by Alex Archer
Annja realized she was unprepared to document their find. She had one of Patty’s cameras in her pack and went to dig it out.
“This is just the beginning,” she said.
“You mean there’s more?” Eddie asked.
“That’s what von Hoiningen claimed. I think we kind of have to believe him now, don’t we?”
“I have got to see this!”
The relief here was relatively flat. The obvious choice for a quick vantage point was to scale the ruined wall. Eddie quickly shed his pack and clambered up with his usual agility.
Annja frowned. “That might not be a good idea,” she said, concerned from a preservation standpoint.
It was a bad idea. For a reason Annja never anticipated.
Ignoring her, Eddie reached a high point on the wall, where the stone outer sheathing was still intact. He stood upright. “My God, Annja!” he exclaimed. “You’re right! It’s like it goes for miles—”
A burst of gunfire spun him around and down to the ground.
23
Choking back an exclamation that could only risk drawing the eyes of the unseen shooter, Annja darted around the wall stub. Eddie lay on his back with his knees and forearms up. His eyes were wide behind askew glasses.
Probably more from his bad luck than the shooter’s good marksmanship the burst had taken him right across the chest. Kneeling over him, Annja could see at least four entry holes in his blue polo shirt with the thin horizontal white stripes, surrounded by spreading patches of darker fabric.
He caught her hand. “Annja,” he croaked, and the blood gurgled up from the back of his throat and ran out his mouth and down his cheeks. “Tell my father I’m—sorry—”
There seemed to be more. But it would have to wait. Eddie jackknifed in a terrible coughing spasm. His glasses flew from his face. He emitted a rasping croak and fell back dead.
Squeezing his hand in both of hers, she dropped her forehead to it. The tears streamed hot down her cheeks. She had not yet had time to grieve for Patty, or even Phil—
And now she had three times the grieving to do, and no time to do it. She dragged Eddie’s body under some brush; it was the best she could do for him. Then she ran hunched over around the rock, brought his pack and shoved it next to the body. A feeble gesture at concealment, it would work or it wouldn’t.
Behind her a flight of crows burst raucously skyward. Someone was approaching from the cliffs.
She had to move. Now.
Her choice of direction was obvious. She fled deeper into the mesa, into the overgrown temple complex and toward the red peak on which the Temple of the Elephant stood. Eddie had been turning when he got hit; Annja didn’t know which direction the shots came from. Parties unknown closing in were the immediate threat.
Moving as quickly as she could with some degree of quiet, she became aware of more ruins around her. Some were wall stubs like the one Eddie had incautiously climbed. Others were segments of walls of larger blocks, fallen into jumbles. She saw apparently intact small buildings or perhaps surviving rooms, some mounded with overgrown earth, inviting with blank black windows or low doors.
Annja passed these by, recognizing them for what they were—not bolt-holes but traps. She had no way of knowing which, if any, had other exits. Giving in to the siren song of a hiding place might get her caught, to be finished by gunfire, a grenade or literally smoked out.
She darted through a gap between walls. On her left a second stump of wall joined the other, a corner turned buttress when the rest of the chamber fell away. She stepped into the niche thus created. It gave her not just concealment, meaning she couldn’t be seen, but cover, meaning it shielded her from gunfire, from two directions, including the way she had come. It was neither a safe nor a satisfactory position. Just the best available chance to breathe deeply, calm her wild-running emotions and try to grasp some sense of her tactical situation.
Cautiously she peered back through the gap. She could see nothing but forest with occasional glimpses of stonework. She heard nothing but the normal jungle sounds. She could almost believe she had the mesa to herself.
But someone had shot Eddie Chen. Someone close by. Very few shooters were skilled enough to keep full-auto bursts on target at any range at all. Muzzle jump and parallax usually meant so many shots from one brief burst couldn’t hit a target even from a hundred yards or less. They would have dispersed too widely.
If Annja were very, very lucky, whoever killed Eddie had no idea of her presence. “Yeah,” she said softly. “As if I’m ever that lucky.”
“Annja!” a voice whispered from behind her. “Annja Creed.”
The phrase “almost jumped out of her skin” took on a whole new meaning for her. Her heart felt as if it hit the front of her rib cage as if shot from a cannon, and she jumped a foot straight up, twisting in midair like a cat. She landed trembling violently and gasping for air.
A dark, shiny face peered at her from a stand of green bamboo ten yards behind her.
“Annja, thank God you’re here,” Easy Ngwenya said. “I’ve been hoping against hope—”
Fury filled Annja with a force to equal the fright that had picked her up and whipped her around a few jackhammer heartbeats before. “You murdering little witch!” she shouted.
Annja charged.
Easy’s face creased in a frown. “Good Lord, please be quiet—” she began, obviously reacting more to the volume of Annja’s exclamation than its content. Her dark eyes widened. She only just managed to duck and roll away as Annja swung for her head.
Easy rolled and snapped to her feet with the practiced grace of the gymnast she was. “What on Earth do you think you’re—?”
“You killed them!” Annja screamed, berserk with anger, grief and the successive shocks of seeing three comrades die in such a short period of time.
She aimed a kick at the crouching woman. Easy flung herself to the right.
“Who?” Easy yelped as she sprang up.
“All of them!” Annja cried, running toward her. Easy darted behind a tree with a six-inch bole.
“All who?” she shouted, then ducked as Annja swung and missed again.
“Sir Sidney,” Annja panted. “Isabelle Gendron. My friends. Who knows how many others?”
“I never did!” Easy said. “I never touched a hair on Professor Hazelton’s dear old head. I’ve no idea who Isabelle Gendron is. And I—holy shit!”
The uncharacteristically vulgar exclamation burst from the young woman when the upper half of the tree she hid behind toppled abruptly to her right, crashing into some brush as unhappy monkeys bailed in all directions.
“How did you do that? And will you kindly quit trying to chop me in two with that bloody cleaver?”
Annja had summoned her sword when Easy had ducked behind the tree.
Annja hacked at her again. Easy dodged around the tall stump. Annja was as astonished as Easy was by the fact she’d cut through the tree with a single stroke. Now that she was trying she couldn’t do it again. The blade went in halfway and stuck fast.
“Maybe you’ll listen to reason now,” Easy said, still keeping the trunk between herself and Annja. “I’ve killed people, yes. I’ve killed some today, as it happens. But I sincerely doubt any of them were remotely friends of yours—hey!”
After two ferocious tugs Annja had dislodged the blade from the grip of the green wood.
Annja raised the sword above her head, preparing for a mighty stroke. As she did Easy rolled into view on Annja’s right, lying on her back on the short clumpy grass.
The muzzles of her twin Sphinx .40-caliber autopistols were like unwinking black eyes staring into Annja’s.
“Now we’ve arrived at the standoff phase of our program,” Easy said conversationally in her upper-class Brit accent. “You know no handgun bullet really has any such thing as stopping power—they won’t prevent you splitting me like kindling with that bloody great pig sticker. But it will be a dead or dying hand that splits
me, I assure you. So for the love of God, can we talk?”
Annja frowned as she considered. “That might be,” she said deliberately, “a worthwhile idea.”
Easy’s right hand weapon flashed orange fire. Annja never heard the shot, nor the one that immediately followed. She did feel the heat of muzzle flares, and stings as bits of unburned propellant struck the exposed skin of her arm and cheek.
She did not launch a dying stroke. Because a pre-conscious part of her mind had registered how the young woman who held the purple-and-gold firearm with such unwavering steadiness had twitched a few degrees aside before the paling of the skin over a knuckle betrayed that Easy’s body was preparing to fire.
Annja spun. As she did she heard a scream.
A small man dressed in dark green clothes and a blue turban was falling in the gap between wall fragments through which Annja had run in what now seemed another lifetime. His bare forearms were twined with tattoos. As he went down a dying reflex triggered a burst toward the slate-colored sky from his AK-47. The muzzle-flash was enormous. It lit the little clearing like a bonfire.
A storm of fire burst through the gap from the wall’s far side. Annja couldn’t see the shooters. Bullets clipped branches from trees and mowed down bamboo stalks thirty feet from the two women.
“That’s torn it,” Easy said. “Run!”
She took off on a course that led into deep brush, straight toward the mesa’s center. Annja saw no choice but to follow. Unless she wanted to stand and fight at least one patrol of heavily-armed thugs. Or wander strange territory at random with night coming fast.
Even following a mortal enemy looked more attractive.
Easy seemed to slip between the branches and her boots landed lightly on the forest-floor mulch. Annja was acutely conscious of blundering like a rhino. Everything raked her face, legs and forearms. Everything made loud crackling and swishing sounds. The earth crunched and drummed beneath her feet.
But it made little difference. Annja had fired Kalashnikovs full-auto. She knew a person doing that didn’t hear much else short of an artillery barrage landing right nearby. Stealth was no issue; speed might well mean life.
Easy turned sideways as she ran between trunks flanking the faint game trail she followed. When she passed through she almost casually extended her left arm to its full extent at an angle from her path.
As Annja squeezed after her, feeling the rough bark squeeze her boobs, Easy’s Sphinx cracked off twice.
A figure collapsed forward out of a scrim of brush, a rifle falling from limp brown hands. This one wore a ratty nondescript shirt that was stained and a faded blue-checked sarong. His head was wound with a yellow turban.
That surprised Annja. She was pretty sure all the goons she had seen so far wore dark green uniforms or pseudouniforms, and definitely blue headgear.
She wasn’t going to ask many questions right now nor get answers to them. The reconnaissance-by-fire had calmed down behind them, probably because the shooters had blazed off their whole 30-round magazines and were reloading. Occasional random bursts still ripped the heavy evening air, drowning out confused shouts from behind. All Annja could think to do was stick as close to Easy as possible. At least she seemed to know where she was going.
Without visible effort Easy vaulted a fallen log arching three feet from the forest floor. She kept running. Two men suddenly appeared behind her from a bush full of yellow flowers that seemed to be opening as night descended. They wore yellow headbands.
They carried M-16s, black and almost as long as they were tall. They raised them after the running woman, who hadn’t noticed them. At this range Annja knew the gunmen could hardly miss by dumping their whole magazines after Easy.
24
Not five minutes earlier Annja had been doing her furious best to harm Easy Ngwenya. Now she raised her right hand and summoned the Sword to save her.
Sensing something amiss, the closer man turned to look over his shoulder. She slashed backhand, descending left to right, diagonally right between wide shocked eyes staring from a mustached face.
He dropped as if his bones had instantly dissolved. Annja didn’t break stride. A running horizontal forehand cut took the second gunman, totally unaware, right at the back of his sweaty neck beneath a yellow turban.
Annja ran past never glancing his way.
ANNJA PUT HER BACK to a tree and slid down. The rough bark of the bole rasped her skin through the light shirt she wore. She paid no attention.
They had not run that far—no more than a quarter mile, she guessed. But it had been across broken, blocked terrain, the lushly undergrown forest of the mesa top between increasingly sizable spills of masonry. And it had been high stress—nothing sucked energy out of your body as fast as combat.
Even though they had seen no sign of actual enemies since Annja had cut down the unsuspecting pair getting set to shoot Easy, her body had stayed on alert the whole way, jumping over tangles and bouncing off trees. Now she felt as if she’d kickboxed ten rounds and run a marathon.
Easy squatted on her haunches. Annja almost felt relieved to note the younger woman was panting like a dog, as well. Easy mopped at the sweat streaming freely down her high round forehead with a rag. It mostly redistributed the wetness. She took a canteen from her belt, drank deep, then tossed it to Annja without asking if the other woman wanted it.
She didn’t have to. Annja needed it. She upended the bottle and drank greedily.
She threw the canteen back to Easy. “What the hell is going on?” she asked through gasping breaths. She was trying to control her breathing, channel it into the deep, slow respiration that would most efficiently reoxygenate her fatigued muscles and calm her swirling thoughts and emotions. But it took huge force of even her strong and well-practiced will.
Easy drank again. She seemed to have her own panting under control already.
“Blue turbans,” she said. “Grand Shan State Army. Marshal Qiangsha, proprietor. Self-proclaimed marshal, unquestioned warlord. Ethnic resistance army but mostly gangs. Qiangsha likes walks at sunset, Irish whiskey and sticking his enemies’ heads on poles.
“Yellow turbans are Lord’s Wa Army. Recruited from a tribe of backward, inbred Wa. It’s politically incorrect to call them headhunters. That’s exactly what this bunch were. Until they got converted from animism to fundamentalist Christianity by their current spiritual and military leader, Jerry Cromwell.”
As they had fled, the sounds of a firefight broke out behind them. They died away to nothing before the two women halted to rest. Annja guessed the contestants had mainly wanted to back away and break contact with each other. Nobody was eager to get shot, and a couple of hostile patrols that happened to bump into each other had no real motivation to hang and bang to a conclusion.
“Jerry Cromwell?” Annja asked.
“Foreign name because he’s a foreign bloke. A Yank, as it happens. Former cable television preacher sort of chap. Apparently made carloads of money off the faithful in his day. Big on Armageddon. I understand he left the States in rather a hurry, ahead of a slew of charges.”
“Great,” Annja said. She breathed almost normally now. Her lungs felt as if she’d been inhaling superheated sand. But at least she wasn’t gasping anymore. “Another disgraced televangelist.”
She sat with her knees up and her wrists draped across them. She looked at the other woman. “He converted this Wa group from being headhunters?”
“I didn’t say that,” Easy said with a faint grin. “It was animism he got them to give up. The headhunting—maybe not.”
“I’m not so sure the modern Shan bunch are much better. Heads on poles. Nice,” Annja said.
“Oh, they’re not,” Easy said, “of course. But I suppose they’d argue that their headtaking is intended to send a message. Politics of meaning and all that. Whereas the Wa’s is recreational. Much more civilized, don’t you know?”
Annja grinned. She found herself liking this brash, brave young woman.
Whom, she recalled with a force like a kick to the gut, she had been trying to kill a few minutes ago. Whom she had accused of multiple murders herself.
She tried to recoup that righteous, avenging rage. She couldn’t. Maybe it was just the fact she was so drained physically and emotionally—by so much more than the frenzied activities of the past few minutes. Maybe it had something to do with the fact she had just killed two men who had been trying to kill Easy Ngwenya. Then again, Annja didn’t doubt for a nanosecond that they’d have killed her as quickly.
The young black woman looked at her with her head angled to one side. “Not so eager to vivisect me anymore, then?” she asked cheerfully.
Annja shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Easy let herself sit all the way down on her rump, round and taut inside khaki cargo shorts not so different from the ones Annja wore.
“I have a bit of a line on local news,” she said, “having been on the ground, as it were, these two days past. And wondering, I’ll admit, what was keeping you.”
She grinned. Annja felt a stab of irritation. But she could still muster no more than that. She was as befuddled as she was worn-out.
“But I admit I’m in a bit of a bother over why you were hollering about my murdering a lot of strangers while trying to reduce me to my component parts. If you’d care to elucidate—”
She waved a dark hand invitingly. Annja nodded.
“All right.” She explained quickly and tersely the trail of corpses she thought Easy had left behind her on her search for the Temple of the Elephant.
“Oh, dear,” Easy said. Her eyes were huge and round. It made her look fourteen. “I can see why you’d feel murderously inclined toward me.”
