21

Annja blinked and woke suddenly.

She was about ten feet from the bonfire, on a cot that someone had pulled out of a tent, a blanket draped over her. There was a cool rag on her forehead, which fell into her lap when she sat up. Instantly, she felt dizzy again.

There was more gunfire, and she swung her legs over the side of the cot, getting them tangled in the blanket. She struggled with it for a moment, before she won and balled the blanket on the end of the cot. Then she stood, carefully, so the dizziness wouldn’t send her to the ground again.

She saw the jeep she’d driven into the camp, and the tent next to it that she’d taken down with a tire. Dari, Cindy, Wes, Jennifer and two security guards were using the jeep and the collapsed tent as cover and were firing at something she couldn’t see. A quick look around the rest of the camp showed that the students and the rest of the archaeologists were near the canopy tent, on the other side of the bonfire.

Annja started toward the jeep, setting her feet in time with her pounding heart. She must have collapsed earlier, and someone had put her on the cot and tried to take care of her. Her arm had been dressed. And then the rest of the hit squad must have shown up from the other dig site. That six people were shooting meant that they must have retrieved some guns from the jeep.

And more than guns, she realized after a moment. Dari lobbed a grenade, which thundered and spit up chunks of dirt when it hit. Cindy cheered and kept firing, and Dari threw another one before Annja could reach them.

“Dari’s got blood worth bottling!” Jennifer exclaimed. “He got one with that last throw.”

“Let me toss one!” Cindy reached into the back of the jeep and pulled out a grenade, but Dari grabbed it from her.

“I don’t want you blowing us all up,” he said.

Cindy made a face and started firing again. It looked as if she actually knew how to use a pistol.

Through the smoke from the grenades, Annja finally saw what they were shooting at—the men who had driven toward the student camp while she was driving away.

“How long was I out?” Annja asked as she shouldered up between Cindy and Dari.

No one answered, but Jennifer reached behind Cindy and passed Annja an M-16.

“I used to target shoot when I was in college,” Jennifer said. “Haven’t lost my touch. I nailed one of the bastards!”

Indeed, as Annja fitted the rifle to her sore shoulder, she saw two bodies. One was sprawled across the hood of a jeep, and the other one was on the ground in pieces from the grenades. She fired, shattering the windshield of the closest jeep. Not military grade, she thought.

She fired again, just as tires squealed and the jeeps pulled back. The remaining men—three in each jeep that she could see, returned fire, but the archaeologists had excellent cover and knew when to duck. Within the passing of a few heartbeats the vehicles were roaring away.

“Hated to throw those grenades,” Dari said. “I don’t want to hurt the preserve.”

Dr. Michaels slapped him on the back. “Saved our necks, you did. The government can replant. And you kept them from entering our site.”

For the first time Annja saw deep lines on his face, from worry and fatigue, and maybe from loss. She looked at him and met his sad gaze.

“They killed Josie,” Wes said.

“And Matthew,” Cindy said. Her eyes were puffy from crying. “They wanted to know where you were, and when we wouldn’t tell them—honestly because we didn’t know exactly—they shot Jeff, and then Matthew.” She dropped to her knees and put her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking from the force of her sobs. “How could something like this happen?”

“Shot Josie for the same reason, mostly,” Wes said. He was the calmest of the bunch, but Annja suspected that was because he hadn’t let himself absorb the gravity of everything. “They shot her in the head like an execution. They wanted to know if we’d left the sites any time yesterday or today, or if we talked to anyone.”

“Because one man didn’t want to be seen,” Annja said dully. “Or maybe two men didn’t want to be seen together.”

“Dr. Hamam,” Jon said. The student had shuffled up behind them. He was white from fear, his eyes unnaturally wide. “Dr. Hamam was with that man with all the scars. I didn’t like that man.”

“The man is called Sayed,” Annja added.

Jon stroked his chin, his lip quivering nervously. “Sayed. That was the guy with Doc, right?” It looked as if Jon might topple at any moment, his legs trembling so much the fabric of his pants made a shooshing sound.

“Creeped me out,” Cindy said. She raised her head, face a red mask of anger and disbelief. “Good reason why, I guess, if these were his men. But Doc wouldn’t’ve had anything to do with this. Just that creepy Sayed fellow. Bet Doc didn’t know he was a bad dude.” She started crying again.

Annja didn’t blame her. It was as if the students and the archaeologists had been dropped in the middle of a skirmish, something they were all totally unprepared for.

“God, please don’t let them come back,” Cindy said.

Annja couldn’t hear the jeeps anymore; they were out of range. The sounds of the woods came back—owls and night birds mostly, and something that sounded like a cricket.

“Sayed, huh?” Jon knelt next to Cindy and stroked her hair. “Name sounds familiar somehow.”

“Sayed Houssam,” Annja whispered, as it suddenly came to her. “A very bad man.”

Cindy continued babbling about how innocent Doc must be and that “this horrid Sayed person” must have duped him into thinking he was a grantor or investor who really only wanted to steal gold from the dig.

“Sayed Houssam, the international terrorist. A murderer a hundred times over.” That’s what had been tickling the back of Annja’s thoughts. It wasn’t that she was well informed about everything going on in the world, but she did read newspapers online, and she had read several articles about bus and subway bombings in London. Who hadn’t been transfixed by all the terrorism reports? she thought. Sayed Houssam—the Sword—had come up amid the reports. He was an international terrorist whose name had been associated with bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and others of their ilk—someone for hire and who supposedly had his own agenda. She’d seen his picture in the online papers.

Why hadn’t she recognized him when she looked through Oliver’s camera? Because they were far away and she didn’t get a good look at him, she reasoned. And because she certainly wasn’t expecting to see an international terrorist at a student dig in a forest preserve northwest of Sydney. Last she’d read he was in London, having bombed the bleachers at a soccer stadium.

He certainly doesn’t want anyone to know he’s here, she thought. And either he doesn’t want to be connected to Dr. Hamam, or Dr. Hamam doesn’t want to be connected to him.

“This isn’t just about Egyptian relics,” she said, talking to herself and not realizing at first that she was speaking aloud. “The Sword bombs things—he doesn’t steal artifacts. At least I don’t think he does.”

“Then what’s it about?” Wes asked. “I’d bloody well like to know why Josie had to die.”

“And Matthew.” Cindy started blubbering, and Jon put his arm around her. Both of them shook together.

“I don’t know,” Annja answered. “But I will find out.”

“And why Jeff had to get shot,” Jon put in. He looked up at Annja, tears coming down his face now, too.

Jeff, they’d mentioned him before. “Shot? Someone’s hurt? They left someone alive? Jeff is alive?”

“Yeah,” Jon replied. “They shot him in the knee. Said they were going to shoot him in the other knee and then cut off his fingers one by one if he didn’t tell them where you were.”

“But then Matthew put himself between Jeff and that horrid man,” Cindy added. She stuffed her fist in her mouth and the tears came faster. “And Matthew took the next bullet.”

“They shot Josie just after,” Wes said. “They were going to shoot Jennifer next, maybe shoot all of us. Hell, certainly shoot all of us, but you showed up.”

Wes leaned against the jeep. He hadn’t let go of the pistol. He peered out into the darkness and sniffed. The air was thick with the smell of smoke from the grenades and had an acrid stench from all the gunfire.

“They’re not coming back,” Annja told him. “We killed too many of them. They’re going back into whatever hole they crawled out of.”

“So we’re safe,” Jennifer said, her shoulders slumping in relief. She hovered over Jon and Cindy, gently touching each one. “I’m afraid, too,” she whispered. Her hand shook visibly. “And so very, very angry.”

“Safe?” Jon asked. “Really?”

“I didn’t say that,” Annja cut back a little too sharply. “But those men won’t be back, at least for a while.” She turned to Wes, who still hadn’t moved from the jeep. “You did call the police?”

He nodded. “And before this second wave of bastards showed up I also called for an ambo.”

“For Jeff,” Annja said.

Another nod. “And for that fellow Dari walloped the crap out of.”

Annja’s eyebrows rose. “You have one of them? Alive?”

Dari finally spoke. “They raced in here in their jeep, the first batch, jumping out and shouting at us. Well, one of them shouted anyway. Only one spoke English from what we could tell. Then another started waving a gun in my face, and I tackled him.”

“And hit him in the throat!” Jennifer cut in. “I thought Dari killed him at first, broke his friggin’ neck.”

Jon got up and tugged Cindy with him. He dug the ball of his foot into the ground. “That’s when they beat Dari up.” He pointed to the bald biker’s face. “Then they lined us up like we were gonna all be shot by a firing squad, shot Jeff in the knee.”

“And killed Matthew and Josie,” Annja said. “And before that, Oliver.”

She stepped away from the jeep and turned toward the bonfire. The blaze had died down a little, and she could no longer make out the outlines of furniture, only pieces of burning wood. She walked toward the cluster of people beyond it. Jeff would be there, no doubt tended to as someone had tended to her. And hopefully the man Dari had hit in the throat was there. Finally she had someone alive, and she intended to get some answers from him.