Magic Lantern (Rogue Angel)

by Alex Archer

  Fiona regarded her. “What kind of relationship do you have with Roux?”

  Annja thought for a moment, then answered, “Complicated?”

  “I can believe that.” Fiona took a breath as the jet taxied down the runway.

  She stared out the window, but Annja knew that the woman didn’t see a thing. “For a few days I was afraid the mysterious Garin person had finally succeeded in killing him. I kept watch over the newspapers and news channels. There was nothing.”

  “Until he called about me.”

  Fiona looked back at Annja. “Yes.” Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she blinked them back. “Surely between us we can find another topic. After all, we’re potentially flying into the jaws of death.”

  The jet had reached cruising altitude after a steep climb and settled into a level course. Edmund was snoring softly in his seat. She looked at Fiona. “That wasn’t an analgesic, was it?”

  Fiona settled back in her seat. “Tell me about that sword.”

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, ANNJA STOOD in line waiting for the French customs agent to clear her through Orly Airport. Air traffic was lighter at Orly than Charles de Gaulle. But the customs agents were no less demanding. She’d been separated from the other two by a few people and the conversations going on around her were in a half-dozen languages. Behind her, two women with Texas accents were talking loudly.

  Annja took out her cell and punched in Roux’s number.

  The phone rang three times and she was sure it was about to go to voice mail. She didn’t know if she hoped it would or if she wanted Roux to pick up. She liked Fiona a lot and hearing what her sometime-mentor had done to the woman was exasperating. Roux’s behavior wasn’t without precedent, though. Annja knew that neither Roux nor Garin invested too heavily in the feelings of others. They put their own welfare first.

  “Must you keep interrupting me? I was playing cards.”

  “If you were at the table right now, you wouldn’t have answered.” Roux cared about her, though, or he wouldn’t have taken her call.

  Roux harrumphed. “For all you know, I just threw in a winning hand to answer this infernal device.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, but that could have happened. Don’t tell me you called just to ask what I was doing.”

  “I called to tell you you were an asshat,” she snapped.

  Roux didn’t reply right away. “I don’t think I’m familiar with the term.”

  “It means you wear your ass for a hat.”

  Roux was silent for another moment. “I suppose that isn’t a sartorial comment.”

  “No.” Annja moved forward, now only a dozen people from the customs agent. “It means you have your head up your ass.”

  “Since we haven’t been in contact for hours, I assume you’re basing this conclusion on something other than what I might have done.”

  “Oh, I’m definitely basing this on something you’ve done.”

  “Did Fiona Pioche not work out? I must tell you, Annja, that would surprise me. She’s quite capable. Of course, she is older now, no longer the young woman I knew.”

  Okay, that ageist comment brought the anger back full force. “No, Fiona is great. Terrific, perhaps. She’s tougher than any of the nuns that raised me in the orphanage, and she’s entertaining and witty. Not only that, she helped me rescue Edmund.”

  “That’s the professor you’d lost.”

  “Not exactly mine to lose, and I wasn’t responsible for him when he went missing.”

  “But Fiona helped you get him back nonetheless.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you should be happy.”

  “Why did you leave Fiona?”

  The silence over the phone stretched out.

  “Roux.”

  No response.

  “Roux?” For a moment Annja thought he’d hung up on her.

  “That is not a topic open for discussion.”

  “Why?” Annja shifted the phone to her other hand as the line moved forward.

  “Quite frankly because it’s no business of yours.”

  “It’s Fiona’s business.”

  “Then she should ask.”

  Annja took a breath. “She’s not going to ask.”

  “Good.”

  “She’s not going to ask because you hurt her.”

  “That was…regrettable.”

  “Regrettable? Regrettable is when you send a birthday card and it doesn’t get there on time. Regrettable is when you burn the eggs for breakfast and you don’t have any more. Leaving a woman without a word is more than regrettable. It’s cowardly and selfish.”

  The phone clicked in Annja’s ear. She stared at it. Roux had hung up on her. She couldn’t believe it. Then again, she couldn’t believe she’d had that conversation with him in the first place. She didn’t like people prying into her business, either.

  “He hung up on you, didn’t he?” The Texan woman behind Annja spoke up. She patted Annja on the shoulder. “I could have told you he was going to. Men don’t like confrontation. They know when they’ve been bad, and they don’t like anybody rubbing their noses in it.”

  Annja put the phone away. She didn’t really know what else she could say to Roux. Worse, she knew it wasn’t her place to say anything.

  “A pretty little thing like you?” The woman continued patting Annja. “Why, you don’t have anything to worry about. If I was you, I’d move right on to the next one.”

  “Thanks.” Annja gave the woman a smile and hoped the line would move faster.

  “Men, most men, anyway, are just dogs, honey. Just dogs.” The woman’s companion nodded sagely. “They don’t know the first thing about love. And you can’t teach them no matter how hard you try. Why, let me tell you what happened to my friend Ethyl here.”

  Annja hoped the line moved a lot faster.

  * * *

  “MS. PIOCHE!” A SMALL dapper man in a maroon sweater and khaki pants stood waving near the doorway leading out to the pickup area. He looked like a grandfather picking up a favorite grandchild.

  “Georges!” Fiona changed directions and cut through the crowd to reach him.

  Annja tried to keep up, but it was difficult. The crowd was thick and relentless, and she found herself momentarily carried along in its tide. Before she could turn back, a young Asian woman stepped in beside her. In the next instant, Annja felt the prick of a very sharp blade pressed into her side.

  The Asian woman was in her thirties, compact, five and a half feet tall. She gripped Annja’s arm above the elbow. A martial-arts hold.

  “Remain calm, Ms. Creed,” the other woman said in flawless English. “Do that and you will live.”

  Annja breathed in and out, thinking fast. There was no room to work in the crowd, and nowhere to run if things got out of hand. She kept walking forward, with the woman’s hand on her arm, going with the flow of traffic.

  “Are you with Puyi-Jin?” Annja glanced back at Fiona, who was looking at her in concern.

  “Do not talk. Walk where I take you.”

  “Annja.” Edmund was beside Fiona, staring at Annja in confusion. “Annja?”

  Reluctantly, without a choice, Annja walked out through the door. As soon as she stepped outside the air-conditioned building, the foul odor of car exhaust and diesel smoke hit her, burning her nasal passages and tightening her lungs. Brakes squealed and horns honked as taxis jockeyed for position at the curb. Voices in a dozen different languages surrounded them. Twilight was already falling and the lights around the airfield shone brightly.

  The woman redirected Annja to a black luxury sedan to her left. A uniformed airport worker stood engaged in a heated debate with the driver.

  “Get this vehicle out of here, sir. I will not tell you again. You cannot pick up private travelers in this lane. You must go out and around.” The airport worker glanced up and saw the woman approaching with Annja in tow. “Do you know this man?”

  The woman answered w
ithout breaking stride. “I do.”

  “He can’t park here. It’s against the rules.”

  “I will explain that to him.”

  The airport worker shook his head wearily and held up his walkie-talkie. “You’re lucky I haven’t called a tow truck.”

  “Thank you.” The woman guided Annja to the vehicle’s rear door and opened it. “Get in.”

  Annja hesitated, but the woman pressed the keen blade into her side. Without a word, she climbed in, then she shot across the seat and tried to open the other door.

  The handle lifted, but the lock remained engaged.

  Wheeling around in the seat, Annja looked back as the woman closed the other door. Then Annja noticed the thick security acrylic that separated her from the front seat. She tried the release on the other door.

  The woman smiled at her from the other side of the window. Then she opened the front passenger door. Moving easily, the woman took her seat as the driver pulled out into traffic amid screaming horns and a torrent of offensive language.

  24

  The driver maneuvered smoothly out of the airport. From her other visits to the city, Annja knew they were traveling the A6. The Autoroute de Soleil—the Sun’s Motorway—was a nod to King Louis XIV, the Sun King. She’d never known if the highway’s name was actually derived from an old trade route from Paris to the south of France and the French Riviera or if someone had just given the thoroughfare that as an honor.

  Evidently their destination was Paris because the driver turned north.

  Neither the woman nor the driver paid particular attention to Annja. They kept their eyes on the slowly darkening highway. The woman spoke on the phone, but the acrylic partition was soundproofed, as well.

  Annja took her sat-phone from her backpack, powered it on and went to her contact list. She glanced at the names only for a moment, then decided to call the Parisian police. They would be able to track her GPS signal.

  She opened up the maps app and waited to enter Paris Police, knowing it would give her the phone number. Instead, the phone remained blank. A quick glance at the bars showed that she was receiving no signal. Something inside the car was preventing the sat-link.

  Frustrated and a little panicked, Annja returned the phone to her backpack, then leaned back in the seat so that her feet shoved forward. Thrusting violently, she lay on her back and drove her feet into the acrylic partition. The thud of impact echoed in the spacious backseat.

  In the front seat, the driver glanced at the rearview mirror and the woman turned around to gaze into the backseat. Annja rammed her boots against the acrylic again.

  The woman flicked a switch on a panel on the back of the front seat. Her voice came over a concealed speaker. “Stop that.”

  “Come back here and make me.” Annja drove her feet against the acrylic panel again. Truthfully, she didn’t feel the barrier giving way or loosening. It felt like she might as well have been trying to kick a hole through a steel plate.

  Temporarily abandoning her efforts against the partition, Annja swung around and set herself to drive a boot against the passenger’s-side window. Bailing out of a car doing sixty or seventy miles an hour wasn’t something she wanted to do, but she had to have options. If the glass would break, the car eventually had to slow or stop. She’d seize whatever opportunity came along then.

  But hammering the side window didn’t help much, either. The acrylic there bore up just as well.

  “You can’t escape.” The woman’s voice was devoid of emotion.

  Annja ignored her and turned her attention to the rear windshield. A quick examination assured her that it, too, was thick acrylic. Then she eyed the seat, wondering if there was a release that would let her into the trunk space.

  A moment later, she gave up looking for it. She reached for the sword and it was there in her hand. Thankfully there was enough room for it to materialize in the back of the car.

  On the other side of the glass, the woman’s eyes grew huge. She spoke hurriedly to the driver, who glanced over his shoulder.

  Annja drove the sword through the backseat cushions easily. Many cars now had safety releases in the trunk to keep people from getting locked up there. Of course, she’d again be forced to wait for the car to slow or stop before continuing her escape.

  Fabric and stuffing came away in pieces as she bared the seat’s steel frame. Disappointingly, the framework was too tight to allow her into the trunk. She released the sword and it vanished.

  In the darkness filling the back of the car, Annja couldn’t see clearly but she thought she’d revealed a thin backing that sealed the backseat off from the trunk. When she pushed against it, the backing moved easily. The steel supports across the backseat prevented her from crawling through. She seized one of them in both hands, set herself, one foot against the back of the seat, and pulled.

  Nothing moved.

  She tried again to no avail.

  Just as she was thinking she might be better served using the sword as leverage against the support, Annja spotted a large gray sedan racing along on the highway shoulder. Her Asian captor and the driver hadn’t noticed the vehicle rapidly gaining on them because their attention was on Annja.

  In just a few seconds, the gray sedan pulled onto the highway and cut off a car trailing the vehicle that held Annja. At the same time, two other vehicles converged on the trailing vehicle. Windows rolled down on both those cars and muzzle flashes punctured the gathering darkness.

  Wary of ricochets, Annja ducked down. The back window went untested, though. The driver hit the accelerator and the big car shot forward, only to slow again a moment later as traffic continued to block its progress.

  Traffic quickly backed off. Drivers recognized gunfire and wanted no part of the battle. Cars, buses and shuttles gave ground to the large sedan holding Annja captive and the other cars in pursuit.

  A large muzzle poked through one of the large gray sedan’s windows and belched fire a moment later. In that instant, the wheel and axle assembly sheared away from the pursuit vehicle on the left and caused the car to swerve hard to the right.

  The gray sedan met the other vehicle in full side-to-side contact. The smaller car, already out of control, rebounded from the larger vehicle and shot into the median. A deep scar snaked behind the car as it left the highway. Upon reaching the uneven ground, the vehicle flipped and rolled till it came to a rest on its side. The flaming wheel well blazed in the night.

  In the front seat of her captors’ car, the Asian woman pounded the dashboard and spoke frantically. Annja still couldn’t hear her. In fact, she just realized she wasn’t able to hear any of the gunfire or collisions. The soundproofing was excellent.

  A moment later, the muzzle of the rocket launcher—and Annja knew that was what the weapon had to be—shoved through a window on the opposite side of the gray sedan. The smaller car tried to accelerate and get around in front of it.

  The brake lights of the gray sedan gleamed red as the wily driver slowed to let the other car pass. As soon as it did, Fiona Pioche inched out the passenger window just enough to take aim with her rocket launcher.

  Despite her trust in the woman, Annja sank down just a little in case the rocket missed its intended target or skated off a curved surface. The missile sped true, though, and caught the back of the second pursuit vehicle. Instantly, the car’s rear section shredded and flames wreathed it. Lifted by the concussion, the car went airborne and spun in a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn that left it facing the oncoming sedan.

  The gray sedan’s driver accelerated and pulled hard to the right, going wide of the stricken car as it crashed down on the highway. Debris scattered across the pavement, but the traffic had already pulled to a stop several yards back. All of the drivers had recognized that they were in danger.

  In the passenger seat, the Asian woman rolled down the window and shoved her arm through. A large-capacity pistol in her hand jumped and spat bullets. Annja couldn’t tell if her captor was missing
her intended target or if the gray sedan was armored. The sedan had a lot more power than the car Annja was in. The driver closed the intervening distance quickly, then switched lanes and came up on the driver’s side.

  Frustrated and probably out of ammunition, the Asian woman dropped back into the seat and pulled her safety belt back in place. Concern tightened her features as she watched the gray sedan pull up alongside their vehicle. She yelled at the driver, who yelled back at her.

  Swerving, the driver pulled the car into the sedan, but the other vehicle was larger and heavier, and all he managed to do was confirm his opponent’s prowess. His own car shuddered and swerved, barely remaining under control.

  Through the window, Annja stared at Fiona Pioche. The woman’s hair blew back from her face and her black-lensed sunglasses looked implacable and unyielding. She no longer held the rocket launcher, which Annja was happy to see, but had pistols in both fists. Looking at her, Annja couldn’t help but think how well Fiona must have fit with Roux.

  At her age now, Fiona would fit even better with Roux. And that made Annja wonder even more why Roux had left her.

  The dapper Georges, Annja could see, was piloting the gray sedan. He dropped back a couple feet, then pulled hard on the wheel. Guessing what was coming, Annja grabbed the nearest safety harness and held tight.

  The sedan’s front bumper slammed into the car’s rear hard enough to break the traction the rear wheels had on the pavement. Hammered by the heavier vehicle, the car drifted sideways. The driver tried to recover control, but before he had the chance, Georges swerved and hit the car again.

  This time the car tore completely free of the highway and went into a drift. The sedan muscled forward and hit the skidding car broadside this time, driving it in front of it. In the backseat, Annja bounced and ricocheted as the car left the highway and went onto the shoulder.

  Dirt and grass flew in a maelstrom around the car as it went off-road. Something under the vehicle, a tire or a strut or the frame, buckled and dug into the ground. Caught for just a moment, the car almost stopped, then it was struck again. Driven forward once more, the car slid sideways, then went up on one side and rolled over onto its side, then onto its top and over onto the other side.