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 grinned at Gamay. They began to paddle back toward the quieter waters of the lake. The helicopter circled around the lake, then came back and hovered above the dugouts. A smiling figure with a bushy silver mustache and deep-set eyes leaned out a side door and waved. It was Dr. Ramirez.

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.

NUMA 2 - Blue Gold

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, grinning face framed by the Prussian-cut dirty blond hair reminded her of one of the monsters in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Only uglier. But it was the eyes that got her. The irises were so black that the pupils were practically invisible.