He didn't concern her anymore.
None of the other half-dozen standing enemies had noticed the fall of the
marksman behind the rock. She put down two more with solid hits to the torso
before the survivors broke and ran, realizing with a sudden adrenal fear-jolt
that someone was firing at them from the flank. Abandoning their own vehicle
they rabbited off over the nearby hills. Baron and Larry Taitt swarmed out of
the ditch, grabbed up fallen Kalashnikovs, and fired after them with quick
shoulder-aimed bursts. One threw up his arms, his rifle soaring up over his
head theatrically, before collapsing over the top of a ridge out of sight.
And silence descended like a steel curtain.
Annja sighed and slumped to the
cold ground. She let herself just lay there and quiver with reaction for three
whole breaths. Then she stood and walked back toward the bus, brushing snow off
the front of her jacket and pants with one hand.
She held the Kalashnikov ready in the other. She doubted the Kurds would stop
running for some time as they'd taken terrible casualties in terms of their
small numbers. But she wasn't going to bet her life on that.
"Nice job, Creed," Baron said as she came back to the road.
With obvious effort Charlie Bostitch hauled himself out of the ditch where he
had taken cover. "Annja!" he cried. Brushing snow-damp bits of dead
vegetation from his trench coat he lumbered quickly toward her.
"Thank the Lord you're all right!" Before she could elude or try to
dissuade him he'd caught her in an enfolding embrace. Fortunately it was no
more than a sort of clumsy dancing-bear hug. If he harbored any impure ideas
beyond that they didn't come through. Of course that might have been tricky,
given that he'd trapped the heavy Russian rifle crosswise between their bodies.
Releasing her, he held her out to arm's length for a moment. Out of politeness
she didn't try to squirm away. Still wired from the fight she was determined
that if he got out of line she'd give him a fast knee where it'd do the most
good, boss or no boss.
Instead he said, "You've done a remarkable thing. But why didn't you let
the men handle it?"
In light of whom she had agreed to work with she'd already performed the
necessary attitudinal self-adjustments not to give in to reflex resentment at a
question like that. Besides, she had to admit it wouldn't take a
dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist to ask it; in her place most women would've
said the same thing. And most women would probably have been right to.
"He had the drop on the men, sir," she said, quite truthfully.
"The man on the bus did, I mean. He was also pretty focused on them. I saw
my opening and acted. And then because I knew what to do next, I went ahead and
did it."
"That's a pretty concise after-action report," Baron said.
They took stock of the situation. Mr. Atabeg was dead. So were six of the
roadblock party. If any of the Kurds had gotten injured their companions had
carried them off with them.
Although Bostitch, Baron and Taitt were soggy and dirty and chilled through
from diving into a ditch partially filled with snow none of them was hurt.
Neither was anybody on the bus.
There was no sign of the bus driver. The
CHM
crew and several of
Bostitch's pack wandered around the ridges calling his name, which was Ali.
They got no response.
The worse news was that neither the lead car nor the school bus was going
anywhere anytime soon. The shine had definitely come off the Mercedes SUV, with
bullet holes speckling what looked like every square inch of its bodywork and
the starred and sagging windows. Meanwhile the engine compartment of the
battered white school bus had gotten shot up; the radiator was gone, the engine
block probably cracked. Or so Baron, Tommy and a couple of the Young Wolves who
knew a lot more about cars than Annja did said after prying up the damaged
hood.
However, all the full-auto/high-power rounds had gone one way. Aside from a
hole in the windshield the truck blocking the road was intact. It started
immediately when Baron tried it.
Unfortunately the stake-bed was too small to accommodate both the luggage and
the passengers from the deceased bus. The pickup that brought up the rear was
untouched, although its driver had likewise departed for parts unknown at some
time during the proceedings. But it was already overloaded with the
expedition's equipment.
"The good news is," Baron said, "we're getting into the area
where I have contacts."
"Yes, our contacts with the Kurds have been highly gratifying so
far," Robyn Wilfork said cheerily. Everyone ignored him. Although Annja
admitted to herself he may have had a point.
Taking Josh Fairlie with him Baron motored off down the road in the truck in
search of more transport. Charlie Bostitch and Robyn Wilfork clambered back on
the dead bus and sat sharing a seat with their heads together while Larry Taitt
enthusiastically oversaw the unloading of the gear from the back.
Annja went off to the side and sat with Rabbi Leibowitz and watched.
"Should we help?" Levi asked.
"Under most circumstances I would," she admitted. "But I think
we probably need to preserve our standing as expert consultants, not grunt
laborers. Besides, it'll do the Young Wolves good to work off some of that
adrenaline."
He blinked at her through the thick round lenses of his glasses. "'Young
Wolves.'"
"Sorry. Private nickname I gave them. It, ah, wasn't supposed to come
out."
"They do seem lupine, somehow," Levi said, watching the Rehoboam Academy contingent joke and hoot as they hauled out the baggage. "They show
distinct pack behavior, I believe. Very appropriate name, Annja."
"Thanks. So, how are you holding up?"
"Me? I'm fine. Why?"
"Well, I mean…being caught in the middle of a firefight and all."
He shrugged. "I leave handling that sort of thing to others," he
said, as casually as if he were talking about the heavy lifting going on.
"As for the danger, I'm a student of the Qabbala. Not in the sense that's
received all the publicity the last few years."
"I understand the distinction. I've run into several flavors of Qabbalist
the last few years. All of whom spell it differently," Annja said,
laughing.
He laughed, too. "The Semitic tongues don't fit into Latin transliteration
very well, I'm afraid. In any event, I suppose I have a philosophical attitude
toward such matters. Perhaps it's merely being an otherworldly scholar."
She felt a rush of warmth for this strange, genial man. "Don't worry,
Levi. Wait, I guess you don't. Keep on not worrying. I'll get you up the
mountain and down safely."
Whether I make it or not, she mentally added. Not that she had any reason to
expect things to go bad.
Aside from the occasional ambush, bombing and assassination, all before coming
in sight of the stupid mountain, of course. No reason to expect trouble on the
climb at all.
She thought Levi might be caught out by her declaration, imagine it was
bravado, coming from a mere woman. Instead he smiled.
"Well, of course, Annja," he said. "I knew you would. It's what
you do, protect the innocent."
The
Chasing History's Monsters
team came down the ridge—the same one
over which Ali the bus driver had fled into the snowy wastes of Ağri province,
and from whose flank Annja had fired up the roadblock gunmen—carrying their
gear. Once the shooting had stopped they had bailed out to record as much as
they could of what had happened. Thank goodness they couldn't catch any video
of me shooting, she thought.
They looked oddly deflated. They seemed to be studiously ignoring Zeb, who'd
accompanied them to the crest line with a Kalashnikov recovered from one of the
dead gunmen hung around his neck on a waist-length Israeli-style sling. Annja
thought it a good idea. There was no telling whether the Kurds might decide to
come back with reinforcements to avenge their fallen comrades. She wasn't sure
whether the trio from New York were in deep denial over the danger or just
uncomfortable around an armed man.
She got a quick hint as they came up to her. All three stared at her as if
she'd turned into a scorpion.
"I feel like I don't know you," Trish said. "I feel like I don't
know if I
want
to know you."
"Yeah," Tommy said. He still had his big camera perched on his
shoulder. "That whole thing totally creeped me out. That dude is dead,
Annja. You smashed in the whole side of his head."
A voice at the back of her skull said, Good. It scarcely penetrated her lead
emotion, which was surprised hurt at the reception she was getting from her
compatriots. She had steeled herself to take whatever her fundamentalist
employers from the other side of the culture wars chose to dish out. But the
raw fear and loathing and sheer rejection from what she thought of as her own
people felt like an ice-cold bucket of betrayal thrown in her face.
"But why are you angry with her?" Levi asked. "She saved your
lives. She saved all our lives."
"She should've let the authorities handle it!" Tommy said.
"Authorities?"
Annja echoed.
Jason shook his head. "Violence never solves anything, man."
Levi looked at them quizzically. "Violence would seem to have settled that
gunman on the bus, yes?"
* * *
"NOW THAT IS ONE SORRY-ASS
motorcade," Jason said, peering up the road at the approaching procession
of vehicles.
Fortunately the Young Wolves had had plenty of jockish energy to burn up; after
Bostitch made a quiet suggestion to Taitt the dead had quickly been gathered up
and carried away out of sight over the nearest ridge. What they did with poor
Mr. Atabeg, his sunny positivism forever dimmed, and his Kurdish assassins
Annja didn't know and didn't ask. The local burial customs and whether they got
respected or not didn't much matter to her right now; she wasn't an
anthropologist. The
CHM
crew, whose résumés presumably didn't include TV
news, were freaked out considerably by the sight of the bullet-riddled corpses.
And even more by the sight of the man Annja had been forced to kill.
Two hours had passed before Baron called Bostitch to let him know he and
Fairlie were inbound with new transport, and requesting nobody fire at them as
they approached. Actually seeing the vehicles Annja quickly understood that
"new" only applied as a manner of speaking.
There were four of them, two sedans and two pickups. Proudly leading the way was
a slab-sided old Citroën 2CV with square headlights. Its gray color seemed to
be what it normally was, not a product of the cloud-filtered afternoon light.
Annja stood up from the pile of baggage where she'd been sitting. Levi sat
beside her. He hadn't spoken a word since their earlier conversation—had never
taken his nose out of the Hebrew paperback he'd pulled out of a pocket. She
figured he was trying to give moral support in the face of her apparent
ostracization from the New York contingent by continuing to sit with her.
Annja had rebuffed efforts by Wilfork to strike up conversation. She wasn't
prepared to deal with his foibles, especially since he seemed to keep intruding
deeper and deeper into her personal space. If he chose to interpret her unresponsiveness
as shock reaction to taking human lives, or post-adrenaline slump, let him. The
latter was at least partially true, anyway.
The unlikely vehicular procession pulled up alongside the baggage mounds, which
had been covered over with blue tarps against a restless wind that sent
powdered snow scurrying and eddying everywhere. Baron himself was driving the
front car; another man sat beside him. It wasn't Josh, whom Annja recognized
driving the Isuzu pickup next in line.
Baron got out. Charlie lumbered over, relief and concern washing over his big
slack features like ripple echoes from two sides of a narrow pool. "Great!
You found us more vehicles."
"Yeah. But we got some news, too," Baron said. "The Turkish
army's really locking Ağri province down hard. We'll need to stick strictly to
the back roads and camel trails from here on."
"What about the
peshmerga
, dear boy?" Wilfork asked. As always
he had his small digital voice recorder out and waving like a stubby magician's
wand. "They'd seem to be of more immediate concern."
"Maybe not," Baron said. "Allow me to introduce my man,
Hamid."
A man unfolded himself from the other side of the gray Citroën. When he
straightened he was taller than Annja, at least as tall as Charlie, but lean
and wolflike, with coal-smudge eyebrows over dark, dangerous eyes. He had a
thick moustache, but beard shadow covered the whole lower half of his face; the
top edges of it, angling from ear to mouth, were so precisely straight it
looked to have been stenciled on. He wore a colorful wool knit cap and a
sheepskin jacket over weathered blue jeans.
Behind her Annja heard Trish Baxter gasp. Hamid looked that way and scowled. He
said something guttural under his breath to Baron. It might even have been
English. Then he stepped forward and waved his hand.
"No camera, no camera!" he exclaimed.
Jason and Tommy were both filming. With practiced ease Jason stepped toward the
tall newcomer, lowering his camera while Tommy kept his up and recording.
"Not a problem, my man," the
CHM
crew chief said, tone
soothing but eyes cutting to Baron. "Not a problem. We're not a news crew.
We edit this before we send it back, and we can block out his face if that's
what he wants."
Baron said something sharp to Hamid that definitely wasn't English. Hamid
stopped and lowered his hands. But he didn't stop glowering at the television
crew.
Baron introduced Bostitch, Levi, Wilfork, Larry Taitt, then Annja. Under other
circumstances Annja might have been mildly amused at the pecking order. Josh
and the drivers of the other two vehicles came up, and introductions became
more general. The local drivers might have been Kurds, too, but they were
smaller and altogether less intimidating than Hamid.
Annja waited until she noticed Baron standing momentarily apart from the
others. She walked up to him. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" she
asked quietly.
"We lost our local guide and fixer, you may have noticed," he said.
"Under circumstances that maybe suggest we need one now more than ever. I
know Hamid—I've worked with him before. He knows how to get things done."
Annja was prepared to swallow her ambivalence about Baron and his own ability
to "get things done," at least in the absence of firm evidence of
actual wrongdoing. And as long as he seemed to be using his competence to keep
everyone alive and moving forward. She wasn't happy about extending that kind
of grace to a stranger in an even stranger land.
"How well do you know him? It's not as if our relations with the local
Kurds have been cordial so far," Annja pointed out.
Baron shrugged. He seemed impatient, shifting his weight from foot to foot and
speaking with more than a hint of tension. "Look, I've worked with him,
okay?"
If anything that set more alarm bells ringing. Annja knew they were not very
far from the borders with Georgia and Armenia, two former Soviet republics
affected by violent unrest, one of which had recently fought and lost a short
if vicious war with its former masters. Not to mention how near they were to Iraq and Iran as well. It was not a tranquil part of the world. Nor did the possible kinds of
"work" Hamid and Baron might have found to do together in the region
allay Annja's many misgivings.
"As I told you before," Baron went on, "there are Kurds and
there are Kurds. Some of them shoot at us. Some are listed by the U.S. State
Department as terrorist groups.
"Hamid, here, will help us deal with the bad ones. Look, why don't you
just leave this part of things to the professional and not worry your pretty
little head about it?"
Annja just stared at the arrogant man. Did he really say that? she wondered as
he moved off with quick lizard motions to consult with some of the acolytes who
were coming back from loading gear from the dead bus into one of the pickup
trucks. It left her shaking her head.
"Well, it troubles
my
scabby old outsized head, too, if it's any
consolation to you, Ms. Creed."
Annja spun to find Robyn Wilfork looming behind her.
"So sorry. Didn't mean to startle you. I thought post-adrenaline reaction
had set in and you'd be more…relaxed," he said with a smile.
Reaction had indeed set in, with its attendant mental dullness, sense of
wondering what anything was worth and incipient nausea. The aftereffects of
adrenaline overload were all way too familiar to Annja.
"Under the circumstances relaxation doesn't seem to be much of an option,
Mr. Wilfork," she said.
He shook his imposing head. The wind ruffled his yellow-white hair as he gazed
around the uneven horizon, with white-peaked mountain walls rising to the sides
and in front. The breeze came from the west, though, and was warm. It wasn't
snowing anymore.
"I suppose not," he said. "I have to admit, dinosaur that I am,
that under most circumstances, or I suppose if any other woman were involved,
I'd quite agree with the bellicose Mr. Baron. But given the somewhat…startling
and indeed impressive faculties you've displayed, I'm just glad you're on watch
as well. You may well see things our masculine egos blind the rest of us
to."
He didn't say anything about Trish, the only other woman in the party. Annja
tended to agree with the tacit assumption that Trish wouldn't be much use in
danger. She wasn't at all abashed about that judgment, either. It wasn't about
being male or female but about experience and courage. Abundantly blessed with
physical courage, Annja tended not to be awed by it. She was more interested in
the moral kind, herself. That to her mind was what separated true heroes from
the psychos and blunt instruments. From what she knew of Trish, she wasn't
likely to rise up in the face of real danger.
But she wasn't willing to let the journalist off the hook. "I would've
thought old-school socialists had a more enlightened outlook on women, Mr.
Wilfork."
He laughed gustily. "Oh, my no, my dear. Not us graybeards who were around
when Marcuse and Che walked the earth. There were giants in those days, at
least in their own minds. No, our prevailing wisdom was the dictum of Brother
Stokeley Carmichael, that the only place for women in the revolutionary movement
is prone."
And he ambled amiably off, suit coat hiked up and hands in his trouser pockets,
leaving Annja with her eyebrows climbing up her forehead.