The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (41 page)

‘And lastly,’ Maggie said, ‘
Right Concentration
, the art of meditation.’

As the final turn was completed, Sarah heard the ancient tumblers fall into place.

The door popped open with a hiss, inviting them into Polo’s chamber.

Sadly, only one of them would ever step inside.

Sarah heard the man before she saw him, and what she heard made her blood boil.

It was the unmistakable sound of laughter.

She turned around to see a lone Chinese gunman leveling a pistol at her and Maggie. As he stepped closer, she recognized the sharp features of his face. He was Feng He, the man that Garcia had said was now in charge of the Brotherhood.

He had come to do his dirty work personally.

‘Your weapons,’ he demanded, ‘place them on the floor.’

Sarah slowly pulled her pistol out of the concealed holster and lowered it to the ground by her feet. As she straightened up again, she noticed Maggie had not done the same.

‘I said “weapons”.’ Feng moved closer. ‘That means both of you.’

Maggie took a defiant step forward. ‘Why do you need
my
weapon? You never would have made it this far without me!’

The revelation struck Sarah like a sucker punch.

Her gut churned with disbelief.

Maggie was working with the Brotherhood?

‘And neither would they,’ Feng hissed, his delivery dripping with menace. ‘If you had come to me in the beginning and told me of their quest, I would have kept my promise and paid you the sum of their millions combined. But instead, you betrayed your people by helping the foreigners raid our country and steal our history. The only reason you contacted me is because the Brotherhood was on your trail. You got scared like a weak-minded Westerner and decided to hedge your bets. How could I reward someone like that?’

Everything that Feng had said about Maggie was true. In the beginning, she had never considered betraying her team. She enjoyed their company and had worked extremely hard to help them find the treasure. Unfortunately, her allegiance shifted when they interrogated one of the Fists in Tibet. Not because of their actions, but because of the captive’s answers.

Under the threat of torture, he had revealed that several pictures of the team had been sent to the criminal organization’s headquarters in Hong Kong, a city where Maggie was very well known. She knew it was only a matter of time before her friends and family were vigorously questioned about her whereabouts, and she couldn’t let that happen. Although she liked her teammates, she would do anything to protect her loved ones.

While translating the anguished pleas of the captive, she had made her choice: she would give the Fists what they were missing. She would use her knowledge of Polo’s treasure to bargain for her freedom and the safety of her family and, for a small percentage of the haul, she would reveal the location of the riches as soon as the team figured it out. Unfortunately for the hunters, the lateness of Maggie’s betrayal had prevented the team from suspecting anything.

Which made it hurt even more.

Sarah faced Maggie, her lower back brushing against the top of the pedestal. ‘You bitch! You sold us out! That’s how these bastards found us here!’

Maggie slowly reached for the pistol inside her cargo pocket as Feng watched on.

He could only smile as he watched the inevitable creep into her mind.

He knew Maggie was going to make a move.

Sarah sensed it as well. She slid a hand behind her back and reached for the wooden-bound codex. She knew it wasn’t much, but it was the only solid thing within reach. She was tempted to call out for help, hoping that Cobb or McNutt could come to her aid, but she quickly realized that she hadn’t heard a transmission in several minutes. She wondered if the comms had gone down for everyone, or if Maggie or Feng were blocking the signal.

Then it happened.

Maggie spun to face her now-former teammate, the weapon still in hand.

Sarah reacted instantly, pulling the codex from behind her back and hurling the two-foot long wooden slats at Maggie’s face. She hoped that the desecration of the sacred artifact would be the last thing that Maggie ever expected, and fortunately she was right.

Maggie’s face registered a mix of shock and horror as she instinctively raised her arm to ward off the attack. The wooden boards slammed into her wrist, knocking her gun to the cavern floor with a clatter. Dismayed and disarmed, Maggie assumed a classic fighting pose and readied herself for Sarah’s assault.

Sarah was happy to oblige.

She sprang across the room in a lightning-fast flurry of swinging limbs.

Maggie managed to sidestep the onslaught just at the last second. She retaliated with a flying sidekick, catching Sarah squarely in the ribs. The impact sent Sarah sprawling backwards, and she slammed into the cavern wall.

Determined to end the battle before her younger opponent could wear her down, Maggie rushed in but Sarah lunged upward with one fist outstretched. Her knuckles caught Maggie just under the chin, dropping her to the floor. Sarah tried to stomp on her while she was down, but Maggie lithely twisted away from the attack.

Maggie sprang up from the floor and wiped the trickle of blood from her split lip.

Sarah circled her wounded prey like a hungry predator.

The display delighted Feng, who simply stood nearby and watched as the two women squared off. In his chauvinistic mind, women were put on this planet for two reasons: to breed and to serve. Few things gave him greater joy than watching the unrestrained combat of the weaker sex. Not that he cared who actually won the fight.

Either way, he would end up victorious.

And that was the only thing that mattered.

Sarah danced to her right, and Maggie deftly shifted her weight to counter. Sarah kept moving, constantly adjusting her stance as she searched for the right opportunity to strike. When she sensed an opening, Sarah pounced forward with a series of rapid punches. When those failed to connect, she spun her body, using the torque to slam her elbow into Maggie’s midsection as she passed by. She finished the 360-degree rotation by launching her trailing leg skyward and driving her knee into the bottom of Maggie’s chin.

Maggie’s head snapped back, and she staggered away.

In an attempt to press her advantage, Sarah swung her other leg up for a kick, but Maggie deflected the blow at the last possible instant.

Maggie rushed forward, raining lightning-fast blows upon the smaller Sarah. When she raised her hands in defense, Maggie lowered her aim and pounded away on Sarah’s ribs.

Sarah doubled over to protect herself, and Maggie dropped back – but only for a second.

It wasn’t a retreat; she simply needed room to use the full range of her leg.

Maggie leaped forward, swinging her hardened shin into the side of Sarah’s head. The kick sent Sarah careening to the ground, but she rebounded beautifully. As Maggie moved in closer, Sarah sprang from her crouch and smashed the crown of her head into Maggie’s oncoming face.

Blood sprayed from her ruptured eyebrow and gushed down Maggie’s face. Snot dripped from her broken nose and mixed with the spit drooling down into the split in her chin. Her eyes were swollen and watery.

She staggered aimlessly, helpless against Sarah’s advance.

Feng’s chest pounded with excitement.

‘Finish her,’ he ordered. ‘Kill her. Kill her now!’

Sarah’s eyes glazed over with rage. Maggie’s deception had unleashed a hornet’s nest of pent-up frustration, a sea of simmering angst that had been bubbling since the catastrophic loss of their previous historian in the deserts of Egypt. Despite her opponent’s defenseless condition, wrath overwhelmed her.

The roundhouse kick shattered Maggie’s sternum.

The arm bar that followed collapsed her trachea and snapped her neck.

Maggie fell dead to the cavern floor as Sarah stood trembling above her.

She had won the fight, but the battle wasn’t finished.

Feng didn’t applaud her victory or wait for his enemy to regroup. He had never been interested in a fair fight; not when he could strike while his opponent was weakened. His sentiment toward life echoed his strategy in business: the strong prevail, while the feeble must be purged from existence.

The blow from him came silently, while her back was turned. Feng blasted a rock-hard fist into the flesh protecting her right kidney, dropping her to her knees as a wave of nauseating pain swept over her. She tried to stagger to her feet, but Feng delivered another vicious blow, this time catching her squarely on the backside of her lungs.

She gasped for breath, certain that at least two of her ribs had been shattered.

Feng grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face toward the floor. She desperately spun her head to keep her nose and teeth from breaking against the solid rock, but her temple still smashed against the unforgiving stone. She landed on her stomach, which drove the last of the air from her lungs in a tortured gasp. She rolled to her side in agony, trying to move further and faster to escape the deranged man about to kill her, but her body wouldn’t respond.

She felt Feng’s foot ram into her side, and another rib crumbled. She brought her knees up in a protective fetal curl, but the man’s foot drove down onto her throat, squeezing off her air. Sarah clawed at his calf, but the man’s leg was like granite, the muscles under his trousers corded and strong from years of training.

She tried to shove him off her, but it was like trying to move a tree.

Her eyes bulged from the sockets as her lungs sucked for fresh oxygen.

Slowly, her vision grew hazy around the edges.

A few moments more, and she would be gone.

In a last-ditch effort, she tried to swing her legs up behind the man and hook him with her heels, hoping that she could push him away, but he deflected each blow with a forearm. He leaned heavily into her, pressing his boot on her windpipe as if he were trying to ram his foot through her neck to the floor. She could feel herself losing consciousness, her resistance slipping with each passing second.

As her eyes rolled back, a final idea exploded in her mind.

The knife!

Sarah frantically dug into the folds of her pockets until her fingertips found her knife. Fighting the lack of air, she wrapped her fingers around the handle. With the last energy she could muster, she withdrew the blade and slashed the knife parallel to her throat. The only thing in her way was Feng’s Achilles tendon.

She sliced through it like tender veal.

Feng roared in agony and jolted backward from the pain. Though he landed on his feet, the sliced tendon gave him no support. He immediately toppled backwards, the pistol from his holster sliding harmlessly across the floor.

Sarah rolled to her side and forced herself to her knees, still clutching the knife. Her bruised neck throbbed as she sucked in huge gulps of air, but she was oblivious to the pain.

She was just happy to be alive.

As she rose to her feet, Feng clawed desperately for his pistol, which had fallen just beyond his reach. His hand strained for the weapon, his limb extending back as his nails dug into the grip. The tips of his powerful fingers inched the gun closer, until it was finally within his grasp.

She saw the entire scene in slow motion.

In response, she cocked her arm backward, the knife still in hand.

As Feng raised the gun, she let the blade fly. The knife tumbled end over end through the air for what seemed like an eternity, but her aim was true.

And so was the pistol’s.

The blade sank deep into his eye as a gunshot echoed through the chamber.

Sarah stared at the barrel of Feng’s gun. There was no fire. There was no smoke. There was no projectile hurling its way toward her face at the speed of sound.

The knife had sunk securely into his left eye, the blade tunneling deeply into his skull and the handle lodging firmly up against his orbital bone. Yet it was the right half of his face that had left her in awe. It wasn’t just damaged, it was shredded, the skull beneath having been pulverized into skeletal fragments.

The reality of the moment slowly crept into her brain.

Feng never got off a shot.

Someone else pulled the trigger.

Feng’s body tipped over to the side, and Sarah glanced over her shoulder to see who had joined the fray. She breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Cobb; she didn’t have the strength to fight more of the Brotherhood.

‘Nice timing,’ Sarah croaked before dropping to the ground in exhaustion.

Cobb raced forward to catch her, but she held up a hand to signal that she was okay. He crouched beside her. ‘I think what you meant to say was, “Thanks for saving my life.”’

Sarah grinned as she gulped in air. ‘Nah, I had him. The knife killed him first. You just made things messy.’

Cobb was about to laugh when he noticed Maggie’s crumpled body near the other side of the room. He sprang up to investigate, but Sarah grabbed the cuff of his pant leg.

‘Don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘She’s not worth it.’

Cobb’s troubled stare told her that she needed to explain.

‘She was working for Feng. She sold us out for a paycheck, then she turned on me.’

Cobb was confused. ‘She couldn’t have been in his pocket all along. Not with all the help she gave us. That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I don’t know when he flipped her,’ Sarah admitted. ‘All I can tell you is that she definitely wasn’t working for us at the end. Xenophobia. Nationalistic fanaticism. I really don’t know. But it was either her or me.’

‘Well, you made the right choice,’ Cobb said.

He went through Feng’s pockets and found a small electronic device. He dropped it on the floor, then stomped on it with his boot. As he ground the remnants into dust with his heel, they heard Garcia in their ears.

‘– repeat. Radio check. I have no audio. Jack? Sarah? Maggie?’

‘Hector, we’re here,’ Cobb replied. ‘Sarah and I are back on comms.’

‘Any sign of Maggie?’ Garcia asked.