“Stop!”
Everyone turned their attention to Zahra. The big guy left his post over by the obelisk and joined the others, walking confidently even with an armed adversary in his presence. It was plain to see that he didn’t fear being gunned down. None of them raised their hands in surrender.
The leader stepped away from Grant and her man.
She smiled. “Zahra Kane, I presume?”
Zahra recalled her name from the radio conversation she had overheard earlier.
“And you must be Ifza.”
Grant attempted to rip free of the gunman’s grip but was unsuccessful. “She’s Khaliq’s sister, Zahra!”
The aggressor shoved Grant in the shoulder and then drove the stock of his rifle into his lower back. Grant cried out in pain and fell to his knees, grabbing at the injury. Zahra took a step forward but stopped when Grant’s assailant swung his rifle around on him.
Zahra gave the gunman a long look before turning her attention to her assistant. “You okay?”
Grant winced but nodded. “Yeah, I’m alright.” His face soured. “I’m sorry, Zahra, but they got your mother’s jar.”
Both of Ifza’s men wore matching backpacks. If Zahra had to guess, the mountain-of-a-man was the one who was carrying.
The news of the theft was bad, but at least Grant was still alive. “It’s fine. As long as you’re safe.” Zahra looked at Ifza. “You have what you came for. Leave him and go.”
Ifza chuckled softly. “You are in no position to make any demands.”
“Okay, then…” Zahra said, lowering her rifle to the floor. She stepped away from it. “Can you at least tell me what you’re going to do with him — my brother too?”
The woman’s fiery eyes ignited. The corners of her mouth turned upward into a manic smile. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
Ifza laughed. “You’ve been lied to your entire life, and this is how you find out?” She gave Zahra a faux frown. “Poor thing.”
Zahra had no idea what Ifza was talking about. She couldn’t put her family history in front of Grant’s safety. So, she repeated her question. “What are you going to do with Grant and my brother?”
“You’ll see.”
Ifza shouted in a language that even Zahra didn’t understand. It sounded like a form of Ancient Egyptian. Something was abnormal in it, though. The inflections were different, like American English versus British English. Accents changed from region to region.
It also could be similar to the tribes of the Amazon or the Congo. Isolated cultures developed their own language over time. Was that what this was?
It was an interesting concept.
The big guy slipped out of his pack and handed it to Ifza while the man with the rifle spun and headed for the door. Ifza took Grant by the arm and pulled him back a little as the mountain stomped toward Zahra. She leaned back toward her discarded AK but didn’t get far.
Ifza drew a pistol and jammed it into Grant’s temple. “Don’t even think about it.” The big man kept coming. “This is Odai. The man you killed,” Ifza’s eyes darted to the person Zahra had impaled with the African spear, “was his brother.”
Oh, shit.
Zahra unsheathed her SOG knife and took a step back. Odai pulled a blade twice that size out from a holster on his right thigh. The extra-large Bowie knife looked comfortable in his hand. The two must have been old friends.
Zahra held up her much smaller blade and laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation.
She looked around for something better and saw an artifact that she recognized. Thirty feet behind her was a weapon she had already used earlier that night. She sheathed her knife and turned, and ran for it. Her actions confused the behemoth, pausing him in his tracks. In one motion, Zahra slid to one knee, snagged the bloodied Maasai hunting spear, and popped back up to her feet. She brandished the imposing weapon as if she was expertly trained with it — which she wasn’t. It’s not as if Zahra was pretending to be Okoye, General of Wakanda’s Dora Milaje.
Odai growled, staring at her between the African tribesman’s legs. The diorama was now equidistance between the two combatants. If it were possible, he now looked even angrier than before. Zahra understood why too. She glanced right, to a pair of feet protruding from inside the information desk. Then, she focused on the spear tip — the plasma that coated it.
The blood belonged to Odai’s brother.
Instead of simply shooting Zahra where she stood, the mountain was going to make her suffer. He wanted to kill her with his bare hands.
Zahra couldn’t let that happen.
She charged.
Chapter 26
Zahra
Zahra made it to the Maasai exhibit first. She leaped onto its raised platform and swung the spear in a long upward arc. Odai blocked it with the blade of his enormous Bowie knife, absorbing a large portion of the kinetic energy with his thick body.
But it did knock him off balance.
Zahra used that moment to press the attack. She went airborne, once again, and launched a strong kick into Odai’s chest. He staggered away, unsure. Zahra doubted he had ever fought a woman with Zahra’s skill or ferocity before. His culture subjugated the opposite sex to the point of treating them like animals.
Odai regained his composure and got his boots back underneath him. He swung his Bowie knife in a long, powerful downward arc. Zahra had only just gotten her own feet set before having to block it, using her spear like a bow staff.
Donatello would have been proud.
An ear-splitting clang reverberated throughout the Great Court, as well as in Zahra’s ears. She cringed but kept her focus on Odai and not on her personal discomfort.
Still, it hurt like hell.
The big guy moved impossibly fast. Zahra dodged his attacks but was driven directly into the platform. She rolled backward, losing a few strands of hair as she mounted the exhibit once again. Odai’s next attack had come that close.
On one knee, Zahra jabbed at Odai’s face and was delighted to see it connect with his left cheek. He reeled back and snarled but didn’t grab for the wound. He never lost concentration and promptly retaliated. The beast’s pain tolerance was as impressive as his physical stature. He attempted to swipe it across Zahra’s throat, but luckily, she wasn’t there.
Her spear was.
Their weapons met with a skull-pummeling clang. This time, it was too loud for either of them to ignore, and both Zahra and Odai responded and grimaced. She wasn’t sure what Odai was feeling, but Zahra’s ears rang worse than getting kicked in the head by a mule.
Or so she thought.
She shook the cobwebs loose and shoved the blunt end of her weapon into Odai’s chest, pushing him back as she dismounted the platform. Back on level ground, Zahra was taken aback by how much taller he was than her. Six inches, at least. It didn’t matter, though. If her life had taught her anything, Zahra was similar to a cannonball made entirely from ill-tempered wolverines.
The elder Kane sibling was a lot to handle, even in her compact, unassuming package. She enjoyed using her stature and looks to her advantage when at all possible. But now wasn’t one of those times. Odai wasn’t about to show her any mercy, regardless of the fact that she was an attractive damsel in distress — mostly because he was the one causing the distress.
Zahra and Odai sized each other up while regaining whatever strength they had left. Both were drenched in sweat and gasping for air.
“I like your knife,” Zahra said, speaking Arabic, trying to delay the inevitable. “It looks really sharp.”