by Alex Archer
The local technicians paid no attention to either foreign woman. Yet another page of text extracted from a burned scroll had just appeared on the big screen. They were high-fiving and chirping and carrying on as if they'd just scored a touchdown.
Jadzia never even glanced at the monitor. She just turned and walked toward Annja.
"But there's a scroll missing," Annja said, belaboring the obvious. She meant the one being run through the multispectral imager.
"Leave it," Jadzia said. "We have to go."
Annja followed her into the hall. "What's going on?" Annja realized the students were moving along the hallway with a more set purpose than seemed normal.
"You and Tex," Jadzia said incongruously. "You made me realize I could die." Her voice sounded more clotted than tense.
"Huh?" Annja was getting annoyed by Jadzia's behavior.
"Hear that announcement?" Jadzia said. They were halfway to the stairs nearest the computer lab. "They're saying a terrorist threat has been made against this building. Students are to report to designated evacuation points while antiterror forces secure the place."
Annja felt as if a cold hand had clamped down on her. "Euro Petro?"
Jadzia's face crinkled with fury and disgust. "Who else? Bribery really is the universal language, I guess."
Though she was still loath to admit to herself the possibility there might be something to the Atlantis myths, Annja had to accept that someone at Euro Petro was a true believer.
"You're right," she said tautly. "We have to go."
"Where?" Jadzia asked. Her eyes were openly fearful now.
"Somewhere they don't expect."
The classrooms on the right faced the back of the building. Annja grabbed the latch of the nearest door.
She opened the classroom door, stepped quickly inside.
Jadzia followed tentatively. "We're on the second floor," she pointed out.
"Yep," Annja said.
The room was dimly lit with morning light through half-drawn shades. Moving swiftly between the desks, she reached the line of windows on the far side and examined them. They were built to angle open a handspan to permit airflow but no farther. One or two were open, allowing the smells of humid subtropical greenery to eddy in.
"This low down they shouldn't be shatterproof or anything," she said, thinking aloud. She went to the head of the small classroom. The professor's desk was large and heavy. A swivel chair rested just behind it.
Annja hoisted the chair over her head and threw it through the nearest window. The whole casement failed and fell away with a crash.
She stuck her head out into the humid air and looked quickly around. Below her lay a parking lot with a scatter of boxy cars of unfamiliar makes parked near the building. The far side was bordered by a taller-than-head-high hedge. It marked the northern edge of the campus. Beyond rose the blocky buildings of an industrial park. The sound of traffic was like the rush of a nearby river. On the west end of the lot stood a copse of lychee trees. To the east, Annja's right, a sheltered walkway with soaring, curving concrete pillars holding up an eccentrically angled roof led to a lot exit. She saw no one.
"What now?" Jadzia asked.
"Simple," Annja said, and jumped.
She struck a perfect three-point landing. She hit a bit harder than she'd expected but her powerful legs easily absorbed the impact of the fall.
"Annja!" she heard Jadzia scream.
A strand of hair fell before her eyes as she raised her head. Through the chestnut screen, turned auburn at the edges by the morning sun, she saw a squad of six soldiers in bulky camouflaged battledress trot into view, three to the left side of the parking lot, three to the right, machine pistols angled before them.
She looked up just in time to see the heavy bag of scrolls plummet down on her. She just managed to raise her hands to field the well-scuffed green-and-purple bag. It slammed into her chest and forced her back a couple of steps.
"You might want to warn me next time," she called up to Jadzia's pale pigtail-framed face.
"What about me?" the girl called back, ignoring the remark.
Annja dropped the satchel to the sidewalk. "Same way as the bag," she said. "I'll catch you."
One thing Annja had to give Jadzia. She didn't allow common sense to hold her back from much. The next thing Annja knew 110 pounds or so of lanky young woman was falling with all the skill and grace of a sock monkey.
She caught the girl and they fell in a heap.
"Are you all right?" Jadzia asked.
"Probably not," Annja said fuzzily. One of Jadzia's extremities had clocked her in the right eye. She stirred her limbs to prove to herself she could. She felt very feeble. "But that won't stop me."
She wondered in passing if Jadzia was showing actual concern for another person – or simple dread at the prospect of being stranded all alone in a parking lot in the People's Republic of China with fifty pounds of hot artifacts and a antiterror unit plus a probable multinational army of corporate thugs about to land on her like an imploded tower.
She realized she couldn't breathe. "Will you...please...get off?"
"Oh." Jadzia scrambled to her feet.
Annja arched her back and jumped up to her feet in an acrobatic recovery. Immediately she swayed and would've fallen flat down had Jadzia, either deliberately helpful or accidentally in the way, not propped her up.
"Okay, that wasn't bright," Annja muttered. "Let's go."
It was sheer bravado. But it worked. She engaged her will. And that, she knew, was a pretty powerful thing.
She took the scrolls from Jadzia. They'd move quicker that way. She led across the lot at a trot for the exits. The soldiers opened fire but were still too far away to do any harm.
Surprisingly the street beyond the hedge was not full of traffic. What there was ran to a lot more cars and a lot fewer bicycles than Annja had expected.
"What now?" Jadzia asked.
A white-and-red taxi approached from the left. Annja walked right out in its path, faced it squarely and held her right hand out in a stop gesture.
The driver locked up the brakes. The tires squealed. It shuddered to a halt with the chrome of the bumper all but brushing Annja's shins. The stink of burned rubber rose up about Annja, momentarily drowning out the exhaust fumes. Reaction-dizzy, Annja toppled forward. She caught herself with a hand with a thump on the hood. The metal was hot as a stovetop.
"Okay," she said. "Not a good idea."
The driver stuck his head out the window. He had a kind of pushed-in face with somewhat extruded lips that made him look like a cartoon duck, prominent ears that didn't and immense industrial-framed glasses that inspired little confidence in his visual acuity. "What matter you, crazy Western-devil girl? You wan' die?"
"We need a ride," she said.
"You pay American dollar?" he asked without hesitation.
"If you want," she said.
His manner changed immediately. "You crazy girls, need crazy ride. You come to right man. Hop in!"
They did. Annja shoved Jadzia in first, then the scrolls. As she leaned down to follow, Jadzia vented a squeal that went through Annja's head like a red-hot railroad spike.
"Annja! Behind us!"
From a pillared exit two blocks behind the cab, a glossy blue Mercedes sedan was howling through a turn. Despite the violence of the maneuver, not to mention a score of cars in between, a man hung halfway out the front passenger window. The muzzle-flash of his assault rifle was a brilliant dancing spark.
Chapter 23
Annja dived in headfirst on top of the bag of scrolls. "Drive," she said.
The driver didn't move. Instead he turned around. "You no pay combat pay," he declared firmly.
Annja's hand slid into her pants pocket. She writhed on top of the gym bag and a startled Jadzia, cursing the vanity that made her wear her tight jeans instead of the baggier cargo pants she often wore. After a contortion or two she squeezed out her wallet. Lying fully across Ja
dzia's lap she fished in it, grabbing some bills. She came out with at least two hundred dollars and thrust it at the cabbie.
"The same if you get us safe to the Hong Kong airport!" she shouted.
His hand snatched the bills like a mongoose taking a striking cobra. "I your man!" he declared, turning and shifting into Drive. "You call me Rambo now!"
Annja sat up and looked out the back window. The bad news was a second big sedan full of hitmen had blasted out of the gates. The good news was both pursuers were at least momentarily locked up in traffic. Even Shenzhen drivers tended to lose their composure when random full-automatic gunfire sprayed over their heads.
The cab took off as if it had a jet assist. Annja, Jadzia and satchel got jumbled into a heap of synthetic fabric and long, lean feminine limbs. After a few confused, squirming moments they got themselves sorted out, though Annja's left eye socket now throbbed from having gotten Jadzia's elbow in it. At least they'll match, she thought.
Annja looked back again. Their pursuers had sorted themselves out and accelerated, weaving in and out of traffic. Annja had the satchel dumped on her again as their cabdriver did the same thing. She heard the blare of a horn and a big flat-nosed panel truck rushed by the other way, so close the cab actually rocked to its passage.
Traffic actually picked up as they exited the industrial area by the university. But the pursuing vehicles were gaining by dint of truly demented recklessness. For the moment they had quit shooting, anyway.
"What about the army?" Jadzia asked as the cab's darting for position tossed them from side to side. They had finally managed to get their seat belts fastened, which prevented them from crashing into each other at each wild swerve.
"Why aren't they chasing us?"
"They may not even know we got away," Annja said. "And having announced the security sweep through the building, I suspect they have to carry through with it."
A sudden crack made them both cringe. They looked back to see a hole in the rear windshield with a white spider of fractured glass around it. The bullet had apparently passed out the open front passenger window. Somehow it had missed all three occupants.
"Son of a bitch must pay!" the driver screamed in English. He leaned out his own window to throw a finger back at their pursuers, one of whom had pulled momentarily into the opposing traffic lane for a clear shot at them. He turned forward just in time to keep the cab from veering into the front bumper of a cement truck, which passed with the now almost obligatory blare of a horn.
They crossed a bridge over the river that formed the eastern border of the university. The slow water was bright green, with a sort of iridescent sheen to it, like radiator fluid. "It looks just like what Hollywood thinks toxic waste looks like," Annja said.
"Cool," Jadzia said. "Maybe there are mutants."
"Pollution just temporary problem of growth!" cried their cabbie over his shoulder. He glanced in his side mirror as they came off the bridge. "Uh-oh. Bad guys gaining."
They were. The second Mercedes was just a few cars back in the pack.
"Do something," Jadzia hissed urgently.
The cabbie fumbled around in the front seat and shocked Annja when he hauled out a submachine gun. Its cylindrical see-through magazine showed it was mostly full of cartridges.
The cabbie handed it back. "Chang Feng. Very nice."
Maybe Rambo wasn't such a bad name for him, Annja thought.
"What are you waiting for?" Jadzia shouted. The black Mercedes swerved around another little boxy sedan to move in closer. Behind them the blue pursuer also gained ground. "Shoot them."
"I can't," Annja said. "Not until I get a better shot. I'm not going to spray traffic with bullets at random."
"They do!"
"Do you want to be like them?"
"I want to be alive!"
A street
angled off at forty-five degrees to their left. The cabbie suddenly cranked the car across two lanes of onrushing traffic and shot up it.
"This isn't the right way," Jadzia complained. "The border with Hong Kong is east and south of here! We're going northeast."
"Well, we just lost the black Mercedes," Annja said, looking back. "We need to lose both before anything else happens. Anyway, the airport's on an island pretty much south of the university. We've been heading away all this time."
They had come into a zone of flats between steep hills. Beyond them rose factories, sculptures of tanks and pipework and chimneys, all lustily belching black smoke and white steam.
"Black car back behind us," Jadzia said. Her voice rose an octave. "Here comes the blue one! Shoot! Shoot!"
Annja twisted in her seat. The traffic had thinned to next to nothing. The black car was making a move, overtaking rapidly on the left.
"No worries!" the driver chortled. The taxicab accelerated away from the Mercedes.
After a moment the bigger sedan accelerated. Annja thought she could actually hear its engine roar.
"We can't outrun them!" Jadzia wailed.
She and Annja rocked violently forward as the driver tapped the brakes. Annja's mouth bounced off the passenger's headrest.
"What are you doing?" Jadzia screamed at the driver as the cab jolted and slowed to another hit on the brakes.
The Mercedes shot past them. A man hung half out the window again. He grabbed the frame, trying to twist to shoot back without falling out of the vehicle.
The cab accelerated again. The gunner was actually facing away from it, with his rump all but sticking out the window. They scooted past.
This time she definitely heard the Mercedes' engine growl furiously as it sped up to run them down. "Now driver watch only us," the cabbie sang out. "Too bad for them."
Annja glanced toward him, then did a second take. A train bridge crossed the road ahead of them, complete with a bloodred and sunflower-yellow-painted locomotive creeping across it, pulling open-topped cars piled perilously high with what looked to Annja like rusting chunks of scrap metal.
As they approached the bridge the Mercedes surged up alongside. Annja saw the gunman grinning over the sights of his bullpup assault rifle at her. She started to raise the Chang Feng, knowing she was too late.
The cabbie threw the wheel hard left. The cab sideswiped the Mercedes. The enemy driver probably flinched reflexively away from a car slamming into his. The black Mercedes rammed head-on into the concrete bridge support.
It telescoped with a terrible grinding screech, and a cloud of white steam rose from its ruptured radiator. Through the white puff Annja saw the gunner's body snapped suddenly sideways.
She gulped down sour bile. A human body wasn't meant to bend that way.
The cabbie uttered a triumphant rebel yell. Jadzia echoed him piercingly, pumping her fist.
"Not so fast," Annja said. "Here comes the other one."
They were driving between factory buildings, with almost no other cars on the road. The blue Mercedes was overtaking them quickly. This time Sulin himself leaned out the passenger window, white hair whipping in the wind, aiming an assault rifle one-handed.
"Your turn to do something," the cabbie shouted. "Better make snappy!"
"Roll down your window," Annja told Jadzia.
"What?"
"Do it!"
Jadzia cranked the window down, using both hands. Annja flung herself across the girl's lap and stuck her right arm and head out.
The blue Mercedes was swinging out to come alongside. Sulin wanted to make sure of his shot, it seemed.
The cab masked him from Annja. She lined up the red-dot sight on the shadowy figure of the driver and pumped out a 2-round burst, followed by another.
The windshield cracked as four holes appeared in front of the driver. The Mercedes continued to overtake them. Then it suddenly veered away left.
A meaty thump came from the rear of the cab. Annja felt the vehicle rock. The pursuing Mercedes went off the road into the ditch. It rolled over once, continuing to slide forward at a great rate of sp
eed.
"He's on the car!" Jadzia screamed.
"What?"
"Sulin! He's on the roof!"
The cabbie hit the brakes hard. The white-haired assassin failed to fly off the front. The cabbie shifted his narrow butt into the passenger seat, improbably, and continued to steer from there as the taxi slowed.
Bullet holes appeared in the middle of the roof. Bullets struck the inside of the driver's door. If the cabbie hadn't moved he would have been shot in the head and shoulders.
"I saw that in a movie!" the cabbie crowed.
"Annja! Do something!" Jadzia cried.
She aimed the Chang Feng at the roof, pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. With no idea how to clear a jam in the unfamiliar weapon, Annja let it drop.
Still lying across Jadzia's lap, Annja held her hand tipped forward at an angle between the front seats. "Stay put," she advised the cabbie. She focused.
The sword sprang into being, angled upward. To Annja's relief it cleared the arm the driver used to steer the slowing vehicle.
Another burst ripped down into the driver's seat. Bits of stuffing flew up to drift like gnats around the inside of the car. Annja dropped her hands so she could bring the tip of the sword to the holes in the roof. Then she thrust up with both hands on the hilt.
With a crunching sound the sword pierced the roof of the cab. The cabbie ducked under her arm back into his seat to take better control of the cab.
For a moment Annja wondered if her blow had gone true. Would another burst rip through the ceiling, kill the driver and leave them helpless? Or kill her – or Jadzia, whose safety was in her hands?
A red drop ran down the side of the blade. Then another. Then a scarlet stream poured down to wet her hands.
****
It struck Annja as strange that a factory that must have been recently built could already be derelict. But as he pulled in out of sight from the road behind a huge blocky concrete structure, the cab bouncing across a parking lot already cracked and heaved by weeds sprouting through it, Rambo the cabbie explained that businesses died off as quickly as they sprang into being in boomtown Shenzhen.
The cab stopped. Annja let go of the sword. It vanished, allowing a brief rain of blood just beginning to congeal to fall to the floor of the cab. Some of it fell on Annja's hand and forearm. She grimaced.