Warned by the woman’s voice calling his name, Lourds threw himself to the ground and rolled behind a wrecked Jeep lying on its side. The front right tire had been blown off, probably from one of the Taliban rocket launchers, and the front end was a mess of twisted, blackened metal.
Lourds’s heart hammered inside his chest. He didn’t know why the man had killed Boris, or why he was now trying to kill Lourds himself. Especially after saving him only a short time ago. It didn’t make sense.
“Professor Lourds!”
Lourds turned at the sound of the young woman’s voice and spotted Anna twenty yards away and closing. She ran along a ditch enhanced by a snowdrift. For the moment, she was out of view of the Russia Today man.
“Anna! Stay back!”
She stopped and looked fearfully in the direction of the pursuer. “What is going on?”
“That man killed Boris.”
A stricken look filled Anna’s face. “Boris is dead?”
“Yes. In the cave.” Lourds thought she was going to cry.
“But why would he do this?”
Lourds shook his head. “I don’t know.” He peered around the Jeep and saw the Russia Today man break off his pursuit and go to the ground. A spray of bullets chopped into the snow where he’d disappeared. Lourds hoped that one of the ANP officers had seen what was going on and come to their rescue, but that wasn’t the case.
Evidently, some of the Taliban warriors had come down from the mountains and arrived at the dig site. Four of them lay spread out over the countryside, all of them firing at the Russia Today man, the ANP officers, and the wounded indiscriminately.
Unfortunately, the Taliban now lay between Lourds and Anna and the group of ANP officers clustered around the cargo truck with the wounded. Some of the ANP officers had spotted the Taliban and fired on them. If their aim improved, they would free up the Russia Today man to finish up his killing spree.
Anna evidently realized the same thing and dashed over to join Lourds. “Who is he?”
Lourds shook his head and looked around for his rental truck. He’d parked somewhere close by but couldn’t spot it in all the chaos. “I don’t know.”
“He told me his name was Yakov Fursin.”
“Probably an alias.” Lourds spotted the top of the white four-wheel-drive pickup fifty yards away. He had missed it among the snowdrifts. “Can you run?”
She frowned at him. “As fast as I have to.”
Lourds nodded at the truck. “I have a vehicle over there. If we can get to it, maybe we can elude this Fursin, or whatever his real name is.”
Grabbing Anna’s hand, he pulled her to his feet and raced toward the truck.
Frustrated, Linko lay pinned against the earth. He shifted the rifle and locked on to a Taliban who stuck his head up thirty yards away. Smoothly, Linko squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle butt kick into his shoulder.
The bullet caught the Taliban in the face but didn’t kill him. Panicked and in pain, the man dropped his weapon and clapped his hands to his shattered jaw to try and stem the blood. Linko shot him twice more, placing both shots in the man’s throat in case he was wearing body armor taken from the body of a dead soldier. The man’s bulky coat made that hard to tell.
Another Taliban went down under the guns of the ANP officers defending their position at a cargo truck.
That left two.
Movement to the left caught Linko’s eye, and he saw Lourds and Anna Cherkshan running away from the Taliban, the ANP, and him. Beyond them, over a rise, Linko knew there were vehicles. He’d left one there himself.
Linko pushed himself up and ran, sweeping around the area where the last two Taliban were. He had twice as much ground to cover as the American professor and Anna Cherkshan but felt he could manage it.
However, Lourds and the woman were faster than he’d thought, and the snow deeper in spots than he’d figured. Twice he fell headlong into a snowdrift and had to fight his way back out.
He arrived at the rise just in time to see Lourds and Anna Cherkshan climb into a four-wheel-drive pickup at the front of at least thirty vehicles. The media had flooded the area with rental cars. Pulling the rifle to his shoulder, Linko fired a burst of rounds that caught the truck’s left rear fender as the vehicle shot forward. Lourds swerved around a van, cutting it too close and sliding into the parked vehicle. The truck’s tires spun uselessly for a moment, then Lourds must have engaged the four-wheel-drive, because it powered through.
Taking aim at the retreating truck, Linko fired again, punching holes in the truck’s rear window. The borrowed rifle cycled dry, and he had no more magazines. He threw the useless weapon aside and ran for his rental car.
Breath coming easily but clouding the air with gray clouds, Linko used the electronic key to open the sedan’s locks as he approached it. Throwing open the door, he slid behind the seat. He twisted the key in the ignition, and the motor caught immediately.
As he watched the truck racing around the parking area, Linko smiled to himself. Lourds had made a mistake — he hadn’t checked his exit path. There was only one way out of the impromptu parking area, and Linko commanded it.
He waited patiently as Lourds figured out the maze of parked vehicles and corrected his flight, finding a wide space that allowed him a straight shot at escape.
Linko planned to ram the truck and drive the vehicle into the others on the opposite side of the path, and then to beat Lourds to death with his bare hands if he had to. Then he would take the scrolls.
Suddenly, across the path, a Taliban warrior stepped through the swirling smoke coming from the battlefield. As Linko watched, he lifted an RPG-7 rocket launcher to his shoulder, aiming straight at the sedan.
Cursing, Linko grabbed for the door.
Praising God for delivering his enemy into his hands even though the rest of his brethren had been routed and left dead and dying on the mountain by the cursed Army helicopters, Mafouz Abu Walid aimed his rocket launcher at the sedan fifty yards away.
He and three of his men had run down from the mountain when the Army aircraft had appeared. He’d known the mountainside would become a fire zone and that his life was probably forfeit, but he had wanted to take down as many of the dirt diggers, media, and ANP as he could. His rewards in heaven would be great. He could almost taste the wine and smell the virgins.
He pulled the trigger and heard the whoosh of the rocket leaving the launcher. For just a moment, he saw it in flight, then it gained speed and disappeared. A heartbeat later, the front of the sedan exploded. The engine cover blew off and sailed through the air as flames enveloped the destroyed vehicle.
Reaching into his munitions pack, Mafouz took out another rocket and loaded the launcher. There was at least one more target to be had. He’d seen the truck racing around before he’d spotted the Russia Today journalist climbing into his car. He listened for the roar of the truck’s engine, but the noise echoed within the hollow, distorted by the sounds of battle and the aftereffects of the RPG launch.
For the moment, though, he wanted to gloat over his kill. The journalist had to be fried to a cinder if he hadn’t been blown to pieces. Wiping blood from his injured left eye, Mafouz darted across the path.
Then he realized the truck engine sounded like it was almost on top of him. He turned to his left, only noticing then how much of his vision had been obscured by the swelling and the blood. Horrified, he watched the white truck bearing down on him.
He swung the rocket launcher around and fired.