by Alex Archer
Even through the translation Annja could hear the anger in the elder’s voice. Gently, she thought.
“I did not enter your territory with a weapon, nor did I have one in hand when the People took me prisoner. As I said earlier, I was not there of my own volition but rather as a result of my attempt to escape harm at the hands of my enemies.”
This time, it was the translator and the elder who went back and forth for several minutes. Annja didn’t know if they were arguing about the translation or if the translator was offering his advice to the elder. Either way the older man didn’t seem happy with what he was hearing, scowling several times in Annja’s direction.
Hey, I’m not too happy with you, either, bud. Wisely she chose to bite her tongue. Still, she glanced around, noting the position of the palace guards, as well as those of Nagamush and the captain of the guard, just in case she needed to fight her way out of here. What she would do after she got outside, she didn’t know. One thing at a time.
The elder signaled an end to the discussion with a sharp slash of his hand, silencing the translator. He addressed himself to Annja.
“Knowledge of the People—” Annja’s jaw dropped; the old guy knew English, too “—has been forbidden to outsiders since our passage through the Hole in the World. We have jealously guarded our city and will continue until the Twin Gods decide the end has come.”
The elder paused, considering, and then went on. “Yet, according to Nagamush, you have not raised your hand in anger against the People, so I am loath to pass judgment. Death does not seem just.”
Annja let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Nothing like escaping a death sentence to get your pulse going.
“You shall remain with us until I have had sufficient time to eat, drink and pray.”
“So I’m to be a prisoner, then?” Annja asked.
“Think of yourself as an honored guest. Nagamush will see to your needs.”
“Now wait a minute!” Annja began. “There’s no way—”
She didn’t get any further. “You want I carry out the first sentence instead?”
Annja knew how to quit when she was ahead.
“No,” she told him, bowing her head.
With that the wizened old man rose and walked back across the dais, the translator at his heels. They retraced their steps to the door through which they’d entered and disappeared inside.
Annja turned to find Nagamush and the captain of the guards waiting for her. They led her back outside and turned her over to a squad of warriors, who, in turn, took her to a small house on the outskirts of the city. They ushered her into a bedroom at the back of the house.
The door closed behind her and, seconds later, Annja heard the distinctive sound of a bar being slid into place.
She was locked in.
35
Porter and his men had retreated nearly a quarter mile back through the canyons when he called a halt. They waited, listening for signs of pursuit.
They didn’t hear any.
It appeared whoever it was that had attacked them in the canyon had refrained from following them.
Porter’s irritation at being attacked was tempered by his growing excitement over who those natives had been. He had been studying the San tribesmen for months. While they were certainly skilled hunters, the men they had just encountered were far more than that. Not just hunters, but warriors.
For years the idea that there was a lost city somewhere in the Kalahari had been dismissed by the scientific establishment. The San were a nomadic people, migrating across their lands in the wake of the animals that formed their primary source of food. Critics claimed that these were simple hunters with no reason, and no skill, to build anything larger than a temporary camp. A city, especially one made from stone blocks the size of those in Farini’s unsubstantiated photographs, was completely out of the question.
Countering this so-called evidence was the suggestion that perhaps the San hadn’t built the Lost City at all, but that another tribe, possibly one not previously known to modern researchers, had.
Porter believed that he and his men had just run into that very tribe.
And if that was the case, then following the tribe might take them right to the Lost City.
Bryant was playing rear guard so Porter called him over.
“Is that locator working?” Porter asked.
Bryant nodded. “The signal’s faint, but steady.”
“Let me see it.”
Bryant turned on the display, then handed the phone over to Porter. There was no sign of the blue signal, but the red signal that indicated Creed’s position was moving slowly north, deeper into the canyons.
Porter thought back to the confrontation. The tribal warriors had directed their attack at Porter and his men. Not at Creed. At least, not that he had seen.
Could she be in league with them? Was that why she ran in that direction? Had she previously made contact with those who occupied the Lost City and counted on their protection?
That was it. It had to be!
He turned to Bryant. “Creed’s working with the warriors who attacked us and there’s only one place they could have come from. If we want to find the city, we follow them.”
“Right.”
Bryant took the map out and spent a few minutes studying it before sharing his thoughts with Porter.
“If they continue on their present path,” he said, “we should be able to follow the ridgeline here and catch up to them. Once we have, our position should keep us from being seen and all we’ll have to do is wait for them to lead us to our destination.”
Within minutes the group was back on the trail.
* * *
SOMETIME LATER, Porter and Bryant lay in the shadow of a large boulder perched on a cliff. Using binoculars, they looked down into the canyon before them at Creed and her companions.
Not companions, Porter corrected himself. Captors.
The ropes binding Creed’s hands behind her back were obvious even without the binoculars. So maybe this tribe wasn’t in Creed’s back pocket, after all, not like he’d thought.
Serves her right.
Porter moved the binoculars from Creed to the massive stone edifice they were approaching. Possibly a temple, he guessed. Unlike his father, who would have been swooning over a find in such well-preserved condition, Malcolm really didn’t see any value in the structure itself. It was just another old building in a lifetime of old buildings, as far as he was concerned. No, what interested him was the fact that Creed and her captors seemed to be headed directly for it.
What is in that temple?
He soon had his answer.
Four armed men stepped out to greet them. After a few minutes, they all disappeared inside the temple.
“What do you think?” Bryant asked.
Porter didn’t take his eyes from the binoculars. “Not sure yet...”
He waited for the group to come back out, but when they hadn’t after twenty minutes he reluctantly decided that they weren’t going to.
The temple had to lead somewhere else.
He was about to turn away when motion caught his eye once more. A lone warrior emerged from the entrance, followed the wall of the canyon until he reached a small alcove and then stepped inside. He would be out of sight of anyone looking out from inside the temple, but because of their relative positions above him, Porter and Bryant were able to see him quite clearly. The warrior stepped over to a ditch dug in the ground, pulled up his loincloth and squatted to relieve himself.
Porter recognized an opportunity when he saw one.
“Go!” he said to Bryant, only to discover the big man was already on his way.
By the time Porter and the others caught up to him, Bryant was standing over the rapidly cooling body of the tribesman, a pool of blood spreading out at his feet.
“Well?” Porter asked.
Bryant shook his head. “Nothing but that damned click speech. Figured it was bet
ter if we didn’t leave him in our wake.”
Porter agreed. The last thing they needed was this guy sneaking up on them from behind.
“Now what?” Bryant wanted to know.
Porter grinned. “We keep on, of course.”
The decision was made to sneak up on the entrance from the side. Bryant and two of his men would enter, while the others stayed with Porter until the coast was clear.
In the end, the strategy worked even better than expected. Bryant and the others slipped inside the building, discovered the other three tribesmen sitting around a small fire in one of the adjacent rooms, preparing to eat, and three quick shots eliminated them as a threat.
A few minutes of searching led them to the tunnel Annja and the other warriors must have taken less than an hour before. Without hesitation, they lit torches from the pile on the table and headed down the tunnel in pursuit.
Bryant took point, staying a good fifteen yards ahead of the main group, trusting his instincts and the night vision he’d honed over years in the service. Because of that, he was able to spot the final pair of guards before the others rounded the corner and betrayed themselves with their lights.
He took one final look, then hustled back to the others. After telling the group to dim their lights and remain where they were, the ex-soldier drew his knife and disappeared into the darkness ahead.
Porter waited, fully confident in Bryant’s ability to handle the problem.
After several minutes there was a thud from somewhere up ahead, followed seconds later by another.
Then silence.
Success, Porter thought.
He was straining to make out the sound of Bryant’s return, but the other man was able to get right up next to him before he even knew he was there.
“Sentries won’t be a problem anymore,” Bryant told them, wiping the blade of his knife on his pant leg before sliding it back into its sheath. “I can see daylight up ahead.”
They traversed the remaining length of the tunnel without incident and stood within the mouth of the cave, staring out at the city before them in the late-afternoon sunlight.
“Want me to find a way down?” Bryant asked after a few minutes.
Porter pulled the binoculars away from his face and shook his head. “No, not yet.”
He stepped away from the entrance and paced back and forth, his thoughts awhirl. The legends involving the Lost City always made note of its vast wealth. It stood to reason if the city was real, that the treasure was, as well. And if that was the case, which Porter believed it was, the city’s rulers probably wouldn’t be inclined just to give it to him when he came asking for it.
Fat chance of that.
He was going to have to take it. Just like everything else in his life. Take it by force.
He thought about that narrow entrance to the tunnel they’d just passed through. A small, decently armed force could hold off an army in that tunnel if they had enough preparation time. Even with modern weaponry, it would be tough to bring a group of the size he needed to take the city by force through that tunnel. There had to be a better way.
He turned back toward the cave mouth and his gaze automatically slipped to the opening high above the city where the last of the day’s sunshine could be seen. It was like standing inside the base of a volcano, he thought, and looking out through the cone.
Out through the cone...
Just like that Porter knew how he was going to do it.
By this time tomorrow, the city, and its treasure, would be his.
36
The room was rectangular and about the size of a studio apartment back in Brooklyn. It had one entrance, the door she’d just come through, and a single window.
A quick check of the window revealed that bars covered it on the outside. Escape through that route was unlikely unless she was willing to make a fair bit of noise. The room was also lightly furnished, with just a bed and a table with two chairs of carved wood. A clay chamber pot stood in the far corner.
“Now what?” she asked herself, but no answers were forthcoming.
She sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly exhausted. It had been a long and difficult day and she’d had very little to eat. In fact, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t had anything at all since getting up that morning.
Just then she heard the bar on the door lift. She came to her feet, hands loose and at the ready, in case the elder had changed his mind and had sent warriors to carry out his “preferred” sentence. They wouldn’t be expecting her to be armed and that might buy her enough time to...
Thoughts of escape vanished as the door opened and her two guards entered the room, followed by Nagamush. In his hands was a tray full of food and a jug of what Annja suspected was water.
Her stomach rumbled at the sight.
Nagamush said something, then shook his head and tried again. This time it came out more clearly.
“Eeee-t.”
Surprised by his effort to speak her language, Annja smiled at him and received a smile in return. Perhaps there was a potential ally in the making.
The three men stepped back outside the door, which was then closed and barred behind them. Annja barely noticed; all she had eyes for was the food.
The tray held several different fruits and a bowl of some kind of meaty stew. A wooden spoon had been included, as well. In the jug, she found water, just as she’d suspected.
Annja didn’t waste any more time. She dug in with enthusiasm. After a few bites she decided the meat was some kind of antelope, chewy and with a distinct but not unpleasant gaminess that reminded her of venison or reindeer. She ate most of it, but set aside some of the fruit for later. She was going to need it for the energy required when she made her break for freedom later that night.
When she was finished, she used the chamber pot and then settled onto the bed.
She was asleep within seconds.
* * *
PORTER AND HIS TEAM retreated back down the tunnel as quickly as possible. They collected the bodies of the sentries they had killed on the way in and then stashed them in a small cave they found a short distance from the temple. With any luck, the bodies would soon be found by scavengers and any trace of them would disappear before the men were even missed.
The sun had long since set by the time they made their way back to the SUVs they’d had to leave behind at the dry riverbed, but even in the dark it didn’t take the men long to set up camp. Fires were prohibited, but cold rations and spare water were passed around so that the men would be comfortable. Bryant established a two-man watch that would last them through the night and settled in to take the first shift.
Meanwhile, Porter was on the satellite phone, rounding up the men and materials he would need for what he had in mind. It took some time and more than once he had to call back on alternate numbers as some of his suppliers were with other clients, but in the end he got everything he needed. Some of it was going to take a few hours to arrive, but his suppliers assured him he would have everything by early afternoon.
What he did with it at that point, of course, was up to him.
Of course, Porter thought.
After hanging up, he filled Bryant in on the plan and the two of them spent the next few hours ironing out the details. With the firepower he had called in, Porter was confident they would be more than a match for anything the tribesmen threw at them.
By the time he called it a night, Porter was feeling very confident.
Very confident indeed.
37
Annja awoke several hours later. Moonlight streamed in through the window, telling her the sun had long since set.
She rose to her feet, stretched and then walked over to the window. The streets outside were deserted and the town itself was quiet.
She tiptoed to the door and put her ear against it, listening carefully. After a moment she was rewarded with the sound of someone snoring on the other side.
She leaned back and examined the door.
While it was well built, it certainly didn’t have the precision that modern tools would have given it, and there was a quarter-inch-wide crack separating the edge of the door from the doorjamb.
It was perfect.
No better time than the present.
Stepping back, she reached out and called her sword to her. It appeared in her hand the next instant, fully formed and ready for use. The blade seemed to glow with a life of its own in the silvery light.
Without hesitation Annja slid the blade into the crack, pushed it forward a few inches and then drew it slowly upward until she felt it hit the wooden bar placed across the door to secure it.
The snoring aside, it was clear the guards weren’t paying attention; no one would see the tip of a sword emerge from the door of a room where the prisoner was supposed to be unarmed and not raise a fuss. Which meant Annja would have a few extra seconds from the element of surprise once she got the door open.
Hopefully those seconds would be enough.
She took two deep breaths to prepare herself and then yanked the sword up a good couple of feet.
She felt the bar slide up with the sword and then tip out of its metal brackets. It hit the floor with a clatter that sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness of the night. Annja barely noticed. She was already in motion and had no intention of stopping until she was free.
She came through the door with her sword up and startled the guard, who was staring wide-eyed at the crossbeam now lying at his feet. He had just enough time to register her presence before the flat of her sword caught him across the side of the head and he went down without a fight, unconscious before he hit the floor.
The sleeping guard had been startled awake by the noise and was just now sitting upright on the floor mat he’d been using as a bed. His eyes grew wide as he took in Annja coming toward him. He was so focused on the sword in her right hand that he never saw the haymaker left she threw. The solid punch connected with his jaw and that was all it took. One blow and he was out. As he slumped over, Annja caught him and lowered him to the floor.