Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

The inferno of Helskel smeared the dark sky with a glow that could be seen for miles. Even after the dune buggy had dipped down into a gulley, the orange stain could still be seen, like the aurora borealis.

 

Jak, standing and holding on to the roll bar, had been checking their backtrack. "Whole ville going up."

 

"What about pursuit?" asked J.B., crouched behind the wheel.

 

"No sign, yet. Too busy fighting fire."

 

J.B. switched on the headlights. The dune buggy had peen running without headlights for the past hour, relying on the tracker instincts and night vision of Jak to find and follow the AMAC's trail.

 

Doc, Krysty and Fleur were still crammed shoulder to shoulder in the back seat. Krysty's head rested on Doc's shoulder in a sleep so deep it was almost a coma. The jarring and jouncing of the wag over the rutted, uneven ground had failed to stir her.

 

J.B. figured to follow the AMAC's tire tracks to a certain point, then cut over in the general direction of the cave. Trouble was, he wasn't sure how to find that certain point.

 

Worries swirled through his mind like a tornado. Though he hadn't seen one, the AMAC could be outfitted with a shortwave comm unit, and Hellstrom could have already been apprised of their escape. The closer they rolled to Mount Rushmore, the greater the odds of rolling into an ambush.

 

He wasn't sure if they could find the cave in the darkness, since he had only glimpsed its general location on Hellstrom's hand-drawn map. Fleur had never been allowed to visit the pickup point. According to her, it was a trip Hellstrom always reserved for himself and a couple of sec men. The closest she had been to the cave was the mouth of a canyon that led to it.

 

Consulting his chron, then the position of the stars and the moon overhead, he judged they had about seven hours of sheltering darkness left to them, seven hours to navigate ravines, hills and dry creek beds to locate a cave none of them had ever seen. Hell, they only had the word of a maniac the place even existed.

 

The dune buggy raced across the rugged terrain, and they made good time, much better time than the AMAC during their initial trip into the area.

 

Around midnight, J.B. stopped the vehicle briefly so everyone could stretch their legs and drink from the canteens they'd taken from a room off the armory. Krysty slept on in the back seat. Only Fleur thought her near-comatose state was unusual. The wag's fuel tank was half drained, so Jak refilled it from one of the gas cans. After half an hour they were underway again, Doc trading places with Jak in the shotgun seat.

 

They rode far into the night until they recognized the mouth of the valley that had been the site of their battle with the Lakota. It was about an eighth of a mile away J.B. quickly switched off the headlights and silenced the engine. Half to himself, he said, "If Hellstrom's anywhere about, that's where he's laying."

 

Doc nodded. "I concur. He appears to be a creature of habit, and probably intends to camp in familiar surroundings, at least until morning. I suggest we reverse our course."

 

Jak leaned forward, his white hair shining like a tangle of silver threads in the moonlight. "Need recce, find out if there, if know we escaped."

 

J.B. agreed with the albino teenager. There was a chance Hellstrom and his party might be watching for them.

 

Getting out of the dune buggy, J.B. said softly, "We'll take a stroll in that direction. Doc, stay here with Krysty and Fleur. If you hear any shooting, and when you think you've waited long enough, haul ass out of here. Stay on triple red. Jak, since it was your idea, you can lead the way."

 

The two men walked toward the mouth of the valley but angled their path toward one sloping wall of the arroyo. The moon dropped a ghostly light on the rocky, brush-studded ground. Wind brought the faraway howl of a wolf, and the answering yelp of a coyote. At least, J.B. hoped it was a wolf and a coyote.

 

They clambered up the side of the valley wall and crept along its crest for a quarter of a mile. Then they lay forward beneath a small bush, propped on elbows, their blasters cocked and ready.

 

J.B. and Jak saw the AMAC, parked near the scene of he fight with the Sioux. There were no security lights blazing, and no sign of movement anywhere around the big armored wag. Straining their ears, they listened for any unusual sounds.

 

They heard a whispered conference somewhere below them, several men talking in hushed tones. Jak put his mouth close to J.B.'s ear and breathed, "Scouts. Spotted our headlights. Coming from a recce, reporting to sec boss. Don't know it's us."

 

J.B. had no reason to question what Jak had said. The youth's hearing was exceptionally, enviably sharp, and one question was answered, at least. Hellstrom wasn't aware of their escape from Helskel. The Armorer heard a number of feet scurrying alongside the bank of the arroyo. A patrol was moving out to investigate the mysterious lights.

 

A figure appeared on the crest of the slope, about twenty yards from their position. The shaven-headed sec man walked cautiously, and he was followed by another.

 

J.B. felt Jak tense beside him, but they remained motionless as the men approached. The first figure was no more than six feet away, boots crunching pebbles. J.E saw him glance casually at their bush, glance away, then look back. As far as he could see, the man's expression didn't change.

 

The deep-throated boom of Jak's Colt Python came without warning, snatching a startled curse out of J.B. The bullet knocked the sec man backward. Before he hit the ground, the Colt hammer fell again and killed the second man. Yells and screaming curses sounded from the valley floor, and feet pounded on turf.

 

"Damn it all!" J.B. spit in disgust.

 

He got to his knees and fired the Uzi into the valley, not aiming, just hosing the shots. Bedlam broke loose. Autorifles and machine pistols cracked and stuttered, echoing in the valley, spitting slugs into the rim of the arroyo. The sec men below were shooting blind, but bullets tore into the ground near Jak and J.B.'s position all the same.

 

Pulling his companion's arm, J.B. urged him to his feet. The two men bent low and ran, sliding down the bank, trying to keep to the shadows.

 

"Think recognized us?" Jak panted.

 

"Who gives a shit?" J.B. retorted angrily. "They know somebody is around now. Why'd you blast the bastard?"

 

"Would have stepped on head, seen anyhow."

 

Not bothering to argue, J.B. tried to put more speed into his pumping legs. The shooting was dying down, and he heard shouted orders coming faintly on the wind. The voice was Hellstrom's. Then all was quiet.

 

They made it back to the dune buggy. Doc was at the wheel, the engine idling. When he spotted their figures rushing forward, he aimed the Le Mat over the windshield, then breathed an audible sigh of relief when he recognized them. Jak climbed in the back, squeezing next to the still-sleeping Krysty.

 

"Move over, Doc," J.B. said, elbowing the man into the passenger seat.

 

"Was it the patriarch you saw?" Fleur asked, a strange mixture of eagerness and anger in her voice.

 

"Does it matter?" J.B. replied, putting the buggy into gear and turning it northeast. He didn't switch on the lights.

 

Fleur sat back in the seat and stared at an invisible point beyond the windshield.

 

Steering the vehicle around a rock slide, J.B. said, "Got my bearings at least. The cave is in this direction."

 

For several miles the trail sloped gently upward into the Black Hills, and it became necessary to turn on the headlights. The dune buggy carried them swiftly up, then down into twisting ravines. It took more than an hour to navigate the wag through and around obstacles that would have given even the Land Rover a great deal of difficulty.

 

The sun slowly rose behind them, tinting the sagebrush and stands of gama grass a russet red. J.B. kept pushing on, even as they shivered in the predawn chill. As the sun inched higher, the heat rose in the rocky gorges and gullies around them.

 

According to the Armorer's chron, it was exactly six o'clock when the narrow ravine they traveled opened into a canyon. Sheer walls rose to nearly a hundred feet on either side, and they were grooved with deep horizontal lines, here and there forming ledges where the softer layers of strata had been eroded away.

 

The canyon floor was less than two hundred feet wide, and it wended off to the right, to a cave entrance. The opening was a lopsided triangle, twenty or so feet tall, fifty in width. Boulders were strewn all around, except for an unnaturally flat clearing immediately in front of the yawning black cleft carved into the canyon wall. was about four hundred yards away.

 

Carefully J.B. steered the dune buggy close to the wall, beneath an overhanging ledge and behind an outcropping. It would be shielded from Hellstrom's sight if he came down the canyon, and from any eyes inside the cave. The stony floor was too hard to take their tire treads, so they couldn't be tracked that way.

 

After turning off the engine, J.B. turned to Fleur. "Is the front way the only way in?"

 

She shrugged. "As far as I know."

 

Krysty was awake now, dragging a hand over her eyes. "You sure this is the place, J.B.?"

 

"Hell, no, I'm not sure of anything," he replied gruffly. "But its location fits the general coordinates we saw, and unless somebody can prove otherwise, I'm going to assume this is the right place. Anybody got an objection?"

 

No one did. Disembarking, J.B. scanned their surroundings. Because Hellstrom had mentioned beetles guarding the place, a frontal penetration of the cave was out of the question. He saw a rough but scalable natural staircase curving up thirty or forty feet from the canyon floor and swerving over and down to a point directly beside the cave entrance. After a brief discussion, they decided to climb it.

 

As they headed up, J.B. was struck by the brooding majesty of the place; he could almost understand why the Indians believed a supernatural power guarded the Black Hills. The canyon was totally silent, the only sounds the grating of their feet on rock, their labored breathing and the occasional murmured word. The towering rampart walls seemed subtly charged with menace. Something eerie and uncanny existed here.

 

They had scaled perhaps half of the staircase's length, cautiously approaching a projecting granite slab they would have to squirm around, when Jak tapped J.B.'s shoulder.

 

The youth was peering intently at the canyon's opposite wall. "Hear something," he whispered.

 

"Like what?" J.B. whispered back.

 

A splitting crack shattered the silence, and a bullet sang past J.B.'s ear, bouncing off the cliff face behind him.

 

"Like that," Jak said calmly.