Staff of Judea

by Alex Archer

  Annja didn’t give him a chance to recover. As he pushed up from the ground, she ran him through with her sword. He gave a surprised grunt and died, a bewildered expression on his face. Annja felt no remorse. He’d tried to kill her—and no doubt would have succeeded if she’d remained weaponless.

  She pulled her sword free.

  Chaos swirled on all sides of her.

  While she dealt with the first rider, the others had passed her and reached the center of the camp. Her warning had succeeded in rousing some of the security team, however, who were now locked in combat with the horsemen. Annja tried to make sense of it all. Images flashed through her mind as if she were seeing them with the help of a strobe light.

  Flash.

  A rider rearing up over one of Grimes’s men who was trying to scramble out of his tent. The rider’s sword flashing downward as the other man frantically sought to draw his gun.

  Flash.

  Two security agents pulling a rider down from his saddle and falling on him, their fists flying.

  Flash.

  Grimes stepping inside the arc of his opponent’s sword, catching him by the arm and twisting suddenly, sending the other man over his head in a classic judo throw before leaping on him, a knife glinting in his hand.

  Flash.

  Two swordsmen advancing on Connolly, who stood in front of his tent holding them off with nothing more than a shovel in his hands….

  That last image was enough to snap her back into action. Annja raced toward the group even as the swordsmen took their first swings at Connolly. Miraculously he managed to evade both blows, deflecting the strikes with the blade of the shovel as he frantically backpedaled.

  No one noticed Annja advancing from behind, least of all the swordsmen, and she drew close enough to strike before anyone even knew she was there. Her first blow struck the rearmost swordsman’s head from his shoulders in a spray of arterial blood.

  His death provided a warning to his partner, who turned to meet Annja with a flurry of sword thrusts. In seconds she was fighting for her life against an opponent who clearly knew how to use the weapon in his hands. He came at her aggressively, trying to use his strength and size to overwhelm her in the first few moments of their encounter. But Annja was far too good with a sword to fall for something as simple as that. She parried each swing and then went on an offensive of her own, slashing and jabbing and thrusting at her opponent, driving him backward…right to where Connolly was waiting with the shovel. Annja thought she could hear the crack of bone as the shovel hit its target and the swordsman collapsed with a crushed skull.

  Annja was about to go help the others when Connolly shouted, “The map!” Turning, he raced inside his tent. Afraid to leave him alone, she moved to follow him inside, but not before letting her own sword vanish back into the otherwhere and replacing it with one of the attacker’s weapons lying nearby. She could only hope that Connolly wouldn’t notice that her sword was now curved where moments before it had been straight.

  Inside the tent Annja found him unlocking one of the large chests to the left of the folding safari cot he was using as a bed.

  “Thank God you came along when you did, Annja.” He opened the trunk and began moving things around inside. “I found those bastards trying to sneak inside the tent just after you sounded the alarm and held them off as long as I could. But things were getting a bit dicey there, I don’t mind saying. Another few minutes…”

  Another few minutes and you would have been toast. No one needed to be reminded of their own mortality, least of all the billionaire who was funding their expedition.

  She cast an anxious glance back toward the entrance to the tent, knowing that there were probably others who needed their help.

  “Ah!” Connolly brandished the leather case containing his iPad over his head as he stood. “They didn’t get it.”

  That was all Annja needed to see. “Stay here and don’t leave the tent until Grimes or I tell you its safe!” She dashed back out.

  She emerged from the tent to find the mysterious riders retreating as quickly as they had come, disappearing into the darkness on the far side of the camp.

  Chapter 17

  Just like that, it was over. Annja and the others were left staring into the darkness where the horsemen had disappeared, wondering what had just happened.

  Grimes took control of the situation, ordering those who were healthy to tend to the wounded after he did a quick head count. Amazingly, they’d only lost two—Chan, who had been on guard duty at the time of the attack and had no doubt died before he knew what hit him, and Mendez, the man Annja had seen murdered as he’d struggled to get out of his tent. A few of the others had minor scrapes and injuries, but nothing a first aid kit couldn’t treat.

  They had killed three of the attackers in turn—the horseman Annja had taken out early in the battle, the one crushed by Connolly’s shovel and the man Grimes had killed with his knife. They also had one captive, now tied and gagged—the man Annja had choked into unconsciousness during the first moments of the attack. A quick search of both their captive and the bodies of his comrades didn’t turn up anything that could help identify who they were.

  Grimes wasn’t ready to let it go at that, however.

  “We need to go after them and we need to do it now,” he was saying to Connolly as Annja walked over after checking on Ephraim and the others. “It’s going to be a while before our new ‘guest’ is able to tell us anything and we can’t afford to give them time to regroup and attack again. The best thing we can do is move in on them, just as they did to us.”

  “You think they’ll be back?” Connolly asked.

  “Of course I do. They want something from us and won’t stop until they get it. We need to know more about them so that we don’t give them the opportunity to try a stunt like this again.”

  Grimes was right—they needed to know as much about their opponents as possible because she was as certain as he was that this wasn’t the last they’d see of them. The riders would be back. She had no doubt about that. A little knowledge would go a long way in helping them prepare to deal with them when the time came.

  Connolly, as it turned out, didn’t need much convincing.

  Once the decision was made to go after them, the group wasted no time in getting under way. Grimes ordered Johnson and Daniels to stay behind and guard the camp in case the intruders came back. Ephraim herded the graduate students into one tent, where he could watch over all of them during the remainder of the night. For once, none of them complained. Meanwhile, Grimes, Connolly, Annja and the other four security guards would pursue the horsemen out into the desert in the hopes of locating their camp and learning why the group attacked them in the first place.

  “The Gibborim take their mission very seriously, Annja,” Ephraim told her quietly, out of earshot of the others. “Perhaps it is best if you remain behind, here, with us. Where it is safe.”

  “It’s not the Gibborim I’m worried about,” she replied. “It’s Connolly and his men.”

  She wasn’t kidding, either. The attack on the camp had brought out a militaristic attitude in Connolly and his team that was making her nervous. She had a nagging feeling they knew more than they were letting on about what was happening. Annja didn’t like being in the dark and had no intention of letting them keep her at arm’s length.

  “Don’t worry, Ephraim,” she told him. “I can take care of myself.”

  She wondered what he would think of her if he really knew what she was capable of.

  One of the security guards in the hunters’ group, a young black fellow by the name of Gardner, had spent two tours in the mountains of Afghanistan hunting the Taliban and so Grimes ordered him to take point. His teammates—Beck, Hamilton and Douglas—would be on foot behind him so that they formed a wide diamond. Behind them
would come Grimes, Connolly and Annja in one of the SUVs, without headlights. Gardner would be using a red-colored flashlight to follow the horses’ tracks and they didn’t want to mess up his night vision or give their location away to the enemy.

  They would have to travel slowly, as a result, but the consensus seemed to be that the camp wouldn’t be far. The raiders probably wouldn’t expect their targets to come after them and, if they were the Gibborim as Ephraim feared, then they would remain close enough to keep the treasure hunters under observation.

  They took their previous positions—Grimes behind the wheel, Annja in the front passenger seat, Connolly in back behind Grimes. The atmosphere was tense as they peered out into the night, trying to keep the security team in sight while at the same time trying to avoid driving into a boulder or sliding into a ditch.

  Just over an hour passed before Gardner held up a clenched fist and they all stopped. Beck, Hamilton and Douglas took up defensive positions around the front of the vehicle, facing forward, while Gardner came back to talk to Grimes.

  “There’s a ridge up ahead,” he whispered through the open window. “I can make out the light of a campfire coming from the other side.”

  “Well, then let’s go take a look,” Grimes said.

  They got out of the car, easing the doors shut behind them. Grimes produced a pair of automatic pistols from somewhere, checked to be sure they were loaded and then passed one to Connolly without a word. Since the security detail were carrying M4 carbines, that left Annja the only one in the group without a firearm. Fine with her. She had her own weapon should she need it.

  The security team fanned out around the three of them, resuming their diamond formation, but this time with Connolly, Grimes and Annja in the center. Moving slowly and quietly, the group made its way up the ridgeline. Camp sounds could be heard as they drew closer to the top—men’s voices, the clank of pots knocking against one another, the nicker of horses. When Gardner gave the signal, they got down on their bellies and crawled the rest of the way to the top. From that vantage point, they looked down into the wadi on the other side.

  Gardner had lived up to his reputation and taken them right to the raiders’ camp. Annja counted twelve men around the fire below them, their horses tied up nearby. They appeared to be armed—some with the curved swords they’d used during the attack on the archaeologists’ camp less than an hour before and some with what appeared to be Kalashnikov semiautomatic rifles. The ever-popular AK-47s, if she had to guess. A few of them were tending to the wounds of those who had been injured in the fight, but most of them seemed to be arguing with a man who appeared to be their leader. He was clearly in disagreement with whatever it was the others were saying. They were too far away to hear clearly, but Annja thought they were speaking in…French? Finally fed up, the leader turned and disappeared inside a brightly colored tent that stood at a distance from the others.

  Annja leaned toward Grimes. “Now what?” she whispered. She didn’t think they were going to learn much from up here. It was starting to look like this had been a bad idea.

  Grimes ignored her question. Instead, he whispered, “Stay here and guard Connolly,” and then signaled for his men to follow him. Annja didn’t even have a moment to object as they slipped into the darkness. She moved to go after them but was brought up short when Connolly grabbed her arm in an unexpectedly powerful grip. He shook his head.

  This was supposed to be a reconnaissance, not a damned search-and-destroy mission. Just what on earth did Grimes think he was doing?

  From her position on the ridge, Annja was able to watch as Grimes’s men encircled the camp and then moved in silently from all directions, their weapons at the ready. For a moment she thought they would take the camp without bloodshed, that the security team would get close enough to make resistance an obviously futile idea, but then a shout went up from one of the Bedouins who, rather than surrendering, went for his gun.

  Big mistake.

  Grimes’s men opened fire with short, controlled bursts from their M4s and the desert raiders went down in a haze of bullets. It was done with such brutal efficiency that Annja realized she had vastly underestimated the security team’s capabilities. She’d assumed they were your typical executive protection detail, but from the way they’d just taken out the entire camp in a matter of seconds she guessed they were much more than that. Not just ex-military, but most likely ex–Special Forces.

  She didn’t find the revelation particularly comforting.

  The gunfire drew the Bedouin leader back out of his tent. He rushed into the center of the camp, drawing his pistol as he came, only to find himself surrounded. For a moment Annja thought he was going to try to fight. One man armed with a pistol against Grimes’s security team armed with semiautomatic rifles. But his good sense must have asserted itself and before the others opened fire the man raised his hands over his head.

  Grimes looked at Hamilton and inclined his head toward the surrendering man. While Grimes covered him with his pistol, Hamilton moved in, disarmed the other man and then forced him down on his knees with his hands over his head. Grimes gave the signal for the others to stand down. While Hamilton kept a gun trained on the prisoner, the others relaxed and lowered their weapons.

  Then, and only then, did Grimes signal for Annja and Connolly to join them.

  It took a few minutes to clamber down from the ridge and, by the time Annja arrived in the camp, the bodies of the raiders had been dragged to one side and lined up in a row.

  Eleven men dead in moments.

  Annja didn’t like it at all. But something told her that now would not be a good time to object to what had just happened.

  It wouldn’t take much for you to end up lying right there with the Bedouins.

  The ruthless manner in which the desert raiders had been dispatched brought her earlier concerns back tenfold. She’d underestimated the security team’s role in this enterprise and it made her wonder what else she had missed. This entire expedition was rapidly moving in a direction she wasn’t comfortable with.

  “Give me a few minutes,” Grimes said to Connolly, “and we’ll know everything we need to about their interest in us, sir.”

  Connolly surprised them with his reply. “No. I want to talk to him myself.”

  Grimes frowned. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “I don’t care,” Connolly replied. He strode forward, forcing Grimes to follow him or be left out of earshot. Annja tagged along, as well.

  Connolly stood looking down at the prisoner kneeling on the ground before him. The other man gazed up at him, his expression unreadable.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Connolly asked in English.

  The prisoner didn’t respond.

  Connolly tried again, this time in Hebrew. Annja didn’t speak the language, but she recognized it and assumed he’d asked the same two questions.

  Again no response.

  By the time Connolly asked a third time, in what sounded to Annja like Arabic, the prisoner had apparently grown bored and glanced at the rest of them. His expression didn’t change as his gaze passed over Grimes, but when he looked at Annja he hesitated for the barest fraction of a moment before glancing away.

  Annja knew that it could have been the fact that she was the only woman among a group of men that caught the prisoner’s attention, but her instincts were telling her it was something more than that.

  She stepped forward and put her hand on Connolly’s arm, just as he was opening his mouth to say something else. He stiffened at her touch but didn’t pull away as he glanced at her.

  “May I try?” she asked.

  Connolly grunted.

  The prisoner smirked as she stepped in front of him. She fixed her gaze on his.

  “We know who you are so there’s no sense in lying about it,” she said in Fr
ench.

  There.

  For just a fraction of a second the man’s pupils had widened before he’d glanced away, seemingly indifferent to what she’d said.

  But Annja knew better. He’d understood her.

  She was about to say something to that effect to Connolly when she abruptly changed her mind. There was something here that she was missing, something important.

  She pretended to try again, asking the man his name in both Italian and Spanish before giving up with a shrug of her shoulders.

  The others apparently had had enough, as well. Connolly exchanged a few words with Grimes privately before the latter turned back to Hamilton and, pointing to a spot on the edge of camp away from everything else, said, “Take him over there and sit on him until we’re ready to go.”

  “Got it, boss.” Hamilton grabbed the other man’s arm and hauled him to his feet. “Let’s go, knucklehead.”

  That’s when everything fell apart.

  The prisoner’s docility throughout the interrogation had lulled Hamilton into thinking he was no longer a threat, so when he sprang into action, kicking Hamilton’s knee joint with a side kick, the guard was unable to protect himself. Hamilton went down screaming, his knee badly twisted by the blow. The prisoner spun around, but rather than trying to make a run for it he dropped to one knee and thrust his hand inside the lip of his boot. When it came out again, he was holding a squat-looking pistol that Annja didn’t recognize but that she knew was as lethal as it was ugly.

  Time slowed.

  The Bedouin’s hand began to come up, the barrel of the pistol pointed in Connolly’s direction.

  Annja was already in motion, having thrown herself at Connolly the moment she’d seen what was in the other man’s hand.

  Dimly, she heard Grimes yelling something, but it seemed to be coming from very far away and she couldn’t make out what it was.

  A shot rang out.

  Everything sped back up again as Annja slammed into Connolly, the two of them tumbling to the ground even as the bullet sped through the spot where Connolly had been standing a split second before. Annja hit the ground hard, the impact driving the air out of her lungs. She forced herself to roll to one side, waiting for the gunman’s next shot, the one that wouldn’t miss.