Raiders Of the Lost Ark

next to the Indians stood Barranca. Barranca, staring past Indy with a stupid, greedy smile on his face. A smile that turned slowly to a look of bewilderment and then, more rapidly, to a cold, vacant expression, which Indy recognized as signaling death.

The Indians on either side of the traitorous Peru­vian released his arms, and Barranca toppled forward. His back was riddled with darts.

'My dear Dr. Jones,' Belloq said. 'You have a knack of choosing quite the wrong friends.'

Indy said nothing. He watched Belloq reach down and pick the idol from his hand. Belloq savored the relic for a time, turning it this way and that, his expression one of deep appreciation.

Belloq nodded his head slightly, a curt gesture that suggested an incongruous politeness, a sense of civil­ ity.

'You may have thought I'd given up. But again we see there is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away.'

Indy looked in the direction of the warriors. 'And the Hovitos expect you to hand the idol over to them?'

'Quite,' Belloq said.

Indy laughed. 'Naive of them.'

'As you say,' Belloq remarked. 'If only you spoke their language, you could advise them otherwise, of course.'

'Of course,' Indy said.

He watched as Belloq turned toward the grouped warriors and lifted the idol in the air; and then, in a remarkable display of unified movement that might have been choreographed, rehearsed, the warriors laid themselves face down on the ground. A moment of sudden stillness, of primitive religious awe. In other circumstances, Indy thought, I might be impressed enough to hang around and watch.

In other circumstances, but not now.

He raised himself slowly to his knees, looked at the back of Belloq, glanced quickly once more at the prostrate warriors-and then he was off, moving fast, running toward the trees, waiting for that mo­ment when the Indians would raise themselves up and the air would be dense with darts from the blow­guns.

He plunged into the trees when he heard Belloq shout from behind, screaming in a language that was presumably that of the Hovitos, and then he was sprinting through the foliage, back to the river and the amphibian plane. Run. Run even when you don't have a goddamn scrap of energy left. Find something in reserve.

Just run.

And then he heard the darts.

He heard them shaft the air, whizzing, zinging, creating a melody of death. He ran in a zigzag, mov­ing in a serpentine fashion through the foliage. From behind he could hear the breaking of branches, the crushing of plants, as the Hovitos pursued him. He felt strangely detached all at once from his own body; he'd moved beyond a sense of his physical self, be­yond the absurd demands of muscle and sinew, pushing himself through the terrain in a way that was automatic, a matter of basic reflex. He heard the occasional dart strike bark, the scared flapping of jun­gle birds rising out of branches, the squeal of ani­mals that scampered from the path of the Hovitos. Run, he kept thinking. Run until you can't run anymore, then you run a little further. Don't think. Don't stop.

Belloq, he thought. My time will come.

If I get out of this one.

Running-he didn't know for how long. Day was beginning to fade.

He paused, looked upward at the thin light through the dense trees, then dashed in the direction of the river. What he wanted to hear more than any­thing now was the vital sound of rushing water, what he wanted to see was the waiting plane.

He twisted again and moved through a clearing, where he was suddenly exposed by the absence of trees. For a moment, the clearing was menacing, the sudden silence of dusk unsettling.

Then he heard the cries of the Hovitos, and the clearing seemed to him like the center of a bizarre target. He turned around, saw the movement of a couple of figures, felt the air rush as two spears spun past him-and after that he was running again, racing for the river. He thought as he ran, They don't teach you survival techniques in Archaeology 101, they don't supply survival manuals along with the methodology of excavation.

And they certainly don't warn you about the cunning of a Frenchman named Belloq.

He paused again and listened to the Indians behind him. Then there was another sound, one that de­lighted him, that exalted him: the motion of fast-flowing water, the swaying of rushes. The river! How far could it be now? He listened again to be certain and then moved in the direction of the sound, his en­ergies recharged, batteries revitalized. Quicker now, harder and faster. Crashing through the foliage that slashes against you, ignore the cuts and abrasions. Quicker and harder and faster. The sound was be­coming clearer. The water rushing.

He emerged from the trees.

There.

Down the slope, beyond the greenery, the hostile vegetation, the river.

The river and the amphibian plane floating up and down on the swell. He couldn't have imagined anything more welcoming. He moved along the slope and then realized there wasn't an easy way down through the foliage to the plane. There wasn't time to find one, either. You had to go up the slope to the point where, as it formed a cliff over the river, you would have to jump. Jump, he thought. What the hell. What's one more jump?

He climbed, conscious of the shape of a man who sat on one wing of the plane far below. Indy reached a point almost directly over the plane, stared down for a moment, and then he shut his eyes and stepped out over the edge of the cliff.

He hit the tepid water close to the wing of the plane, went under as the current pulled him away, surfaced blindly and struck out toward the craft. The man on the wing stood upright as Indy grabbed a strut and hauled himself out of the water.

'Get the thing going, Jock!' Indy shouted. 'Get it going!'

Jock rushed along the wing and clambered inside the cockpit as Indy scurried, breathless, into the passenger compartment and slumped across the seat. He closed his eyes and listened to the shudder of engines when the craft skimmed the surface of the water.

'I didn't expect you to drop in quite so suddenly,' Jock said.

'Spare me the puns, huh?'

'A spot of trouble, laddie?'

Indy wanted to laugh. 'Remind me to tell you some­time.' He lay back and closed his eyes, hoping sleep would come. But then he realized that the plane wasn't moving. He sat upright and leaned forward toward the pilot.

'Stalled,' Jock said.

'Stalled! Why?'

Jock grinned. 'I only fly the bloody thing. People have this funny impression that all Scotsmen are bloody mechanics, Indy.'

Through the window, Indy could see the Hovitos begin to wade into the shallows of the river. Thirty feet, twenty now. They were like grotesque ghosts of the riverbed risen to avenge some historic transgres­sion. They raised their arms; a storm of spears flew toward the fuselage of the plane.

'Jock...'

'I'm bloody well trying, Indy. I'm trying.'

Calmly, Indy said, 'I think you should try harder.'

The spears struck the plane, clattering against the wings, hitting the fuselage with the sound of enormous hailstones.

'I've got it,' Jock said.

The engines spluttered into laborious life just as two of the Hovitos had swum as far as the wing and were clambering up.

'It's moving,' Jock said. 'It's moving.'

The craft skimmed forward again and then began to rise, with a cumbersome quality, above the river. Indy watched the two warriors lose their balance and drop, like weird creatures of the jungle, into the water.