The Third Caliph

by Alex Archer

  * * *

  LESS THAN A HUNDRED YARDS from the cave, the driver of MacKenzie’s Jeep took a bullet through the head that painted the windshield with blood. The dead man slumped and the Jeep started to veer.

  Cursing, MacKenzie shoved the dead man aside, grabbed the steering wheel from the passenger seat and shoved his foot on the accelerator. He drove right into the teeth of the waiting Shiite warriors as their bullets hammered the front of the Jeep. Thabit’s men scattered an instant before the Jeep smashed into the cave mouth and lodged, stuck on both sides.

  Bruised and breathless from the impact, MacKenzie drew his leg back and kicked out the windshield in a spray of safety glass. He released the seat belt, then crawled through the window onto the vehicle’s hood. Turning back, he pulled the rifle to his shoulder and fired at the Shiite warriors converging on the cave mouth.

  Yahya scrambled out of the wedged Jeep, as well, and added his firepower to MacKenzie’s. The young man ducked behind the vehicle and slid a fresh magazine into his weapon. “We are likely dead men now that we are trapped in here.”

  MacKenzie slipped around the side of the Jeep and grabbed a flashlight from the emergency kit under the seat. Bullets ricocheted from the Jeep’s body. Beyond the opening, the mountainside had become a battleground steeped in blood.

  “We’re not trapped yet.” MacKenzie switched on the flashlight and tracked it down the passageway. “Places like this, there are usually more than one way out. A rat never builds itself a nest with only one door. And we’re better off in here than out there. Those people are going to die. Not you and me.” He slapped the young man’s shoulder. “C’mon. Get moving. Let’s find Thabit or Creed. Either one of them and we’ll be holding cards everybody else has to count.”

  He started down the passage, with the echoes of the gunfire ahead and behind in the enclosed space around him.

  * * *

  GARIN FOUGHT THE CENTRIFUGAL force of the Hummer slewing around as the driver came to a jerking stop not far from the Jeep jutting partially out of the cave mouth. The vehicle slid into two of the Shiite warriors and knocked them backward.

  Stepping out of the Hummer, Garin took quick aim with his rifle and put rounds into both men. He spared only a quick glance at the vehicles engaged in battle out in front of the cave, then turned his attention to the wedged Jeep. Slinging his rifle, he hauled himself over the jammed vehicle and clambered into the cave.

  Breathing hard, staying low, Roux and Qurtubi ran at his heels. Garin plucked a flashlight out of his combat vest and turned it on. The stink of gunsmoke filled his nostrils but there were no bodies in the passageway.

  Yet.

  * * *

  ANNJA PASSED INTO THE LARGE room before she knew she was there. She came to a stop when she spotted the dark pool in front of her and realized the sound of running water was echoing in a much larger space than her running steps had been.

  She was breathing fast but easily. Currents in the water showed that it was fed by an underwater tributary, probably a spring. From bank to the back wall of the cave, the pool was about fifty feet across and sixty feet wide, nearly the width of the cavern. As she flicked her light around, blind white fish nearly the length of her arm surfaced and disappeared just as quickly.

  If the fish were here, there might be an underground opening to the tributary. But that could run underground for a few yards or a few miles.

  She pointed the flashlight beam around the cavern, searching desperately for another passageway. The running footsteps behind her were closing fast.

  The cavern was easily eighty feet wide and a hundred feet long. Although the light was uncertain, Annja felt that the cavern was thirty or forty feet deep. On both side of the doorway, steps led up to loft areas where small caves had been cut out of the solid walls.

  Sometime in the past, the cavern had been used as a hideout for large groups. Broken spears, arrows and bows littered the floor, along with ashes from cook fires.

  The cavern itself was a great find. In years past, the Assyrians, the Kurds, the Persians and the Ottomans had all lived and warred in the area. So much unrecorded history lay around her.

  Except you’ve got gunmen closing in. Annja turned to the left and fled up the stone steps carved out of the wall.

  At the top of the steps, she slid out of her backpack and shoved it into a niche behind a ragged outcrop. Then she turned off her flashlight and crept back to the ledge fifteen feet above the bottom. She reached into the otherwhere and took hold of the sword, then pulled it into the cavern with her. In the absolute stygian darkness, she lay in wait.

  Less than a minute later, flashlight beams intruded into the area. Six armed men spread out around Hamez and Thabit. Hamez gave orders to his men. They blanketed the room with their flashlights, shining the beams into every crook and crevice.

  Annja ducked back from the ledge as one of the beams passed over her position. Then she peered back down.

  At another command from Hamez, the warriors ignited flares. The red glow and twisting smoke filled the enclosure. The men spread out, obviously searching for another passageway, then quickly reached the conclusion that one didn’t exist.

  Hamez glared around the room again. “Miss Creed, come out now. If you do, things will go much easier for you.”

  Annja sincerely doubted that. The only chance she had was to get past Thabit and his men and escape into the mountains.

  One of the men standing near the far wall called excitedly to Thabit. For a moment, all the attention in the room shifted in that direction. Annja measured the steps to the entrance and thought she’d have a chance to get away if she moved quickly.

  Then she noticed what Thabit and his men had found: an Arabic symbol of the House of Muhammad carved into the wall. She froze where she was and waited.

  Thabit immediately turned from the marking on the wall and walked back to the wall beneath the ledge where Annja lay. He spoke with rising excitement, then began marking off a distance from the wall where the steps were cut. Four steps over, he stopped and faced the wall.

  Obviously he didn’t tell you everything he’d deciphered from that map. With breathless anticipation, Annja watched as two of Thabit’s men took out trenching tools and checked along the wall.

  A moment later, the men wedged the trenching tools into the rock and pulled out thick slabs that had been mortared into place. Leaning out over the ledge, Annja spotted a smooth stone face inset with a keyhole.

  She thought at first Thabit was going to produce the key, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped back into the dying glow of the flares. Then she thought Thabit was going to have his men force the door. The keyhole was there for a reason. If he forced the door whatever was inside might be destroyed. Not that he cared.

  Then one of the men slapped a chunk of plastic explosive to the stone door and inserted an electronic detonator. He retreated as Annja tried frantically to figure out what to do to save Abdelilah Karam’s papers.

  In the next instant, a gunshot split the relative silence inside the cavern. The muzzle flash briefly illuminated Rafe MacKenzie in the doorway. Then he was firing again.

  Chapter 40

  Acting quickly, Annja dropped over the ledge, grabbed the plastic explosive from the wall and heaved it toward the pool. Then she vaulted onto the steps as Thabit spotted her and started yelling. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the plastic explosive drop into the pool.

  Then the explosive detonated, filling the cavern with light and thunder and water. A deluge flooded over Annja as she rolled over onto the steps, and bullets chopped a ragged line against the stone wall where she’d been standing.

  She stayed in a crouch as she ran up the steps. The blast had knocked Thabit, Hamez and the Shiite warriors off their feet, but they recovered quickly. Two of them pounded after Annja while the othe
rs returned MacKenzie’s fire.

  Ears ringing with the explosion, all the gunshots and frantic shouts now muted, Annja reached the top of the steps and crouched. The flares had burned out and the only light in the cavern was created by the muzzle flashes. The effect was like strobe lights in the darkness. Slices and flashes of images loomed suddenly out of the dark and made everyone look as if they were moving in stop-motion.

  When the first man reached the top of the steps, Annja slashed with the sword and knocked his rifle aside. A line of rapid-fire bullets slapped into the far wall, throwing off showers of sparks. Annja pivoted on her left leg and drove her right boot into the man’s face. He crumpled at once and she moved forward to meet the next man, giving no quarter.

  She used the sword to catch the man’s rifle barrel on the cross hilt and force it up. The rifle fired repeatedly till Annja reached out with her other hand, caught the front of the man’s uniform and heaved him over the side. She vaguely heard him scream before he hit the ground. In the reflected glow of the shots, she saw him lying silent and still on the stone floor.

  MacKenzie and Yahya dashed into the cavern even though Thabit and most of his men still fought. On their footsteps, more Shiite warriors filed into the room. MacKenzie led his protégé up the steps on the other side of the room, but the young man quickly went down under a hail of gunfire. He lay there, crying out for MacKenzie, who reached back and pulled him onto the ledge with him.

  The newly arrived Shiites tried to rush up the steps. MacKenzie opened fire from a prone position and chopped three of them down before they reached the top. The others scattered back into the darkness.

  Annja sank into the shadows, too, marking positions in her mind and trying to come up with a plan. The entrance was a deadly no-man’s-land, a kill box for anyone who tried to leave that way.

  A flare arced out from the ledge and delivered blinding light as it plummeted to the center of the cavern.

  “Thabit!” MacKenzie’s harsh voice rang out and penetrated the dense cotton in Annja’s ears.

  Thabit answered from somewhere in the darkness. “What do you want?”

  “I see you found your little treasure box over there.” MacKenzie’s tone mocked the Shiite leader. “The way I hear it, a lot of those little hidey-holes are set up with traps. I’ve got the key that goes to it. Maybe you want to negotiate.”

  Oh, man. Everybody was holding out on me. Annja remained flat against the wall.

  “There is one problem.” Thabit was on the run and Annja barely tracked his movement through the darkness. “I do not want anything from that vault. So we have nothing to negotiate.” The warriors around him opened fire.

  Bullets chipped stone along the ledge where MacKenzie lay in hiding and ricocheted from the ceiling and walls. Yahya yelled again in pain. MacKenzie was pinned down, unable to return fire.

  Hamez led a small group of Shiites up the steps toward MacKenzie’s position.

  Unable to watch the American be executed, Annja sprang forward. Thabit’s entourage caught sight of her and brought their rifles around. Annja ran her sword through one man’s chest, then grabbed him by the shirt collar and held him as a shield. She let go of the sword and it faded away at once as she caught the man’s rifle before it could hit the ground.

  Sweeping it up, Annja held the trigger down and emptied the magazine into the three men in front of her. She threw the weapon away and pulled the sword to her again, shoving the dead man aside and stepping through the strobing muzzle flashes toward Thabit.

  Thabit turned and fired at her almost point-blank. Reacting instinctively, knowing she couldn’t get out of the way, Annja flipped the sword so the flat of the blade came between her and Thabit. The bullet slammed into the sword and stopped. The vibration shivered through Annja’s arms as she took another step before he could fire again and delivered a roundhouse kick that caught him in the face.

  Hamez lifted his rifle and aimed at Annja as she threw herself forward. The sword vanished again and she rolled forward as Hamez’s rounds cut the air where she’d been standing. She caught herself, rolled to the side and kicked the legs out from under the final guard who was standing almost on top of her. He fell heavily. She grabbed the back of his head and hammered his face into the stone floor.

  Then she rolled away again as Hamez fired another burst that struck the man she’d knocked unconscious. She came to a crouching position behind Thabit and encircled the man’s neck with her arm as he tried to get to his feet. She came up with him, and the sword was again in her hand.

  Together, she and Thabit faced Hamez and the remaining Shiite warriors.

  Annja lifted her voice. “Put down your weapons or I’m going to kill him.” She held the sword at his throat.

  “I do not believe you can kill a helpless man, Miss Creed.” Hamez strode forward, locked behind the sights of his rifle.

  The pool was behind her, leaving her nowhere to retreat to.

  “I will, however, have no problem at all killing you.” Hamez froze, and a sick expression stretched across his face. Slowly, he looked down and saw edged steel protruding from his chest. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth, then he sagged to the ground as his rifle clattered beside him.

  Garin Braden stood silent and grim above the dead man. Behind him, Annja spotted Roux and another man. They each held a sword.

  “Hello, Annja.” Garin cleaned his weapon on the dead man’s shirt. “I trust you are well.”

  “I am.”

  Roux came forward and inspected her in the glow of the dying flare in the center of the cavern. “You didn’t really think this through, did you?”

  Annja grinned at the old man. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I had them right where I wanted them.”

  “Poppycock. You and your curiosity.” Roux stood there with blood dripping from his sword. “So what is it that brought you all this way?”

  “I don’t know. Yet.” Annja nodded toward the locked vault. “I haven’t gotten to open it.”

  “I believe there was some mention of a key.” Roux looked up at MacKenzie on the ledge. “Don’t make me come up there and get it.”

  “I don’t know who you are, but I’ve got your skinny butt covered. I’ll ventilate you before you can blink an eye.”

  Roux smiled. “We’ve got Qurtubi.”

  For the first time, Annja realized the young man behind Garin and Roux was no longer there. In the next instant, she saw someone’s arm as the rifle was plucked from MacKenzie’s hands. MacKenzie rolled over onto his back.

  Then something metallic winked as it spun through the air toward Annja. She released the sword back to the otherwhere and caught the brass key.

  Garin pointed his sword at Thabit. “Down on your knees.”

  Reluctantly, Thabit dropped and Garin secured the man’s hands and feet with zip ties. Qurtubi, the young man, brought MacKenzie down the steps similarly secured.

  Roux walked with Annja to the vault and she placed the brass key into the keyhole and turned. The locking mechanism ratcheted, then she caught hold of the heavy door and swung it outward.

  Inside the vaulted room lay several dusty scrolls. The sight took Annja’s breath away. She carefully opened one and saw Abdelilah’s signature on the page. Then she rolled the scroll back up.

  She turned to Habib ibn Thabit. “Why did you want to destroy these?”

  He refused to answer.

  Annja grinned. “Don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. I’ll have them translated. I’ll have the answers soon enough.”

  Roux cleared his throat. “Actually, I read Kufic.” He pulled at his beard. “And I have to admit to being a trifle curious myself now.”

  Epilogue

  Istanbul

  Republic of Turkey

  Annja found Roux where
he’d promised to meet her, which was somewhat surprising because he didn’t always do what he said he would. She took a seat at a table in the small outdoor café on a terrace of the Kanyon shopping mall overlooking Buyukdere Avenue. She’d stepped inside to answer a phone call from David Smythe, letting the archaeologist know she would be returning to the dig site in the Atlas Mountains soon.

  Roux, in tourist-gray pants and a vibrant Hawaiian shirt and Panama boater with sunglasses, glanced up at her and smiled. “Your phone call went well, I assume?”

  Annja nodded. “David said they were able to recover most of the site. The well diggers had hung on to Abdelilah Karam’s remains, so the excavation can continue—more or less. Since the real story is the recovery of Karam’s scrolls and all the history those will reveal, the authentication of the site is not going to be questioned. David is excited to get his hands on those scrolls.”

  “You’ve sent them to him?”

  “By courier. It was his dig, after all. I was just along for the ride.”

  “So you’ll be splitting the fame and fortune of your find.”

  Annja shrugged. “I found something incredible. I don’t do this for the adulation of the masses.”

  “Of course not.” Roux scowled. “You have that reprehensible television program for that.”

  Annja grinned. “You’re still peeved about the flash-mob autograph session at the hotel this morning.”

  “It interrupted breakfast.”

  “Those are my fans.”

  “Ptui. Give me anonymity any day.”

  “Wearing that shirt?”

  “It’s a perfectly lovely shirt. I’ve had a few people ask me if I was Tom Selleck.”

  “Aside from that, did you ever find out why Thabit wanted to destroy the scrolls?” Annja had spent the past two days photocopying the scrolls while Roux read them.