Jak reached the entrance first and helped to pull the others into the angled slit in the cliff. Inside was cool darkness. Coughing and gasping for breath, the companions leaned against the crumbling sandstone.
The air attack broke off at once, but they could hear the gyroplane still hovering outside. Gradually, the rasp of their breathing slowed and their eyes adjusted to the cave entrance’s dim light. From deeper in the cave came rustling sounds.
The rustling became a rattling.
“Shit!” J.B. snarled as he fumbled for a match. Light flared from the end of his small rag wrapped torch. All around them the floor moved, uncoiling into dozens of thick bodied, slithering shapes.
Mildred and Krysty instinctively drew their handguns.
“No bullets in here!” Ryan warned. “Ricochets. Stay back.”
His panga knife scraped leather as it cleared his leg sheath. Grunting with the effort, Ryan cut a frantic, bloody path through the mutated rattlesnakes. This cave had kept the companions and Gabhart’s crew in vittles—big, juicy, snake steaks—for better than a week. There was no choice now but to waste the rest of the nest—the rattler venom was agonizingly lethal. In the flickering torchlight he isolated, cornered and slaughtered the stragglers, using the flat of the blade to stun, followed by a quick backslash to decapitate.
With J.B.in the lead holding the torch, they crossed the sandy floor, stepping over headless, still thrashing bodies, moving toward the back of the cave. As they advanced, the ceiling and walls necked down, forming an archway that J.B. had to duck to pass under. Beyond the arch, the space widened into another domed chamber.
As Ryan approached the arch, his head brushed the ceiling. Pieces of loose rock and dirt came showering down.
“Watch out!” Mildred said, covering her head with her arms. “The roofs rotten.”
Ryan ducked low to clear the arch. J.B. and the others were already examining the cave’s back wall. On the floor a jumble of S-shaped snake tracks led up to it, then vanished. “There’s a rad-blasted snake hole here!” the Armorer said, dropping to his knees. “Could be a way out!”
Jak fell to his knees beside J.B. and they both dug madly with their hands to deepen and to enlarge the hole.
From the mouth of the cave came the sound of heavy vehicles pulling up outside.
“Cover the entrance!” Ryan said.
Their weapons up and ready, the others took defensive positions on either side of the arch.
Ryan looked over his shoulder to see Jak squirming under the overhang of rock. J.B. passed him the torch through the hole, which plunged the cave into darkness.
From the cave’s entrance an electronically amplified voice boomed, “You are trapped. Come out now and it will go much easier on you. If you make us come in after you, we will hurt you…badly.”
Sounds of a scuffle and cursing came from the hole behind them. Moments later the torch popped back out and Jak scrambled out after it. “Dead end,” he said, spitting out a mouthful of sand.
A beam of whistling green light speared through the middle of the cave, striking the back wall above Jak’s head. He rolled out of the hole, out from under showers of fat sparks as the sandstone hissed and melted.
The companions drew back behind the curve of the archway, shielding their eyes from the green glare.
“You are outnumbered,” said the electronic voice, much louder now to compensate for the piercing squeal of the laser beam. “There is nowhere to ran. Surrender now or we will make this very unpleasant for you.”
It already was unpleasant.
The laser beam was making the middle of the back wall glow like a huge ember. Sweat had already started to pour off the companions, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
Dean looked up at his father, eyes bright in the torchlight.
Ryan made a decision.
“Okay, okay!” he shouted. “We give up! Turn off the fireworks. We’re coming out.” Ryan signaled for everyone to keep their heads down.
The green light immediately winked off, but the red glow behind them continued. The rock wall was almost molten hot.
Boot heels crunched heavily on sand. The enemy had entered the cave. “Throw down your weapons,” the electronic voice said.