Clive Cussler - Inca Gold

"As soon as we begin to rise in the air, the torque effect will cause our tail to swing left and our nose to the right. Lightly press the left foot pedal to compensate."

Loren nodded gamely. "I'll do my best, but I wish I didn't have to do this."

"We have no choice but to fly out. Rudi would be dead before he could be manhandled down the side of the mountain."

The helicopter rose very slowly less than a meter off the ground. Giordino let it hang there while Loren learned the feel of the tail rotor control pedals. At first she had a tendency to over control, but she soon got the hang of it and nodded.

"I think I'm ready."

"Then we're off," acknowledged Giordino.

Twenty minutes later, working in unison, they made a perfect landing beside the Customs headquarters building in Calexico where Admiral Sandecker was standing beside a waiting ambulance, anxiously puffing a cigar.

In that first moment when Amaru forced him beneath the water and he could feel the jaws of the current surround his wrecked body, Pitt knew instantly that there was no returning to the treasure cavern. He was doubly trapped-- by a killer who hung on to him like a vise and a river determined to carry him to hell.

Even if both men had been uninjured, it would have been no contest. Cutthroat killer that he was, Amaru was no match for Pitt's experience underwater. Pitt took a deep breath before the river closed over his head, wrapped his good right arm around his chest to protect his fractured ribs and relaxed amid the pain without wasting his strength in fighting off his attacker.

Amazingly, he still kept his grip on the gun, although to fire it underwater would probably have shattered every bone in his hand. He felt Amaru's encircling hold slide from his waist to his hips. The murderer was strong as iron. He clawed at Pitt furiously, still trying for the gun as they spun around in the current like toy dolls caught in a whirlpool.

Neither man could see the other as they swirled into utter darkness. Without the slightest suggestion of light, Pitt felt as though he was submerged in ink.

Amaru's wrath was all that kept him alive in the next forty-five seconds. It did not sink into his crazed mind that he was drowning twice-- his bullet-punctured lung was filling with blood while at the same time he was sucking in water. The last of his strength was fading when his thrashing feet made contact with a shoal that was built up from sand accumulating on the outer curve of the river. He came up choking blood and water in a small open gallery and made a blind lunge for Pitt's neck.

But Amaru had nothing left. All fight had ebbed away. Once out of the water he could feel the blood pumping from the wound in his chest.

Pitt found he was able, by a slight effort, to shove Amaru back into the mainstream of the current. He could not see the Peruvian drift away in the pitch blackness, observe the face drained of color, the eyes glazed in hate and approaching death. But he heard the malevolent voice slowly moving into the distance away from him.

"I said you would suffer," came the words slightly above a hoarse murmur. "Now you will languish and die in tormented black solitude."

"Nothing like being swept up in an orgy of poetic grandeur," said Pitt icily. "Enjoy your trip to the Gulf."

His reply was a cough and a gurgling sound and finally silence.

The pain returned to Pitt with a vengeance. The fire spread from his broken wrist to the bullet wound in his shoulder to his cracked ribs. He was not sure he had the strength left to fight it. Exhaustion slightly softened the agony. He felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life. He crawled onto a dry area of the shoal and slowly crumpled face forward into the soft sand and fell unconscious.

"I don't like leaving without Cyrus," said Oxley as he scanned the desert sky to the southwest.

"Our brother has been in tougher scrapes before," said Zolar impassively. "A few Indians from a local village shouldn't present much of a threat to Amaru's hired killers."

"I expected him long before now."

"Not to worry. Cyrus will probably show up in Morocco with a girl on each arm."

They stood on the end of a narrow asphalt airstrip that had been grooved between the countless dunes of the Altar Desert so Mexican Air Force pilots could hold training exercises under primitive conditions. Behind them, with its tail section jutting over the edge of the sand-swept strip, a Boeing 747-400 jetliner, painted in the colors of a large national air carrier, sat poised for takeoff.

Zolar moved under the shade of the starboard wing and checked off the artifacts inventoried by Henry and Micki Moore as the Mexican army engineers loaded the final piece on board the aircraft. He nodded at the golden sculpture of a monkey that was being hoisted by a large forklift into the cargo hatch nearly 7 meters (23 feet) from the ground. "That's the last of it."

Oxley stared at the barrenness surrounding the airstrip. "You couldn't have picked a more isolated spot to transship the treasure."

"We can thank the late Colonel Campos for suggesting it."

"Any problem with Campos's men since his untimely death?" Oxley asked with more cynicism than sense of loss.

Zolar laughed. "Certainly not after I gave each of them a one-hundred-ounce bar of gold."

"You were generous."

"Hard not to be with so much wealth sitting around."

"A pity Matos will miss spending his share," said Oxley.

"Yes, I cried all the way from Cerro el Capirote."

Zolar's pilot approached and gave an informal salute. "My crew and I are ready when you are, gentlemen. We would like to take off before it's dark."

"Is the cargo fastened down securely?" asked Zolar.

The pilot nodded. "Not the neatest job I've seen. But considering we're not using cargo containers, it should hold until we land at Nador in Morocco, providing we don't hit extreme turbulence."

"Do you expect any?"

"No, sir. The weather pattern indicates calm skies all the way."

"Good. We can enjoy a smooth flight," said Zolar, pleased. "Remember, at no time are we to cross over the border into the United States."

"I've laid a course that takes us safely south of Laredo and Brownsville into the Gulf of Mexico below Key West before heading out over the Atlantic."

"How soon before we touch down in Morocco?" Oxley asked the pilot.

"Our flight plan calls for ten hours and fifty-five minutes. Loaded to the maximum, and then some, with several hundred extra pounds of cargo and a full fuel load, plus the detour south of Texas and Florida, we've added slightly over an hour to our flight time, which I hope to pick up with a tail wind."

Zolar looked at the last rays of the sun. "With time changes that should put us in Nador during early afternoon tomorrow."

The pilot nodded. "As soon as you are seated aboard, we will get in the air." He returned to the aircraft and climbed a boarding ladder propped against the forward entry door.

Zolar gestured toward the ladder. "Unless you've taken a fancy to this sand pit, I see no reason to stand around here any longer."

Oxley bowed jovially. "After you." As they passed through the entry door, he paused and took one last look to the southwest. "I still don't feel right not waiting."

"If our positions were reversed, Cyrus wouldn't hesitate to depart. Too much is at stake to delay any longer. Our brother is a survivor. Stop worrying."

They gave a wave to the Mexican army engineers who stood back from the plane and cheered their benefactors. Then the flight engineer closed and secured the door.

A few minutes later the turbines screamed and the big 747-400 rose above the rolling sand dunes, dipped its starboard wing and banked slightly south of east. Zolar and Oxley sat in a small passenger compartment on the upper deck just behind the cockpit.