Ник Картер - War from the Clouds

The only way to climb, I deduced, would be to put my feet on one side of the wall and my back against the other. By scooting along, like a mountain climber in a narrow ravine or cleft, I’d be able to make progress. It would be slow progress, but I knew the chimney must narrow as it rose. It must also twist and turn, giving us purchase with our feet and hands.

Then again, I thought, this isn’t a man-made hole up through the mountain. Smoke and air don’t need large or perfect openings. The chimney might have places where it narrowed too much to permit the passage of anything the size of a man.

There was, of course, only one way to find answers to all my speculations. And that was to climb up.

I was tempted to go on alone, knowing that time was precious and that I could make much better time on my own. But I would need the warriors and Elicia at the top. I would need firepower. That is, if this chimney had an opening at the top big enough for us to get through.

I loosened the loop of rope on the jutting rock and made a more secure link over a greater section of rock. When the rope was ready, I looked down and saw that Elicia and the four warriors were still fending off bats.

“Climb up first, Elicia,” I shouted. “The rope is secure.”

“Nick, I can’t do it,” she shouted back. “The bats. They’re attacking our eyes.”

I looked harder and sure enough the bats were not missing them in their diving attacks. Most were still swooping past Elicia and the others, but some — perhaps the mothers of the disenfranchised babies — were making direct hits, going for the eyes.

I remembered reading somewhere that bats were frightened of loud noises. The sound of our voices had alarmed them and had got them stirred up. What would a louder sound do to them?

I didn’t know, but anything was worth a try. I got Wilhelmina out of its pouch and aimed at a point to the side of the platform. It wouldn’t do to have a ricochet or a hunk of splintered rock hit Elicia or the others.

BOOM!

The whole damned cave seemed to explode in a rolling crescendo of thunder. The sound of the shot echoed from wall to wall and back again, nearly blasting out my eardrums. I could imagine what the sound must have been like below.

The bats went wild then. The deafening sound of the luger shot must have fritzed up their radar. They screeched and slammed into the walls of the cave. The mothers gave up their attack on Elicia and the warriors and went sailing off into walls. Some of them even flopped into the icy pond and a few others sailed out through the narrow opening into the afternoon light.

“Hurry and climb,” I called down. “Once they get their senses back, they’ll renew their attack. Come on, Elicia.”

Elicia climbed as though she’d been squirreling up ropes all her life. She reached the outcropping of rock and I put out a hand to help her. She missed my hand on the first try and did a crazy spiral on the rope. Her hand slashed at the air and she was about to lose her grip with her other hand. I leaned down, caught her swirling arm and literally dragged her into the hole and onto the narrow ledge.

“Climb farther up to make room for the others,” I said. “Put your feet against one side and your back against the other. Just scoot your body along until you’re ten to fifteen feet up the tunnel.”

She was short and her body barely gained purchase on the opposing walls. When she went past me, I put my hands on her buttocks to give her a boost. Her skirt was hanging free and my hands were against bare flesh. For a fleeting moment, I remembered that delicious hour in the council hut, then put it all out of my mind. Wrong time, wrong place. And she was Purano’s woman now.

Most of the rest went smoothly and without mishap. But not all. When three of the warriors were shuttling along up after Elicia and the fourth was on the rope, climbing up, the bats returned.

“Hurry, before their radar picks you out,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “Climb, man, climb.”

The Indian came streaking up the rope, hand over hand, his legs dangling free. The bats sensed him and, after making several swoops just beneath him, they zeroed in on his body and, finally, his face.

He was almost at the top when a huge bat came swooping in a wide arc around the full circumference of the cave below. It took a radar bead on the warrior’s eyes and scored a direct hit just as my hand was touching the Indian’s outstretched hand.

We never made the proper link.

The warrior let out a scream, and let go of the rope. The bats skittered to dark areas of the cave and I lunged forward to catch the man’s flailing arms. I missed and he went plummeting thirty feet through the dimly-lighted air.

I heard him hit, heard the sickening thwack of skull being cracked open. I knew he was dead the moment he landed. But I waited there at the opening to make sure. The Indian had landed on his |head, and his rifle had gone clattering across the platform, sending up a cloud of ashes. Human ashes. I stared at his body, at the grotesque way he was strewn on the platform. There was no movement and the bats were already attacking his face.

Even as a sick feeling was rumbling through my stomach and chest, I looked up to see that the others had also witnessed the disaster. The three warriors and Elicia were silent, watching the bats work over the battered corpse below. I didn’t try to imagine what they were thinking or feeling: there was no time for the obvious.

But I did respect their feelings and thoughts. I waited until they had obviously prayed for the soul of the dead warrior and then I began to climb slowly past them.

“I’ll take the lead,” I said as I edged past the three warriors in the channel. “We’ll have to hurry now.”

“How much time do we have?” Elicia asked as I eased past her.

I took my digital watch from its waterproof pouch and saw that it was still running. The numbers flipped over to 5:32.

“We have just about three hours,” I said. “We’ll have to really punish ourselves and keep at it.”

“Do you think the bats will return?”

“I doubt it,” I said, although I didn’t doubt it for a minute. “The way should be clear and easy now.”

It wasn’t.

As I moved up into a narrow channel and saw that it split into two equal-sized holes, I heard movement above. A soft buzzing sound came from the hole to my left. I flipped on my flashlight and examined the hole openings. Soot covered the walls of both holes, so both apparently were open. I played the light into the left hole, trying to see what was making the buzzing sound, but could see only a twisting, turning, soot-covered channel ahead. The hole on the right presented an identical sight, but it had no buzzing sound in it.

I took the hole to the right. I hadn’t gone five feet into it, though, when I realized that it was narrowing radically. I no longer could maintain purchase with my feet against one side and my back against the other. I reached out and found small ledges in the darkness above. I let my feet hang free and began to climb the ledges with my fingertips. It was rough going, but I knew it would be easier once my feet were inside the hole and I could use my feet on the ledges.

I never got that far. The hole narrowed until my shoulders were touching the sides. Soon, I couldn’t get my shoulders through. I started crawling back down.

Meanwhile, below me, one of the warriors had seen me go into the right-side hole and had decided to take the left. He had edged past Elicia and was climbing up into the hole where I had heard the soft buzzing.

“Hold it,” I said, tapping his foot just as he was lifting it to a small ledge inside the hole. “We’d better find out what’s buzzing first.”