AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Amaru tried to rise up on an elbow and say something, but Pitt was gone.
He rushed to the rear opening again. A mattress and pair of knives he had scrounged from living quarters inside the cliff tomb discovered by Giordino and Shannon sat beside the window. He laid the mattress over the lower sill, then lifted his legs outside and sat on it. He cast aside the rifle, gripped the knives in outstretched hands, and glanced apprehensively at the ground 20 meters (65 feet) below. He recalled an occasion when he bungee-jumped into a canyon on Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Leaping into space, he mused, went against all human nature. Any hesitation or second thoughts abruptly ended when a fourth rocket smashed into the temple. He dug the heels of his sneakers into the steep slope and jammed the knife blades into the stone blocks for brakes. Without a backward glance, he launched himself over the side, and slid down the wall, using the mattress as a toboggan/sled.
Giordino, with Shannon and the students trailing behind him and Rodgers bringing up the rear, cautiously climbed a stairway from an underground tomb where they had been hiding when the helicopters landed. Giordino paused, raised his head slightly over a fallen stone wall, and scanned the landscape. The helicopters were sitting only 50 meters (164 feet) away, engines idling, the two-man flight crews calmly sitting in their cockpits watching the assault on the temple.
Shannon moved beside Giordino and looked over the wall just in time to see a rocket bring down the arched entrance of the upper palace. "They'll destroy the artifacts," she said in grief.
"No concern over Dirk?" Giordino spared her a brief glance. "He's only risking his life for us, fighting off an army of mercenaries so we can steal a helicopter."
She sighed. "It pains any archaeologist to see precious antiquities lost forever."
"Better yesterday's junk than us."
"I'm sorry, I want him to escape as much as you. But it all seems so impossible."
"I've known the guy since we were kids." Giordino smiled. "Believe me, he never passed up an opportunity to play Horatius at the bridge." He studied the two helicopters that sat in the clearing in a slightly staggered formation.
He selected the one in the rear as a prime candidate for escape. It was only a few meters from a narrow ravine they could move in without being seen, and more important, it was out of easy view of the crew seated in the forward craft. "Pass the word," he ordered over the sounds of battle, "we're going to hijack the second chopper in line."
Pitt shot uncontrollably down the side of the temple, like a plummeting boulder on a path that took him between the stone animal heads protruding from the convex sloping walls with only centimeters to spare.
His hands gripped the knife handles like vises, and he pushed with all the strength in his sinewy arms as the braking blades began to throw out sparks of protest from the friction of steel against hard stone. The rear edges of the rubber heels on his sneakers were being ground smooth by the rough surface of the wall. And yet he accelerated with dismaying speed. His two greatest fears were falling forward and tumbling head-first like a cannon ball into the ground or striking with such force that he broke a leg. Either calamity and he was finished, dead meat for the Peruvians who wouldn't treat him kindly for killing their officers.
Still fighting grimly but hopelessly to arrest his velocity, Pitt flexed his legs a split second before he struck the ground with appalling force. He let loose of the knives on impact as his feet drove into the ooze of rain-soaked soil. Using his momentum, he rolled over on one shoulder and tumbled twice as required in a hard parachute landing. He lay in the mud for a few moments, thankful he hadn't landed on a rock, before rising experimentally to his feet and checking for damage.
One ankle slightly sprained, but still in working condition, a few abrasions on his hands, and an aching shoulder appeared to be the only damage. The damp earth had saved him from serious injury. The faithful mattress was in shreds. He took a deep breath, happy at still being intact. Having no time to waste, Pitt broke into a run, keeping as much of the ruins as possible between him and the troops massing for an assault up the temple stairs.
Giordino could only hope that Pitt had survived the rockets and somehow made it safely down the wall of the temple without being spotted and shot. It seemed an impossible act, Giordino thought. Pitt was seemingly indestructible, but the old faceless man with the scythe catches up to us all. That he might catch up with Pitt was a prospect Giordino could not accept. It was inconceivable to him that Pitt could die anywhere but in bed with a beautiful woman or in a nursing home for aged divers.
Giordino crouched and ran into a blind position behind the trailing helicopter as a squad of troops began charging up the precipitous temple steps. The reserve squad remained below while pouring a covering storm of rifle fire at the now shattered palace of the dead.
Every one of the Peruvians had his attention focu
sed on the attack. No one saw Giordino, clutching an automatic rifle, steal around the tail boom of the helicopter and enter through the rear clamshell doors. He hurried inside and dropped flat, his eyes taking in the empty troop carrier and cargo compartment and the two pilots in the cockpit with their backs turned to him, intently watching the one-sided battle.
With practiced stealth Giordino moved with incredible quickness for a man built like a compact bulldozer. The pilots did not hear him or feel his presence as he came up behind their seats. Giordino reversed the rifle and clubbed the copilot on the back of the neck. The pilot heard the thud and twisted around in his seat, staring briefly at Giordino more from curiosity than dread. Before he could blink an eye, Giordino rammed the butt of the steel folding rifle stock against the pilot's forehead.
Quickly he dragged the unconscious pilots to the doorway and dumped them on the ground. He frantically waved to Shannon, Rodgers, and the students, who were hiding in the ravine. "Hurry!" he shouted, "for God's sake hurry!"
His words carried clearly above the sounds of the fighting. The archaeologists needed no further urging. They broke from cover and dashed through the open door into the helicopter in seconds.
Giordino had already returned to the cockpit and was hurriedly scanning the instruments and the console between the pilots' seats to familiarize himself with the controls.
"Are we all here?" he asked Shannon as she slipped into the copilot's seat beside him.
"All but Pitt."
He did not reply, but glanced out the window. The troops on the stairway, becoming more courageous at encountering no defensive fire, surged onto the landing and inside the fallen palace of the dead. Only seconds were left before the attackers realized they'd been had.
Giordino turned his attention back to the controls. The helicopter was an old Russian-built Mi-8
assault transport, designated a Hip-C by NATO during the Cold War years. A rather ancient, ugly craft, thought Giordino, with twin 1500-horsepower engines that could carry four crew and thirty passengers.
Since the engines were already turning, Giordino placed his right hand on the throttles.
"You heard me?" said Shannon nervously. "Your friend isn't with us."
