"I do, sir," Hollis answered through tight lips.
"As your Commander-in-Chief, I'm ordering you to blow that hill, and blow it now."
"The mob is swarming up the hill," Nichols said in near panic.
They all tensed and swung their eyes to the monitor sweeping the hill.
The huge throng was slowly moving up the slope toward the summit, chanting Topiltzin's name.
"If you wait any longer you'll kill a lot of people," said Metcalf urgently. "for pity's sake, man, detonate." Hollis's thumb was poised above the switch. He spoke into his transmitter. "Detonation!"
But he didn't press the switch. He used the enlisted man's gambit: Never refuse an order and be tried for insubordination, but answer to the affirmative and never carry it out. Inefficiency was one of the most difficult of charges to prove at a court-martial.
He was determined to squeeze every second he could for Pitt.
Holding his breath as though he were diving under water, eyes tightly closed against the stinging smoke, Pitt willed his legs to move, to run, to crawl, to do anything which would rush him clear of that horror chamber. He made it into a passage, not knowing if it led to the tunnel shaft or the crater. He kept his eyes shut, feeling his way along the wall, half-hopping, half-hobbling on his bad leg.
He felt a burning rage to live. He simply couldn't believe he'd die now, not after having survived the last few minutes. Finally he opened his eyes. They burned as if stung by bees, but he could see. He had passed the worst of the smoke. It was only an orange vapor now.
The shaft through the limestone began to rise. He felt a slight increase in temperature and a light breeze. Then he stumbled outside into the night. The stars were there, almost blotted out by the bright lights shining up the hill.
But Pitt was not clear. There was a snag. He had the unsettling realization that he had exited through the crater tunnel. The slanting sides rose up another five meters. So close, yet so tormentingly far.
He began clawing his way up the incline, his wounded leg, totally useless now, dragging along behind. He could only dig in and push with one foot.
Hollis had gone silent. The Colonel had no words left to say. Pitt knew the explosion he'd so carefully planned was going to take him with it. Fatigue swept over him in great floating waves, yet he stubbornly crawled upward.
Then a dark form appeared over the rim of the crater and a massive hand reached down, grabbed the shoulder of Pitts sweater and heaved him onto level ground.
With seemingly incredible ease Giordino flung Pitt into the open tailgate of the Jeep, leaped into the driver's seat and jammed the accelerator pedal flat onto the floorboard.
They had barely covered fifty meters when Hollis pressed the demolition switch. The signal set off the two hundred kilo of C-6 nitroglycerin gel deep inside the hill with a monstrous roar.
for one brief moment it was as if a volcanic eruption was about to hurtle from the bowels of the earth. The hill shook with a rumble.
The great mass of Topiltzin followers were thrown to the ground, their mouths agape in horror, the concussion sucking the air from their lungs into a vacuum.
Then the whole summit of Gongora Hill rose almost ten meters into the air, hung there in the night as if clutched by a giant hand, and cnimbled and fell inward, leaving a huge plume of birowmg dust as a ghostly tombstone.
November 5, 1991
Roma, Texas.
Five days later, a few minutes past dnight, the President's helicopter set down at a small airfield a few miles outside Roma. Accompanying him were Senator Pitt and Julius Schiller. As soon as the rotor blades swung and drooped to a stop, Admiral Sandecker walked up to the door and greeted them.
"Good to see you, Admiral," the President said graciously.
"Congratulations on a splendid job, though I must say I didn't think NUMA could pull it off."
"Thank you, Mr. President," replied Sandecker with his usual cocky air.
"We're all grateful you had enough confidence in our mad plan to give us the go-ahead."
"A neat scam, a very neat scam indeed." The President turned and looked at Senator Pitt. "But you have the Senator to thank for my backing. He can be very persuasive."
After a few words between Sandecker and Schiller, they all climbed a short ladder ugh a concealed door into the bed of a huge tandem, ten-wheeler dump truck.
Two of the President's Secret Service agents, wearing work clothes, climbed into the cab with the driver. Four more piled into an old battered Dodge van parked in the rear.