Restless Soul - Alex Archer [62]
Like a shadow, she slipped around the other side of the Jeep, edging to its front and poking her head up only briefly to see that the two men were still standing and talking at the back of the truck. It was half-filled with crates, and she saw the dark outline of a Buddha statue. Likely they hadn’t cleaned out the entire cavern before now because there’d simply been so many relics in it. Hauling away that much stuff required time and multiple vehicles, and no doubt multiple trips. The men were taking care with the goods and not hurrying.
She calculated how to take the pair out without killing them—she didn’t need their deaths to meet her revenge. She just needed to catch them.
A part of her knew this was something the Thai authorities should handle. But they weren’t here, and she worried that the men might not tarry long enough for the authorities to arrive…though her stopping the Jeep would help that matter. Stopping the truck would cement the deal.
Annja weighed the options and decided the authorities could deal with her prisoners. She would explain that the smuggling operation was being packed up and moved because she, Luartaro and Zakkarat accidentally stumbled across it, and so she had to act.
She crept closer and tightened the grip on her sword. The shorter man dropped his cigarette and ground it out with the ball of his foot. He was looking down, studying a turtle that had crawled out of the tall grass, and Annja chose that moment to strike. She sprang forward, sword pulled back, and she cleared the distance to the closest man in a heartbeat.
The shorter man looked up just as Annja rapped the pommel of her sword against the back of the other man’s head. He crumpled just as the shorter man drew the pistol from a holster at his side, brought it up and shouted.
It was a warning of some kind, she was certain, as she spun to her right when his first shot went off. The gun looked similar to the one she’d briefly used, and she counted herself fortunate that in his haste he was a bad aim. She closed the distance and brought the pommel down like a hammer on his hand. The gun dropped and he shouted again.
He fumbled for a knife at his waist and tried to back away from her, but the ground was still damp and he lost his balance. She brought her leg up and caught him hard in the thigh, then kicked him a second time.
As he dropped to his knees she thumped the pommel against the top of his head, cringing when she heard a cracking sound and praying she’d only knocked him out. No time to check, she vaulted over his body and whipped around the side of the truck, feet churning over the ground and heading toward the hole the winch sat in front of. A man was emerging from it, awkward in his climbing because he had a gun in his hand.
He fired it without aiming, and he struck a front tire of the truck. Annja smiled at that.
“Now shoot out the other one,” she said as she charged him.
He managed to climb all the way out by the time she reached him, and he squeezed off two more shots, one grazing her arm. It felt like fire, and she ground her teeth together. She swept the sword around, turning it so the flat of her blade would hit his side, but he was too fast for her. He leaped backward, across the hole, hollering to whoever was still inside.
“I definitely need to learn Vietnamese,” she said. She skirted the hole as shots were fired upward through it, spit rapid-fire from a machine gun. Then she whirled as the man up top fired again, this time at least one of the bullets striking the blade of the sword.
“No!” she hollered. The sword had been in pieces when it had come into her possession, and she could well imagine it breaking into pieces again.
She led with the sword again, darting toward him