by Alex Archer
The two intruders still on their feet opened fire from the far side of the room. Though the suppressed shots sounded relatively loud in the enclosed space, they were not loud enough to mask the hard thumps of the bullets hitting the big archaeologist's soft body. He roared in defiance, turning toward them. Then his legs gave way. He fell to the floor with a slapping sound.
The man Pilitowski clubbed lay sprawled on his face with a pool of dark red spreading out from his head.
Annja yanked loose his MP-5. Shouldering it, she came up to a crouch. The weapon had open battle sights.
The killers had lost track of her when she jumped off the table. They were making plenty of noise and she could actually differentiate where both men were. When she popped up from behind the table, the MP-5's ghost-ring sights were lined up almost perfectly on the shooter to her left.
She aimed for the man's head and fired. The night-vision goggles shattered. The killer let his weapon drop on its long sling, covered his face with his hands and fell onto the photography table. It upset, spilling priceless blackened chunks of ancient lore to the floor.
Annja ducked as the other man blazed away at her. More computer cases crashed as bullets punched through them, scrambling the delicate circuit boards inside.
She rose up on all fours, still clutching the machine pistol, scrabbled forward like a monkey across the prone body of the man Pilitowski had hit. She turned around the long computer table and launched herself in a forward slide on her left side across the center aisle.
She held the pistol grip tight. She figured the gunman's torso was encased in some kind of body armor so she chopped his legs out from under him. He fell screaming and kicking, spraying blood.
The machine pistol's charging handle locked back. Empty. Annja slid into the collapsed photo table and stopped.
From the darkened corridor outside she heard shouts. Bullets glanced off the concrete floor near her outspread legs and ricocheted around the room. Their tumbling made them scream.
She heard a shrill yowl of fury from the back of the lab.
She jumped up, risked gunfire in a dash back across the aisle, and vaulted the computer table. The man she had thrown the computer into had found his feet if not his firearm. He was staggering toward Jadzia, who had her back against the wall and the satchel clutched protectively to her breasts. The intruder held a big black saw-backed knife in his hand.
He heardAnnja land behind him, and spun. His hand lashed out horizontally with the combat knife.
He was way short. Annja didn't even have to dodge. Before he could recover with a back stroke she sprang like an angry leopard and closed with him. She grabbed him by the biceps of his knife arm and his left shoulder.
Something came skittering down the aisle into the middle of the lab.
Grenade. Annja was out of time, with nowhere to go.
In fear and frustrated anger, Annja stepped past the black-clad assassin like a dancer leading her partner, and threw him toward the back of the room with all her strength. He hit the sealed-off window with a crunch. The bricks exploded outward into the humid Alexandrian night.
Grabbing the motionless Jadzia around her narrow waist, Annja dragged the young woman to the window and leaped out through the hole in the wall.
The grenade exploded behind her, filling the lab with smoke and tear gas.
Annja landed hard in the alley behind the building. Her right ankle buckled, not quite far enough to sprain. Her knee slammed against something hard – a bottle or stone.
"What are you doing?" Jadzia screamed from under arm. "Put me down!"
Annja dropped her, eliciting a fresh squall of fury. They were in a space ten feet wide between the warehouse and the next building. Lights shone from a crane out by the docks a long block away. A fast glance over her shoulder showed only dark the other way.
The hunters had night-vision equipment. Light gave her at least equal vision and the possibility, however slight, of witnesses.
A slim edge was an edge.
"Come on," she said to Jadzia, who was sitting up rubbing grit out of her hair and cursing in several languages Annja didn't recognize.
Jadzia opened her mouth to say something, probably a snotty protest. Annja grabbed her arm and started running. With a squawk the young woman found herself dragged to her feet and scrambling, still clutching the satchel.
As Annja reached the alley's end a figure loomed before her. The bizarre shape of the head silhouetted against the silvery glare told her all she needed to know.
Letting go of Jadzia's wrist, she sprinted the last few yards at full speed and leaped in the air as the inevitable machine pistol came up. Her right leg pistoned out in a flying side kick. It telescoped the single objective tube of the night-vision goggles and snapped the gunman's neck as if he'd been hit in the face with a pile driver. In a sense he had.
Annja landed beyond the body, out on the rubble field. The inflatable tent over the excavation was ahead and to her right. She did a quick scan of the area. She seemed to be alone. The intruders, knowing there were no exits from the converted warehouse but the front way in, apparently and logically hadn't bothered leaving more than one man on guard outside. Annja stood drawing in huge breaths of thick Mediterranean air flavored with cooking spices and motor oil.
A crunch of shoes on the loose, gritty earth behind brought her around. Jadzia was teetering toward her with blue eyes wide.
"What the hell?" she said.
"I'm scared, pissed off and alive," Annja said. "And damned determined to stay that way. If you want to do the same, come with me. And don't ask questions till later!"
Chapter 4
Jadzia swiveled her pigtailed head from side to side as the two women walked down a street full of hulking trucks. The narrow lane ran between big dark warehouse walls near the Western Harbor wharves. It smelled strongly of seawater and sea-life uncomfortably past its sell-by date. Water sloshed along the rough surface underfoot. Not even her college geology courses enabled Annja Creed to know whether the street was actual cobblestone or just really decrepit pavement.
They passed through a spill of light from the rectangular opening into an amber-lit cavern of a warehouse. Rough-looking men in badly stained coveralls stood around the entrance smoking and talking in guttural Arabic while a skinny young man, probably just a boy, dressed in a black T-shirt and baggy cotton shorts reeled in a big hose. The smell of fish was very strong.
The conversation stream trickled to a stop as the men saw the pair of Western women, one dressed skimpily enough to be considered more than a little risqué even in cosmopolitan Alexandria.
Annja smiled widely and nodded at the startled male faces as they passed through the island of light. Nothing to see here, she thought, trying hard to broadcast it despite her devoted disbelief in psychic powers. Mess with us and you'll be trying to digest your teeth. Have a nice night!
She had to tug extra hard at Jadzia's wrist to tow her the rest of the way out of the light.
Jadzia followed her none-too-gentle insistence. The young language prodigy continued to maintain the shocked silence that had settled over her after Annja had killed the final attacker standing between them and escape. Fortunately, Jadzia showed little difficulty with the hike. Either she wasn't one of those nerds who was totally opposed to any physical activity greater than teetering to the bathroom or the fridge to get another can of Red Bull, or adrenaline was working its magic. As aggravatingly lean as she was, Annja suspected the former.
Annja led them west for about a mile, following the waterfront, through the Greek quarter and into the city's west side. She stayed alert but saw no sign they were being tailed. At length she circled back toward her own hotel.
"Why are we here?" Jadzia asked, looking up at the front of the hotel.
It was a modest three-star kind of place in the Greek quarter, big enough to have an elevator, a bar and even pretty decent bathrooms in all the rooms, but without being part of a big chain.
&
nbsp; "I thought I'd grab my gear," Annja said.
Jadzia hung back. Somewhere among the nighttime streets Annja had quit having to pull her along by the wrist. She had followed on her own, and now reminded Annja uncomfortably of a lost puppy.
"But won't they know to look for us here?"
"Watch a lot of spy movies, do you?" Annja said. She instantly regretted the snide tone.
But Jadzia, while she had a flash-fire temper for perceived slights, proved to be dense as one of the city's ancient stone Sphinxes when a real one hit her. She smiled happily.
"Of course!" Her pigtails bobbed as she nodded enthusiastically. "I know all about these things."
What have I gotten myself into now? Annja wondered. "I'm betting they either aren't aware of my existence or haven't identified me yet," she said. "Your team roster is available on the Web for all to see. My name's not on it."
She knew it was thin, as she watched a cab pull under the portico. The uniformed doorman bowed as a silk-suited Sikh with silver in his beard, and his shorter companion, voluptuous in an emerald-green dress, exited the vehicle and entered the hotel. She wondered briefly what the story was. The couple dressed nicely enough to afford a much pricier place.
Annja wanted to get in and out before much could go wrong even if the night's assassins were watching for her. They might have spotted her while surveilling the dig – probably had, she had to admit to herself as she formed her plan. She would gather her things, then duck out of the hotel, shake anybody trying to tail them and head for a new place to hole up for the night.
She wasn't that attached to the belongings she had brought. She traveled light, and nowadays always packed with the expectation she might have to leave anything behind and walk away for survival's sake. Even her laptop was relatively cheap and contained no information that could easily be used against her.
But it would be convenient to have her stuff. And she reckoned that if she threw some of her own clothes on Jadzia, no matter how bad they fit her coltish form, they would be a lot less conspicuous than having the girl wandering around dressed in such a look-at-me manner.
"Tell you what," Annja said to Jadzia, who was rocking back and forth on her heels and chewing on her lower lip. "You keep an eye out for anybody suspicious. Okay?"
Jadzia's eyes lit up. "Okay!"
****
"Two men in the lobby," Jadzia said. "They sit on the far side with their backs to the door and pretend to read newspapers."
"You're kidding," Annja said. She fought her irritation with the girl in the close confines of the stairway.
Jadzia's pigtails swung from side to side beneath the backward Tulane Green Wave ball cap she had stuffed down over them as she shook her head emphatically. She wore an outsized windbreaker that covered her hands, and running pants cinched as tight around her waist as they could be. They resembled a pair of gray terry-cloth sandbags.
At least playing spy got Jadzia too excited either for panic or to take potshots at Annja. Annja opened her mouth to question her further, unsure as to whether to trust the young woman's judgment. Clearly she had a taste for melodrama. Would she see danger where it wasn't?
Annja shut her mouth. Belatedly it hit her that a degreed cryptologist might actually have a certain bent for spying.
"Right," she said. "We'll go out the back."
So I was wrong, she thought, frowning at the back of her own windbreaker as Jadzia pushed through swinging utility doors. I guess they did make me. I still have a lot to learn about this whole intrigue thing.
Little wiry Egyptian men and women looked at the brisk Western women as they passed through the hotel's service areas. Jadzia swung along like the health department inspector. Annja followed down the corridor, which smelled of steam and fresh laundry and cooking food, smiling in what she hoped was a friendly rather than nervous manner.
No one challenged them until a door flew open just in front of Annja. A man in a sort of iridescent brown suit tumbled out right in front of her wearing sunglasses and –
"A fez?" Annja said aloud.
The man's hand dived into his suit coat, which looked as if it had been intentionally made to look slightly greasy. That was all Annja needed. She acted instinctively and grabbed the upper biceps of what she figured had to be his gun arm to control it. She used the leverage to drive a forward elbow-smash into his face with her right arm. She felt impact that jarred clear down to her tailbone, and felt a sharp pain in her own arm.
The man gave up doing whatever he was doing to clutch his face. He fell straight on the floor, bleeding, to the accompaniment of thrashing and mewling noises, she thought.
"Damn," Annja said, inspecting her right elbow. A tooth had gouged her, drawing blood. She was mighty glad of her strong immune system. Human bites are nasty, she thought.
Jadzia faced Annja across the man's kicking form, eyes big. "It's Egypt," she said. "They wear fezzes. Get over it. Watch out!"
Somebody grabbed Annja from behind in a bear hug that pinned her upper arms to her rib cage. He felt big and smelled of sweat and garlic.
"I got her," he said in thickly accented English.
He hoisted her feet clear off the cracked linoleum. She felt hot breath on the back of her head, snapped it back hard. She felt, as well as heard, the cartilage of his nose shift. He grunted and his grip on her rib cage slackened.
She thrust her arms forcefully out before her, busting the rest of the way loose. As the corrugated soles of her trusty hiking boots touched down she braced, covered her right fist with her left palm and, spinning clockwise, pile-drove an elbow into a big soft belly.
The elbow was working for her. Her attacker doubled over with a great expulsion of hot, foul-smelling air. Annja took a step to her left and side-kicked the big Egyptian. The force propelled him into a dumbwaiter that stood open in the cracked pink stucco wall to his right. The door dropped on him.
She turned around quickly to see if anybody else wanted to play. She and Jadzia had the corridor to themselves. The hotel maintenance staff did not get paid to intervene heroically in these little disputes among the guests.
She turned back.
The first man she had dropped lay on the floor moaning. His face was covered with blood. He had his hand in his jacket again.
Annja did not think he was scratching an itch. Irritably she kicked him on the point of his chin. His head, which still had the fez crammed on top of it, snapped into the wall beside him. The fez fell off. He slumped.
Annja crouched quickly, reached a bit tentatively into the clamminess of the inside of his biliously colored jacket and fished out a Beretta. Straightening, she dried the grips off with two quick swipes across the rump of her jeans. Then she pulled the slide back far enough for a flash of yellow brass to confirm he had a round chambered.
"Insurance," she said to Jadzia, whose eyes had gotten even bigger. It was true. She knew that it would be a lot easier to explain shooting an assailant to the local authorities than carving him up with a sword.
"What's wrong with a fez?" Jadzia asked.
Annja blinked and shook her head once, violently, as if trying to shed water. "It was just way too Casablanca," she said. "Let's just get out of here, okay?"
Chapter 5
"I think it was the Muslim Brotherhood," Annja said.
"Nonsense," Jadzia replied. Beyond her, cars swished up and down the boulevard. Across the street tourists sauntered down a broad walkway that ran along the Alexandrian waterfront. "I heard one of the men shout at you in French."
"That doesn't mean anything," Annja said. "Plenty of Muslims speak French."
It was late morning. They had survived the night, at least, in a small, somewhat seedy hotel. Fortunately Annja had spent enough time knocking around the world from undergrad days onward to appreciate the fact that it was still pretty plush by Third World standards.
Jadzia had recovered from her shock – or perhaps the thrill of playing adventure spy girl – enough to gripe about th
e surroundings, from the mildewy smells to the stains on the bedspread.
But once she had slurped down her first mug of strong coffee well charged with sugar, and chomped her way through her first flaky pastry at the sidewalk café on the Corniche, Jadzia found something that appealed to her even more than pouting. Arguing.
Her pretty lips were twisted in a sneer as if she'd forgotten Annja had repeatedly saved her life the night before.
"They were assassins sent by the big oil companies," Jadzia said in a tone that clearly declared Annja was a moron not to recognize the facts. "They sent them to keep the knowledge of Atlantean energy secrets covered up from the world."
Annja didn't react for a moment. She was struck by the fact that the lips sneering at her were covered in a carefully applied layer of lipstick. And as far as Annja knew, Jadzia had no personal effects except her wallet, some credit cards, identification and her passport.
Do I have lipstick that shade? she wondered. The truth was she seldom bothered with it, or makeup in general, except for special events. She realized belatedly she had with her a sort of premade kit – the Mr. Right Emergency Kit – provided to her by her female cronies from Chasing History's Monsters. She had never, so far as she could recall, used it. Or so much as opened it.
I hope there weren't condoms in it, she thought.
"Wait," she said. Jadzia's last statement had finally penetrated her protective shields of puzzlement. "You're blaming the oil companies?"
Jadzia nodded.
"Isn't that a conspiracy theory?"
"Aren't we victims of a conspiracy?" Jadzia said in infuriatingly superior tones. "Or do you really think that those men all just independently decided to attack us last night, and wound up doing so all at the same time by coincidence? That's just stupid."
Annja frowned. It made the snottiness immeasurably worse, somehow, when the brat being snotty was right. At least about that angle of conspiracy. Obviously someone had conspired to hit the Polish-Egyptian dig team last night. And they'd done a hell of a job. Had it not been for the fact that she was getting used to coming under attack, they would have made a clean sweep.