by Mike Resnick
Mason sidestepped the charge, picked up a bottle—she had no idea what was in it, and probably he didn’t either—and hurled it into the man’s face. The man’s mouth opened in a soundless scream, and he ran toward the door, covering his eyes. He missed, ran headfirst into a wall, and fell to the floor in a senseless heap.
Meanwhile the knife-wielding Arab was back on his feet again. He charged at Mason without a word. Mason’s left hand shot out and grabbed the man’s wrist, holding the knife away. With his right hand he landed two quick blows to the Arab’s belly, then took a left to the jaw and staggered back.
Don’t trade punches with him! Use your brain, not your muscles.
The Arab charged again at Mason, his knife raised above his head. Mason ducked and stepped forward, and the larger man, caught by surprise, spun over Mason and landed on his back. Mason kicked the knife out of his hand, then knelt down and began pummeling him, again and again, right, left, right, left. Teeth flew out of the Arab’s mouth, blood poured out of his nose, and finally he lost consciousness. Mason got to his feet. “Are you all right, Lara?”
“That’s twice you’ve saved me,” she replied weakly. As suddenly as it had disappeared, her voice was back.
“This could become a habit,” remarked Mason. He turned on the light, then began looking through shelves and cabinets.
“What are you doing?”
“You may not be aware of it,” he replied, “but you’re bleeding rather badly. We’ve got to get you bandaged up. Ah, here it is!”
He pulled out a roll of tape and a tube of antiseptic ointment. Then, kneeling down next to her, he swabbed away most of the blood with a towel, rubbed on the ointment as best he could, and began taping her arm.
“I’m afraid that will have to do,” he announced when he had finished.
“It’s not a very good job,” she noted.
“I’m not a very good doctor—and I need the rest of the tape for them.”
He knelt down and bound the two men’s hands behind their backs with tape, then taped their feet together as well. By the time he was done, both had regained consciousness.
“All right,” said Mason. “Are you alone or did you come with others?”
They stared at him sullenly.
“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” he said. “Are you alone?”
No answer.
He picked up the knife that had nearly killed Lara. “If you won’t talk, then you won’t need your tongues. . . .”
At this threat, the men merely smiled. Their grins spread grotesquely wide. Empty.
“Ugh,” said Lara. “Looks like someone beat you to it.”
Before Mason could reply, both men began gasping for breath. A moment later they were dead.
“What the hell?” Mason frowned. “I was just bluffing with the knife. . . .”
“Afraid you scared them to death? Not those two. I’ve read of assassins trained from infancy, their tongues cut out to make them creatures of silence. I never believed those tales— until now.” She paused. “Let’s get a doctor up here to determine what killed them.”
“We haven’t got time,” said Mason, wiping his fingerprints from the knife and dropping it. “They obviously know you’re here, and if the hospital discovers the bodies, we’ll both be held for questioning.”
“Who obviously knows I’m here?” she demanded.
“The people the assassins worked for. We’ve got to get you to someplace where you’ll be safe.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you find anything in the Temple?”
“I told you I didn’t,” she answered. “What’s going on here?”
“I’ll tell you when we have a little time. But those two aren’t the only ones they’ll be sending after you.”
“That who will be sending after me?” she insisted. “Why did two men I never saw before want to kill me?”
“Later.” He helped her to her feet. “Are you strong enough to walk by yourself?”
“I don’t know.”
Mason frowned. “If you collapse in front of anyone, I’ll never get you out of here.” He paused. “I’ll get a wheelchair and bring it back.” He looked around, picked up a white laundry bag, and handed it to her. “These are your clothes. The hospital washed them. I know you’re groggy, but try to get into them while I’m gone.”
“Why?” she asked, fighting off another wave of dizziness.
“Because once we get out of here, I can’t take a beautiful woman through a Moslem country with her backside peeking out of her hospital gown.”
“I should have thought of that,” said Lara.
“If you didn’t have a lump the size of a baseball on the back of your head, I’m sure you would have. Now hurry up.”
Then he was gone, and Lara took off her gown and climbed slowly, painfully, into her clothes. Her holsters were there, but her pistols were gone. Back in the tomb, probably. Which meant they were as good as gone. She felt a pang. She was going to miss those guns.
Mason came back about half a minute after she’d finished, wearing a doctor’s white lab coat and pushing a wheelchair.
“In case you’re wondering,” said Mason, “your pistols are in my car. If you’d still been wearing them when I brought you in here, they’d be locked away in some hospital safe now.”
“That’s another one I owe you.” She sat in the wheelchair while he walked over to the bed, pulled off a pair of lightweight blankets, and covered her with them.
“You’re not exactly wearing hospital garb,” he said as he tucked them around her. “No sense advertising it.”
Then they were out in the corridor, and he wheeled her past the nurse’s station to an elevator. The door closed and the elevator began descending.
“So far so good,” said Mason.
The elevator stopped at the main floor, and the door slid open. Mason quickly surveyed the lobby. There were half a dozen doctors milling about, a trio of nurse’s stations, a registration desk, and two uniformed policemen standing by the door.
“Now what?” Lara asked in a whisper.
“Hopefully this white coat I’m wearing will make them think I’m a doctor. Better cross your fingers under those blankets, Lara—here we go.” He took a deep breath and wheeled her to the main entrance.
One of the guards stared at him curiously, but Mason simply smiled and continued walking, and the guard stepped aside and allowed him to wheel Lara out of the hospital and over to a late-model Land Rover.
“That was either very brave or very stupid,” Lara said. “I’m not sure which.”
“I read in a spy novel once that the best way to deflect suspicion is to act like you’ve got nothing to hide.” He opened the passenger door and carefully helped her to her feet. “Can you climb in by yourself?”
“Of course I can,” said Lara. She tried to pull herself onto the seat. Suddenly another wave of dizziness overcame her, and she fell back into Mason’s arms. “Well, I thought I could.”
He helped her into the Land Rover, then walked around and took his place in the driver’s seat.
“Where are we going?” asked Lara.
“Away from here,” said Mason. “If I step on it, we can be out of Cairo in half an hour.”
“Where are my pistols?”
“The glove compartment.”
She opened it, found her passport and billfold, which she pocketed, and her pistols, which she slipped lovingly into their holsters.
“Those are very unusual guns,” said Mason. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like them.”
She pulled a pistol out. “This is the Wilkes and Hawkins Black Demon .32.”
“Custom job?”
“Modified to my specifications,” she answered. “Fifteen shots to the clip, and it’s just this side of a hair trigger. Sculpted to fit my hand, and weighted exactly as I directed—and it’s got a chip that reads my palm print. No one else can fire it.” She slid the pi
stol back into its holster. “There’s not a more accurate pistol around.”
“Interesting,” said Mason, pulling onto a main thoroughfare.
“Are you ready to tell me what this is all about?” asked Lara.
Mason’s reply was to swerve the car into a narrow alley and floor the gas pedal. “We’ve got company,” he said, looking into the rearview mirror as three cars entered the alley behind them.
He veered onto a side street, then another, and finally hit another main drag.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” said Mason, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. “Did you find anything, no matter how trivial or unimportant, in the Temple?”
“I already told you,” said Lara irritably. “No.” She paused, trying to order her thoughts. “The men in my hospital room, and these men who are chasing us—how did they know I’d been to the Temple of Horus, anyway?”
“They—or the ones they work for—were keeping a watch on it.”
The back window shattered as a bullet crashed through.
“Keep your head down,” warned Mason.
“But why did they come after me?” demanded Lara, ducking. “Why didn’t they simply steal what they wanted from the Temple of Horus?”
“Because they couldn’t find it,” said Mason. He swerved sharply as another bullet took away his side mirror.
Just what have I stumbled into? Lara wondered as the Land Rover sped south along the Nile.
3
“Damn!” muttered Mason as they raced out of the city and into the desert.
“What now?” asked Lara.
“I can’t outrun them.” He glanced at the rearview mirror again. “They’re not gaining on us, but I’m not putting any more distance between us . . . and I have to. There’s nothing between here and Luxor, and I don’t have enough petrol to get us there.”
“Where are the police?”
“Maybe they’ve been bribed. Maybe they stop at the city limits. Maybe they just don’t expect people to be racing down the highway at three in the morning. Whatever the reason, I haven’t seen one since we left the hospital.”
“Then we’ll have to make a fight of it.”
He grimaced. “There are six or seven men in those cars, maybe more—and you’re in no condition to fight.”
“You worry about the driving,” said Lara. “I’ll worry about the fighting.”
“Lara . . .” he began.
“Just drive,” she said. She turned in her seat, steadied her hand against the headrest, aimed her Black Demon out the gaping hole where the back window had been, and heard a click as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. She pulled the trigger twice more. Two more clicks.
“Kevin?”
“Yes, Lara?”
“Where are my bullets?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you.” He reached into a pocket and tossed a handful of sleek narrow clips to her. “I emptied them for your own good,” he explained. “I knew I might have to take you out of hospital tonight, and I knew you would want your guns, but I didn’t want you firing them. In your condition, you’re as likely to shoot me or yourself as an enemy.”
“Let me worry about my condition,” she said furiously, ignoring the pain in her head and loading the clips into the weapons. “And don’t ever mess with my pistols again.”
He was about to answer when a bullet smacked into the dash between them. Mason cursed and resumed swerving as the speedometer crept up to 110 miles an hour.
Lara tried to focus her eyes on the pursuing vehicles. It seemed to get blurrier and darker, and the next thing she knew, Mason’s hand was on her shoulder and he was shaking her awake.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You passed out.”
“We’ve stopped!” she exclaimed.
“For the moment.”
She began blinking her eyes furiously. “How long have I been out?”
“Perhaps an hour, perhaps a little more.”
She looked around. “Where are the bad guys?”
“Probably hunting for us in Luxor by now. At least, I hope so.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’re in a village of sorts. I suppose it has a name, but it’s not on any map I’ve ever seen. Most of these small villages aren’t. The road began twisting and turning for a few miles, and once I was out of their line of sight I pulled in behind a couple of buildings. They went past and never gave us a look.”
“What now?”
“I’ve only got about two gallons of petrol, if that much. I can’t get us to Luxor and I can’t go back to Cairo—and I’ve been up and down this road often enough to know that there aren’t any petrol stations within fifty miles.”
“Then I repeat: What now?”
“A few of the locals stopped by to see who we were, and I’ve made an arrangement with them,” said Mason. “We’ll take a small dhow to Luxor and then hop one of the bigger cruise boats going south.”
“That could take hours,” said Lara. “Why not drive toward Luxor until we’re out of petrol and then go the rest of the way on the Nile?”
“You’re still not thinking clearly,” said Mason.
“See how well you think after a temple falls down on you!”
“Point taken,” said Mason. “I’m assuming our friends are searching for us in Luxor—but there’s always a chance they’ll figure out they passed us, and I’d prefer not to meet them head-on as they come back looking for us.”
“Let’s get on with it before I start passing out again,” she said. “How far do we have to go?”
“The river’s only about forty yards away, and the dhow’s right there. Do you think you can make it?”
She was about to nod her head, but some instinct told her not to. Instead she merely grunted a “Yes,” climbed out of the Land Rover, and began walking, Mason at her side. Once they reached the river, he helped her into the boat, fixed the sail, pushed off from shore, and jumped in.
“Nice dhow,” he said.
“It’s called a felluca on the Nile,” she corrected him absently.
“Whatever,” said Mason with a shrug. “The fellow who rented me the dhow—er, felluca—has a ham radio. He was able to find out what tour boats are in Luxor now.”
“Is there one in particular that you want?”
“The least popular, of course,” answered Mason. “There’s a grubby little boat, only twenty cabins, called the Amenhotep, privately owned, and it’s due to leave an hour after sunrise. The owner is the captain, and there’s no office. He picks up any passengers who happen to be handy and takes off, so if we can get there in time to board it, there’ll be no way to trace us.” He smiled. “If we don’t die of food poisoning, I think we’ll be safe.”
“For how long?” asked Lara.
“For as long as it takes.”
She was getting tired of half-answers. “As long as what takes?” she demanded angrily—and the anger and tension sent bolts of pain shooting through her skull again.
“Careful!” said Mason, reaching over and steadying her by the shoulder. “I know the Nile’s not very deep, but we don’t want you falling overboard anyway.”
She tried to answer him, found she couldn’t speak, and lay back, allowing consciousness to float away on the warm Egyptian breeze.
4
Lara was lying on a lumpy mattress with her head resting on a torn pillow. Mason was sitting on a wooden stool right next to her.
“What happened?” she asked.
He smiled. “You caught up on your sleep.”
“How long this time?”
“Damned near twenty-four hours,” said Mason. “How do you feel?”
She ran a mental survey of her various aches and pains. “Better,” she said. “Much better.”
“Good. I’m sorry I had to rush you out of hospital, but it really couldn’t be avoided.”
Lara looked around the tiny, decrepit room. “Where are we?”
“Aboard t
he Amenhotep,” answered Mason. “We made it before sunrise, and this is the kind of boat where no one saw anything unusual about picking up two British passengers from a beat-up felluca, even though one of them was unconscious.” He paused. “Are you hungry? I don’t think you’ve eaten since I found you in the Temple of Horus.”
“They fed me a light dinner at hospital,” she replied. “But I am famished.”
“I’ll get you something.” He walked to the door. “I’ll be back soon.”
“I think I’m up to coming with you,” she said, swinging her feet to the floor.
“Bad idea.”
“Look, Kevin. I’m grateful that you saved me, but I don’t like being patronized,” said Lara. “If you explain why it’s a bad idea, I’ll listen; if you just state it, talk to the wall—it will be a more receptive audience than I will.”
Mason looked annoyed, but acquiesced to her demand. “Only two or three people saw us come aboard, and it was too dark for them to see that you’re a beautiful woman with a pair of black eyes. Whoever’s looking for us is looking for a couple, and they know that the woman was pretty badly banged up. Let’s not make it too easy for them.”
“I thought you told me that this was a tiny boat and no one would find us here,” said Lara.
“I said they wouldn’t think to look for us here,” responded Mason. “But that doesn’t mean the word isn’t out that they are looking for us. Why give the crew or the passengers any information to sell?”
“All right,” she said, putting her feet back up. “But when you get back, we’re going to have a long talk about exactly what’s going on.”
“I promise,” he said as he walked out onto the deck and closed the door behind him.
Lara ran her hands down her hips and realized that her holsters were missing. She sat up abruptly—there was some pain, but nothing like the day before—and then relaxed as she saw the holsters, pistols still in them, sitting on a crooked wooden table. She checked: The Black Demon .32s were loaded, ready to spit death at whoever was after her.
