by Alex Archer
Once she was several hundred yards away from the camp, she stopped and took a moment to think about her next move. The staging area was out of the question; the cops would be all over the vehicles there in short order, if they weren’t already. If she couldn’t approach the cops and it was too risky to try and reach her rental car at the staging area, it seemed she had no choice but to travel overland until she found some alternate means of transport.
Squatting on her heels, Annja drew a quick map in the dirt in an effort to help her get her bearings. If the camp was here, she thought, and the staging area here, then the road must go like this. She drew a line in the dirt that traveled parallel to the camp for a short distance before angling sharply away toward the southeast. There was only one major road in these parts and that was it, if she was remembering things correctly. That meant if she turned south at this point, she should eventually run into it. She wasn’t sure exactly where she would cross it, but cross it she would, if she just kept going south.
“All right then, south it is,” she said.
With her pack over her shoulder, she started walking again.
It was hard going. The terrain was a mix of woods and marshland, which wasn’t the best possible choice. She had a healthy respect for the danger the marshy bogs represented, given what she’d recently gone through, and so she was forced several times to change direction, skirting the edges of the bogs rather than attempting to find a path through them. Each time she cleared them she headed south once more, but after the first few hours it was clear she’d underestimated the task ahead of her.
By midday the sun was beating down and Annja had gone through the two bottles of water she’d snatched on her way out of the camp.
If she had to do this for much longer, dehydration was going to start being a problem.
The marshlands gave way to wooded hill country, which had its good and bad points. She was out of the sun more often than not, and no longer had to take these wide looping detours to avoid the bogs, but the constant hike up and down the hills began to wear on her.
As she crested another hill, the trees fell away before her at the top and she found herself looking down a long grassy slope.
There, below her, was the road.
“About time,” she said, with not a little impatience. She’d known it would be a long hike, she just hadn’t expected it to take several hours. She was hot, tired, thirsty and more than a bit irritated. She almost felt sorry for whomever it was who eventually stopped to give her a ride.
Annja descended the hill and, once on the roadway itself, took a moment to brush the dust and leaves out of her clothing and hair. It was going to be difficult enough to get someone to stop out in the middle of nowhere; she didn’t want to make it any harder by looking like she’d just spent the afternoon rolling around in the woods.
Satisfied her appearance was as good as it was going to get, she set off walking along the shoulder, hoping it wouldn’t be long before someone came along to give her a lift.
The first two cars, both driven by women, passed her without slowing despite her efforts to flag them down. Stopping to help a fellow female stranded by herself on the side of the road was too much effort apparently. As they roared on past, their gazes averted so they could pretend to themselves they hadn’t seen her, Annja took the time to memorize their license plates. If she ran into them again up the road, she wanted to be sure she could identify them properly, if only to show her appreciation for their kindness to a stranger. And just to show that she was a better person than they were, she waved cheerfully after them, laughing all the while. It felt good to blow off a little steam, even if it was over something as stupid as a stranger’s failure to give her a ride.
Heaven knew she had enough to worry about.
She’d been on the road for almost an hour when she heard another car in the distance behind her. Her two previous encounters hadn’t gone very well, so this time around she was prepared to try something different. As the sound of the engine drew closer, Annja hurriedly stripped off the long-sleeved Henley she wore to expose the thinner T-shirt beneath and stuffed the outer shirt into her pack. She gathered the bottom of the T-shirt in her hands and tied it into a quick knot, which had the dual result of exposing a bit of her tanned midriff while at the same time pulling the fabric of the shirt tight across her breasts. Stuffing the ball cap she wore in the back pocket of her jeans, she let her long hair fall down her back in a gleaming wave, fluffing it up a bit with her fingers as she did so.
At this point, her ears were telling her that the car was less than a hundred yards away.
Turning to face the oncoming traffic, she cocked one hip toward the road, stuck out her thumb and put a big smile on her face.
Please let it be a man, she thought, knowing she’d feel a bit ridiculous dressed like this if it was a woman who stopped for her.
The car was a beat-up old four-door Renault, blue-gray in color, and thankfully there was a man behind the wheel.
He was already slowing the vehicle as he got closer to her and so she was able to get a good look at him as he drifted past to bring the car to a stop just a few yards farther up the road from where she stood. He looked to be in his early thirties, with thick blond hair that didn’t seem to want to stay where he put it and a tentative smile on his face that told her stopping for a hitchhiker, and a pretty one at that, was outside his usual behavior.
She hustled over and bent down to look in through the open passenger window.
“Car trouble?” he asked.
Wanting to avoid having to explain why he hadn’t passed her car along the way, she answered, “Boyfriend trouble. The SOB dumped me on the side of the road three miles back.”
He said something in reply, but Annja didn’t really hear it, as she was staring at the Roman collar about his throat and taking in the uniformlike black shirt and pants he was wearing.
“You’re a priest?” she said, surprised, though she didn’t quite know why. For a second she even felt guilty about the thing with the T-shirt, but, then again, it had worked, hadn’t it?
“Is that a problem for you?” he asked, genuinely concerned, and Annja realized she’d inadvertently offended him.
“Not at all,” she said with a smile. “It’s a relief, in fact. You can never be too careful nowadays.”
He nodded sagely and Annja fought the urge to laugh.
“Can I give you a ride?” he asked.
Annja opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. “A ride would be great.”
As she got into the car, another vehicle came roaring around the corner ahead of them, headed in the other direction, back the way she had come. It was a late-model Mercedes, black with silver trim, and Annja looked up to watch it go past. The windows were all tinted, so she couldn’t see inside it, but she felt a chill pass over her as it sped by. In that moment she was thankful that she hadn’t been on the road alone when the vehicle had appeared.
“Well, coming or aren’t you?” her Good Samaritan called, breaking her reverie.
Annja laughed and got inside the car, the Mercedes already forgotten.
Concerned that the men who were hunting her might somehow catch up with them, Annja introduced herself as Amy, not wanting to reveal her real name. The less the good father knows, the better, she thought.
He, in turn, told her his name was Gary—Father Gary Anderson, to be exact—and he was a newly ordained Catholic priest working out of the Church of St. Ignatius, a small parish about twenty miles outside of London. He was returning from a clerical conference and was happy to take her to the parish rectory, where she could call a cab to take her the rest of the way into the city.
Gary was pleasant company and Annja found herself relaxing as he told her funny stories about the parishioners he’d met in his first few months at the church.
He must have been eager for company, for he barely let her get a word in edgewise, and she soon found herself listening with half an ear. That proved
to be fortuitous, for when the growl of a heavy engine came roaring up behind them, Annja noticed. She looked back just in time to see the Mercedes they’d passed twenty minutes earlier closing on them rapidly.
It didn’t look like the driver had any intention of stopping.
13
“Uh-oh,” Annja said.
Gary glanced over in her direction. “Something wrong?” he asked.
Annja nodded. “You might want to hold on,” she said as she braced herself against the dashboard with both arms.
A look of confusion crossed his face. “What’s wrong?” he asked, easing up on the gas as the realization that there was a problem filtered into his consciousness.
Annja risked a quick look back and saw that the Mercedes was just a few feet off their bumper and closing quickly. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that whoever they were, they were probably with the same group that had attacked the dig site. She didn’t know how they’d known to look for her on the road—if, in fact, that was what they were doing—but at the moment the how really didn’t matter all that much; they had and now she had to deal with it.
“Don’t slow down!” she shouted at Gary. “Go faster!”
But her sudden exclamation had the opposite effect, startling him, and as a result his foot slipped even farther off the gas.
The driver of the Mercedes chose that moment to nurse his own engine and the big black automobile leaped forward and slammed into the back of the Renault, sending it skidding across the road as Gary fought to control the wheel.
“What the hell?” The young pastor cried out, glancing backward at the behemoth closing in again from behind. From the fear that was now plain on his face, Annja guessed that he’d never been involved in a car accident in his life, never mind a high-speed chase where the other guy’s only interest was in driving you off the road.
Welcome to my life, she thought.
She reached over and shoved her hand down on his knee, forcing his foot down on the accelerator.
“I said faster!” she shouted.
This time he seemed to understand the urgency in her request and when she took her hand away his foot stayed right where it was, pinning the gas pedal to the floor.
The Renault bucked and jerked beneath them, not used to having so much demand put on its aging engine.
“What do they want?” he asked, glancing back and forth between her and the rearview mirror. His voice still had a slight tremor to it but Annja was pleased to see him getting his wits back about him.
Maybe there was hope for him yet.
“At a guess, I’d say they want to run us off the road,” Annja said calmly, her gaze flitting around the inside of the car, looking for something she could use as a weapon. Mystical swords were all well and good, but they just weren’t all that useful when you were tearing down a country road at sixty miles an hour trying to get away from the killer Mercedes behind you. It wasn’t like she could stop and challenge them to a sword fight.
“Why would they want to do that?” Gary asked, and then before she had time to answer, followed that with a quick, “Hold on!” as he jerked the wheel to the right, avoiding the sudden rush by the vehicle behind them as it tried again to ram the back of their car.
Rather than attempting to explain the past twenty-four hours to him, Annja simply answered, “I have no idea.”
He didn’t believe her; that much was obvious. But he was too busy steering the car back and forth across the road to bother arguing about it, and for that Annja was grateful. It let her concentrate on how they were going to get out of this mess.
She opened the glove box in front of her and began digging around in it.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for a gun,” she answered.
“I’m a priest, for heaven’s sake!” Gary said. “Do I look like the kind of guy who carries a gun?”
He had a point there.
Giving up on the glove box, she turned and glanced into the backseat. Her gaze fell on the two large cardboard boxes on the floor behind them.
“What’s in the boxes?” she asked, hoping for something useful. A rocket launcher would be really nice right about now, she thought, knowing it was unrealistic but hopeful nonetheless.
“Hymnals!” he said.
Oh, for heaven’s…
She suddenly had an idea.
Hymnals might just do the trick, after all, she realized.
She scrambled between the seats and fell into the back, being sure to keep below the level of the rear window as she did so. She didn’t want to give their pursuers any idea of what was coming.
Annja looked inside the nearest of the boxes and found it filled with dozens of thick, leather-bound volumes.
These will do nicely, she thought.
She pulled a few of them into her lap and then turned around, positioning herself behind the driver’s seat but still staying out of sight of the men in the other car.
“What are you doing?” Gary shouted.
“Giving them something else to think about,” she answered.
She moved closer to the open window and watched as the Mercedes roared up behind them again, making another run at them. Their rear bumper was hanging off the vehicle now, the result of the past few times the two cars had collided. It dragged behind them, sending up a mass of sparks each time it bounced off the pavement, and from where she sat Annja could see that their trunk was half the size it used to be, crushed inward from the impact with the other car.
“Hold it steady and let them get close,” she shouted above the window.
“Are you nuts?” he shouted back, but did as he was told, trusting her obvious command of the situation.
She waited, letting the Mercedes get closer.
Fifteen feet.
Ten.
Five feet.
As the other car surged forward, closing the gap between them, Annja suddenly sat up and whipped her arm out the window in a classic sidearm throw, sending the heavy leather hymnal in her hand flying directly at the windshield of the Mercedes.
The driver reacted just the way you’d expect anyone to react when something came flying at them at speeds in excess of fifty miles an hour; he ducked and jerked the wheel to the side. The book struck the center of the windshield, starring the glass there rather than directly in front of the driver, but it still had the desired effect. The Mercedes went careering across the road as the driver fought to regain control, the outer wheels actually leaving the pavement and bouncing through the scrub brush at the side of the road.
“Go, Amy!” Gary cried, pumping his fist in the air, but his joy was short-lived as the other car pulled back onto the road and raced up behind them again.
This time Annja didn’t wait for them to get close but began flinging hymnals out the window as fast as she could. The big car swerved to avoid the first few and then hung back far enough that Annja couldn’t reach them with the next.
The whole time Gary kept the pedal to the metal and raced down the center of the road without saying a word. Annja figured he was either praying that they didn’t encounter another car coming the other way or cursing his luck for stopping for her in the first place.
Maybe even a little of both.
They drove another mile down the road before the men in the Mercedes decided to change the game. Annja was sitting up in the back, a hymnal in hand, ready to throw it, and so she had a clear view when the man in the passenger seat stuck his arm out of the window and pointed a gun at them.
“Oh, hell,” Annja said softly. She’d known it was coming and was frankly surprised they hadn’t forced the issue before now. After all, they’d killed more than twenty people so far to get their hands on the torc she carried. What were two more?
Two too many, Annja thought to herself, that’s what.
“They’re about to start shooting at us!” she shouted to Gary, ducking as she did so. As if in punctuation, her words were immediately followed by the crack of a shot
and the crash of breaking glass. When she looked up again, the rear window had a hole in it.
Gary started swerving the car back and forth across the road, praying all the while. “Protect us Lord! Send Your angels to surround us! Lend us Your mercy and love….”
The gunman fired again, missing this time, but not by much. Annja knew it was just a matter of time before one of those bullets struck either her or Gary, and if that happened, it was all over for both of them.
Gary kept swerving.
Think, Annja! Think!
The gunman’s third shot struck the rear of the car and the trunk suddenly flew open, hiding them from the driver’s view for a moment.
There was no way they could outrun them; the Renault wasn’t in the same class as the Mercedes and frankly never had been, even on the day it rolled off the assembly line. Nor could they keep doing what they’d been doing. Either the Mercedes would eventually force them off the road or one of the gunman’s shots would finally hit something valuable.
Like Gary and me.
It seemed to Annja that their only choice was to bring the attack to the enemy. “Always mystify, mislead or surprise the enemy,” the great tactician Sun Tzu had said in The Art of War, and Annja always tried to listen to her betters.
The trick was going to be convincing Gary of the necessity.
The trunk slammed closed, startling them both, and no sooner had it done so that a gunman opened up again, peppering the rear of the vehicle with several well-placed shots. Two of them struck the rear window, which finally proved to be too much for the old safety glass and it fell away behind them in one big cascading sheet.
The Mercedes crushed it beneath its tires as it continued after them.
“We’ve got to do something!” Gary shouted to her, and Annja took that as her cue.
She laid out her plan as quickly she could.
“Can’t we just pull over and give them whatever it is they want?” he asked, not liking the sound of her idea at all. But when she explained that what they wanted was most likely their lives at this point, he saw the logic of her proposition.