"Without the decency of a fair trial," protested Sarason as his hand crept past his knee toward the concealed derringer. Only then did he notice that Pitt's injuries went beyond the bloody gash across the forehead. There was a fatigued droop to the shoulders, an unsteadiness to his stance. The skewed left hand was pressed against his chest. Broken wrist and ribs, Samson surmised. His hopes rose as he realized that Pitt was on the thin edge of collapse.
"You're hardly one to demand justice," said Pitt, biting scorn in his tone. "A pity our great American court system doesn't hand out the same punishment to killers they gave to their victims."
"And you are not one to judge my actions. If not for my brothers and me, thousands of artifacts would be rotting away in the basements of museums around the world. We preserved the antiquities and redistributed them to people who appreciate their value."
Pitt stopped his roving gaze and focused on Sarason. "You call that an excuse? You justify theft and murder on a grand scale so you and your criminal relatives can make fat profits. The magic words for you, pal, are charlatan and hypocrite."
"Shooting me won't put my family out of business."
"Haven't you heard?" Pitt grimly smiled. "Zolar International just went down the toilet. Federal agents raided your facilities in Galveston. They found enough loot to fill a hundred galleries."
Sarason tilted his head back and laughed. "Our headquarters in Galveston is a legitimate operation. All merchandise is lawfully bought and sold."
"I'm talking about the second facility," Pitt said casually.
A flicker of apprehension showed in Sarason's tan face. "There is only one building."
"No, there are two. The storage warehouse separated by a tunnel to transport illegal goods to the Zolar building with a subterranean basement housing smuggled antiquities, an art forgery operation, and a vast collection of stolen art."
Sarason looked as if he'd been struck across the face with a club. "Damn you to hell, Pitt. How could you know any of this?"
"A pair of federal agents, one from Customs, the other from the FBI, described the raid to me in vivid terms. I should also mention that they'll be waiting with open arms when you attempt to smuggle Huascar's treasure into the United States."
Sarason's fingers were a centimeter (less than half an inch) away from the little twin-barreled gun.
"Then the joke's on them," he said, resurrecting his blasé facade. "The gold isn't going to the United States."
"No matter," Pitt said with quiet reserve. "You won't be around to spend it."
Hidden by a knee crossed over one leg, Sarason's fingers met and cautiously began slipping the two-shot derringer from his boot. He reckoned that Pitt's injuries would slow any reaction time by a split second, but decided against attempting a snap, wildly aimed shot. If he missed with the first bullet, Samson well knew that despite Pitt's painful injuries there wouldn't be a chance to fire the second. He hesitated as his mind engineered a diversion. He looked over at Amaru and the two men eyeing Pitt with implacable black anger. Julio was of no use to him.
"You are the one who doesn't have long to live," he said. "The Mexican military who assisted us in removing the treasure will have heard your shots and will come bursting in here any minute to cut you down."
Pitt shrugged. "They must be on siesta or they'd have been here by now."
"If we all attacked him at the same time," Sarason said as conversationally as if they were all seated around a dining table, "he might kill two or even three of us before the survivor killed him."
Pitt's expression turned cold and remote. "The question is, who will be the survivor?"
Amaru did not care who would live or die. His dark mind saw no future without his manhood. He had nothing to lose. His hatred for the man who emasculated him triggered a rage fueled by the memory of pain and mental agony. Without a word, he launched himself at Pitt.
In a muscled flash of speed, Amaru closed like a snarling dog, reaching out for Pitt's gun hand. The shot took the Peruvian in the chest and through a lung, the report coming like a booming crack. The impact would have stopped the average man, but Amaru was a force beyond himself, driven like a maddened pit bull. He gave an audible grunt as the air was forced from his lungs, and then he crashed into Pitt, sending him reeling backward toward the river.
A groan burst from Pitt's lips as his cracked ribs protested the collision in a burst of pain. He desperately spun around, throwing off Amaru's encircling grip around his gun hand and hurling him aside.
He brought the butt of the Colt down on his assailant's head, but stopped short of a second blow when he spotted the two healthy guards going for their weapons at the edge of his vision.
Through his pain, Pitt's hand instinctively held steady on the Colt. His next bullet dropped the grotesque one eyed guard with a quick shot to the neck. He ignored the blind Julio and shot the remaining henchman in the center of his chest.
Pitt heard Loren's scream of warning as if it were far off in the distance. Too late he saw Sarason pointing the derringer at him. His body lagged behind his mind and moved a fraction slow.
He saw the fire from the muzzle and felt a terrible hammer blow in his left shoulder before he heard the blast. It flung him around, and he went down sprawling in the water with Amaru crawling after him like a wounded bear intent on shredding a disabled fox. The current caught him in its grasp and pulled him from shore. He grabbed desperately at the bottom stones to impede the surge.
Sarason slowly walked to the water's edge and stared at the struggle going on in the river. Amaru had clenched his arms around Pitt's waist and was trying to drag him under the surface. With a callous grin, Sarason took careful aim at Pitt's head. "A commendable effort, Mr. Pitt. You are a very durable man.
Odd as it sounds, I will miss you."
But the coup de grace never came. Like black tentacles, a pair of arms circled around Sarason's legs and gripped his ankles. He looked down wildly at the unspeakable thing that was gripping him and began frantically beating at the head that rose between the arms.
Giordino had followed Pitt, drifting down the river. The current had not been as strong as he'd expected upstream from the treasure island and he had been able to painfully drag himself into the shallows unnoticed. He had cursed his helplessness at not being physically able to assist Pitt in fighting off Amaru, but when Sarason unknowingly stepped within reach, Giordino made his move and snagged him.
He ignored the brutal blows to his head. He looked up at Sarason and spoke in a voice that was thick and deep. "Greetings from hell, butthead."
Sarason recovered quickly at the sight of Giordino and jerked one foot free to maintain his balance.
Because Giordino made no attempt to rise to his feet, Sarason immediately perceived that his enemy was somehow badly injured from the hips down. He viciously kicked Giordino, hitting one thigh. He was rewarded by a sharp groan as Giordino's body jumped in a tormented spasm and he released Sarason's other ankle.
"From past experience," Sarason said, regaining his composure, "I should have known you'd be close by."
He stared briefly at the derringer, knowing he had only one bullet left, but aware there were four or five automatic weapons lying nearby. Then he glanced at Pitt and Amaru who were locked in a death struggle. No need to waste the bullet on Pitt. The river had taken the deadly enemies in its grip and was relentlessly sweeping them downstream. If Pitt somehow survived and staggered from the water, Sarason had an arsenal to deal with him.
Sarason made his choice. He stooped down and aimed the gun's twin barrels between Giordino's eyes.
Loren threw herself at Sarason's back, flinging her arms around him, trying to stop him. Sarason broke her grip as if it were string and shoved her aside without so much as a glance.
She fell heavily on one of the weapons that had been cast aside, lifted it and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. She didn't know enough about guns to remove the safety. She gave a weak yelp as Sarason reached over an
d cracked her on the head with the butt of the derringer.
Suddenly he spun around. Gunn, remarkably come to life, had tossed a river stone at Sarason that bounced off his hip with the feeble force of a weakly hit tennis ball.
Sarason shook his head in wonder at the fortitude and courage of people who resisted with such fervor. He almost felt sorry they would all have to die. He turned back to Giordino.
"It seems your reprieve was only temporary," he said with a sneer, as he held the gun at arm's length straight at Giordino's face.
In spite of the agony of his broken legs and the specter of death staring him in the face, Giordino looked up at Sarason and grinned venomously. "Screw you."
The shot came like a blast from a cannon inside the cavern, followed by the thump sound of lead bursting through living flesh. Giordino's expression went blank as Sarason's eyes gazed at him with a strange confused look. Then Sarason turned and mechanically took two steps onto shore, slowly pitched forward and struck the stone floor in a lifeless heap.
Giordino couldn't believe he was still alive. He looked up and gaped at a little man, dressed like a ranch hand and casually holding a Winchester rifle, who walked into the circle of light.
"Who are you?" asked Giordino.
"Billy Yuma. I came to help my friend."
Loren, a hand held against her bleeding head, stared at him. "Friend?"
"The man called Pitt."
At the mention of his name, Loren pushed herself to her feet and ran unsteadily to the river's edge. "I don't see him!" she cried fearfully.
Giordino suddenly felt his heart squeeze. He shouted Pitt's name but his voice only echoed in the cavern. "Oh, God, no," he muttered fearfully. "He's gone."
Gunn grimaced as he sat up and peered downriver into the ominous blackness. Like the others who had calmly faced death only minutes before, he was stricken to find that his old friend had been carried away to his death. "Maybe Dirk can swim back," he said hopefully.
Giordino shook his head. "He can't return. The current is too strong."
"Where does the river go?" demanded Loren with rising panic.
Giordino pounded his fist in futility and despair against the solid rock. "The Gulf. Dirk has been swept toward the Sea of Cortez a hundred kilometers away."
Loren sagged to the limestone floor of the cavern, her hands covering her face as she unashamedly wept. "He saved me only to die."
Billy Yuma knelt beside Loren and gently patted her bare shoulder. "If no one else can, perhaps God will help."
Giordino was heartsick. No longer feeling his own injuries, he stared into the darkness, his eyes unseeing. "A hundred kilometers," he repeated slowly. "Even God can't keep a man alive with a broken wrist, cracked ribs, and a bullet hole in the shoulder through a hundred kilometers of raging water in total darkness."
After making everyone as comfortable as he could, Yuma hurried back up to the summit where he told his story. It shamed his relatives into entering the mountain. They fabricated stretchers out of material left by the army engineers and tenderly carried Gunn and Giordino from the river cavern up the passageway.
An older man kindly offered a grateful Loren a blanket woven by his wife.
On Giordino's instructions, Gunn and his stretcher were strapped down in the narrow cargo compartment of the stolen NUMA helicopter abandoned by the Zolars. Loren climbed into the copilot's seat as Giordino, his face contorted in torment, was lifted and maneuvered behind the pilot's controls.
"We'll have to fly this eggbeater together," Giordino told Loren as the pain in his legs subsided from sheer agony to a throbbing ache. "You'll have to work the pedals that control the tail rotors."
"I hope I can do it," Loren replied nervously.
"Use a gentle touch with your bare feet and we'll be okay."
Over the helicopter's radio, they alerted Sandecker, who was pacing Starger's office in the Customs Service headquarters, that they were on their way. Giordino and Loren expressed their gratitude to Billy Yuma, his family, and friends, and bid them a warm goodbye. Then Giordino started the turbine engine and let it warm for a minute while he scanned the instruments. With the cyclic stick in neutral, he eased the collective pitch stick to full down and curled the throttle as he gently pushed the stick forward. Then he turned to Loren.
"As soon as we begin to rise in the air, the torque effect will cause our tail to swing left and our nose to the right. Lightly press the left foot pedal to compensate."
Loren nodded gamely. "I'll do my best, but I wish I didn't have to do this."
"We have no choice but to fly out. Rudi would be dead before he could be manhandled down the side of the mountain."
The helicopter rose very slowly less than a meter off the ground. Giordino let it hang there while Loren learned the feel of the tail rotor control pedals. At first she had a tendency to over control, but she soon got the hang of it and nodded.
"I think I'm ready."
"Then we're off," acknowledged Giordino.
Twenty minutes later, working in unison, they made a perfect landing beside the Customs headquarters building in Calexico where Admiral Sandecker was standing beside a waiting ambulance, anxiously puffing a cigar.
In that first moment when Amaru forced him beneath the water and he could feel the jaws of the current surround his wrecked body, Pitt knew instantly that there was no returning to the treasure cavern.
He was doubly trapped-- by a killer who hung on to him like a vise and a river determined to carry him to hell.
Even if both men had been uninjured, it would have been no contest. Cutthroat killer that he was, Amaru was no match for Pitt's experience underwater. Pitt took a deep breath before the river closed over his head, wrapped his good right arm around his chest to protect his fractured ribs and relaxed amid the pain without wasting his strength in fighting off his attacker.
Amazingly, he still kept his grip on the gun, although to fire it underwater would probably have shattered every bone in his hand. He felt Amaru's encircling hold slide from his waist to his hips. The murderer was strong as iron. He clawed at Pitt furiously, still trying for the gun as they spun around in the current like toy dolls caught in a whirlpool.
Neither man could see the other as they swirled into utter darkness. Without the slightest suggestion of light, Pitt felt as though he was submerged in ink.
Amaru's wrath was all that kept him alive in the next forty-five seconds. It did not sink into his crazed mind that he was drowning twice-- his bullet-punctured lung was filling with blood while at the same time he was sucking in water. The last of his strength was fading when his thrashing feet made contact with a shoal that was built up from sand accumulating on the outer curve of the river. He came up choking blood and water in a small open gallery and made a blind lunge for Pitt's neck.
But Amaru had nothing left. All fight had ebbed away. Once out of the water he could feel the blood pumping from the wound in his chest.
Pitt found he was able, by a slight effort, to shove Amaru back into the mainstream of the current. He could not see the Peruvian drift away in the pitch blackness, observe the face drained of color, the eyes glazed in hate and approaching death. But he heard the malevolent voice slowly moving into the distance away from him.
"I said you would suffer," came the words slightly above a hoarse murmur. "Now you will languish and die in tormented black solitude."
"Nothing like being swept up in an orgy of poetic grandeur," said Pitt icily. "Enjoy your trip to the Gulf."
His reply was a cough and a gurgling sound and finally silence.
The pain returned to Pitt with a vengeance. The fire spread from his broken wrist to the bullet wound in his shoulder to his cracked ribs. He was not sure he had the strength left to fight it. Exhaustion slightly softened the agony. He felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life. He crawled onto a dry area of the shoal and slowly crumpled face forward into the soft sand and fell unconscious.
"I don't like leaving w
ithout Cyrus," said Oxley as he scanned the desert sky to the southwest.
"Our brother has been in tougher scrapes before," said Zolar impassively. "A few Indians from a local village shouldn't present much of a threat to Amaru's hired killers."
"I expected him long before now."
"Not to worry. Cyrus will probably show up in Morocco with a girl on each arm."
They stood on the end of a narrow asphalt airstrip that had been grooved between the countless dunes of the Altar Desert so Mexican Air Force pilots could hold training exercises under primitive conditions.
Behind them, with its tail section jutting over the edge of the sand-swept strip, a Boeing 747-400 jetliner, painted in the colors of a large national air carrier, sat poised for takeoff.
Zolar moved under the shade of the starboard wing and checked off the artifacts inventoried by Henry and Micki Moore as the Mexican army engineers loaded the final piece on board the aircraft. He nodded at the golden sculpture of a monkey that was being hoisted by a large forklift into the cargo hatch nearly 7
meters (23 feet) from the ground. "That's the last of it."
Oxley stared at the barrenness surrounding the airstrip. "You couldn't have picked a more isolated spot to transship the treasure."
"We can thank the late Colonel Campos for suggesting it."
"Any problem with Campos's men since his untimely death?" Oxley asked with more cynicism than sense of loss.
Zolar laughed. "Certainly not after I gave each of them a one-hundred-ounce bar of gold."
"You were generous."
"Hard not to be with so much wealth sitting around."
"A pity Matos will miss spending his share," said Oxley.
"Yes, I cried all the way from Cerro el Capirote."
Zolar's pilot approached and gave an informal salute. "My crew and I are ready when you are, gentlemen. We would like to take off before it's dark."