Blue Gold

"Maybe we can lose them in the mists," Paul replied.

Gamay spun the dugout around and pointed the bow toward the falls. Paul and Tessa were right behind. The water became choppy as they neared the falls. The Indians doggedly kept in pursuit. With their strength and skill they were rapidly closing the gap. The falls loomed closer and the mists enveloped them, but it became apparent that they would be pounded to pieces by the falls if they got closer to the torrents.

Paul shouted over the roar. "Francesca, we need help from your bag of tricks."

Francesca shook her head.

Tessa picked up on Paul's frantic plea. "I have something," she said. She handed over the sack that had rested between her knees. Paul reached into the bag, and his fingers closed on a hard object. He pulled out a 9mm pistol.

"Where did this come from?" he said with astonishment.

"It was Dieter's."

Paul looked back at the oncoming canoes, then at the cascading falls. He had little choice. Regardless of Francesca's wishes that her former subjects not be hurt, they were between the devil and the deep blue sea. Arrows were flying in their direction.

Paul plunged his hand into the bag again, looking for extra rounds. This time he came out with a GlobalStar satellite phone. Dieter must have used it to keep in touch with his buyers. He stared at it a moment before the significance of the find sank in. He yelled with joy.

Gamay had moved closer and saw the phone. "Does that thing work?"

He pushed the ready light, and the phone was on. "I'll be damned." Paul handed Gamay the phone. "Give it a try. I'll see if I can scare those guys off."

Gamay punched a number out on the phone. Seconds later a familiar deep voice answered.

"Kurt!" Gamay yelled into the phone. "It's me."

"Gamay? We've been worried about you. Are you and Paul okay?"

She glanced at the oncoming canoes and swallowed hard. "We're in a hell of a mess, and that's an understatement." She had to shout over the roar of the falls. "Can't talk, I'm calling on a GlobalStar. Can you get a fix on our position?"

Crack!

Paul had laid a shot across the bow of Alaric's canoe, but it failed to slow him down.

"Was that a gun?"

"That was Paul shooting."

"Hard to hear you with that background noise. Hold on."

The seconds ticked by like years. Gamay had no illusions about her call. Even with a position fix it could be days before someone came to their aid. At least Austin would know what happened to them. Austin's voice came back on, calm and reassuring. "We've got a lock on you."

"Good. Gotta go!" Gamay answered, ducking low as an arrow whizzed past like an angry bee.

With Gamay and Paul busy, their canoes had drifted side ways to the waves. They dug their paddles in and got the boats around. Both dugouts rocked dangerously, but they moved closer to the falls where the mists might hide them.

The Indians hesitated, then, sensing the end was near, began their strange ululation. The archers were kneeling in the bow. They could stand off and let arrows fly at their helpless targets.

Paul had lost all patience. He raised the handgun and took a bead on Alaric. If he killed the leader the others might run for it. Francesca yelled. He thought she was trying to spoil his shot, but the white queen was pointing toward the top of the falls.

What looked like a huge insect flew over the crest of the falls and descended rapidly through the rainbows and the cloud of mist until it was a hundred feet above the lake. The helicopter hovered for an instant, then swooped low and buzzed the war canoes. The archers dropped their bows, grabbed their paddles, and stroked madly for shore.

Paul lowered the pistol and gri

The phone rang. It was Austin. "Gamay, are you and Paul all right?"

"We're fine," she said, laughing with relief. "Thanks for sending the taxi. But you're going to explain how you pulled this one off. This is something, even for the great Kurt Austin."

"Tell you about it later. See you tomorrow. I need you back here. Be ready to work."

A ladder was being lowered out of the chopper.

Ramirez signaled for Francesca to go first. She hesitated, then grabbed the lower rung and, as befitting a white goddess, began to climb into the sky from which she had descended ten years before.

Chapter 26

Sandy Wheeler was getting into her Honda Civic when the strange man approached and asked in accented English how to get to the Los Angeles Times advertising department. Instinctively she hugged her purse close to her body and glanced around. She was relieved to see other people in the newspaper's garage. She had grown up in L.A. and was used to freaks. But she was jumpy lately handling this crazy water story, and even the cute, pearl-handled .22-caliber pistol in her pocketbook wasn't totally reassuring. The stranger looked as if he could chew the barrel off her gun with his metal teeth.

Wheeler had the reporter's ability to take in people at a glance, and what she saw was someone who looked as if he played the bad guy for the WWF. He was her height and would have been taller if he had a neck. The dark green sweatsuit was a couple of sizes too small for a square, powerful body that looked as if it had been assembled from refrigerator parts. The roundish, gri

After giving the man hurried directions, Sandy got into her car and instantly locked the doors. She didn't care how unfriendly the gesture looked. As she backed out of her space he seemed to be in no rush to go to the advertising department. He stood there staring at her with eyes as hard as marbles. She was in her thirties, with long chestnut hair, an athletic body from jogging and working out. Her nut-brown face was taut and angular but not unattractive, dominated by large sky-blue eyes. She was pretty enough to attract occasional attention from the odd characters who seemed to drop from the palm trees around town. She was street-smart and had gained a layer of emotional calluses working as a police reporter before being assigned to the investigative team. She didn't spook easily, but this creep gave her the shivers. It went beyond appearances. There was some thing of the grave about him.

She checked her rearview mirror and was surprised to see that the man had disappeared. Easy come, easy go, she thought. She scolded herself for letting him sneak up on her. Growing up in L.A., she had learned early on to be aware of her surroundings at all times. This damned water story had preoccupied her, taken the edge off her alertness. Cohen had promised only a couple more days before they ran the story. Not soon enough. She was getting sick of taking the file disks home. Cohen was positively paranoid about leaving them in the building. Every night he cleaned the files off the computer and put them on backup disks. In the mornings he would load them back on.

Not that Sandy blamed him for being paranoid. There was something special about this story. The team had talked Pulitzer prize. Cohen coordinated the work of the three reporters. Her area was the Mulholland Group and its mysterious president, Brynhild Sigurd. The other two reporters concentrated respectively on domestic acquisitions and international co