Slowly Annja did as she was told. She never took her gaze off the Dragon. If this was going to be it, she wanted to meet death with her eyes open and spit into the face of her adversary. While she watched her enemy, she also continued concentrating on keeping the sword in the here and now; having it disappear into the otherwhere would probably earn her a bullet in the head.
The Dragon kept her distance as she circled toward where the sword rested on the ground. By the time Annja reached the balcony, the Dragon was standing over the sword. She bent over, slid it into a cloth sheath that she’d produced from somewhere on her person and slung the entire package over her back, next to her own weapon.
“We had a deal,” Annja said. “The sword for Roux.”
For a moment Annja thought the Dragon was just going to run off, but then she realized the woman was enjoying this. Whatever was about to happen, it would probably not be pleasant for Roux or Annja.
“Look to your left,” Shizu said. “Do you see the line tied to the railing?”
Annja looked that way and then quickly back again. “Yes, I see it.” It was a narrow piece of fishing line, nearly invisible in the fading sunlight, tied off at the railing and disappearing out into the pond.
“Untie it and pull on it,” the Dragon said.
Annja eyed her warily but made no move toward the line.
The gun swiveled in her direction again. “I said, pull on it.”
Annja didn’t see that she had a choice, so she stepped closer and began to work at the knot. While she did so, she tried reaching out to Henshaw again.
“Are you out there?” she whispered.
She heard nothing but static.
When the line was finally untied, she gave it a good yank. Behind her, out on the water, something splashed.
“Reel it in,” Shizu ordered.
Again, Annja did as she was told, but this time a cold sense of foreboding was stealing across her body. Something had gone very wrong; it seemed likely that both Henshaw and Roux were already dead, which left her alone to escape the Dragon’s clutches.
It only took a few seconds to reel in the line and when she did she discovered that it was attached to a long hollow reed that resembled nothing so much as a wet piece of narrow bamboo. As she stared at it, something began to churn and splash at the base of the floating Torii marker in the middle of the lake.
“I promised I’d deliver Roux alive and unharmed,” the Dragon said, with a vicious smile. “I always keep my promises. It’s just too bad that you’re the one who just took his air hose out of his mouth. Old guy like that, he probably won’t last two minutes.”
As Annja made the connection between the long narrow reed in her hand and the churning commotion in the middle of the pond, her mind screamed at her to act before it was too late.
She backed up, took three running steps and dove over the railing into the lake, all thought of the Dragon forgotten. She struck the water in a shallow dive and let her momentum carry her along as far as it could before she surfaced and swam toward the floating torii with hard strokes of her arms and legs. The cold water sucked the heat from her limbs and her wet clothing threatened to drag her down, but she knew she had only minutes to save Roux from drowning so she fought her way forward.
Behind her, unnoticed by all but the gun-toting watcher on the ridge above, the Dragon walked briskly out of the pavilion.
As she drew closer to the floating signpost, Annja ducked below the surface. The torii wasn’t actually floating, she discovered, but was held in place by a long shaft that was sunk several feet into the muck-covered bottom of the pond.
Roux was tied to that shaft.
He was flailing, trying desperately to get himself free. Air bubbles streamed away from him as he fought to hold his breath and his eyes were wide with the sense of impending death. Annja couldn’t even be sure if he saw her, nor did she have time to find out.
She surfaced, grabbed another lungful of air and then shot back down to help Roux.
Up close she discovered she’d been wrong; Roux wasn’t tied to the shaft.
He was chained.
A shiny steel chain was attached to the pole and then wrapped around his body several times, securing him in place. It was all held together by a thick, brass lock.
There was no way she could pick that lock in the time she had, nor could she smash it open with anything at hand. She was going to have to focus her efforts on the chain and hope for the best. But when she tried to pull the long loops away from Roux’s body enough for him to slip free, she found they were wrapped too tightly to budge even an inch.
Roux continued to thrash frantically beside her and one of his feet lashed out, connecting with her thigh, sending a wave of numbness shooting down its length, but she ignored the injury and swam in close against the shaft. She held on to the chain with her left, opened her hand and summoned her sword.
She felt the solid weight of it against her palm. She jammed the blade down between the first loop of the chain and the pole itself and then pulled against it with all her strength.
For a moment she thought it wouldn’t work, that she wouldn’t be able to get enough torque, but she was surprised when the link snapped quickly.
Annja wanted to shout for joy, despite being several feet underwater, but she knew she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She still had several more lengths to go before it would be loose enough to free Roux.
She shot for the surface, filled her lungs with another gulp of cool spring air, and then dove back down. Annja could see that Roux had stopped struggling; he was just hanging there in the chains, his mouth open and filled with water.
Annja had run out of time.
She wasn’t ready yet to give up the fight, however.
She repeated what she had done before, sliding the sword between the pole and the links of chain. Planting her feet against the pole, she hauled down on the sword with all of her might.
As if in answer to her prayer, several links of chain parted and Roux’s body began to slip downward toward the bottom of the pond.
Annja dropped her sword and grabbed for him before he could drift out of reach. Hugging him to her, she kicked for the surface.
Below her, the sword flickered and was gone.
29
With her arms wrapped around his chest from behind and his head resting in the crook between her shoulder and neck, Annja struggled to get Roux to shore. The minute she stopped kicking with her feet, their combined weight would start to drag them down and she’d have to heave him upward with her arms to keep his head from going under again. It was tough, tiring work. Eventually her feet found the bottom and she stood, relieving her back of some of the burden. She dragged him up and onto the shore and laid him flat on the ground.
He was a mess. His face had been severely beaten and the right side was so swollen that his eye was barely visible. The fingers on one hand were broken and it felt as though his shoulder was dislocated, as well, though whether that happened before he went into the water or when struggling against the chains that bound him, Annja didn’t know.
It had taken so long to get him across the pond and out of the water that she feared for the worst. Would CPR even work after this long? If she did get his heart beating again, would his brain be damaged by the lack of oxygen it had sustained? What was the longest someone could go without oxygen, anyway?