by Alex Archer
Their quarry still had a good lead. They were too far away for accurate shooting. Besides, both Chatura and Jagannatha had impressed on him that gunfire was strictly a last resort up here amid the snowpack.
He assisted Duka for a few halting steps until he seemed able to proceed on his own. Normally he’d leave stragglers behind without a thought. But Duka was a special case. He was loyal as a dog to his master. That meant something in this treacherous age.
Ahead he saw Chatura and the new man, Jagannatha, trudging side by side. Speaking of unclean beasts, the major was like a dog forced to walk placidly beside a cat, Bajraktari thought. Or an old wolf. That one is dangerous, he thought.
As a matter of traditional business practice, Bajraktari had been contemplating the possibility that Chatura might not make it off the mountain alive. The little potbellied infidel was annoyingly smug and superior. His elimination would leave the more for Bajraktari and his men. And unlike his men, of course, the commissar had no extended family back in Kosovo who cherished the same blood-feud traditions as the Bajraktaris.
But Jagannatha was cut from different cloth. A highly dangerous man himself, Enver Bajraktari prided himself on his ability to read the signs. And clearly the major had no more use for the Kosovars than he did for their quarry. Nor for Chatura and his swaggering city-born political thugs, who all had their tongues hanging and their feet dragging.
The problem, Bajraktari saw, was that he and his men most clearly needed Jagannatha’s help to get to the treasure—and get down with it alive.
Ah, well, he thought. It’s in Allah’s hands. The evil mountain would itself thin the number of hands reaching for pieces of the golden pie, he suspected. And he wasn’t naive enough to believe they’d finish off the treacherous Annja Creed and her companions without getting well bloodied; the woman must be some kind of wicked sorceress.
And when at last the treasure was in their hands and the Creed woman and the policeman were dead, hopefully after a very great deal of pain, Enver Bajraktari was just the man to sort matters out. He was good at that sort of thing.
“Pasha?” Duka grunted. It was an old borrowing from Turkish, meaning “boss.”
“Yes?”
The man’s big shaggy head nodded. “Storm coming.”
Bajraktari looked beyond the brightly colored line of the party they pursued. The thick, gray-hearted clouds that had been gathering about the mountain now swept toward them with swirling skirts of white.
Without regard to safety he began to jog forward. He had to talk to Chatura. And Jagannatha.
FROM THE BACK OF THE GROUP a Sherpa cried out in alarm. Annja tore her eyes from the snow squall flowing around the mountainside to meet them.
A large group of pursuers had separated themselves from the rest and advanced quickly in open pursuit, heedless of the treacherous and now icy trail. Heavy curved blades gleamed dully in their hands.
“Jagannatha,” Pan said, a beat before Prasad confirmed it.
“He knows once we’re in the snowstorm they’ve lost us,” the guide said. “Wise old wolf that he is.”
“The kukris—” Annja said.
“They do not wish to risk avalanche. They intend to do their work with blades.”
Deal with it, she told herself. It’s not as if I’m likely to survive this encounter anyway. She started determinedly toward the rear of the procession. If you want to play with sharp things, I’m your girl, she thought.
A hand caught her arm. She spun, frowning. It was Pan. He released her as if her arm had gotten hot. “Sorry. But where do you think you’re going?” he said.
“Most of our Sherpas are unarmed. There’s only a couple of Prasad’s kinfolk left. I’m not about to ask them to fight my battle while I scuttle for safety,” she said.
“Why not? They won’t be alone.”
She realized he had a length of steel in his right hand. Serious steel, with a wide single-edged blade a foot long tapering to a wicked point. “Where’d you get that?” she asked.
He grinned. “Afghanistan. A souvenir. It’s called a Khyber knife.”
“You’re a man of surprises, Pan. But I can’t let others fight my fights. Not even you.”
He frowned. “You fight remarkably well,” he said. He left the “for a woman” unsaid. It didn’t sting her particularly; she knew it wasn’t male chauvinism, or not purely that. A woman, a sheltered American woman at that, could rarely hope to hold her own in a face-up fight with a man. And she still couldn’t explain why she was the exception….
A short, sturdy figure appeared beside them. “Prasad,” she said.
“Lal will lead the men onward as fast as he dares. I will join you in the rear guard. If Lord Buddha smiles, the snow shall spare us the need to fight.”
“But Annja—” Pan began.
“Do you truly not see it yet, my friend? She is a spirit warrior. If anything, it is she who will protect us. Now we must go!” Prasad said.
They paused to let the Sherpas pass them. Fortunately the porters, mountaineers by birth and blood-line, had been holding back for the benefit of their outland employers. Now they moved like eager mountain goats for what they obviously thought of as the welcoming shelter of the blizzard. Annja wished she could feel the same about it.
She, Pan and Prasad took up position at the end of the line. The pursuers were no more than fifty yards back. Walking backwards, trusting to the body sense imparted by her training in martial arts, Annja could clearly see the grizzled red face of Jagannatha between his fur collar and his big fuzzy cap.
It chilled her in a way the rising wind couldn’t match. She realized she was looking at the face of a man who was neither criminal nor madman, but who had set his own interests aside to do what he believed was right. In that seamed, stern face she read neither anger nor hatred. Just determination. For whatever reason, Jagannatha saw Annja and her mission as a deadly threat to his homeland. And he was as unstoppable as a runaway train.
“Annja?” Pan said from her elbow. He was still clearly unhappy about her being there. He was all hard-core special-forces vet now, and wasn’t buying any “spirit warrior” nonsense. Which at least meant he was wholly in the present.
She shook her head. How can I tell him that most of those I’ve killed in the past were clearly bad men, doing bad things? she thought. But this man—I almost don’t feel I’ve got the right.
She shook herself all over. Catch a grip, she thought. If Jagannatha attacks you, you’ve got the unbreakable right to defend yourself. His motives don’t matter. You can’t really know them anyway; you’re not a mind reader—
A soft-voiced comment traveled back along the line to them. “Ms. Creed,” Prasad said, managing to sound both polite and urgent, “the storm comes swiftly. Lal and the first men are already within it. We must hurry.”
Annja caught Pan’s eye. They turned and raced full speed behind Prasad for the storm.
Imagine thinking of a violent Himalayan snowstorm as shelter, she thought. Then she plunged into the white maelstrom.
“THEY’RE GETTING AWAY!” Bajraktari heard someone shout in his native tongue.
Though dizzy from the thin air and nervous on the slick footing, his men had begun to hurry once Jagannatha took the lead, as if unwilling to leave the pleasure of the kill to the locals. Who after all were infidels. Bajraktari hung back. Duka still found this heavy going. Chatura and most of his lowlanders stayed back of them. Content to let others do the hard part, he thought. Yet reap all the rewards afterward.
He looked up from aiding Duka past a slick stretch to see the woman and her party moving into a curtain of snow and mist so dense he couldn’t see into it at all. Their curious knives in hand, Jagannatha and his men trotted after them. They were still much too far to close the gap.
Screaming in rage, one of Bajraktari’s men raised his Kalashnikov and triggered a furious burst after the fleeing group.
Two of Jagannatha’s men stumbled and fell. One toppled over t
he edge with what began as a surprised shout and ended as a despairing wail that trailed away forever. Jagannatha pirouetted. He brought up his antique Chinese-made Mauser with two gloved hands and fired a single shot at the gunman, who still blazed mindlessly away, his screams half-heard above the racket of his gun.
The man dropped the heavy rifle and fell over backward, arms outflung. His eyes stared with uncomprehending fury past the small blue hole in his forehead.
But the damage was done. Bajraktari felt a rumble that seemed to resonate in his very bones. He heard crackling and then a strange, sinuous hiss as tons of snow broke free and slid downward.
He grabbed his gigantic bodyguard and flung him against a boulder jutting from the mountainside. Then he tried to make himself very small as the avalanche roared over them.
“OH, MY GOD,” Annja breathed as the avalanche came down. A strangely coherent mass at least a hundred yards by maybe thirty started sliding downward and outward like packed snow from a pitched roof. It hit the pursuing group of guerrillas and Kosovar bandits and washed them out of view and out of existence, right over the edge of the cliff.
But most of Jagannatha’s men escaped. A few threw themselves down on the path. The major himself waved his arms for his men to run, not wanting to shout and risk dislodging more snow. Annja caught the impression that at least some of the camouflage-clad Party thugs remained on the far side of the slide, but the wave of packed snow and thrown-up powder blotted them from sight.
She felt Pan’s hand clamp on her arm and tow her forcibly along the trail. The blizzard shut off her vision like a curtain falling.
26
Breathing hard, Jagannatha stood staring at the turbulent wall of white advancing toward him. The last sounds of the avalanche echoed down the blue-ice gulf between peaks. The last remnants of loose snow sifted down over the ramp of snow where the trail had been.
Although the slide’s main force had missed most of them, his men had thrown themselves down against the trail’s rocky inner face as its fringes swept over them. Now they picked themselves up and cleaned themselves off. Only their leader had remained standing, stubborn as a rock fixed to the White Mountain itself.
With an angry grimace he thrust his pistol back in its holster and sealed the flap. “Rope yourselves,” he growled. Condensation issued from his mouth, making him look like a temple-guardian dragon.
“What about comrade Chatura?” asked his senior lieutenant, Raghu. “Shouldn’t we try to help him?”
Steam puffed from the major’s broad nostrils. “He knows everything. Let him fend for himself.”
“What if he’s dead?”
“Then we don’t need to trouble ourselves over him anymore, do we? Get the men tied together. Those Western interlopers aren’t getting away on my watch.”
FOR A MOMENT Annja felt completely disoriented. She’d never encountered a snowstorm before that so abruptly cut visibility to where she couldn’t see her fingers if she stretched out her arm. The wind swirled and howled. The cold cut at her exposed face like a bee swarm. She blinked ice-laden lashes to clear her eyes. Through the soles of her boots she could still feel the death rumble of the avalanche’s aftermath.
“Move to the inside of the trail,” she heard Prasad say urgently from nearby. His small figure appeared from the enfolding white. It had a reassuring sense of balance and solidity to it. “Pull your goggles back down. They have yellow lenses. You should still see well enough.”
She nodded and obeyed, mumbling thanks. I actually lost focus there, she thought with shock. More than any other trait her ability to keep her head in a lethal crisis had kept her alive—on several occasions even before she received the unexpected and unasked-for gift of the sword of Joan of Arc.
Pan loomed up beside her, dark and solid. He put an arm around her. It felt strong. Secure. She melted against his chest in a fervent hug.
She didn’t like to think of herself—wouldn’t think of herself—as a woman who needed a strong man’s touch to pull herself together. She was not that woman.
He took his arm from around her shoulders. She felt him doing something at her waist. She realized he had her moving forward again through the blinding snow.
“Prasad wants us to rope ourselves together,” Pan said. He had to bring his mouth so close to her ear his breath seared like a dragon’s to make himself heard without shouting and taking the risk of dropping more packed snow on their heads. “We have to keep moving. Jagannatha will.”
She gave him a little smile. “Okay.”
On they pressed through the curious blizzard. It was, Annja thought, like being inside a blender making a vanilla milkshake. Indeed the snow fell so densely it felt like frigid liquid splashing against them.
Without warning the wolves were on them. Annja heard the crunch of a boot on snow behind her and spun. A figure appeared, a leathered face snarling, swinging a kukri at her head.
She turned away. The big curved blade whistled inches from her face. She summoned the sword and hacked the guerrilla across the face as he bent his arm across his body for a backhand return stroke. He screamed and fell out of her field of vision.
She was jerked halfway off her feet as Pan, bringing up the rear, tried to block two more attackers from getting to her. With a quick slash she cut the rope binding them together.
As one of Pan’s opponents grappled with him the other darted toward Annja. She saw his eyes widen as he caught sight of the blade she held. She thrust. He ran straight onto her point. His eyes bulged and he fell out of view.
Still hoping Pan hadn’t seen the weapon appear in her hand, Annja stooped to snatch up the kukri dropped by the man she’d just killed. Its extreme blade-heavy balance felt alien and unwieldy to her. She transferred it to her left hand and held the sword in her right.
This should give me plausible deniability with Pan, anyway, she thought.
Abruptly Pan brought a shin up between the legs of the man he grappled with. The man grunted and his grip on Pan’s knife wrist slackened. Pan slammed the hilt into his attacker’s face. Taking a step and driving from the hips, he hurled the man away from him—and away from the inside rock face. The man vanished into the churning whiteness. His cry as he fell was a ghostly sound.
Then he and Annja were locked in a bizarre dance as men with big curved knives swarmed them. Annja parried and slashed and thrust for fur-covered bellies and hate-twisted faces. Steel played fierce music on steel while the million voices of the wind sang haunting accompaniment.
As best they could they backed up along the trail. Prasad joined their fight without a sideways glance at Annja’s unusual weapon. Lal appeared, too, Enfield slung and kukri drawn, to join the frenzied melee.
Although the guerrillas were determined and outnumbered the explorers they couldn’t outflank them on the narrow trail, especially once Lal returned. Red slush was building around their boots and the slick-rock footing threatened to send them after so many of their enemies, screaming away in blankness.
Then a man with a ferocious scowl and eyebrows and round grizzle-bearded cheeks confronted Annja. She recognized Major Jagannatha himself. He struck at her with his kukri, lightning fast.
She blocked the cut with the flat of her sword. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded between crossed blades, one bent, one straight. “What have we done to you?”
“It’s not what you do,” he said, “it’s who will follow. And then our land will no longer be ours.”
Not at all fazed by her weapon, he hooked his blade over hers and pivoted hard to his left. He put his hips into it.
The swift, powerful move torqued the hilt and levered the sword right out of her hand. It seemed to vanish in the blizzard but Annja knew it had simply winked out of existence.
Jagannatha tried to whip a rising backhand hack at her face. She blocked with the kukri she still held in her left hand.
Jagannatha pressed her hard. He was single-mindedly trying to destroy her. With Annja fighting off-h
anded with an utterly strange weapon he was going to win soon, too.
Gasping for breath, forced to focus totally on his whirlwind blade to keep from having an arm hacked off or her head split by it, Annja was unable to concentrate enough to call back the sword.
Jagannatha was clearly a master of kukri close-in fighting. But she was strong and her reflexes were quick.
Back he pressed her, up the trail. It was mostly by luck she didn’t take a wrong step and go over the edge. But suddenly her right foot slipped as she put her weight back on it. It shot forward and dropped her painfully on her rump.
Her fall allowed Jagannatha to press his advantage. It also gave Annja an eye blink’s grace to curve the fingers of her right hand as if grasping a hilt and reach with her will into that unknown otherwhere. Instantly she felt the sword fill her hand.
She thrust out. The kukri’s weakness was that it was badly unsuited for point fighting. It had probably never faced a long sword.
But Jagannatha was a cagey and adaptable fighter. He didn’t obligingly charge in to impale himself. He caught himself like a cat and leaped nimbly back from the sword’s lethal point.
Despite the way her head swam and her body felt wrung out, Annja snapped herself upright with a gymnast’s quickness. Seeing what he took for an opening, Jagannatha closed quickly. His kukri swung down for her face.
Annja had come back to her feet with her sword hand down before her hips. She whipped the blade straight up. It sheared the descending kukri off where its blade narrowed. By pure reflex she wheeled into a clockwise spinning back kick. Her right heel pistoned into the middle of Jagannatha’s torso. Its force sent him reeling backward.
She saw his last look of angry defiance. Then he dropped over the edge in silence.
The snow was thinning, although the wind raged more furiously than ever. Annja could see back along the trail where figures continued to struggle. One held up a black submachine gun with the side-mounted magazines over his head and triggered a burst.