Clive Cussler - Treasure

It was a sound tactic when facing armed and dangerous criminals.

Unfortunately, it didn't work with a small army of unseen terrorists who suddenly opened fire with a storm of bullets that shredded the patrol car and killed the two deputies before they had a chance to react.

At a signal from one of the agents peering around the window, Hala was lifted and brusquely flung out onto the ground. The Secret Service men followed and quickly took her by the arms and began running, stumbling through the snow on an angle toward the highway.

They had covered only paces when one of Ismail's men spotted them and shouted the alarm. Shots struck the trees and branches fell around the fleeing survivors. One of the agents suddenly threw up his hands, clawing at the sky, stumbled forward a few steps and then fell face downward in the snow.

"They're trying to cut us off from the highway!" the other agent snapped. "You try to make it. I'll make a stand and delay them."

Hala started to say something, but the agent spun her around and gave her a not-too-gentle shove that sent her on her way.

"Run, dammit, run!" he yelled.

But he could see it was already too late. any hope of escape was dealt a death blow. They had taken the wrong angle away from the burning lodge and were headed on a direct line toward two Mercedes-Benz sedans parked in woods beside the road. In dazed defeat he realized the cars belonged to the terrorists. He had no alternative. If he couldn't stop them, he would at least slow them down long enough for Hala to hail a passing car. In a suicide gamble, the agent ran at the Arabs, finger locked on the trigger of his Uzi, shouting every obscenity he'd ever learned.

Ismail and his men were momentarily stunned into immobility by what they saw as a charging demon. for two incredulous seconds they hesitated, then recovered and let loose a long burst at the courageous Secret Service agent, cutting him down in mid-stride.

But not before he took out four of them.

Hala saw the cars too. She also saw the terrorists rushing for them.

Behind her she heard the thunderous fusillade of shots. Choking and gasping for breath, her clothes and hair singed, she staggered into a small ditch and up the other side before sprawling on a hard surface.

She raised her head slightly and found herself staring at black asphalt.

She pushed herself to her feet and began running, knowing she was only delaying the inevitable, knowing with dread certainty she would be lying dead in the next few minutes.

The Cord rolled majestically along the highway from Breckenridge, the morning sun gleaming on the bright chrome and new paint. Skiers wailing to the lifts waved as the elegant sixty-year-old classic swept past.

Giordino dozed in the enclosed rear seat while Lily sat up front in the open with Pitt.

Pitt had awakened in a stubborn mood that morning. He saw no reason to ski on rental skis when his own American made Olin 921s were in a closet only three miles up the road from the hotel. Besides, he reasoned, he could drive to the family lodge, pick up his gear and be sitting on a chair lift in half the time it took waiting his Turn to be fitted in a rental shop.

Pitt shrugged off his father's unexplained warning to stay clear of the lodge. He simply wrote it off as bureaucratic overplay. The Senator would have made the same impression on Hulk Hogan by telling the wrestler to Turn the other cheek after an opponent had kicked him in the groin.

"Who's shooting off fireworks so early in the morning?" Lily wondered aloud.

"Not fireworks," Pitt said, tuning in the sharp crack of gunfire and the explosive thump from grenades echoing off the mountainsides of the valley. "Sounds like an infantry firefight."

"It's coming from the woods up ahead!" Lily pointed"to the right of the road."

The smile wrinkles around Pitts eyes tightened. He increased the Cord's speed and rapped on the divider window. Giordino came awake and cranked the glass down.

"You woke me just as the orgy was getting started," he said between yawns.

"Listen up," ordered Pitt.

Giordino winched as the cold air flew into the passengers' compartment.

He cupped his ears. Slowly an expression of bewilderment crossed his face.

"Have the Russians landed?"

"Look!" said Lily excitedly. "A forest fire."

Giordino made a quick study of the black smoke that abruptly billowed above the treetops, chased by columns of flame. "Fuel concentrated," he stated briefly. "I'd say it was a burning structure, probably a house or condominium."

Pitt knew Giordino was on target. He swore and pounded the steering wheel, knowing with sickening certainty it was his family's lodge that was feeding the growing mushroom of fire and smoke.

He said, "No sense asking for trouble by stopping. We'll drive past and check out the action. Al, you come up front.

Lily, climb in the rear and keep your head down. I don't want you hurt."

"What about me?" Giordino asked in resigned indignation. "Don't I rate a little concern? Give me one good reason why I should sit up there exposed with you?"

"To protect your trusty chauffeur from harm, evil and unsavor-y felons."

"Definitely not a good reason."

Pitt tried another tack. "Of course, there's that fifty bucks I borrowed from you in Panama and never paid back."

"Plus interest."

"Plus interest," Pitt repeated.

"What I won't go through to protect my meager assets."

Giordino's weary despair sounded almost genuine as he scrambled through the open divider window and changed places with Lily.

Farther down the highway, a half-mile before the entrance to the lodge, people were stopping and crouching behind their parked cars, gawking at the swirling smoke and listening to the rattle of automatic rifles. Pitt thought it odd that the sheriff's department hadn't put in an appearance, and then he saw the bullet-riddled patrol car barricading the road to the lodge.

His attention was focused to his right and the inferno beyond when suddenly, at the very edge of his peripheral vision, he caught a vague form running down the road on a collision course with the Cord.

He stomped on the brakes, hard, and cramped the steering wheel to the right, whipping the Cord into a ninety-degrre angle and sending it on a broadside skid. The high, narrow tires shrieked from their treads'

friction against the pavement. The Cord ended up sideways, blocking both lanes of the highway, the driver's side not more than a meter from a woman standing stock-still.

Pitts heart had doubled its beat. He let out a deep breath and looked at the woman he'd come within a hair of mashing like a bug. He saw the fear and shock in her eyes slowly transform into an expression of incredulity.

"You!" she gasped. "Is it really you?"

Pitt stared at her blankly. "Ms. Kamil?"

"I believe in d'eji vu," Giordino mumbled. "I do, I do, I do."

"Oh, thank God," she whispered. "Please help me. Everyone is dead.

They're coming to kill me."

Pitt climbed from behind the wheel at the same time Lily stepped from the passengers' compartment. They helped Hala inside and lowered her on the rear seat.

"Who's they?" Pitt asked.

"Yazid's paid assassins. They murdered the Secret Service men guarding me. We must get away quickly. They'll be here any second."

"Rest easy," Lily said soothingly, noticing Hala's smokeblackened skin and singed hair for the first time. "We'll take you to a hospital."

"No time," Hala gasped, making a trembling gesture through the window.

"Please hurry or they'll kill all of you too."

Pitt turned just in time to see two black Mercedes sedans burst from the woods and veer onto the highway. He studied them for no more than a second before jumping into the driver's seat. He shifted into first gear and jammed the accelerator to the floor. He twisted the wheel and turned the Cord in the only direction open to him-back toward downtown Breckenridge.