“Ah, I see.” Some of the sharpness left Hellstrom’s tone. “Have no fear, Cawdor. We have enough ammunition here to wipe out the entire tribe, not just Touch-the-Sky’s group.”
Swiveling his head, he bestowed a gallant smile upon Krysty. “And thank you, my dear, for your perceptions. I understand now how Cawdor has kept his life, when so many have wanted to take it.”
Doc cleared his throat and asked, “So you are acquainted with that particular band of Sioux?”
Hellstrom nodded. “Touch-the-Sky is a traditionalist. He thinks that the nukecaust ceded the old Indian lands back to him and his people through divine intervention. He regularly patrols this area, killing any non-redskins who might cross into it. He’s a vicious psychopath, completely unreasonable.”
Doc raised his eyebrows in a “look who’s talking” expression. He asked, “Why does he hold this area in such high esteem?”
The AMAC jounced as it climbed up a slope and out of the arroyo. As it topped the crest, Hellstrom gestured toward the windshield. “That’s why.”
The mountain filled the rectangular window, framed like a work of art. Though it was still miles in the distance, Ryan saw that what he had first interpreted as an optical illusion combined with erosion was indeed a grouping of carved faces on the mountainsideor what was left of them.
“Dark night,” J.B. murmured, eyes wide behind the lenses of his spectacles.
“The nose,” Jak said. He barked out a short laugh. “Get it now.”
“By the Three Kennedys,” Doc intoned in a husky whisper.
“No,” Mildred contradicted him. “Roosevelt, Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. Or they used to be.”
Ryan surveyed the granite cliff looming above heaps of broken shale and scrubby trees. He dredged up a memory from his childhood education and said softly, “Fireballs! Mount Rushmore.”
Chapter Eleven
All four of the sixty-foot-high heads of the predark presidents had been nearly obliterated, except for the colossal Abraham Lincoln effigy, and it was hardly intact. The top of Lincoln’s head had been blown away, and one of his huge eyes was jigsawed by a network of cracks. The sight disturbed Ryan, as though he were looking at some symbolic image from years gone by, the leader of a nation with no mind, half-blind like himself.
Mildred didn’t help matters when she said quietly, “It took fifteen years of preparation and over six years of actual work for an artist named Gutzon Borglum to design and begin construction of that memorial. He died before he could see it completed. Fifteen yearsand it was destroyed in probably five seconds.”
Ryan glanced over his shoulder and was surprised to see tears glimmering in Mildred’s dark eyes. She said, “My Uncle Josh brought me here once, as part of a church tour group. I was about eight Over a hundred years ago.” A hand flew to Mildred’s mouth as she realized what had slipped out.
J.B. put an arm around her shoulders, and Hellstrom turned toward them. His lips quirked in distaste at the display of open affection and sympathy, but he didn’t comment on it.
He asked, “What do you mean, woman? And tell the truth. I’ll sense a lie.”
Mildred hesitated a moment before stating boldly, “I was in cryogenic stasis during the nukecaust. Ryan and the others found me.”
Hellstrom grinned. “You’re a freezie!”
Mildred frowned. “So?”
“So, it appears that my first assessment of your little band was far more correct than I initially surmised. You can be a great help in my undertaking.”
“You’ve mentioned that before,” Ryan said suspiciously. “Mebbe it’s time for you to explain.”
Hellstrom waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Perhaps I will. After a demonstration.”
The man at the wheel steered the AMAC toward a series of gentle grass-covered bluffs. He navigated the big wag expertly over the top of one, then followed a winding course between two of them. Hellstrom didn’t provide him with directions. Evidently the driver had come this way before.
He braked the vehicle at the foot of a slope that was only ten feet high, more of a dirt dune than a hill. He keyed off the engine.
From a box attached to the wall, Fleur removed a hollow-bored Very pistol and a flare cartridge. The cartridge was color-coded yellow.
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