“CNN has a live feed coming from there. Are you in a safe place? You must see to your own safety.”
Anna looked around the cargo truck. Several wounded people lay on the ground. ANP corpsmen moved among them, trying to keep them alive.
“I am safe.”
“Good. I see the American Army has arrived.”
Anna glanced at the helicopters swirling through the air. She was close enough to see the soldiers manning machine guns at the cargo doors. Rockets shot out from the pods under the stubby wings again and again, pulverizing the mountainside. The Taliban ran from the area, but Anna felt certain few of the terrorists would escape.
“They have arrived, Father.”
The general fell silent, and Anna knew he didn’t know what else to say. Neither did she. They both still cared about each other, but they agreed on so few things these days that small talk did not come easily.
Seventy yards away, Thomas Lourds sprinted into view. He glanced over his shoulder, and Anna tracked the direction back to the Russia Today man as he raised a rifle to his shoulder, pointing it at Lourds.
“Father, I have to go.” Anna closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. She ran toward the American. “Professor Lourds, look out!”
***
Warned by the woman’s voice calling his name, Lourds threw himself to the ground and rolled behind a wrecked Jeep lying on its side. The front right tire had been blown off, probably from one of the Taliban rocket launchers, and the front end was a mess of twisted, blackened metal.
Lourds’s heart hammered inside his chest. He didn’t know why the man had killed Boris, or why he was now trying to kill Lourds himself. Especially after saving him only a short time ago. It didn’t make sense.
“Professor Lourds!”
Lourds turned at the sound of the young woman’s voice and spotted Anna twenty yards away and closing. She ran along a ditch enhanced by a snowdrift. For the moment, she was out of view of the Russia Today man.
“Anna! Stay back!”
She stopped and looked fearfully in the direction of the pursuer. “What is going on?”
“That man killed Boris.”
A stricken look filled Anna’s face. “Boris is dead?”
“Yes. In the cave.” Lourds thought she was going to cry.
“But why would he do this?”
Lourds shook his head. “I don’t know.” He peered around the Jeep and saw the Russia Today man break off his pursuit and go to the ground. A spray of bullets chopped into the snow where he’d disappeared. Lourds hoped that one of the ANP officers had seen what was going on and come to their rescue, but that wasn’t the case.
Evidently, some of the Taliban warriors had come down from the mountains and arrived at the dig site. Four of them lay spread out over the countryside, all of them firing at the Russia Today man, the ANP officers, and the wounded indiscriminately.
Unfortunately, the Taliban now lay between Lourds and Anna and the group of ANP officers clustered around the cargo truck with the wounded. Some of the ANP officers had spotted the Taliban and fired on them. If their aim improved, they would free up the Russia Today man to finish up his killing spree.
Anna evidently realized the same thing and dashed over to join Lourds. “Who is he?”
Lourds shook his head and looked around for his rental truck. He’d parked somewhere close by but couldn’t spot it in all the chaos. “I don’t know.”
“He told me his name was Yakov Fursin.”
“Probably an alias.” Lourds spotted the top of the white four-wheel-drive pickup fifty yards away. He had missed it among the snowdrifts. “Can you run?”
She frowned at him. “As fast as I have to.”
Lourds nodded at the truck. “I have a vehicle over there. If we can get to it, maybe we can elude this Fursin, or whatever his real name is.”
Grabbing Anna’s hand, he pulled her to his feet and raced toward the truck.
***
Frustrated, Linko lay pinned against the earth. He shifted the rifle and locked on to a Taliban who stuck his head up thirty yards away. Smoothly, Linko squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle butt kick into his shoulder.
The bullet caught the Taliban in the face but didn’t kill him. Panicked and in pain, the man dropped his weapon and clapped his hands to his shattered jaw to try and stem the blood. Linko shot him twice more, placing both shots in the man’s throat in case he was wearing body armor taken from the body of a dead soldier. The man’s bulky coat made that hard to tell.
Another Taliban went down under the guns of the ANP officers defending their position at a cargo truck.
That left two.
Movement to the left caught Linko’s eye, and he saw Lourds and Anna Cherkshan running away from the Taliban, the ANP, and him. Beyond them, over a rise, Linko knew there were vehicles. He’d left one there himself.
Linko pushed himself up and ran, sweeping around the area where the last two Taliban were. He had twice as much ground to cover as the American professor and Anna Cherkshan but felt he could manage it.
However, Lourds and the woman were faster than he’d thought, and the snow deeper in spots than he’d figured. Twice he fell headlong into a snowdrift and had to fight his way back out.
He arrived at the rise just in time to see Lourds and Anna Cherkshan climb into a four-wheel-drive pickup at the front of at least thirty vehicles. The media had flooded the area with rental cars. Pulling the rifle to his shoulder, Linko fired a burst of rounds that caught the truck’s left rear fender as the vehicle shot forward. Lourds swerved around a van, cutting it too close and sliding into the parked vehicle. The truck’s tires spun uselessly for a moment, then Lourds must have engaged the four-wheel-drive, because it powered through.
Taking aim at the retreating truck, Linko fired again, punching holes in the truck’s rear window. The borrowed rifle cycled dry, and he had no more magazines. He threw the useless weapon aside and ran for his rental car.
Breath coming easily but clouding the air with gray clouds, Linko used the electronic key to open the sedan’s locks as he approached it. Throwing open the door, he slid behind the seat. He twisted the key in the ignition, and the motor caught immediately.
As he watched the truck racing around the parking area, Linko smiled to himself. Lourds had made a mistake—he hadn’t checked his exit path. There was only one way out of the impromptu parking area, and Linko commanded it.
He waited patiently as Lourds figured out the maze of parked vehicles and corrected his flight, finding a wide space that allowed him a straight shot at escape.
Linko planned to ram the truck and drive the vehicle into the others on the opposite side of the path, and then to beat Lourds to death with his bare hands if he had to. Then he would take the scrolls.
Suddenly, across the path, a Taliban warrior stepped through the swirling smoke coming from the battlefield. As Linko watched, he lifted an RPG-7 rocket launcher to his shoulder, aiming straight at the sedan.
Cursing, Linko grabbed for the door.
***
Praising God for delivering his enemy into his hands even though the rest of his brethren had been routed and left dead and dying on the mountain by the cursed Army helicopters, Mafouz Abu Walid aimed his rocket launcher at the sedan fifty yards away.
He and three of his men had run down from the mountain when the Army aircraft had appeared. He’d known the mountainside would become a fire zone and that his life was probably forfeit, but he had wanted to take down as many of the dirt diggers, media, and ANP as he could. His rewards in heaven would be great. He could almost taste the wine and smell the virgins.
He pulled the trigger and heard the whoosh of the rocket leaving the launcher. For just a moment, he saw it in flight, then it gained speed and disappeared. A heartbeat later, the front of the sedan exploded. The engine cover blew off and sailed through the air as flames enveloped the destroyed vehicle.
Reaching into his munitions pack, Mafouz
took out another rocket and loaded the launcher. There was at least one more target to be had. He’d seen the truck racing around before he’d spotted the Russia Today journalist climbing into his car. He listened for the roar of the truck’s engine, but the noise echoed within the hollow, distorted by the sounds of battle and the aftereffects of the RPG launch.
For the moment, though, he wanted to gloat over his kill. The journalist had to be fried to a cinder if he hadn’t been blown to pieces. Wiping blood from his injured left eye, Mafouz darted across the path.
Then he realized the truck engine sounded like it was almost on top of him. He turned to his left, only noticing then how much of his vision had been obscured by the swelling and the blood. Horrified, he watched the white truck bearing down on him.
He swung the rocket launcher around and fired.
***
“Look out!”
Lourds had been staring out across the parked cars. He knew the Russia Today man had probably had time to reach the parking area. Anna had thought she’d spotted him. But her startled cry drew his attention back to his driving. He expected to see the killer standing before them on the other side of the bullet-riddled windshield.
Instead, it was one of the Taliban warriors with a rocket launcher over his shoulder. The man was directly in Lourds’s path, and there was no room to miss him. Lourds yanked his foot from the accelerator and stepped on the brake.
The Taliban warrior swung around.
“What are you doing? Don’t stop!” Anna grabbed her seat belt strap and braced her feet against the floor. “He’s going to shoot us! Run him down!”
Lourds pulled his foot from the brake, which wasn’t doing anything more than causing the truck to slide on the slick snow and ice mix, and applied a steady pressure on the accelerator. All four wheels grabbed traction immediately.
The Taliban fired the rocket.
Lourds threw up a hand and immediately felt foolish. His arm wasn’t going to offer much of a shield against the rocket.
Miraculously, the shot passed overhead, missing them by a hand’s span or less. The Taliban tried to run, but the truck ran right over him.
Anna peered through the back window, which had several bullet holes in it. “He’s alive.”
Lourds checked the side mirror as he powered out of the hollow. “The Taliban?” He didn’t see how that was probable, but he had to admit that it could happen if the truck had crushed him into the snow.
“No. Yakov Fursin.”
In the mirror, Lourds spotted the man in the green coat getting up beside a flaming car. “I thought we agreed that’s probably not his name.”
“We did. But that is what I will call him until I find out who he is.”
Lourds looked at her with grim seriousness. “That’s probably not the best course you could pursue.”
“How could I not follow this man? I am a journalist. I write for The Moscow Times. This could be a big story. He has killed Boris Glukov for some mysterious reason, and he would have killed you if not for me.”
Lourds nodded. “You’re right.” There was no question she had helped him tremendously.
“I will gladly accept this story in exchange for that.”
“I don’t even know what this story is.”
“Then we will find out together.”
23
Herat
Herat Province
Afghanistan
February 14, 2013
When he reached Herat, Lourds parked the truck in an alley, left the keys in the ignition, and got out.
Anna hesitated. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving the truck. It’s not safe to keep driving it. Fursin knows what it looks like, and it’s shot up so badly that it’s only a matter of time before the police get curious.”
“But it will get stolen.”
“I hope so.” Lourds glanced down at the end of the alley and noticed a small group of pre-teen boys. “And things are certainly looking up.”
“But shouldn’t you return it to the rental agency instead?”
Lourds shook his head. “Only if I want to leave a trail.” Over the past few years of dealing with assassins and mercenaries, he had gotten smarter about such things. Escape and lying low weren’t quite as easy in real life as they were in the potboilers he enjoyed, but there was a certain amount of truth in those novels. “If I return the truck, that’ll give our pursuers a place to start.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“After everything that’s happened, you bet I’m paranoid. Yakov back there seemed pretty determined. And he shot Boris right in front of me.” Lourds still felt numb over that. There’ll be time to grieve later. Right now you need to concentrate on survival.
Anna hesitated a moment more, then climbed out of the truck and joined him. Together they walked to the street.
“What do we do now?”
“We find a public place and try to figure out what our next step is.” At the curb, he flagged down a taxi. The driver parked at the curb and waved them inside.
Lourds opened the back door of the taxi and allowed Anna to get in first. She slid over immediately and made room for him. Lourds got in and dropped his backpack at his feet.
The driver turned around to face them with a generous smile. “Where to?” His English was serviceable.
Before Lourds could reply, the white pickup roared out of the alley and swerved recklessly out onto the street. The three pre-teen boys inside seemed to be having the time of their lives.
The taxi driver shook his head in disgust. “Foolish children.”
***
“Are you certain this is the best place we could find?”
Lourds led the way through the booths and tables of the small restaurant’s outer dining area. “I like the view. We’ll be able to see anyone coming.” He claimed a table and sat, putting the backpack on the bench beside him.
“The view?” Anna sat beside him and wrapped her arms around herself. “It is cold out here.”
“And that’s just one of the reasons the people who could be looking for us won’t think to look in this place.”
The restaurant booths sat outside a small building used for preparing food. A curved canopy overhead was supported on metal struts. A low brick wall enclosed the dining area, and engraved concrete squares marked the walkway across the floor. There were no walls and no windows. To the south, tall government buildings stood, but they were dwarfed by the mountains that rose against the horizon. Only a short distance from the government building, a blue-domed temple squatted.
Despite the fact that it was February and winter, the temperature was in the low fifties.
Lourds took off his coat and placed it on the bench on the other side of his backpack.
“You are insane. You will freeze out here.”
“No. I’m quite comfortable, thank you. If you want to see cold winters, you should stop by Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January. We have cold winters there.”
“Not as cold as those in Moscow.”
“Then you shouldn’t be cold here either.”
Anna frowned, then shivered. “I do not mean to be disagreeable.”
“You’re not. You’re in shock.”
“And you are not?”
“Of course I am.”
“You do not appear to be.”
“I’m working. It’s my way of coping.”
He took his notebook computer from his backpack, then the scrolls in their protective case, and his digital camera. The camera came out in pieces. Evidently the bullet that had struck the backpack had torn through his camera and his trail bars. Granola and nuts lay strewn through the backpack as well. The ring box was intact, and he held it for a moment before placing it on the table.
Seeing the broken camera and the full extent of the damage to his backpack and its contents, it suddenly struck Lourds just how close he’d come to death. Again.
Anna seemed to understand what he was feeling. “You ar
e alive, Professor. Do not forget how fortunate you are.”
“But Boris wasn’t very fortunate, was he? That tomb, Boris lived for finding something like that. And in less than a day, it was lost. And so was he.”
“I am sorry for your loss. I wish there was something I could do.”
“There isn’t. I can’t do anything either.” Lourds thought of Lev Strauss. Lev had been a friend much longer. His death had hurt more than Boris’s, and the pain was still there too.
“So what do we do?”
Lourds looked at the protective scroll case, then at Anna. “It’d probably be better if you got out of this now. Just walk away and return to whatever it was you were doing.”
Anna spoke precisely. “What I was doing was interviewing Professor Boris Glukov on the discovery he had made. I had hoped to follow that up with an interview with Professor Thomas Lourds.”
“We’re past that now.”
“I’m not.” Anna’s gaze dipped to the protective case, then back at Lourds. “Something in there got your friend killed. We need to find out what that is.”
“I need to. You need to be safe.”
Anna frowned at him. “Yakov Fursin saw me with you. He is still alive. Do you not think that perhaps I am in danger now, too?”
She had a point.
“All right. As long as we can stay ahead of this thing. If this gets worse, you can go home to your father.”
“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “That I will not do. I left his house to become my own person.”
“This isn’t about being a person, Anna. It’s about being alive. You said your father was a military man. If this thing turns any worse, he should be able to protect you.” Lourds sighed. “If Boris had known investigating that tomb would get him killed, he wouldn’t have done it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She turned her hand toward the scrolls. “Yet here you sit with those scrolls, determined not to abandon them or whatever secrets they protect.”
Lourds didn’t have an answer for her. For him, it wasn’t a choice. This was something he had to do. For Boris, and for himself.
The Oracle Code (Thomas Lourds, Book 4) Page 14