Polar Shift (30 page)

Schroeder's deep laughter echoed off the walls of rubble that now arose high on both sides. Karla joined in despite her weariness and fears, but they picked up the pace more in eagerness to find a way out than concern at losing the herd.

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.

A
USTIN 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.
“People!”

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.

G
RISHA'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.

Z
AVALA 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 Clan-ton boys.”

“As I recall, he did pretty well without it.”

Zavala slipped his Heckler & 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.

G
RISHA HAD
one arm around Karla's neck, his fingers en-twined 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.

W
HEN 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?”

“Yes, I'm fine,” she said. “My uncle needs help.”

Austin dug a first-aid kit out of his pack. The man was still conscious. He lay on his back with his eyes open. He could have been anywhere from sixty-five to seventy-five years old, but it was hard to tell because his long-jawed face was covered with blood that flowed from lacerations on the cheek and brow.

Austin knelt by his side, cleaned the wound and applied antiseptic on the raw flesh. His ministrations must have been painful, but the man didn't flinch. His arctic blue eyes watched every move Austin made.

Austin had barely started his first aid when the man said, “That's enough. Help me up.” With Austin's aid, Schroeder struggled to stand. He was a tall man, several inches over Austin's six foot one.

Karla put her arm around her uncle's waist. “Are you all right?”

“I'm a tough old lizard,” he said. “It's you I'm worried about.”

“I'm okay, thanks to these two men.”

Austin noticed the evident bond between the older man and the young woman. He introduced himself and Zavala.

“My name is Schroeder,” the man said. “Thank you for your help. How did you find us?”

“We talked to a woman named Maria Arbatov.”

“
Maria.
How is she?” Karla said.

“She's going to be fine, but her husband and two other men were murdered. I assume they were your fellow scientists. There was another man we couldn't identify.”

Karla glanced at Schroeder, who said, “He attacked Karla. I had to stop him.” He squinted toward the boulder field. “This is a dangerous place. They'll be back. They have automatic weapons, and we're totally exposed out here.”

“This is your neighborhood,” Austin said. “Where can we find cover?”

Schroeder pointed to the base of the slope that came down from the rim of the caldera.

“Down there in the city.”

Austin wondered if the man was delirious from his injuries.

“Did you say ‘city'?” He saw only the low bluffs at the base of the slope.

“That's right,” Karla said. “Oh no, the dwarves are gone. The gunfire must have scared them.”

It was Zavala's turn to wonder if he was hearing things. “Dwarves?”

“Yes,” Karla said. “Dwarf woolly mammoths.”

Austin and Zavala exchanged glances.

“Enough talk. We've got to get moving,” Schroeder said.

Clutching Karla by the arm, he limped toward the edge of the bowl. Austin and Zavala took up the rear. Schroeder's insistence that they start moving proved to be sound advice. The group had almost reached the edge of the green area when Grisha and his men suddenly broke from their rocky cover and began firing their guns.

Fountains of dirt erupted in the grass about a dozen feet behind the fleeing group.

It would take only a second for Grisha and his men to get the range. Austin yelled at the others to keep going. He turned and threw himself belly-down on the ground and took careful aim with his Bowen at the nearest Russian.

He cracked off a couple of shots that fell short. Grisha and his men were taking no chances. When Austin fired, they stopped shooting and went belly-down as well.

Austin turned and saw that the others were nearly at the face of the bluff. He scrambled to his feet and sprinted after them. Grisha's men started shooting again. The bullets were practically hitting the ground at his heels as he ducked the others into an opening in the face of the cliff.

Karla shook her flashlight, and the batteries apparently still had a little juice left in them because the bulb glowed dimly. They picked their way through the winding path. When the flashlight finally sputtered and died, they had entered the area where some buildings still stood among the rubble and were beginning to see the glow from the underground city. They followed the beckoning light like moths toward a flame and soon came upon the subterranean metropolis.

Austin gazed at the shimmering streets and buildings.

“What
is
this place, the land of Oz?” he said.

Karla laughed. “It's an underground city built of some sort of light-producing mineral,” Karla said. “We don't know who built it, but these are only the suburbs. It's quite extensive.”

Schroeder hushed Karla and said they could talk about it later, and then he led the way through the maze of streets until they were back at the plaza where they had first come upon the mammoths.

The dwarf mammoths had returned to the plaza and were huddled around the pyramid. They seemed restive, snorting frequently as they milled around the square.

Karla saw Austin reach for his gun. She put her hand on his arm. “It's all right. They won't hurt you. They must have been spooked by the noise.”

Austin had seen many strange sights on missions that took him to remote places around the world and under the oceans. But nothing like the creatures moving around the plaza. He was looking at smaller versions, from the tips of their tails to their curved tusks, of the ancient behemoths he had seen pictured in textbooks.

Zavala was equally dumbfounded. “I thought these things were extinct.”

“They
are
extinct,” Karla said. “Rather, they
were.
These animals are the descendants of full-size mammoths that once lived on the island.”

“Karla,” Schroeder said. “We should be talking about how to get away from those murderers.”

“He's right,” Austin said. “Is there another way out of here?”

“Yes, but it's long and treacherous,” Karla said.

“I can't make it, but that's no reason for you not to try,” Schroeder said. “If I can borrow a gun, I'll pin them down here while you and our new friends escape through the cave.”

Austin grinned. “Nice try, Uncle Karl. Martyrdom went out of style in the Middle Ages. We're sticking together.”

“I'm just starting to like this place,” Joe said. “Warm. Romantic lighting. A unique, uh, fragrance in the air.”

Schroeder smiled. He didn't know who these men were, but he was glad for Karla's sake that he had them by his side. “If you are going to be foolish, we'd better get ready.”

At Austin's suggestion, Zavala went to stand watch where the street entered the plaza.

Austin turned to Schroeder. “Any suggestions?”

“It's useless to run. We can take positions in the square and try to get them in a cross fire.”

Austin was glad Schroeder wanted to go on the offensive. The city provided a protective maze that offered dozens of places to hide, but, like Schroeder, he knew that the constant movement would eventually take its toll.

“I don't know how much firing I'll be doing,” Austin said. “We brought extra ammunition, but we didn't expect the Little Bighorn.”

“They only have to wait until we run out of ammunition and they can pick us off one by one. Too bad I used my hand grenade.”

Austin gave Schroeder an odd look. The old man didn't look like the type who walked around with a grenade in his pocket. Austin was reminded that looks were deceiving. Schroeder was old enough for Medicare, but he talked as if he were part of a SWAT team.

Zavala trotted over from his lookout post. “Showtime. Our pals are coming down the street.”

Austin took a quick look around the plaza. “I've got a crazy idea,” he said. He quickly outlined his scheme.