over by the blow from the shield, was still awkwardly lifting the pistolized shotgun with his left hand when Pitt fired.
Pitt tightened his grip for the next recoil. The Arab stumbled backward against the chamber wall, and then his body fell forward onto the floor and his head struck with a repugnantthud.
Pitt stood panting through clenched teeth. Only then did he hear a familiar voice shout through the speaker.
'Get out of there!' Hollis was yelling. 'for Jesus' sake, run for it!'
Pitt was temporarily disoriented. He was so busy fighting Ibn he forgot which passage led to the easier tunnel and which to the more difficult crater exit. He took a last fleeting glimpse of Robert Capesterre.
The face was ashen from the loss of blood but not, Pitt saw, with fear.
Hate filled the eyes of Topiltzin.
'Enjoy your trip to hell,' Pitt said.
Capesterre's reply was the smoke bomb. He had somehow pulled the primer pin. Smoke instantly burst and fined the interior of the chamber with a densely packed orange cloud.
'What happened?' the President asked, staring at the strange orange mist that blocked out the camera view of the chamber.
'Capesteffe must have been carrying some kind of a smoke-screening device,' Chandler answered.
'Why haven't the explosives gone off?'
'One moment, Mr. President.' Chandler looked off-camera and conversed angrily with an aide. Then he turned back. 'Colonel Hollis of the Special Operations Forces insists on a direct order from you, sir.'
'Is he in charge of the detonation?' demanded Metcalf.
'Yes, General.'
'Can you patch him into our communications network?'
'One moment.'
Four seconds was all it took before Hollis's face was peering from one of the monitors in the Situation Room.
'I-you can't see me, Colonel,' said the President.
'But you'recognize my voice.'
'I do, sir,' Hollis answered through tight lips.
'As your Commander-in-Chief, I'm ordering you to blow that hill, and blow it now.'
'The mob is swarming up the hill,' Nichols said in near panic.
They all tensed and swung their eyes to the monitor sweeping the hill.
The huge throng was slowly moving up the slope toward the summit, chanting Topiltzin's name.
'If you wait any longer you'll kill a lot of people,' said Metcalf urgently. 'for pity's sake, man, detonate.' Hollis's thumb was poised above the switch. He spoke into his transmitter. 'Detonation!'
But he didn't press the switch. He used the enlisted man's gambit: Never refuse an order and be tried for insubordination, but answer to the affirmative and never carry it out. Inefficiency was one of the most difficult of charges to prove at a court-martial.
He was determined to squeeze every second he could for Pitt.
Holding his breath as though he were diving under water, eyes tightly closed against the stinging smoke, Pitt willed his legs to move, to run, to crawl, to do anything which would rush him clear of that horror chamber. He made it into a passage, not knowing if it led to the tunnel shaft or the crater. He kept his eyes shut, feeling his way along the wall, half-hopping, half-hobbling on his bad leg.
He felt a burning rage to live. He simply couldn't believe he'd die now, not after having survived the last few minutes. Finally he opened his eyes. They burned as if stung by bees, but he could see. He had passed the worst of the smoke. It was only an orange vapor now.
The shaft through the limestone began to rise. He felt a slight increase in temperature and a light breeze. Then he stumbled outside into the night. The stars were there, almost blotted out by the bright lights shining up the hill.
But Pitt was not clear. There was a snag. He had the unsettling realization that he had exited through the crater tunnel. The slanting sides rose up another five meters. So close, yet so tormentingly far.
He began clawing his way up the incline, his wounded leg, totally useless now, dragging along behind. He could only dig in and push with one foot.
Hollis had gone silent. The Colonel had no words left to say. Pitt knew the explosion he'd so carefully planned was going to take him with it. Fatigue swept over him in great floating waves, yet he stubbornly crawled upward.
Then a dark form appeared over the rim of the crater and a massive hand reached down, grabbed the shoulder of Pitts sweater and heaved him onto level ground.
With seemingly incredible ease Giordino flung Pitt into the open tailgate of the Jeep, leaped into the driver's seat and jammed the accelerator pedal flat onto the floorboard.
They had barely covered fifty meters when Hollis pressed the demolition switch. The signal set off the two hundred kilo of C-6 nitroglycerin gel deep inside the hill with a monstrous roar.
for one brief moment it was as if a volcanic eruption was about to hurtle from the bowels of the earth. The hill shook with a rumble.
The great mass of Topiltzin followers were thrown to the ground, their mouths agape in horror, the concussion sucking the air from their lungs into a vacuum.
