by Alex Archer
“Stop!” Mustafa’s hoarse order rang out behind her.
Annja never broke stride. Bullets kicked up the sand around her, then the ringing cracks of the shots split the night. Trusting her unerring sense of direction, she kept on the same heading. From what she had seen of the khettara wells, the openings were about sixty yards distant at this point. She counted her strides.
Only a few later, she spotted the rise of the khettara wall of the next well ahead of her. Horses’ hooves joined the gunshots. She hoped the Bedouin didn’t kill anyone at the camp. Taking the women was bad enough and would draw the attention of the local authorities, but a massacre would guarantee retribution.
As she neared the khettara, Annja knew the horse would overtake her. She hadn’t completely thought out her escape plan, but it was in progress. Lifting her knees, she drove herself forward and shook out the climbing rope she’d seized on her way out of the campsite. The grappling hook had a six-inch span. She told herself that would be plenty, that it would hold, and she hoped that was true.
Another volley of bullets chopped into the bermed rise around the khettara. At the top, she spun and planted the grappling hook into the earth, then dropped into the well. The rope slipped through her palms fast enough to heat her hands, but it didn’t burn them. She didn’t descend into the darkness as much as control her fall. She wrapped a leg through the rope to help slow her plummet. Unfortunately, the extra drag on the line ripped the grappling hook from its precarious mooring.
No longer supported, Annja dropped into the darkness as the suddenly slack rope tumbled down around her. She went limp and hoped the impact didn’t knock her senseless.
Her pursuers were coming for her.
Chapter 4
Annja dropped into the water and mud at the bottom of the khettara on her back. The wind left her lungs in a rush, but she remained alert. Instantly, she rolled over and tried to get her bearings, but all she could see was the open mouth of the well above. She got to her feet, soaked, and found the rope by feel.
Hurriedly, she pulled it into a coil and slipped it over her head and left shoulder. Rope was always useful, and she was otherwise empty-handed. She hated being separated from her computer, which was in her backpack at the camp. Taking a couple steps with one hand out before her and the other folded over her chest to protect herself, she oriented herself inside the tunnel, finding both ends but not knowing for certain which led back the way she had come.
Then bright light flashed in the darkness and she recognized the lanterns carried by the Bedouin bandits at the same time they saw her. The illumination spun crazily in the well, throwing shadows across the curved walls and reflecting from the water. She thought there were four of them, but there might have been five. The well kept them close as they closed on her at a dead run. Thankfully, they had swords and knives in their fists and not pistols. In the close quarters, a firearm would have made resistance a lot more dangerous. Edged weapons she felt she could handle well enough, and her opponents’ numbers would work against them.
Knowing she wasn’t going to run and leave Smythe and the others to their fates, Annja took the coiled rope from her shoulder in her left hand and held it tightly. She reached for the sword that had once belonged to Joan of Arc with her right hand and pulled it from the mystic otherwhere that she couldn’t explain.
Standing in the well canal holding her sword gave her the confidence she needed. She and that blade had shared a lot of danger, a lot of combat, and it had never once failed her. Nothing in her life had ever felt so right as holding that sword.
Their double-edged steel splintering the lantern light, the Bedouin warriors charged her, howling and snapping like dogs. Trying, no doubt, to frighten her. She took a fresh grip on her own unadorned leather hilt. The sword was plain; the crosspiece that formed the guard was a straight line that crossed the blade, and in anyone else’s hands—which the sword would never allow—the weapon would have been heavy. She hefted it easily, as though it was a part of her.
The man leading the pack saw the sword too late, and his companions didn’t see it at all. He tried to stop, but the other men crowded behind him and drove him forward.
As a general rule, Annja didn’t kill if she had a choice. Taking life was a serious business and she didn’t like being put in the position of having to do such a thing. But she liked the thought of her friends getting hurt or killed even less.
She whipped the sword at the first man’s head. He ducked and thrust his sword up to parry the blow. Annja’s sword crashed through the Bedouin warrior’s, snapping the curved blade in half and slicing through the top of the man’s keffiyeh. The man continued his panicked dive till he was on all fours.
The man immediately following the first tumbled over his fellow, managing a swipe at Annja as he fell. She blocked his blade with her own, stood on her right leg and lifted her left knee into the man’s face. His nose broke with an audible crunch and he started screaming. She kicked him once more and laid him out unconscious, draped across the first man.
Two of the lanterns lay on the ground, still providing light. The other two Bedouin held up to reassess the situation. She read their surprise in their eyes. Annja stepped toward them, drawing the swing of a sword from the man on her left that scored the well wall next to her head. A small plume of dust eddied into the light.
With a quick turn of her wrist, Annja set her sword tip against the man’s throat. Reversing direction at once, the man tried to backpedal. Annja stayed with him, then menaced the other Bedouin still on his feet, chasing him back to the wall. When the first man tried to get his blade up in front of him, Annja returned her attention to him, driving him back with two quick slashes that filled the tunnel with the ring of steel against steel.
Retreating, keeping her sword at the ready, she flicked the coiled rope over the second man’s head, waited till the loops settled over the back of his neck and yanked while he was still trying to get his weapon up. She set herself and torqued her upper body from the hips, driving a fist into the man’s face three times in quick succession. The back of his head bounced against the cave wall, then his eyes rolled upward and his knees went slack.
Before the last man standing could get organized, Annja flipped the coil of rope from the unconscious man’s head as he toppled. The sword leaped in her hands, driving the swordsman back and back until he slipped in the mud. He tried to scramble to his feet, but froze when Annja placed the point of her sword just under his chin.
“No.” She let out a breath, stepped closer and kicked him in the temple. He screamed, but only briefly before pain took him away.
A shot rang out just as a miniature crater formed in the mud a few feet in front of Annja.
Whirling, hair damp and sandy from her fall, eyes still adjusting to the new angle of the lights, Annja dove to the ground just as another couple bullets split the air where she’d been standing. She released the sword, allowing it to disappear, and caught herself on her palms, rolling and springing to her feet against the wall.
Thirty feet away, a Bedouin hung upside down through the mouth of the well. He held an assault rifle in both hands and swung awkwardly from a rope knotted around his waist. He took aim again.
Annja ripped a knife from one of the unconscious men she’d left sprawled on the ground. Still in motion, listening to the stream of bullets smack into the well shaft behind her, she drew her arm back, then whipped it forward, launching the knife at the man.
The knife gleamed in the torchlight. He might not have even seen it coming. He stopped firing immediately and dropped the rifle, then clutched the knife that had pierced his left thigh. She’d been lucky. She’d been aiming at the man’s chest.
Sprinting again, she raced for the fallen rifle, dropped to her knees in a skid and brought the weapon to her shoulder. She hadn’t had extensive training in firearms, but she’d learned what she cou
ld, first from the ex-SAS soldiers who had taught her on the Hadrian’s Wall dig, and then at various gun ranges. Her New York police detective friend, Bart McGilley, had contributed to her store of knowledge through his own tutelage.
The wounded man dangling at the end of the rope screamed at his comrades to pull him up. He waved his arms helplessly, trying to find some purchase so he could escape.
Annja sighted up through the opening. Three men at the top. In the darkness she could just make them out as they reached for their weapons, letting go the rope that held their comrade.
Screaming, the wounded man landed with a crunch that left him silent and still.
Shifting the rifle from the men to the dirt lip just below them, Annja squeezed the trigger. The bullets stitched into the earth, exploding craters. She didn’t want to kill them, because the survivors might take revenge on their prisoners.
That was the thing that bothered Annja most: she was going to have to leave the Bedouin with their prisoners. They’d be somewhere out in the Atlas Mountains while Annja went to get help.
The rifle cycled dry. Annja darted forward through the rain of dust and debris. She stopped by the wounded man just long enough to find an extra magazine for her weapon. Then she was up and moving again, running back toward the campsite through the lantern light.
She picked up her coiled rope and was gone before the men saw which way she headed.
* * *
THE PLAN CAME TOGETHER in Annja’s head as she fled. Granted, it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had. The optimum goal was to get her dig mates safely out of harm’s way, and the mysterious gold box and the coins, as well. Slavers worked all throughout Morocco. That danger was always present. She had been warned about that. They all had.
The only hope any of them had was if she could get help. But she had to be able to find Smythe and the others again, and there was only one way she knew of to do that. The only problem was staying alive while she raided the camp.
She ran past the well where they’d discovered the skeleton. A fresh pile of dirt formed a large hill in the canal. She climbed over that, trying not to be seen in the residual light from the campfires, and caught bits and pieces of the conversation among the Bedouin.
“She was there, but now we don’t see her.”
“Find her!” That was from Mustafa, and from the sound of him, he wasn’t far from the mouth of the well overhead.
“We will.”
“Get someone down the well. Doubtless she is running scared. Do not allow her to get away.”
Running scared? Annja made a face in the darkness as she crawled over the temporary dam that blocked the water flow. Don’t bet on it.
At the other end of the canal, men with lanterns descended into the tunnel. Annja stood still in the standing water behind the dam. The water had risen to her chest. Nadim had explained that the reservoir would have to be carefully released so it wouldn’t wash away the floor and necessitate further repairs.
The men huddled for a moment, evidently trying to choose a leader, then surged down the tunnel away from her.
Annja blew out a breath through her chattering teeth as she watched them go. Then she turned and continued wading up the tunnel through the water. Finally, another forty yards from the last entrance, she stood under another one.
She slung the rifle over her shoulder and shook out the rope. Whirling the grappling hook experimentally, she tossed it up through the opening and slowly tugged, hoping that it would catch on something without arousing suspicion.
Finally, the rope grew taut. Annja kept the pull steady, then put her weight on it, wishing she knew whether she could trust the hook to hold. A moment later her feet dangled off the ground. Moving steadily, she climbed the rope, straining to be silent as she pulled herself up.
When she reached the top, she paused with one hand hooked over the lip, the rope still wrapped around her leg. Mustafa’s voice came from a short distance away, but it wasn’t loud enough for her to make out what he was saying.
Horses snuffled and stamped their feet much more closely. That was encouraging. Evidently the Bedouin had chosen to move their mounts to the other side of the camp from the direction Annja had run.
She pulled herself out of the well and over the berm, keeping low as she crawled along the ground. Dirt stuck to her wet clothing and the icy wind bit into her.
Mustafa stood to one side of the campsite so that it was hard to pick him out of the shadows. Annja paused a moment and counted the Bedouin still at the campsite. She spotted six, but there could have been more.
Whatever the actual number, there were too many for her. And even if she managed to subdue them all, there were other Bedouin in the hills and tunnel. The prisoners wouldn’t be able to escape before they were gunned down.
The horses stood tied to a ground line twenty feet to her left. Thirty feet in front of her, she spotted the tent where her backpack was, along with her notebook computer and satellite phone.
She also needed the canteen of water in there. Civilization was at least a day’s hike away.
Annja crawled forward on her knees and elbows, the rifle in her hands at the ready. The grit and rocks bit into her and she knew some of them were drawing blood. She ignored the pain and concentrated on the Bedouins.
When she reached the tent, she eased up behind it. Smythe, Theresa and Cory all stared in the direction Annja had originally fled. Souad talked in whispers to his father. Nadim shook his head and leaned into the teen.
Annja’s heart went out to them, but she knew she had to leave them. If they were going to be safe, she had to go.
She pulled a Swiss Army knife from her pocket, flipped open a blade and cut a slit in the back of the tent. Once the slit was large enough, she pushed her head and shoulders inside.
Her backpack sat against the wall next to her sleeping bag. She grabbed it by one strap, snatched the canteen sitting beside it and pulled them both from the tent without making a sound. She reached into the backpack for two of the battery-powered GPS transponders the dig personnel used to mark finds.
The devices were an inch and a half to a side and only a half-inch thick. The batteries would last one hundred and twenty hours. She had five days to locate Smythe and the others before the unit died. She switched it on and returned to the tent only long enough to slide the GPS tracker into Smythe’s computer bag. She kept the other in hand as she returned to the horses.
Holding the backpack and the canteen by their straps, she duckwalked back to the horses. As she neared the animals, they shied and snorted, pulled hard at their reins fastened to a ground tie. She paused only long enough to drop the second GPS locater into a saddlebag. She intended to scatter the horses during her escape, but she felt certain the Bedouin would recover them quickly enough.
“Easy, easy,” Annja whispered to another horse, and ran a gentle hand along its neck. She didn’t stop moving because she knew if she did and the men saw her, she’d lose a step toward freedom. She caught the reins of one horse and sawed at the ground tie with her knife. When the ground tie parted, in essence freeing all the horses, she caught the pommel and heaved herself aboard.
A light pinned her in the darkness. Instinct pulled her eyes toward the beam, but she caught herself and looked away as she put her heels to the horse’s sides and yelled, “Hee-yaaahhh!”
“It is the woman! Mustafa! The woman is among the horses!”
The horses in front of Annja parted as her mount shoved through. She lashed about with the reins, startling the horses into panicked hopping.
“Get the woman! Do not let her get away!” Mustafa pointed his pistol and shot. Bullets ripped through the air over her head. “Get the horses!”
Annja pulled the sword back into her hand, then whacked the flat of the blade against the rumps of the nearest horses as sh
e continued shouting. Mustafa’s shots turned the tide, though. Hearing the sharp cracks, the horses galvanized into motion and swept away from the campsite. Their hooves thudded against the hard ground.
Bending low in the saddle, Annja kicked her horse again and rode in the middle of the crush of bodies headed away from the campsite. She ran with the group for a time, pausing only to glance over her shoulder at the campsite.
Muzzle flashes flared against the darkness. Two of the horses stumbled and dropped. A few seconds later the rifles fell silent. Annja stayed low over the horse’s neck, feeling the animal’s muscles bunch and flex, and promised herself that she would return in time to save the others.
Chapter 5
Annja spent the night in the saddle, constantly looking over her shoulder for pursuers. Thankfully, she hadn’t seen any. She assumed that Mustafa and his men had had a hard time gathering the horses and had decided chasing after her was a luxury they couldn’t afford. They had to have time to finish raiding the dig.
Thoughts of the hardships her colleagues might be enduring kept plaguing Annja. She pushed the horse as fast as she dared, and got down and walked periodically to rest the animal.
She kept hoping she would meet someone along the way, but the dig wasn’t on any of the caravan trails that fed out of Erfoud, the small city forty miles west. The horse could safely travel twenty to thirty miles a day, maybe more, but the inclement weather worked against that.
Leading the horse now, Annja checked her compass and readjusted her backpack. She was headed north-northwest, hoping to pick up one of the trails.
She put the compass away and scanned the flat horizon. The sun was to her back now, warm at the moment, but she knew it would reach baking temperature by noon. Out of habit she checked her sat phone again. It was as dead now as it had been last night. Theresa had borrowed it the previous day to call in and hadn’t put the phone in the charger.
After a few more minutes, still able to safely keep watch in all directions, Annja brought the horse to a halt. She picked the canteen up from the saddle pommel, took a couple gulps, then poured a cup of water into a bowl she made out of a plastic sheet.