Trailing behind, Pitt could not see their faces in the dim and cavorting shadows, but he knew that each one of them possessed a stubbornness that would keep them going until they dropped, too proud to be the first to suggest a rest break. He noted that their breathing had become more labored. Though he still felt fresh, he began panting loudly so the others could hear his seemingly desperate plea.
"I'm done in. How about stopping to rest a minute?"
"Sounds good to me," said Marquez, relieved that someone else had suggested it.
Ambrose leaned against one wall. "I say we keep going until we get out of here."
"You won't get my vote," said Pat. "My legs are screaming with agony. We must have stepped over a thousand railroad ties."
It was only after they all sagged to the floor of the tunnel, while Pitt casually remained standing, that they knew they had been tricked. None of them complained, everyone happy to relax and massage sore ankles and knees.
"Any idea how much farther?" asked Pat.
Pitt consulted his computer for the hundredth time. "I can't be absolutely positive, but if we can climb two more levels and are not blocked by another cave-in, we should be out of here in another hour."
"Where do you reckon we'll come out?" asked Marquez.
"My guess is somewhere right under the main town of Telluride."
"That would be the old O'Reilly Claim. It was a shaft sunk not far from where the gondola runs up the mountain to the ski slopes at Mountain Village. You do have a problem, though."
"Another one?"
"The New Sheridan Hotel and its restaurant now sit directly on top of the old mine entrance."
Pitt grinned. "If you're right, dinner is on me."
They went silent for the next two minutes, lost in their thoughts. The only sounds came from their breathing and the steady drip of moisture from the roof of the tunnel. Despondency gave way to hope.
Knowing the end was perhaps in sight, they felt symptoms of fatigue begin to wash away.
Pitt had always suspected that women had more acute hearing than men, from the times his various lady friends had visited his apartment and complained that the volume on his TV was too loud. His suspicions were confirmed when Pat said, "I think I hear a motorcycle."
"A Harley-Davidson or a Honda?" asked Marquez, laughing for the first time since leaving his house.
"No, I'm serious," Pat said firmly. "I swear it sounds like a motorcycle."
Then Pitt heard something, too. He turned and faced the tunnel from the direction they had come and cupped his hands to his ears. He made out the undeniable sound of exhaust from a high-performance off-road motorcycle. He stared soberly at Marquez. "Do the locals ride around old mine tunnels on motocross dirt bikes for a thrill?"
Marquez shook his head. "Never. They'd become lost in a maze of tunnels, if they didn't plunge down a thousand-foot shaft first. Then there's the danger of their exhaust noise causing rotted beams to collapse and a cave-in to crush them. No, sir, nobody I know is fool enough to joyride underground."
"Where did they come from?" Pat asked no one in particular.
"From another mine that's still accessible. Lord only knows how they happened to be in the same tunnel as we are."
"A peculiar coincidence," Pitt said, staring up the tunnel. He felt a sense of uneasiness. Why? He couldn't be sure. He stood without moving a muscle, listening to the rattling sound of the exhaust as it grew louder. It was a foreign sound in the old mine labyrinth. It did not belong. He stood still as the first flash of light showed far down the tunnel.
Pitt couldn't tell yet if it was one or more motorcycles coming through the tunnel. It seemed a reasonable assumption that he should treat the biker or bikers as a threat. Better safe than sorry. As ancient and hackneyed as the words sounded, they still had meaning, and his cautious nature had saved him on more than one occasion.
He turned and slowly walked past Ambrose and Marquez. Absorbed in the approach of the sound and lights, they took no notice as he slipped along one wall of the tunnel in the direction of the approaching bikers. Only Pat focused on Pitt as he unobtrusively stole into the darkness of a portal leading into a narrow bore between the timbers. One moment he was there, the next he had vanished like a wraith.
There were three bikers. The front of their machines were packed with an array of halogen lights that blinded the exhausted survivors, who shielded their eyes with their hands and turned away as the engines slowed and idled in neutral. Two of the intruders dismounted their bikes and walked closer, their bodies silhouetted by the bright lights behind them. They looked like space aliens in their black, sleek helmets and two-piece jerseys worn under chest protectors. Their boots came halfway to their knees and their hands were encased in black, ribbed gloves. The third biker remained on his machine as the other two approached and raised the shields on their helmets.
"You don't know how happy we are to see you," said Pat excitedly.
"We sure could have used your help earlier," said Ambrose wearily.
"My compliments on making it this far," said the figure on the right, in a voice deep and sinister. "We thought sure you'd drowned in the Amenes chamber."
"Amenes?" Pat repeated, puzzled.
"Where did you guys come from?" demanded Marquez.
"It doesn't matter," said the biker, as if he were brushing off a classroom student's irrational question.
"You knew we were trapped in the chamber by a rockfall and rising water?"
"Yes," the biker said coldly.
"And you did nothing?" Marquez said incredulously. "You didn't try to rescue us or go for help?"
"No."
A stimulating conversationalist, this guy, thought Pitt. If he'd been a tiny bit suspicious earlier, he was downright convinced now that these men were not local daredevils on a weekend adventure. These men were killers, and heavily armed. He didn't know why, but he knew they were not going to allow them to escape the mines alive. It was time to act, and surprise was his only advantage. He slipped his dive knife from its sheath and gripped the hilt. It was the only weapon he had, and it would have to do. He took several slow deep breaths and gave a final flex to his fingers. It was now or never.
"We came within minutes of drowning in the chamber," said Pat, wondering what Pitt was planning, if anything. She began to wonder if he was a coward and simply hiding from danger.
"We know. That was the plan."
"Plan? What plan?"
"You all were supposed to die," the biker said conversationally.
The words were greeted with a stunned, uncomprehending silence. "Unfortunately, your will to survive overcame the cave-in and the flooding," the biker continued. "We did not foresee your perseverance. But it is of no matter. You merely prolonged the inevitable."
"The dynamite blast," muttered Marquez in shock. "That was you?"
The answer was candid. "Yes, we set the charge."
Pat began to look like a deer staring into the headlights of an approaching truck. She knew that the bikers were not aware of Pitt's presence, so she acted as if he didn't exist. Marquez and Ambrose assumed he was simply standing behind them quietly, as stunned with shock as they were.
"Why would you want to kill us?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Why would total strangers want to murder us?"
"You saw the skull and you saw the inscriptions."
Marquez looked like a man torn between fear and anger. "So what?" he growled.
"Your discovery cannot be allowed to become known outside these mines."
"We've done nothing wrong," Ambrose said, strangely calm. "We're scientists studying historic phenomena. We're not talking treasure but ancient artifacts. It's insane to be killed because of it."
The biker shrugged. "It's unfortunate, but you became involved with matters far beyond your comprehension."
"How could you possibly know about our entry into the chamber?" asked Marquez.
"We were informed. That's all you need to know."
"By who? Not more than five people knew we were there."
"We're wasting time," grunted the second biker. "Let's finish our business and throw them down the nearest shaft."
"This is madness," muttered Ambrose, with little or no feeling in his voice.
Pitt silently moved from the bore, any sounds of his footsteps covered by the soft popping from the exhaust, and crept up behind the rider still sitting on his bike, who was distracted by the conversation. Pitt was no stranger to killing, but it wasn't in him to knife another man in the back, no matter how rotten the victim might be. In the same motion, he reversed the grip on the knife and plunged the blunt hilt with all his strength against the base of the biker's neck below the helmet. It bordered on a killing blow, but it was a pound short of fatal. The biker sagged in his seat and fell back against Pitt without making so much as a soft moan. Pitt crouched low and quickly threw his arms around the body, held it for a moment, then lowered it, together with the bike, quietly onto the ore cart track with the engine still idling in neutral.
Working swiftly, he pushed aside the biker's chest protector and uncased a Para-Ordnance 10+1
round, .45-caliber automatic from a shoulder holster strapped under an armpit. He trained the sights on the back of the biker standing on his right and pulled back the hammer. He had never fired a P-10
before, but from the feel, he knew the magazine was full and that the gun possessed most of the same features as his trusty old Colt .45, which was locked inside the NUMA vehicle he'd driven to Colorado from Washington.
The headlights on the motorcycles brightly illuminated the two killers, who failed to detect the figure stealing up behind them, but as Pitt crept closer, he passed in front of the light from the third bike, which was lying on the track, and he became identifiable to Ambrose.
The anthropologist spied Pitt emerging from the bright light, pointed behind the bikers, and blurted,
"How did you get back there?"
At the words, Pitt took careful aim and allowed his index finger to caress the trigger.
"Who are you talking to?" the first biker demanded.
"Little old me," Pitt said casually.
These men were top of the line in their profession. There was no hint of stunned surprise. No pointless discussion. No obvious questions. No hesitation or remote display of uncertainty. Their sixth sense worked as one. Their actions came with lightning speed. In a seemingly fused, well-practiced movement, they jerked the P-10 autos from their holsters and whirled around within a single second, the expressions on their faces frozen in cold implacability.
Pitt did not face the killers full-on, knees slightly bent, his gun gripped and extended in two hands directly in front of his nose, the way they taught in police academies or as seen in action movies. He preferred the classic stance, body turned sideways, eyes staring over one shoulder, gun stretched out in one hand. Not only did he present less of a target, but his aim was more precise. He knew that the gunslingers of the West who'd lived to a ripe old age had not necessarily been the fastest on the draw, but they were the straightest shooters, who'd taken their time to aim before pulling the trigger.
Pitt's first shot took the biker on the right in the nape of his neck. A slight, almost infinitesimal shift of the P-10 as he squeezed the trigger for the second time, and the biker on the left took a bullet in the chest at nearly the same instant his own gun was lining up on Pitt's silhouetted figure. Pitt could not believe that two men could react as one in the blink of an eye. Had they been given another two seconds to snap off a shot, it would have been Pitt whose body fell heavily across the granite floor of the mine tunnel.
The gunshots erupted like a deafening barrage of artillery fire, reverberating throughout the rock walls of the tunnel. For ten seconds, perhaps twenty-- it seemed more like an hour-- Pat, Ambrose, and Marquez stared unbelievingly at the dead bodies at their feet, eyes wide and glazed. Then the tentative beginnings of a dazed hope and the final realization that they were still alive broke the horror-numbed spell.
"What in God's name is going on?" Pat said, her voice low and vague. Then she looked up at Pitt.
"You killed them?" It was more a statement than a question.
"Better them than you," Pitt said, putting his arm around her shoulders. "We've experienced a nasty nightmare, but it's almost over now."
Marquez stepped past the rails and leaned down over the dead killers. "Who are these people?"
"A mystery for law-enforcement authorities to solve," replied Ambrose. He thrust out a hand. "I'd like to shake your hand, Mr. . ." He paused and looked blank. "I don't even know the name of the man who saved my life."
"It's Dirk Pitt," said Pat.
"I'm deeply in your debt," said Ambrose. He seemed more agitated than relieved.
"As am I," added Marquez, slapping Pitt's back.
"What mine do you think they entered to get here?" Pitt asked Marquez.
The miner thought a moment. "Most likely the Paradise."
"That means they purposely trapped themselves when they blew the dynamite that caused the avalanche," said Ambrose.
Pitt shook his head. "Not purposely. They knew they could make their way back to the surface by another route. Their big mistake was in using too massive a charge. They hadn't planned on the earth tremors, the collapse of the tunnel, and the opening of the underground fissures that allowed the water to rise and flood the tunnel."
"It figures," agreed Marquez. "Since they were on the opposite side of the cave-in, they could have easily ridden their bikes up the sloping shaft ahead of the flooding to the entrance. Finding it blocked with snow, they began searching connecting tunnels for a way out--"
"And after riding lost through the mines for hours, eventually came upon us," finished Ambrose.
Pitt nodded. "By riding up the Paradise's entrance shaft to this level, they saved climbing the vertical shafts we were forced to struggle through."
"It's almost as if they were looking for us," Marquez murmured.
Pitt didn't voice his thoughts to the others, but he was certain that once the bikers had ridden to the upper levels to escape the flooding, they had then followed in the footsteps of the four of them.
"It's all so crazy," said Pat, staring dazedly at the dead bikers. "What did he mean, we were ìnvolved with matters far beyond our comprehension'?"
Pitt shrugged. "That's for others to decide. The question in my mind is who sent them? Who do they represent? Beyond that, I'm only a marine engineer who is damp and cold and wants to find a thick Colorado prime rib medium rare and a glass of tequila."
"For a marine engineer," said Ambrose, grinning, "you're pretty handy with a gun."
"It doesn't take virtuosity to shoot a man from behind," Pitt came back cynically.
"What do we do with him?" inquired Marquez, pointing at the biker Pitt had clubbed senseless.
"We've no rope to tie him up, so we'll take his boots. He won't get far in bare feet through the mine tunnels."
"You want to leave him?"
"No sense in hauling an inert body around. Chances are, by the time we notify the sheriff and he sends his deputies down here, the killer will still be unconscious." Then Pitt paused and asked, "Have any of you ridden motorcycles?"
"I rode a Harley for ten years," answered Marquez.
"And I have an old Honda CBX Super Sport that belonged to my dad," Pat volunteered.
"Do you ride it?"
"Rode it all through college. I still hit the roads with it on weekends."
Pitt looked at Pat with newfound respect. "So you're an old leather-crotch, hard-in-the-saddle woman."
"You got it," she said proudly.
Then he turned to Ambrose. "And you, Doc?"
"Never sat on a motorcycle in my life. Why do you ask?"
"Because we've got what look like three perfectly good Suzuki RM125 supercross bikes, and I see no reason why we can't borrow them and ride out of the mine."
Marquez's teeth showed in a wide
smile. "I'm with you."
"I'll wait here until the sheriff shows up," said Ambrose. "The rest of you get going. I don't want to spend any more time with a live killer and two dead men than I have to."
"I don't like leaving you here alone with this killer, Doc. I'd prefer that you ride behind me until we're out of here."
Ambrose was firm. "Those bikes don't look like they were meant to haul passengers. I'm damned if I'll ride on one. Besides, you'll be traveling over rail tracks, making it unstable as hell."
"Have it your way," said Pitt, giving in to the obstinate anthropologist.
Pitt crouched and removed the P-10 automatics from the bodies. He was anything but a born killer, but he showed little remorse. Only a minute earlier, these men had been intent on murdering three innocent people whom they had never met-- an act he could never have allowed to happen under any circumstances.
He handed one of the guns to Ambrose. "Stay at least twenty feet away from our friend, and stay alert if he so much as blinks." Pitt also gave Ambrose his dive light. "The batteries should last until the sheriff comes."
"I doubt if I could bring myself to shoot another human," Ambrose protested, but his voice came with a cold edge.
"Don't look upon these guys as human. They're cold-blooded executioners who could slit a woman's throat and eat ice cream afterward. I warn you, Doc, if he looks cross-eyed at you, brain him with a rock."
The Suzukis were still idling in neutral, and it took them less than a minute to figure out the shift, brake, and throttle controls. With a farewell wave to Ambrose, Pitt roared off first. There was no room for the machines to move between the outer rails and the walls of the tunnel, not without scraping the handgrips on the rough granite. Pitt kept his wheels in the center of the rail tracks, closely followed by Pat and Marquez. Bouncing over the rail ties with rigid suspensions rattled their teeth and made for uncomfortable riding. Pat felt as if her insides were being shaken around by a laundromat dryer. Pitt found the trick was to find the proper speed that gave the least vibration. It worked out to twenty-five miles an hour, a speed that might have seemed slow and safe on a paved road but was quite dangerous inside a narrow mine tunnel.