by Alex Archer
"Liberty braided-hair half pennies," Hallinger said as he examined them. "The full penny at the time was the size of a half dollar now."
"Those were minted between 1840 and the late 1850s," one of the students said. Brian was calm and easygoing.
Hallinger glanced at his student and smiled. "We didn't cover that in class."
Brian grinned shyly. "I've been into coin collecting since I was a kid. My dad bought me a metal detector as soon as I was big enough to carry it. We spent our weekends tramping through battlefields all over the South."
"Your father was a treasure hunter?"
"Still is. Drives Mom crazy. But he's making serious money on eBay with the stuff he finds. Coins, jewelry, stuff like that. He's made enough from his hobby to buy an RV so he's not camping in a tent on weekends anymore. Mom's okay with that. She gets to work on her genealogy stuff."
Hallinger glanced at his watch. "Maybe we should think about taking a break. It's almost nine. We've been working for hours."
Annja nodded. She was still ready to work, but she knew she would be until she fell on her face. The idea that the group of men in the furnace room was some kind of war party wouldn't leave her thoughts. Where had they come from? Where were they going? Who had killed them? She was curious, definitely hooked on the mystery that had been dropped into Hallinger's lap.
But the professor and his crew had been on-site since early that morning.
Hallinger looked at her, and Annja knew he read what was on her mind. "Just a break. We'll be back." He turned to the students. All of them were covered in grime and sweat. They looked tired and hungry. "I'll even spring for pizza. I'm sure I can get the university to pick up the tab."
"Sure. Just let me get this." Annja reached for the large stone covered in Hausa writing. A long journey. She couldn't help wondering what that meant. Were they starting a long journey? Or coming back from one? Why had the men been armed when they knew it would mean death for them? Had they been on the same journey when they'd been killed?
Out in the hallway, someone yelped in pain.
"Get down!" a gruff voice roared. "Get down on the ground on your face and you won't get hurt!"
Annja put the rock aside as she stood. Unconsciously, she reached into otherwhere and felt her sword at her fingertips. She kept it ready but didn't pull it into the world with her. In two quick strides she reached the opening and peered out into the low tunnel.
****
Three men in ski masks, maybe more, hurried along the tunnel. They all carried semiautomatic pistols sporting thick, stubby silencers. They blinded the students with high-intensity flashlights.
One of the students wheeled around and shoved a girl behind him. He reached for the lead invader. The masked man barely moved the pistol he held in close to his side. The muzzle-flash briefly flared in the tunnel, and only a slight coughing sound reached Annja's ears.
The bullet struck the student in the upper chest and forced him backward. Blood spattered the wall and coated the nearby electric bulb. The crimson liquid hissed and smoked for just a moment, then the bulb burned out and went dark.
"Sit down," the masked man ordered, "or I'll put the next bullet between your eyes."
The student was too stunned to move. In disbelief, he put a hand over his chest against the wound.
The masked man reached the student, shoving out a hand that hit the young man in the throat and knocked him off his feet. The young woman was screaming.
Annja held on to the sword hilt. It felt solid and sure in her hand. All she had to do was pull and the blade would be there in the tunnel with her.
And the big guy with the gun will shoot you. Or someone else, Annja thought. Reluctantly, she released the sword.
"You!" The masked man waved at Annja. "Get down! Now!"
Annja lay on the ground. Ahead of her, the young woman held the gunshot victim. He quivered and jerked, but Annja thought it was shock setting in. He was still breathing, so she chose to remain optimistic.
The masked man reached her. "Where's the stone?"
Annja kept her voice level, holding the fear and adrenaline that filled her at bay. "What stone?"
"Don't play games with me. The Spider Stone."
She chose not to answer. It's nine o'clock. Maybe it's dark outside, but these guys couldn't have gotten in here unseen. Someone has to have seen them, she thought.
The masked man pointed the pistol at the young woman holding the gunshot victim. She cried out in fear and tried to crawl away, but there was nowhere to go in the narrow tunnel.
"I'll ask you one more time, then I'll kill her. Where is it?"
"It's in the other room." Annja pointed.
The masked man stepped over her, following the pistol into the furnace room. Stepping into the room, tearing through the grid they'd strung so carefully, he stooped and picked up the stone in one gloved hand.
Annja waited for the police to arrive. She hoped they would, but she dreaded it, too. Police might mean gunplay, and gunplay could mean a lot of dead university students.
"No, it's here. I got it." The masked man looked at the stone. "It's covered in writing. I can't make it out. It's not in English."
For a moment, Annja thought the man was talking to himself, then she saw the outline of the cell phone earbud under the ski mask.
The masked man tossed the stone to one of his compatriots and turned to Annja. "Where are your notes?"
"I've got a microcassette recorder in my pocket," she said.
The gloved hand flicked impatiently. "Gimme."
Annja dug the device out and handed it over. She hated feeling helpless, and she was scared. But she didn't let the fear take over.
The masked man shoved the cassette recorder into a thigh pocket of his camouflage pants and sealed the Velcro tab. Seeing the military-style pant and thinking about the way the guy moved and wasn't squeamish about shooting other people, Annja thought maybe he was – or had been – military. The black boots looked like military issue, too.
The man's eyes focused on hers through the slits of his mask. "What does it say on the stone?"
"I don't know," Annja said honestly.
"The professor held up operations here till you arrived. Don't tell me you can't read the stone."
"I can. Some of it."
"What does it say?"
"I didn't get a chance to decipher all of it. It mentions something about a journey."
"To where?"
"I don't know. I wasn't the first choice for the job. I'm doing the best I can. We were working the room first. We were going to address the stone later."
Frustration glinted in the man's cold eyes. He swung his pistol toward one of the students again.
"I'm telling you the truth." Panic knotted Annja's stomach. Violence was something she still wasn't used to even though she'd been through quite a lot of it lately – since she'd acquired the sword – but she could deal with it. The possibility of watching the man shoot someone through the head to prove his point made her sick. "I could lie to you. I could tell you anything I wanted. You wouldn't know the difference."
"I'd know if you were lying to me," he said.
"Then prove it." Annja looked directly into those cold, hard eyes. She spoke slowly. "I haven't finished translating the stone yet. I don't know any more about what's written there than I've told you." When she finished, her heart was hammering inside her chest. Part of her knew that the student was about to die.
Then the masked man lifted the pistol. "All right. You don't know what it says."
Annja released her pent-up breath.
"But you can translate it."
"Maybe."
"That's why Hallinger brought you in."
"Yes."
"Fine. Let's go." The masked man caught Annja's left arm, yanked her to her feet and twisted her arm behind her.
Pain shot through Annja's arm, but she stubbornly refused to cry out. She also resisted the impulse to attempt to break free. Whi
le at the orphanage, she'd gotten involved in martial arts, then continued her studies in college and after graduation. When she was home in Brooklyn, she still took classes in various dojos and even did some boxing.
Wait, she told herself. Don't react until you have to, or until you can make a difference. She looked around at the students and hated seeing the fear in their eyes. None of them had signed on for what they were currently dealing with. She didn't want the men responsible for that to escape.
****
Shoved ahead of the masked man, Annja hurried down the tunnel. In seconds they reached the warehouse. The plywood covering the broken windows didn't quite block out all the light. Enough remained that Annja knew at least some of the crowd still remained outside. There were probably even a few reporters waiting to do remotes for the last news shows of the evening.
The masked man shoved Annja toward a side door that had been boarded shut. A fine spray of sawdust showed on the scarred wooden floor.
One of the men opened the door, and Annja's captor shoved her through to the dark, narrow alley on the other side. In the alley, Annja heard car engines idling out front, letting her know the police hadn't deserted their posts, either.
A rope ladder dangled from the building opposite the warehouse.
"Up." The masked man pointed toward the ladder.
Annja went, moving along the ladder quickly. Too quickly as it turned out.
The man grabbed her leg. She looked down at him, one hand over the top of the two-story building. Moonlight shone against her hand, washing away all color.
"Slowly." The man held on to her and aimed the pistol at the center of her body. "Try anything and I'll drop you."
Annja waited until he released her leg, then she went up.
Another man with a rifle equipped with telescopic sights hid on the rooftop. In the distance in front of the warehouse, two police cars with spinning lights stood guard. Two men sat on the hood of one of the cars drinking from paper cups.
Annja tried not to feel angry with them. Someone had been out in front of the warehouse since the bodies had been discovered. She was certain everyone involved was getting tired of the duty.
In short order, the five men who had invaded the dig site joined Annja and the sniper on the rooftop. All of them were heavily armed.
"When do we blow the building?" one of the men asked.
"Now," the big man said.
Ice water filled Annja's veins. She couldn't wait any longer. Reaching into the otherwhere, she gripped the sword and ripped it free just as the first man started to take an electronic detonator from his chest pack. She swung at him even before the sword was completely in her reality.
"Look out!" one of the men yelled, lifting his pistol.
Chapter 3
The sword appeared in Annja's hand as she swung it toward the demolitions man's chest pack. The man was caught flat-footed.
Three feet of naked double-bladed steel, honed to razor-sharp edges, whipped through the air. The sword was inelegant, a tool designed for bloody work, not a showpiece to be kept on a mantel somewhere. It was the sword of a warrior.
The sword tip sliced through the chest pack and nicked the flesh beneath. Annja could have killed the man where he stood. Instead, she whirled and caught the tumbling remote control in her free hand, folding her right leg into her chest, then driving it forward in a side kick.
The man flew backward three or four yards, landing in a heap. He didn't move again.
Annja was fairly certain she'd rendered him unconscious but hadn't killed him. She made it a point not to kill unless she had to.
She turned, too fast for any of the surprised men to stop her, though they tried. She shook off one man's hand, then swept the sword forward and blocked the sniper's attempt to shoot her. Metal grated on metal.
Professor Hallinger and the others had burst free of the warehouse. The shouting on the ground quickly escalated into mass confusion.
The man who'd taken her hostage took aim at Annja as she ran to the roof access door. She dodged, feeling a bullet scald the air close to her cheek. From the corner of her eye, she spotted the masked man taking aim again.
She dived forward, tucking the sword and the detonator in close, rolling to the side as bullets thudded into the rooftop behind her. Coming to her feet immediately, she raced for the access door and took shelter behind it just as a fusillade of bullets raked the front of the structure.
The screaming detonation of automatic fire told Annja the thieves no longer favored silence.
"Up there!" someone shouted.
Dropping to her knees, Annja glanced at the remote control and saw a panel on the back. Laying the sword aside for a moment, she opened the back and popped the batteries out. Placing the detonator on the ground, she picked up the sword and smashed the device with the hilt.
Footsteps sounded to her right.
The moon was behind the man. Evidently he hadn't noticed because his shadow stretched out before him, arriving well before he did.
Annja broke to her left. The roof's edge wasn't far away. Close enough, she thought, that she could make it. If she had to, she could probably jump to street level to escape.
But she didn't want to escape. These men had gone into the warehouse, and one of them had callously shot a student as if it were nothing.
Annja didn't intend to let them simply walk away. That hadn't been her way before she'd found the sword, and it definitely wasn't her way now.
On the other side of the roof-access structure, she could see that the other men were now in full flight. They headed north across the rooftops, away from the warehouse, leaping the distance between the close-set buildings. They'd left behind the man she'd kicked. He still lay prone on the roof.
Moving quickly, Annja vaulted on top of the access structure and scrambled forward. On the other side, the shadowy man advanced around the corner, both hands supporting his pistol as he spun to face where he believed Annja was hiding.
Her shadow, caught by the moon, shot out ahead of the structure's shadow on the rooftop. The sudden appearance must have caught the man's attention. He tried to turn and bring his weapon up, stepping back to give himself room to work.
Gripping the structure with one hand, Annja swung down, angling her body so that her left foot caught the man in the face. He went down, falling backward and losing his grip on the pistol.
Annja landed on her feet, knees bent to absorb the shock. She slid naturally into a horse stance, then swung the sword and brought the flat of the blade hard against the side of the man's head as he struggled to get to his feet. He slumped on the rooftop, unconscious.
Turning, Annja set off in pursuit of the fleeing men. Her stride was immediately long and sure, eating up the distance. She had no idea who had sent the men, but it was obvious that someone felt the stone was important.
She made the leap to the next building easily, lengthening her stride again. Ahead, the men disappeared over the side of one of the buildings. Annja ran faster.
****
When she reached the edge of the last building, Annja peered down carefully. She caught sight of the gunman stationed below just as he fired the machine pistol he held. Annja barely yanked her head back in time to keep her face from getting shot off.
Bullets ripped through the air in front of her, then chipped into the stone side of the building as the gunner tried to correct his aim. The gunfire and whine of the bullets ricocheting from the wall rang in her ears.
Farther out, three of the men ran for a white van that skidded to a stop in front of the single police car blocking the alley from curious pedestrians. The policeman took cover behind his vehicle as he shouted on his radio. The radio squawks were overwhelmed by the sound of the gunfire.
Two gunmen slid free of the van. Both of them held fully automatic weapons that peppered the police car. The lone police officer tried to duckwalk away from his vehicle as bullets cored through the police car. Before he'd taken a half-dozen
steps, he pirouetted and dropped, sprawling to the ground.
One of the gunners in the van turned his weapon on the rooftop where Annja stood. More bullets tore through brick and mortar where she took cover. Frustrated, she waited out the onslaught. She had no choice.
Rubber shrieked on the street as sirens shrilled on the other side of the warehouse.
Chancing a look down, Annja saw the white van speeding away. She also knew with the way the road curved along the warehouse district, coming back around in almost a 180-degree turn, that the thieves hadn't gotten away cleanly. She still had a chance.
She ran to the side of the building that overlooked the street where the van would have to pass along. She charged down the metal fire escape, steps banging as she made the twists and turns. She reached the final ladder, grabbed hold of it with her free hand and jumped on to ride to the ground.
Taking cover in the shadows, Annja kept her hand around the sword hilt and watched as the van came sliding around the far turn. The bright lights played over her position, then kept on moving, coming closer.
Okay, Annja told herself, this is your last chance to rethink what you're about to do. She kept picturing the innocent student the masked man had shot in cold blood. She knew that Professor Hallinger would feel responsible. She didn't want the men to get away.
Annja stepped out of the darkness into the path of the speeding van. She held the sword in both hands, up high so she could sweep the blade down.
Roux had worked with her for a time on her swordcraft, then he'd ultimately found more pleasant pursuits after spending five hundred years looking for the pieces of the shattered sword. She still practiced with the sword every day, getting to know the weapon more and more intimately as she worked.
The van's headlights fell across Annja. Shadows within the front seats moved. The passenger leaned out his window and took aim.
Annja ran toward the van, matching her speed and her stride, running toward the driver's side to make it more difficult for the gunner to track her. Bullets cracked through the air as the muzzle-flashes appeared in sporadic bursts.
At the last moment, Annja leaped, placing one foot on the van's hood and pushing off again. She arced up, twisting her body so that she flipped and landed on her feet on the van's roof. She was sure that before she'd gotten the sword she could never have accomplished such a maneuver. Now it was almost child's play.
