by Alex Archer
The two pirates crouched in front of Annja weren’t, though. Unseen by the combatants, back there in deep shadow, they raised Kalashnikovs to aim at the young Sultan.
Annja glided forward. She struck twice. Her blade bit deep. Both pirates fell without a sound.
No one looked their way. Wira and the man with the two swords and the commanding presence came together in a clash of steel.
Eddie Cao Cao caught Wira’s downstroke with his swords in an upward X. Before he could riposte the Sultan side-kicked him in the flat belly. The pirate leader slammed back against the crate. His powerful upper body swayed alarmingly over it.
Wira darted forward, slashing backhand for his opponent’s chest. Cao Cao had feigned some of his loss of balance. He blocked across his body with his left-hand sword held upward. His edge skirled off Wira’s. The pirate spun around, crouching, slashing for Wira’s right knee with the blade in his right hand.
Wira jumped astonishingly high in the air. The broad blade swiped harmlessly beneath his boot.
As he came down he slashed a whirring blow at Cao Cao’s head. The pirate lord blocked with his left sword. Then he slashed the young Sultan across the stomach with his other weapon.
Wira jumped back. A line of skin appeared, pale against the midnight blue of his blouse. The middle of it was a shocking scarlet line.
Annja’s shout was lost in the general roar of dismay from the commandos and—she thought—the Knights, and approval from the surviving pirates.
Wira seemed to freeze, staring down at himself as if paralyzed with horror, at the pain, at the sight of his own blood, at the shock of having his sacred person so violated. Annja felt sick. He should never have come there. She glanced frantically around for the rifles dropped by the men she had silently dispatched. Both corpses lay atop their weapons.
Grinning like a shark, Cao Cao advanced for the kill.
Cocking his right butterfly sword back over his shoulder the pirate thrust his left one for the Sultan’s wide-open chest.
The young Sultan moved with shocking speed. His sword flashed across his body, right to left. It struck the stabbing blade and knocked it across his opponent’s broad chest. Turning his wrist sidearm Wira slashed backhand right over the top of the pirate’s sword arm.
His curved blade sliced Cao Cao’s throat. Blood spurting, the pirate leader took several steps back. His head lolled to one side. He fell.
The hold was silent.
For a moment Wira stood gazing down at his fallen foe, chest heaving. Blood streamed from the gash across his belly, wetly glistening black against the dark fabric of his uniform. With a flick of his wrist he cleared blood from his curved blade.
Then he raised his head to look at the surviving pirates. Only five remained standing. The ragged men instantly threw down their weapons. Turning inward toward the crate they went to their knees and laced hands behind their heads.
Evidently they knew the drill. As well they ought. They’d inflicted it on others often enough.
For a moment Annja feared one or the other group would simply massacre the surrendered men where they knelt. She had no objection to cutting them down in the heat of battle. But killing in cold blood went against her grain.
Perhaps they merited death these men—they served with the most bloody-handed and merciless pirate gang in the South China Sea, which probably meant the world. But what if all wasn’t as it appeared? What if they were recent recruits, maybe even conscripts whose obedience was secured by threats against their families? They had fought fiercely at Eddie Cao Cao’s side. But had they any choice? When not one but two packs of highly trained, highly motivated and thoroughly ruthless killers swarmed aboard the great junk, the only available options were fight or die.
It was pure speculation, of course. Annja had no way of knowing.
As if noticing them for the first time, Wira stared past the crate, its yellow-pine sides defiled with shocking bright spatters of blood, at the Knights. The two groups, who had relaxed subconsciously at the fall of the pirate king, went tense. They glared at each other from blacked-out faces—dog packs contesting an alley.
Annja thought one of the Rimba Perak commandos swung up his submachine gun first. The Knights did likewise. Suddenly the rival forces were aiming at each other with automatic weapons, separated by no more than a dozen feet of deck slick with blood.
My turn, Annja thought. She straightened and strode forward from between the piled crates, right between the barrels of the too-ready guns.
30
“Gentlemen,” Annja Creed said, projecting for all she was worth, “I, Annja Creed, hereby claim this relic in the name of science and the global archaeological community.”
Wow, she thought. Is that totally the lamest, most pompous sentence ever, or what?
Many faces turned to gape at her. Even the pirates swiveled their turbaned heads on scrawny necks to stare at this unexpected apparition.
“Ms. Creed?” a young Knight burst out. No mistaking Sharshak, Annja thought.
“Annja?” the Sultan said.
On Sharshak’s far side, farther from Annja but no farther from the fray, a Knight with broad shoulders and chest and a bit of a belly stood shaking his big square head. Behind his war paint and the black glop in his beard he seemed to be smiling.
“Well,” Wira said slowly, still staring at her as if she’d sprouted antlers, “I have agreed to such an arrangement.”
He looked at the Knights again, seemingly unconcerned by the black barrels of submachine guns pointing at him, and frowned. “But I am not sure circumstances permit it to be carried out.”
“Well,” Annja said in her brightest, brassiest voice, “if you boys are dead set on slaughtering each other to show who’s got the biggest sword, then I suggest you take it up on deck, where you can die in the nice fresh air and not threaten any more damage to this priceless treasure.”
They all stared at her.
Hevelin expelled his breath in a gust. “May God forgive me saying so,” he said, “although I suspect our unsainted patron would heartily concur. Clearly there’s no point in contesting who has the biggest sword. There can be no doubt.”
“By Allah, you are right,” Wira said. “It is most assuredly Annja Creed.”
She felt herself blushing. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, Wira. Sir Hevelin. Now, why don’t we all remember our basic firearms safety, and stop pointing those things at each other before someone gets hurt?”
Almost shamefacedly, both sides lowered their weapons. They didn’t look at each other. They seemed embarrassed to.
I always wondered about the actual distinction between ballsy and stupid, she thought. Now I know—if it works, it’s ballsy.
“But wait,” Sharshak cried. Annja’s heart sank. His earnest young voice throbbed with genuine distress. That could only mean bad news.
“Where will you take our holy relic to determine its just ownership?” he asked.
Darn, Annja thought. “The only sensible place is back to Meriahpuri, in Rimba Perak.”
His boy’s face turned mulish behind the black paint. “I don’t see how we can possibly agree to that,” he said. “How can you trust this man?”
“The Sultan has signed a contract to abide by my decision,” Annja said.
“But we haven’t,” Sharshak said. He shook his head. His eyes seemed to glitter suspiciously, as if tearing up. “Ann—Ms. Creed, we cannot permit you to hand our relic over to these unbelievers!”
Cosmopolitan though he was, Wira looked pretty grim at being called an “unbeliever.” Annja could see tension winding the body language of both groups back up. The captive pirates, meanwhile, were turning into quivering masses. They knew if things headed south, they’d be caught in the cross fire.
“Hold it,” Annja said. She tried to make her voice snap without raising it—to sound commanding without making any trigger fingers reflexively twitch. It seemed to work. People looked at her again.
It was a start.
“I set up this arrangement,” she said. “I know for a fact you’re all honorable men, pirate scum excepted, of course. But I don’t ask you to take my word for it. I’d stake my life on Sultan Wira holding to the letter and the spirit of his promises to me. In fact, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I guarantee this deal with my life!”
Everybody’s eyes were wide again.
“That’s a real touching offer,” an all-too-familiar voice said. “Too bad you’re gonna get taken up on it so quick, little lady.”
“St. Clair?” Annja looked wildly around. The U.S. agent, looking cool and positively dapper in his ice-cream suit and Panama hat, had emerged from the shadows behind the Rimba Perak commandos. Crowding out on the narrow gallery to either side of him were men in green turbans with cutlasslike swords thrust through their sashes. Similarly clad men were popping up behind the Knights. All of them aimed Kalashnikovs at the two groups facing each other past the crate.
The Sword of the Faith had arrived at the party. Apparently, as counterterrorism specialist St. Clair’s honored guests.
“All right,” Annja said, “this officially sucks.”
St. Clair looked her way and gestured. Hard hands grabbed her arms from behind.
The faces of Knights and the Sultan’s commandos were stiff as they stared at the weapons held on them. Perhaps thirty men of both sides remained functional inside the hold. At least twenty terrorists surrounded them—more than enough, given that they had the drop on their victims and a height advantage so they could massacre them without cross-firing each other.
Through pregnant silence St. Clair strolled around behind his men to approach Annja.
“Ms. Creed,” he said politely, “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you here. It’s kind of like hitting a grand slam. We scoop up the relic, the Sultan and you, all at one stroke. Very cool.”
“I thought you worked for the United States!” she flared at him.
His smile was thin and icy.
“I do,” he said. “It’s policy. Maybe I’m goosing it along a little bit. But it’s for the good old U.S. of A. I told you, amateurs couldn’t understand.”
He reached out to stroke a finger under her chin. She turned her face aside—mostly to prevent herself from snapping at his hand. I’ve got to pick my chance, she told herself. I’ll only have one. If I even get that.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she said. “These are Muslim terrorists you’re palling with!”
“You noticed.” He smirked.
“The war on terror is losing steam back home,” he told her quietly. “We need to get the terrorists a win, here. One that won’t hurt U.S. interests. Just a strong nudge, to remind the softheads back home why we fight. No hard feelings, okay? Like I said—policy.”
“Policy,” she echoed stonily.
“We got some special techniques in store for you,” he said with a leer. “You’ll star in your very own torture video showing the world what barbarians these rag-heads are we’re dealing with. You’ll be queen of YouTube for at least a week. People will tear out their hair and scream for blood.”
He turned to his ring of terrorists. “Kill them all,” he said. Then he shrugged.
Orange fire and head-splitting noise filled the hold as the terrorists opened up.
The two terrorists held Annja’s arms down to her sides. As St. Clair turned away and the other terrorists’ guns thundered she summoned her sword. She flicked it down against the man to her right’s leg.
Shocked, he shrieked and let go of her arm to grab at his blood-spurting calf.
She snapped the blade horizontal, and pivoted into the man on her left. She yanked backward hard with her trapped left hand to keep that arm clear. The sword cut into the man’s belly and side. He fell, releasing her wrist.
St. Clair spun toward her. His hand was inside his jacket. He was clearly going for a handgun in a shoulder holster.
Annja used both hands to wrench her blade free of the falling terrorist. She flung herself toward St. Clair, cocking the sword to her right and then lashing out at waist level with all her strength in a desperation swing. She felt a moment of hesitation.
St. Clair’s knobby hand came out holding a big angular Colt 1911. His face twisted in a sneer. “Missed,” he said.
Something made him look down. His eyes flew wide in horror as he began to register the pain. His stomach had been slashed open. The .45 dropped from nerveless fingers as his body toppled.
Annja’s sudden explosion of motion had drawn everyone’s attention, even the terrorists who had just begun to massacre the Knights and commandos. The gunfire faltered as the terrorists gaped at their leader’s fate.
At least seven Knights and commandos were down. The rest suddenly turned and went for the terrorists with attack-dog fury.
Guns flared and crashed. But the Sultan’s men and the Christian holy warriors had rushed in among the terrorists. They couldn’t use their Kalashnikovs without cutting each other down. That wasn’t stopping all of them. Some at the rear sprayed the scrum impartially.
Annja ran right toward the nearest terrorist. He looked her way. The expression on his face was total astonishment as he felt a whistling slash.
Several others saw her charging. She slashed one’s rifle across the top of its receiver as he swung it toward her at waist level. He fired. Muzzle blast and the bullets’ passage yanked at her shirt.
The gunman screamed and fell back, black shirt alive with blue flames, as hot gas jetted from the ruptured top of his weapon into his body and face.
The others threw down their rifles to draw swords. Annja cut down two before steel cleared their sashes. Then she was stuck in a wild melee against four terrorists at once.
All of the black-clad Sword of the Faith killers in their green turbans had stopped shooting. Annja had the impression of all-out vicious face-to-face fighting to her left. As she defended herself against wild swings and slashes she could only hope the superior training and discipline of the Knights and Wira’s commandos could overcome the terrorists’ numbers—and that they wouldn’t wind up fighting each other, by accident or on purpose.
A foe tried a horizontal backhand slash at her neck from too far away. Too far, because when Annja parried with the flat of her blade, point-upward with her hand at the level of her own sternum, the spacing was ideal for her to flow into a rapid high-line lunge that sent her blade horizontally right between his eyes.
As he went down with his eyes rolled up toward his turban and weeping tears of blood, she engaged two more of his comrades. A third danced from foot to foot behind them, glaring at her with eyes more horribly fascinated than angry or defiant.
She glanced quickly left. Wira stood embattled with his back to the crate. He fought like a whirlwind against three foes. He had picked up a second sword, as he had last night in his bedroom, this time one of his own men’s. Around him lay a semicircle of fallen terrorists.
But for all the young Sultan’s superb skill with twin weapons he lacked eyes in the back of his head. A new attacker leapt up on the crate, raced forward with sword upraised to split the unwitting monarch’s skull. Annja shouted a warning.
It went unheard in the din of clashing steel, shouts, screams and agonized groans of the wounded.
Pain flashed through her face like fire as one of her assailants took advantage of her momentary lapse of attention to slash her across the cheek. She lashed out backhand in reflex. Her sword caught him in almost the same place. It cut through both cheeks and his nose. He fell screaming and clutching his ruined face.
A figure leapt up behind the man on the crate. The terrorist swung his blade at the Sultan’s unsuspecting head. Flinging himself heedlessly forward, the young Knight Sharshak rammed his short sword through the terrorist’s back.
The man slumped forward, dragging down Sharshak’s blade. Annja mechanically parried as the man who had been jittering behind his comrades launched a w
ild cut at her head. He was reckless. He closed too far, allowing her to thrust-kick him in the sternum, driving him back several paces.
Furiously she rounded on the other man. From the edge of her vision she saw Sharshak kick the impaled man from his blade, falling off the crate to slam one of Wira’s three attackers to the blood-slickened deck. Then the Knight leapt down at the Sultan’s side.
Wira looked at him. His eyes widened in amazement. Then Sharshak thrust again—right toward the young Sultan.
Annja hacked her opponent’s sword off in the middle. He stared at it in dumbfounded amazement until her return stroke spun him to the deck trailing a spiral of dark blood.
Sharshak’s short sword went to the hilt in the belly of a terrorist who, seeing Wira distracted, had pressed the attack from the Sultan’s right. The remaining killer slashed Sharshak across the left shoulder.
Wira cut the terrorist down. Sharshak wrenched his blade free. The man who had fallen under his slain comrade’s weight grabbed him by an ankle.
Twenty feet away Annja saw a terrorist shoulder a Kalashnikov. Its muzzle-brake pointed at Sharshak and the Sultan. He was too far for Annja to reach with a sword attack. Screaming a warning as shrilly as she could she released the sword and stooped to grab a fallen rifle.
Wira and Sharshak looked around. Sharshak saw the terrorist aiming the assault rifle. Ignoring the man clutching both his ankles, pinning him in place, he knocked the Sultan sprawling with a broad sweeping blow of the back of his sword hand.
Three bullets of a wild burst slammed into his chest. He fell.
A moment later Annja caught the terrorist rifleman’s head on top of the front sight post of her recovered rifle. She triggered a burst of her own. The man’s face crumpled beneath his turban, vanished in a spray of blood.
She swung the weapon around, looking for targets. The last of the terrorists was being chopped down as she watched—oddly enough, by one of Eddie Cao Cao’s surrendered pirates, who had snatched up a fallen commando’s blade and lustily engaged the hated Sword of the Faith swordsmen. Two more pirates likewise stood shoulder-to-shoulder by their erstwhile captors. The other two had apparently died in the fighting.