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There were openings in the rocky ramparts, but the breaks only went in a few feet or yards As theythe ied They had escaped the fire only to wind up in a very large frying pan Schroeder, on the other hand, seenored the pain his ankle, his eyes darting along the face of the wall He disappeared into a gap, and after a few minutes let out a yell of triumph

Schroeder e and announced that he had found a way through the barrier He grabbed Karla's hand as if he were leading a child, and they plunged into thethe path a few steps when a man stepped out from behind a boulder It was Grisha, the leader of the murderous ivory hunters

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Austin looked down into the yawning caldera as the paraglider soared like a condor through the notch in the ri up the side of the volcano went through the low spot and descended a gradual slope to the midpoint of the caldera, where it ended in a low bluff On the opposite side of the crater, the rim dropped alreen roughly shaped in a circle was sandwiched between the bottom of the slope and the field of black boulders

Austin put the glider into a lazy spiral into the crater and looked for a good landing site

"What's that down there?" Zavala pointed to the base of the slope where the road ended "Looks like a herd of cows"

Austin squinted through the lens of his goggles "Too furry to be cows Maybe they're yaks"

"I could use a few yaks after all we've been through"

Austin cringed at the pun, but his mental pain was short-lived Zavala called his attention to another section of the green area

"I'll be damned," Austin said "People!"

The group stood near the edge of the boulder field As the paraglider drifted lower, Austin saw soure rushed to the aid of the fallen figure but was jerked away The paraglider was low enough for Austin to see a flash of blond hair

"I think we just found Karla Janos," Austin said

Grisha's thin lips were peeled back in a grin that revealed his bad teeth He spoke in Russian, and his murderous cohorts appeared fro

Schroeder quickly sized up the situation While he and Karla pursued a zigzag path through the city, Grisha and his h the central boulevard and stumbled on the way out

Grisha o back the way they had come As the Russians and their captives broke out of the rocks into the open, Grisha saw the woolly mammoths