The Lost Ark (26 page)

“She was just a whore,” said Kazeem.

“I loved her, emir.”

“You defiled her, you pig! I was supremely pleased to watch her die. In fact, she called out your name until the moment the ax dropped. Apparently she was under the false impression that you would save her.”

Bright flashes of hate seared Farid’s brain. But he forced himself to stay calm, breathing deeply through his nostrils, controlling his anger. The anger, he knew, could come later, but not now. No, not now.

Kazeem attacked, attempting a classic feint-and-lunge maneuver. Farid parried it easily and punched the prince in the face as hard as he could. Kazeem’s head snapped back, blood jetting from both nostrils. It had been a hell of a punch. Farid’s hand ached pleasantly. The prince looked at the blood on his robe, and then at Farid.

Hell hath no fury like a spoiled prince scorned—

Kazeem pushed himself off the wall, and lunged recklessly. Farid parried and riposted, his blade opening a slashing wound across the emir’s chest. The prince cried out and looked down, and in that instant, Farid swung his steel blade in a deadly arch. Kazeem’s eyes opened in horror. The whistling blade swept through the air and through the emir’s neck. As swiftly as if through butter. Blood poured free from the ghastly wound like a macabre necklace. The emir’s eyelids fluttered crazily.

“It is supremely pleasant watching you die, emir.”

Farid stepped back as the large head, at least twenty-five pounds worth, toppled over the still-standing body and thudded on the wooden floor, coming to rest near Farid’s blood-spattered boots. With the tip of his sword, Farid sent the headless body crashing backwards.

Chapter Fifty-seven

Unchallenged, Caesar and I moved along the rear of the launcher. We peered cautiously into camp through the gently falling snow. Soldiers were everywhere, moving quickly from tent to tent, searching. Between us and the helicopters (one of which was still in smoldering ruins) was a vast, empty stretch of ice. It might as well have been Siberia.

“Cover me, professor,” I said.

“Cover you with what?”

“With your gun, professor. Keep the soldiers at bay while I make a break for the chopper.”

He nodded, but looked puzzled. The chopper was fifty yards away. Even from here, I could see the pilot going through his pre-flight checks, face hidden behind a helmet shield.

Inhaling, I darted out into the open glacier.

* * *

I went unchallenged for the first twenty yards, running low to the ground, until several small explosions erupted at my feet, sending up showers of icy particles.

Who was shooting at me?

I looked over my shoulder—and stopped running. The professor was taking dead aim at me again, looking down the sights of his weapon. “Don’t shoot at me!” I pointed up the slope. “Shoot at them, goddamn it!”

The professor lowered his weapon, cheeks turning bright red. He cupped a hand around his mouth to direct his voice. “Sorry, Sam. Now that you mention it, shooting at you does seem a little dangerous.”

Bullets suddenly ripped through the ice to my right, moving rapidly to cut me down. I jumped to the side, rolled, and returned fire. Behind me, I could hear Caesar’s own weapon rattling away; at least he wasn’t shooting at me. Farther up the slope, two soldiers scrambled for cover behind a snow-dusted boulder.

I ran hard for the black chopper. As I did so, a bullet tore through the armpit of my jacket, but missed me. I kept my head down and alternately fired in the direction of the soldiers above.

Thirty yards from the chopper…

As it prepared for lift-off, the combined sounds of the twin turbines and rotor blades was almost deafening. I picked up my speed.

Twenty yards…

The chopper lifted slowly in the air, scattering snow in all directions. It hung briefly above the slope. Then turned to port, on its way down the mountain.

“Ah, hell,” I said, and tossed aside my weapon and angled across the hard-packed ice to cut-off the rising aircraft.

* * *

The big cabin door opened. Omar appeared holding a small revolver. The muzzle flashed. Bullets impacted the ice in a random pattern around me. Luckily, the emir was a horrible shot. I considered varying my course, until I realized a varied course might match the emir’s own erratic shooting pattern.

I saw one of Omar’s shooting problems: Faye was beating his exposed back with her fists, forcing him to hold her off while he methodically snapped off shots at me. Maybe Omar was thinking twice about Faye joining his harem.

I ducked as a bullet whistled past my right temporal lobe. He was getting closer.

Omar finally backhanded Faye, sending her reeling into the cabin, where she disappeared from view.

The son of a bitch.

I was ten feet from the helicopter.

Point blank range.

The Arab grinned and nodded, as if confirming once and for all that he would be victorious in the end. His destiny and all that shit. I watched his finger tighten around the trigger—

But he was out of bullets. He blinked uncomprehendingly at first; then, in anger, hurled the revolver at me, which promptly bounced off my shoulder, and hurt like hell. Lucky throw. And as the helicopter gained altitude, I jumped and extended my fingers…and grabbed hold of the starboard landing skid.

* * *

The ASW attack helicopter lifted quickly to five hundred feet. Straight up into the swirling snow. I dangled like an autumn maple leaf at the end of a bare branch. I adjusted my grip, knotting my arms around both the horizontal skid and forward vertical skid. The chopper continued to gain altitude. Snow fluttered crazily, stirred by the downblast generated by both of the main rotor blades and the four-bladed tail rotors. Below, the camp was barely discernible through the storm. The missile launcher looked like a dark cancer on the pristine landscape.

I swung my right leg up and over the horizontal skid, taking the weight off my arms. I caught my breath and tried to think clearly. My left leg hung out into open space. My face was pressed against the metal skid. Wind pounded me. A few moments later I realized it was impossible to think clearly. But I knew I had to get on board the chopper. Somehow.

* * *

The chopper swept low over the mountain. The wind hammered me into immobility. I feared that I would be torn away by the thundering wind. I tried reminding myself that I was a fearless explorer, but that didn’t work. I told myself to think of something positive. But the best I could come up with was that I hadn’t fallen yet.

Below, the Ahora Gorge appeared majestically, cutting deeply into the heart of Ararat. Meltwater from the Abich glacier fell hundreds of feet down a steep cliff into a churning whirlpool. The pool fed a frothing river that marched down the center of the gorge.

Omar appeared again in the cabin door, this time with an AK-47. I kicked away from the horizontal skid and shimmied up the forward vertical, which arched underneath the belly of the chopper. Sparks ricocheted behind me. I was safe for the moment, away from his angle of fire.

The chopper banked to port and gained altitude until we were hidden within the eye of the storm, surrounded by the roiling gray mist. Here, the beat of the rotor blades was amplified, unbearably loud. The mist had a way of dampening the skids, which may or may not have been intentional.

The chopper hovered like a UFO seeking its next bovine victim. I swung my feet around the arched vertical skid. Time passed slowly. The helicopter pulsated with life. The cloud continued to billow and fold in on itself, stirred awake by the spinning rotor blades. I had a sickening feeling about what was to come next. And I wasn’t disappointed.

The chopper tilted forward, then dove down through the cloud cover, its mighty turbines drowned by the thundering wind. The clouds opened; the mountain appeared through the slashing snow.

The chopper suddenly leveled, turbines grinding, stabilizers shuddering. The tremendous gravitational forces tore my hands loose and I swung upside down, held in place only by my crossed legs. Blood rushed to my head. I reached up and gripped the metal landing skid just as the chopper banked to starboard, throwing me hard into the vertical skid. The shock caused my breath to burst from my lungs.

Omar appeared once again like a bad dream, squeezing off a few more shots, but I was already moving hand over hand up the vertical skid and away from his line of fire. I dangled under the craft like a South American spider monkey, minus the prehensile tail. And certainly not as cute.

Next, I endured a series of aerial maneuvers that were not only insane, but would fill any number of barf bags. The chopper wove and looped and plunged and twisted, the pilot challenging the craft’s capabilities to the limit.

But I was too stubborn, or stupid, to fall.

* * *

We were now deep within the Ahora Gorge, the helicopter’s tiny shadow weaving in and out of the corrugated face of the granite cliff. Compared to the enormity of the canyon, we were nothing more than a flyspeck. Before us rose the north wall. As we approached, I wondered if the emir was crazy enough to kill us all.

Then the chopper abruptly angled up.

I took advantage of the minor reprieve in aerial acrobatics, and swung my feet onto the horizontal skid. There I squatted, facing the open hatch. The cabin could seat up to five soldiers, although the ASW was designed for a three-man crew, including both a pilot and co-pilot. Omar, standing just inside the cabin doorway, saw me and swung his assault rifle in my direction.

In the same instant, I lunged forward into the cabin.

Chapter Fifty-eight

The first shot impacted my shoulder like a blow from a mallet, the 7.62 mm bullet spinning me in the air, knocking the breath out of me. I collided with the emir before he could fire again, hurling the prince to his back.

The bullet had entered my shoulder between the pectoral and deltoid muscles, exiting violently through my back. That would leave a mark. Warm blood spread instantly from both the entrance and exit wounds. For now my arm was merely numb; the pain would set in shortly. Faye was slouched behind the co-pilot seat, hanging on to the craft’s fire extinguisher, lip bleeding. She scrambled to her feet when she saw me. I could see the pilot trying to look over his shoulder, his face obscured behind the faceplate. Probably wishing he had a rearview mirror.

Hunched forward in the small cabin, Omar stood and withdrew his ceremonial
jambiya
from his hip scabbard. “I assume,” he said, his voice coming to my ears as if from far away, “that if you are here, than my brother is dead.”

I thought of Farid. I did not yet know what had happened in that small control room, but I was relatively confident of the outcome. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Faye was carefully removing the fire extinguisher from the wall. I had to keep the emir talking, despite the pain that was setting in, despite the blood pooling beneath me. “Yes, emir, your brother is dead.”

Omar shook his head sadly, although he displayed little regret. “Am I to assume that Farid had something to do with his death?”

“You assume correctly, emir.”

A pained expression crossed Omar’s haggard face. It was brief and fleeting, more of a subliminal display of pain. “It was inevitable, I suppose. Kazeem was always jealous and perhaps intimidated by Farid’s skill and size. Indeed, Farid was a good bodyguard, perhaps the best, but he had gotten soft of late, and that is unacceptable.”

“He was tired of the senseless killing. You have killed many in your quest for revenge.”

“And I will kill more,” he said, leveling the
jambiya
at my chest. “At least one more.”

He lunged forward, but a sudden burst of carbon-dioxide enriched foam pummeled him, knocking him off balance. Omar screeched in frustration and swung his blade wildly in reposte, knocking the canister out of Faye’s hand. Covered in foam, dripping from his nose and chin, the emir looked like the victim of a college fraternity prank. Faye searched desperately for something to defend herself with, and grabbed a shiny pair of pliers that was wedged behind the co-pilot chair and the floor. Sloppy maintenance. She looked at the pliers and blinked, but held them out bravely, as if she intended to ply the emir to death.

“Sam,” she said, not daring to take her eyes off the emir, “now it’s
your
turn to save
me
.”

Waves of pain rocked me. Blackness encroached along the edges of my vision. I needed to stop the flow of precious blood from my wounds, but now was not the time. I stood on jelly legs. Attached to the wall was a white metal box. A first aid kit. I ripped the box free from its mounts and swung it into the back of the emir’s head, knocking him forward. The
jambiya
plunged harmlessly into the black fabric of the co-pilot seat cushion.

Shockwaves of pain erupted in my shoulder.

I gasped.

Stars flashed in my head like Vegas neon.

The emir shook his head and pulled the weapon free from the seat. He turned and faced me and tried a quick over-the-top jab at my wounded shoulder. I parried it with a swipe of the box, which rattled in my hand from the impact.

The emir lunged wildly again and I side-stepped the sword and swung my good arm around his neck and held on, squeezing with all my remaining strength.

“Shoot him,” he gasped.

Who the hell was he talking to?

I looked up to see the pilot aiming down the sights of his Browning 9mm pistol. He removed his helmet to get a better aim. “But I don’t have a clear shot, my lord,” he said.

“I’ll take my chances, godammit!”

I didn’t like the direction this was going, but then Faye suddenly appeared from behind the co-pilot’s seat and swung the fire extinguisher down as hard as she could. The metal clanged off his thick skull.

Good girl.

The unconscious pilot slumped forward over the control column, bleeding profusely from a serious head injury, and promptly threw the helicopter into a stomach-turning dive.

Chapter Fifty-nine