The Amulet of Power (2 page)

2

Lara drifted in and out of sleep. She kept dreaming of spiders that turned into Kevin Mason—or perhaps it was Kevin Mason turning into a spider. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the slightest movement sent pain shooting up and down her arm. Soon her head was aching again, and sleep was impossible. She made an effort to sit up despite the pain, but the IV tubes in her arm made movement difficult.

With a sigh she gave up the struggle and lay back on the soft pillow. There was so much noise outside the door, so many people walking up and down the hospital corridor. Didn’t they know there were sick people here, people who were trying to sleep?

She began listening to the footsteps, making a game of identifying them in the semidarkness of her room. This was the heavy-footed intern. That was the idiot nurse who’d worn high heels to work and
click-click-click
ed up and down the tiled corridor. This other one was a doctor with his entourage of students, lecturing as he walked to the operating theater.

And then there was the thud.

A
thud
? Finally she figured it out. Some orderly must have dropped a pile of laundry while he went into the next room to strip the bed.

Suddenly the light from the corridor shone across her darkened room.

Why was the orderly coming in here? Didn’t he know this bed was occupied?

Then she saw that it wasn’t one orderly, it was two. And they weren’t dressed like orderlies. They wore the robes of Arab tribesmen from the desert—and one of them had a knife in his hand.

Lara tried to roll off the bed, but the IVs held her in place.

“Who are you?” she demanded, ignoring the pain in her arm. “What do you want?”

Neither man said a word. They were tall, over six feet in height, and carried themselves like warriors. The one with the knife approached her and raised the blade high above his head, ready to plunge it down into her.

“You’ve got the wrong person!” she rasped hoarsely. “I’ve never seen either of you in my life!”

The two men exchanged glances, and then the knife came down.

Lara twisted at the last second. The knife barely missed her, burying itself deep in the hospital bed. She pulled the tubes from her arm—it hurt like hell, and blood began leaking from the wounds she had created—but an instant later she was on her feet, confronting her attackers, trying to ignore the blinding pain in her head. She opened her mouth to scream for help, but one of the men, the one without a knife, gestured with his hand, and suddenly her voice was gone, silenced.

Instinctively, she reached for her pistols, but all she had on was a hospital gown. She tried to focus her eyes as the two men silently closed in on her, but a wave of dizziness and nausea swept over her.

The man with the knife approached her and held out his hand as if he expected her to give him something.

I’ll give you something, all right!

She landed a kick in his groin. He grunted and hit her across the face with a backhand blow that sent her careening into the trolley that held the dangling IV tubes.

The man with the knife grinned at her and charged. Lara grabbed a tube, ducked under his extended arm, sidestepped, and quickly wrapped the tube around his neck, yanking with all her strength. The man collapsed, gasping for breath, his knife clattering noisily to the floor as he clawed at his throat.

The second man was on her before she could turn to face him. She tried to twist loose, but she was too weak. Blood was still flowing from her arm, and her head felt like it was about to explode.

One bitter thought raced through her mind as she grappled with her attacker:
After all the things I’ve survived, I’m going to be murdered by men I’ve never seen before, and I don’t even know why!

She forced herself to remain conscious, to fight off the pain long enough to sell her life as dearly as possible. Maybe she was too weak to stand, maybe her weapons were buried beneath the Temple of Horus, but she still had teeth and fingernails. They wouldn’t do much harm, but at least she’d die fighting, however futilely.

And then, through a haze of pain and nausea, she became aware of a third man in the room. Like her opponents, he remained silent, but she soon heard the sound of bones crunching, and suddenly she wasn’t being held any longer. She fell to the floor, then rolled against a wall to avoid the battle.

And some battle it was. The man who had just entered the room landed a haymaker. It would have decked any normal man, but the big Arab just grunted, shook his head, and hurled himself at the newcomer—and now she could see that the intruder was Kevin Mason.

Mason sidestepped the charge, picked up a bottle—she had no idea what was in it, and probably he didn’t either—and hurled it into the man’s face. The man’s mouth opened in a soundless scream, and he ran toward the door, covering his eyes. He missed, ran headfirst into a wall, and fell to the floor in a senseless heap.

Meanwhile the knife-wielding Arab was back on his feet again. He charged at Mason without a word. Mason’s left hand shot out and grabbed the man’s wrist, holding the knife away. With his right hand he landed two quick blows to the Arab’s belly, then took a left to the jaw and staggered back.

Don’t trade punches with him! Use your brain, not your muscles.

The Arab charged again at Mason, his knife raised above his head. Mason ducked and stepped forward, and the larger man, caught by surprise, spun over Mason and landed on his back. Mason kicked the knife out of his hand, then knelt down and began pummeling him, again and again, right, left, right, left. Teeth flew out of the Arab’s mouth, blood poured out of his nose, and finally he lost consciousness. Mason got to his feet. “Are you all right, Lara?”

“That’s twice you’ve saved me,” she replied weakly. As suddenly as it had disappeared, her voice was back.

“This could become a habit,” remarked Mason. He turned on the light, then began looking through shelves and cabinets.

“What are you doing?”

“You may not be aware of it,” he replied, “but you’re bleeding rather badly. We’ve got to get you bandaged up. Ah, here it is!”

He pulled out a roll of tape and a tube of antiseptic ointment. Then, kneeling down next to her, he swabbed away most of the blood with a towel, rubbed on the ointment as best he could, and began taping her arm.

“I’m afraid that will have to do,” he announced when he had finished.

“It’s not a very good job,” she noted.

“I’m not a very good doctor—and I need the rest of the tape for
them
.”

He knelt down and bound the two men’s hands behind their backs with tape, then taped their feet together as well. By the time he was done, both had regained consciousness.

“All right,” said Mason. “Are you alone or did you come with others?”

They stared at him sullenly.

“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” he said. “Are you alone?”

No answer.

He picked up the knife that had nearly killed Lara. “If you won’t talk, then you won’t need your tongues. . . .”

At this threat, the men merely smiled. Their grins spread grotesquely wide. Empty.

“Ugh,” said Lara. “Looks like someone beat you to it.”

Before Mason could reply, both men began gasping for breath. A moment later they were dead.

“What the hell?” Mason frowned. “I was just bluffing with the knife. . . .”

“Afraid you scared them to death? Not those two. I’ve read of assassins trained from infancy, their tongues cut out to make them creatures of silence. I never believed those tales— until now.” She paused. “Let’s get a doctor up here to determine what killed them.”

“We haven’t got time,” said Mason, wiping his fingerprints from the knife and dropping it. “They obviously know you’re here, and if the hospital discovers the bodies, we’ll both be held for questioning.”

“
Who
obviously knows I’m here?” she demanded.

“The people the assassins worked for. We’ve got to get you to someplace where you’ll be safe.” He looked directly into her eyes. “I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you find anything in the Temple?”

“I told you I didn’t,” she answered. “What’s going on here?”

“I’ll tell you when we have a little time. But those two aren’t the only ones they’ll be sending after you.”

“That
who
will be sending after me?” she insisted. “Why did two men I never saw before want to kill me?”

“Later.” He helped her to her feet. “Are you strong enough to walk by yourself?”

“I don’t know.”

Mason frowned. “If you collapse in front of anyone, I’ll never get you out of here.” He paused. “I’ll get a wheelchair and bring it back.” He looked around, picked up a white laundry bag, and handed it to her. “These are your clothes. The hospital washed them. I know you’re groggy, but try to get into them while I’m gone.”

“Why?” she asked, fighting off another wave of dizziness.

“Because once we get out of here, I can’t take a beautiful woman through a Moslem country with her backside peeking out of her hospital gown.”

“I should have thought of that,” said Lara.

“If you didn’t have a lump the size of a baseball on the back of your head, I’m sure you would have. Now hurry up.”

Then he was gone, and Lara took off her gown and climbed slowly, painfully, into her clothes. Her holsters were there, but her pistols were gone. Back in the tomb, probably. Which meant they were as good as gone. She felt a pang. She was going to miss those guns.

Mason came back about half a minute after she’d finished, wearing a doctor’s white lab coat and pushing a wheelchair.

“In case you’re wondering,” said Mason, “your pistols are in my car. If you’d still been wearing them when I brought you in here, they’d be locked away in some hospital safe now.”

“That’s another one I owe you.” She sat in the wheelchair while he walked over to the bed, pulled off a pair of lightweight blankets, and covered her with them.

“You’re not exactly wearing hospital garb,” he said as he tucked them around her. “No sense advertising it.”

Then they were out in the corridor, and he wheeled her past the nurse’s station to an elevator. The door closed and the elevator began descending.

“So far so good,” said Mason.

The elevator stopped at the main floor, and the door slid open. Mason quickly surveyed the lobby. There were half a dozen doctors milling about, a trio of nurse’s stations, a registration desk, and two uniformed policemen standing by the door.

“Now what?” Lara asked in a whisper.

“Hopefully this white coat I’m wearing will make them think I’m a doctor. Better cross your fingers under those blankets, Lara—here we go.” He took a deep breath and wheeled her to the main entrance.

One of the guards stared at him curiously, but Mason simply smiled and continued walking, and the guard stepped aside and allowed him to wheel Lara out of the hospital and over to a late-model Land Rover.

“That was either very brave or very stupid,” Lara said. “I’m not sure which.”

“I read in a spy novel once that the best way to deflect suspicion is to act like you’ve got nothing to hide.” He opened the passenger door and carefully helped her to her feet. “Can you climb in by yourself?”

“Of course I can,” said Lara. She tried to pull herself onto the seat. Suddenly another wave of dizziness overcame her, and she fell back into Mason’s arms. “Well, I
thought
I could.”

He helped her into the Land Rover, then walked around and took his place in the driver’s seat.

“Where are we going?” asked Lara.

“Away from here,” said Mason. “If I step on it, we can be out of Cairo in half an hour.”

“Where are my pistols?”

“The glove compartment.”

She opened it, found her passport and billfold, which she pocketed, and her pistols, which she slipped lovingly into their holsters.

“Those are very unusual guns,” said Mason. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like them.”

She pulled a pistol out. “This is the Wilkes and Hawkins Black Demon .32.”

“Custom job?”

“Modified to my specifications,” she answered. “Fifteen shots to the clip, and it’s just this side of a hair trigger. Sculpted to fit my hand, and weighted exactly as I directed—and it’s got a chip that reads my palm print. No one else can fire it.” She slid the pistol back into its holster. “There’s not a more accurate pistol around.”

“Interesting,” said Mason, pulling onto a main thoroughfare.

“Are you ready to tell me what this is all about?” asked Lara.

Mason’s reply was to swerve the car into a narrow alley and floor the gas pedal. “We’ve got company,” he said, looking into the rearview mirror as three cars entered the alley behind them.

He veered onto a side street, then another, and finally hit another main drag.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” said Mason, trying to keep the urgency from his voice. “Did you find
anything
, no matter how trivial or unimportant, in the Temple?”

“I already told you,” said Lara irritably. “No.” She paused, trying to order her thoughts. “The men in my hospital room, and these men who are chasing us—how did they know I’d been to the Temple of Horus, anyway?”