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painted like a skeleton. Bullets smashed into the tree, tearing bark free in
chunks.
The rider leathered the pistol and gunned his machine after Annja. Other shots
echoed over the broken terrain as she ran.
Abruptly, knowing the man was on the verge of running her down, Annja stepped
aside and wheeled to face her attacker. She timed her move, trusted her
strength and resiliency, and swung her left arm out, clotheslining the man and
knocking him from the motorcycle.
The man landed at Annja's feet. The impact had knocked the air from his lungs.
She kicked him in the face, rendering him unconscious.
Kneeling, she stripped an assault rifle from the man, took the bandolier of
extra magazines, and the pistol and holster, as well. She buckled the belt
around her waist, reloaded the pistol with one of the extra magazines on the
belt and stood with the assault rifle in hand.
She wasn't sure what kind of rifle she was holding  she guessed a Russian or
Chinese weapon  but she knew how to use it. At the moment, that was enough.
Armed, she ran back toward the train. Whoever the attackers were, and she was
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pretty sure whom they belonged to, she didn't think they were going to take
any unnecessary prisoners.
Tanisha Diouf made herself stand. Dazed, she looked around for Bashir and
Kamil. Her children were the center of her life. They were all that she had
left of the dreams she and Kevin had had when they married.
"Mom! Mom!" Bashir yelled, tears streaming down his face. "The train wrecked!"
Kneeling, Tanisha helped her youngest up from the clutter of baggage that had
tumbled from the overhead compartments. "Easy, Bashir. I've got you." She put
her arms around him, felt him shaking and shivering in his fear.
He held on to her tightly.
Gently, Tanisha disengaged from him and took one of his hands in hers. Panic
welled up inside her, threatening to spill out of control. Where's Kamil?
Please! Please don't let anything have happened to my baby! She looked around,
but the car had plunged into total darkness.
A light flared to her left. Someone had a flashlight.
In the glow of the beam, Tanisha saw that it was Jaineba. The old woman
stepped through the wreckage of the train car as calmly as though she were out
for a Sunday walk.
"Jaineba," Tanisha called.
"I hear you, daughter," the old woman said. "You're going to be all right.
You've just got to keep your wits about you."
"My son," Tanisha said. "Kamil is missing."
Pausing, Jaineba braced her staff against her shoulder and reached down into
the debris. She grabbed Kamil's hand and pulled him free. Kamil stood, but he
had a cut above his left eye that bled terribly.
"Kamil!" Tanisha let go of Bashir's hand and grabbed Kamil's head in her
hands. She turned his face toward the light to better see the cut. It was deep
and would require stitches, but it wasn't life-threatening.
"I'm all right," Kamil protested. "What happened?"
"I don't know." Tanisha gazed around.
The men who had been with Annja Creed had weapons in their fists. Some of them
were taking still more weapons from luggage cases.
Seeing the men with guns didn't surprise Tanisha. They'd seemed to her to be
the type of men who would carry weapons. They moved calmly and efficiently.
"Where's Annja?" one of the men asked.
"She was just here, Agent McIntosh," one of the other men said.
Agent? Tanisha was surprised about that. She'd guessed that the men were
bodyguards for the archaeologist, hired to protect the expedition she was
directing.
"She went outside," Tanisha said.
McIntosh directed his flashlight on her. "Who are you?"
"Tanisha Diouf. Annja and I were talking earlier. I saw her go out the back of
the car."
The American agent cursed and started for the back door.
"What happened?" someone else asked.
"The train's under attack," the agent said.
Tanisha realized why the train had been attacked. A large part of the cargo
was equipment  bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment  to replace the
machines that had been destroyed by the tribesmen fighting against
encroachment onto what they claimed were their lands. She was sure the
Childress Corporation was their target.
"Come on," Jaineba said, waving to her. "We must get the children out of this
place. It's very dangerous."
Tanisha nodded and started to follow the old woman to the back of the car. She
was disoriented because the car lay on its side.
A shadow fell over her. Looking up instinctively, Tanisha saw a man  not a
man, she corrected herself, a skeleton  squatting next to the shattered
window. He had a rifle in his hands.
All of the memories of the voodoo ceremonies she'd seen in and around Dakar
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came back to Tanisha in a flood. She'd never believed in any of it, not the
zombies, not the loas riding willing hosts who gyrated to the savage beat of
drums and bit the heads off chickens for tourists.
None of that is real, she told herself.
But she was certain she was staring into the face of death. She tried to open
her mouth in warning, but she knew she would never get the words out in time.
Annja ran to the overturned train car she'd been riding in. From thirty feet
away, she saw one of the attackers clambering along the side. The
skeleton-faced man stopped and took aim with his rifle.
Raising the assault rifle to her shoulder, Annja squeezed off a burst. The man
jerked as the bullets struck him, but she hadn't hit any mortal areas.
Spinning, the attacker lifted his weapon and took aim.
Before he could fire, before Annja could move, the window at his feet exploded
in a hail of shattered glass. Gunshots rolled from inside the train car, and
the skeleton-faced man jerked like a marionette in the hands of an unskilled
puppet master. Then the dead man collapsed.
A moment later, McIntosh came through the door at the back of the train car.
He held his pistol in both hands and moved well enough that Annja knew he
wasn't hurt.
A jeep roared along beside the train. A man in skeleton makeup hung on to a
light machine gun mounted on the rear deck.
"McIntosh," Annja yelled in warning. "Look out!"
McIntosh went to ground at once, taking cover behind the platform beside him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]