by Gabriel Hunt
“Is not good,” Djordji said when Gabriel climbed, dripping, into the front seat.
Gabriel figured his driver could have been talking about any number of things. “What’s not good?”
“They cross to Transdniestria,” Djordji said, pointing to the remaining riders galloping ahead of them. As Gabriel watched, the white stallion and one of the other horses jumped across what appeared to be a deep, rocky ravine. “Jeep cannot go that way. We have to go around.”
But Gabriel knew they couldn’t go around—by the time they made it, all signs of the horses and riders would be gone.
“We’re not going around,” Gabriel said. “Speed up.”
Djordji looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but kept his foot on the gas. They were just yards from the edge of the ravine.
Gabriel reached down into the footwell, groped around till he found his Colt, and reholstered it. “Get me next to one of those horses,” he said, standing up again. He climbed onto the seat.
A third rider reached the ravine and leapt across. There were only two left. As Djordji poured on what additional speed remained in the jeep’s overtaxed engine, they overtook the last horse. The rider looked to his side. He seemed surprised to see Gabriel there, standing beside him. Gabriel cocked a smile at him, and the man smiled back. “Dobry vecher, gospodin,” Gabriel said, and swung a wide right into the rider’s face, knocking him backward off his horse. Gabriel looked ahead. There were only seconds left before they hit the ravine. Gabriel leapt astride the now empty saddle and swept the reins up in his hands.
Djordji slammed on the brakes, bringing the jeep to a halt in a massive cloud of dust, just inches from the lip of the ravine. Gabriel gripped the black mare’s steaming flanks with his legs and pulled back on the reins, urging the animal to make the jump.
The horse let out a snort of protest against her new, unfamiliar rider but launched herself across the ravine after her fellows. There was a tense moment of shifting pebbles and slipping hooves as they landed on the far side and the horse fought to maintain her balance. Gabriel leaned forward and spurred his anxious mount ahead. She regained her footing and took off after the other riders.
As the horse galloped across the moonlit steppe, their destination came into view. An ancient ruin of a large circular fortress, grim, brooding half-hidden by the low broken hills around it. This was no tourist attraction, no spectacular gothic castle out of a travel brochure. It was an ugly, forgotten place, nothing left but cold, unfriendly walls designed not for aesthetics but function, the function being to keep enemies out. But the defenses had been breached centuries ago, and enemies or not, the Cossacks were riding in.
As they approached the fortress, a heavy, rusted portcullis slowly cranked open, allowing the riders to pass beneath and into the dull yellow glow emanating from the interior. As the portcullis began to close, Gabriel urged his mount to top speed.
He wasn’t going to be able to make it on horse back, he saw—the metal gate was dropping too quickly, and already there was no room. Yanking the reins sharply to the right, Gabriel dropped off the horse to his left, diving to the ground and rolling beneath the portcullis’ descending spikes. As the ancient gate slammed closed, Gabriel could feel one leg of his pants catch and tear. He struggled to stand and pull his pant leg free from the spike that had pinned it to the ground. There was a loud rip as he freed himself, but the sound was drowned out by a louder ratcheting sound, a sound of metal sliding against metal that made his heart sink when he heard it. He spun to face the interior of the fortress and found himself staring into the business ends of over a dozen AK-47s.
Chapter 3
Gabriel could see the white horse standing by the open doorway of a low stone building on the opposite side of the courtyard. Steep stone steps were visible through the doorway, leading sharply down into the darkness beyond, but Fiona and the rider who had grabbed her—the man with the tall fur hat—were nowhere in sight.
However there was no time to contemplate where Fiona might have been taken, because Gabriel was distracted by the infinitely more pressing issue of the hostile, rifle-wielding soldiers currently drawing down on him.
One of their number, a handsome, dark-haired older man with the insignia of a commanding officer, stepped forward and ordered Gabriel, in Russian, to surrender his gun. One of the younger soldiers helpfully clarified the command by tapping Gabriel’s shoulder holster with the barrel of his Kalashnikov and then jamming the muzzle into the soft spot under Gabriel’s ear.
Gabriel raised his hands and slowly removed the Colt from its holster. His eyes desperately scanned his surroundings for any hope of escape. There were stacks of stenciled wooden crates, several parked military vehicles and a pair of noisy, foul-smelling generators powering the strings of weak yellow lightbulbs that illuminated the scene. The remaining riders had dismounted at the far end of the courtyard and were seeing to their horses with only the vaguest interest in Gabriel’s predicament. A group of grim-faced African men in suits were standing to his left, conversing quietly in French and giving him occasional stony glares while one of their number counted the crates, jotting figures on a clipboard. The surrounding walls were over twenty feet high. There was no visible way out.
Gabriel held his pistol out at arm’s length and tossed it to the ground. It slid across the mossy paving stones and came to rest against the commanding officer’s spit-shined shoe. The soldier pressing his rifle against Ga-briel’s neck backed off with a smug look. The smugness rapidly transformed to curiosity, then astonishment as the sound of an approaching vehicle became a deafening crash. Djordji’s jeep rammed the rusty portcullis, knocking it loose from its ancient moorings and driving into the courtyard with the gate drunkenly balanced across the hood, steam billowing from the damaged engine.
Gabriel leapt aside, narrowly avoiding being flattened as the jeep scattered men before it like bowling pins. He dove for his Colt, rolling away with the gun in hand and ending up behind a stack of wooden crates. Gabriel ducked down and listened to the multilingual chaos, trying to discern Djordji’s fate while his fingers moved on autopilot, emptying the Colt’s spent brass and reloading. He’d only had time to slide two fresh slugs into the cylinder when a wiry young soldier dropped down on him from the stack of crates above, slamming a fist into the back of his neck and causing the remaining bullets in Gabriel’s palm to drop and scatter.
Gabriel swore, twisting and bringing the hand holding the pistol up toward his attacker, but the Russian grabbed Gabriel’s hand and pressed his thumb against the still open cylinder to keep it from snapping shut. Gabriel managed to wrench his hand free from the Russian’s grip, but not before the struggle caused the two bullets to slip from the chamber and roll away under one of the crates. He let the young Russian have it in the temple with the butt of the empty gun. The Russian dropped as if suddenly boneless. Stepping over his crumpled form, Gabriel angrily holstered the empty Colt and peered around the stack of crates.
The courtyard was full of soldiers, running and shouting. The jeep was upside down and on fire, but Djordji wasn’t in it. In fact, he was nowhere in sight. Several men were battling the smoky blaze with foam extinguishers while others, under the supervision of the grim Africans, formed lines to swiftly move crates of ammo and other dangerous explosives away from the fire. It was then that Gabriel realized what was going on here. Clearly he had stumbled into the middle of some kind of arms deal. But what did this have to do with Fiona and the kindjal?
Gabriel eyed the open door and the stone steps down which Fiona and her captor had disappeared. He thought he had a clear shot and was about to make a run for it when one of the Africans came around the far corner of the stack of crates. His eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed to a slit as he pulled out an HK .45, drawing a bead on Gabriel’s chest.
Gabriel raised his palms till they framed his face. In heavily accented French, the African told Gabriel to prepare for death. Gabriel responded in the same tongue. “You
might want to do a little preparation yourself,” he said.
“I? For what?” The man sneered. “I have the gun in my hand, and you have nothing.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, “but my friend there, behind you, has a shovel.”
The man got the beginning of a contemptuous laugh out before the shovel in Djordji’s hands slammed into the back of his head with a loud crack. The man staggered and crumpled, clutching at the crates as he fell. One toppled onto him, breaking open when it struck the ground. A pair of smooth, spherical hand grenades spilled out.
Gabriel snatched one up. “Nobody move!” he shouted. He stepped out into view with his finger through the pin loop. “Drop your weapons.”
There was a moment of shocked silence and then a ripple of outraged Russian murmurs.
“You wouldn’t dare,” replied the dark-haired officer who’d first confronted Gabriel.
“Of course I would,” Gabriel replied in Russian. “Grenade or gun, I’m just as dead, but this way I get to take some of you with me.” The logic seemed to sink in, and the officer took a step back. Gabriel motioned for Djordji to join him as he moved sideways toward the open door.
Every pair of eyes in the courtyard was focused on Gabriel as weapons were lowered but not dropped. The look on the officer’s face was one of barely suppressed rage. Gabriel closed the last few feet between him and the door.
“Go,” he said to Djordji, gesturing for the Gypsy to start down the stone steps.
While the older man descended, Gabriel stood in the open doorway, his finger on the pin of the hand grenade. Once he could no longer hear Djordji’s steps, Gabriel called to the officer. “Here. Catch.” He made as if to throw the grenade at the man, who ducked away in fear—but at the last instant, Gabriel spun and slung the grenade sidelong toward the nearest stack of munitions.
The hot fist of the ensuing explosion shoved Gabriel backward into the stairway. Gabriel pulled the heavy wooden door closed, sliding a massive iron bar into place to seal it. He could hear the firecracker sound of explosions and gunshots, then a barrage of angry Russian as the soldiers beat their fists and gun butts against the door. Gabriel raced downward, following the path Djordji had taken—and Fiona before him—into the bowels of the ancient fortress.
He met up with Djordji halfway down. The Gypsy was leaning against the stone wall, the shovel still gripped in one fist. Djordji put the index finger of his other hand to his lips and gestured with his head below them, where the stone steps vanished into darkness. There were voices below, one male and one female, both furious.
“Where?” the man’s voice thundered in heavily accented English. “You tell, now!”
“I don’t know where it is,” Fiona shouted back, unconvincingly. “I swear I don’t.”
Gabriel took the lead and walked silently, cautiously, down the steps. As they crept around a turn, the darkness was replaced by a dim flickering light, the startlingly red glow a shade Gabriel remembered seeing only once before, in a Croatian monastery; when he’d asked what accounted for the unusual color of the flame, they’d explained it was the admixture of the tallow with a portion of ground-up human bone. The calcium, they explained. Calcium burns brick red.
Gabriel still couldn’t see anything before him—there was another curve in the steps ahead—but he could make out a distinct and repetitive sound, a kind of sharp, resonant thwack, followed swiftly each time by a high-pitched feminine gasp.
He hastened ahead to the curve, Djordji just steps behind. When they came around it, the candlelit scene was revealed. Fiona stood in the center of a large, lowceilinged room, bound to one of several thick wooden pillars with her hands above her head. Her dress was torn nearly to her waist and her shapely legs were scratched and bruised, but she held her small, defiant chin high, eyes blazing. The pillar to which she had been tied was bristling with throwing knives, their wicked points buried in the ancient wood all around her bound and squirming form. The rider in the fur hat stood before her, now revealed as a tall, brutish man with long gray hair, a sharp forked beard and an expression of avid hunger that might have been lust or greed or religious zeal, or perhaps a combination of all three. The man held several knives in one large hand like a deadly bouquet, the same sort of knives that currently surrounded Fiona’s tense, quivering body. He transferred one to his empty hand, then smiled and licked his lips.
“I told you…” Fiona began to say.
The man in the fur hat raised his elbow to the ceiling and then brought his arm swiftly downward, letting the knife fly. It sank deep into the wood a bare millimeter from Fiona’s temple. She yelped as she tried to twist away and found her head trapped, a thick lock of her hair pinned to the wood by the blade.
Gabriel’s hand reflexively drew the now empty Colt. He looked to Djordji and motioned for the Gypsy to hand him the shovel. Should he charge the man with the shovel? Try to bluff with the gun? He needed to act fast, because the next strike of a blade could be fatal. Behind him, Djordji silently crossed himself. The man in the fur hat switched another knife to his empty hand. Gabriel looked from the shovel to the gun and back again.
“Ah, hell,” he muttered, then raised the Colt so its barrel was aimed directly at the knife thrower’s forehead. He called out: “Put the knives down and let her go.”
With stunning speed, the man spun and let the blade fly in Gabriel’s direction. Gabriel’s reflexes were barely quick enough for him to bring the head of the shovel up into the knife’s path. The blade rang loudly against the metal of the shovel, then ricocheted off, burying itself to the hilt in the dirt between two slabs of stone at the foot of the stairs.
Gabriel charged down the remaining steps as the man readied for another throw. Gabriel felt level ground beneath his feet and saw a second knife spinning toward him, end over end. He swung the shovel, deflecting it. He saw Djordji duck as the knife passed by him. The Gypsy flattened himself against the nearest wall, then darted away into the safety of the shadows.
The knife thrower stepped back to Fiona’s side, one of the remaining knives clutched in each hand. He held one up in throwing position and swung the other to a point directly below her chin. “You come,” he said, “I carve.”
Gabriel drew to a halt, gun raised. “You move, I shoot.”
“This close,” the man said softly, “blade is faster.” And to demonstrate he took a nick out of Fiona’s throat with a minute twitch of his wrist. A drop of blood formed, then a trail, a line of red reaching down toward her collarbone. Fiona didn’t make a sound, but Gabriel could see the pain and fear in her eyes.
Was a blade faster than a bullet? It depended on circumstances and was a question tacticians could debate. But a real blade was definitely faster than a nonex is tent bullet.
Gabriel lowered his gun. “All right,” he said. “You win. I’ll tell you where the kindjal is.”
“You?” the man said, his eyes narrowing with disbelief.
“Me,” Gabriel said. “She passed it to me in the bar. I hid it in the alleyway.”
The man considered this for a moment, then shook his head. “You lie. You lie to save woman.” He leered. “Because you like, no?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like. I did once, very much. But that was a long time ago.” He saw the change in Fiona’s expression. The look of pain in her eyes was due to more now than just the blade at her throat.
“Then why,” the man said, “do you try to save her?”
“Because,” Gabriel said, “that’s what I do.”
The knife thrower turned then, at a sound beside him, but not before Djordji, who had crept along the shadows of the wall and circled around behind him, was able to lunge forward and seize the man in a crushing bear hug. They grappled, the knife thrower straining mightily to free his arms, which Djordji held pinned to his sides. Gabriel ran forward, the shovel swinging in a wide arc. The rust-stained metal caught the knife thrower full in the face, sending the fur hat flying. The man went limp in Djordji’s g
rip. The Gypsy let him go, and he slid to the floor.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “That was—”
“Gabriel!” Fiona cried. “Look out!”
The bone-jarring roar of a high caliber gunshot made Gabriel leap backward. Djordji uttered a whispered Romany oath and, to Gabriel’s horror, collapsed first to his knees and then onto his side, a dark stain spreading across the shoulder of his bright red shirt.
Gabriel dropped to the ground beside him. Djordji was still conscious, but his breaths were suddenly rapid and shallow and his face was pale and wet with cold sweat. Blood pooled on the stone beneath him.
A reedy voice issued from the shadows at the far side of the room. “You…must be the famous Gabriel Hunt.”
Chapter 4
Gabriel looked up. He saw a small, dapper man in an immaculate suit come forward. The man had an expressionless, oddly doll-like face and he was holding an enormous, showy chrome Desert Eagle, his finger tight on the trigger.
“Permit me to introduce myself,” the dapper man said. His accent sounded Ukrainian. “I am Vladislav Shevchenko. I, too, have an interest in…” He paused, as if searching for the right English word. “Antiquities. Do not get me wrong, it is not my primary trade. My primary trade is the one you saw upstairs, the trade in modern weapons. But there is no…elegance to a modern weapon. You press a button, a man dies, a car explodes—there is no grace there, no beauty. The money, however, it is good. This…lucrative trade in inelegant modern armaments allows me to collect rarer, dare I say unique, items such as the one we have both been searching for.”
He stepped forward, the gun not wavering by so much as an inch.
“Imagine my sense of betrayal and disappointment when I heard that Dr. Rush here was planning to sell the object of our common interest to one of my most bitter rivals. I suspect it was not very different from your emotions when you discovered she had betrayed you.”