Eternal Journey

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?”