“Any more of them?”
“Not yet,” Hood said.
“What’s down here, anyway?”
“Deviltry.” He held up the amber staff with his mutilated hand. Blood dripped from the bandage.
“No good on your lonesome, are you? What happened?”
“We were fighting over some kind of goddamn magic wand. SS cutlery is pretty sharp. Actually, Keyuri here finished the amputation.”
“She chopped off your finger?”
“With a kiss.” He grimaced.
“No wonder you’re smitten. She’s not dead, is she?”
“Not yet. Wounded, though.”
“You’re going to have to boost her up. There’re more nuns above.”
“Nuns?”
“There’s a nunnery outside the valley with tunnels into this anthill. The abbess gave me blood to unlock the booby hatch I just dropped from. She said they use blood like a key. Can you believe that?”
“Unfortunately, yes. My surgeon has already saved my finger for that quaint custom.” He bent under the pipe. “Keyuri, help has come. We’re going to patch you up, all right?”
The young woman groaned.
Beth stooped to examine her. “Wow, that’s bad. Okay, I’m going to use my flying scarf to bandage her up. Then we’re going to boost her on top of the pipe, I’ll get in the shaft that goes upstairs, and you lift her to me.”
“You’re saving her life, Beth. You probably saved mine.”
“Damn right, Professor. So let’s move, or do you want to spoil my track record?”
He looked up the hole she’d dropped from. There were torches flickering far above, and a halo of shaven figures peering down a well at him, clad in scarlet. The women’s eyes were wide and fearful.
As gently as they could, they lifted Keyuri atop the pipe and climbed up themselves. Then Beth leaped for a handhold in the shaft, hauled herself up, swung her head and arms upside down again, and braced to lift the nun. Hood felt awkward having the two women together. He’d made love to both of them. Keyuri, however, was going into shock, and Beth seemed intent simply on escaping.
Then the earth quivered slightly.
There was a clunk, a whine, and a pale illumination came on in the tunnel below. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the rocks and the air and the motes of dust, spangling the corridor.
Raeder was starting the machine again.
Hood called up to Calloway. “How did you find us?”
“After I put the biplane down I hiked up to that smoke we saw. Turned out to be this crazy nunnery. These nuns stand watch until the time is right, the abbess said. They were buzzing like a disturbed hive because no one had approached for centuries, and then those Nazis climbed in like human flies. When I told them you’d parachuted in, it was like announcing Herbert Hoover had snuck back into the White House. They went nuts. Then we heard this gawd-awful noise. What the hell do these Germans have? A Big Bertha cannon?”
“It’s a stick that shoots fire.”
“A fire stick? We’re Indians now?”
“In our technological understanding. There’s stuff down here that looks like it’s out of Buck Rogers, Beth. Heaps of bones, too. Something went terribly wrong.”
“I’ll say. Is your pal Raeder still down there?”
“Yes, I think he just started the big machine again. I think it reloads a fire stick. A magic staff like this one.” He held it up. “I don’t think we should let a man like Kurt Raeder have it.”
“I’ll say. Well, let’s start with Keyuri. I’ll drag her up to the nuns.”
Hood lifted the groaning, half-conscious Tibetan, watching her small, dangling feet disappear up the chimney. In the dimness, it was as if she were floating skyward. Then Beth dropped back down to the hole in the roof of Hood’s tunnel, holding out an arm. “You next.”
He shook his head.
“Thanks for coming back for me, but I was sent here to put a stop to this. I think Raeder’s going to try to take another one of those thunderbolt staffs back to Adolf Hitler. I don’t think I can let him do that.”
“How you going to stop him?”
“Just two krauts left, I think.”
“Then I’m coming with you, Ben. Even odds.”
“No. This isn’t your fight.”
“The hell it isn’t! That bastard dragged my biplane to the middle of nowhere.” She looked at him expectantly. Keyuri was shot, Hood desperate. This was a way to cement their partnership.
“No.” He shook his head decisively. “I might not make it. I want you to take this staff of mine to the surface. It’s too low on juice to fight with, but I think we need to show it to the American government. War’s coming.”
“We can leave it with the nuns for a minute. We get Raeder, and then we worry about the shaft.”
“No, Beth. I want you to fly it, and Keyuri, back to Lhasa.”
“I’m flying you to Lhasa!”
“Listen. There’s only room in the biplane for two. If I don’t survive, none of this matters if we can’t report what happened. Somebody has to get out alive. Somebody has to warn the Tibetans, so they can arrest Raeder if he tries to escape overland. There’s something strange about how this place feels, like it does something corrupting. So stay clear. If I stop him, I’ll come back here. If not, Keyuri and you have to tell what happened. And Keyuri is shot. You have to make her well.”
“I’m no doctor! You make her well. Maybe we can just seal Raeder in.”
“And maybe he’ll blow his way out, if we let him play with this infernal machine long enough. Please go up and wait.”
“This is nuts.” It was the end, Beth could feel it, and it tore her in two. She liked this guy. He was an egghead, all right, but an egghead with gumption, dammit. “Leave the fanatics down here to play with their machine, Ben. If he’s got another magic wand, what chance do you have if you give this one up? Where’s your pistol?”
“It jammed, and Keyuri’s carrying it. But I’ll take the submachine gun of the German you just shot. I’ll get the drop on them.”
“Ben…” She was pleading.
He wearily held up his bloody hand. “I’ve been lucky my whole life. Rich my whole life. Catered to my whole life. And rarely had much I cared about, except shooting blue sheep and falling for both of you. Now I’ve fallen into something important, against a man I know better than anyone. Kurt Raeder and I have been destined to come back together ever since the death of Keyuri’s husband.”
Beth’s faced twisted. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“And I need to straighten things out. It starts with Shambhala.”
“This isn’t Shambhala,” Beth said. “Not this evil power. This isn’t what the legends promise.”
“Well, whatever it is, we need to button it up before all hell breaks loose in the world. I was told it wouldn’t be difficult for me to kill Kurt Raeder, and I realize Duncan Hale was right. Go, seal the door until it’s over. Save Keyuri.”
The aviatrix shut her eyes. “Try not to lose any more fingers.”
“I wish we’d kept that scotch.”
“I could use a swig myself.”
The nuns called down “Hurry!” in English.
“At least I’ve got a flashlight for you in case the lights go out.” Beth handed him one and glanced at his holster. “And take my pistol.”
“No, I’ll have the machine gun. I can’t leave you unarmed.”
“You’re the one going to a gunfight, and you’d better have a backup. Take it, dammit, so I can go heal your girlfriend. Meanwhile I’ll fix your forty-five.”
“She’s not…” He stopped, frustrated. “Thanks.” He took the revolver, a cowboy six-shooter, and jammed it in his holster.
“Don’t get too grateful. There’s just one bullet left. It’s for you, if you get trapped in the cave.”
“Oh.”
“I think ahead.”
He smiled, tiredly. Then he went to the body of the dead German lying in a flower of blood. Calloway was quite the crack shot with a pistol; there were three holes in the bastard. He picked up the machine gun, lighter and more practical than anything Americans had.