Inca Kings

CHAPTER SEVEN

She flung herself full length, grateful that the car had a roomy back seat. A bullet shattered the glass, spraying the interior and her back. Another came immediately after, the noise overwhelming, the closeness to death a living nightmare. Kenzie squirmed, falling to the rear footwell. A third bullet punched through the back door, disappearing through the seat where she’d just sat. She heard Tremayne complaining that he’d “just bought the fucker”, and then a noise above her head.

Cracktooth opening the rear door.

Kenzie pushed hard off her heels, angling her body through the door and hitting Cracktooth in the chest with her head. The blow wasn’t hard enough to move, nor even stagger him, but it was packed with surprise, and brimming with fury.

She landed hard on the road outside, ignored the pain and rolled against his legs. A peripheral glance showed Tremayne turning to his guards who were exiting the car, no doubt reaching for weapons too. This was about as bad as it got.

Kenzie changed tack, rolling under the car.

She pushed with both legs, wrenched her arms, scraped her skin and tore her dress. The hot exhaust brushed her shoulder, an intense kiss that would leave a permanent mark. Material tore at her knees. She flattened herself as much as she was able. She saw Cracktooth’s shoes move back and then his knees appear as he bent, making her writhe with even greater purpose. She saw other feet appear to the front of the car — the guards — then one set appeared at the side she was aiming for.

Now Cracktooth waved his gun under the car. She heard his laughter.

A shot. The bullet passed perilously close to her head, taking out the front tire. Tremayne cursed once more. Cracktooth could barely contain his mirth.

Kenzie squashed herself into a tight, flat shape and squeezed out the other side, then kicked at the legs that stood there. The guard was waiting, but hadn’t expected the instant attack. He jerked forward, inadvertently pulled his trigger, and fired. The bullet slammed into the concrete next to Kenzie’s head, the bullet as close as any had ever come to ending her existence.

Once, she’d have welcomed it. Not today.

“Ya get bitch?” A nasty, simpering drawl, spoken in French.

Kenzie saw but a single chance and only seconds of her life remaining. Using every muscle that had taken intensive years to mold, she whipped her body upright in a single movement, used the momentum to slam her forehead into the guard’s and squinted as an explosion of blood covered them both. The guard collapsed, poleaxed. The gun slipped from his hands; straight into Kenzie’s.

And even then, even with such inventive, skilled accomplishments, she was too late. A guard came around the front, gun leveled. Cracktooth was headed around back. Tremayne pointed a pistol at her over the hood of the car, still wearing that infuriating smirk.

“Not. Good. Enough,” he mouthed.

The answer came in the form of a slicing, reverberating gust of wind, a high-pitched whine, and then a thick chunk of sound as a black, two-foot long Japanese blade somehow ended up lodged right through Tremayne’s throat. The man’s eyes bulged, his hands flexed and then he fell to his knees, already dead.

Kenzie didn’t miss a beat.

All around her men stared, gasped, and one man let out a whiny guffaw. The Israeli fired her gun, sending the guard in front of her flying backward, then slid over the front of the car in an attempt to recover her weapon of choice.

The vehicle was high, slowing her, and she left smears of blood and skin across its smooth metal nose. Cracktooth had barely missed a beat, and now fired again, shattering the front windshield and covering her diving body with shards of glass. She hit the ground again, swearing and cursing, and asking for at least one of her impacts to get a little goddamn easier.

Aware of another object blasting out of the shadows she glanced up. Torsten Dahl hit like an avenging angel, hurling a trash can at Cracktooth and then following it up with his substantial body. The villain flattened like wet paper, folding and then smashing into the car, leaving a man-sized dent, rebounding off Dahl’s muscle-bound structure and then folding again. Bones broke and that was the only sound. Cracktooth never uttered another word.

Kenzie saw two more guards, both looking unsure. Fighting the urge to grab the katana, she fired close to them and watched them run. Dahl appeared at her side.

“You okay, Kenz?”

“What do you think, Torst? That is no way to use a katana.”

“It had the desired effect.”

Kenzie found herself keeping an eye on the still-open metal roller door and uttered a silent congratulation. Here she was, a proper agent, watching their perimeter and looking out for her teammate. How the hell did that happen?

“So we really fucked it all up now,” Dahl stated as he retrieved the katana. “The seller just lost a middleman and our only contact with him has gone. Hopefully, the team will be able to pinpoint his base in Peru.”

Kenzie helped clean up, wrap the priceless Incan vase, and then walked with Dahl back to where he’d stashed a car.

“Tremayne may be gone, but he’s not the seller’s only buyer. And he’s just one of dozens of high-quality facilitators out there. Remember, Torsten, I know them all.”

The Swede offered her the katana, a nice gesture. “Tremayne’s buyer? He’ll be pissed. Maybe we can exchange the vase for information.”

Kenzie nodded. “Yeah, but putting aside the incredible danger, isn’t that a bit unethical? I mean, for a government-funded Special Forces team?”

Dahl waved it away. “Ach, nobody knows we really exist. Don’t worry about it.”

“Well then, the deeper we go, the worse, barely human animals we get in contact with… the more likely we are to learn more details about this mysterious seller. And who he previously sold to.”

Dahl opened the car door for her. “All right then, Kenzie. I’m ready to go all the way in.”

She paused, wondering for just a moment if he was flirting with her. Surely not. She met his eyes and wondered a little more.

The Swede offered a glint.

“What do you call ‘all the way?’” she asked.

“Balls deep,” he persisted.

“I do like the sound of that.”

“Clearly. So start making calls. The further we penetrate this criminal underworld that exists around the smuggling and selling of ancient relics the closer we will be to unraveling this conspiracy. Let’s get dirty on this one.”

Kenzie swallowed drily, finding it hard to concentrate on work. If the Swede didn’t stop using innuendos soon, welcome or not, she was going to have to jump his bones.