The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (43 page)

He turned to help Willie, who’d just slammed another thug down with the gun butt. Before he took a step, the guard he’d just dispatched climbed over the back of the truck again, though; he bashed Indy on the head with a rock. Indy went down.

Willie stepped up instantly. She took aim, gave the man a good right hook to the face, and sent him sailing down onto the tracks for the count. She hadn’t spent time in Shanghai without learning
something.

Indy stood up wobbily. “My mistake.” He smiled.

She handed him his hat.

In the car alongside, the guards were picking up their guns. They’d dropped behind about five yards during the last interchange.

“Get down!” shouted Indy. He saw something useful.

He grabbed the shovel, swung it hard at an overhead dumper release; then hit the deck.

A barrage of rocks, dirt, and gravel pelted both cars from the dumper. The following car took it full bore: one guard was crushed outright, then the whole trolley was derailed by debris on the tracks. They went over in a cloud of rock dust as Indy’s group, bruised and dirty, roared on.

Roared on into a tunnel studded with stalactites. Indy stuck his head up, but scarcely had time to say “Duck!” The car crashed through the rocky projections, breaking off tips that hung too low from the ceiling, then careening out again with only a minimal loss of speed.

Willie looked up this time. There was once again nothing to do but close her eyes: twenty feet ahead was a break in the track.

They hit the break at sixty. The
good
news was there was a five-foot drop-off beyond it. The car went sailing over the edge, dropped the distance, landed with a CRUNCH on the lower section of track . . . and kept going.

Willie giggled lightly. Anything goes.

The sledgehammers kept beating. Two more rock supports gave way; then a third. Almost in slow motion, the enormous pot began to tip.

There were shouts as the guards ran for cover.

Mola Ram stood, removed, on a platform overlooking the event. The noise alone was incredible—the sound of the earth’s own engines—as the huge vessel rolled, keeled over, crashed to its side.

With a deafening roar, a million gallons of water burst across the cavern in a surging tidal wave.

Into the tunnels.

This new length of track was straight; the tunnel, high.

Indy smiled with that air of nonchalance Willie both loved and hated. “Brake, Shorty, brake,” he said.

Short Round was a little sorry the ride was over already, but figured there’d be other rides. He pulled casually on the brake lever.

It didn’t work.

He pulled harder.

It came off in his hands.

“Oh, oh. Big mistake,” he said, wide-eyed.

Willie only nodded. “Figures.”

It also figured that they were just heading into a long, gentle slope that didn’t seem to go anywhere but down.

They, of course, began moving faster still.

Indy bent over the front of the car to look underneath. The entire braking apparatus was hanging loose from the pad. Indiana pulled himself back in.

The three of them looked at each other with complete understanding of what had to be done. They’d been through a lot together. Here was half a moment to remember it.

Willie thought:
You’re a good man, Indiana Jones. Wish I’d known you somewhere else.

Indy thought:
Hope you two guys stick together, ’cause I sure haven’t been much help to either one of you.

Shorty thought:
If this lady is the last treasure Chao-pao discovered before he leaves me in this life, she must be pretty big fine treasure. Better I keep her.

Willie and Shorty each squeezed one of Indy’s hands. Then Indy climbed out over the front of the racing car.

Facing backwards, he lowered himself down. Willie and Short Round held on to his arms and jacket, to give him extra bracing. When his bottom was inches from the rails, he swung a leg underneath the car, trying to kick at the brake pad. The ground was a blur beneath him. His feet fell momentarily—he bumped along, in danger of being dragged under the iron wheels—but he regained his grip.

With one leg he managed to find a foothold on the undercarriage of the car; with his other, he located the brake pad. Slowly, firmly, he applied pressure with his foot; the pad closed against the spinning disk.

“We’re going too fast,” noted Willie with a feverish grin. She was sweating; her hands were cramping, holding on to Indy for all of their dear lives.

Then she looked up, for one last laugh: the tunnel was ending; the tracks stopped dead at a not too distant stone wall.

Shorty saw it too. “We’re gonna crash!” he shouted. The ride was not supposed to end this way at all.

Indiana looked around behind him. No doubt about it: they were flying at top speed into a wall the size of a mountain, and the first thing to hit was going to be Indiana Jones.

He slammed his foot into the brake pad with every ounce of strength he could muster. The pad screamed against the angry iron. Sparks shot out in skyrockets. Indiana’s sole was getting hotter, but he closed his mind to the pain, concentrated only on the force his leg could exert, didn’t waste energy thinking about the wall.

The wall drew nearer.

But not quite as quickly. Indy groaned with pushing; the brake pad began to smoke. The car slowed even further. The wall approached. Indy jammed down with his whole body. The car slowed more. Indy pressed.

It slowed until it ran down the last few yards to the dead end; rolled gently to a stop, and just nudged Indy’s back against the wall.

He stood, limped a few steps away, his boot smoking. “Water,” he rasped.

The others got out of the cab, stood there shakily, smiling tentatively.

They could see that the tunnel continued on, somewhat to the left, without any more tracks. So they started to walk.

No one spoke. They were all too full of what had just happened.

Soon, a wind rose quickly to a stiff blow. Then a strange rumbling sound echoed down the tunnel from behind. The walls seemed to be reverberating.

It felt . . . worrisome.

They exchanged uncertain looks, shrugged, walked a little faster. The wind, in particular, disturbed Indy. There shouldn’t be so high a wind so low in the earth.

The noise grew louder. They glanced over their shoulders. Nothing. “Indy?” said Willie.

He wasn’t sure, but he grasped Willie by the hand; all three of them started jogging.

The rumbling increased. Small debris began to fall from the ceiling; the ground was almost quaking. It made Short Round remember a volcano movie he didn’t want to remember just now. He wondered if The Lord of Thunder was angry about something.

They ran. Ran fast, though they didn’t know why. Yet.

The noise was stunning now. Willie looked around again. Suddenly she slowed; stopped. Stopped dead in mid-stride, paralyzed with disbelief, awe. Doom.

It was a monster wall of water, crashing spectacularly into the opposite embankment of a cross tunnel far behind them.

But not far enough.

Willie whispered. “Oh, shit.”

Short Round and Indiana stopped to see what was keeping Willie. What they saw was a watery cataclysm spewing forward, soon to overtake them. For a long moment, they just stared.

Then Indy grabbed Willie, and they all ran like hell.

The tidal wave smashed furiously down, booming closer every second. At its foaming muzzle it carried the debris of a hundred cluttered tunnels: boulders, branches, animals.

They weren’t going to make it.

Except just maybe, at that small side tunnel in the bend ahead . . .

“There!” Indy screamed above the roar. “Dive!”

They sprang toward the hole. Short Round dove through first, just like stealing home. Indy shoved Willie in, then followed himself—just as the tsunami exploded past in the main shaft.

This narrow tunnel dropped precipitously. They slid at a tumble, showered by the small side current of water diverted from the central stream.

They rolled down the chute to a larger tunnel. Shorty looked particularly lighthearted. “That was fun. Wait a minute, I do it again.”

Indy collared him before he could take a step, however, pointing him in a more proper direction. Where did these kids learn this stuff? he wondered.

The growl of the tidal wave receded as they caught their breath.

Up ahead, Willie dared to believe she could actually see light, yes, at the end of the tunnel. She was about to mention it when a new explosion boomed behind them. They turned to see another arm of the same wave cascading down now this tunnel, with an alarming force.

They all hollered in unison, started running full tilt toward the daylight. The towering wall of water surged mirthlessly after them.

They raced to the mouth of the tunnel; the first tongues of water were on their backs. Out into sunshine, they emerged . . .

And teetered on the brink. The tunnel exited midway up a cliff: they were looking at a three-hundred-foot sheer drop straight down to a rocky gorge.

Arms flailing to keep their balance, they hovered there a lifetime. Then Indy swung Willie to a narrow ledge on one side of the tunnel-mouth cliff-face, pushing Short Round after her; he jumped to the other side—just as the tidal wave crashed between them, out this gutterspout in the rock. At the forefront was the wreckage: rail ties shot out, and barrels, and all manner of detritus; even a mine car rocketed past. All surging in the water.

It was a massive gusher, spurting out of this and multiple other tunnels all around them in the cliffside. Short Round and Willie stayed balanced on their little ledge; Indy remained perched on his, on the opposite side of the erupting geyser.

Willie looked down for a second, but vertigo nearly overcame her. Water thundered into the gorge below; crocodiles slithered angrily in the shallow streambed there, disturbed out of their afternoon slumber.

Indy looked around. The gorge was maybe a hundred yards across; craggy bluffs rose on the other side to an expanse of flat plain that resembled the way home, as far as Indy could tell from this distance. Then he saw the bridge.

It was a thin rope bridge, swinging between the two plateaus. On this side it emerged about twenty feet above and another twenty beyond where Willie and Shorty were clutching the rocks. Indiana shouted to them across the blasting waterspout.

“Wllie, head for the bridge!” He pointed up.

She looked. She looked away. Would this never end?

“Nothing to it,” Short Round encouraged. “Follow me.”

He edged along the narrow precipice on which they were balanced, toward the outcropping that lay directly beneath the bridge. Reluctantly, Willie followed. Once under the bridge, they began climbing up the rocks.

Rockclimbing is an activity at which twelve-year-olds are known to excel; this instance was exemplary of that fact. Short Round scrabbled like a mountain goat, finding nooks and handholds that seemed to have been awaiting his arrival all these centuries. Willie was somewhat less agile in this endeavor. Still, she was a dancer; moreover, she was running for her life—and she hadn’t gotten as far as she
had
gotten without being light on her feet. So she wasn’t all that far behind Shorty.

Indiana was having a bit more difficulty. For one thing, his foot was still painfully numb from braking the runaway mine car. For another, he had to scale the cliff up, over, and around the several geysers between him and the bridge. The rockface here was wet, slippery, perilous.

He grabbed at the sparse scrubbrush for support; he inched along, crab-wise, slowly. With one unfeeling foot, his size was a distinct disadvantage.

Willie and Short Round pulled themselves up at the end of the bridge. Behind them in the cliff, a dark tunnel ran back into the mines. In front of them, the rope bridge looked more like taunt than hope.

It spanned the gorge like the last strands of a spiderweb at the end of the summer. It was at least a century old. It had not been built by the army corps of engineers.

It consisted of two thick lines at its base, connected by hundreds of worm-eaten, moldy wooden slats—and hundreds of empty spaces where slats used to be. Along the length of this catwalk, vertical side ropes linked the foot-span to two thin upper ropes that crossed the gorge, constituting flimsy hand railings.

Willie balked.

Short Round, though, it should be remembered, had bad lots of experience running hell-bent along Shanghai rooftops, not to mention scatting across the clotheslines that connected tenement windows, to elude pursuit. So he was less deterred by the sight that confronted them now.

Tentatively, he stepped out onto the bridge. It held. He turned, smiling to Willie. “Easy like pie! Kid’s stuff!”

Suddenly the board under him broke. Disintegrated, actually. Had Willie not been expecting such an eventuality, the boy would have tumbled into the abyss. But she grabbed him by the scruff, yanked him back to safety.

He looked a little pale, less cocky now. Yet there was nowhere to go but onward. Once more, he stepped onto the risky footing, concentrating very hard on being much more yin than yang. This time, it held. After weighing the alternatives, Willie followed. She tried to imagine this was a solo performance for a big producer: there could be no wrong moves; there was no starting over.

Cautiously, step by step, they made their way along the span, walking gingerly over the missing or obviously rotten slats. They had to cling to the rope hand rails, too, for the bridge swayed constantly in the wind, as well as bouncing up and down in synchronized resonance to their footfalls. Short Round begged Madame Wind, Feng-p’o, to go play somewhere else.

It was the longest, slowest promenade Willie had ever taken.

Behind them, Indy finally pulled himself up from under the bridge. Almost free. He paused for a moment, catching his breath. Willie and Short Round, he could see, were halfway across, wavering every step. Maybe he ought to wait until they were over so his additional weight didn’t rock the crossing too much.

Behind him, there were footsteps. He ducked to the side of the tunnel mouth, disengaging his whip from his belt as he did so. All at once, two Thuggee guards rushed out.