Adskhan looked to the east and saw nothing but flat land. “How far you walk?” Hall got unsteadily to his feet, wobbled, his eyes not yet focused to his surroundings.
“How far you walk?” he asked again.
“I don’t know.”
For a long moment Adskhan stared at him. Then: “You ride camel,” he said.
“What?”
“You ride camel.”
Adskhan took his riding switch and tapped the camel’s legs, signaling it to get down and prepare itself to be mounted. When it did, Adskhan aided Hall onto the camel’s back, and began to usher Hall and the camel along with the pull of the tether.
Never once did Hall relinquish the backpack or allowed it to slide from his grasp.
As mindless as he was, he held on to it all the way back to safe territory.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Alyssa and Savage saw the Megalania Prisca keeping pace on the bank beside them, the creature bounding like a puppy in play, its head taking periodic glances their way, the receptors within its frill telling it that they were there, they were close.
“John!”
“I see it!”
They reached out and held hands so that they weren’t driven apart by the current. In the distance was something they immediately recognized. It was the incessant roar of water rushing over the edge of a ravine.
“John, it’s a waterfall!”
The Megalania Prisca called out, its frill shaking in agitation. It was about to lose its quarry.
“Swim to the edge of the opposite bank!” he shouted.
The current was getting stronger, pulling them faster. The roar of the falls was getting louder.
“We’re not going to make it!”
“Swim!” he goaded.
They paddled for the edge with every fiber in their bodies, with all the strength they could muster, fighting their way to the shore opposite the Prisca.
They were ten feet away from the bank, the depth getting shallower. But the edge of the fall could be seen.
They were eighty feet away.
“John!”
…Seventy feet and closing…
The Megalania Prisca was livid. Its prey was about to be lost forever.
Rearing up to a bipedal stance, the creature then dove into the water. In general, the lizard is a natural swimmer, graceful and elegant in waterways, using its tail as a rudder. Its head stayed above the level of the surface, getting closer, its tail moving back and forth in serpentine motion.
“John, it’s coming!”
They were close to the bank, only feet away, Alyssa buoying them because of her ankle.
The Prisca was getting closer.
The current was growing stronger, faster.
And Alyssa was losing her grip. “John!”
The roar of the falls was deafening, coming dangerously close.
…Forty feet…
And then Savage reached the bank, clawing at dry surface, his other hand barely hanging onto Alyssa as the power of the current threatened to sweep her out of his hand, out of his grip.
The Prisca fought against the current by trying to swim vertically and against the grain. With powerful sweeps of its tail it had propelled itself halfway across the river, but it continued to fight against the increasing power of the current, which drew it closer to the edge.
…It was thirty-five feet away from the spill…
It roared.
Savage was able to grab Alyssa by both hands and pull her to the bank.
…It was thirty feet away from the spill… inching closer…
Now it was two-thirds across the river, its tail sweeping.
Above them was a manhole-sized opening that allowed a streamer of light to filter in. To get to it, however, was going to be tough, since it was a near vertical climb along a stone wall, which was impossible with Alyssa’s ankle.
She read his mind. “You know I can’t.”
The Prisca was twenty feet away from the fall’s edge.
“It’s going over,” she said.
But she was wrong. The Prisca made it to the bank and was watching them intently.
Savage looked at the wall, at the climb. “You have no choice!” he told her. “You have to try!”
And then the Megalania Prisca came forward.
Leviticus, Nehemiah and the rest of the team had completed the set up of the charges with them set to go off in a coordinated pattern beginning with the center explosion, then working outward toward the perimeter so that the structure would implode upon itself, leaving a gaping sink hole.
“An hour or so before sundown,” said Nehemiah. “We’re right on schedule.”
“The chopper is on its way,” said Leviticus. “So give it another few minutes before we blow it. We don’t want to draw the authorities too quickly on seismic readings. I want to make sure we’re long gone by the time the readings are recorded.”
“Ten minutes, then?”
Leviticus looked at the horizon. “Ten minutes,” he confirmed.
The Megalania Prisca was moments away from a final kill when the receptors of its frill informed it that its quarry was trying to escape.
Alyssa and Savage were about ten feet above the base floor with Alyssa struggling with the footholds, her bad ankle becoming a disadvantage, the climb glacially slow. John Savage was beneath her assuring that she made gains. In his hand was the KA-BAR. Beneath him, the Prisca was looking up with its tail swinging back and forth along the ground like an excited canine. Its jaws were open with its pink gullet and needlelike teeth, waiting for the fall.
“You can do it, Alyssa.”
She didn’t complain. With the strength in her arms and her one good leg she pulled herself upward, her good foot finding a gap that kept her firm to the wall.
He edged up behind her, taking glances at the lizard beneath him. The thing was huge, he considered, so the knife would essentially be ineffective given the toxicity of a single bite. And then he began to climb at the same painfully slow pace as Alyssa toward an opening that seemed so far and so out of reach.
The hole was at least thirty feet away and the light was fading fast as the angle of the setting sun pinched the illumination into a thin streamer of light.
The creature was growing bolder.
“I’m sorry, John! We’re running out of time! There’s no point to this! You need to pass me and climb out!”
“I’m not leaving you behind!”
“You’re not being rational!”
“I’m a man! We’re never rational!” The Prisca began to pace below, anticipating. “Climb, Alyssa! We can do this!”
She pulled herself up, straining every muscle in her body and winning the fight. She moved up another foot. And then another.
But the light was growing dimmer, causing shadows within the cavern to become pools of absolute darkness rather than just spots of gloom. When the Megalania Prisca found the moment of opportunity, when the light was at its weakest point, it began to scale the wall using its talons like pitons.
Looking downward to gauge his position, John suddenly found himself staring right into the maw of his predator.
It was that close.
Nehemiah had his thumb on the switch, his eyes on Leviticus as he waited for the OK.
“This is your baby,” Leviticus told him.
It was getting dark. The sun halfway beyond the horizon, which meant the chopper was on its way.
Nehemiah nodded. “Fire in the hole!” And then he hit the button.
When the center charge went off, a mushroom cloud of dust boiled skyward. And then the subsequent charges went off in sequence, the explosions working across the landing one after the other from the center to the temple’s perimeter.
The center of the facility caved, and then its edges followed, the hole growing wider as the charges continued to go off.
Dirt and rock and desert sand tried to fill the gap, but the hole was too deep.