lines to the sail, Austin went over to the blond woman who was kneeling beside an older man.
'Miss Janos?' Austin said.
She glanced up at Austin with her striking gray eyes. 'Who are you?'
'Kurt Austin. My friend Joe and I have been looking for you. Are you all right?'
