'Can you see anyone else other than the driver?' Tweed asked.
'Not from where I'm sitting,' Newman replied.
Paula gently pushed Tweed back against his seat. She elevated her machine-pistol, aiming it through the open window. It had been so warm in the car before the window was lowered she had begun to feel sleepy. Now, with the ice-cold air pouring in, she was totally alert.
The rumble of the big snowplough was very loud as it came on, much closer, spewing great quantities of snow off the highway. Just before it drew level the driver took off his peaked cap, waved it to them, then proceeded past them as Paula swiftly dropped her weapon out of sight. She let out her breath.
'Now we can relax.'
'No, we can't,' Tweed warned. 'Somewhere ahead I anticipate a major attack. So stay at the ready.'
Newman increased speed – the gap between his and Marler's car had grown. Tweed closed the window and Paula started gazing out. Here and there she saw an isolated house made of wood, standing well back from the road, with welcoming lights. The houses had very steep roofs, presumably to slough off an accumulation of heavy snow.
In the distance was a sweeping panorama of far-off summits, white with snow, of deep valleys inside which she saw tiny colonies of houses huddled at the bottom. One panorama succeeded another and in the moonlight it looked like paradise.
'It's so peaceful,' she commented.
'It is, so far,' Tweed warned.
'The red light is growing fainter,' called out Newman. 'Same direction, but for some reason Ronstadt has speeded up.'
'So has Marler,' Keith Kent said, speaking for the first time.
'I'm doing the same,' Newman replied as he accelerated.
'We're getting close to the Hollental,' Paula announced after checking her map with the aid of her torch. 'Very close, I'd say.'
A few minutes later they entered a vast gorge. On both sides steep rugged slopes closed in on the highway. Paula felt a return of a sense of tension. The slopes, almost vertical in places, seemed to hem in the car. And now their height hid the moon, still shining on the upper slopes, but plunging the gorge into deepest shadow. No more cosy little houses with their welcoming lights. Just the dark remote gorge, cutting off all contact with the outside world.
'I wonder how Marler's getting on?' Newman speculated. 'For some reason he's slowed down again.'
'Keep a close eye on the heights,' Marler said to Nield. 'I am doing just that.'
'If they're up there they have to have found somewhere they could drive up, I don't think they'd go in for any mountaineering if they could help it. In any case they'd have to park the car on the highway.'
'Why are we going so slowly?' Butler called out from the back.
'So we can see if they have turned off,' Marler told him.
He had his lights on full beam, so he could look as far ahead as possible. Glancing up, he detected enormous snow-covered boulders poised high above them. Not a sight he welcomed. He checked his screen. The red light, which was Ronstadt's car, was fainter, telling him the American had increased his speed considerably. Why?
He leaned forward, staring at the precipitous slope to his left. Could he be wrong? He drove on, still staring hard. Then he saw it wasn't his imagination. Ahead, climbing up the slope to his left, he made out the double tracks of a car's wheels, deep ruts in the otherwise virgin snow. He increased his speed.
'Hold on to your seat belts. We're going up that slope. That's where they are. Lord knows how high above us.'
Butler held his breath as Marler swung the car at speed – skidding as his rear wheels swung round. He rammed his foot down and began climbing what turned out to be a curving gulley with high banks of snow on either side. The snow tyres gripped the hard-frozen ground as he plunged higher still.
Perched on the heights way above where the gulley left the highway, Brad, squat and ugly, but powerful, had earlier watched the highway far below through his night glasses. He had seen Ronstadt's convoy of three black Audis pass, heading deeper into the Hollental. Brad was in charge of the unit of four men, given the task of destroying Tweed and his team.
'Dan,' he called out to a big man with a down-curving moustache, 'you've got an automatic rifle. Climb that tall tree over there. Do it now – before the bastards arrive.'
'Buster,' he shouted to a fat man with a face like a slab of stone, 'you've got your machine-pistol. Get down behind that 'boulder so's you can cover the exit from the gulley. Just in case.'
'And you, Bruce, he shouted again, 'you got your boulder ready to go down with mine?'
Bruce, heavily built with a scarred forehead, like Brad stood at the edge of the ridge with a steep rolling slope below, but further along. He held a crowbar he'd used to lever the rock loose. Now he only had to heave on the crowbar inserted under it to send it down at murderous speed onto the highway.
Brad was standing behind an enormous snow-covered boulder. It had taken all his considerable strength to lever it out so now it was poised on the brink. He stood with his crowbar shoved well underneath it. Like Bruce, he had only to exert enough pressure to send it flying into space. He called out again to Bruce.
'T'ain't just the boulders which will kill Tweed's cars and everyone inside them. When the boulders go down they'll start an avalanche. Slope below us is unstable…'
When Marler suddenly swung off the highway up the gulley at speed he had no way of knowing he had averted – at least temporarily – their doom.
About to lever the boulders, Brad was taken by surprise at Marler's unexpected and swift manoeuvre. Earlier he had used his glasses to check who was in Marler's car. No sign of the girl Ronstadt had described to him, no sign of Tweed, also described to him. He decided to take the car out anyway – until the last second.
'Bruce!' he screamed. 'Not yet! They're in the gulley, comin' up.' He switched his attention to the man with the machine-pistol behind a boulder. 'Buster! They's drivin' up the gulley. Blast the car to hell soon as it appears…'
Marler was making steady progress, swinging the wheel quickly as one curve succeeded another and blotted out any view of the top. The snow tyres saved him, kept the car moving up and up and up. It was still deep in the gulley with the high snow-covered banks on both sides.
'Damned gulley goes on for ever,' Butler called out.
'It has to end somewhere,' Marler called back.
He had just spoken when the car swung round another curve and he saw, beyond a very steep stretch of track, moonlight glowing at the top.
On the highway Newman, worried that the red circle on the screen which was Ronstadt's car was fading, had accelerated. He was now moving at speed as Paula looked up at the steep slope on her left. High up along the rim in the near distance she saw boulders perched – boulders which had been there probably since prehistoric times.
'We're catching up with Ronstadt,' Newman told them. 'The red light is stronger. Can't see any sign of Marler's rear lights. Don't understand that.'
'Just keep moving,' Tweed urged.
'What do you think I'm doing!'
Near the top of the gulley Marler braked at the foot of the last steep stretch. He left the engine running. No profit in finding themselves without transport out here in the middle of nowhere. His mind was racing as he Inside their Audi, Paula saw the massive boulder roaring down. She calculated it would hit the highway just ahead of them – or hit them.
'Brake!' she screamed.
Newman reacted, not knowing why. He brought the car to an emergency stop. In the back Tweed and Kent had braced themselves but they were, thrown forward against their seat belts, which saved them. The boulder hit the highway, bounced, seemed to pass across their windscreen. It continued its passage of tremendous velocity across the highway, dived down into a gulch, clear of the other lane.