“Look out!”
Lourds had been staring out across the parked cars. He knew the Russia Today man had probably had time to reach the parking area. Anna had thought she’d spotted him. But her startled cry drew his attention back to his driving. He expected to see the killer standing before them on the other side of the bullet-riddled windshield.
Instead, it was one of the Taliban warriors with a rocket launcher over his shoulder. The man was directly in Lourds’s path, and there was no room to miss him. Lourds yanked his foot from the accelerator and stepped on the brake.
The Taliban warrior swung around.
“What are you doing? Don’t stop!” Anna grabbed her seat belt strap and braced her feet against the floor. “He’s going to shoot us! Run him down!”
Lourds pulled his foot from the brake, which wasn’t doing anything more than causing the truck to slide on the slick snow and ice mix, and applied a steady pressure on the accelerator. All four wheels grabbed traction immediately.
The Taliban fired the rocket.
Lourds threw up a hand and immediately felt foolish. His arm wasn’t going to offer much of a shield against the rocket.
Miraculously, the shot passed overhead, missing them by a hand’s span or less. The Taliban tried to run, but the truck ran right over him.
Anna peered through the back window, which had several bullet holes in it. “He’s alive.”
Lourds checked the side mirror as he powered out of the hollow. “The Taliban?” He didn’t see how that was probable, but he had to admit that it could happen if the truck had crushed him into the snow.
“No. Yakov Fursin.”
In the mirror, Lourds spotted the man in the green coat getting up beside a flaming car. “I thought we agreed that’s probably not his name.”
“We did. But that is what I will call him until I find out who he is.”
Lourds looked at her with grim seriousness. “That’s probably not the best course you could pursue.”
“How could I not follow this man? I am a journalist. I write for The Moscow Times. This could be a big story. He has killed Boris Glukov for some mysterious reason, and he would have killed you if not for me.”
Lourds nodded. “You’re right.” There was no question she had helped him tremendously.
“I will gladly accept this story in exchange for that.”
“I don’t even know what this story is.”
“Then we will find out together.”
23
When he reached Herat, Lourds parked the truck in an alley, left the keys in the ignition, and got out.
Anna hesitated. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving the truck. It’s not safe to keep driving it. Fursin knows what it looks like, and it’s shot up so badly that it’s only a matter of time before the police get curious.”
“But it will get stolen.”
“I hope so.” Lourds glanced down at the end of the alley and noticed a small group of pre-teen boys. “And things are certainly looking up.”
“But shouldn’t you return it to the rental agency instead?”
Lourds shook his head. “Only if I want to leave a trail.” Over the past few years of dealing with assassins and mercenaries, he had gotten smarter about such things. Escape and lying low weren’t quite as easy in real life as they were in the potboilers he enjoyed, but there was a certain amount of truth in those novels. “If I return the truck, that’ll give our pursuers a place to start.”
“You sound paranoid.”
“After everything that’s happened, you bet I’m paranoid. Yakov back there seemed pretty determined. And he shot Boris right in front of me.” Lourds still felt numb over that. There’ll be time to grieve later. Right now you need to concentrate on survival.
Anna hesitated a moment more, then climbed out of the truck and joined him. Together they walked to the street.
“What do we do now?”
“We find a public place and try to figure out what our next step is.” At the curb, he flagged down a taxi. The driver parked at the curb and waved them inside.
Lourds opened the back door of the taxi and allowed Anna to get in first. She slid over immediately and made room for him. Lourds got in and dropped his backpack at his feet.
The driver turned around to face them with a generous smile. “Where to?” His English was serviceable.
Before Lourds could reply, the white pickup roared out of the alley and swerved recklessly out onto the street. The three pre-teen boys inside seemed to be having the time of their lives.
The taxi driver shook his head in disgust. “Foolish children.”
“Are you certain this is the best place we could find?”
Lourds led the way through the booths and tables of the small restaurant’s outer dining area. “I like the view. We’ll be able to see anyone coming.” He claimed a table and sat, putting the backpack on the bench beside him.
“The view?” Anna sat beside him and wrapped her arms around herself. “It is cold out here.”
“And that’s just one of the reasons the people who could be looking for us won’t think to look in this place.”
The restaurant booths sat outside a small building used for preparing food. A curved canopy overhead was supported on metal struts. A low brick wall enclosed the dining area, and engraved concrete squares marked the walkway across the floor. There were no walls and no windows. To the south, tall government buildings stood, but they were dwarfed by the mountains that rose against the horizon. Only a short distance from the government building, a blue-domed temple squatted.
Despite the fact that it was February and winter, the temperature was in the low fifties.
Lourds took off his coat and placed it on the bench on the other side of his backpack.
“You are insane. You will freeze out here.”
“No. I’m quite comfortable, thank you. If you want to see cold winters, you should stop by Cambridge, Massachusetts, in January. We have cold winters there.”
“Not as cold as those in Moscow.”
“Then you shouldn’t be cold here either.”
Anna frowned, then shivered. “I do not mean to be disagreeable.”
“You’re not. You’re in shock.”
“And you are not?”
“Of course I am.”
“You do not appear to be.”
“I’m working. It’s my way of coping.”
He took his notebook computer from his backpack, then the scrolls in their protective case, and his digital camera. The camera came out in pieces. Evidently the bullet that had struck the backpack had torn through his camera and his trail bars. Granola and nuts lay strewn through the backpack as well. The ring box was intact, and he held it for a moment before placing it on the table.
Seeing the broken camera and the full extent of the damage to his backpack and its contents, it suddenly struck Lourds just how close he’d come to death. Again.
Anna seemed to understand what he was feeling. “You are alive, Professor. Do not forget how fortunate you are.”
“But Boris wasn’t very fortunate, was he? That tomb, Boris lived for finding something like that. And in less than a day, it was lost. And so was he.”
“I am sorry for your loss. I wish there was something I could do.”
“There isn’t. I can’t do anything either.” Lourds thought of Lev Strauss. Lev had been a friend much longer. His death had hurt more than Boris’s, and the pain was still there too.
“So what do we do?”
Lourds looked at the protective scroll case, then at Anna. “It’d probably be better if you got out of this now. Just walk away and return to whatever it was you were doing.”