Phantom Prospect (15 page)

Annja stalked down the corridor, expecting at any moment to hear an alarm go off. If her captors could control the lights and switched them on, they’d see she had escaped.

There was also the expectation that another meal would be coming. She might well run into the person who fed her.

What a nice surprise that will be for them, she thought.

The corridor sloped upward at a gentle angle. Annja noticed that there seemed to be a constant stream of water running down sections of the walls. Where the walls met the floor, small troughs had been carved to help funnel the water down and away, presumably to some sort of drainage system.

But it made Annja wonder exactly where she might be if there was so much of it running throughout the complex. She figured she must have been in some underwater cavern.

She tried to remember if she’d ever heard of underwater caves off the Nova Scotia coast before and couldn’t. But then again, she’d never really wondered if there were any. For all she knew, there could be vast amounts of them.

Her sword gleamed and Annja kept moving, preferring to stay close to the walls rather than out in the middle of the corridor. She tried to keep her shadow behind her, but with each light she approached and then passed, her shadow would move.

She stopped suddenly.

Ahead of her she could have sworn she heard something out of rhythm with the rest of the ambient noise in the corridor.

Annja checked her position. The corridor curved around to the right and she was in a good position to surprise anyone coming at her. The next light was about twenty feet in front of her and cast her shadow behind her body. There was nothing that could give her position away unless she did something to make noise.

Annja stilled her breathing.

She heard the sound again.

There was definitely something up ahead of her. But who? Or what?

She knelt down and risked a quick peek around the corner. She saw a shadow and ducked back. In the glimpse, she’d made out someone about six feet tall. And he was armed and walking toward her.

He wasn’t carrying a meal tray.

Annja waited until the very last possible second and then as the muzzle of his submachine gun came around the curve, Annja grabbed it and jerked him forward.

The man went with the momentum and tucked himself into a roll, bringing the gun up across his body to protect it and simultaneously get a bead on Annja. Annja came cutting down at him with the blade.

He pivoted and used the gun to deflect her stroke. Annja tried to recoil and bring the blade back up and across at his chest, but he scrambled away, coming up on his feet as the hilt of Annja’s sword bounced off his gun.

She heard something clink on the floor, and as the man tried to bring the gun up level with her, he squeezed the trigger and frowned.

Nothing happened.

Annja didn’t wait for him to correct the problem. She slashed down at him. He gave up trying to fire the gun and used it to knock her blade away from him. Annja’s sword went flying across the floor. The man punched Annja in the stomach. Annja fell back gagging and retching.

She couldn’t get any air into her lungs.

The man was a highly trained fighter. He aimed a kick at her head and Annja barely had a second to dodge it before he caught her with another one in the lower back. Annja felt the steel toes of his boots sink into her kidneys and she grunted.

But then she rolled back, trapping his legs and lifting to toss him onto his backside. She came up, still trying to catch her breath. He punched at her but Annja brushed his strikes away, going for a sharp knee to his groin. She caught him and he grunted, knocking his head against Annja’s upper lip. Annja felt the lip balloon into some swollen mess. She reached for her sword blade, which was still about ten feet away.

He tackled her around the waist and then dragged her away from it. Annja scrambled to get her feet under her, looking for any purchase she could find on the damp floor of the corridor.

She felt his hands clawing at her and then managed to get one foot under her. She drove off her other leg and fell forward as he refused to give up the fight.

Annja turned around and raked his face with her fingernails. He winced as blood streamed. Annja kicked again and, this time, he backed off a little.

Annja summoned her sword to her and at last wrapped her hands around the hilt. She sensed movement behind her as the man came up with his submachine gun and fumbled with it for a moment.

Annja dived to the right as the explosion of bullets swept across the corridor, ricocheting off the stone walls.

Annja threw the sword and heard the sudden intake of breath as it sank into the man’s stomach and pierced his vital organs.

He coughed and spit blood across the wall.

The shooting stopped.

Annja’s ears rang and her head screamed in protest at the horrible noise. But she quickly drew out her sword as the man sank to his knees and then toppled forward, dead.

A pool of blood spread out from his body and then ran into the trough on the left side, quickly mixing with the water and sliding away toward the drainage area.

Annja wiped her brow and took quick stock of her own injuries. Her lip was a swollen mess and her kidneys hurt like hell, but she was alive.

Apart from the sudden barrage of gunshots, there’d been little noise during the entire fight aside from the grunts and sounds of exertion. It always amazed Annja how little noise occurred in hand-to-hand combat. No one screamed or yelled or did any of the craziness that happened in martial-arts movies.

Usually it was quick, dirty, sweaty stuff that left one person dead and the other alive, for better or for worse.

Annja hefted her sword and used some of the water running down a nearby wall to wash the man’s blood off.

She dragged her victim’s body behind the curve where she’d waited for him before the fight. It wouldn’t do for long, but it might keep his corpse concealed for a few minutes.

Of course, the entire complex had probably heard the gunfire and knew something was wrong. The fact that more people hadn’t come rushing had her somewhat confused. Annja had expected instant backups to fly at her from wherever the corridor led.

But no one had.

She wondered if the sound had even reached them. Perhaps due to the construction of this facility, sound didn’t echo or bounce along as it might elsewhere? She didn’t know. Acoustics weren’t something she knew much about. One thing was certain. She had to reach the end of the corridor and see where she was. Annja took off again, walking up the slope toward a dim light she could see at its summit.

It took her three more minutes of fast walking to reach it, but as she came abreast of the zenith, she started hearing more noise. She picked out loud machines that hummed and heavy industrial gear from the sound of it.

Annja paused and sank down to her knees to get a better picture of what was going on beyond.

Bright light greeted her, making her blink rapidly. Her eyes had been so used to the dim light that the sudden rush of illumination hurt her head. Annja looked back and blinked to further acclimate her eyes.

What she saw amazed her.

She was overlooking the vast expanse of a stone cavern that was filled with all manner of machinery. One of the things she thought she recognized was a huge drill that seemed to be boring right into the base of a giant stone.

In the lower part of the cavern, Annja could see scores of people working on a variety of geological contraptions. Across from them, she saw a dock and, floating in water, she spotted several submarines and two giant sharks.

Two of them?

Annja frowned. Where the hell was she? And whatever she’d stumbled upon, it was obviously well financed. To get this type of machinery and gear down here, let alone employ so many people in whatever processes were ongoing, would take enormous sums of money.

Who had that kind of financing available to them? Sheila had mentioned Henderson. Was she lying or was there really a man named Henderson who was fronting this entire operation. Surely this wasn’t just about some crucifix. They wouldn’t need resources like this just to recover a sunken relic.

No way.

Annja looked around and saw more armed guards on patrol overlooking various parts of the cavern. But the machinery noise was so loud, Annja wasn’t surprised that the guard she’d killed hadn’t attracted any notice. No one would have heard the gunfire from the main cavern.

The area where Annja knelt opened onto a ledge that seemed to run all the way around the cavern. It was on this catwalk of sorts that Annja spotted the other guards.

And across from her, she could see a glass-enclosed control room. She noticed a series of monitors and computers.

If she was going to get any answers as to what was happening here, she would have to reach that spot.

But what had happened to Cole? Was he here? Were there other cells back where she’d been held?

Annja wanted nothing more than to go and check, but her gut instinct told her that Cole wasn’t back there. Something inside her insisted that he was still alive, but where?

She saw soon enough.

A break in the machinery din caused her to look down and to the right when she thought she heard a laugh. As she did, she saw Cole strapped to a board, arms and legs akimbo.

A guard nearby held a long wand that crackled at the end. Annja recognized the Taser and wondered why they were torturing Cole when, to her knowledge, he had no idea what was going on.

She saw the guard touch the device to Cole’s chest and watched as Cole arched his back in agony. The voltage was not enough to kill him, but they could make him suffer for hours until he mercifully passed out or had a heart attack as his body gave up.

I’ve got to get to him, she thought. But a quick glance around the catwalk told Annja that reaching Cole would entail her taking on half a dozen armed men who were presumably very well trained if the first guard she’d encountered was any indication.

Those weren’t good odds for Annja.

She leaned back and took a deep breath. Could she possibly reach the control room? That would mean she’d have to expose herself.

She looked around and tried to figure out how people were able to get down to the lower levels. Clearly, this area led up to the catwalk, but what about going in the opposite direction? Would that lead Annja down to where Cole was?

She had to try.

Annja ran back the way she’d come. She wasn’t worried about running into anyone there. Her feeling was the prisoner cells were positioned so that someone could get to them from either the top level or from the bottom.

Annja ran past her cell, relieved that no one appeared to have visited her since she escaped. She kept going along the corridor. It started to slope downward pretty fast and Annja had to slow her pace or risk falling forward from her own momentum.

She skidded to a stop twenty yards away from another doorway. This time the noise was much louder than it had been up on the catwalk. Annja could hear all the different machinery.

And, along with those sounds, she could hear Cole screaming.

I have to get to him, she thought.

But she couldn’t risk running out and getting them both killed. She had to sneak out there without anyone knowing.

But how?

Annja crept up to the doorway and risked a look, hoping that the answer would reveal itself to her.

The first thing Annja spotted was a group of workers in coveralls heading out of a room that hadn’t been visible to Annja from the catwalk. One of them was still zipping up the coveralls and Annja suspected that there might be more sets in what she hoped was a changing area. Judging by the makeup of the group, which included three women, Annja felt a surge of hope.

She waited until the group passed her spot and then she cautiously crept toward the next doorway. She could see a polished stone floor that gleamed from the constant dampness that seemed to pervade every aspect of this complex. Just beyond the doorway, she spotted a series of metal lockers set against the stone wall and beyond them another doorway where Annja heard what sounded like flushing toilets.

And they gave me a pail, she thought. The bastards.

She checked the first locker and found it locked but then spotted a bin full of used coveralls. Quickly, she grabbed one and stepped into it, zipping it up to her neck and effectively covering her body.

Fortunately, the coveralls had booties and Annja hoped that her absence of shoes would be hidden from view.

She wished the people wore masks but that didn’t seem a likely event, so she took a deep breath, checked to make sure the sword was ready to pull out if she needed and then stepped out of the changing room just as two more workers entered.

“Hey,” one said, barely even looking at her.

Annja smiled at the one that spoke to her. “Hey.”

And that was the extent of the exchange. Annja took a breath and tried to remain nonchalant. Clearly, not everyone here knew who she was or even what she looked like. That was good news.

Outside the changing room, she looked around and spotted Cole still hung up on the wooden board. She started making her way over to where he was.

The guards near Cole seemed not to even notice her as she drew closer and closer. Annja’s heart hammered, but she had to commit to this. She had no idea how they were going to make it out of there, but judging from how Cole screamed, he wasn’t going to last much longer if they kept shocking him the way they were.

She closed the distance to ten feet and was ready to jump the closest guard when she saw a new guard come down from a circular stone staircase cut into the back of the rock. He pointed at the Taser holder and shook his head. “That’s enough now. There’s no sense in killing him. At least, not yet.”

Cole’s head slumped forward and Annja saw sweat running down through the muscle valleys on his body. She frowned and bit back the surge of anger she felt coursing through her veins.

“Get him down and take him back to his cell.”

The guards complied and Cole fell forward into their arms. As he did so, his eyes fluttered open and he saw Annja.

Annja winked at him and she saw the immediate reaction of relief in his body. But he checked it and nodded toward the area by the staircase.

Annja looked over and saw something she hadn’t seen before. A video camera was stuck on a rotating pole that covered that particular part of the lower cavern. No doubt its feed led back to the control room she’d spotted from the catwalk overhead.

Cole was still staring at her so she nodded once and then he slumped forward again. Two of the guards dragged him away and Annja was relieved to see that they headed back the way she’d come down from her own cell.

The relief was short-lived, however. She realized that if they got Cole back to this cell, they’d see that Annja’s own door was a mess and she was no longer in her cell.

She turned and started working her way toward where the guards were carrying Cole.

“You there.”

Annja’s heart sank. She turned. “Yes?”

“Are you supposed to be over here?” It was the guard who had stopped the torturing of Cole. But he didn’t look even remotely friendly. The submachine gun slung over his shoulder wasn’t at the ready, but it was close to his hands. And the expression on his deeply scarred face was a portrait of evil and hatred.

“Aren’t I?” Annja said.

He shook his head. “All drill workers are supposed to be over in that area there.” He pointed in the opposite direction that Annja was headed. “Get over to where you need to be. You don’t want the boss looking for you and I don’t need any extra bother today.”

Annja smiled. “Great, thanks.” She started walking in the same direction that she had been heading. She was close to the opening. Just six feet to go.

“Did you hear what I said?”

She nodded. “Yep, I just have to check on something over here first,” she said.

Four feet away from the doorway, she heard the ratchet of the submachine gun’s charging handle slammed into place. The guard had a round ready to fire into her back if he wanted to. “Doesn’t seem like you heard me,” he said.

Annja considered her options. If the guards got Cole back to his cell, she was finished. If she took this guard out, she was finished, as well. There was no other option left but to make a messy scene.

As she came abreast of the doorway, she grabbed a small rock she’d noticed on the ground and wheeled around, aiming with perfect accuracy at the guard’s head.

Before the man had a chance to react, the rock struck him between the eyes and he slumped to the floor. Annja grabbed him and his gun before they could draw attention and dragged him into the changing room. She struggled and heaved until she stuffed the body in the laundry bin and then stripped off her coveralls.

Annja grabbed the gun and raced toward Cole’s cell.

She turned the corner and came face-to-face with one of Cole’s guards heading back at a run. She could see the body of the guard she’d killed in the distance.

Annja collided with the oncoming man and they both went down, their respective guns clattering on the stone floor.

Annja had the faster reaction and instantly shot her right leg out toward the guard’s head. He saw the kick coming but didn’t have enough time to block the savage blow that snapped his head back. He lay still.

Annja scrambled to her feet and grabbed at the two guns, slinging one of them on her back and running for Cole’s cell. As she ran, she wondered about the absence of radios on the guards, but quickly dismissed it as a nonissue. Probably due to the solid rock that surrounded them, radios were unreliable.

She went up the slope toward the row of cells and saw the second guard examining the entrance of her cell. Cole was nowhere to be seen.

The guard saw Annja and started to aim his weapon at her. “Hey—”

Annja’s trigger finger twitched and the gun recoiled in her hands as three rounds tore into the guard’s chest, shredding his black turtleneck and splattering blood across the walls.

He dropped and Annja knelt next to his body, grabbing his keys off the belt he wore. She called out, “Cole!”

“Annja?”

She raced to a door past her cell and fumbled with the lock. She got the door open and saw him struggle forward. He collapsed into her arms. “So it really
was
you. I hoped, but couldn’t be sure.”

“It’s me, you big jerk. Now come on, we’ve got to get you out of here.”

She wrapped her hands around him and took his weight. He was heavy and outweighed her by a great deal. Annja took a breath and propped him up.

He tried to stand by himself. “Let me go. I can manage.”

“You sure?”

He nodded. “I feel like shit, but if we can get the hell out, I’ll fake it long enough to escape.”

Annja took the submachine gun off her back and handed it to him. “It’s going to get messy before we’re clear.”

They headed out into the corridor. Cole looked down at the dead guard and scowled. “I wanted to kill that guy myself. Talk about a sadist.”

“No need now. We’ve got to get out of here. I’ve taken out three guards so far and my actions won’t stay hidden for long.”

“You got three of them? You’ve been busy.”

They headed toward the lower level of the cavern. Annja led the way. “I saw a submarine from the catwalk. And there are two sharks. They must be submarines, as well.”

“Of a type,” Cole said. “But I think they’re here specifically to scare the hell out of anyone who stays in this area.”

“You have any idea what’s going on?”

Cole shook his head. “Not a clue. For some reason, though, the gas they used didn’t completely knock me out, so I was pretty aware when they unloaded me from the shark.”

“You must have been surprised when the shark swallowed you up only to find that it wasn’t real.”

Cole almost chuckled. “You could say that. I imagine you were the same way, obviously.” He frowned. “But how the hell did you get swallowed up?”

“Long story,” Annja said. “Let’s just say that after I saw you presumably killed, I was more than a little bit upset with that shark. The next time it came around, I decided to take it on and that’s when it happened.”

“Take it on?” Cole shook his head. “You make it sound like it was some back-alley fight.”

“Yeah, I know. Pretty insane, right?”

“Sounds like it.” Cole smiled. “I’m glad you’re here, though.”

“Well, we’re not out of the woods just yet. We need to get one of those submarines and disappear before someone finds out that we didn’t think too highly of our accommodations.”

They passed the second guard Annja had killed with the kick to the head and Cole whistled. “Impressive.”

“Necessary,” Annja said. “Let’s leave it at that if we could. I’m not what I would consider a bloodthirsty woman. But if need be I can do the deed.”

“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Cole said.

“Done.”

They ran down the slope toward the lower level. Annja thought she heard noises behind them, but she couldn’t risk looking back.

“Something tells me that our advantage of surprise may be up,” Cole said.

“You might be right.” Annja felt certain she heard footsteps pounding the stone corridor behind them. No doubt reinforcements had come in from the catwalk. “Dammit,” she said.

“What?”

She stopped running. “Your cell.”

“What about it?” Cole asked.

Annja shook her head. “I can’t believe I forgot. You were probably under surveillance just like I was. They had a camera in there. And the light was on. They know you’re out and they know I’m out, too.”

“That’s not good.” Cole looked behind them. The sounds were growing louder. “How do you want to handle this?”

Annja checked the magazine on her gun and saw that it was full. She slapped it back and pulled the charging handle. “Only one way to play it as far as I’m concerned. I wasn’t born to be someone’s prisoner.”

Cole nodded. “Good. Let’s do this.”

Annja pointed behind them. “We’ll be sandwiched between two sides if we keep going to the lower level.”

Cole nodded. “Then let’s do what they don’t expect. Let’s meet these guys head-on and hit them before they can do the same to us.”

“Good plan,” Annja agreed.

They turned and ran back up the slope. The sound of boots tramping down the corridor was clear. Annja saw shadows coming at them. Three by the look of it.

She waved Cole to her side and they both dropped to their stomachs. From the prone position, they would at least have a small advantage.

The guards rounded the corner.

“Now!” Annja said.

She and Cole opened fire.