by Alex Archer
Anup regarded Dunraj. “You are a fool.”
“What would have happened when they tried to melt it down, Dunraj? They would have discovered the ruse. What would have prevented them from coming after you then?”
Dunraj pursed his lips. “Nothing, I suppose,” he said simply.
Annja frowned. That didn’t seem like the Dunraj she knew. He wouldn’t have been that careless.
“You’re not telling us everything, are you?”
Dunraj smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Annja shook her head. “There’s no way you’d be that reckless. Once the Tigers found out you’d duped them, they’d put a contract out on you. You’d be a dead man walking and you wouldn’t be able to go anywhere. You might dodge the hit teams for a while, but they’d eventually catch up with you.”
“Everyone dies sometime,” Dunraj said. “Look, I rolled the dice, and this time it didn’t come up in my favor.”
“I should kill him now,” Anup said.
“Obviously,” Annja replied. “But then we have that little problem of the bombs he’s left behind.”
Anup hesitated. “What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m still intrigued by the idea that Dunraj was trying to trick you into taking that statue.”
“You’re wasting your time, Annja,” Dunraj said. “It was a gambit that didn’t pan out for me.”
But she knew he was hiding something. And it was something he didn’t want revealed, obviously, by the way he kept trying to skirt the issue.
Annja nodded at Anup. “You should come with me. And bring him. I want to check something out.”
“What? What are you checking out?” Anup waved his pistol. “I’ll shoot if I have to.”
Annja held up her hand. “Relax. I just want to satisfy my own curiosity about something.”
Dunraj sighed. “Do I need to remind you what happened to the cat that was too curious?”
“You’re not in any position to give me advice right now.” Annja walked away from the dump trucks and toward where the statue had fallen. Behind her, Anup was pushing Dunraj ahead of him so they were following.
Annja found the area of impact and set about looking at the fractured pieces of the statue. Anup watched closely.
“What are you looking for?”
Annja shook her head. “I don’t know yet. But I have a feeling that I’ll recognize it when I see it.”
“Is this going to take a while?” Dunraj asked. “Because if it is, I’d like to sit down and rest a spell. My legs are aching.”
Anup frowned disapprovingly. “Sit if you must.”
“Thank you.”
Dunraj sat twelve feet away from Annja and cleared his throat. Annja glanced at him.
“What?”
“Sorry?” Dunraj asked.
Annja shot him a look. “Leave me alone unless you’ve got something to tell us.”
Dunraj glanced up at Anup and then back at Annja. “Nothing. Just that you should really think before blundering into things.”
Annja was beyond irritated. “Shut up, Dunraj.”
“Yes,” Anup said. “Shut up.”
Annja went back to studying the fragments of the statue. From what she could tell, the gold layered over the plaster certainly seemed real enough.
“This is quite the fake,” Annja said. “It must have cost you a lot of money, Dunraj.”
“Far less than I would get for the actual statue.”
Annja nodded, studying the debris. The way the arms had broken off left no doubt that Dunraj had had this manufactured and then buried in the mountain to make it look genuine. He probably had the Tigers come out here when he was proposing the job to them. The sight of this thing partially uncovered in the dirt would certainly have been enough to convince them. And even if it wasn’t, taking a sample of the gold from the arms would have convinced them. It was layered to a thickness of at least a half inch in some places.
But not others.
That meant Dunraj would have had to lead them to the exact point where they could take a sample. Probably he’d left the arm with the thickest layer of gold uncovered, and when the Tigers had seen it, it would have seemed natural for them to test that arm.
Clever.
But why?
Annja wasn’t buying Dunraj’s explanation. And the amount of effort that had gone into this. Why bother with the Tigers at all? Why get them involved in a situation like this? Surely Dunraj had other resources he could have tapped before resorting to a terrorist group.
She kept poking through the fragments and the plaster. The entire area was coated in a fine dust.
“Find anything interesting?”
Annja shook her head. “Not yet.”
Anup frowned. “I don’t have time for this. Let me force him to show me where he has hidden the explosives. Then I can kill him.”
Annja smiled. “You really think he’s going to tell you where he hid bombs if he knows you’re going to shoot him?”
“I have ways to make him talk.”
Annja nodded. “Very nice. I’m sure you have a catalog of nasty things you can do, but it’s counterproductive. Give me a few more minutes here, and then we’ll sort out the bomb business.”
“Two minutes.”
“Generous,” Annja said. “Thanks.”
She bent back to the pieces of the statue. And then something caught her eye. “Hello.”
“Annja.” Dunraj’s voice was quieter now.
Insistent.
But it was too late. Anup had heard Annja’s voice and come closer to look over her shoulder.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Chapter 35
Annja hesitated. “I don’t know. What do you think it is?”
Anup leaned closer. Annja followed his line of sight, not sure if he’d seen it yet. But judging from the look on his face, Anup had. And worse—for Dunraj at least—he was no dummy.
Anup leaned back. “It looks sophisticated. It is definitely not a thing you might purchase in a store. Is it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know all that much about it, to be honest. But judging from the placement and the microcircuitry, I’d have to agree with you. It looks very sophisticated.”
Anup turned and hauled Dunraj to his feet. “Who are you working for? Who told you to put that into the statue?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Honestly. I had that statue commissioned as a fake. If there’s anything in it, it wasn’t put there by me.”
Annja brought out the rest of the wiring and held it aloft. “So what is it? A homing device?”
Dunraj glared at her. If looks could kill, Annja would have been well on her way to the next life. But to Anup, Dunraj merely looked puzzled. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“You are lying.” Anup pitched Dunraj into the back side of a dump truck. Anup followed up with a right cross that set Dunraj on his heels before slumping down the side of the truck unconscious.
Annja nodded. “Nice shot.”
Anup came back over. “Is there any way to tell who built this?”
“I doubt it. As I said, my knowledge of these things is only what I’ve seen in movies. But it’s obvious you were set up. That’s why Dunraj was willing to take a chance like this. He knew this statue would presumably be going—where, exactly?”
Anup frowned but didn’t reply.
“Well, probably your headquarters or something, right? Some secret location, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“Don’t you see?” she said. “That’s what this was about. That’s why you were hired. Dunraj didn’t care about your targets. That was convenient cover to get you in here. And once you’d seen the statue, you were hooked. That kind of money could buy weapons, men, training— everything you’d need to start a full-fledged war with the Indian government.”
“It would have allowed us to take the fight to them.”
“And whoever put this inside the statue knew that. And you can bet once this statue had arrived at wherever you were planning to melt it down, the army would have shown up to kill every last one of you. The irony of this statue certainly isn’t lost on me. You would have all been destroyed by the very goddess a lot of your men probably worship.”
Anup was quiet for a moment. “I will kill the traitor now.”
Annja caught his raised fist. “Wait—don’t forget about the explosives. We don’t have any way of knowing where they are.”
“Are we so sure they even exist? He could be lying to us again. He does that quite often, apparently.”
Annja held up the tiny circuit panel to which a very long wire was attached. “This must have been the antenna. They could run it the length of the statue to help improve its broadcast ability, I’m guessing.”
Anup leaned closer as he looked back at Dunraj. “Who is this horrible man, anyway?”
“I don’t know. But he certainly didn’t want you to find out about this device, that much is certain.”
“Only because I would kill him.”
Annja shook her head. “He was aware of that, anyway. And it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have.”
Kormi and Frank and Pradesh hadn’t yet returned from their search. Was it possible they had found another one of Dunraj’s men in hiding? Or had something happened?
“Did you do anything to my friends?” she asked Anup.
“No, why should I have?”
“We were all looking for you and Dunraj.” She gazed past him toward the trucks. “And now they seem to be missing.”
Anup lifted Dunraj off the ground by the shirt and held him there. “Perhaps this weasel knows where they are?”
Anup shook Dunraj hard. Dunraj’s eyes fluttered. “You really shouldn’t have meddled in this,” he sputtered.
“You didn’t leave me any choice,” Annja replied. “You were trying to kill us. I took steps to make sure that didn’t happen. Not my fault it caused you to run afoul of some very dangerous people.”
Anup shook him again. “Where are her friends?”
“How would I know that? I have no idea what might be keeping them.”
Annja frowned. “I’m really growing to not like you one little bit, Dunraj. Did you set a trap?”
He sighed. “How could I possibly set a trap when this lug here had me at gunpoint for betraying him? What was I supposed to do, run off and set an ambush and then come back to be his prisoner?”
Annja stood and tossed the circuit panel to Anup. “I need to go find them.”
“We will accompany you.” Anup shoved Dunraj ahead of him, and he fell into step with Annja.
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with here, Annja,” Dunraj said adamantly. “You should have listened to me.”
She stopped and turned on him. “At what point? When you were busy not telling me about any of this or later when you couldn’t tell me again?”
“You didn’t need to know.”
“Maybe you should have considered changing your mind about that when it became obvious I was going to be rooting through your precious fake statue. Who put you up to that, anyway? The manufacture of that statue alone would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. And it doesn’t seem like something you would be willing to do for the hell of it.”
“You’re right. It’s not.”
“So who?”
“I suppose it depends on who would stand to gain the most from tracking the Tamil Tigers, wouldn’t it?”
Annja moved closer to the dump trucks. They were still sitting idly by, their engines off. And again, a strange silence seemed to descend on the place.
“Maybe you should go first.”
Dunraj was amused at her suspicions. “There’s nothing here, Annja. I assure you I would know if there was an ambush about to occur.”
“Then why don’t I trust you?”
“Because you have issues with trust? Exactly what you accused me of earlier. A sad story in your childhood?”
Annja rolled her eyes. “Just keep moving.”
They walked in between two dump trucks on the right side, where Kormi and Frank had taken the search. Annja reached out for the sword and held it up in front of her.
Dunraj shook his head. “That is truly a marvel. Do you mind my asking how it is you came by it?”
“Sorry, Dunraj, you don’t have a need to know.”
Behind them Anup held his pistol low and at the ready. Annja shook her head. How in the hell was she partnered up with a terrorist right now? What was her world coming to when something as bizarre as this had become her norm?
I need a vacation. A real one, she thought.
She rounded the corner and stopped. There were tracks in the dirt. Fresh tracks. “Hold it.”
She crouched and examined them. One set was definitely Frank’s. She could tell by the sheer size of the tread.
“Your friends?” Anup asked.
Annja nodded. “I think so.”
“Then they were here.”
“Yes, but I don’t know what happened after this point. You see? The tread changes. It’s no longer walking forward. And there are fresh drag marks in the dirt.”
“They were taken by surprise,” Anup suggested. “And then their captors dragged them away. Possibly unconscious?”
Annja squinted at the dirt. Who could have come upon them and managed to disarm them both? Sure, Frank was a newbie, but Kormi was a seasoned fighter. For someone to get the drop on them like this, it meant they had to be very good.
“I don’t like this one bit,” she said, standing and staring at Dunraj. “You sure you don’t have something else you want to tell me?”
“I can’t think of anything.”
Annja held his gaze. “I get the feeling you’re lying to me again, Dunraj. And I don’t like that.”
“I can’t predict your suppositions. Honestly, the way you carry on gets tedious.”
Anup shoved the barrel of his pistol under Dunraj’s ear. “You are growing tiresome. I should execute you right now for your crimes against the Tamil Tigers.”
Dunraj snorted. “Oh, yes, your grand plans for independence. How stirring. How revolutionary. Please. You’re nothing but a poor excuse for a terrorist organization bent on its own agenda of opportunity. You’re all hypocrites, deluded into believing what your leaders tell you.”
Anup pulled the hammer back on his pistol. Annja held up her hand. “Anup, the explosives.”
“I think he is lying about them, anyway. And in that event, it is time for him to meet his ancestors.”
“Typical response from a terrorist,” Dunraj said.
“You’re not helping your situation,” Annja snapped.
Anup leveled the gun on Dunraj’s head. “I hereby sentence you to death for your crimes of betrayal against Tamil Tigers.”
Annja sighed. “Are you sure about this, Anup?”
“I no longer care.”
Annja looked at Dunraj. “Got any last words?”
Dunraj smiled wickedly. “Actually, yes, I do have a few last words. Well, one, anyway.”
Anup hesitated, lowered the pistol slightly. “And what is that?”
“Boom.”
Dunraj started to laugh. Annja looked at Anup but the Tiger was already bringing the pistol back up. Annja wasn’t entirely sure she could blame him for wanting to end the man’s life. But there was still the matter of finding Kormi, Frank and Pradesh.
Anup said something low in Hindi, but started to squeeze the trigger, anyway.
She heard the gunshot. It sounded like an explosion, but not quite as loud as she expected from being so close to the shooter.
But Dunraj’s head didn’t explode.
Anup’s did.
And as his body crumpled to the ground, Dunraj smiled. “You see? I told you. Boom.”
Chapter 36
Annja turned and saw Pradesh step out from around a corner where he mus
t’ve taken the kill shot. “You certainly took your time,” Dunraj snarled. “This git was bloody close to ending me.”
Pradesh shrugged. The expression on his face was one of absolute loathing as he stepped over the body of Anup. “I did it when it counted.”
“What the hell is going on around here?” Annja asked. Pradesh and Dunraj together? She was giving strong consideration to simply cutting them both down and calling it a day.
Pradesh slid his gun back into his holster. “Surely you must have figured it out by now. Smart girl that you are.”
“I have some ideas but I’d rather just cut to the chase. Speaking of which, where are Frank and Kormi? If you did anything to them—”
Pradesh held up his hand. “They’re both fine. I had to hit Kormi on the head to get him under control, but Frank helped me put him under cover. I couldn’t be sure about Anup not going off half-cocked so I wanted them both out of the line of fire.”
Annja frowned. “All right.”
Dunraj pointed a finger at Annja. “She found the device. She ruined the entire operation.”
Pradesh eyed Dunraj. “Calm down. As soon as she caused the statue to fall and shatter, the operation was over. There was no way they were going to fall for it once they saw that statue break into a million pieces.”
“Exactly,” Dunraj said. “It’s her fault.”
“And what was I supposed to do?” she asked. “You were going to have them shoot us. Including, I might add, Pradesh here. If you two have something going on, it doesn’t seem very solid to me when one of you was willing to let the other get shot.”
Pradesh nodded. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that, as well, Dunraj. We had an agreement, and you seemed only too willing to forget that. Rather convenient, wouldn’t you say?”
“I told Anup not to shoot you. Just the others.”
Annja shook her head. “I don’t believe that for a second. I never heard Anup say anything to his men about only shooting us. Unless they had telepathy, you’re lying.”
Pradesh stared coldly at Dunraj. “We’ll deal with that later. And you’d better have a good explanation or else you’re in trouble, my so-called friend.”
