Part 22 (1/2)

He shrugged again. ”As you may have inferred, bright young women that you are, I am a most results-oriented man, as opposed to a process-oriented one. Failure is unthinkable to me in anything I set my mind to.

”I am also, I pride myself to say, a consummate realist. You are both dangerous as vipers. You are highly resourceful. And you are scarcely more enc.u.mbered by conventional morality concerning the employment of violent means than I am myself. I take for granted that you will try to turn the tables on me. Likewise I take for granted that should you succeed, my own life span will be measurable in milliseconds.”

He reached in a pocket, brought out something roughly the size of a cell phone and clicked a b.u.t.ton with his thumb. ”This is, please take my word for it, what is quaintly yet accurately termed a dead man's switch. Should you ladies contrive to spring some lethal reverse upon us, then you, and I, and this temple with all its priceless archaeology and culture will be blown to rubble. See how I respect your personhood?”

He looked left and right and nodded his head briskly. ”Now, gentlemen.”

A pair of husky goons each advanced upon Annja and Easy. They held guns before them, one arm locked out, the other bent for support, and moved with little crab steps in approved counterterrorist style. Annja almost laughed out loud.

”Rather pretentious for hired thugs, wouldn't you say?” Easy muttered sidelong to her.

”Spirited to the end, I say!” Giancarlo called out. He seemed a little miffed at losing his stage for a moment. ”And now, since you've been doing as much of the talking as I-”

”Another lie,” Easy said.

”I can't be convicted of monologuing if I go ahead and acknowledge what I'm sure is obvious to you both-once the treasure, and we, have flown, you two will be found here. Apparently a cla.s.sic battle between archaeological good and evil will have been resolved by the tragic deaths of both comely young contestants. So sad.”

While one goon held down on Easy with a 9 mm Beretta his partner relieved her of her two Sphinxes. She only smiled a cool smile.

She glanced at Annja. Easy was clearly not giving up.

Nor would Annja.

If Giancarlo had his way with this site, as he had with Easy-and thankfully not Annja, although she felt a weird chill sickness in her stomach at how close she had come, and bitterly resented every second she had spent longing to be reunited with him-the treasure and its priceless context were done anyway. So, obviously, were Easy and Annja. And he was right that his announcing his plans to them didn't matter much, since they'd worked them out for themselves already, thank you very much, she thought bitterly.

Annja carried no obvious weapon. So while one thug, a little shamefacedly, pointed his Glock at her, his partner grabbed her upper arm.

”You gentlemen have things well in hand,” Giancarlo said. ”Now let's see what prize awaits us behind door number one.”

He swept confidently up the steps past Annja and Easy.

Then he stopped. And stared. ”Dios mio!” ”Dios mio!” he all but shrieked. he all but shrieked.

”Boss?” the man with the Glock said in English. His eyes flicked to Giancarlo.

The sword flashed into existence. Blood spurted from the stumps of the gunman's wrists. His piece, still clasped in both scarred hands, clattered on the worn ancient stone steps.

Easy Ngwenya's right hand whipped up over her head. Silver flashed. The gunman holding her grunted as the chromed hilt of a specialized throwing danger suddenly protruded from the juncture of jaw and throat. Easy was just jam-packed with surprises, it seemed.

As his lifeblood spurted past the left hand he had clasped immediately to the wound, his right pumped out two shots, even their echoes shatteringly loud in the entryway.

The bullets slammed into his partner, above the body of Easy Ngwenya, who had twisted free of the second man and dropped p.r.o.ne.

Annja turned away from the screaming, spurting man. The other had released her arm in astonishment. Now he tried to bring up his gun to shoot her.

It was Luigi, she noted, in the split second before she split the heavy, brutal face to the chin with a downward stroke.

Annja heard more shots. Giancarlo ducked an end-the-world slash of her sword and scampered back down the stairs. He held the dead man's switch out at the two women like a talisman.

”Don't forget!” he screamed. ”I have this! I'll use it!”

Annja looked around. Both of Easy's opponents lay facedown in widening pools of blood and she had her Sphinxes in her hands. She was an efficient little creature when it all came down, Annja had to admit.

”But you haven't, Giani,” Easy said in contemptuous tones. ”Because you still have hope. And because it's so unthinkable to you that you should lose you're not ready to admit defeat by ending your worthless life.”

Fury blazed in his wide eyes. He pushed the switch toward her.

Easy shot him.

Annja braced for instant immolation. Then as the thump of the bullet hitting soft flesh-not dynamite-reached her ears even beneath the cracking and ringing of the gunshot she saw blood appear on the fine fawn-colored designer fabric over his flat abdomen. He grunted and bent over in terrible agony.

”The pain reflex has caused your muscles to contract,” Easy said. ”It won't be so easy to let go of the b.u.t.ton, now-”

Annja was already in motion. A skipping, spinning back kick took Giancarlo in his injured belly. He screamed hoa.r.s.ely, staggered back to the very edge of the precipice.

He raised the dead man's switch. Annja kicked him again, hard.

As he fell Annja turned and threw herself facedown on the stone. From a corner of her eye she saw Easy do the same.

The rock face directed the blast's force outward and upward. All that came in through the yawning temple entrance was a cataclysmic roar, and a dragon's-breath puff of superheated air.

32.

Annja stood on the sidewalk in front of a house whose several levels laddered down from the top of a steep black lava cliff. It stood just outside Hilo, Hawaii. This was the last stop on her current quest. It would also be the hardest.

She thought it might be the hardest task she had ever faced.

The Protectors had recovered Eddie Chen's corpse the morning after he died, contemptuously under the noses of the Grand Shan State Army, which was still scaling the mesa at that point.

After Giancarlo met his spectacular end, Annja and Easy had recovered Patty from the mesa's base where the Shans had left her. The Protectors helped-they were willing to do almost anything for the outsiders who had helped them carry out their ancient charge.

Easy's solution to the problem of transporting corpses was brutally direct-she bribed a local drug gang to smuggle them out of Myanmar. The Protectors helped her find one that would stay bribed, in process dropping a few hints that Easy had played a big part in causing the hasty departure of both the GSSA and the Lord's Wa Army, now disbanded, from the scene. Not just the ancient sanctum's defenders but the lesser predators and scavengers heaved a major sigh of relief at that.

What the Protectors weren't willing to do, even for their allies, was allow the temple complex, or the special Temple of the Elephant on its lonely peak, to be revealed to the world. They would continue to await the return of Maitreya as their ancestors had been bidden by the long-vanished princes of Bagan.

To Annja's astonishment Easy concurred readily with her decision to forgo recovery of any artifacts whatever. Even the Golden Elephant.

”Why, Annja,” she said with a laugh, ”it was never about the money. That's just a token to me-like points in a video game. It helps me keep track of my score. What need do I have for money? My daddy will pay literally anything to keep me from coming home.

”And anyway, once I realized there were actually people up here looking after the site-the owners, in effect-I gave over any intention I had of making off with anything. Dead people have no property, and I don't respect the claims of any government. Least of all one so thoroughly vile as the SPDC. But real, living people-them I leave alone. Unless, of course, they commit aggression. Against me or my friends.”