Annja flailed for the railing around the platform. Her left hand caught, but the right hand missed. Around her, sparks shot out for yards, showering the ground and the brush. Small fires had already started in the wake of the train. The squeal of metal on metal as the wheels skidded along the tracks sounded like the howl of a gigantic beast.
She regained her balance as her right hand took hold.
An explosion of light struck the locomotive. The sound of the detonation followed.
The train whipsawed like a snake. Train cars flipped from the tracks onto their sides. Bedlam filled the night.
Annja looked for the old woman. She was nowhere in sight.
The train car shuddered as it slammed to a full stop. Then it reared up like some rebellious beast. A roar of incredible clanging and shredding metal filled Annja’s ears. At the front of the train, the lights of several vehicles suddenly flared to life.
Trap! Annja thought. Either the attackers had used an anti-tank weapon of some kind or they’d mined the tracks.
She leaped from the train, landing in a crouch. Covering her mouth to keep from choking on the huge cloud of dust the wreck had created, Annja scanned the landscape. The vehicles—jeeps and motorcycles—closed in rapidly.
She darted behind a tree as a motorcycle rider spotted her and lifted a pistol in his left hand. The rider was African, dressed in Kevlar armor, his face painted like a skeleton. Bullets smashed into the tree, tearing bark free in chunks.
The rider leathered the pistol and gunned his machine after Annja. Other shots echoed over the broken terrain as she ran.
Abruptly, knowing the man was on the verge of running her down, Annja stepped aside and wheeled to face her attacker. She timed her move, trusted her strength and resiliency, and swung her left arm out, clotheslining the man and knocking him from the motorcycle.
The man landed at Annja’s feet. The impact had knocked the air from his lungs. She kicked him in the face, rendering him unconscious.
Kneeling, she stripped an assault rifle from the man, took the bandolier of extra magazines, and the pistol and holster, as well. She buckled the belt around her waist, reloaded the pistol with one of the extra magazines on the belt and stood with the assault rifle in hand.
She wasn’t sure what kind of rifle she was holding—she guessed a Russian or Chinese weapon—but she knew how to use it. At the moment, that was enough.
Armed, she ran back toward the train. Whoever the attackers were, and she was pretty sure whom they belonged to, she didn’t think they were going to take any unnecessary prisoners.
TANISHA DIOUF MADE herself stand. Dazed, she looked around for Bashir and Kamil. Her children were the center of her life. They were all that she had left of the dreams she and Kevin had had when they married.
“Mom! Mom!” Bashir yelled, tears streaming down his face. “The train wrecked!”
Kneeling, Tanisha helped her youngest up from the clutter of baggage that had tumbled from the overhead compartments. “Easy, Bashir. I’ve got you.” She put her arms around him, felt him shaking and shivering in his fear.
He held on to her tightly.
Gently, Tanisha disengaged from him and took one of his hands in hers. Panic welled up inside her, threatening to spill out of control. Where’s Kamil? Please! Please don’t let anything have happened to my baby! She looked around, but the car had plunged into total darkness.
A light flared to her left. Someone had a flashlight.
In the glow of the beam, Tanisha saw that it was Jaineba. The old woman stepped through the wreckage of the train car as calmly as though she were out for a Sunday walk.
“Jaineba,” Tanisha called.
“I hear you, daughter,” the old woman said. “You’re going to be all right. You’ve just got to keep your wits about you.”
“My son,” Tanisha said. “Kamil is missing.”
Pausing, Jaineba braced her staff against her shoulder and reached down into the debris. She grabbed Kamil’s hand and pulled him free. Kamil stood, but he had a cut above his left eye that bled terribly.
“Kamil!” Tanisha let go of Bashir’s hand and grabbed Kamil’s head in her hands. She turned his face toward the light to better see the cut. It was deep and would require stitches, but it wasn’t life-threatening.
“I’m all right,” Kamil protested. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Tanisha gazed around.
The men who had been with Annja Creed had weapons in their fists. Some of them were taking still more weapons from luggage cases.
Seeing the men with guns didn’t surprise Tanisha. They’d seemed to her to be the type of men who would carry weapons. They moved calmly and efficiently.
“Where’s Annja?” one of the men asked.
“She was just here, Agent McIntosh,” one of the other men said.
Agent? Tanisha was surprised about that. She’d guessed that the men were bodyguards for the archaeologist, hired to protect the expedition she was directing.
“She went outside,” Tanisha said.
McIntosh directed his flashlight on her. “Who are you?”
“Tanisha Diouf. Annja and I were talking earlier. I saw her go out the back of the car.”
The American agent cursed and started for the back door.
“What happened?” someone else asked.
“The train’s under attack,” the agent said.
Tanisha realized why the train had been attacked. A large part of the cargo was equipment—bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment—to replace the machines that had been destroyed by the tribesmen fighting against encroachment onto what they claimed were their lands. She was sure the Childress Corporation was their target.
“Come on,” Jaineba said, waving to her. “We must get the children out of this place. It’s very dangerous.”
Tanisha nodded and started to follow the old woman to the back of the car. She was disoriented because the car lay on its side.
A shadow fell over her. Looking up instinctively, Tanisha saw a man—not a man, she corrected herself, a skeleton—squatting next to the shattered window. He had a rifle in his hands.
All of the memories of the voodoo ceremonies she’d seen in and around Dakar came back to Tanisha in a flood. She’d never believed in any of it, not the zombies, not the loas riding willing hosts who gyrated to the savage beat of drums and bit the heads off chickens for tourists.
None of that is real, she told herself.
But she was certain she was staring into the face of death. She tried to open her mouth in warning, but she knew she would never get the words out in time.
ANNJA RAN to the overturned train car she’d been riding in. From thirty feet away, she saw one of the attackers clambering along the side. The skeleton-faced man stopped and took aim with his rifle.
Raising the assault rifle to her shoulder, Annja squeezed off a burst. The man jerked as the bullets struck him, but she hadn’t hit any mortal areas. Spinning, the attacker lifted his weapon and took aim.
Before he could fire, before Annja could move, the window at his feet exploded in a hail of shattered glass. Gunshots rolled from inside the train car, and the skeleton-faced man jerked like a marionette in the hands of an unskilled puppet master. Then the dead man collapsed.
A moment later, McIntosh came through the door at the back of the train car. He held his pistol in both hands and moved well enough that Annja knew he wasn’t hurt.
A jeep roared along beside the train. A man in skeleton makeup hung on to a light machine gun mounted on the rear deck.
“McIntosh,” Annja yelled in warning. “Look out!”
McIntosh went to ground at once, taking cover behind the platform beside him just as the jeep’s searchlight swept over him and the machine gun chattered.
Using the tree beside her to steady the assault rifle, Annja opened fire. Her bullets raked the side of the jeep, missing the driver, as well as the gunner. Okay, so you’re not Annie Oakley, Annja thought, adrenaline surging.
McIntosh fired from cover, a carefully measured 2-round punch that caught the driver in the face. The jeep swerved out of control and slammed into a tree. The gunner flew out of the vehicle and landed in a heap. Before he could get up, McIntosh shot him, as well.
“Who are they?” McIntosh asked.
“They didn’t exactly introduce themselves,” Annja replied.
McIntosh jogged over to the jeep and helped himself to the dead men’s weapons. Other agents did the same. McIntosh also helped himself to one of the bloody Kevlar vests and tossed the other one to Annja.
“Put that on,” he growled.
Two other motorcyclists closed on their position. McIntosh and three of the agents took aim and cleared the seats.
“What do you suppose the chances are that the brakeman had a chance to call in the attack?” one of the agents asked.
“Even if they had a radio and were in contact with someone at the railroad,” another agent said, “it’s going to be hours before anyone comes looking for us.”
“The jeep might still be drivable,” one of the men said.
“See if you can get it started,” McIntosh said. “We need to get the women and children out of here.”
Annja started to respond to that, thinking McIntosh was being sarcastic and referring to her. Then she saw Tanisha Diouf and her two sons. The old woman, Jaineba, was right behind them.
Tanisha was hunkered down beside the train, holding Bashir in one arm while she held Kamil’s hand with her free hand. She looked frightened.
The jeep roared to life. The agents quickly hustled Tanisha, her sons and Jaineba into the vehicle. One of the agents manned the deck-mounted light machine gun.
“Clear the battle zone, then take cover,” McIntosh ordered. “Keep the civilians safe and healthy. We’re going to see if we can keep the opposition distracted and whittle the odds down.”
The agent wished them luck and pulled out, keeping his lights out so he wouldn’t be noticeable immediately.
McIntosh pulled the team together, organizing them into two groups. “We go forward,” he told his troops. “Slowly. Take out anybody who isn’t us and isn’t a civilian.”
“With those skull faces they’re wearing, there won’t be much worry about who’s who,” one of the agents said.
They went forward slowly, and they killed everyone who was wearing a skull face. They also added to their armament and ammunition with every encounter. Annja immediately saw that McIntosh’s agents were far more skilled at this kind of warfare than their attackers.
“When we left Dakar earlier today,” Annja said to McIntosh while they regrouped, “you were upset because you thought we might lose Tafari.”
McIntosh grunted sourly and looked down at the dead man at his feet.
“I think maybe we have his attention,” Annja said.
TAFARI CURSED the ineptitude of his men as they lost battle after battle. He watched through night-vision binoculars, only catching glimpses of the woman and the men who protected her.
“They’re too skilled,” Zifa said. “Our people haven’t ever been up against men like this. Our warriors have had an easy time of it killing ill-equipped tribesmen.”
Gazing through the binoculars, Tafari watched as one of his jeeps suddenly swerved and overturned. A jeep with a flamethrower mounted in the back suddenly burst into flames and became a ground comet as bullets tore through the fuel tanks. Burning quickly, the jeep slammed into one of the train cars, came to an abrupt stop and sagged as the tires melted and blew.
“All we’re going to do tonight is lose more men,” Zifa reasoned.
Tafari knew Zifa was right. There were still plenty of warriors he could use, but the ones who survived the night would tell the others if he used them so coldly.
Besides, he had access to other men, trained mercenaries, who could track and kill Annja Creed and the Americans. He hadn’t expected the resistance they’d had tonight. There’d been no way of knowing what those men were like.
He had expected the train wreck to have caused more damage than it had. No one else had recovered as quickly as Annja Creed and her bodyguards had.
“All right,” Tafari grated. “Call them off.” But he promised himself there would be another opportunity. Soon. And when that opportunity came and the American archaeologist was within his grasp, she would die a very slow, painful death that people would remember for years.
More than that, the treasure that Anansi had given the Hausa people would be his.
“THEY’RE PULLING UP stakes and leaving,” McIntosh said.
Beside him, hunkered down behind one of the train cars, Annja watched as the skull-faced warriors withdrew from the battle.
“Do you think it’s a trick?” she asked.
“No,” McIntosh said. “I think they’ve had all they could stand. But we’re going to stay put until we know for certain.” He glanced at his watch. “It’ll be dawn in a couple more hours. We’ll see how things look then.”
“We need supplies,” Annja said. “If they return in the morning, with more men, we don’t want to get caught out here without water.” She nodded at the overturned train. “We also need to find out if anyone in there needs medical attention.”
“You’re not a doctor,” McIntosh said.
“I’m trained in first aid,” Annja said. “I’ve stitched myself up when I had to.”
McIntosh stared at her. “You’ve stitched yourself up?”
“And a few other people when we were too far from civilization or didn’t have access to medical care.”
“The lady’s right, McIntosh,” one of the agents said. “If there’s people in that train who’ve been hurt and there’s something we can do for them, I think we need to get it done.”
McIntosh nodded. “All right. But we operate in two-man teams and stay in constant radio communication.” He and the other agents wore walkie-talkies with earbuds and pencil mikes that lay along their jaws. “Annja, you’re with me.”