A few boulders ahead of them, the Master of Sinanju stopped dead. He shot a concerned look back to Remo.
"What the hell set them off?" Remo demanded. The question died in his throat.
His senses had suddenly picked up something else. Even Heidi felt the new rumble through the rock. On the hill above them, she could see the tops of the farthest trees topple and vanish behind those closest to them. They were being flicked aside by some horrifying force.
It was like a cliched movie scene in which some creature from a bygone age first makes its appearance. Except this terror was real.
An avalanche.
"Remo!" Chiun squeaked anxiously. Trees nearby rattled.
"Go!" Remo shouted back.
Chiun hesitated at first, too far away to offer assistance. All at once, he spun on a sandaled heel, his mouth a thin line. Rapidly he began bounding from rock to rock, distancing himself from the main area of collapse.
The trees nearest them ripped away. Like pencils in some massive sharpener, they were flung beneath the great rolling boulders. The mighty trunks were split to kindling and thrust into the ravenous maw of the avalanche.
When the mass of rock was nearly upon them, Remo snatched Heidi up around the waist. It would be difficult enough by himself. He didn't know if he could manage with extra baggage.
Remo didn't follow the Master of Sinanju. He was too far back. If he attempted to follow, Remo would be swept under the collapsing mountain of debris. Instead, he spun on his heel and-Heidi in tow headed directly into the incoming rush of stone and earth.
The first rock he encountered was only as large as a beach ball. It was rolling rapidly as Remo dropped one toe atop it. Using opposite force against the stone's forward momentum, Remo vaulted up and over. He landed on a larger, flatter stone that was being swept along at the fore of the advancing pile of churning rubble.
Fortunately Heidi was not fighting him. She remained limp beneath his arm, not wishing to distract him from his life-or-death ballet.
His next jump brought him to a toppled tree trunk. It was scraping down the hill at a terrifying speed. Remo ran to the far end of the log, then rode it like a surfboard back down into the growing pile of debris.
Already in the valley, many of the rocks they had been climbing on earlier were covered by fresh stones.
When the lower end of the log they were on struck the swelling pile of debris, Remo jumped again. Both feet barely touched the surface of a dangerously splintering boulder before he sprang again. He landed on yet another stone.
The huge rock he had barely trodden on struck an even larger boulder at the bottom of the ravine and shattered. The pieces were instantly covered in a washing mass of dirt.
Remo leapfrogged a few more times, but found the going increasingly easier.
The avalanche was tapering off.
With a sigh of settling earth and a cloud of choking dust, the last of the largest chunks of earth and sections of broken road rolled into the ravine. Long after, tiny stones still toppled along the devastated path of the avalanche.
In all, it had taken no more than a minute.
Remo set Heidi down to the still-reverberating earth. He glanced back at the damage.
It looked as if the claw of a gigantic backhoe had swiped a huge chunk out of the side of the mountain. There was a single stripe of missing trees and rock running straight up to the road. The valley where they had been standing was buried.
Panting, Heidi looked at Remo. For all his exertions, he had not broken a sweat. He wore a deep scowl.
"Have I told you lately that I hate Nazis?" Remo grumbled.
As he spoke, Chiun bounded into view far ahead of them. He stood at the nearest visible part of the valley that had not been overrun by the avalanche. For an instant when he first saw Remo, the Master of Sinanju was visibly relieved.
"Remo, that was-" he suddenly considered his words, and his look of relief morphed into one of blase acceptance "-adequate."
"Adequate, my ass," Remo griped. "That was perfect. And how the hell did they do that without us stepping on the damned things?"
"They could be set to accept a radio signal."
Remo turned away from Chiun, looking at Heidi. "Thank you, Professor Science," he said.
"Do not ask if you do not wish to know," she said with a shrug. Readjusting the pack on her back, she struck off toward Chiun.
"No wonder everyone loves Germans," he muttered to himself. "They're so damned cuddly." Following Heidi, he began hiking across the fresh pile of stone rubble toward the waiting Master of Sinanju.
IT HAD BEEN forty-five minutes since Kluge had set off the field of land mines. The leader of IV had sat in front of the bank of video monitors the entire time, his anxiety level rising every minute.
"Has everyone reported in?" he asked Herman. "Yes, sir."
"Even Theodor? You were not able to raise him."
"It was a communications problem," Herman explained. "It has been corrected."
Kluge nodded. He glanced at the monitor on which he had last seen his stalkers. A ragged V-shape crater was visible on the road. Beyond it sat the girl's parked jeep.
"They are dead, Adolf," Herman insisted.
"Possibly," Kluge said. There was a touch more optimism in his voice than there had been of late.
"I cannot imagine anyone surviving that," Herman said, indicating the minefield damage on the monitor.
Kluge snorted derisively. "In that case; I have the greater imagination." He bit his lip. "Still..."
Herman waited a moment before breaking the silence. "We could send the second unit down to sift the rubble," he suggested. Indeed, this was the third time he had floated the same idea in the past forty-five minutes.
Kluge nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, all right." Herman wheeled around in his chair. He held his hand delicately over the slender microphone that was hooked around the back of his head and positioned it over his mouth.
"Christoph, come in."
Herman waited. There was no reply. He repeated the command. Again, his radio message was greeted by silence.
"More equipment failure," Herman griped.
He attempted to raise the IV soldier a third time. As he did so, Adolf Kluge switched his attention to the monitor screens.
The second unit was the designation given to the IV villager and his attendant group of Numbers who were at the next checkpoint up from that of the late Veit Rauch, only a few yards outside the periphery of the village.
When he called up the appropriate image on the nearest monitor, the tree-mounted camera panned the designated scene.