Eternal Journey

by Alex Archer

  He started to say something, but she was vaulting away, tumbling down and drawing fire.

  Annja thought she had a slight advantage in that her assailants were not wearing night-vision goggles. She was fast and constantly changing direction, making herself a difficult target. Of course, she was outnumbered, and they had guns. Lots of guns.

  A bullet whizzed by her head so close it sheared off a lock of her hair. Another sent gravel flying against her goggles. They were better shots than the men at the hotel, she grimly mused as she cleared the bottom of the ridge and dashed to the closest tent. Bullets from the Uzi chewed up the ground behind her. She ducked behind the canvas and caught her breath, then sprinted to the next tent as more rounds ripped into the canvas where she’d been a heartbeat before.

  Wes and the others had to be hearing this, she thought. The ridge couldn’t cut all the sound. She spun and then flattened herself on the ground behind Jon’s tent. Bullets chewed the canvas and burst the lantern inside. She instantly smelled smoke and realized the oil from the lantern had spilled on something and caught fire. The growing light registered painfully in her goggles, and she looked away.

  Fine, she thought, I’ve successfully drawn the attention of all four of them. I’ve bought Dari some time, but how much time do I have? She squeezed the hilt tight in her right hand. Her left palm was pressed against the ground, tiny shards biting into it. In lulls in the gunfire, she heard the men reloading and talking among themselves. Some of it was in a language she couldn’t understand, but two of the men spoke English.

  “Has to be the Creed woman,” one man said. “Hamam and Sayed want her dead.”

  There was more gunfire and Annja sprinted to the south, drawing them toward what she hoped was her salvation. She shrugged out of her jacket as she went, transferring the sword from hand to hand so she could pull out her arms. She was careful not to run too close to the slabs covered with canvas. Errant gunfire could ruin the ancient carvings.

  “Kill her!”

  Now there’s scintillating speech, Annja thought.

  “Shoot her now!”

  Bullets sprayed in her wake, and she dived into the shadows, dropping the jacket strategically, then rolling and coming to a rest on her stomach, sword flat against the ground, and little rocks biting into her. She breathed shallowly and through her goggles kept her eyes trained on the men. Her side hurt fiercely, and she hoped she hadn’t done any further damage to her ribs.

  The two with pistols and M-14 Minis approached from the northeast, her left. They were almost shoulder to shoulder and of similar builds. They weren’t amateurs; she could tell that in the way they moved and how they constantly looked around for a target. Trained by some military or in a mercenary camp, she guessed.

  “She went this way,” one of them said, his voice carrying in the stillness.

  “Into the darkness,” the other replied.

  So these were the two who spoke English—and with actual English accents. Annja dug the fingers of her left hand into the damp ground as they moved closer. They were about fifty feet away.

  The other two appeared, skirting the ridge and deep in the shadows. She might not have seen them were it not for her goggles. They were about 250 feet away, maybe a little less. The one with the Uzi jammed another clip into it, tossing the empty one on the ground. He was wearing gloves and so had no fear that fingerprints would draw the authorities to him. The other leveled the M-16.

  Annja hunkered down, sucked in her lower lip and bit down, hoping the competing pain might take her mind off her fiery ribs.

  If they weren’t walking in pairs, Annja knew she would try to take them now, come at them one by one, fast with her sword. This wasn’t like in her hotel room, where the confining space worked to her advantage. As her gaze flitted back and forth between them, the ones with the pistols coming dangerously close, she saw that one of the English-speaking men pointed at the ground.

  “I almost fell in that!” he said.

  His companion knelt. “There’s a rope ladder. Think she went down?”

  “I would,” the first answered. “Where else could she have disappeared to?” He pulled a flashlight from his belt, flicked it on and aimed the beam in the crevice. “I’m going to check it out. There’s a purple jacket caught partway down. It’s got blood on it. We might’ve hit her.” He clipped the flashlight to his belt so it lit up his leg. Gripping the pistol in his right hand, he started down, using his left to help him climb.

  Of course the jacket’s got blood on it, Annja thought. It was blood spatter from the men she’d fought and killed on the ridge.

  His companion stayed up top and waved to the two others. “Remy is checking out a cave. He thinks she’s down there. He found her jacket. Hasan, you go with him.”

  Annja held her breath as the one with the Uzi looked around and cursed softly. He slung the subgun over his arm and followed the first man down the rope ladder.

  “We’ll stay here,” the Englishman told the one with the rifle. “Just in case she’s still around the camp and tried to throw us off track.”

  “Dig,” the rifleman corrected. “Sayed calls this a dig. Says the professor doesn’t like it called a camp.”

  “Whatever. We just need to kill her.”

  “And everyone else out here. The students have to be hiding somewhere.” The man’s accent was thick and exotic sounding but he also spoke English. “Kill the students, Sayed told me. Then kill the archaeologists to the east. The professor wants no witnesses. He wants it to look like thieves after the artifacts. And the one of us who kills the American girl will get a bonus. If she is down in that hole, Hasan will get the money. His Uzi will turn her into pudding.”

  Annja chose that moment to rise and rush at the two men standing near the hole. Engaged in conversation, they were less alert to their surroundings, and too confident that she’d escaped into the cave. It had been just what she’d wanted them to think, and it was why she’d dropped her jacket.

  The one with the M-16 looked up first, bringing the gun up in the same motion. He’d heard her feet slapping across the ground and tried to draw a bead. He saw her and he squeezed off a round just as she leaped at him, sword leading, body parallel to the ground.

  The bullet slammed into her right arm and through it, and this time Annja didn’t manage to stifle the cry of pain. But it didn’t stop her. In the passing of a heartbeat the pain lessened to a bee sting and triggered an adrenaline rush. There was a momentary sensation of numbness that stretched to her hand and made her fingers tingle, but she redoubled her grip on the sword.

  She landed in a crouch as he fired again, the bullet screaming above her head. She rose, knocking the M-16 back with her shoulder as she lunged forward, both hands gripping the sword now. The blade sunk into the gunner’s chest. She’d aimed for his heart and was certain she’d hit the mark. The M-16 fell, and he toppled backward as she yanked her blade free.

  His companion was swinging around with the pistol, squeezing the trigger as she dropped and rolled past him, jumped up and came at him from behind. She swung the sword as if it were a baseball bat and she was aiming for the perfect pitch. There was so much strength behind her swing that when she cleaved into his waist the blade went through to his spine. His cry was agonizing and terrible, and Annja couldn’t pull the sword out with a simple tug. He fell forward, legs and arms quivering, and she planted her good foot on his back to give her leverage so she could retrieve her sword.

  He continued to shake, blood gurgling in his mouth as he cried again.

  “Mercy to you,” she said as she jabbed him in the back, the blade hissing between his ribs and finding his lungs and heart. “Though you’d have granted me no mercy.”

  She heard shouts from below and spun to look into the crevice. The man with the Uzi had been climbing back up and was nearly to the top.

  “No, you don’t.” She pulled the blade free and swung it again, this time at the rope ladder held by the metal spikes. One slic
e at each side was all she needed, her sword was that sharp and she was that strong.

  The man fell, shooting on his way down. Bullets sprayed up, chipping the stone around the opening and causing Annja to dance back. She heard the gun clatter on the stone below, and the heavy thud of his body hitting the bottom.

  She took a moment to catch her breath, and then she looked into the crevice. Directly beneath her was the broken body of the man with the Uzi. Standing over him was the other man who’d climbed down. She watched him feel for a pulse and shake his head, then turn the flashlight on the coil of rope ladder. Finally, he aimed the light up, and Annja withdrew.

  20

  Annja willed the sword away.

  She knew the man was trapped below, and when the authorities arrived, they could deal with him and find a way to get him out. She prayed he didn’t damage anything in an attempt to escape; even though the small relics had been removed, the temple itself was priceless. For a moment she considered using the M-16 to finish him—it would guarantee he not harm the ruins.

  But that wouldn’t be a fair fight. That would be murder.

  She felt her right arm. It was slick with blood from where the bullet had passed through. She’d been grazed in that same shoulder early in the morning.

  “What an amazing day,” she said, as she worked at the left sleeve of her blouse until she ripped it free. She wrapped it around her wound and tied it tight, but not as tight as a tourniquet. She just wanted to staunch the blood. She figured Dr. Michaels would have alcohol or disinfectant. The students probably had some first-aid supplies, but she wasn’t going to take the time to look for them. She needed to get back to the archaeologists.

  She snatched up the M-16 and reloaded it. Then she stuffed some extra ammunition in the back pocket of her jeans. She took a pistol, too, and extra rounds. Neither man had identification or a wallet, though one had a wad of Australian money rolled up. Annja didn’t consider herself a thief, but she knew the dead man had come by the money for doing something terrible. She shoved the roll in her pocket and checked the jacket of the rifleman. He was the smallest of the quartet, and so his jacket would prove the best fit. She still felt feverish, and so she knew she needed to keep warm. Annja found keys in an inside pocket as she put it on. She wouldn’t have to hoof it back over the ridge after all.

  Annja spotted three more M-16s in the back of the jeep, an M-14 Minirifle along with an AK-47, a large box of ammo, an empty duffel bag, a small carton of grenades and a satellite phone. She grabbed the phone and slid into the driver’s seat. She dropped it on the passenger’s seat, along with the M-16 she’d taken off the dead man. She laid the pistol in her lap and started the jeep. The engine purred as she backed up the jeep and turned it around, trying to disturb the ground around the dig as little as possible.

  How did these men manage to get all these guns—and the grenades—into this country?

  “Silly question,” she answered herself. “How do they get guns into any country?” There are always illicit channels for those who look hard enough and grease the right palms with a significant amount of cash. She’d run afoul of too many of those kinds of people in recent times.

  She kept her night-vision goggles on as she drove, carefully and not as fast as she would have liked.

  There was no road here and she was not used to driving sitting on the right side of a vehicle. She kept the headlights off and relied on the black-green sci-fi world the goggles showed to her. Maybe there would be a way to trace this jeep to someone. At the very least the authorities might be able to get something out of the man left alive in the underground temple. Perhaps he would tell them where Oliver’s body was…and the name of the mystery man who hadn’t wanted to be seen and who was behind all this chaos.

  “Or do I already have the man’s name?” Annja searched her memory. She’d heard the men talking, about the professor, whom she was certain was this Dr. Hamam the students mentioned. And the men used the name Sayed. “What, what, what?”

  Something niggled at the back of her brain, something familiar that was hanging just out of range. She slapped her hands against the steering wheel in frustration.

  “What am I missing?”

  Maybe Wes would know. Maybe this Sayed was important in archaeology circles in this part of the world. She hit a rut and the jeep jumped, jarring her and knocking her teeth together.

  “I’m going to need a vacation when I’m through with this,” she groaned.

  But she wasn’t close to through yet. She saw headlights coming in her direction, two pairs.

  “The police,” she said. That’s who she wanted it to be, but she wasn’t certain. There were high grasses ahead, and she pulled into them and killed the engine. Just to be sure, she told herself.

  The vehicles passed her, only one of them close enough for her to get a decent look, and she had to stand to do so, risking being spotted. It was another jeep, or something close, dark colored and driving too fast and carelessly through the preserve. There were no roads so it was bouncing over the uneven earth and digging up bushes and ground cover in its wake. She cringed at the destruction. Four men were inside, at least two with rifles. She saw the silhouettes of the guns sticking up in the back.

  Definitely not the police. More goons from Dr. Hamam and Sayed.

  She could try to take them out. She had rifles and ammo and her night-vision goggles would give her the edge. But there were four of them—and more in the other jeep. Bad odds. Still…she plucked the rifle up from the seat beside her. But before she could bring it to her shoulder the jeeps were gone, bouncing toward the dig.

  They’d find their dead fellows, and maybe the one in the cave below. For a heartbeat she considered following them. But there were the archaeologists and the students to consider. What if there were more than these two jeeps coming? And what if a team of thugs was descending on the other site even now while she just sat here? She started the engine and cut through the tall grass, taking the route another jeep had so as to limit the damage to the preserve.

  She mentally pictured where the Michaels site was with respect to the ridge. Her course took her around the northern edge of the spine, where she caught what at first she thought was an access road. But it was too narrow, a hiking trail then, or a road from years ago that had been allowed to grow over. She took it, and then drove across a wide, fast creek, the jeep having no trouble with the jagged terrain. She spooked a trio of kangaroos, as well as some owls that had been nested above her. She caught a quick glance at one of the owls, pale and no larger than a rock melon. Its head took up half of its body, and its wings looked so short she was amazed it could fly.

  The adrenaline rush was wearing off, and the pain was surfacing in her arm to compete with her other aches. She fought a wave of dizziness and applied a little more gas when she emerged from a copse of small white stringybarks and ironwoods. She saw four vehicles at the edge of her vision, two of them SUVs. From her trip here yesterday she knew they belonged to Dr. Michaels and his crew.

  “I’m close.” She breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a far walk, and she nearly pulled up next to an SUV with the intention of hoofing it the rest of the way. But then she drove past it, finding a gap between two stringybarks and a stretch of uneven grassland. She’d been this way before, on each of the three days she came out with Oliver. The jeep rolled up and over a fallen tree, bouncing her again and rattling the guns in the back. She leaned forward in the seat, nerves jangling and listening for gunfire, screams, anything that might tell her there was trouble ahead.

  “Nothing,” she said. “They’re safe for the moment.” But not for terribly long, she knew. The other men at the student dig had to have found the place deserted and the bodies. They’d be coming this way next. If they haven’t already been here, she thought grimly

  Annja’s eyes widened in terror as she made out ruts in the grass ahead—deep and muddy and very, very fresh.

  “Please, God—“ She didn’t finish the thoug
ht. She pressed the accelerator and bumped toward the dig, seeing the tops of the tents ahead courtesy of the scant moonlight that came through the clouds and her night-vision goggles. She also saw another jeep, just like the one she was driving.

  She roared into the camp, front left wheel clipping a tent post and bringing down one of the archaeologist’s tents. She grabbed the M-14 Mini in one hand and the pistol in another and jumped out of the jeep. Something glowed in the camp, casting a ghastly, ghostly green that was almost painful to look at.

  She scuttled forward, guns in hand, and slipped behind Dr. Michaels’s tent and peered around a corner. She blinked furiously and flipped up her goggles with her forearm. In the center of the site, near the large canopy tent, a fire roared.

  A broad-shouldered man stepped out from behind another tent and started firing at her. He shouted words she couldn’t understand, and gestured with his head to get the attention of his companions.

  Several yards behind him, three men with rifles stood as if at attention, backs to the fire and facing the archaeologists and students.

  “Kill her!” one of them shouted. “We’ll take care of the rest.”

  Annja ducked to avoid the gunfire, and then instantly poked her head back out, returned fire and quickly counted. Seventeen—there should be twenty with Dari. Dari’s face was a bloody mess, as was one of the security guards. They’d put up a fight, Annja thought, and were beaten as punishment.

  She fired again and missed the man shooting at her; she’d been distracted by the scene behind him. Now he was moving, crouching as he ran, using the shadows of a tent for cover as he came closer. She squeezed off another shot and dropped him.

  All but Dari had their hands in the air. She raced forward and saw that his hands were tied in front of him. Then she saw two men raise their rifles to their captives, while the third had turned his attention to her.