Restless Soul - Alex Archer [40]
She couldn’t hear their words, only the bullets biting into the tree she hid behind.
Then one of the guns quieted, and she heard the metallic ratcheting sound of a magazine being pulled out.
She pushed away from the tree and, somersaulting down the slope, jumped up at the last instant as she reached the safety of another thick trunk.
More shots. More shouting.
Her breath was fast and ragged. Her chest heaved and her thighs burned with the exertion.
“Some vacation,” she muttered. “Some wonderful vacation.”
She sprang away again, to the southeast, slipping and falling just as bullets cut through the air where her head had been a heartbeat before.
She rolled behind a clump of ferns and crawled toward the men.
Stupid! Stupid! She cursed herself for throwing away the gun.
She hadn’t been thinking straight since she got on the plane in Argentina to come here, and certainly not since she went in pursuit of the voice in her head begging for freedom.
The pommel of her sword was so wet from her sweat and the rain she almost dropped it. Everything was so terribly slippery. It was proving to be a slippery vacation.
Why did danger always manage to find her? Why couldn’t this vacation have been simply a break away from her other life? Would she ever have a normal life?
Not if she didn’t stop her attackers, she admonished herself. Focus!
The men slogged closer, sweeping their weapons in a waist-level arc and firing blindly.
But as long as they were firing so wildly, it meant they didn’t know where she was.
She stopped crawling and lay flat. The pack and its skull bowl were heavy against her back. The rain was pattering against everything around her, masking footsteps and words. She strained to hear what the two men were saying. That they were talking meant they were confident in their ability over hers.
She could understand nothing, other than that the words had an edge of anger to them. She didn’t have to translate anything to know that the men were intent on separating her from her life.
They passed her, not noticing her among the ferns, and she silently rose up behind them, slipping the pack from her back so she could move more fluidly. One step, two, sword raised over a shoulder and holding her breath.
Lightning flashed. Her blade glittered as it came down and cut through the back of the lagging man’s neck.
His head lolled to the side and he staggered forward then fell.
She rushed toward the last man, who had spun to face her.
He’d moved too quickly, however, and lost his footing in the mud. A burst from his machine gun went wild and struck his fallen comrade’s body.
She charged him, leading with the pommel of her sword and slamming it hard against his chest. She kicked out and knocked the machine gun from his grasp.
Annja shoved him, and with the ground so slick, he couldn’t keep his balance.
He fell back and she dropped on top of him, planting her knees on his chest and hands on his shoulders.
She dismissed the sword and dug her fingers into his flesh.
He struggled to push her off, but she raised him up by his shoulders and slammed the back of his head against the ground. He went limp.
She let out a great sigh of relief. She hadn’t been forced to kill all of them.
She straightened and tipped her face up to the rain.
Somewhere she’d lost the helmet that Zakkarat had provided. She supposed he’d be annoyed. She stuck out her tongue and took in drops of cool rain. Her hair was plastered to her skull.
Funny that she’d even worry about losing a helmet, considering all that had happened. Zakkarat would have plenty of money to buy whatever caving equipment he wanted.
She focused until her breath became steady, and at the same time she concentrated, listening for traces of more men coming down the side of the mountain.
Some would surely come in search of their missing comrades, but they would find only bodies and this one unconscious man.
Annja summoned up her strength to break the trigger sear, ruining the machine gun. She tossed it into the brush, then rose and did the same to the dead man