She was clawing at his clothes, unbuttoning his pants, and to his own surprise he was responding. What was wrong with him? She was a Buddhist nun! This was as crazy as the Nazis, but of course he didn’t care. She pulled him down on top of her, her robes pulled up, knees high, hips lifted, and in seconds they’d fused. She clung and rocked urgently. “Please, we may never have time again.”
She was impatient. A few thrusts, she bucked, he finished.
“I’m sorry, you took me by surprise…”
She put her finger to his lips. Rather than be displeased with his speed she seemed fiercely satisfied, pulling him as deep as she could, hips quivering as she gently rocked. “It’s good.”
At least he’d forgotten about his hand.
Keyuri let out a loud, shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes shut. Then she reached up to pull him close again and kissed, fiercely, and then just as abruptly pushed him off her. “We must go, but this was my only chance for salvation.”
“That’s some salvation.” He looked at her in wonder. “What about your vows?”
“He already raped me again.”
“Raeder? Did the other krauts know?”
“Yes and no. I don’t know. What does it matter?” There was sorrow there, a profound sense of loss and doom. “I just didn’t want him to be my last. Now, tend to your clothes. We have to hurry to find the second door.”
“I thought you said you sealed the Germans off? Seems to me we have eternity.” He looked down the tunnel into the dark.
“To Westerners, everything is a line. To us, all is circular. Look down the tunnel. How far can you see?”
“It’s dim…”
“The pipe doesn’t extend forever, it disappears, like a ship going over the horizon. This tunnel gently curves.”
“What does that mean?”
“The tunnel is a circle. If you walk far enough from this end of the machine you will come to the other, like walking around the world. The beginning is the end, and the end the beginning. These pipes stretch to infinity, they never end. And yet they go nowhere at all.”
“Is that some kind of Tibetan riddle?”
“Whatever is in these pipes, it’s meant to come back to where it started,” she said. “That’s not a riddle, it’s a mandala, a map of the universe.”
He stood. “But if this tunnel leads back to the machine…”
“Yes. They can come at us from the other end. We have to hope it will take them a while to figure that out.”
“Maybe they’ve given up. And we’ve got this crazy staff.”
“Raeder would give you up. Even give me up. But not the staff.”
Hood took a breath, furious at Raeder for Keyuri all over again, but also oddly renewed. She hadn’t depleted him, she’d tapped new strength. She’d recharged him, like the machine apparently had done to the magic wand here. By blazes, was she in love with him still? Was he in love with her, as Reting and Beth believed? What happened to the three of them if they got out of this nightmare?
But Keyuri, he sensed, didn’t expect to.
“Okay,” he said. “Listen for Nazis coming the other way. The light from this staff keeps getting weaker, and I’ve got a feeling there’s not much pop left. I think it’s low on ammo. Give me back my pistol.”
“You can’t carry it in your injured hand and I told you, it doesn’t work.”
He grimaced. “We need to find that second door. Then we can destroy the tunnel in the other direction and escape.”
The rock tunnel they were fleeing down had no decoration on its sides, and no doors. It just ran on and on, mile after mile, a tube in solid rock. The pipes were mute beside it. They ran, then jogged, then trotted, wheezing from exertion. Mile followed mile. Hood left bright drops of blood on the floor like a spoor trail.
“How long is this tunnel?”
“Not long enough,” said Keyuri.
And then there was a burst of machine-gun fire.
Bullets whined and pinged as they bounced down the curving tunnel. It was a German coming from the other side. They were trapped.
Hood clenched the staff. “Better to go down fighting,” he said. “I can try to blast with this, or maybe hide in the dark behind the big pipe and clobber them. You’ve got your knife… Keyuri?”
He turned. She’d fallen down.
“Keyuri!”
Blood was pooling out beneath her onto the smooth rock floor.
One of the Germans, not Raeder, shouted. “Give it up, Hood! I have a machine gun! Surrender the staff and I let you live!”
The Nazi wasn’t coming close, however. He’d seen the explosion at the other end of the tunnel and was keeping a wary distance.
Hood knelt near the nun and gently turned her over. The front of her coat was sticky with blood and she was wheezing. It looked like she’d been hit in the lower lung. Not instantly fatal, but not good.
“Keyuri, I’m going to drag you between the pipes and the far wall. At least it will protect you from a stray bullet.”
She moaned. “Maybe he’ll go past us,” she whispered.
“No, he’ll see the light of the staff. How do we turn it off?”
“I don’t know.”
The beam of a flashlight stabbed toward them. The German kept a cautious fifty yards away, too far for accurate submachine-gun fire but also far enough to be out of easy range of their thunder stick.
“Hood, I know you’re there! Come out with your hands up if you want to live!” he called in English. “Come out, and we spare the nun!”
He and Keyuri stayed silent, hiding behind a pipe.
“You can’t escape, you blocked your own retreat. Come out, American, and we negotiate, eh? Do you want the girl hurt?”
Hood squeezed the shaft with his left hand, feeling the familiar jolt of power. His only hope was that he got a shot at the German before the German saw him.
Then the Nazi flashlight went out.
The staff glowed brighter. Amber illumination peeked from under the piping.
“Ah, there you are. You ran with the wrong man, Keyuri. He led you into a trap.”
Why not at least save her? She wasn’t dead yet. “I’m going to surrender in return for your life,” he whispered. “Raeder still wants you in his own twisted way. He may still spare you.”
She shook her head. “If he does, it will be to destroy me slowly. He needs to destroy people, Ben. You know that.”
They heard footsteps, a heavy tread, coming toward them. Slowly, cautiously, inexorably. “Don’t make me kill you!” the German called.
“Let him come closer,” she whispered. “Then erase him.”
Feisty for a Buddhist nun. Hood rose and braced, dreading to have to fire the painful thunder stick again. Would it bring everything down on top of them? Then the flashlight came on, blinding. Its cone of illumination fell directly on him, and then played over the pool of Keyuri’s blood.
“I see you! Stand, stand!” The stubby snout of the machine gun gleamed, dark and oily in the gloom. The German was nervous but excited. “Come out, come out, it’s your only chance! Come out or I machine-gun the girl!”
Slowly Hood put down the staff.
“No!” Keyuri groaned.
He didn’t care. The German was too far away. A thunderbolt could bring the whole tunnel down on them. He had to save her.
“Raise your hands! Climb over the pipes!”
He began to do so.
The German raised the submachine gun. “Now. We finish this and get out of here.” He nodded and aimed.
And then there was the crack of a pistol. Several shots rang out and the German jerked, a hole appearing in the middle of his forehead, and he slowly toppled backward. A tendril of blood ran down his face. His torso was punctured, too. His submachine gun fell with a clatter. He sat down with a woof, looking at where a new light blazed from the ceiling. His mouth opened, as if seeing an apparition.
And now a new voice came down, as if from heaven.
“This way, college boy. And bring baldy there with you.”
33
Eldorado Peak, Cascade Mountains
September 6, Present Day