"But they bombed me," Rominy exclaimed. "We're the victims. We're escaping from the terrorists, if that's what they are. You have to help us, Mrs. Clarkson."

"I'm helping you into a holding cell where you can sing your story to great big guys with buzz cuts and badges. Move, woman!"

Rominy was in shock. First the cave-in, and now this? She'd never touched a gun except for her great-grandfather's old pistol, and now one was being pointed at her. The twin muzzles looked as big as manholes. Jake handed back her pack but kept the satchel and the backpack with the money on his own shoulders. Then he winked, as if this were all part of some game, part of his mysterious, irritating, admirable, enviable self-confidence. Was that supposed to reassure her? He could dig through bones and wink at a loaded gun? Who was this guy? Rominy led the way, the dogs flanking her, with Jake behind and Delphina Clarkson's shotgun behind him.

"I'll bet you Seattle people figured I wouldn't have TV way up here on the Cascade River, didn't ya?" their captor said as they retraced their route to the trail. "You think I never go into Marblemount for a buffalo burger and a beer? Oh yes, the Safeway bombing is all over the news, and Miss Rominy Pickett's picture is getting more airtime than a politician with his pants down."

"So I'm missing, right? That's what the reward is for."

"And you know what? Not one newscaster has said anything about some heir of Benjamin Hood. Not one newscaster talked about pretty-boy newspaper reporters, or musty old mysteries. You know what? I don't think that's your cabin at all."

"So at least I won't be scooped," Jake murmured.

"What's that?"

"I said I'm glad you're a vigorous news consumer, Mrs. Clarkson."

"Shut up with your fancy talk."

They hit the trail again and started down it. No amount of reasoning seemed capable of getting the crazy old woman to lower her gun. The only good news was that she seemed to have no curiosity about what they'd found down in the mine or what might be in the decaying old satchel. She couldn't think past the possibility of a payday. Rominy tried to calm down. Once they were in the hands of the police, they'd be safe, wouldn't they?

Just get dotty Delphina to swing the muzzle away or take her finger off the trigger. How could she connect with her?

"Mrs. Clarkson, I'm impressed your dogs could track us."

"My dogs could sniff out a Brussels sprout in a meatpacking plant."

And then there was a hiss of something slicing through the air, a lethal whisper, and a soft thud as it hit. Damnation, one of Clarkson's dogs, gave a sudden jerk, squealed, and flipped over. The shaft of an arrow jutted from his flank. Where it met flesh, the dog's chest rose and fell, pumping blood.

Rominy whirled. There was a man in the forest who was dressed in camouflage and drawing back a bow. His head was shaved with a strip on top, like a Mohawk Indian.

It was the same guy she'd thought she'd seen in the cabin window. Another arrow loosed, and then both shotgun barrels went off with a roar next to her ear.

"Run!" Jake raced past and jerked Rominy like a rag doll, leaping off the switchbacking trail and straight down the forested mountainside, crashing into brush. With his hand on her arm they half ran, half plunged down the precipitous slope. There was a frantic yelping and cries of outrage behind. Rominy tensed for the sting of another shotgun blast but none came. The gun had swung at the skinhead, and then they were far enough downhill that the woods gave them screening.

"That crazy bitch is too old to follow us this way! Run, run, run!"

She leaped like a gazelle, heedless of obstacles, bounding over logs she'd hardly dare crawl over in normal times. A single misstep and she'd break a leg and yet their flight seemed charmed, magical, even exhilarating as they fell through the forest. They came to the trail again, which zigzagged the other way, but simply leaped it and continued straight downhill in a barely controlled plunge.

There was another gun blast, but far up the mountain. Faint shouts, too.

Step, leap, step, leap, as trees flashed past. She was not so much out of breath as breathless, stunned, afraid, excited.

They hit the switchbacking trail again and Jake pulled up, gasping. He was grinning, too, the bastard. "Geez, Rominy, what was that?"

"It was that man."

"What man?"

"The man I saw in the window."

That sobered him. "It's them. Skinheads. Come on."

"I thought you said he was a raccoon."

"I thought wrong."

They ran again, but down the trail now, Jake sometimes drawing ahead but then slowing so she could catch up. Her legs were jelly, her feet ached, but she dared not rest. What if shotgun lady was chasing them? What if Mohawk man was doing the same? For the thousandth time, what was going on?

"Jake, why do skinheads care about my great-grandfather?"

"Nazis. They were in a race with Hood for something important, and these neo-Nazis know more than I thought. They tracked us here, which means they know about the cabin."

Her eyes darted as they ran. Every tree seemed to hide an archer or street tough with a swastika tattoo. The towering fir and hemlock blocked out the sun, casting their escape in shadow. The world had become nothing but menace.

"Let's cut through here," he said. "I don't want to run into a bad guy waiting at the trailhead." They left the path again, skidding down through sword fern and salal toward a growing light: the road. There was a final embankment she almost pitched over but instead slid on her butt, hitting the road shoulder in a shower of dirt and gravel. Her bare legs were a mottle of scratches and dirt. Jake was already crouched, peering up and down the lane.

"There." He pointed.

It was a dusty black SUV, windows tinted, pulled off on the shoulder. Jake's truck was out of sight, in the small trailhead parking lot.

"You think that's their car?"

"I saw it before at Safeway." He started toward the Explorer.

"What if somebody's in it?"

"If they were, they'd already be out the door and in our face by now."

He trotted up, chest heaving, and peered through the windows. Then he jiggled the handle. "Locked."

"What are you doing? Let's get out of here!"

"That is what I'm doing." He began feeling the driver's-side wheel well, and beneath the door. "Bingo." He pulled out a magnetic case. "Hikers don't like carrying keys."

"You're going to steal the Nazi's car?"

"We're going to steal it, because I've got the key for my own truck and I don't want Mr. Bow Hunter following us any longer. This ends, now. He can walk out to Marblemount. If Delphina Clarkson hasn't finished him."

"We go to the police?"

He unlocked the doors, jerked open the door, and climbed in, waiting for her to join him on the passenger seat. The rig still smelled new and had every bell-and-whistle accessory that Detroit could invent. Apparently, skinhead Nazis had money. Or they'd stolen the car themselves. The engine started with a roar.

"No way." He shook his head. "We go to Tibet."

34.

Shambhala, Tibet October 3, 1938 Beth Calloway had shot the German while hanging upside down from an airshaft that rose from the ceiling of the tunnel. A stone door had slid aside to reveal the chimney. Now she turned, tucked her smoking pistol into her belt, and dropped lightly down onto the big pipe running to infinity. She glanced in both directions.

"Any more of them?"

"Not yet," Hood said.

"What's down here, anyway?"

"Deviltry." He held up the amber staff with his mutilated hand. Blood dripped from the bandage.

"No good on your lonesome, are you? What happened?"

"We were fighting over some kind of goddamn magic wand. SS cutlery is pretty sharp. Actually, Keyuri here finished the amputation."

"She chopped off your finger?"

"With a kiss." He grimaced.

"No wonder you're smitten. She's not dead, is she?"

"Not yet. Wounded, though."

"You're going to have to boost her up. There're more nuns above."

"Nuns?"

"There's a nunnery outside the valley with tunnels into this anthill. The abbess gave me blood to unlock the booby hatch I just dropped from. She said they use blood like a key. Can you believe that?"

"Unfortunately, yes. My surgeon has already saved my finger for that quaint custom." He bent under the pipe. "Keyuri, help has come. We're going to patch you up, all right?"

The young woman groaned.

Beth stooped to examine her. "Wow, that's bad. Okay, I'm going to use my flying scarf to bandage her up. Then we're going to boost her on top of the pipe, I'll get in the shaft that goes upstairs, and you lift her to me."

"You're saving her life, Beth. You probably saved mine."

"Damn right, Professor. So let's move, or do you want to spoil my track record?"

He looked up the hole she'd dropped from. There were torches flickering far above, and a halo of shaven figures peering down a well at him, clad in scarlet. The women's eyes were wide and fearful.

As gently as they could, they lifted Keyuri atop the pipe and climbed up themselves. Then Beth leaped for a handhold in the shaft, hauled herself up, swung her head and arms upside down again, and braced to lift the nun. Hood felt awkward having the two women together. He'd made love to both of them. Keyuri, however, was going into shock, and Beth seemed intent simply on escaping.

Then the earth quivered slightly.

There was a clunk, a whine, and a pale illumination came on in the tunnel below. It came from everywhere and nowhere, from the rocks and the air and the motes of dust, spangling the corridor.

Raeder was starting the machine again.

Hood called up to Calloway. "How did you find us?"

"After I put the biplane down I hiked up to that smoke we saw. Turned out to be this crazy nunnery. These nuns stand watch until the time is right, the abbess said. They were buzzing like a disturbed hive because no one had approached for centuries, and then those Nazis climbed in like human flies. When I told them you'd parachuted in, it was like announcing Herbert Hoover had snuck back into the White House. They went nuts. Then we heard this gawd-awful noise. What the hell do these Germans have? A Big Bertha cannon?"

"It's a stick that shoots fire."

"A fire stick? We're Indians now?"

"In our technological understanding. There's stuff down here that looks like it's out of Buck Rogers, Beth. Heaps of bones, too. Something went terribly wrong."

"I'll say. Is your pal Raeder still down there?"

"Yes, I think he just started the big machine again. I think it reloads a fire stick. A magic staff like this one." He held it up. "I don't think we should let a man like Kurt Raeder have it."

"I'll say. Well, let's start with Keyuri. I'll drag her up to the nuns."

Hood lifted the groaning, half-conscious Tibetan, watching her small, dangling feet disappear up the chimney. In the dimness, it was as if she were floating skyward. Then Beth dropped back down to the hole in the roof of Hood's tunnel, holding out an arm. "You next."

He shook his head.

"Thanks for coming back for me, but I was sent here to put a stop to this. I think Raeder's going to try to take another one of those thunderbolt staffs back to Adolf Hitler. I don't think I can let him do that."

"How you going to stop him?"

"Just two krauts left, I think."

"Then I'm coming with you, Ben. Even odds."

"No. This isn't your fight."

"The hell it isn't! That bastard dragged my biplane to the middle of nowhere." She looked at him expectantly. Keyuri was shot, Hood desperate. This was a way to cement their partnership.

"No." He shook his head decisively. "I might not make it. I want you to take this staff of mine to the surface. It's too low on juice to fight with, but I think we need to show it to the American government. War's coming."

"We can leave it with the nuns for a minute. We get Raeder, and then we worry about the shaft."

"No, Beth. I want you to fly it, and Keyuri, back to Lhasa."

"I'm flying you to Lhasa!"

"Listen. There's only room in the biplane for two. If I don't survive, none of this matters if we can't report what happened. Somebody has to get out alive. Somebody has to warn the Tibetans, so they can arrest Raeder if he tries to escape overland. There's something strange about how this place feels, like it does something corrupting. So stay clear. If I stop him, I'll come back here. If not, Keyuri and you have to tell what happened. And Keyuri is shot. You have to make her well."

"I'm no doctor! You make her well. Maybe we can just seal Raeder in."

"And maybe he'll blow his way out, if we let him play with this infernal machine long enough. Please go up and wait."

"This is nuts." It was the end, Beth could feel it, and it tore her in two. She liked this guy. He was an egghead, all right, but an egghead with gumption, dammit. "Leave the fanatics down here to play with their machine, Ben. If he's got another magic wand, what chance do you have if you give this one up? Where's your pistol?"