by Alex Archer
The Russians came around the corner of the mausoleum in a two-man staggered group so that each of them had a clear field of fire. Annja dropped into a half crouch and launched herself at the first one. A stream of bullets ripped through the air only inches above her head.
She planted her shoulder into the man’s midsection and felt the almost bone-breaking impact of flesh and blood striking body armor. With her headlong drive, she managed to lift the bigger man from his feet and propel him backward for a couple yards like an offensive tackle. Then her legs became tangled in his and they went down in a heap.
The other man jockeyed for position, trying to get his weapon lined up on Annja without accidentally shooting his partner. Annja did a forward roll toward the second man eight feet away to avoid the withering bursts of fire from his weapon, then came up in a crouch. Using both hands, she swung the sword and cut through the assault rifle between his hands. The weapon dropped in pieces from the man’s hands as he stared down in silent surprise.
Continuing up into a standing position, Annja shifted onto her left foot, then kicked the man’s head with her right. The Russian’s head snapped back and he was unconscious before he hit the ground.
When Annja had both feet on the ground, she was facing the first Russian. He tried to get up, but his balance hadn’t returned to him, and he was an easy target as she swung her leg and caught him full in the face with a snap-kick. Blood running from his broken nose, the man flopped back but immediately tried to get up again. Annja swung her sword, catching him in the temple with the flat of the blade and stretching him out unconscious.
Letting go of the sword so it could return to the otherwhere, Annja picked up one of the fallen assault rifles, quickly recognizing it as an AK-47. She checked the magazine, discovered it was half-depleted and changed it out with a fresh one from the man’s chest ammo rack. She dropped two more magazines into her pants pockets, then sprinted in pursuit of the screaming ghosts, the Goths and the remaining Russians.
* * *
SECONDS LATER, ANNJA caught up with the first of the Russians. She pulled up short, lifted the AK-47 and sprayed bullets at his legs. As a general rule, something to separate her from the people she often found herself fighting, she tried not to kill unless she had to.
The 7.62 mm rounds caught the Russian below the knees and cut his legs out from under him. He squalled in pain and fell headlong into a four-foot marble obelisk, taking it down with him.
Annja vaulted over him. Ahead of her the two other Russians stopped and swung around, bringing their weapons to bear in blistering bursts.
Annja ducked to one side and took shelter behind the thick trunk of an elm tree. Bullets embedded in the trunk and ripped splinters from the bark. The two men called out to each other, but Annja didn’t understand them. Her Russian was limited but she was sure they weren’t discussing their surrender.
She feinted to her left, rolling out just far enough to be exposed for a second, then rolled right and sprinted toward a mausoleum fifteen feet away that would place her out of the field of fire and out of sight. Bullets pursued her across the cemetery grounds.
Instead of staying put behind the small stone building, Annja retreated twenty yards and threw herself behind a double headstone. She hated using the grave marker for cover, because it was someone’s stone, and because it looked old. She’d seen a lot of headstones in Boston cemeteries that British soldiers had used for target practice during the American Revolution. She mourned the loss of such history.
The Russians came around the mausoleum from opposite sides and nearly shot each other. They cursed—something Annja understood clearly enough—and started searching for her. One of them pointed toward the mausoleum’s roof.
Breathing out, Annja aimed at the one on the left and took up trigger slack. The AK-47 went off with a loud retort and the man she’d aimed at went down as his knee buckled beneath him. The other Russian scrambled for cover behind a rosebush. Annja chased him with three shots just to keep him busy, then rolled away from her position, knowing the man had marked her from the muzzle flashes.
A hail of bullets smacked into the headstone where she’d sheltered and tore divots from the graves. Rising to one knee, Annja took aim low and fired. He screamed and the rosebush shivered.
She had the Russians’ attention now. Her guides and the ghosts were surely back to the road and the ghosts’ vehicles by now. She just had to stay alive long enough to get lost in the shadows. She shifted and studied the area. At the same time the rifle jumped in her hands and two more shots struck the tree beside her.
Rolling away to a new position, Annja rose to a crouch and sped through the headstones. She pointed the AK-47 toward muzzle flashes off to her left, but when she squeezed the trigger, nothing happened.
Hunkering down behind a statue of a robed saint, Annja dropped the magazine and tried to work the bolt but it wouldn’t move. Without enough light to see by, she examined the rifle with her fingertips and discovered the action had been severely dented.
She should have checked the downed Russian for a pistol, as well. No time for regrets. Annja dropped the ruined assault rifle and scanned the night for the shooter. She didn’t know if one of the men she’d left alive behind her had regained consciousness or if the man back on the boat had joined the sweep.
Reaching into the otherwhere, she pulled the sword to her and got into a crouch. Heart beating like a snare drum, she stayed in the shadows as she circled around the mausoleum and headed for the cemetery’s front gates. She had the keys to the rental car in her pocket. All she needed was a big enough lead to reach the vehicle. If everyone else had made it out, she would be gone in seconds.
Ten feet short of the wrought-iron double gates, Annja caught movement in her peripheral vision and went to ground, sprawling no higher than the freshly mown grass. Then rising to hands and knees, she scrambled for the nearest tree as bullets slammed into the ground and brush around her. She held on to the sword as she edged into a standing position with her back to the tree trunk.
Cautiously, the Russian gunman crept forward, calling out to his friends.
Knowing that her chances of escape were diminishing by the second, Annja found a baseball-size chunk of tombstone lying on the ground in front of her. She shifted her sword to her left hand and fisted the rock.
Taking a deep breath, Annja used the sword to shake the bushes next to the tree on her left. As soon as the man opened fire, she whirled to her left and threw the chunk of stone. Sister Mary Abigail at the New Orleans orphanage where Annja had been raised had been a big fan of softball, and a perfectionist pitching coach.
The rock caught the Russian in the chest instead of the face as Annja had intended, but it was enough to cause him to stagger back.
Before the man could recover, Annja sprinted across the distance. He shifted the AK-47. Annja dodged to her left and swung the sword, slicing through the rifle just ahead of the man’s hand. Holding her ground, she stopped her forward momentum, whipped her sword back in front of her in a fluid motion, then spun and slammed the hilt into the back of the man’s head.
His eyes rolled up, and he dropped.
Before she could take another step, Annja heard the helicopter rotors overhead. In the next instant, a spotlight picked her out of the darkness and illuminated her in bright light. A P.A. system blared out orders.
“Cape Cod Coast Guard! Stop right there!”
Annja did as she was told. The coast guard was used to dealing with smugglers, and they weren’t gentle with them. She squinted and looked up at the helicopter as it lost altitude and hovered over her. Official markings gleamed on its sides.
Man, Doug is really going to hear about this.
The man’s voice over the P.A. system got louder and more agitated. “Drop the sword!”
Seriously? Full-on assault rifles have been
chewing up the real estate, and you’re worried about a sword?
Annja held her arms out and let the sword drop, hoping they wouldn’t see what happened next. It vanished back into the otherwhere before it hit the ground.
So did Annja’s hopes for a hot bath anytime soon.
3
Standing in the long early-morning shadows that fell over Piazza della Signoria, Garin Braden was a man lost in time. Florence always had that effect on him. Pedestrians, bicycles and scooters hustled across the stone plaza as people made their way to work, but he was caught in the memory of the city as it had been five hundred years ago.
He had first seen the plaza in 1498 while still traveling with Roux. At the time, they’d already spent more than sixty years looking for remnants of Joan of Arc’s shattered sword. Whatever magic made the sword—and its resurrection—possible had bound Roux and him to their lives, freezing them at the ages they had been at Joan’s death. Well, at least it had done that for him. He still wasn’t sure how old Roux was. The man had seemed ancient when Garin had first been apprenticed to him.
Even now, almost six centuries later, Garin still remembered the day Girolama Savonarola, a Dominican monk who accused Pope Alexander VI of being corrupt, had been burned at the stake in this place. That event had reminded Garin of how Joan had died at the stake and had sickened him. Later, during World War II, Garin had been in the city when freedom fighters battling the German regime and Mussolini were shot down in the plaza.
A lot of blood had been spilled on these stones. Garin had taken lives here himself over the centuries. As long as the plaza existed, people would die here. It was too easy to make a point in this place.
He was convinced that was why the man who had engineered the meeting with him had chosen the area.
In his dove-gray Italian suit, Garin looked like a businessman collecting his thoughts or someone having an early-morning tryst with a mistress. His height and breadth set him apart, though. He stood six feet four inches tall before the boots added another couple inches, and his shoulders were wide enough that most men gave him a generous berth. His black hair hung straight and a carefully manicured goatee covered his powerful chin. Wraparound dark blue sunglasses hid his black eyes. He’d been told they were “magnetic.”
He checked his Rolex. It was 8:03 a.m. If he hadn’t been certain the man meeting him had what he said he had, Garin might have left and ordered the man killed as an example to future clients of how he did business.
The earwig in Garin’s left ear crackled. “Sir.”
Garin lifted his Styrofoam coffee cup to cover his response. “Yes?”
“I have identified the man meeting with you.” The security leader’s name was Emil Klotz, a very good man to have providing backup in a dicey situation.
“Good. So have I.” Garin’s eyes watched the crowded food carts off to his left. “He’s at ten o’clock from my position.”
“Yes, sir.” If the man on the other side of the commlink was surprised, he didn’t show it. Some of Garin’s DragonTech security people had worked with him for years, part of an international mercenary force that rivaled Blackwater. The good ones survived.
“I count three bodyguards who were already in position when I arrived.”
“Yes, sir. The team confirms it.”
“There will be others.”
“We’re looking, sir.”
Garin sipped his espresso and discovered that it had grown tepid. That didn’t bother him. Despite his current wealth, he hadn’t always had money. When he’d first ridden with Roux, chasing after items the old man had claimed were made with Power—with a capital P—they had made do most of the time with what the land had provided, sharing their bedrolls with vermin. Hundreds of years had passed since, but he never felt far from those survivalist beginnings.
His satphone rang and the viewscreen showed Unavailable. Few people had his number. He picked up the device and watched the plaza, feeling the old familiar adrenaline in his veins. He was never more alive than when he stood on the edge of death.
“Yes?”
“You are at the plaza. I see you.” The male voice spoke German with an Eastern European accent, and the husky tone advertised that he was a smoker. Eyuboglu was a Turkish name in origin, but the world was so transient these days that hardly meant anything. The accent meant more. He was a purveyor of ancient artifacts and by all accounts a dangerous man.
Garin resisted the impulse to look around. “If you can see me, why aren’t you here? I thought this was to be an amicable exchange.”
“We are searching for him.” Klotz sounded unhurried and unperturbed, a professional consumed by his job.
The tall buildings ringing the plaza offered a thousand vantage points for a sniper. Garin knew that, and he knew that despite his longevity, he was still a man of flesh and blood. Yes, he had survived crippling wounds and come back whole. But Joan’s sword was once more in the hands of a Champion and Garin wasn’t yet sure what impact that had on his future.
“You are prepared to transfer the money we agreed on?” Garin heard a hint of anticipation in Eyuboglu’s voice.
“You already have half of it.” Garin baited the man who had been relegated to the role of go-between. “I’ve already been far too trusting in the matter.”
Eyuboglu chuckled. “I’ve been told by others that you were a very difficult man to deal with.”
“I am.” Garin made his voice cold and hard. “I never forget a man who betrays my trust. Although I don’t have to remember for long because those men don’t live much longer.”
“I’ve heard that, too. That’s why I’ve sent an associate. He will be there shortly.” Eyuboglu paused a moment. “You and I both know that this artifact you’re buying isn’t what you’re really after.”
Garin said nothing. He had expected further extortion. If he had been in Eyuboglu’s position, he would have done the same thing. In fact, after he had his hands on the piece—and the knowledge of where it had been found—he himself intended to use it for leverage. It was the price of doing business.
“You want to know where I got it, and if there is any more of it.”
Garin smiled. He hoped Eyuboglu could truly see him right now. “You and I both know that if you had any more pieces of this artifact to sell, you would trot them out and put a price on them. Don’t act cavalier. I’ve paid a price to see this thing today. Keep me waiting and I’ll simply take it.”
“That would not be as easy as you think.”
“Why?” Garin sipped his coffee. “Because you have the case your errand boy is carrying rigged with explosives? Because you’ve got guards in the plaza to protect your interests? Please. Do you think you’re the only clever mind who has taken to the field this morning?”
Eyuboglu was silent.
Garin smiled again and dropped his empty coffee cup in a nearby waste receptacle. “Drop the charade and let’s see if what you have is real. Because if it’s fake, you’re a dead man.” He broke the connection. “Emil?”
Klotz responded immediately. “We have him, sir. Triangulated his cell phone signal to the fourth floor of the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali. I’ve got a team en route.”
Garin’s eyes went to the blocky gray building. “Don’t be overeager, and I want him whole when we take him. I can’t question a dead man.”
“Understood, sir.”
Eyuboglu had thought the artifact was bait to get Garin to pay, but the payment Garin had made had been bait in a trap of his own. Even if he never recovered the money he’d spent to get Eyuboglu here, the price would be worth it if he could discover the hiding place of this particular artifact.
* * *
THE GO-BETWEEN WAS a nervous little man in his late forties who looked more like a clerk than a clandestine agent. He was scarcely f
ive and a half feet tall, rotund with ferret features and thick glasses. His comb-over lifted and dropped in the wind like a flagman waving semaphore. His cheap suit didn’t fit him well. He stood in front of a flower kiosk where an attractive woman with blond hair made change for a young man who’d purchased a bouquet of spring flowers.
The man looked up at Garin’s approach, then pulled the briefcase protectively to his chest. “Mr. Braden?”
“I am.”
“I was told to give you this.”
Garin reached for the briefcase and immediately felt the solid heft of it. He turned to the flower kiosk and smiled at the young woman. “May I borrow your booth for a moment?”
She returned his smile and ran her gaze over him. “Of course. Perhaps after you conclude your business I could interest you in some flowers for your wife?”
Garin grinned as he laid the briefcase on the counter surface. “I’m not married.”
“Really?” An arched brow lifted in speculation. “And you are not from here. I know this by your accent.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Perhaps this evening you would like to see more of our beautiful city. A private tour?” Her hazel eyes held a lot of promise.
“That does sound inviting.”
She looked away, playing coy now. “Of course, if you find your schedule too filled with business, this might not work for you.”
“Give me a moment to conclude this and we’ll discuss the matter.”
“I will be right here.”
Impatiently, Garin waved at the briefcase’s lock. The go-between fumbled through the combination and the lock clicked. The man stepped back.
Flipping the briefcase open, Garin surveyed the contents excitedly.
The piece was a mechanical butterfly made of a green-tinged metal. Twice as large as Garin’s hand, the device lay nestled in cut foam. The body was as long as Garin’s index finger and was filled with small gears that no longer quite meshed. That was disappointing. Eyuboglu had mentioned that the device was in good shape, but he had failed to mention that it no longer worked.