Paradox (24 page)

She turned at once and slid down the rock. The slide of her gun was locked back
over an empty magazine.
But as her boots thumped onto the gritty ground at the base of the boulder her
mind burned with a single image, branded on it in an instant. She'd seen
Baron's identical black P226. It was identically slide-locked.
"Can you hear me, Annja?" she heard him call from the far side of the
boulder.
She started moving up the slope. I know where you are, she thought. You know
where I was.
"I'm empty," Baron said. "All out of cartridges. You are, too, I
bet. I saw your slide locked back."
He was moving now, too. The weird acoustics in this Devil's rock garden made it
hard to tell where.
"You're going to die, Annja. You and the rabbi. You know that, don't you?
You know I don't need a gun to kill you both."
She stopped with her left shoulder almost touching the side of a granite rock
ten feet high. It ended just a foot or two ahead of her.
"You've got the Devil in you, Annja Creed," Leif Baron called.
"You must be full of the Devil himself to get the kind of power you've
showed. That's it, isn't it? You're full of the Devil."
She ground her teeth and waited. He was getting close. She could feel him.
"But I've got the cure for that, Annja. My knife. A good, sharp knife.
It'll end your suffering, Annja. It'll cut the Devil right out of your black
heart."
The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. The rocks were casting
it back at her from every direction. The echoes seemed to mock her.
"You'll love having that steel cleanse you, Annja. It'll feel better than
the Devil's will. And the best part of it is—"
She heard a crunch of gravel. He was right in front of her. He held a SEAL
combat knife low by his right hip. Ready to plunge deep in her flesh and
slice
.
"The pain will be over…."
His voice faltered.
Then he looked down to see the gleaming broadsword pressed right up against his
six-pack. Two strong female hands clutched the hilt, with bones and veins
standing in bold relief.
"Mine's
bigger
," Annja hissed.
She plunged the blade into him. Hard.

"Come on, Levi,"
Annja said.
She heard the brush stir. Levi's head appeared between the rock clump and the
boulder.
"You killed both of them? Baron, too?" the rabbi asked.
"Eli and Baron. Yes."
"I knew you could do it."
"That makes one of us. But to my surprise, I did. Come on, take my hand.
We're not off the mountain yet."
"What about Mr. Bostitch?" the rabbi asked as he got gingerly up on
his one good leg. He swayed and had to grab her shoulder to steady him.
She got them headed downward. Away from the crest. And toward bidding a
none-too-fond farewell at last to the Mountain of Pain.
"I didn't see him," she said. "Let's just hope he decides that
what all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't do, the king's
better off not even trying. Or something. Losing all his acolytes and his
superhuman killing machine must've shaken his morale. A little bit,
anyway."
Levi shook his head. "I don't know, Annja. He seemed pretty desperate. Men
who don't think they've got anything left to lose strike me as good martyrdom
candidates."
"Oh, well," she said. "All I can think of to do then is stay
frosty. And if he catches up with us we'll do our level best to make sure he
gets to be a martyr."
"I'm down with that," the rabbi said.

* * *

"SO WHO ARE
THEY
?"
Levi asked in a whisper. While Annja had zipped her goggles in a pocket he
still wore his. They were sort of holding his one-winged glasses in front of
his eyes.
The two of them lay side by side on their bellies, screened by brush and rocks
at the top of a forty-foot bluff. Below them lay the stream, the base of the
mountain and freedom.
Across the stream from them a couple of hundred bearded men in long coats sat
and smoked on the flats. The clouds still made a mean lead ceiling that seemed
low enough to brush the hidden tip of the great mountain. The sun, a hard white
disk of blindness, had just rolled behind the clouds. It had already shifted
far enough south that it didn't shine directly in Annja's and Levi's eyes as
they gazed west from the bluffs. But the late-afternoon light, mellow and
yellow, unreeled long shadows along the ground toward them from the seated men.
The waiting men all had Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades near at
hand. They appeared to be watching the cliff intently. If they were conversing
Annja was too far away to hear. They weren't being boisterous about it. In fact
they looked deadly serious, these bearded, smoking, well-armed men.
"Kurdish militia," she said, sick to her stomach.
"Peshmerga."
"Is it just me, or do they not look too friendly?" Levi asked.
"They don't look friendly. Something tells me they're our late guide
Hamid's pals. Waiting here to make sure no infidels get down off their Fiery Mountain alive."
"How'd they know we'd be coming down around here?"
"Binoculars," Annja said. "Ears. Gunshots carry."
"Oh. Yeah."
She studied the situation. It didn't look good. There were some arroyos eroded
deep into the reddish face of the bluff, steep but not sheer, that they could
probably use to get down all right. If there weren't a hundred guns shooting at
them.
A hundred yards or so to the north the stream widened into a green pond where a
rockfall had blocked its original course. After another hundred and fifty yards
or so the bluffs petered out and gave way to a slope strewn with
furniture-sized rocks that ran all the way down to the stream. The same thing
happened maybe four hundred yards south, but with bigger and fewer rocks.
"They'll be keeping an eye out to see if we try going down there where it
gets less steep," Levi said.
"That's about how I've got it sized up. How're you feeling?" Annja
asked.
"I hurt. I'm running on empty."
"Me, too. But we may need to hike for a few more miles. Work our way
around the base of the mountain until we get out of sight of the reception
committee. We could try to slip past the inevitable patrols under cover of
night. That kind of thing."
He sighed. When he looked at her his eyes seemed to gleam moistly behind his
thick glasses.
"This isn't going to end, is it, Annja?"
"Oh," she said, "it'll end."
"It won't end well, I mean."
"Probably not. You weren't planning to live forever, were you?"
"I was sort of hoping."
She laughed quietly. Then she clamped down hard when it threatened to run away
with her. "Me, too. Well, we can go on hoping for a while yet. Let's get
rolling before our poor overworked muscles set up like freshly poured
concrete."
She started to slither back away from the edge. Gunfire erupted behind them.
The shock and sheer cataclysmic noise took her breath away. A line of earth
geysers zipped by them on the other side of Levi, outbound toward the patiently
sitting men.
She caught a glimpse of those men throwing away their smokes and jumping to
their feet, snatching up their weapons. Then she twisted her body to stare back
at the mountain.
A rumpled figure stood on a granite knob a hundred yards away with Ararat's
black cone rising behind him. It was Charlie Bostitch. He had his jacket
hanging open, his gut hanging out and lank hair hanging almost in his eyes.
In his hands he held an object maybe two feet long. With a sinking heart Annja
made it out through the gloom as a folding-stock AKSU short assault rifle. Unlikely
as it seemed, it almost had to be the weapon that had gone over the cliff with
Hamid. Evidently the Young Wolves had found it. That legendary Kalashnikov
toughness meant it was actually still in working order. That had to be more
than you could say for its former owner.
"I can't let you slip away from me, Annja," Bostitch shouted. By the
throb of his voice she could tell he was crying. "Not alive."
"Get ready to run for it," she said quietly to Levi.
"Run?" He looked at her incredulously.
"Hop," she said. Then, pitching her voice to carry to the man on the
boulder pulpit, she shouted, "Sure you can, Charlie. It's over. You lost.
Give it up. Anyway, all the
peshmerga
in this part of Turkey are waiting at the foot of this cliff to carve us like Christmas turkeys."
Bostitch shook his head. "That doesn't matter to me. It makes no
difference whether I live or die. My Lord's waiting on me, Ms. Creed. I just
have to make sure you can't pour your poison in the world's ear."
He started down the side of the rock. As he did he loosed another burst of
gunfire. It didn't come close to striking her. Annja winced anyway; that
abbreviated barrel made the AKSU loud.
"You're Jezebel," Bostitch shouted. "You're the Whore of
Babylon. I should have known you were wicked when you introduced lust into my
heart. When you tempted me. You brought this on yourself. Now you have to pay
the price," he ranted.
"Now would be good," she told Levi.
Clutching his hand she set off at a trot, though she ached to sprint. But Levi
could never keep up with her trying to run on one leg; and she wouldn't be
setting any records trying to carry him, either. Bostitch had started off down
the south side of his boulder. She took them north.
A whole Fourth of July's worth of gunfire broke out from the Kurds on the
ground. What they thought they were shooting at Annja had no clue. The angles
were wrong for any of them to see them or Bostitch.
It sure didn't help the situation. Bostitch paid no attention. Maybe he didn't
notice the fireworks. He sprayed another burst after his fleeing prey.
Somebody at the back of the pack must have tried a long lob shot with an RPG,
which could fly for over a kilometer. The rocket motor burned itself out while
the projectile was still climbing toward those sinister clouds. Annja never saw
it coming.
The rocket-propelled grenade didn't hit close enough to hurt them with
fragments or blast effect. But suddenly the earth just erupted in a twenty-foot
column of dirt and smoke with a yellow jet of flame at its core, ahead and to
the right of Annja as she and Levi ran their three-legged race to the north.
The noise was terrific, laced with harmonics too high to actually hear but that
seemed to shoot through Annja's brain. She shied away.
The sudden shift in direction caused her to put a foot wrong. A chunk of rock
the size of a cantaloupe turned beneath her right boot. Pain stabbed through
her ankle and then her hip as she fell, headlong and twisting.
She cracked her head on a somewhat larger rock, half-buried in the ground.
She didn't lose consciousness. Not quite. But for a while her world was a hell
of bright flashing lights and vertigo and a sense that her stomach had turned
into a washing machine gone berserk.
When her senses cleared she lay on her back with her head cradled on Levi's
right leg, which was cocked back toward his body as if he were trying to sit
half-lotus. His left leg with its injured ankle was stretched out straight
across the black ground.
She blinked her eyes reluctantly back into focus. She realized the rushing,
screaming roar that filled her head wasn't actually
in
it. Instead it
passed overhead, seemingly across the sky.
Levi had his head uplifted. "It's a jet, Annja. Looks like a
fighter."
"Great," she muttered. "That's all we need. It probably hates
us, too."
He slid his leg out from under her. "You should probably get up now,"
he said. "We've got a lot more immediate problems."
The world erupted in shattering noise. For a moment Annja imagined the ancient
volcano had decided to wake up and spoil everybody's day at once. Then dirt
thrown up by bullets striking too close for comfort rained down onto her face.
She snapped upright. Bostitch was stalking them. Tears gleamed on his puffy
cheeks, shining like gold in the near-horizontal radiance of the sun. He pushed
the stubby Kalashnikov out in front of him and ripped out another burst. Dirt
spurted up between him and his prey.
Seeing Annja respond he raised the stock to his shoulder. From fifty feet away
the hole in the muzzle looked her in the eye. She caught her breath and braced
for a last desperate dive to the side.
It wouldn't work. But she was damned if she was going to die frozen like a
terrified rabbit.
The muzzle bounced up and down. Up and down. She realized Bostitch was jerking
the trigger. Bad form, that. Worse, from his viewpoint anyway, the weapon
wasn't making any noise. No fire. No nasty little bullets moving at several
times the speed of sound.
"Empty," he said. She could barely make him out through the ringing
in her ears. It sounded as if Quasimodo had set up shop in her skull. "It
won't save you. The Lord provides…I've got more…" he babbled.
She scrambled up. Pain stabbed through the joint of her hip. Her right ankle
wobbled. She found herself tipped against Levi. She wasn't sure how he'd gotten
to his feet unaided.
"Down to two legs between us," she said out of the side of her mouth.
She looked over her shoulder. Her tiny hope of possible escape died. The ground
fell away not ten feet behind them as if severed by God's paper cutter. Down on
the flats the Kurds were still firing enthusiastically. Through the grass at
the brink she saw a little arc of green below.
They had nowhere to go. She took Levi's hand.
Bostitch had dropped the empty magazine from his weapon. He brought another
orange plastic banana mag from a pocket of his jacket. He fumbled to stuff it
into the rifle's well. His hands didn't seem to be cooperating with his eyes
too well.
"I got you now," he said. "You can't escape."
Leaving his big unsteady hands to sort out the reload as best they could he
lifted his face to show the victims waiting for his sacrifice a wide, gloating
smile.
"It's the end. The end for you sinners. I'll be washed in the blood of the
Lamb."
Over the madman's right shoulder Annja saw a speck appear against the sky. It
was a small darkness above the great dark mountain. Setting sunlight glinted
off a wing as it dipped forward and rapidly began to grow in appearance.
The magazine finally went home with a click. A screaming came across the sky.
Bostitch ignored it. He racked the charging handle to chamber a fresh round.
Something dropped from the sleek belly of the slender winged shape. It was a
long, thin egg that twinkled in the slanting sunlight as it tumbled, end over
end.
"You are weighed in the balance," Bostitch crowed in triumph, raising
his short rifle.
Yellow light bloomed brilliantly behind him. A dark shape, the ruptured
canister, tumbled at the front of what quickly became a rolling wave of flame.
"
And you are found wanting!
" Annja screamed.
At last some presentiment of the wrath to come made Bostitch turn. He dropped
his rifle and threw up his arms in a futile attempt to shield his flesh from
the tsunami.
It wasn't the water, but the fire this time.
Annja had turned, too. She dragged Levi over the cliff with her.
As they dropped toward the pond she heard Bostitch's maniacal shrieking as
liquid hellfire consumed him.
She'd known from glimpsing a sliver of it that the pond lay below. Whether they
could reach it by jumping she didn't know. Nor did she know if it was deep
enough to safely break their fall.
It didn't much matter, she thought, oddly calm as they fell, still hand in
hand. It's a quicker way to check out than Charlie's got. She pulled in the
deepest abdominal breath she could.
Not really wanting to watch, Annja flicked her gaze upward as her feet reached
the water. To her horror she saw that a glowing cascade of flame had rolled
right out over the cliff into the air. It was falling right on top of them.
The water swallowed her. Somehow she still held on to Levi's hand as they went
down through the cold liquid. Her feet hit silty bottom. Her right ankle
panged. Her left leg flexed and absorbed the last of her momentum.
She'd shut her eyes when they hit. She opened them again. She clearly saw Levi
next to her, looking astonished; the rounded mud bottom of the pool, the water
weeds growing from it; the tail-flick of a startled fish fleeing the commotion.
All lit by a weird yellow glow whose brilliance defeated the water's murkiness.
She looked up. A ceiling of fire hung a few feet above their heads. It was
literally that—napalm burning on the surface of the pool. And they were
beginning to bob right back up into the floating inferno.
Getting a fresh death grip on Levi's hand Annja went horizontal and began to
kick for all she was worth. She gestured for Levi to swim with her. Or she
hoped she did. And hoped he could see her signal at all. His goggles and
glasses were gone.
For a moment he fought her, wide-eyed, bubbles streaming out his nose and open
mouth. She squeezed his hand hard. Cognizance came into his eyes. He nodded.
She let go to free their arms. Side by side they swam beneath the lethal glow.
The need for fresh air tore at Annja's lungs. But she willed herself to keep
going until they were out from under that hideous glare.
They came up against the accidental rock dam that had formed the pond. Annja
braked with a hand and let herself shoot to the surface. She broke through.
The air was hot and stank of petroleum fractions. The fire had already started
to die off into little patches of yellow flame, rocking on the water and giving
off greasy black smoke. Levi came up splashing at her side. He thrashed his
arms and shook his head wildly.
"Annja! I can't swim!" he shouted.
"I'm glad you didn't remember that when you were doing it a moment ago.
Just put your feet down. Foot. You'll touch bottom," she said.