“They’re following the river down,” said Tane.
“Looking for us. Police?”
“I’m not sure,” said Tane. He turned to the pilot. “What do you think, Tom?”
“First of all, it was a big ’copter, real big,” he replied in his slow drawl. “It looked like a Black Hawk troop carrier, the sort the army used to use on operations and now they use for logging and spraying. But it didn’t have any markings, so it could be doing something illegal.” He shook his head. “It might be huia poachers.”
“Pretty big helicopter for poaching,” said David.
Tane broke in. “Like hell it’s poachers! That helicopter was coming down the valley from Devil’s Peak. On the other side of the Peak is the watershed of the Waitoa.”
“The Waitoa,” David whistled. Do you think it was coming from the Waitoa?”
“The huia sanctuary,” said Kate softly, “where no human beings are allowed.”
David was listening again. “It hasn’t gone far! The motor’s stopped.”
“I think it’s landed,” said Tane.
“Do you think they know where we are and they’re coming up?” asked Kate.
“Wait!” said Tane “They’re doing something down there.”
They listened, but could hear nothing. After about fifteen minutes they heard the motor spring into life and a few minutes later the roar broke on them again. They hid as the helicopter swept above them and went on upward towards the headwaters.
David came out and they all stood looking up the valley. Their Shangri La was no longer magical. It felt cold. The birds were no longer singing.
“I think we should reconnoitre,” he said. “Will you stay here, Tom?” The pilot nodded. The others got their boots on. David looked at Tane. “Lead on, but be careful.”
Before they had gone far, suddenly Tane stopped. “Hear that?”
They listened.
“Just the river,” said David.
“Listen again.”
David heard it. A low, continuous roar. “The falls?”
“Two hundred feet high. They’re the highest in the Raukumara.”
Shortly afterwards, when the roar was becoming much louder, they came out into a small clearing.
“That’s where it landed,” Tane said pointing to the skid marks.
He dropped into the riverbed. “Someone’s just been down here.” He pointed to wet boot marks on a rock.
“Be careful,” said Kate.
“It’s all right. The tracks come back too.”
Now Tane stalked noiselessly, nimbly among the boulders. In a moment he was out of sight.
Then they heard above the roaring an agonised yell. “Help! Help!”
They came round the bend and the river just ended. The water leapt into nothingness. The horizon collapsed. Spray was wetting them like rain. There was thunder all around them echoing and resounding from the black, sheer cliffs.
Tane was on the edge of the drop, pointing down. They saw it. A rope leading down into the falls. A climber’s rope. With horror David saw that the rope was taut and passed tightly over a rock near the edge. The rock was sharp and little strands of rope were spinning off.
“Hold me!” Tane motioned, and advanced towards the edge.
They formed a chain, bracing themselves as they could against any footholds they could find. Tane leaned over the very edge and grasped the rope just below the frayed part.
“One – two – three – HEAVE!” he called.
The rope did not move. Tane wedged his foot into a crevice. “Try again.”
This time the rope moved upwards an inch.
“That’s it! Again!”
Now it moved six inches. Tane stepped back from the edge. “Again!”
Inch by inch the rope came up.
They cried out in horror. A hand was coming over the edge clenched to the rope, then an arm, a head and shoulders. Sodden, white, blood-flecked, numb.
“Don’t let go! There’s another!” cried Tane.
It was true. A second man came up. The hands had to be prised loose from the rope.
They seized both men and brought them to the bank, wrapping them round with their jerseys and parkas. Tane flung himself on one and started to rub his limbs furiously. David hugged the other in a desperate attempt to impart warmth.
David never forgot the moment when the eyes of the half-drowned man opened and looked at him. He was back in the Geology vestibule talking to a stranger with a square face and piercing eyes under short, greying hair.
And he heard the voice of Kate crying brokenly.
“Stan! It’s Stan McTaggart!
CHAPTER 38
“Get it out!”
An urgent shout broke the stillness of the summer mid-afternoon.
David couldn’t believe his eyes. A person whom an hour ago he had seen as the half-dead victim of a staged accident was out of Tane’s sleeping bag and limping frenziedly towards the camouflaged helicopter.
“Get it out!” he shouted again as he started pulling away the net with his bandaged hands.
The shouts woke the other tramper. “Nice toy,” he said casually. “Arawa Lines. Hughes 500. Hunting registration Number One. Aircraft registration JM. How did you get hold of that at a thousand dollars an hour?”
David saw Tom looking anxiously at the tramper attacking his helicopter. “We sort of borrowed it. He’s the pilot.”
The exertion had proved too much for Stan. He was leaning against the machine and breathing heavily. “Start it up!”
His laconic, lantern-jawed companion did not move out of the sleeping bag he was in, but calmly lit a cigarette. “Give it a rest, Stan. You’ve hardly noticed the people who saved your life, and all you can think of is pinching their helicopter.”
“I should have introduced Stan’s friend,” put in Kate. “This is Bill.”
Bill’s words had their effect. “Kate, is that you?” Stan limped back towards them. “Is this an Ornithological Society expedition?” Then without waiting for an answer, he eyed David closely.
“I’m David Corbishley, Geology Department. You called on me just before Christmas”
“Doctor Corbishley. You had a colleague who disappeared.”
He nodded towards Tane. “This is him.”
“I thought you didn’t want to know about him. I must have got it wrong.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“So you’ve come to do a survey. ‘There’s great potential even though it’s a Forest Park,” he mimicked.
“I don’t feel that way now,” said David.
Stan turned his gaze to Tane. “The lost colleague. You came in here, didn’t you? You found something?”
It was time to change the subject. “What’s the hurry?” David asked.
Stan looked towards his companion who was still in Tane’s sleeping bag, then he sat down and buried his face in his hands. “There’s a madman loose. Ten thousand people – are going to die.”
They all looked at Bill in horrified silence. “It’s true,” he said.
“We know about the Hollow Mountain and the uranium,” David said. “Is there a base there?”
“You’re all too late!” Stan laughed hysterically.
“Cool it, Stan!” said his companion. “I must apologise for my cobber. He’s not the most tactful chap. But I can tell you there is a base and it’s run by an underground international group called The Brotherhood.”
“But what about the limestone caverns?” asked Tane anxiously.
“That’s where the base is.”
Tane groaned, but he felt David’s hand on his shoulder.
“But how do you know about this?” asked Kate.
“After we were captured a fortnight ago, we convinced them that we agreed with their aims and we were allowed to join them.”
“But we heard they were a white supremacist group? Surely Stan…” spluttered Kate.