A long spiked club hissed past his face, and Remo countered with a swift kick that collapsed his adversary's rib cage, driving bony spikes into his heart and lungs. The warrior went down, spouting blood, already dead before his body reached the bottom of the staircase.
That left two, and neither one of them had any great enthusiasm for the fight, but neither could they run away. One tried, and Remo caught him with a short jab to a point below one shoulder blade, which stopped his heart and sent another dead man body-surfing down the spiral stairs.
The sole survivor had no options left. He came at Remo, shrieking through a set of crooked, fang-like teeth, and slashing with the thick shaft of his lance. It was a simple thing to block the downward blow, disarm him, hoist the scrawny figure overhead and toss him twenty feet across the hand-carved banister. The native went down screaming, flapping arms that wouldn't serve as wings, and hit the floor with a resounding thud.
The three surviving expedition members stared at Remo, wide-eyed, Audrey with her mouth agape. If she had closed her eyes, thought Remo, the expression would have been familiar, but she wasn't high on sex right now. Instead, like Stockwell and their Malay chaperon, she seemed both amazed and repulsed.
"How… ?" she began, choking on the words. "I mean—"
"I took some classes," Remo told her. "Can we go now?"
Angry voices from a another corridor, somewhere below them and to Remo's left, provided all the motivation they required to scramble down the stairs past the pair of crumpled bodies, down a hallway that he hoped would lead them to the open air. If they were forced to double back, it meant another confrontation with the palace guards. While he had no doubt of his ability to cope with the resistance, Remo couldn't guarantee that one or more of his companions wouldn't stop a spear or arrow in the process.
If he had been saddled with a lone companion, Remo could have simply carried him or her and run as fast as necessary to the nearest exit. As it was, though, progress was effectively restricted to the top speed of their slowest member—meaning that Dr. Stockwell set the pace. Protesting all the way, demanding that the others leave him, save themselves, the weary academic could do little better than a shuffling jog by now. They were losing precious time.
Somehow they found an exit and got out of there before the rabble in pursuit caught up with them. This door, like all the others, was constructed out of wood; it opened outward on a patio that seemed to join the courtyard proper somewhere to their right, around a corner of the temple. Remo dug his fingers deep into the wooden door and ripped a six-inch wedge-shaped portion free before he slammed the door and held it shut. The wedge went underneath, a solid kick ensuring that the hostiles on the other side would have their work cut out for them if they intended following this way.
"Come on," said Remo to the others. "We're already out of time."
They followed him through darkness, toward the open courtyard, where the awesome sounds of mortal combat told them that a battle from another age was taking place.
Chapter Nineteen
Audrey Moreland's mind was racing as she followed Renton Ward—or whoever the hell he was—in the direction of the courtyard. From the sounds, it was apparent that the dinosaur these tribesmen worshiped as Nagaq had left the temple, made its way outside, where it was raising hell. Its snarling, roaring voice was readily identifiable before she glimpsed the monster—and, Audrey suspected, she would hear it in her dreams for months to come.
It was the other sound that puzzled her right now. A kind of trumpeting. Some other animal perhaps… or were the natives trying to distract their killer god by blowing horns?
No, that was wrong. The sound was something she had heard before, if she could only place it, drag the necessary sound bytes from her memory and bring them forward into conscious thought. It sounded like…
An elephant!
Sherlockian deduction played no part in Audrey's sudden breakthrough. Rather, she had reached the corner separating her from the main courtyard, and she saw the looming pachyderm in front of her.
Not just an elephant, at that. It was an elephant complete with rider, and a queer old duck he seemed to be. A slight figure with white puffs of hair and wearing what appeared to be a jet black robe. An Asian of some kind, she realized, and clearly not a member of the local tribe. He held no staff or riding crop, as was the normal practice with most handlers, yet the elephant appeared to understand and willingly obey his orders… to a point.
The creature was distracted now, of course, by the ceratosaurus pacing back and forth some thirty feet away. From all appearances, the two great beasts were strangers to each other, nothing in the way of species recognition visible on either side. The reptile's attitude combined suspicion, anger and a kind of raw malevolence rarely associated with nonhuman species in the wild. The elephant, for its part, seemed determined not to give its snarling enemy the satisfaction of displaying fear. As Audrey watched, it raised its trunk and screeched another challenge at the prehistoric hunter.
The ceratosaurus hesitated briefly, rocked back on its haunches, great tail twitching, then shot forward, massive jaws agape and hissing. If the elephant was startled or intimidated, nothing showed. Instead of bolting for the open gates, it put its head down, furled its trunk to clear the long white tusks—and charged.
Before the two behemoths came together, Audrey saw the rider leap to safety, his kimono flared around him like a vampire's cloak open to the night. He made a perfect three-point touchdown, scrambled clear and turned to watch the jungle giants as they met with a resounding crunch of flesh and bone.
All eyes were on the grim, primeval contest, Audrey's no exception, but her thoughts were not confined to the potential fate of two inhuman gladiators. In the background, when their lurching bodies cleared the way, she had a fair view of the courtyard's phosphorescent fountain, shining like a beacon to her fortune.
The uranium was down there, somewhere underneath this city of grotesque inhabitants. Her contact with the rebels had been broken permanently, thanks to Renton Ward, but there was nothing to prevent her passing map coordinates along to the Chinese, fulfilling her part of the contract to ensure that she received the second payment of five hundred thousand dollars. She would walk into the Chinese embassy in broad daylight, if necessary, and concern herself with consequences afterward.
When she was wealthy and retired.
It crossed her mind that there might even be a bonus in the deal if she could block the Malay government from finding out about the lode before her Chinese sponsors had a chance to make their move. As far as she could make out, only Renton and herself knew anything about the city's radioactive foundation so far. Dear old Safford was off in a dreamworld, watching the ceratosaurus like a child with a new toy on Christmas morning. Sibu Sandakan might work it out if he had time, but it was still a long way back to Kuala Lumpur. Anything could happen on a trip like that—assuming Sandakan escaped the ancient city with his life.
And that left Renton Ward. From what she had already seen, there would be no point trying to surprise him or knock him on the head. Some kind of kung fu expert, for heaven's sake, from the damned New Orleans Serpentarium! That cover wouldn't hold for long, once he got home and started spouting off about their find.
If he got home.
She might get lucky, see an elephant or dinosaur step on him yet. It would be quite a waste, considering his talents in the sex department, but a million dollars would ensure that Audrey Moreland never lacked for male companionship again. Not that she couldn't find a man these days, but something told her she would meet a better class of lover on the Riviera, maybe down in Rio de Janeiro—or Tahiti. Sure, why not?