A woman’s voice shouted from the darkness behind them. The language was Lakota, but the tone was unmistakably triumphant.
“Sisoka!” Joe raged. “Blood-sniffer somehow managed to betray us without our knowledge!”
There was another rapidly spoken stream of Lakota from behind them, the words “Maza Wakan” figuring prominently.
“We’re ordered to lay down our blasters,” Joe translated bitterly.
J.B. silently mouthed a curse and squeezed off a triple burst into the blackness. The rounds bounced in whining shrieks off the curved walls of the tunnel.
“They’re back around the fork where our shots can’t reach them,” Ryan said.
Joe nodded tersely. “We can’t go back, so we must go forward.”
“Go forward to where?” J.B. asked.
“To wherever we end up.”
The three men trotted through the black tunnel. Chunks of rock, feeling like malformed human skulls, clattered at their feet. They caromed off outcroppings and bumped their heads on stalactites.
Testing the air currents with a wetted forefinger, Ryan felt a fairly strong movement to their right. By groping and feeling, he found a narrow side passage branching off from the tunnel. Since they were in a dead end, they had no choice but to crawl into the rough-edged passageway.
All three men squeezed into it. It crept upward at a forty-five-degree angle, and the passage narrowed very quickly, the walls catching at Ryan’s broad shoulders. He was forced to turn sideways and scrabble onward and upward. Sweat slid from his forehead and stung his eye. As he was blinking it back, he realized the darkness was no longer so absolute. He was able to pick out dim, dark gray shapes. Ahead and a little above them was a faint circle of starlight.
“There’s our exit,” he panted.
They clawed their way up the cramped tunnel toward the little opening. They climbed out in starlight, and J.B. staggered. They were standing on a small hill, and about half a mile away were the cyclopean boulders around the cavern entrance. Below and to their right was the outer ring of tepees.
“One of us should wait here,” J.B. panted. “Pick them off as they come out.”
“I think they expected us to come out in this place,” Ryan said. “They’re probably running to outflank us.”
“Mebbe so,” J.B. barked. “But I want to get that double-crossin’ wolf”
Joe was looking around, his blaster held at waist level. “Listen.”
At that moment a chorus of wolf howls echoed all around. It was a heart-stopping sound. Four-legged shapes raced swiftly toward them from all points of the compass.
Ryan shifted his SIG-Sauer to a double-handed grip and said, “Here’s your chance, J.B.”
The dark, leaping shadows of the wolf pack plunged over the ground. The three blasters poured a stream of fire at the bounding, snarling shapes. Most of them dodged the bullets with supernatural swiftness, but two twisted in midair and screamed in pain. The hill became a bedlam of fire, noise and movement. J.B. had the Uzi on full-auto and he swung it in a left-to-right pattern, the muzzle-flash smearing the night with streaks of orange flame.
Ryan squeezed the trigger of the SIG-Sauer four times in rapid succession and one of the loping, bounding shapes leaped and fell.
Joe fired his weapon from the hip, holding down the trigger, hosing the rounds in a semicircle. Bullets skittered over the ground, striking sparks from rocks.
There was a momentary lull in the attack. Ryan pulled the crystal-studded gold wafer from a pocket and slapped it against his forehead. He didn’t have time to couch a telepathic call in words. His mind focused on a wordless message that was a plea, a pledge of love and a promise at the same time. If performed vocally, it would have been a yowl of anguish. The wolves came again in a circling rush, and he dropped the wafer.
Ryan, doing his best to pick his targets carefully, heard the Uzi’s firing pin click dryly against the empty chamber. J.B. cursed, letting the blaster dangle from the lanyard around his neck and went to unsling the M-4000 scattergun from his shoulder. Then a wolf was at the Armorer’s throat.
At the sound of J.B.’s half curse, half scream of pain and anger, Ryan wheeled, triggering his blaster at the dark gray shape ripping at the body of his friend.