Читать книгу Eternal Journey - Alex Archer - Страница 11

Situation assessed, Annja thought. She mentally called for her sword again, in the same instant drawing it back as she leaped into the room, bringing the blade down decisively at the first man she came to, a swarthy, barrel-chested thug with deep wrinkles around his eyes. He was just beyond the doorway—the other two were farther back in the room, and he snarled at her and spit and fumbled at his back.

He was going for a gun, she knew instinctively, and she managed to turn her sword at the last second so she struck him hard in the side of the head with the flat of the blade, knocking him senseless. She would try to take them alive, at least one of them, she decided. Dead, they certainly couldn’t tell her what they’d done to her cameraman…or what any of this was about.

The barrel-chested man shook his head and continued to fumble at the small of his back. She released one hand from the sword and struck his throat with her palm, watching his eyes bulge. He was the oldest and appeared the most out of shape, the least threat, she judged. She turned her attention to the other two.

The slightest was a young man standing close to the window. He’d been pulling things out of her suitcase and tossing them every which way.

What was he searching for?

He’d dropped a pair of her shoes and gaped at her when she’d entered. He said something softly in a foreign language. She didn’t catch any of it, but she registered that his face was severely pockmarked, as if he’d had an illness or a bad case of acne in his youth.

The tallest, the one who had danced on her laptop, was near the desk. “Kill her!” he repeated. “Kill her!”

Clearly the leader, Annja thought.

“Are those the only words you know?” Annja instantly regretted her quip as he cursed and dug his heel into what was left of the hard drive.

The barrel-chested one, still doubled over from the second blow she’d delivered, made an attempt to regain his wind, but eased back against the wall and looked almost helplessly to the leader.

At first glance Annja had thought them all in some sort of uniform, but that wasn’t the case. Each wore black pants, the tallest in tight-fitting jeans, with the other two in slacks that one might wear to an office. The tallest had on a black polo shirt, with something embroidered over the pocket. He was moving now, and so she couldn’t read it because the fabric bunched. The wiry one wore a simple black T-shirt, while the wheezing man had a sport shirt with the buttons pulled tight across his middle. Two wore black leather shoes, the wiry one in a pair of new-looking gray running shoes.

All of them were slightly dark skinned, but not black or suntanned.

Not Aussies or aboriginals. Arabs? she wondered.

The barrel-chested man finally caught his breath, bolted upright and grabbed her arm, still grimacing in pain from her blows. His grip was strong and he maliciously dug in his fingers.

“She’s got a sword!” he hollered.

The tall one growled as he pulled a gun from his waistband. “I think we all can see that, Zuka!”

Zuka—she had the name of one, not that the tidbit was very useful at the moment. An unusual name, though.

“What should I do, Sute?”

Two names now. Annja knew Sute was an Egyptian name, a derivative of Sutekh, the name of the evil god of chaos said to have slain Osiris.

“Surrender, all of you,” Annja said, though perhaps too softly for the wiry one to hear.

“Kill her, I said! Kill her and we’ll be gone from here!”

Annja’s hotel room was not a small one, but it was confining to fight in, which worked to her advantage, as the men could not circle her. Zuka, the barrel-chested man, pulled her toward him, fingers digging in even harder. She didn’t resist. In fact, using his momentum, she slammed herself against him, pinning him to the wall. Once more the breath was knocked from him, but he stubbornly refused to release his grip.

Better he hold on to her, she thought, as that was keeping him from drawing a gun.

She drove her heel down on his instep and jabbed her right elbow into his gut. He wasn’t a soft man, she realized, just big, but neither was he well trained in physical combat. She slung him around just as the tall man fired.

The gun had a silencer, making a spitting sound followed almost instantly by the soft thud of the bullet striking Zuka, whom she’d inadvertently used as a shield. He sagged against her, and she jumped back, losing a flip-flop and bumping into the door frame.

The tall man fired again, grazing Annja’s shoulder. Then she was moving, thrusting the stinging pain to the back of her mind and bringing the sword around until it was aimed at his heart.

“Thrice damn you!” he cursed. His gun jammed, and he threw it at her.

Annja sidestepped the hurled gun and adjusted the grip on her sword.

“You will join Zuka, Annja Creed. Join him in hell, as my master commands!” In a flash the man reached behind his back again, retrieving a second gun as she lunged forward, the sword’s blade gleaming in the sun coming in through the window. A streak of flashing silver hit the barrel and knocked the gun away. “The pit for you, Annja Creed!”

Why? she wondered as she dropped beneath a punch aimed at her face. Why the pit for me? What have I done to you? I don’t even know you. And who is your master?

Then everything seemed to speed up, and she dismissed her questions and concentrated only on the fight. The tall man backed away to buy himself a moment, kicking aside pieces of her laptop and drawing a dagger. Small, it was nonetheless deadly.

The wiry one had a gun, too, but it wasn’t aimed at her. He was looking beyond Annja and to the doorway behind her, his hands shaking. She couldn’t risk a glance over her shoulder, but from the sound of hushed voices she could tell that curious hotel guests had spilled out into the hall and were looking inside.

“Get out of here!” she called to them.

“The police,” someone said, a young man from the tone of his voice. “Someone should call them.”

“I hear sirens,” another said.

“Bloke’s got a gun,” a third said. “And the sheila’s got a sword!”

There was a scream as the wiry man started firing.

Annja spun like a top and instinctively darted close to the man called Sute, plunging her sword into his stomach before he could use the dagger. A curse died on his lips as the blade slipped from his hand.

There were more screams, and Annja pulled her sword free and whirled as the wiry man vaulted past her and across the bed, nearly tangling his feet in the covers. He was firing his gun into the crowd gathered in the hallway. The shots were wild, intended to scatter the people, she could tell. But one of the spectators outside her door had been hit and was twitching and gasping in pain and disbelief. A few people hovered over him, but the rest fled toward the elevators, shouting and screaming, their feet thundering dully against the carpeted floor.

The wiry man took advantage of the panic and rushed into the hallway, turning down the far corner, away from the panicked people and waving his gun to keep anyone from following him.

“Call an ambulance!” Annja shouted. “Someone call an ambulance!” She knew that she had to catch the wiry man to find out what happened to Ollie…and to find out why these men had attacked her. She couldn’t afford to wait for the police and paramedics and risk this one getting away.

She registered everything in a single glance as she leaped over the wounded man. There were four people still outside her door, two of them kneeling by the wounded man, another standing in shock, staring at the bloody sword in her hand. The downed man had been hit high in the right side of his chest. There was a good chance he would survive if help came quickly. She could do nothing to aid him.

But if she’d reacted faster to the three men ransacking her room, killed the first outright rather than trying to subdue him, the bystander might not have been hit in the first place. Her breath caught at the thought.

She saw a police officer step out of the elevator and wedge his way through the panicked hotel guests. Shouts hinted there were more police behind him. In that instant she willed the sword away. The police didn’t need to see a woman with a sword; she knew it would distract them from the true villains. Also, they would want her statement right now. Her target darted around the corner of an intersecting hallway, and from the clanking sound she could tell he’d pushed open the door to the stairwell. She churned after him, the flip-flop on her left foot slapping madly, her bare right foot striking the well-worn carpet.

She’d catch up to the young man, question him and then she’d return to her hotel room, hand him over to the police and answer their questions. If the gawkers mentioned a sword…well, there’d be no sign of such a weapon. And, as always, she’d deny using one.

She turned the corner and thrust the heel of her hand against the door. It flew open, striking the wall behind it with a resonant clang. She heard footsteps and followed him down the stairs, taking three steps at a time. Above and behind her people were shouting, one in a commanding voice that could have belonged to one of the police officers.

“Take everyone’s name,” she heard.

“What’s this about a woman with a sword?” another asked.

“Who are these men? Seen them before?”

Then the door clanged shut and deadened everything save for the rapid click-clacking of her target’s feet.

One landing later she caught sight of him. Leaning against the railing, he fired upward, the bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the bottoms of the steps above him and the wall. Then he vaulted over the railing, dropping to the next lower level, and she did the same, only a few dozen steps behind him now.

Annja was so determined to catch him that she gritted her teeth and ignored the biting pain in her shoulder and the ache of her bare foot—she was scraping it against the rough sandpaper-like metal strips that had been nailed to the steps. From somewhere above her a door clanged open, followed by curious shouts. The police or hotel security, she suspected, come to join in the chase. She ignored those noises, too, and increased her speed.

A superb athlete, Annja knew the only reason she hadn’t yet caught the young man was that he was obviously in excellent shape and he was in shoes that gave him better traction on these stairs. But she would catch him.

Just another minute, she told herself.

Annja was just beyond the landing for the fifth floor when the door clanged open directly behind her. Police was her first thought, but the spitting sound of a silenced gun ended that notion. She glanced over her shoulder, the gesture nearly costing her balance, as the toe of her flip-flop caught on a metal strip. She kicked off the shoe and dropped to a crouch as the gun continued to spit bullets.

Two guns, she corrected herself, as she spun to face the new adversaries. Two men had burst onto the fifth-floor landing, these also dressed in black.

The color of the day, she thought.

But these men looked a little different, with broad shoulders and thick arms, like bodybuilders or professional muscle. They conversed rapidly in a language she didn’t recognize as they continued to fire. Annja somersaulted down to the fourth-floor landing, then rounded the stairwell and headed for the third floor.

The wiry man stood down there, blocking her way and holding his gun out, both hands clamped so tight his knuckles looked pale. His fingers trembled, and sweat beaded heavily on his face.

“Stop!” he commanded.

“Why? So I’ll be an easier target?” Annja flattened herself against the outer stairwell wall as he squeezed the trigger. The staccato shots were loud. More spitting came from the two silenced guns above her, bullets striking the concrete wall just above her head.

She willed the sword to her, the mental gesture coming easily. The hilt fit into her grip as if it were an extension of her arm. Her fingers held it tight as she pushed off from the step, body arcing down as if she was diving off the side of a pool. She tucked herself into a ball and rolled, straightening her legs when they pointed down to the third-floor landing and feeling the impact of the wiry man’s face against the balls of her feet. His cheekbones cracked from the impact.

Annja dissected the sounds—the man’s painful gasp, his gun clattering to the floor, his body following it with a dull thud, more gunfire from above, bullets striking the concrete, several bullets striking the torso of the wiry man, from whom she just pushed herself off. She continued down the next flight of stairs, registering that the third floor was where Oliver had stayed.

The two men raced behind her, chattering in a foreign language. Annja was fluent in many languages—French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian—and she had some command of Russian. What the men spoke wasn’t any of them. She couldn’t understand a single word, save the few English terms sprinkled in—American, photographer, and Creed.

This had to have something to do with the dig, but what? And what about the other members of her crew who had left on the red-eye? Had they truly left? Or had these men gotten to them?

No, they were safe, she told herself. She would’ve heard something at breakfast about shootings or kidnappings, or would’ve picked up on trouble at the hotel. No, these men hadn’t gotten to the hotel in time to stop the rest of her crew. Just in time to stop Oliver. And now they were trying to stop her.

More doors clanged opened and closed from floors above, and more shouts followed. Two guns discharged, these without silencers. The police, Annja was certain, hoping they would nail one of the men pursuing her.

But only shoot one, she prayed; she wanted one alive to question.

Halfway down to the first floor, she stopped and whirled as more gunfire erupted. It was followed by the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs. A heartbeat later, only one dark-clad man appeared on the steps above her, one hand on the railing to balance himself, the other holding a gun—a Glock 17. Odd that something like that would register, Annja thought, given the dire situation.

She feinted to her right, toward the outer wall of the stairwell, then dipped and pivoted to her left. He fired at where’d she’d stood a breath before. Pushing off the step, she flew up at him, executing a hammering block when his leg came out to defend himself.

“What is this about?” she shouted. “What have you done with Oliver?”

He grunted and tried to draw a bead on her, shooting the railing instead. Only one step below him now, she grabbed his raised leg and tugged, setting him off balance. Agile, he didn’t fall. He swept the gun at her, the barrel striking her face. He brought it back for a second strike and pulled the trigger in the same motion. Annja reacted with an inward parry, a kenpo blocking method. One hand wrapped around the hilt of her sword, she opened her other hand and redirected his next blow by riding with the force of his swing. He hadn’t anticipated that and scrambled to maintain his hold on the gun.

“Kiai!” Annja shouted, as she used her diaphragm to purge the air from her body. The kenpo technique fortified her body and clearly shook the man. She rammed the heel of her hand into his stomach and felt his breath rush out. “I don’t want to kill you,” she said to herself as much as to him. “Though that’s clearly what you intend for me.”

But why do you want to kill me?

“There’s one more shooter down there!” This came from well above her. “Call it in that one’s dead.”

Annja had to finish this quickly. Having the police here was all well and good, she thought, but they would tangle her up for hours in questioning. She needed to call Doug, alert the crew who took the red-eye that they might be in danger for God knows what reason and try to call Ollie again. She desperately wanted to sort all this out before letting the authorities commandeer her time.

“Kiai!” she repeated, following it this time with a swipe of her sword. The blade sheered into the man’s fingers, forcing him to release the gun.

He grabbed his injured hand with his good one and stared at her, his eyes angry daggers.

“Gahba!” he spat at her. “Kelbeh!”

“No doubt you’re calling me something terrible,” she said.

“Khanzeera al matina!” Clearly in pain, the man nonetheless refused to quit. He lashed out with one leg, and then the other, clipping Annja once but causing her no real harm.

She had been a superb athlete before acquiring the sword. She’d since become even better, drawing on its power and honing her skills to an almost unbelievable level. That she’d lived through all this so far—and so much more in other countries before this—was a testament to her training and determination.

“I…said…I…don’t…want…to…kill…you!” The words steamed out as if she were a kettle left too long on the stove. “But you’re not going to be able to answer my questions, are you? Know any English?”

The police nearing, she again dismissed the sword, in the same motion reaching up and grabbing her attacker’s shirt, pulling him toward her and finally setting him off balance.

She lifted him and spun him so he was on the step below her now. Then she pushed him and rode him down the rest of the steps like a bobsled, the back of his head cracking hard and making her wince. For a moment, she feared she might have indeed killed him, but he spit at her and feebly tried to knock her off him.

She jammed her knee into his stomach.

“Where is Oliver? What have you done with him?”

“He saw! You saw!” the man cried, finally speaking so she could understand him. She shook him, and his head rolled to the side.

“Saw what? What did we see?”

“I see them!” Again this came from above. “The woman and a man. The man might be dead. She’s throttling him!”

“He’s not dead.” Annja groaned and pushed herself off him and jumped down the last few steps and out the exit door, the footsteps of the police clacking behind her. A heartbeat later she was in the lobby. A heartbeat more and she was through the revolving doors and onto the sidewalk, sucking in the cool fall air.

I should stop and talk to the police right now, she thought. Clear this up, tell them about Oliver. She couldn’t get any more out of her attacker until he came to, and that would be under police guard in a local hospital—and that would be provided he could speak enough English to make sense. The police would take her in, too, as she was disheveled and bloodied, and no doubt they’d connect her to the reports of a woman in jeans and a bikini top swinging a sword. She’d work through it all; she had before. She’d done nothing wrong.

But it would take time.

Maybe the police would let her call her producer first, or try Oliver again.

Not likely.

But necessary, she decided as she ran, her bare feet striking the cool concrete and sending needles of pain into her because she’d scraped them raw against those metal strips. She had to tell Doug about the attack and ask him to check on the rest of the crew. He needs to know what’s going on. I need to figure out what’s going on.

What had she and Ollie seen?

I need to think! Leaving the scene of the crime wasn’t a good thing, she knew, but she needed space.

Annja spied a pay phone on the street corner. She sped toward it. Just past the hotel parking lot, it cast a shadow on the sidewalk that looked like the pendulum of a clock. She hoped she had enough coins to make it work.

The breeze was cool and tugged the bad scents from her as she ran, the smoke from Oliver’s hotel room, the cordite from the gunshots, the blood. The breeze carried the smell of car and bus exhaust and of redfish that was grilling in a restaurant nearby.

People on the sidewalk called out to her, most in concern, seeing blood run from her shoulder and from her face where the gun had struck her. But some called to the police, as much as telling her that at least one officer had come out of the hotel in search of her or anyone else involved in the mayhem.

“One phone call,” she said to herself. “Just one and then I’m yours until this is all resolved.”

Her hand closed on the receiver and she lifted it, reached for her wallet and cursed. The phone cord had been cut. Sydney had its vandals just like anywhere else. She dropped the receiver and whirled, expecting to see a police officer jogging up to her, but instead spying another dark-clad man cutting through the pedestrians.

He drew a gun, and the passersby screamed and parted, giving him a clear shot at Annja.

“How many of you?” she hollered as she dropped into a catlike pose. She mentally reached for her sword, but stopped herself. Too many spectators, and in broad daylight she couldn’t risk it. Her life was one big secret, and it didn’t need to be exposed on a sidewalk in downtown Sydney. “Just how blasted many of you are after me?”

A bullet whispered through the air from behind her, striking the side of the pay phone and letting her know another assailant was near. She sprung up, past the phone and off the sidewalk, over the curb and onto the street, where a bus was just pulling away.

The driver was closing the doors in a panic, not wanting his passengers endangered. She managed to squeeze on.

“A brass button,” he told her, oblivious to the fact that she’d been the target of the shooters. The door hissed closed behind her.

“We’re being shot at! Just get this bus moving for the love of God!” she shouted.

The bus lurched out into traffic as the wail of a multitude of sirens cut through the air.

She found a small coin in her wallet, tugged it out, held it up and then dropped it in the slot. The Australian dollar was about the size of a U.S. dime, but thicker, nicknamed a brass button.

“Here? Happy?” She mentally rebuked herself for being snide to the man.

“You’re hurt, miss?” The driver noted the blood, but didn’t keep his eyes on her; he was intent on speeding away from the scene.

“I’m fine. Really.” Annja threaded her way down the center of the bus to the back, sagging into an empty seat and avoiding the curious stares of the dozen passengers.

“Pig’s arse!” said an elderly woman who peered over the back of her seat to ogle Annja.

“You’re bleedin’,” another passenger pointed out. “And you’re in your underwear.”

“It’s a bikini top,” Annja fumed.

“Pig’s you’re fine,” the elderly woman persisted.

Annja closed her eyes and pictured Oliver. “I’ll wager I’m in better shape than my cameraman,” she said.