Restless Soul - Alex Archer [61]
She climbed slower than she would have liked, but she was still fatigued from yesterday’s rigorous ordeal. The stitches in her leg from where the retired veterinarian had cut out the bullets pulled. She guessed it was about an hour of steady climbing when she spotted the roof of a truck in a gap in the branches of a pair of acacia trees. The men indeed had not left. In fact, they’d managed to bring a truck up the narrow trail. They probably needed it because the Jeeps they’d had yesterday were not sufficient to haul away all of the treasure. She edged closer, staying low so she could get a good look at what was going on.
The truck seemed to have more rust showing than paint, and it had a high, boxy back. Its tires were thick and mud-crusted, and from the height of the axels it looked like a four-wheel-drive setup—no doubt necessary in this terrain. The truck was narrow, but barely fit on the overgrown trail, and it appeared to be a Howo design. Annja had seen several trucks made by the company during a trip to China. This model had quite some age to it, and she suspected it would haul a good bit of the treasure. There was a Jeep, too, several yards behind the truck and lower on the trail. No one was in either vehicle.
She waited, resting the sword flat against the ground and resisting the urge to brush away the gnats that were dancing around her face. Within minutes, two black-clad men passed by her hiding spot and loaded a crate onto the back of the truck, struggling under its weight. The men she’d seen yesterday had also been dressed in black. They weren’t wearing uniforms, however, as it didn’t look as if any of the shirts and pants matched. One man had on jet-black jeans, the other work trousers; one wore a T-shirt, and the other a short-sleeved shirt with a patch on the pocket and beige buttons. The shoes ranged from tennis shoes to heavy boots, to loafers on the third man who appeared, all caked with mud.
She watched for several more minutes, trying to gauge just how many men were involved. She only saw the three, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more in the cavern helping to bring up the goods. She heard a whirring, chugging sound, and smelled something acrid. They were using a gas-powered winch. She shifted her position and saw that they’d brought a cumbersome contraption to replace the broken one she’d spotted yesterday. It wheezed and belched a small cloud of exhaust. So there was at least one more man down below attaching things to the cable.
Had they been loading treasure all night? Had the torrential rain slowed them? How much had already been carted away? Annja would find out soon enough, and she would try to keep them from taking away any more. She left her camera in the bushes and crept toward the Jeep, crouching low and hunkering behind it. The men were around the truck and didn’t see her.
Stay quiet! she admonished herself as she carefully thrust the tip of her sword between the threads of the right rear tire. The rubber was thick, and it took some worrying at it, but she finally pierced it. She made two more holes in it and stretched her hand forward, feeling the air slowly escaping. Then she worked on the other rear tire. The truck would not be able to easily get around the Jeep…without pushing it out of the way, and the Jeep could not get far on only its front tires. For good measure, she punctured the spare that was affixed to the back.
Annja listened as she worked, hearing the men load another crate and groaning under its weight. None of them spoke English, or any other language she knew, and she promised herself that she would learn a few phrases of Vietnamese. She heard one of the men strike a match as another continued talking. Her eyes widened when she picked up the words Chiang Mai.
Peeking around the rear of the Jeep, she caught a good profile of one of the men. He was short, no more than five feet five inches, and he stood straight, shoulders back in seeming military posture.