Hence, the eavesdropping worm.
So far, though, it had yielded little in the way of worthwhile results. He’d caught a few snatches of conversation here and there, but nothing that helped him narrow down what Shaw’s overall plans were or the true nature of whatever it was he was involved in. The minute Shaw shut down his monitor, the bug went inactive, so its use was by nature limited.
Today was one of those days. Roux could hear Shaw shuffling things around on his desk, heard the snap of a briefcase lid closing down and then nothing more as the monitor was switched off on the other side.
But after living through the centuries, Roux had learned to be patient. Shaw would let something slip one of these days, and when that happened Roux would be ready for it.
While Craig and Paolo got back to work the next morning excavating Big Red from the midst of the block of peat they’d cut from the bog, Annja turned her attention to the necklace that she’d removed from around the warrior’s neck the night before. The artifact had been soaking in a chemical bath overnight and she went directly to it after breakfast, removing it from the solution and washing it under a gentle flow of cold water. Slowly, bit by bit, the dirt, silt and hardened peat that had encrusted it began to fall away, revealing the artifact to the light of day for the first time in almost two thousand years.
It
was
a torc; she’d been right about that. The braided strands of metal were easy to see now that the gunk had been cleared away. What struck her as strange, however, was the fact that this one hadn’t been fashioned from gold, as almost every other one she’d ever seen had. Rather, this one was made from some kind of darker metal that threw off a scintillating array of colors when the light was shined on it just so. She’d thought it might be iron at first, but closer examination revealed that it was much too refined for that.
Perhaps a combination of various metals?
There really was no way to tell until they had a chance to get a sample of it into a gas spectrometer to analyze the component elements. And that wouldn’t happen until they got the necklace back to Craig’s lab at Oxford. For now, she’d just have to wonder.
Annja didn’t know all that much about torcs; Iron Age civilizations hadn’t ever really been her specialty. That was one of the reasons she was so excited to be taking part in this excavation. The chance to break ground, literally, on a new site coupled with the opportunity to learn more about a period of history she wasn’t all that familiar with was like winning the lottery for her. She did know that, in general, the wearing of a torc was usually a sign of nobility or high social status. The time and cost in creating them almost made it so by default. That fit with the events she’d witnessed, if she could call it that, in her dream from the other night. Big Red had clearly been a warrior of some renown; otherwise, they never would have had such an elaborate burial ceremony. But exactly who he was or why he’d been honored in such a fashion might never be known. It was up to Annja and the rest of the team to try to answer those questions, and others like them, as they worked with the body and the artifacts that had been buried with it.
As the cleaning continued, Annja noticed that each end of the torc was adorned with a small sculpture in the shape of an eagle’s head. The ornaments were made from a hard white substance, perhaps bone or even ivory, and it looked as if the beaks once fit together in a certain way to form a clasp that kept the torc secured around the wearer’s neck. Annja marveled at the design; it was quite ingenious.
They broke reluctantly for lunch and were back at it again within the hour. More artifacts were turning up as Craig and Paolo continued the slow but steady process of freeing Big Red’s earthly remains from the peat that surrounded them. A beaded necklace was first, followed by a pair of chain-mail gauntlets and an assortment of coins, their faces blackened from the tannic acid of the bog. As each one was unearthed, they were passed over to Annja for cataloging and cleaning.
Throughout it all, Craig and Paolo shared with Annja stories of prior digs they’d been on and she, in turn, told them about some of the remote places and legends the cable show had sent her to investigate. It was a companionable afternoon and Annja thoroughly enjoyed herself.
Late in the day they heard several shouts coming from the center of camp. The occasional raised voice was common in camp—friends shouting after friends, that kind of thing—but this went on for several minutes, which was unusual and caught their attention.
Craig frowned, then got up from his stool, setting the tools he’d been working with down on the table in front of him. “What’s the heck’s going on out there?” he said, though it was clear he wasn’t expecting an answer from either Paolo or Annja.
He crossed the tent and disappeared through the flap, apparently intent on finding out. Paolo followed him a moment later.
Annja ignored the interruption and kept working, at least for a few minutes. But when the others didn’t return, she began to get worried. The sense that something was seriously wrong stole over her, like a chill wind blowing through an open door, and she shivered in response. The shouting had stopped, but the silence that had replaced it only made her more concerned.
Something was clearly wrong.
She could feel it in her bones, like that sense of unease just before a sharp summer storm.
Annja stepped away from the worktable, intending to go and see what was happening for herself, when her gaze fell upon the torc. Something told her that leaving it behind would be asking for trouble, so she snatched it up and slipped it into her pocket before leaving the tent. On any other day she would have been appalled to treat an artifact so cavalierly, but she was somehow convinced that it was the right thing to do.
She could always put it back afterward, if it turned out to be nothing.
She drew back the flap of the tent, intending to step outside, but stopped short when a man with a pistol in hand stepped into view, leading two of the dig workers forward at gunpoint. They were headed for the center of camp, just as Craig and Paolo had done, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there was probably more than one of the intruders in camp at that very moment. That realization kept her from immediately going to her coworkers aid; she didn’t want to draw attention to herself until she knew exactly what was going on.
She waited for them to move out of sight, then slipped out and looked around. There didn’t seem to be anyone else about. Even if she hadn’t seen the gunman, that in itself would have been unusual. People were always moving about the camp. Now that she was outside and the tent walls were no longer acting as a sound baffle, she could hear several angry voices coming from the center of the camp. She cautiously made her way in that direction, slipping in and out between the tents rather than walking openly down the main path. As she drew closer to the center of camp, she crouched down beside one of the tents and peered around the corner.
From where she crouched she could see that most of the dig team had been herded into the open area in front of the mess tent. Craig stood alone in front of the group, facing a bearded man in dark fatigues who was pointing a pistol at Craig’s head. Behind the newcomer were several more men, all dressed the same way and all holding firearms of their own, pointing them indiscriminately at the rest of the dig team. Annja recognized the guns as MP-5s, the stubby machine pistols that in recent years had become the weapons of choice for more than a few special-operations units across the world. They were effective little things, capable of firing eight hundred rounds per minute on full auto.
If the armed men opened fire, the archaeologists would be cut down in seconds.
Craig glared at the men in front of him.
“What do you want?” he asked.
The leader looked past Craig as if he didn’t matter and addressed his words to the rest of the dig team huddled behind him. “I’m looking for a necklace. A black one. Surrender it now and there won’t be any trouble.”
Annja couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How did they know about the torc? Craig hadn’t even reported it to the trustees from Oxford overseeing the dig yet, never mind to anyone else.
Craig stepped forward, causing the gunman to turn his attention back to him rather than the others.
“I don’t know what anyone has told you, but we haven’t uncovered anything of value here. There’s no gold. No treasure. Certainly nothing to make you rich.”
The man laughed. “I want the torc,” he said. “We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. I don’t really care. Now where is it?”
There was a look in the gunman’s eyes that Annja didn’t like. Almost as if he was eager for a confrontation.
Tell him, Craig, Annja thought. Tell him what he wants to know.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Craig replied.
The man shrugged. “That’s too bad,” he said.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The shot took Craig in the forehead, knocking him over backward to the ground. He was dead before the sound of the gunshot had finished echoing over the campsite.
Silence fell as the rest of the dig team stared in stunned horror at the body in front of them.
The gunman seemed to drink in their fear and terror like a fine wine. A slow smile spilled across his face as he watched them stare at the dead body in front of them and then, almost casually, he said, “Okay. Now that we’ve established that I’m not screwing around, I’ll ask again. Where is the torc?”
The need to charge out and avenge her friend screamed through Annja’s bones, but she fought the urge back down, knowing that to do so right now would be tantamount to suicide. Running out into the open and confronting the mercenary leader—for that is what she guessed them to be, mercenaries—would only get her killed. That would serve no one, least of all the people she needed to help. If she was going to get the rest of the team out of this alive, the next few minutes were crucial. She would need all her wits about her if she was going to succeed.
She slipped slowly backward until she was out of sight behind the nearest tent and then reached into the otherwhere, summoning her sword to hand. It slid smoothly into existence, appearing with the speed of thought, fully formed and ready for use, the hilt fitting her palm as if it had been made for her and her alone.
Sometimes she even thought that it had.
Her life hadn’t been the same since that fateful day when she’d brought the broken, scattered pieces of the sword together again for the first time since their original owner, Joan of Arc, had been burned at the stake centuries earlier. The sword had miraculously reformed in a flash of power right before her very eyes and, in some strange way she still didn’t quite understand, had chosen her to be its next bearer.
The role came with its own unique set of responsibilities, protecting the innocent seemingly first and foremost among them. Her own innate sense of justice seemed amplified when she carried the sword and she’d found herself forced into any number of situations that others would have simply walked away from as a result. Numbers didn’t matter, nor did the odds, only that she acted whenever possible to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves.
Like now.
Craig’s death made the intentions of the intruders quite clear. There was no way they were going to let the other dig workers live after witnessing Craig being killed in cold blood. That meant it was up to Annja to get them out of this alive.
Despite knowing that they would never get there in time, Annja pulled out her BlackBerry with her free hand and placed an emergency call to the regional police. She told the sergeant who answered her name and that the archaeological dig just north of Arkholme was under attack by armed insurgents. When he began to ask questions she hung up. She didn’t have time to sit there and chat with him; people’s lives hung in the balance.
As she slipped the phone back into her pocket, her fingers touched the torc. Something told her that it wouldn’t be safe there; if she was caught, her captors would find it in seconds. She took it out of her pocket and slipped it inside her sports bra instead. That way, at least it would pass a casual search.
Then she took a moment to consider her next move.
Clearly she couldn’t take them all on at once. But if she could even up the odds a bit, she’d have a better chance of succeeding in the end.
With that in mind, she faded back into the shadows, waiting for her chance at vengeance.
The gunman ordered his men to herd the rest of the dig workers into the mess tent behind them, and as they began doing so, Annja slipped around behind it and found a place to crouch down out of sight near one of the windows. From this position she could see and hear most of what was going on inside the tent, while potentially being ready to do something to help if an opportunity presented herself.
The lead mercenary stood facing the group, his gun still in hand.
“Where is Professor Novick?” he asked.
No one would look at one another, for fear of giving Novick away. They had seen what had happened to Dr. Stevens; it didn’t take too much imagination to figure out what was likely to happen to Paolo.
For a moment, Annja didn’t see him and she began to hope that he had slipped away in the initial confusion, but it was not to be.
“I am Novick,” a man said from the back of the crowd and Annja watched as Paolo stepped forward.
“You,” the man said, pointing at Novick, “come with me.” He turned and faced the two guards who had entered the tent with him. “If they try to escape,” he said, nodding back over his shoulder at the prisoners, “kill them.”
Paolo and the mercenary leader walked out of the tent, leaving the entire workforce guarded by only two men.
This was her chance.
Annja slipped over to the corner of the tent and peered around it. From where she crouched she could see other guards moving around the camp, hunting through the tents, apparently searching for the torc. She thanked her intuition for making her grab it at the last moment; at least that would keep it out of their hands for now.
If she didn’t call undue attention to herself, she should be able to make it to the entrance and slip inside the tent without anyone on the outside being any wiser.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she released her sword back into the otherwhere and did just that.
The guards had their backs to her as she strode inside. They were having too much fun terrorizing the dig crew, particularly the female students, and Annja was able to cross most of the distance to them before one of her fellow coworkers called out her name in surprise upon seeing her approach.
“Annja!”
The guards whirled around, reaching for the guns they’d let hang free on the straps around their necks, but Annja was much too fast for them.
Her right leg was already coming up in a perfectly executed crescent kick that caught the first guard across the side of the head, driving him to the floor.
She didn’t let that stop her, though, using the momentum of the kick to spin herself around one hundred and eighty degrees, delivering a stunning hammer fist to the other guard’s face and then, when the blow momentarily stunned him, grabbed either side of his head in her hands and pulled it down toward her rapidly rising knee.
As he fell Annja was already turning back in the other direction. She’d seen the first guard trying to get back on his feet and she lashed out with a powerful side kick that knocked him into unconsciousness like his partner.
The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds.
Annja didn’t give the others time to think about what had just happened.
“Quickly, this way,” she said, rushing over to the rear wall of the tent. She snatched a knife off a nearby table and thrust it through the canvas, ripping downward with all her strength as she did so to create a big gash in the fabric.
“Run for the woods and get as far away as you can,” she said to the others.
“What about Dr. Novick?” one of the men asked.
“I’ll get him. Right now you have to get as far away from here as you possibly can. When you’re free, call the territorial police. Hurry now!”
As they began to file out one at a time into the growing darkness at the rear of the tent, Annja headed in the opposite direction. If they were going to have any chance of getting away, she had to create a diversion, something to keep the gunmen occupied. And she knew just how she was going to do it. She summoned her sword.
As she drew closer to the entrance to the tent, the flap was suddenly pulled back and Annja found herself staring down the barrel of the gun held in the lead mercenary’s hand.
She didn’t stop to think, didn’t look where she was going or what she might land on, just reacted on instinct and threw herself to the side.
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet that should have killed her merely grazed her instead.
It was enough to save her life, but not enough to keep her conscious.
The darkness claimed her before she even hit the ground.