Dovchenko turned just as the engine fully engaged.
The railcar detonated down the railroad tracks, turning into a rocket sled. Both men were thrown to a cushioned shield at the back of the car.
The sled dove into the tunnel. The walls blurred as thrust pinned the men in place. Dovchenko’s ribs squeezed toward his heart. Lights strobed into a blur. Then in a fraction of a second the sled shot out the blast doors and headed across the desert, straight for the setting sun. The light was blinding, but Dovchenko couldn’t close his eyelids; g-force and wind held them peeled open.
The sled continued to rocket across the blasted landscape.
But to where?
A minute later, Spalko stood with George McHale by the hangar. The back of the man’s clothes still smoked. She stared across the twilit desert. A moment earlier, she had witnessed a streak of fire lancing low across the desert.
A sonic boom had followed a second later.
She had not understood what it meant until George McHale had arrived, half burned. “They were both aboard?” she asked again. “Dovchenko and Jones?”
He nodded and waved the smoke from his charred clothes with a wide-brimmed hat.
“Could they still be alive?” she asked.
He shrugged, but she still read the concern in his eyes as he stared off toward the fading sun. Though the man had betrayed his friend, there remained something between them, something that weighed on his heart—even if it was only the passage of time.
One of the staff cars and the lone remaining jeep rolled up, battered and dented. Spalko pointed out into the desert and gave her orders. The vehicles sped off across the sand, heading straight as the crow flies, following the smoky contrail left behind by the rocket sled.
Uncomfortable with uncertainty, she wanted to know the truth. Especially concerning Dr. Henry Jones Jr. She dared not leave Jones behind.
At least not alive.
SEVEN
INDY FELT THE WEIGHT of the world sitting on his chest. Or maybe two or three worlds. He still could not breathe. Accelerating g-force squeezed his vision narrow. The landscape blurred around him, turning reality into one long, rushing tunnel.
All the while, thrust stretched his face toward the back of his skull.
The sled covered miles in moments—then as abruptly as it had started, it ended.
The booster engine shut down. The rocket engine’s brakes engaged, locking onto the rails and slowing their speed. The sled glided smoothly to the end of the tracks. It came to a gentle stop with the softest thump against a giant rubber bumper. A small dark shack marked the end of the line.
Freed, both men stumbled away from the blast shield. They fell off the railcar—but their war wasn’t over. They immediately set upon each other, like punch-drunk fighters.
Indy swung a fist but missed his large target by a good foot.
Still, Dovchenko toppled backward as if KO’d by the errant swing. The giant struck the sandy railbed, out cold. His larger body had not fared as well against the g-force. It was all a matter of mass and gravity.
Indy sat heavily on the railcar.
Across the desert he noted plumes of dust aiming in his direction. Certainly not a rescue crew. He wasn’t that dazed. It had to be Spalko’s men.
Indy climbed back to his feet. Turning away, he spotted the twinkle of lights through the dusk. A town? Out here? Regardless, surely someone could help him. He stumbled across the desert toward the only sign of habitation.
He had to raise the alarm.
The Russians were coming.
“Just leave it,” Mac called over to Irina Spalko.
She didn’t acknowledge him. She continued to drag the steel coffin down the aisle toward the crashed staff car. She refused to leave without it.
As she struggled with her obsession, Mac worried about the one thing dearest to his heart. His own survival. He had gotten the sedan’s engine running, but the crumpled hood had been a problem. He had unbolted it and tugged it off, turning the staff car into what looked like a hot rod.
Across the giant hangar, the squeal of braking tires echoed from the open hangar door. The real US Marines had arrived, drawn by the firing of the rocket sled and subsequent alarms. There was no more time.
Mac hurried to the rear of the sedan and helped Spalko lift the coffin into the trunk—the same trunk he and Indy had been locked inside for most of the day. He shied away from the thought and slammed the trunk lid down. He stared off at the general trajectory of the flying rocket sled.
Sorry, Indiana.
But what was done was done. He had made his choice.
Mac climbed into the driver’s seat, and Spalko settled on the passenger side. He gently hit the gas and edged the staff car toward the rear exit of the hangar. Behind them, orders were shouted across the expanse, echoing loudly.
Mac risked a little more speed.
As the marines entered the front of the hangar, they slipped out the back and into the deepening twilight. Mac raced across the desert.
“At least we got what we came for,” Spalko mumbled.
But not what we deserve, Mac thought.
Dovchenko woke to stars.
Hands pulled him from the sand, dusted him off, and offered him tepid water. He scattered his men away with a sweep of his large arm. Enough. He stumbled a few steps and sucked in deep draughts of the night air. His head pounded, and his eyes burned like ground glass.
Off to the side, a staff car and jeep waited, engines idling.
Men waited, too. He searched among them.
There was no sign of Jones.
“Where is he?” he grumbled in Russian.
One of his men shook his head. “He was gone when we got here.”
Lifting a corner of his lip in a silent growl, Dovchenko continued in a slow circle of the railcar. He discovered a set of boot prints in the sand and knelt beside them. The tracks headed off into the desert.
Jones.
Dovchenko narrowed his eyes and followed the path of the tracks. Across the rocky landscape, lights sparkled in the distance near the horizon. He stood up and grabbed one of his men by the collar. He pointed to the footprints, then to the distant lights.
“Find him,” he ordered hoarsely in Russian. “Kill him and anyone he talks to.”
With a nod, the man waved two more soldiers into the idling jeep. Motor growling, the jeep set off through the desert, casting up sand and heading toward the distant town.
Dovchenko watched for a few breaths, then scowled darkly and limped over to the staff car. He fell into the backseat. The driver turned the sedan around and headed in the opposite direction, back the way they’d come.
Dovchenko stared at the blasted landscape.
He’d had enough of the damn desert.
EIGHT
INDY HOBBLED INTO the small desert town. He could barely keep himself upright after the long walk. He crossed the main street, weaving in an unsteady course. Dark shops lined both sides of the street, closed at this hour. Streetlamps glowed merrily. Down the way, a gas station’s neon sign slowly turned. Off in the distance he heard music drifting from some bar or diner that was still open.
He limped toward the sound, hopeful for a glass of water.
His throat was full of sand.
He jiggled his pockets. No money. He would have to hope for charity.
As he drifted down the center of the street, he kept an eye out for a police station or some other authority. The alarm needed to be raised. The Russians had to be stopped.
As he walked, Indy noted a few cars lining the street. He considered hotwiring one, but he had neither the strength nor the will. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed help.
Reaching the main crossroads in town, he stopped, unsure where to go. Then a rumble caused him to turn and look behind him. Off in the desert, a vehicle approached the town’s edge. One headlamp shone brightly; the other was busted. He made out the vague shape of a jeep.
The Russi
ans had followed him.
Indy slid around the corner and hid out of sight as the vehicle entered the town. It slowly crept down the main street, searching for him.
He swore and leaned on the wall for a breath, but he knew he had to keep moving.
Stifling a groan, he pushed off and hurried away from the intersection. The street had a row of tidy houses with manicured lawns, flowering window boxes, and picket fences. He hated to bring trouble down upon the peaceful residents, but he had no choice.
He also had to get off the road.
He cut between two houses and into a backyard. Focused on the street behind him, he plowed straight into somebody’s laundry hanging on a line. He fought his way through it as if it were an Aboriginal pig net. Finally freed, he trampled the linen and headed toward the back door of the house.
Lights shone through the floral pattern of the window curtains.
He heard voices. And music.
Indy knocked softly, but there was no response. He dared not shout. He found the door unlocked and risked barging inside. He pushed into a tidy kitchen with a checkerboard-tiled floor and the latest appliances, including a heavy-duty King Cool refrigerator.
He glanced longingly at it, wanting to raid the icebox, to find something cold to drink.
But not yet.
“Hello? Anybody?” His voice was a scratched record. Even he barely heard it.
Desperate, he hurried into the living room, where the music grew louder. It rose from a TV set, airing The Howdy Doody Show. The theme song played as a family sat with their backs to him: mother, lather, two kids. Again Indy felt a pang for destroying the perfect tableau here, especially as it was a life that would never be his.
But he had no choice.
He noted a phone on an entryway table. He grabbed the handset and started to dial. He called over to the father seated in an overstuffed wing chair. He fought his dry throat, parched tongue. He willed his voice to urgency.
“Russians! Spies! They broke into the military base and—” With the phone at his ear, he heard no dial tone. He clicked the receiver a few times. “Don’t you have a phone that works?”
Nobody moved. Nobody answered. They just stared, transfixed, at the television set. On the screen, the freckled face of Howdy Doody chuckled and guffawed.
What’s wrong with you people?
He limped to the father and grabbed the man’s arm—but it came off in his hands. The man toppled out of his armchair, stiff, head at an impossible angle, a grin fixed on his waxen face.
Shock pushed Indy away.
A mannequin.
From the television, Buffalo Bob announced, “Why, Howdy, haven’t you guessed yet? It’s an imaginary place.”
Indy glanced closer at the others.
All mannequins.
Dehydrated, exhausted, Indy could not process what was happening. He stood in place, frozen like the wax figures. He needed to get moving, but he couldn’t.
Then as if trying to wake him, the blast of a siren wailed from the street outside. He turned his head toward the noise, something horrible coming together in his mind.
He recognized that klaxon.
An air-raid siren.
“Oh, that can’t be good.”
He rushed to the front door and shoved it open. He stumbled onto the covered porch, then down to the lawn. A mannequin mail-man stood frozen by the mailbox, wax letters in hand. Across the street, a man walked a fake dog, forever in midstride. Up the street, a group of children were locked in a permanent game of kickball, while a passerby waved to them from his stalled Buick.
Indy noted a sign at the edge of the street. He noted the word WELCOME at the top. He swung closer to read it fully.
Welcome to Doom Town
U.S. Army Proving Ground
Civilians Forbidden!
Indy backed away That can’t be good at all.
The siren abruptly ended with a squelch, replaced by a deafening voice.
“ALL PERSONNEL TAKE FINAL POSITIONS. COUNTDOWN TO DETONATION COMMENCING AT T-MINUS ONE MINUTE.”
NINE
INDY DASHED down the street and back to the intersection, his pains forgotten in his panic. It was amazing how the threat of a fiery death could get one moving again, lubricating aching joints with raw terror.
As he rounded the bend, sparks suddenly flashed at his toes, and bees buzzed past his ear. Terrified, it took him an extra moment to realize he was being shot at. The threat seemed minor compared with what was coming.
Still, death was death.
In a diving roll, he ducked behind a mailbox. Risking a quick look, he spotted the Russian sniper as the man popped out of hiding behind a car and rushed his position. The sniper angled for a better vantage.
Indy had nowhere to go.
Then behind him, an engine roared. He twisted around as the battered army jeep careened around the corner a few blocks away, taking the turn on two wheels. It blasted straight at him. The soldier on the passenger side rose up and leveled his rifle over the windshield.
Ambush.
Little late, guys.
The loudspeaker confirmed it. “T-MINUS FORTY-FIVE SECONDS.”
The sniper on the ground swung wide, looking for a clear shot. A round ricocheted off the metal mailbox like a gong.
Indy realized the impossibility of the situation and stood up, hands on his head. What did he have to lose?
“Wait!” he yelled. “Stop, you idiots! Don’t you realize what that is?”
He pointed off into the distance, beyond the far end of Main Street. Perched on a hill overlooking the town stood a metal-framed tower festooned with speakers and sirens. Suspended from a platform in the middle hung a round metal ball, draped with wires and detonating cords.
It might as well have had BOMB written on its side.
In this particular case—NUCLEAR BOMB!
The Russian sniper’s eyes went wide with recognition. Turning away, he ran out into the middle of the street and waved his rifle overhead. He screamed in Russian to his comrades in the jeep and pointed his rifle toward the hill.
The jeep shimmied as the realization struck the vehicle’s driver. Then it steadied and sped toward the lone sniper. It slowed only long enough to allow the rifleman to leap headlong into the back—then sped off again.
Indy stumbled into the street after them, a forlorn arm in the air. “Sure! Don’t wait for me!”
He ran a few steps in their direction, then realized how pointless it was.
The jeep left Main Street and shot out into the desert, casting up sand and cactus in its frantic wake.
“T-MINUS THIRTY SECONDS AND COUNTING.”
Indy knew he had only one chance. He turned and ran—not out of town, but deeper into it. He headed back to the same little handsome street, to the same picture-perfect home. The front door of the house was still open. He crossed the yard, leaped the porch steps, and barreled through the living room.
He raced down the short hall, dogged by the inanely cheerful Howdy Doody theme music.
“T-MINUS FIFTEEN SECONDS AND COUNTING.”
Indy burst into the kitchen and ran straight for the heavy-duty King Cool refrigerator. He threw open the door.
“T-MINUS TEN SECONDS AND COUNTING.”
“C’mon, c’mon . . .”
Frantic, he hauled everything out of the fridge, shelves and all. He took a moment to pop an ice cube into his mouth for his parched throat. He sucked on the ice, savoring the cool water trickling down his throat. It might be his last chance.
“T-MINUS FIVE SECONDS AND COUNTING.”
He crammed himself into the fridge and yanked hard on the door—
“FOUR.”
—but the door bounced back open. His leather jacket had jammed it.
“THREE.”
He tugged his jacket fully into the fridge and—
“TWO.”
—slammed the door closed.
Just as the little interior light blinked off, Indy read
the small steel plate affixed to the upper corner of the door. It read—
LEAD-LINED FOR SUPERIOR INSULATION!
“ONE.”
A mile outside Doom Town the Russian sniper stared back toward the deadly steeple. His heart pounded as the jeep bounced and rattled. He never saw the brilliant burst of blazing white light. The world simply went black as the flash instantly blinded him, searing away his retinas.
The driver wasn’t so lucky. The detonation lit up the desert for miles ahead, casting the world in an eerie brilliance. In his rearview mirror, he watched the world burst into flame. A massive blast wave of brimstone and hellfire rocketed across the flats, turning sand to glass in its wake.
He watched his doom sweep toward him.
In the instant before the blast wave vaporized them and melted the jeep into the sand, the Russian witnessed a strange sight:
A refrigerator flew through the air, riding the blast wave.
It shot overhead—then fire consumed the world.
Indy never remembered hitting the ground. In fact, he remembered nothing beyond waking in the dark, enclosed space. For a terrified moment he thought he’d been buried alive. For an archaeologist like him, it was a constant fear in ancient tunnels and tombs. Panicked, he punched and clawed in the darkness.
Then he remembered it all.
And his panic grew worse.
He fought, shouldered, and kicked at the refrigerator door. Finally the latch gave way, and the door fell open. The heat of a blast furnace swept over him as he fell out of the tight confinement. The refrigerator, half melted and blackened, lay buried amid a pile of smoking slag and debris.
Indy stumbled a few steps, struggling to find cool air.
He finally gave up and straightened, staring straight into the face of Hell.
A mile away, a massive mushroom cloud rose from the desert floor. It climbed in a swirling column of smoke and fire. For a moment, Indy imagined hollowed-out eye sockets and the gaping maw of a skull.