by Alex Archer
"Steady," Annja said.
"I am." Hu's hand wasn't trembling as much as it had the first time. It was almost still.
Behind and to Annja's side, Roux and Hu's assistant held high-beam lights that splashed over the wall. So far she'd struck the chisel three times. The crack they'd discovered had grown wider. Dust swirled from the chamber on the other side of the wall.
Setting herself, Annja swung the hammer again. Metal crashed against metal, a sharp noise that rung inside the cave. Sparks flashed and died before they hit the ground.
This time the chisel sank into the wall several inches. The crack split, fragmenting in different directions. Stone splinters peppered Annja's face.
The cave wall held. More powder whirled into the air.
Hu tried to withdraw the chisel but couldn't get it to move. "It's stuck."
"Do we have another chisel?" Annja breathed deeply, hoping the mask was protection against whatever poison might be seeping from the room on the other side of the wall.
"Not one that big." Hu's assistant knelt at the toolbox they'd brought in. He held up a much smaller chisel.
"That's too small." Frustration chafed at Annja. She couldn't wait to see whatever was on the other side of the wall.
This was what she lived for, what she studied and why she researched and put in countless hours – the find. There was no drug like it. No other feeling she'd experienced came close to what she was feeling. Adrenaline, hot and insistent, pounded through her.
"Stand back." Annja lifted the sledgehammer to her shoulder again, set herself, and swung, putting all of her weight and muscle behind the effort.
The sledge hammered the wall. The fractures deepened and grew longer.
She drew back and hit again and again, turning into an automaton, not stopping until she couldn't lift the hammer any more. A pile of pebbles, stone splinters, and the powder collected where the wall met the cavern floor.
Breathing hard, the caked mask impeding her, Annja stepped back and dropped the sledge. She held her arms over her head to open her rib cage and let her lungs work more easily.
"It's all broken," Hu said, examining the wall, "but the weight is keeping the pieces locked in place." He turned to Annja. "We could send for some dynamite or plastic explosive."
"You have those at the camp?"
Hu shook his head.
That frustrated Annja even more. Getting those things would take too much time.
She turned her attention to the toolbox and found a long crowbar, bent like a shepherd's crook at one end and slanted at the other. Returning to the wall, she looked at the pieces like they were a jigsaw puzzle.
Somewhere in there, there's a rock that will give. A piece that will allow the others to fall. Annja ran her hand over the cracked mass bound together by its own weight. She made a selection near the top, extending her hands well above her head. Then she tightened her grip on the crowbar and slammed the slanted end into the crack beside the rock she'd chosen.
Rock and steel met in a loud, grating rasp. The crowbar sank into the crack a few inches.
Annja tried wiggling the crowbar and didn't feel much give at first. She focused and concentrated, drawing all the strength she had. In her mind, she felt for her sword, almost touching it. She felt stronger then, and she pulled even harder.
With a grumbling crush of noise, a rock the size of Annja's head tumbled from the wall.
Powder swirled for a moment, then poured to the floor.
Roux moved his flashlight beam to the hole Annja's efforts had made. "You're through." He walked forward, shining the light into the chamber beyond.
The room was small, and it seemed to be – as Annja had guessed – a storeroom. Cloth bags sat heaped in arranged stacks.
"If that's all poison," Roux said in French, "Sha Wu Ying had been planning to kill a lot of people."
"What did you say?" Hu joined them.
Annja interpreted for the professor. "It may not all be datura powder," she went on. "They could be other herbs, as well."
Some of the bags did look different.
"Look." Hu redirected his light. "There's a door."
Peering through the darkness, Annja spotted the door leading from the chamber.
She wondered what lay beyond.
****
Hu brought the work crew in and set them to the task of carefully clearing away the powder and debris. They used shovels and wheelbarrows to haul it outside and dump it down the front of the mountainside.
Annja worked at the opening, digging more and more rock out of the way. It was hard work, but she wouldn't back off and let anyone else do it.
She monitored her own feelings, though, alert to any change in her perceptions. There was no sign of anyone succumbing to the hallucinogen's effects.
In just a few minutes, although it certainly felt longer, the opening was large enough to crawl through. Annja stepped back and put the crowbar down.
"Where do you think it goes?" Roux asked.
"It could be just a few rooms," Annja answered. "But if the legend was right, if this really was a city of thieves, then I'll bet it goes deep underground and stretches back toward Loulan."
"Why Loulan?" Hu asked.
"Because they'd have needed a source of water. Loulan had the canal that supported the city."
"They could have dug wells," Roux said.
Annja nodded. "That's a possibility. But Tarim Basin dried up. It was primarily created by collected rainwater, not an underground river or reservoir. I doubt there's much groundwater in this area." She felt certain she was right.
"There's a helicopter," one of the workers shouted.
Wary at once, remembering there had been no sign of Garin Braden or Ngai Kuan-Yin so far, Annja went to the cave's mouth and peered up into the sky. She used a hand to shade her eyes against the bright sun.
Looking waspish, the aircraft swooped in low, coming in from the dark cloudbank that was now almost upon the mountains. The gathering wind swept across the open desert, bringing dust devils to life and causing the helicopter to bob in the air.
****
Strapped into the passenger seat, Garin cursed the windstorm that had swirled into being around him. If he didn't know better, if he hadn't learned to get over so many of his superstitions, he would have sworn that the fates had decided to intervene.
The helicopter closed in on the mountainside. Garin watched as one of the workers dumped another wheelbarrow full of detritus over the side.
Ngai's voice came over the headset. "Kill them."
Angered, Garin turned to look into the back, intending on arguing the point. Instead, whatever attempts he might have made to forestall the wholesale slaughter died as the pilot opened fire.
Once they'd arrived in the desert outside the Loulan dig site, Ngai's men had mounted machine guns under the helicopter and a digital weapons system had been added that fed directly to the pilot's controls.
Furious, Garin considered drawing his pistol and shooting Ngai through the heart. But he knew Ngai's men wouldn't have allowed him to escape.
The heavy machine-gun bullets chopped into the camels and the people who were tending to them. Most of the camels went down at once, huge bloody holes torn in them, sagging on legs that would no longer hold their weight. Two men ran, but they didn't get far.
Then the pilot pulled his craft up, taking aim on the cave mouth.
****
Kelly Swan acted on instinct as the sounds of the heavy machine-gun fire echoed around her, reverberating in the cave and mixing with the sounds of the continued assault. She scrambled for her bedroll, watching from the corner of her eye as the helicopter came up to address the cave as she knew it would.
They were trapped in the cave, there was nowhere to go. She knew the machine guns would chop them to rags if they tried to flee down the mountainside.
Diving to the ground, Kelly yanked the bedroll open. It didn't matter who knew her secrets now. They were all about t
o die.
In her haste, she spilled her pistols from the bedroll. They slid across the exposed rock and dust collected on the cave floor. The bag of bones skittered free, as well, and the ivory sphere tumbled free of the cloth bag, landing in plain sight.
A hand reached out and caught the bone sphere.
For a moment, Annja Creed locked eyes with Kelly. Kelly knew instantly that the archaeologist realized she wasn't just a laborer picked up in Dunhuang.
Move! Kelly told herself. There's nothing you can do about that now!
Sliding forward Kelly grabbed both of her pistols, flipped the safeties off, and charged toward the cave mouth. Two of the workers stood frozen in the opening, staring at what was happening in stunned disbelief.
Kelly threw herself at the two men, hitting them at knee level and knocking them to the ground. She yelled at them, cursed at them, telling them to get moving. Then she pushed herself up from their midst, throwing her pistols before her as the helicopter swelled to fill her vision.
She pulled the triggers, aiming almost point-blank.
****
Garin saw the woman in the cave opening before the pilot did. In the bright light, he couldn't see the muzzle flashes of her pistols, but he knew they had to be there when the Plexiglas nose of the helicopter suddenly spiderwebbed.
Most of the bullets glanced off the rounded surface, but two or three of them tore through. One of them cut by Garin's head and stuffing exploded from his seat.
"Get us out of here!" he roared at the pilot.
The machine guns silenced as the pilot jerked the yoke back and brought the tail section sharply around. Ngai's men slid the cargo door open.
Wind howled into the helicopter, jostling the craft even more. A few of the men fired and the hot shell casings ricocheted inside the helicopter. Ngai cursed them and sank into his seat, taking cover.
Glancing across the pilot, at the cave mouth, Garin saw the woman duck back inside. "She's out of bullets. Quickly. Turn the helicopter – "
He stopped speaking as he saw Roux step from the cave with a hunting rifle in his arms. The old man took aim. Garin knew from experience how deadly Roux could be in a fight.
"Get out of here!" Garin yelled.
The pilot's head disappeared in a rush of blood and bone that sprayed the inside of the Plexiglas. Garin felt the sticky heat spread over his face and tasted the salt of the man's blood. His left eye went dark. He didn't know if the bullet had hit him in the eye or if it had just filled with blood.
With a sickening lurch, the helicopter swerved out of control as the corpse draped the yoke.
Chapter 32
Garin's world turned into a kaleidoscope of movement. He shoved the pilot's corpse away and switched off the helicopter's engines. The vision in his left eye improved as he continued to blink, so he felt certain Roux's bullet hadn't caught him when it had passed through the pilot.
He hoped that shutting off the helicopter's engines would save them. He'd been on board one that had lost power before, and he'd panicked. But the pilot at the time had remained calm and told him that the aircraft's design gave it a fighting chance to survive impact. The rotors still turned enough, powered by the descent, to slow the fall somewhat.
Time slowed. Garin watched the approach of the desert floor coming up at them. Evidently Roux kept firing, because holes appeared in the left side of the helicopter and at least one of Ngai's warriors was hit.
When the helicopter hit the ground, everything went too fast again. Garin fell hard against the strap but was restrained. He was certain his upper body would be covered with bruises by nightfall. But he was alive.
He tried to breathe and couldn't. Panic surged through him. After five hundred years of a life filled with death and danger, though, he calmed himself and relaxed. A moment later, his lungs opened up and he took a breath.
Confusion filled the helicopter's interior. Men yelled and cursed, amazed to be alive. The smell of gas mixed with the air, whipped by the storm's growing ferocity.
Then a hole opened up in the helicopter's side and slammed a man against the opposite cargo bulkhead. The sound of the high-powered rifle crack reached them shortly afterward.
Garin cursed. Roux hadn't given up on killing them.
"Out," he ordered. "It's the old man. Stay in the helicopter and he'll kill you."
He pulled at his seat restraint and found that it was locked and wouldn't release. Reaching into his right boot, he pulled out a fighting knife and slashed the restraint. He rocked forward, barely clearing the seat before another high-powered round slammed through the helicopter and opened another hole he could almost put his fist through.
Kicking the door open, Garin dropped to the sand outside. He didn't pull his pistol. He knew the bullets would never have reached Roux in the cave mouth.
Racing to the cargo area, Garin helped yank the door open, then reached in and jerked Ngai's warriors from the death trap the helicopter had become.
One stray spark and this whole thing will blow up in your face, he told himself grimly.
Five of the men were down. Dead, dying, or wounded, they weren't going to be of any use and would only hold the group back.
"Out of the helicopter!" Garin shouted. "Out of the helicopter before it explodes!" He leaned in and seized an AK-74 from one of the dead men. Another swipe netted him the ammo bandolier.
Ngai got out of the helicopter under his own power. Despite his impatience and self-imposed sense of worth, the man moved like a fighter, powerful and quick.
Roux continued targeting the helicopter. One of the surviving men stepped into the old man's line of sight. A bullet punched through his chest and tore out his backbone. He was dead before he hit the ground, falling first to his knees then to his face.
"Away from the helicopter," Garin ordered. "Follow me." He ran, heading for a sand dune that offered some shelter.
Bullets from Roux's rifle tore dish-sized divots from the sand, but the whipping winds quickly filled them in again.
Garin threw himself behind the dune, fell into a prone position, then took aim with the AK-74. He fired on semiautomatic, pumping round after round at Roux. Garin saw that he didn't have the distance right. He adjusted the sighting screws and took aim again. Before he could squeeze the trigger, a bullet plowed into the sand in front of him, then cut through the sand and burned across his neck.
Realizing that the bullet had nearly taken his head off, Garin ducked down. Sand filled his eyes, bringing an onslaught of blinding pain.
Damn you, old man! Garin called for a canteen, hoping that the sand didn't cut his eyes before he could get it out.
Assault rifles around him chugged on fully automatic.
****
Stunned, her attention torn between the bone sphere in her hand, Roux standing in the cave mouth with his rifle to his shoulder, and the woman who was reloading her pistols with spare clips from the bedroll, Annja didn't know where to look.
Once her weapons were recharged, the woman pointed the pistols at Annja's chest. "Give that back to me." Her voice was flat and hard.
Hu and the others had thrown themselves to the cave floor when the shooting had started. They looked on in amazement.
"What is this?" Annja asked.
"None of your business."
Turning the ball over in her hands, Annja spotted Scythian tamgas cut into the surface of the bones. She realized then that the ball was made from several different bones that fit together.
Annja looked at the woman. "Who are you?"
Throughout the encounter, the sound of Roux's hunting rifle came with metronomic regularity.
Deliberately, the woman pointed one of the pistols at Annja's right eye. "If I have to ask again, I'll kill you."
Bullets suddenly sprayed against the front of the cave. A few of them entered the cave, ricocheted, and somehow didn't hit anyone.
Roux bolted back from the cave mouth, cursing flamboyantly in a variety of languages. He pressed
himself against the scant protection offered by the wall and started feeding shells into the rifle. Then he saw the woman with her weapons trained on Annja.
"What's going on?" Roux snapped in Latin.
"I don't know." Replying in the same language, Annja didn't take her eyes from the woman. "But the ball I'm holding seems somehow connected to all of this."
"Let me see it," Roux said.
The gunfire from outside continued.
"If I try to hand it to you, I think she'll shoot me." Annja reached for her sword.
"You can't just give it to her," Roux protested.
"We're not exactly at the negotiating table on this one." Annja handed the ball to the woman with her left hand. She had her right firmly around the sword, ready to pull it into the cave with her.
The woman reached for the ball.
Annja twisted, drawing the sword and striking the woman's gun arm aside the flat of the blade. Swinging again, taking some satisfaction from the look of surprise on the woman's face, Annja caught her with the flat of the blade again, this time whipping her on the temple.
Dazed, the woman dropped to her knees.
Annja plucked the ball from the woman's hand, then kicked her pistols toward Roux. Surging, the woman pulled a knife from her boot and lunged for Annja's throat. Annja barely got the sword up in time to deflect the surprise strike. Metal rasped on metal.
The woman sprang backward, throwing a roundhouse kick. Annja ducked under the kick and took the sword's handle in both hands.
Roux's bolt-action ratcheting in the cave sounded loud against the sudden silence as the outside guns fell idle. From the corner of her eye, Annja saw that Roux had aimed squarely at the woman's chest.
Roux spoke English, rapidly and harsh.
With a look of pained disgust and maybe a little embarrassment, the woman threw the knife down.
"Now then," Roux said, never moving the rifle, "let's look at the facts. That little bauble you've been carrying means that your presence here isn't a mistake or by chance."