Brigid recognized the explosion of a mortar round and hauled Pakari away from the side. Almost at the same time, metal clashed loudly and the drive wheels locked as Old 88 braked. Sparks flew from the rims like the fiery tails of crashing comets. The royal entourage went sprawling, one of the guardsmen pitching headlong over a bench. They raised their voices in screams and shouts. The goat bleated in outrage.

  The entire train shook violently in a series of bone- jarring impacts. Old 88 plunged into the blinding cloud of smoke. Only when the front wheels hit the smoldering crater, the shattered ties and the twisted rails did the locomotive crash to a full halt, tipping over to the right. Crying out, several people tumbled out of the car to sprawl on the ground.

  Brigid grabbed a crossbar and managed to keep on her feet, but both Pakari and DeFore fell to all fours. Kane's voice, transmitted over the Commtact, declared breathlessly but with unmistakable grimness, "This is what I was afraid of—Grant was lured away so Laputara could get the drop on us."

  Brigid looked to the left and saw two open-bodied trucks speeding over the rocky plain toward them. Gun barrels protruded from the high sides, pointing in their direction like a collection of accusatory fingers.

  Jumping down from the carriage, Brigid dragged the long, flat ordnance case from beneath a bench, shouting, "Everybody off! Take cover!"

  As she undid the latches, Kane and Inkula sprinted up, both men soot stained and breathing hard. A thread of blood inched from Kane's right nostril, and Inkula held a hand over a raw red abrasion on his forehead.

  Moving to the rear of the car, he unleathered his Sin Eater and fired a long, stuttering fusillade at the bouncing, jouncing trucks. A constellation of sparks flared from one of the vehicle's grilles, then a cloud of steam jetted from the punctured radiator. Both of the trucks veered away from their headlong charge, giving Pakari and DeFore time to clamber down from the carriage and take cover behind it.

  There came a distant crump from a gorge wall, and a second later, rocks and dirt gouted in a flame-wreathed column only a few yards from the prow of Old 88.

  DeFore quickly examined Kane and Inkula, but they waved off her ministrations.

  "Sneaky bastards," Kane growled in grudging admiration, scanning the ramparts from beneath a hand. "They set a mortar emplacement up there, probably last night. Utu lured Grant away so Laputara could do his dirty work."

  Brigid lifted the lid of the case and removed the long hollow cylinder of a LAW 80 rocket launcher. She said, "There's dirty work and there's dirty work."

  Expertly, she pulled the two sections to their full extended length and unfolded the reflex collinator sight on the smooth upper surface.

  Kane eyed it and her dubiously. "Are you sure this is the time and place for your first official launch? You've only taken practice shots before—"

  She shrugged. "No time like the present, is there?"

  Kane reached down and lifted a sleek, two-foot long RPG-4 rocket from the case. Three more lay nestled within beds of foam rubber. "I guess not."

  The truck with the punctured radiator had braked to a halt, steam boiling and hissing all around the cab. The men in the back fired from behind the high, metal- reinforced sides.

  The range was too great for their handguns, but a volley of bullets fired from autorifles stitched ragged holes in the flower-bedecked platform upon which Pakari had stood, sending splinters and blossoms flying in sprays.

  Brigid and Kane crept to the front of the car, kneeling down between it and the fuel tender. Brigid placed the launcher on her shoulder, and Kane inserted the rocket into the rear, giving it a twist so the fins locked into place and said, "Loaded."

  Squinting through the sight, she carefully tracked and centered the crosshairs on the truck, exactly where she figured its fuel tank would be. Calmly, she announced, "Fire in the hole."

  Flame and smoke spewed from the hollow bore of the LAW 80. Propelled by a ribbon of spark-shot vapor, the RPG-4 round lanced from the tube accompanied by a ripping roar. Kane recoiled from the searing heat of the back-blast.

  The projectile impacted squarely against the fuel tank. The warhead detonated, followed a fraction of an instant later by an earsplitting explosion. The truck kicked over sideways, driven by the detonation from beneath that instantly gutted the cab and incinerated anyone within. The vehicle rose up on all four wheels and crashed down, strewing the ground with engine parts. Flames covered every inch of the chassis like a blanket.

  A rain of debris filled the air, jagged pieces of metal banging and clattering down all around, mixed in with chunks and hunks of men's bodies.

  Brigid lowered the LAW and gazed dispassionately at the carnage. After a moment, Kane said, "Like you said...there's dirty work and there's dirty work."

  Chapter 29

  Led by Brigid, Pakari and her entourage sprinted across the stone-littered ground to the shadowed foot of Magebali Kwa Belewagi. One of the men slung the goat over his shoulders and ran with it. For once, the animal didn't bleat in protest.

  The troopers in the second truck abandoned their vehicle and took shelter behind a granite outcropping. They rightly assumed it was impervious to rocket tire. A quick head count showed there were only five men, one of whom Kane guessed was probably Laputara himself.

  Though burdened by a pair of Copperheads, DeFore led Inkula toward a jumble of boulders. Automatic fire crackled and gravel spouted at their heels. Bringing up the rear, Kane fired a triburst at the distant troopers but he knew the shots missed. A Waziri guardsman stumbled, clutching at his chest. Dropping his spear, he kept on trying to run. Then he fell, blood welling from a gaping hole in his left pectoral. He convulsed briefly and made no movement afterwards.

  Pakari screamed in rage and grief. She spun around, running back toward the fallen man. Sweeping her up in the crook of an arm, Kane bore her to the cover provided by the boulders. Although she was tall, she weighed very little.

  "He's dead," he told her flatly. "There's nothing that can be done for him."

  Nostrils flaring, eyes bright with fear and fury, Pakari spit, "We will all be killed!"

  "No," said Inkula calmly. "Not until Laputara has possession of the collar."

  "Speaking of which," Brigid said, testing the actions of her TP-9 and Copperhead, "I hope somebody remembered to bring it along. Otherwise, this whole enterprise will be about the biggest waste of time and lives I've ever been involved with. And that's saying something."

  Kane, DeFore and Pakari gazed at her with troubled eyes, then looked over at Inkula. The blind man sensed the weight of the stares and his lips twitched in a barely repressed sly smile.

  "Well?" Kane challenged impatiently.

  Inkula pulled aside his beard and tugged open his loose-fitting robe. Rubies glinted as bright as freshly spilled blood against his dark brown skin. "I have been wearing this since before dawn. It is heavy and I am anxious to give it over to its rightful owner."

  Kane frowned. "I thought the collar had a euphoric effect on the mind."

  The old man's smile broadened into a grin. "It does. Why else do you think you were so willing so help me run Old 88, to protect me and do whatever I asked of you without argument?"

  For a second, Kane's face registered only confusion.

  Then comprehension and anger flashed in his pale eyes. "You've been influencing my mind all damn day?"

  Inkula pinched the air with a thumb and forefinger. "Only the tiniest bit, Kane. I would not have been able to sway you at all if you had not already been predisposed to help the Waziri."

  Struggling to tamp down his mounting rage, Kane snarled, "You sneaky old son of a—"

  The report from the mortar launcher sounded like the bursting of a wet paper bag, but all of them crouched, leaning into the boulders. The round fell short by several yards, but they still flinched away from the explosive concussion. Pebbles and grit pattered down all around.

  Peering carefully over the top of the rock tumble, Brigid said, "We're just barely out of range."

  "That works both ways, right?" DeFore inquired sourly. "But if we start walking up the trail, Laputara and his boys will move in and put us in range."

  Pakari's face twisted. She looked like a small, frightened child. "What can we do?"

  Inkula rested a hand on her arm. "You can talk to him."

  The girl stared at him in shock. "He'll kill me!" "Not before he has the collar," Brigid interjected. Pakari drew a deep, uneasy breath. "He won't listen to anything I have to say."

  "Maybe not," said Kane, cutting his eyes over to Inkula. "But maybe he'll listen to the collar."

  Inkula nodded, gnarled fingers touching the gems. "It's worth a try. But he has to be much closer to feel its effects...so close in fact, he might as well be wearing it."

  "We'll lure him to us, just like Utu did with Grant," Brigid stated.

  Kane nodded, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "We'll start up the trail. He'll damn sure follow, but the trick is to stay out of range of his men's guns. Princess, have your guards ever used firearms?"

  The question took Pakari by surprise. After a thoughtful moment, she said, "Not that I recollect. But they learn very fast if the task is simple enough."

  Gesturing to DeFore and Brigid, Kane said, "Give them your Copperheads. There's no more simple a task than pointing a gun and shooting. They don't have to be accurate to keep Laputara and his jolt-brains from overrunning us."

  "They won't shoot Laputara," she objected. "If he orders them to cease fire and turn over their weapons, they will have no choice but to do so."

  "Don't let them know Laputara is among the attackers," DeFore said, unslinging her Copperhead.

  "Tell them to just keep the soldiers pinned down until we're out of sight up the mountain," Brigid suggested. "Then they can run or surrender or whatever they choose to do."

  Pakari nibbled at her underlip, her eyelids drooping over eyes dull with weariness and grief. After a moment she said, "Mr. Grant is missing, possibly dead, Old 88 is destroyed, my loyal followers will probably die and it's all because of me and a ridiculous tradition."

  "It's not because of you or tradition," Inkula said softly. "It is because of your mad half brother and an arrogant pretender to godhood."

  Pakari swallowed hard. "I'm scared to death." DeFore gave her a jittery smile. "Join the club, sweetie."

  THE TRAIL LEADING up from the base of the mountain was rugged and steep, but there was no other option but to follow it. The sky darkened quickly and Kane estimated less than hour remained before sunset. He had no desire to still be picking his way up the face of the mountain once night fell.

  The rocket launcher bumped in an irritating rhythm against Kane's right hip as they climbed. Once more he brought up the rear. Ahead of him trudged Pakari, Inkula, DeFore and a male member of the retinue who had been charged with carrying the goat. Brigid walked beside him. The rest of the entourage had remained below with the guardsmen. The trail itself was a narrow fissure gouged knee-deep in the face of the mountain, overhung by crags of black stone.

  Kane grimaced at the searing touch of the hot wind whining around his face, blinking against the grit that stung his eyes. He paused to put on his dark-vision glasses. The light-intensification feature of the electrochemical polymer allowed him to see clearly in shadow for approximately ten feet as long as there was some kind of light source. The lenses also protected his eyes.

  He looked up at the sky, squinting as blurry, amoeba like distortions swam across his vision and he rubbed them with thumb and forefinger. Glancing down the slope, he saw the tiny specks of Laputara and his men creeping across the gravel plain. They were spread out to present more difficult targets, but they assumed they faced only spears. Kane hoped the Waziri guardsmen lying in wait behind the boulders would not act until they were sure their enemies drew closer and then catch them in a triangulated cross fire.

  Even as the notion registered, one of Pakari's guards bounded atop a rock and began firing the subgun from shoulder level, wildly spraying the plain with a full-auto burst. The staccato hammering floated up from below and everyone turned to watch. The troopers ducked behind any available cover and went to ground, returning the fire with their AK-47s.

  Kane turned away, shaking his head in disgust. Briefly he considered launching a rocket to add more discouragement to the troopers, but decided to save the three remaining projectiles for a more immediate and formidable threat. At the moment, he couldn't imagine what form that threat might take, but his pointman's sense was on the verge of bursting into full alarm.

  The farther they climbed, the more signs of ancient construction they encountered—fragments of a blue- tiled reinforcing wall and a small, faceless, winged statue, eroded out of recognition by the scouring of wind and sand.

  Brigid pointed to them and said, her voice hoarse with strain, "Those artefacts pre-date the accepted time period of Prester John."

  "Annunaki?" Kane asked.

  She shook her head. "Not that far back. Abyssinian, maybe."

  The party continued climbing, the distant crackle of gunfire accompanying their ascent. Because of the way the path curved beneath ribs of rock, they could not observe the events down below.

  Three quarters of the way to the summit, the trail abruptly ended, flowing into a declivity in the face of the mountain, almost like a valley nestled within a fold of rock. The dim track led deeper into the depression.

  A pair of shapeless statues squatted atop pedestals on either side of the crevice. Their featureless heads were bent forward, as to sniff out interlopers. The general outline of the sculptures suggested apes, but the merciless hand of time and the elements had blurred individual features.

  "This is the threshold," Inkula called back. "This is where we will hold the investiture ritual."

  Kane stepped forward, peering into the black mouth of the passage. Just looking at it made him feel very wary, as though he stared into the maw of some ravenous monster. In fact, he felt more than wary, he felt scared, but he stomped down on the fear, crushing it. His pointman's sense shrilled sharp warnings in his mind.

  Pakari cast an anxious glance around her at the grim landscape and hugged herself. "I don't like it. I feel like we're being watched."

  Old Inkula patted her shoulder. "We must begin the ceremony while there is still some daylight to see the threshold."

  "Threshold?" echoed DeFore. "Threshold to what?"

  A low grating sound, like a wire-bristled brush being dragged over jagged metal, reached their ears. The hair prickled on the nape of Kane's neck. He looked around but nothing moved. The strange noise continued—then the man carrying the goat howled with terror. His eyes bulged wide, fixed on a point behind Kane.

  Skipping around, Sin Eater springing into his hand, Kane searched for a threat—and found it. All the moisture in his mouth dried to a bitter-tasting film of fear.

  For a split second, he felt trapped in the mire of a nightmare as he tried to convince himself he looked only at a trick of the light that confused the eye and confounded the mind.

  With a shimmer like quicksilver sliding over glass, the outlines of the pair of amorphous statues seemed to writhe, acquiring detail and features. Within a moment, two gorilla forms sat stooped on the pedestals, leaning forward on their long, coarse-furred arms, resting their massive weight on doorknob-sized knuckles. Lipless mouths gaped to reveal tusk-like fangs, and broad nostrils flared wide.

  Eyes wide with fear, Pakari shrilled, "The legends are true! The mountain is guarded by flesh-eating apes!"

  The bestial faces turned toward them and deep-set eyes of red fire blazed from beneath jutting, overhanging brows.

  "You're about half-right," Brigid snapped, raising her TP-9 in a double-fisted grip. "Synthetic apes."

  Chapter 30

  Kane wasn't certain of the implications of Brigid's declaration, and at the moment he wasn't inclined to question her. He stared at the two creatures as they swayed on the pedestals, eyeing their swag bellies and the huge pectoral muscles swelling in giant arches over their chests.

  Their large heads, sunk between solid lumps of shoulder muscle, were topped by sagittal crests for the attachment of the massive jaw muscles. The apes looked identical with heavy, supraorbital ridges shadowing their eyes, the protruding muzzles and long yellow canines. He guessed that once they stood up, they would reach or exceed his height.

  Brigid said quietly over her shoulder, "Reba, get everybody back, deeper into the tunnel."

  DeFore did so, stepping back into the cleft, pulling Inkula and Pakari with her by the arms. The man holding the goat was too shocked to move, paralyzed with fear.

  The apes made snuffling grunts in reaction to the movement of the people.

  "They look like real gorillas to me," Kane whispered to Brigid.

  "They very well may have been," she replied in the same low tone. "At one time. They served as the template for—"

  Both creatures uttered thunderous roars and leaped down into the fissure, swinging wide their hairy arms.

  Kane's finger depressed the trigger stud of his Sin Eater, and Brigid began firing her autopistol. The impacts turned the apes this way and that, but they remained on their feet. No blood spurted from the wounds. Snarling, they swatted out for the guns.

  Brigid and Kane leaped aside, backpedaling toward the dark passage, avoiding the keg like, black-nailed hands by fractional margins. One of the gorillas thrust out a long arm and a leathery paw closed around the fear-frozen man's face, completely covering it. There was a sound as of pottery being crushed underfoot.

  The ape opened his hand and the man collapsed to the ground, his limbs slack, his head pulped and squeezed horribly out of shape. The terrified goat went bleating and cantering deeper into the cleft. The ape stood over the corpse and bellowed in triumph, drumming on its chest, tiny eyes glowing crimson.

  Brigid rose up from behind a small outcropping and, taking a double-handed grip on her weapon, fired the autopistol in a steady roll at both of the bestial shapes. Several bullets passed through their squat bodies, the rounds chiseling dust-spurting notches in the stone behind them.

 

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