by Alex Archer
The movement was so sudden, Frank fell back in surprise. “Jeez, don’t say goodbye or anything.”
Annja smiled. “He’s so happy to have that money, he’ll go straight home. That’s good. If there are murderers stalking these grounds, then he shouldn’t be here. He might get hurt.”
“And what about us?”
“We’ll be all right.”
“Yeah? You got a shotgun on you or something?”
“Something like that.”
Frank shifted the camera bag. “All right, well, what’s the plan? It’s getting late and I don’t know how much more we can do tonight. We didn’t get any evidence at the crime scene. And now we’ve got a tenuous lead that points us in the direction of the mountains. But what should we do? Tell Pradesh about it and have him ask us all sorts of questions we probably don’t want to answer?”
Annja stared off toward the mountain ridge. “You might be right. What more can we do in the dark now?”
A noise off to her left caught Annja’s attention. She held a finger to her lips. Then very slowly, she raised the FLIR.
Three blobs of red appeared on the FLIR screen. Coming from the direction of the mountains. Annja frowned. She felt it.
Danger.
Were these the murderers Deva had told them about? Did the boy know they’d be coming?
Had he led Annja and Frank here deliberately?
Annja refused to believe that. Although she had to admit that Deva had seemed very anxious to get away as soon as he was paid.
She watched the screen and showed it to Frank. Frank’s eyes went white and he whispered harshly, “Let’s get the hell out of here. Let the cops deal with these guys.”
Annja switched the FLIR off, not wanting the LCD screen to act as a beacon in the night. These men were obviously skilled at moving quietly in darkness. And they blended in perfectly with their night surroundings.
But who were they?
Frank tugged on Annja’s sleeve. She let herself be pulled, and they came up out of the shrubbery together.
A face appeared before Annja’s, swathed in a black scarf. She heard Frank gasp and then something hit Annja hard on the back of her head.
And she was falling back down the embankment.
Her last thought before she passed out was that whoever these men were, they were masters of the ambush.
Chapter 11
Her head ached as if someone had just blown up a barrel of gunpowder inside it.
Annja cracked her eyes, momentarily afraid there would be bright light that would only make the pain even more intolerable.
But it was dark.
Black as night.
Where am I? She remembered falling down the embankment but then nothing beyond that. She must have hit a rock. And she’d hit enough rocks to know, unfortunately.
A light breeze made her shiver. The air wasn’t nearly as humid as she remembered it being.
Something shifted next to her, and she tried to feel with her hands, only to then realize they had been bound behind her.
I guess this rules out someone friendly finding us, she figured. But then she remembered Frank.
Annja forced herself to crack her eyes again. It took several minutes to adjust to the darkness, but finally she saw the outline of Frank’s body next to her.
“Frank?” She kept her voice quiet. It would be better if whoever was keeping them captive didn’t realize she had regained consciousness.
Frank shifted and then opened his eyes slowly. “Annja?”
“Keep your voice down. We don’t want them knowing we’re awake just yet.”
He paused. “My hands are tied. I can’t move.”
“Mine are, too. Just relax and we’ll figure this out.”
Frank choked. “I couldn’t catch you when you fell. I tried to but then this guy came out of nowhere and clocked me.”
“I hit my head on a rock, I think,” she said.
“Who are these guys?”
Annja shook her head slowly. “I have no idea. It’s probably better if we play dumb and let them do the talking.”
“If they talk at all.”
“They will. If they’d wanted to kill us, we’d probably already be dead. They must want something from us.”
“I hope so,” he said. “In the movies, though, once you give the bad guys what they want, they always kill you, anyway.”
“You watch too many movies, Frank.”
“Probably.”
Annja tried to grin. “Just let me handle things when the time comes, all right? Can you do that?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Try to get some rest now. Let me think.”
He shifted, and Annja heard his breath deepen appreciably. This is probably the last thing the guy expected to get himself into when he jumped all over this assignment.
It came to her then. They were surely in a cave of some sort. That would account for the temperature change, the cool, dry nature of the air. But where were there caves around Hyderabad?
Annja took a breath. The mountains they’d seen in the distance.
Wonderful.
There would be no sign back at the development that Annja and Frank had been there. Not unless the police somehow managed to find Deva and get him to spill the beans.
And Annja knew the chances of that were slim. Deva was a survivor, and he wasn’t about to jeopardize his family’s welfare for Annja and Frank. Especially since he’d already been paid.
Annja tried to figure out how long they’d been unconscious. Unless the guys who had attacked them had vehicles nearby, they would have had to carry their victims back to the mountains. And the mountains were at least a few miles away from the development.
Annja shook her head and winced around the pain. Hours must have passed.
It might be dawn outside but she had no way of knowing that for certain. One thing she did know was that Pradesh would be losing his mind trying to figure out what the hell had happened to them.
First he’d check their rooms. Then when that didn’t turn up any clues, he’d ask the hotel to run surveillance tape. That would at least bring him to the car-rental agency.
Figure another few hours before the car turned up near the development, and Pradesh would realize that she and Frank had gone off alone to try to find the monster.
And we’ve been successful, thought Annja. Much to my personal regret.
If Pradesh found the car, he would no doubt tear around the development looking for clues. But what clues would he find? He might follow their tracks in the daylight. They might lead him to the manhole cover and beyond to the crime scene.
But from there? Annja wasn’t sure how accomplished a tracker Pradesh was, if at all. Still, he might find where they’d been ambushed.
And, God willing, he might even cast his eyes toward the mountains a few miles away.
But would he know to come here and look for them?
Annja had no idea what the mountains themselves were like. If it had been only one, then that would have narrowed things down. But with a range, the chances of him making his way to this exact location were next to none.
That meant they would have to find their way out of this mess on their own.
Great.
Annja had had less than stellar sidekicks before, but even the worst seemed to have some semblance of fighting skill. The closest Frank had probably ever gotten to fighting was on his video-game console.
Well, he was just going to have to get up to speed pretty damned quick. If she couldn’t count on him, then Frank would be going home in a pine coffin.
First things first. Annja had to figure out who their captors were.
In her mind’s eye she saw the sword hanging in its usual position. Ready to be used when the situation demanded it.
And Annja had little doubt that would be soon.
She took a deep breath and willed her awareness to spread out in concentric circles, trying her best to get a feel for the makeup of t
he cave and the area she and Frank were being kept in.
The throbbing in her skull worsened. Twice she had to fight back a surging wave of bile.
Concussions were no fun at all.
But her captors seemed unimpressed with her injuries, which Annja supposed was at the very least a marginally good sign. If she’d been seriously hurt, they might have given her some medical attention. Wouldn’t they?
Unless, as Frank suggested, they were just waiting for the right moment to kill them both.
She had a sense that the cave they were in was part of a networked series of other caverns. She had no idea how low the ceiling was, however, and she’d need to be careful about that. No sense recovering from a head injury only to stand and bang into the rock roof of a cave.
Frank, for his part, seemed unhurt.
Annja took another breath and directed her thoughts inward. She focused on the sword and tried turning its gray glow to a white glow. She remembered reading somewhere that healing oneself often involved visualization of white light.
She took several more deep breaths, willing herself to relax and find a source of the white light where the sword hung in her mind’s eye. Then she felt that energy expand and encompass her body.
The thundering lessened.
A little.
“Annja?”
She sighed. So much for that. “What is it, Frank?”
“I’ve been trying to work on the ropes that are binding my hands. They’re too tight. I can’t even feel my fingers anymore.”
“Don’t fight it. You’ll only hurt yourself.”
There was a momentary silence. “All right,” he finally said. And then he added, “We’ve got to get you to a doctor.”
“I’ll get medical attention when I can. But right now the most important thing is for us to learn what is going on here, then make our escape.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. You just stay quiet when the people who did this to us come back. Let me handle the negotiation.”
“There’s negotiation?”
“There will be whether they like it or not,” she said with only the vaguest of smiles.
Frank didn’t say anything for a moment. And then he whispered, “Have you been in this situation before?”
If only you knew, she thought. But to him she said, “I’ve had a few run-ins in my time. They’ve turned out well so far. I’m still alive.”
“Yeah, well, I hope this another one of those times. I don’t feel like dying this young.”
“Me, neither,” Annja said.
And she meant it.
Chapter 12
They lay there for what seemed like hours more before Annja felt a sudden shift in the air pressure. Someone was coming into the cavern.
She felt Frank stiffen. So he felt the approach, too. Another good sign that Frank was rapidly developing the instincts necessary to survive this situation.
Annja opened her eyes and saw a masked man. He was swathed in black and his head appeared disembodied.
If we were in Japan, Annja thought, I’d think he was a ninja.
But she wasn’t in Japan, and she didn’t think that the ninja had chosen to invade India by way of Hyderabad.
Annja made eye contact with the man and saw intense hatred screaming out of his stare. Annja forced herself to maintain the eye contact, not giving him the pleasure of seeing her frightened.
Not this time, she thought. I guarantee you I will not be like your other victims. I won’t beg for mercy.
The man maintained the eye contact as well as she did. Interesting. He didn’t blanch at confrontation.
That meant he wasn’t used to giving up his position. And that didn’t bode well if they got into a fight. He’d probably rather die than surrender.
Annja cleared her throat to speak.
The man slapped her across the face. The blow was so sudden it took Annja by surprise, mostly because she didn’t think he was that close to her.
He was telling her the rules.
And rule number one seemed to be “no talking.”
All right. I’ll remember that slap and make sure I repay it in kind. Just wait.
He came over and helped Annja to her feet, standing her and keeping her balanced. Her knees buckled slightly from dizziness. Her gorge rose in her throat and she forced it back down, the sour acid burning a trail back down her esophagus.
She took a breath and felt more stable. The man went to Frank and hoisted him up, as well.
Annja silently shushed Frank when he looked at her. This was the hired help. Formidable as he seemed to be, this was not the person who would hold power over whether they lived or died.
But he might be bringing them to that person.
And sure enough, Annja felt herself nudged from behind and was guided out of the cavern. It was difficult seeing in the darkness, and twice she bumped her head on the way out.
She stumbled forward, trying her best to find her footing in the unfamiliar environment.
She focused not on the area in front of her but off to the sides. In the darkness she couldn’t focus on things directly in front of her; she’d need to look out of the corner of her eyes if she had any hope of making it to their destination without causing more injury to herself.
Annja stepped down into a corridor of some sort. The walls were spaced wider apart and the tunnel seemed fairly long and straight, but it had been hewn out of the rock of the mountain. She was amazed by the amount of effort that must have gone into making this place.
Was it some sort of secret mountain fortress? Had people labored over this for centuries? Decades?
Who knew? And was there only one way to gain entrance to the caves? And if so, what chance did Pradesh have of ever finding it?
Very slight. And that meant that Annja would be the only one responsible for making sure she and Frank escaped this situation with their lives.
I’ve got to shake this concussion, she thought.
Behind her, she heard Frank stumble and fall. Third time. Each time he fell, the man behind them didn’t dish out abuse, but instead helped Frank back to his feet, dusted him off and then nudged them forward again.
As long as they didn’t talk, he seemed tolerable enough.
Annja came to a fork in the tunnel complex. Left or right? She glanced back and the man in black nodded to their left. The tunnel was much smaller here. She’d need to be careful.
“Ow!” Frank bumped his head on a low overhang that Annja had avoided. Annja braced for the slap and, when it came, Frank grunted appreciably, but managed to hold his tongue.
Don’t talk, Frank, she willed into his head.
They kept walking.
She felt another breeze. However the tunnels had been laid out, constructed or designed, there seemed good airflow. But again, the air was cool and dry and not at all similar to the humid air of Hyderabad.
Was it just because this was mountain air, or was there another reason why it seemed so fresh? There’d be time to figure that out later, thought Annja. Let’s get to wherever we’re going and then we’ll worry about the air quality of the captors’ mountain fortress.
Annja could sense other openings around them. Like branches or corridors off their route, there seemed an entire honeycombed network of caves. She wondered if people lived here or if this was simply a hideout of some sort.
After another five minutes of stumbling along, Annja saw flickering torchlight ahead. It was the first measure of illumination she’d seen in the complex at all.
But even this was miniscule. A lone torch hung on the wall and seemed to be responsible for lighting an entire chamber at least twice as large as any she’d been in yet.
The man behind them grunted and seemed to be suggesting they now stop.
He walked past them, leaving them alone in the corridor.
Annja glanced back at Frank. “Remember, no talking unless I tell you to start, okay?”
Frank nodded. “Yeah.”
Annja took a breath. “You’re doing a great job, Frank. I mean that. I know this is out of the ordinary.”
“Just a bit.”
“But keep it together. Don’t let them see you’re terrified or they’ll have less respect for you.”
“I got it.”
Annja looked around them. “Did you see anything that seemed to be an escape route on the way over?”
“It’s so dark here, I don’t even know how I’m able to see anything at all.”
“Look out of the corners of your eyes in the dark.”
Annja waited. She could sense movement all around her and then saw that other dark shapes seemed to be walking right past her and Frank.
What the hell was this place?
The filing of people around them seemed to go on for several minutes. Finally, the air stilled once more.
The torchlight cast long shadows of the people that surrounded her and Frank.
Too many here to try to take on by myself, she thought. And that was if she was able to get her hands free to draw her sword in time.
She felt a presence in front of her and then saw the same eyes of the man who had escorted them down here.
Now what?
He tugged on her shirt, and for a brief second Annja was worried that he might tear it off her. But he only wanted her to come with him.
Annja took a step forward and then another. The man guided her several steps ahead of where she’d been standing. Then he disappeared and returned a few moments later with Frank.
Annja could feel the fear emanating from her cameraman. She willed him to stay calm.
But that was easier said than done. Annja herself felt the twinges of fear as she stood there wondering what was coming next.
This much she knew: they were in a larger chamber, and many others just like her black-clad captor surrounded them. Annja concentrated and saw the sword hanging in the otherwhere. Ready.
Her best move was to simply wait. And again, she reasoned that if they’d wanted to kill them as they might have done the others, then it would already be over.
Was it because they were Americans?