Part 16 (1/2)

She wasn't going to ask many questions right now nor get answers to them. The reconnaissance-by-fire had calmed down behind them, probably because the shooters had blazed off their whole 30-round magazines and were reloading. Occasional random bursts still ripped the heavy evening air, drowning out confused shouts from behind. All Annja could think to do was stick as close to Easy as possible. At least she seemed to know where she was going.

Without visible effort Easy vaulted a fallen log arching three feet from the forest floor. She kept running. Two men suddenly appeared behind her from a bush full of yellow flowers that seemed to be opening as night descended. They wore yellow headbands.

They carried M-16s, black and almost as long as they were tall. They raised them after the running woman, who hadn't noticed them. At this range Annja knew the gunmen could hardly miss by dumping their whole magazines after Easy.

24.

Not five minutes earlier Annja had been doing her furious best to harm Easy Ngwenya. Now she raised her right hand and summoned the Sword to save her.

Sensing something amiss, the closer man turned to look over his shoulder. She slashed backhand, descending left to right, diagonally right between wide shocked eyes staring from a mustached face.

He dropped as if his bones had instantly dissolved. Annja didn't break stride. A running horizontal forehand cut took the second gunman, totally unaware, right at the back of his sweaty neck beneath a yellow turban.

Annja ran past never glancing his way.

ANNJA PUT HER BACK to a tree and slid down. The rough bark of the bole rasped her skin through the light s.h.i.+rt she wore. She paid no attention.

They had not run that far-no more than a quarter mile, she guessed. But it had been across broken, blocked terrain, the lushly undergrown forest of the mesa top between increasingly sizable spills of masonry. And it had been high stress-nothing sucked energy out of your body as fast as combat.

Even though they had seen no sign of actual enemies since Annja had cut down the unsuspecting pair getting set to shoot Easy, her body had stayed on alert the whole way, jumping over tangles and bouncing off trees. Now she felt as if she'd kickboxed ten rounds and run a marathon.

Easy squatted on her haunches. Annja almost felt relieved to note the younger woman was panting like a dog, as well. Easy mopped at the sweat streaming freely down her high round forehead with a rag. It mostly redistributed the wetness. She took a canteen from her belt, drank deep, then tossed it to Annja without asking if the other woman wanted it.

She didn't have to. Annja needed it. She upended the bottle and drank greedily.

She threw the canteen back to Easy. ”What the h.e.l.l is going on?” she asked through gasping breaths. She was trying to control her breathing, channel it into the deep, slow respiration that would most efficiently reoxygenate her fatigued muscles and calm her swirling thoughts and emotions. But it took huge force of even her strong and well-practiced will.

Easy drank again. She seemed to have her own panting under control already.

”Blue turbans,” she said. ”Grand Shan State Army. Marshal Qiangsha, proprietor. Self-proclaimed marshal, unquestioned warlord. Ethnic resistance army but mostly gangs. Qiangsha likes walks at sunset, Irish whiskey and sticking his enemies' heads on poles.

”Yellow turbans are Lord's Wa Army. Recruited from a tribe of backward, inbred Wa. It's politically incorrect to call them headhunters. That's exactly what this bunch were. Until they got converted from animism to fundamentalist Christianity by their current spiritual and military leader, Jerry Cromwell.”

As they had fled, the sounds of a firefight broke out behind them. They died away to nothing before the two women halted to rest. Annja guessed the contestants had mainly wanted to back away and break contact with each other. n.o.body was eager to get shot, and a couple of hostile patrols that happened to b.u.mp into each other had no real motivation to hang and bang to a conclusion.

”Jerry Cromwell?” Annja asked.

”Foreign name because he's a foreign bloke. A Yank, as it happens. Former cable television preacher sort of chap. Apparently made carloads of money off the faithful in his day. Big on Armageddon. I understand he left the States in rather a hurry, ahead of a slew of charges.”

”Great,” Annja said. She breathed almost normally now. Her lungs felt as if she'd been inhaling superheated sand. But at least she wasn't gasping anymore. ”Another disgraced televangelist.”

She sat with her knees up and her wrists draped across them. She looked at the other woman. ”He converted this Wa group from being headhunters?”

”I didn't say that,” Easy said with a faint grin. ”It was animism he got them to give up. The headhunting-maybe not.”

”I'm not so sure the modern Shan bunch are much better. Heads on poles. Nice,” Annja said.

”Oh, they're not,” Easy said, ”of course. But I suppose they'd argue that their headtaking is intended to send a message. Politics of meaning and all that. Whereas the Wa's is recreational. Much more civilized, don't you know?”

Annja grinned. She found herself liking this brash, brave young woman.

Whom, she recalled with a force like a kick to the gut, she had been trying to kill a few minutes ago. Whom she had accused of multiple murders herself.

She tried to recoup that righteous, avenging rage. She couldn't. Maybe it was just the fact she was so drained physically and emotionally-by so much more than the frenzied activities of the past few minutes. Maybe it had something to do with the fact she had just killed two men who had been trying to kill Easy Ngwenya. Then again, Annja didn't doubt for a nanosecond that they'd have killed her as quickly.

The young black woman looked at her with her head angled to one side. ”Not so eager to vivisect me anymore, then?” she asked cheerfully.

Annja shook her head. ”I don't know what's what's going on.” going on.”

Easy let herself sit all the way down on her rump, round and taut inside khaki cargo shorts not so different from the ones Annja wore.

”I have a bit of a line on local news,” she said, ”having been on the ground, as it were, these two days past. And wondering, I'll admit, what was keeping you.”

She grinned. Annja felt a stab of irritation. But she could still muster no more than that. She was as befuddled as she was worn-out.

”But I admit I'm in a bit of a bother over why you were hollering about my murdering a lot of strangers while trying to reduce me to my component parts. If you'd care to elucidate-”

She waved a dark hand invitingly. Annja nodded.

”All right.” She explained quickly and tersely the trail of corpses she thought Easy had left behind her on her search for the Temple of the Elephant.

”Oh, dear,” Easy said. Her eyes were huge and round. It made her look fourteen. ”I can see why you'd feel murderously inclined toward me.”

She tightened her lips and tipped her head to the right again. ”So why did you stop trying to kill me? Or not simply let that pair shoot me? Yes, I sensed something was going on and glanced back. And by that time one was down and the other's body was falling, so I put it from my mind and concentrated on flight.”

Annja looked at her a moment. Too bad I didn't get the gift of reading a person's thoughts along with my magic sword, she thought. She hung her head loosely between her raised knees for a moment before answering.

”I'm not sure,” she said. ”You could have shot me back there if you wanted to. I know you're fast enough to have got a couple of rounds into me. For that matter you told me to come along with you when we ran. You let me follow. It would have been easy for you to have left me behind in the meat grinder back there.”

”Right,” Easy said. ”I admit I'm still a bit unclear on the concept of why you leaped to the conclusion that I was guilty of all that sordid homicide.”

”Well, we're after the same thing, aren't we?”

Easy grinned at her again. ”As we were in China,” she said, ”and I didn't notice either of us strewing corpses in our wake like a plague s.h.i.+p.”

Annja shrugged. ”Well. You're a criminal, frankly. You're the world's most notorious pot hunter-tomb robber. Given your disrespect for the law, how was I to know what was beyond you? Especially since you make such a show of going everywhere armed.”

”You're a fine one to talk about that,” Easy said. ”But as for my being a criminal-is Yangon officially apprised of your presence in the happy land of Myanmar, by any chance?”

Annja said nothing.

”Thought so. Do I need to point out how copiously you're in violation of the SPDC's laws? I doubt you've reported the deaths of your comrades, even poor Dr. Kennedy. That's another slew of violations right there.”