by Max McCoy
"Tell the old fool to get back into the car."
"He can't hear me," Indy said.
"Then shoot him."
Indy felt blood roll down between his shoulder blades as the knife pressed harder into the soft hollow at the base of his skull.
"Kill him."
Indy pointed the Webley at Granger and shot. The bullet thudded into a crate behind him. Granger looked aghast, not knowing whether to laugh or to return fire.
"Idiot!" he cried.
Indy rolled forward, exposing the assassin. Granger snatched up his rifle, but the dark figure had scrambled down behind the cargo before he could manage to get off a shot.
Indy crawled back to the flatcar, where Granger was kneeling behind one of the trucks and trying to get a clear shot at their opponent.
"Are you all right?" Granger asked.
"That's a relative question," Indy snapped. "Look at the back of my neck."
"It's nothing," Granger said.
"Nothing? It feels like I'm bleeding to death."
"Flesh wounds always flow like the dickens." Granger's tone was dismissive. "Who is that chap, anyway?"
"An associate of your gangster friend, Lao Che."
"No friend of mine." Granger sniffed. "But one uses what is at hand to get the job done, you know. Jones, did you really have to take a shot at me?"
"He was holding a knife on me," Indy said. "Besides, I missed on purpose. I'll bet you're glad the train didn't hit a bump just then, huh?"
"I don't know where you got the idea that you could shoot." Granger shook his head. "Concentrate, Jones, squeeze the trigger gently. I've watched you, and every time you shoot you hold your breath and snap the trigger like a four-year-old kid with a cap gun."
"Sorry to interrupt your little chat," Joan said as she crawled up next to them, "but what do you intend doing about that fellow in black? If you haven't noticed, he's slicing open the canvas over the truck up there."
"I told you to keep her back," Indy scolded.
"I can't argue with a nun," Wu Han said.
"What the devil is he up to?" Granger asked.
"Say, that big machine gun mounted on the truck isn't loaded, is it? I mean, you didn't fit it with a magazine yet, right?"
"It wouldn't be of any use if it weren't."
"Terrific," Indy said.
"Oh, I doubt whether the bugger will be able to figure out how to operate the thing. It's rather complicated, you know, and most of these simple people have no experience with advanced firearms. If it's not a muzzle loader, they're lost."
The assassin brought back the bolt on the British machine gun and chambered a round. He was crouching in the back of the truck, and the muzzle of the gun was pointed into the air. He test-fired at the sky, laughed maniacally, then swung the barrel down and let go with a short burst at the truck where the others were hidden.
The front end of the Dodge truck quivered as bullets chewed into it, shredding the canvas and sending bits of metal and glass spraying upward. When the shooting stopped, the truck settled down on two flat front tires and began to hemorrhage oil and antifreeze.
"I think we ought to be hunting for a safer place to hide," Granger suggested. "This particular flatcar is loaded with petrol drums."
"Indy," Wu Han said. "What's the plan?"
"I don't have a plan," Indy replied. "Why do I always have to be the one with a plan?"
"You just do," Joan said. "So make one."
"Jeesh." Indy took off his hat and jammed it onto Joan's head. "Take care of this for me. I don't want any holes in it, you understand?"
"What do you want me to do?" Granger asked.
"Keep him pinned down in the truck," Indy said.
Indy sprinted to the forward end of the car and jumped down onto the coupling while .30-caliber slugs riddled the area where he had been. His boots slipped on the grease-covered iron, but he caught himself before he fell.
He took hold of the frame of the flatcar and began to pull himself along beneath it. As the roadbed whizzed beneath him Indy imagined the killer trying to point the machine gun at the deck. If there was a way to do it, he decided, the assassin would probably figure it out.
Finally Indy reached the end of the flatcar and grasped the tongue with both hands. The heels of his boots sparked on the roadbed as he pulled himself up onto the coupling. Then he crouched on top of the coupling, resting briefly between the cars. He studied the mechanism for a moment, then drew his pocketknife and jammed it deeply into the brake hose. He had to twist with all of his might, but finally the blade punctured the tough hose with a hiss of escaping air pressure. Then Indy pulled the pin and strained against the lever that opened the coupling. Finally, it turned.
"Let's see how you deal with that," Indy announced.
As the cars began to separate, Indy realized he was on the wrong side of the coupling. As the gap widened between the cars he would become a sitting duck for the assassin's machine gun, and there wouldn't be enough time to scramble to safety, regardless of whether he was on the top, side, or bottom of the car.
The cars were now held together only by the damaged hose. As the drag of the rear cars increased, the line was drawn like a bowstring. Indy leaped to the tongue of the forward car just as the brake line snapped at the wound he had made earlier.
Suddenly free of part of its burden, the old locomotive picked up speed. Ahead, the tracks gradually dipped downward in a slow curve to a river valley. The rails crossed high over the river on a wooden trestle.
Indy waved sheepishly at his friends on the retreating car. Then he drew the Webley and climbed cautiously up onto the deck of the flatcar, making sure to stay low enough behind the cargo so that the assassin couldn't see him.
With the help of the gradually decreasing grade, and no sign of a brake, the locomotive was gaining even more speed. As the train fanned out around the curve Indy made his way to the side of the flatcar and waved his arms to try to get the attention of the crew up in the locomotive. Smoke and sparks belched from the stack. Surely they knew if they didn't slow the train down, they were going to jump the tracks and plunge into the river at the bottom of the curve.
Indy stopped waving.
The windows in the cab of the locomotive were empty, even though the pair of drivers on each side of the engine were churning furiously against the rails. The crew had left the throttle open and jumped into the nearest irrigation ditch when the shooting started.
"This is no way to run a railroad," he said.
Indy peeked over the top of a crate. The assassin was still in the back of the Dodge, both hands On the machine gun, searching for a target.
"Cut us loose!" Indy pleaded.
His answer was a burst that riddled the top of the crate.
"Look, you trigger-happy polyglot," Indy shouted. "We're both going to die if we don't do something quick. I'm coming over the top of this crate, so don't shoot."
Indy holstered his gun. He held his hands in the air, fingers spread. He squinted, clenched his teeth, and eased himself up. When he was fully erect and found that he had not been shot dead, he smiled and placed his hands on his hips.
"Good," he said. "I knew I could talk a little—"
The assassin was frantically working with his knife to clear the breech of the gun. The gun had jammed during the last burst, and a shell casing was stuck sideways in the ejector, preventing it from firing.
Indy jumped up onto the hood of the truck.
"Get away from there," he ordered as he pulled his revolver.
The assassin backed away from the machine gun.
"Now uncouple us. Do it, quick!"
The flatcar was rocking back and forth on its springs as the train rocketed toward the river. The assassin walked cautiously to the front of the car, pulled the pin, and raised the lever. The car did not, however, show any tendency to leave the rest of the train.
Indy put the gun in his belt and grasped the wheel to set the brakes manually. The wheel was st
iff with rust.
"Help me," he said.
The assassin got on the other side of the wheel. The wheel began to turn, slowly at first and with the sound of tortured metal, then more quickly. Sparks flew from the wheels of the flatcar. At this speed, the brakes were merely an annoyance to the car's momentum. With agonizing slowness, the locomotive and the rest of the train began to move ahead.
"Good," Indy said.
The flatcar was only twenty yards behind the rest of the train when the locomotive left the tracks and plunged over the side of the trestle to the river below. The tender and a half-dozen freight cars were pulled over the side as well.
Indy ducked.
The locomotive exploded as the cold river water seeped into the superheated boiler. The debris from the blast peppered the trestle and the flatcar like shrapnel.
The rails were badly warped, but unbroken, where the train had left the track. The flatcar bucked fiercely as it clattered over the damaged section, then lost speed and rolled to a smooth stop on the other side of the river.
"We made it," Indy said, struggling to his feet. "Hey buddy, we made it!"
But there was no response from the assassin. He was lying dead on the deck of the flatcar, a boiler bolt protruding from his forehead.
3
Wanshan Pass
The expedition's three flatcars, pushed by a tiny switch engine, had finally rolled to a stop at track's end in the city of Kalgan. It had taken a hired crew most of the morning to unload them.
"We don't have room for all of the equipment," Wu Han told Indy as the gang pushed the bullet-ridden Dodge down a pair of makeshift ramps. The truck's flattened front wheels refused to follow the path indicated, however, and the workmen scattered as the front end of the truck fell off the ramps. The truck slid the rest of the way on its frame, then bounced as the rear wheels struck the ground.
"We need three trucks, not two. What do we do, boss?"
"Have you ever driven a team before?" Indy asked.
Indy took off his fedora and wiped his forehead with a dusty sleeve. Despite the cold, he was sweating from the morning's work.
"That was nice work back there, Jones," Granger said. "Not only did you manage to destroy a locomotive and most of a freight train, but you ruined exactly one third of the expedition's vehicles and put us two days behind schedule in the process. I can't imagine Brody will be very happy about that, my brown-eyed friend."
"Please," Wu Han said. "It wasn't Indy's fault. The assassins... and the machine gun..."
"Granger has a very warped sense of humor," Indy told Wu Han. "But don't worry, he's just having some fun at my expense. If he were really angry with me, he wouldn't say a word."
"Oh," Wu Han said. "But that doesn't make sense."
"Nothing has so far on this expedition," Indy concluded.
"What are we going to do about that ruined automobile?" Granger asked. "I don't think we can afford to abandon the rest of our supplies here."
"Do you suppose this town has a blacksmith?"
"Of course," Wu Han said.
"Then find him. See if he can put the truck back into working order. I don't think the block is cracked, so hopefully it will just be a matter of patching the radiator and so forth."
"But Indy," Wu Han protested, "I doubt if this town's blacksmith has ever seen a new American automobile, to say nothing of repairing one."
"We'll have to chance it," Indy said. "Besides, you seem to know a little about everything. And we have to have that third truck, or else we won't have enough supplies with us to return from the middle of the Gobi."
Indy counted out some bills and gave them to Wu Han.
"This is the last of our paper money," he stated. "I spent the rest of it on that sorry excuse for a locomotive to take us the rest of the way. But it should more than take care of fixing up the truck. And make sure you have plenty of petrol when you leave."
"And that's all the money the expedition has left?"
"No," Indy said. "That's just the last of our paper money. The Great Wall is seven miles from here, high up on that mountain, and once we pass through, our paper money is worthless. From that point on, it will be strictly gold or barter."
By the time Wu Han found a blacksmith, ascertained that the modifications could be made, and reported back to Indy, the two running automobiles were loaded with all they could carry.
"The work will take the rest of the day," Wu Han said. "Perhaps more. The blacksmith said that was as fast as he and his apprentice could work."
"But can he fix it?" Indy asked.
"It was a little difficult for me to understand his dialect," Wu Han said, "but he promised me that he could make it go. I told him he would have to answer to the white devil who leads our expedition if he failed."
"Granger, of course."
"No, Indy. The white devil is you."
"With each mile we go," Indy said, "it's like we're going back in time. Airplanes, locomotives, and now blacksmiths to fix a twentieth-century horseless carriage. By the time we get to Professor Starbuck, we'll probably be in the Stone Age."
"Why don't you go ahead?" Wu Han suggested. "The weather is mild and there is plenty of daylight. The expedition is far enough behind schedule already."
"Are you sure?" Indy asked.
"Of course."
"Pick the best hired man to stay on with you, at least for a little while, because crossing the wall alone is often the last mistake a traveler makes," Indy said. "Also, always keep your gun handy. Don't be afraid to use it. These people have seen you with the expedition, they know you have money, so be careful."
"But Indy," Wu Han said. "I don't have a gun."
Indy opened one of Granger's crates and picked up a Colt .45 automatic. He showed Wu Han how to load it, then gave him a box of cartridges.
"Remember," Indy explained, "when you load the clip into the butt for the first time, you have to pull the action back. That puts a round in the chamber and cocks the hammer at the same time. Got it?"
"Yes, boss," Wu Han said.
Indy stuck the Colt into Wu Han's waistband.
"Keep it there, where people can see it." He paused. "And if you have to draw it for any reason, count on shooting it, even if you have to fire a round into the air. It's bad luck and a sign of cowardice to these people if a weapon is drawn and not used."
"I don't like guns, Indy."
"Good," Indy said. "The best kind of person to use one. Now, if all goes well we will make camp about thirty miles on the other side of the wall tonight, along the road to Urga. But if you're not there at first light—assuming the repairs take longer than expected—then we'll have to leave without you. In that case, you catch up with us as best you can."
"Don't worry, Indy. You can count on me. I owe you much more than my life, and we Hans pay our debts."
Indy climbed into the cab of the truck. He stepped on the starter switch and the six-cylinder engine ground for a moment, then sputtered to life.
"Xanadu," Indy said, taking a last look around. "It is said that Kubla Khan built his summer palace a few miles from here. You know, the Coleridge poem..."
"'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,'" Joan recited. "I'm sorry, but this doesn't look much like paradise to me."
The pair of trucks left the city and struck out on the old road that followed the riverbed up to the Mongolian plateau. Granger was in the lead, driving the truck that had the machine gun mounted on the back. In some places, the wheels of countless carts had cut so deeply into the road that all Indy could see of the truck ahead was the barrel of the machine gun.
Joan was surprised at the number of people on the road, some with carts but many on foot, carrying goods to and from the market at Kalgan.
"Where do you suppose they all come from?" she wondered aloud.
"Look closely at the hillsides," Indy said. "The people here live in dugouts and caves for the most part, because they are warm in winter and cool in the summer.
But because the dugouts are the same color as the earth around them, you have to look sharp to see them."
Seven miles outside of Kalgan they reached the foot of the pass, at an altitude of just over three thousand feet above the plain. The road turned abruptly upward, and Indy had to use low gear to keep the truck from stalling on some of the steeper grades.
"This is a pass?" Joan asked.
"This is the flat part," Indy said.
They climbed another two thousand feet in the space of eleven miles, on a road that was filled with switchbacks and doglegs. Indy had to fight the truck to keep the wheels from becoming mired in the deepest of the ruts, or jumping as they bounced over rocks that would qualify in some parts of the world as boulders. Just when Joan thought they would never reach the top, they rounded a corner... and before them stretched the Great Wall of China.
Granger had pulled to the side of the road. He was sitting on the running board of the truck, calmly smoking his pipe and admiring the view.
Indy brought the truck beside Granger's.
"Look where we've been," he said.
Stretching to the south was mile after mile of tortured hills that looked as if they had been torn from a geography classroom's relief map of China. In many places the hills had been cut raw by wind and rain, and the wounds exposed the very backbone of the earth.
"No wonder my rump is sore," Joan said.
Coiling around these broken ridges, like a serpent hoary with age, was the Great Wall—the biggest, and certainly the longest, structure in the history of the world, stretching for nearly four thousand miles over northern China. Some parts of the wall were two thousand years old; but this part, which had been built and rebuilt over the centuries, dated from less than a thousand years past.
The wall was forty feet wide at its granite base, and between the battlements on the top ran a road paved with bricks that had been trod by generations of workers and soldiers. The inside of the wall was filled with earth. And all of the work on its construction had been done by hand, one stone and one cartful of earth at a time.