The Atlantis Code

CHAPTER 19

The village was a scattering of huts and small houses made of whatever their occupants could lay hands on. There were a few tin roofs, but most of them tended to be made of bundles of grass. Goats, chickens, and sheep wandered around the homes. Laundry hung on tree limbs behind the houses.

The driver pulled the four-by-four to a stop in the center of the village. A little girl no more than four or five years old ran from a young woman and yelled for her father’s attention.

“See?” Diop said quietly. “These are the things you miss if you never have a family.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to have a family yet,” Lourds replied. “I’m still not through with my childhood.”

Diop’s eyes sparkled. “No. And I suspect you never will be. You’ll always find one adventure or another that will call your attention away.”

Lourds thought again of the Library of Alexandria. He hadn’t given up hope that not all those books and scrolls from it had been lost forever. He wanted to find them. Perhaps that want would haunt him all his life.

He got out of the vehicle feeling stiff and sore. Part of that was from the sleeping bag, he knew, but part of it was from his amorous adventures with Leslie. He was getting a bit too old for romps on the bare ground.

The men, women, and children of the village all circled them excitedly. They talked in a handful of dialects, trying each one to find a means of communication that worked for the newcomers. They finally picked English, but they had only a rudimentary grasp of the language.

Still, they did much better with English than the standard English-speaker would do with the Yoruba dialect.

But Lourds wasn’t standard.

Lourds chatted easily and amiably with them in the Yoruba tongue. Even though it had been years since he last spoke it, the language came back to him almost naturally. He’d always known he was gifted when it came to languages. Not only did he generally have a quick grasp for them, but he also had a tendency for almost photographic recall when he needed them again, no matter how long it had been since he’d spoken them last.

The villagers made only a token attempt to get to know Natasha. She’d shaken her head at them and smiled at their many questions, but her attention remained riveted on the surrounding forest. She carried her hunting rifle slung over one shoulder and pistols at her hips. She wore her long hair back in a ponytail, and a cowboy hat shaded her face. Ice-blue sunglasses hid her eyes.

She looked more dangerous than any of the forest predators.

As Lourds talked to the villagers, he wondered again at how Yuliya’s sister could be so different from her. Then again, he had to be grateful that she was. Without her, they’d all be dead.

His attention was drawn away from Natasha as the crowd parted before an old man dressed in khaki shorts, sandals, and a white golf shirt. He carried a staff in his right hand. Gray-white cottony hair covered his head and his face.

The man stopped before them.

“Thomas, I’d like you to meet Oba Adebayo,” Diop said.

Lourds walked forward and met the man’s gaze.

“Oba Adebayo,” Diop said, “this is Professor Thomas Lourds. From the United States.”

Adebayo looked from Diop to Lourds. “What do you want?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“Only to talk to you,” Lourds said in the Yoruba tongue.

The old oba’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise. “You speak my language.”

“Some,” Lourds admitted. “Not as much as I’d like.”

“It has been long and long since I have heard a white man speak my language so well,” Adebayo said. “What do you wish to talk about?”

Lourds had given much thought to how to bring up the subject of the drum. He could have forestalled the discussion, but he’d figured that anyone wise enough to run a village and serve as a king to one of the oldest existing African cities would see through that ruse.

Instead, Lourds shrugged out of his backpack and sat it on the ground. “Let me show you,” he said. He knelt beside it, unzipped one of the outer pouches, and took out the pictures of the bell and the cymbal.

“These,” he said, handing the photographs over.

After a moment, Adebayo took the photos. He studied them in quiet contemplation as the livestock milled about and the children continued talking excitedly.

Then he looked up at Lourds. “Where are these things?”

“I don’t know.” Lourds stood and slung the backpack over his shoulder again. “But I want to know.”

“Why have you come here?”

“To hear the story.”

“You have wasted your time. You have come to the wrong place.” Adebayo handed the photographs back and turned away.

“Have I truly come to the wrong place?” Lourds asked softly. “I haven’t been able to translate much on those instruments, but I’ve found a warning on them: Beware the gatherers.”

Adebayo kept walking back to his small house. It had a tin roof and walls covered in children’s drawings, which Lourds assumed had come from Yoruba legends.

“Someone is gathering those instruments,” Lourds said. “Someone very ruthless. One of my friends was killed when it was taken. Whoever is behind that theft isn’t a good person.”

The old man pulled aside the vinyl curtain that hung over the doorway.

“He — or she — knows more about the instruments and the gathering than I do,” Lourds said. “I know that gathering the instruments is dangerous, but I don’t know why.” He paused. “I need help.”

Adebayo disappeared into the house. Lourds started to pursue him. Immediately a half-dozen young men stepped in front of the hut to block his path.

Helplessly, Lourds looked at Diop.

The old historian only shook his head. “If Adebayo doesn’t wish to speak to you,” Diop said, “then he won’t speak. Perhaps another day.”

Disgusted with himself, Lourds tried to think of something to say or something he could do. He looked back at the photographs of the bell and the cymbal.

“You’re supposed to protect the drum,” Lourds said. “I know that. But you’re also supposed to be a wise man. That’s why the messages are written on the instruments. You’re supposed to hand knowledge down to those that would take your place as the drum’s protector.”

The young warriors came forward and chased the children and animals back.

“You will go,” one of them said in English. He had a hand on the knife at his belt.

“Someone else will come,” Lourds said as he reluctantly gave ground before the warriors. “Soon. Someone else will come and take the drum from you. Can you stop what happens when the instruments are gathered?”

Adebayo’s head poked back out the door. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” Lourds admitted. He had to be honest, even if it was to plead ignorance now. The four-by-four’s fender pressed into his hip and blocked any further movement backward.

“Do you know what the writing on the bell and the cymbal say?” Adebayo asked.

“No. I was hoping you could help.” Lourds felt the tiniest trickle of hope in the air, but he dared not reach for it.

Anger showed on the old man’s face. “Let him pass,” he growled to the warriors. “I will talk to him.”

Gradually, the warriors pulled back.

“Come,” Adebayo said. “I will tell you what I can of the Drowned Land and the God Who Walked the Earth.”

Hidden by the brush over a thousand yards from the village, Gallardo kept watch on the proceedings through high-powered binoculars. For a moment it had looked like Lourds and his companions were about to be given the boot.

If that had happened, Gallardo wasn’t sure what he would have done. He still wasn’t certain what Lourds was doing here so deep in the forest.

He pulled his hunting rifle up to him and took the protective caps off the scope lenses. Peering through the scope, he sighted in on the Russian woman’s head.

Killing her would be easy.

After a moment, he slid his finger over the trigger and started to squeeze. Only at that moment, she moved and disappeared entirely from the scope’s field of view.

Gallardo cursed quietly.

Then he heard Farok laughing softly.

Turning to the man, Gallardo scowled.

“This woman,” Farok said without making any attempt to hide his amusement, “has really gotten under your skin, hasn’t she?”

“Yes. But she won’t stay there. Not for long,” Gallardo promised.

Inside the small, one-room house, Lourds found only sparse furnishings. The old man sat in a rocker and left Lourds and Diop straight-backed chairs that looked, and were, uncomfortable.

Shelves lined the walls and held little knickknacks that could have been purchased at a tourist store. There were also maps and several American and British magazines years out of date.

“Tell me about the bell and the cymbal,” Adebayo said.

Lourds did, but he compressed the tales to the bare-bones facts and the trail that had ultimately led him to Nigeria. As he talked, a young woman brought in freshly squeezed mango juice and Jollof rice.

Lourds had enjoyed the meal before while he’d visited in West Africa with his professor. The rice was flavored with tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, chili peppers, salt, and curry that colored the end product reddish. Thin slivers of roasted chicken, beans, and a vegetable and fruit salad filled the plate.

The aroma of the food awakened Lourds’s hunger when he didn’t think he’d be hungry. Breakfast had been hours ago.

“You have related the stories on those instruments to the great deluge,” Adebayo said.

“Yes.”

The old man ate as he talked. “You know many peoples talk about the flood that God called down to destroy the world to erase the wickedness he found here.”

Lourds nodded.

“God has many names for many different peoples,” Adebayo said. “Call him what you will, but for many the stories are all the same.” He paused and pointed outside the door. “Once my people were great fishermen and traders. They were proud and mighty. When they sailed, they sailed to all parts of the world. Did you know that?”

“No,” Lourds said.

“Well, it is true. I hear how some of the white teachers begin to talk about these things again, but many don’t like the idea that the African man would know so much. Part of my people’s banishment was their downfall from that. When the water drank down the Drowned Land, most of my ancestors and their ships drowned as well.”

“What happened?”

“The people on the island angered God.”

“How?”

“They wanted to be gods themselves and they refused to be his children any longer.” Adebayo sipped the mango juice. “In those days, all the people were one. They shared one tongue.”

“One language,” Lourds said. The thought excited him. With the prevalence of the Internet in the world and the interface provided by the binary language and translation interfaces, the world had nearly reached that point again. As a linguist, he rejoiced in the openness, even as part of him mourned for the unique languages that were fading from the human consciousness.

Adebayo nodded. “This is so. God caused the ocean to rise up and take down the land where all the people lived. But he was merciful and spared the lives of some of them. This is how the Yoruba people came to these lands.”

“What of Oduduwa?”

“He was the ship’s pilot. The man who brought us to these lands. He was also the first protector of the drum. Men fought over the drum, though. Oduduwa took his army south and west of where their ship had landed in the north. My grandfather told me that Oduduwa landed somewhere in what is now known as Egypt. That is where the first war for the instruments was fought.”

“There was a war over the instruments?”

“Yes. Many men died to possess them. Oduduwa did as God bade him and kept the drum separate. Four other peoples,” Adebayo held up four crooked fingers, “were also given instruments.”

“Who were those people?”

“Those who became known as the Egyptians kept the bell. More people spread to the frozen north.”

“Russia,” Lourds said.

Adebayo shook his head. “I do not know these names. These names did not exist in those days. And no one was supposed to talk to each other after the instruments were given out.”

“Why?”

“The instruments have the power to unlock the way,” the old man said.

“The way to what?”

“The Drowned Land.”

Lourds thought about that. “But if God caused those lands to sink into the sea, how would people reach them again?”

“I hear many stories,” Adebayo said. “I hear that men have walked on the moon and on the bottom of the sea.”

“On the moon, yes,” Lourds replied. “And on the bottom of the sea. But we haven’t been able to go everywhere.”

“Maybe the Drowned Land is not in the deepest part of the ocean.”

“Which ocean?”

“What is now called the Atlantic Ocean. In those days, it had another name.”

“Not the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean Sea?”

“The sea to the west,” Adebayo confirmed. “The story has always been told so.”

“Who made the instruments?”

“God made five men come together. He gave them their own language which they could not teach to others. He said that the five instruments they created under his direction would become the key to reopen the Drowned Land.”

“How?”

Adebayo shook his head. “God did not give them that knowledge. He told them only that when the time came, a way would be made for them to reach that which was hidden from the eyes of men.”

“What was hidden?”

“Power,” Adebayo said. “The power to destroy the world again, and this time God would not save them.”

“Why didn’t God simply take the power away?”

“I don’t know. My ancestors have suggested that God would not destroy that which he created.”

“But he destroyed the world.”

“Not completely. You and I are here now as proof of that.” Adebayo sipped juice. “My ancestor told me the story also goes that God left the power here to test his children again. That he sowed their own seeds of destruction among them.”

“To see if they had learned?”

Adebayo shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“But this story,” Lourds said incredulously, “isn’t even known.”

“Many of the people who knew this story spread lies about it so that others would not hunt for the instruments and no one would believe. They stripped the faith in God away so they would be the only ones who knew. Many wars are fought in this world over the name of God.”

Lourds silently agreed with that.

Adebayo continued. “Two of the instruments, the bell and the cymbal, were lost in early times to men who wanted to claim the power left in the Drowned Land. The Yoruba people have always protected the drum.”

“Do you know where the flute and the pipe are?”

“We are not supposed to know.”

Lourds thought for a moment. Something wasn’t ringing true. There was some conflict that was in front of him that was evading his grasp. Then his mind closed on it.

“You knew that the bell and the cymbal were lost,” Lourds stated.

“That was many years ago.”

“But… you… knew,” Lourds said.

Adebayo said nothing.

Lourds decided to take another tack. He took the pictures of the bell and the cymbal from his backpack again. “These instruments both have two inscriptions on them. One of the inscriptions on both is in the same language.”

“I know.”

“Can you read either of them?”

Adebayo shook his head. “It is forbidden. To each people there shall be an individual language.”

“Then what is the language of the inscriptions that are in the same language?”

“That,” Adebayo said, “is in the language of God. It shall never be known to his children.”

The announcement stunned Lourds. The language of God? Could it really be? Or was it simply a language that had been forgotten?

“Do you have the drum?” Lourds asked.

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

“The drum is a holy relic,” Adebayo said. “It’s not some tourist trinket.”

“I know,” Lourds said as patiently as he could under the circumstances. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to make Adebayo turn the drum over to him so he could see it. “I’ve come a long way to see that drum.”

“You are an outsider.”

“So are the men hunting these instruments,” Lourds argued in a soft voice. “Those men are trained killers. They won’t stop at anything to get what they want. They know about the five instruments.”

“No one knows about the five instruments except the Keepers.”

“Someone knows about them. Someone has been looking for them for a long time.” Lourds took a deep breath. “I know about them. I know enough about languages to know that the cymbal had a language on it that came out of Yoruba.”

“That can’t be. The languages were different.”

“These were later markings,” Lourds said. “And they were written in a Yoruba dialect. That’s how I came to be here.” He nodded at Ismael Diop. “The fact that you had shown him the drum made finding you even easier. When more than one person is involved, secrets tend not to last.”

Adebayo didn’t look happy.

“You’ve protected the drum for a long time,” Lourds went on, “but the secret is coming out again. Somewhere, somehow, someone knows more about this than I do. They’re searching for the instruments systematically. It won’t be long before the killers find you, too.” He took a short breath. “They may already have.”

A troubled look filled Adebayo’s eyes. “I know who the other Keepers are. We have been in contact with each other, as our ancestors have, for a long time. Since almost the beginning. That’s how I knew the bell and the cymbal were lost.”

Lourds waited quietly and found himself scarcely able to breathe. So close, so close…

“We had believed the bell and the cymbal destroyed,” Adebayo said. “For generations we’ve protected the instruments but didn’t fear that the wrath of God would ever be turned loose in the world again.” He paused. “Now you say it is almost upon us.”

“Yes. The time has come to take action before it is too late. The message on the instruments needs to be translated,” Lourds said. “Maybe that will help.”

“No Keeper has ever been able to read the inscriptions.”

“Perhaps no Keeper has ever before been a linguistics professor,” Ismael Diop suggested. He reached out and clapped Adebayo on the knee. “Forever and always there has been talk of prophecies. Yet, every now and again, one of them has to come true. Perhaps, my friend, it is time for this one to come true.”

“Even if it destroys the world?” Adebayo asked.

“We can’t let that happen,” Lourds said. “God willing, perhaps we’ll prevent that here and now. But if we don’t do anything, our enemies will.”

Adebayo knelt down on the floor near the woven sleeping mat. Placing both hands against the wall, he pushed and slid a section of it away. Only then did Lourds realize the wall was over a foot thick. The hiding place was cleverly disguised.

A drum and a curved striking stick sat inside the wall. Lourds recognized it at once as a ntama, an hourglass-shaped drum. It was also called a “waisted” drum due to its unique shape. Usually the drum cores were made out of wood that was carved into the hourglass-shape then hollowed out.

This one was made of ceramic material. As with other ntamas, this one had a drumhead at either end that would be struck with the curved drumstick as needed. Lourds didn’t know if the heads were made out of goatskin or fish hide. The hoops that formed the drumheads were tied together with dozens of flexible leather cords.

Lourds had seen men make the drums “talk” the last time he was in West Africa. By placing the ntamas under the arm and squeezing to relax or tighten the leather cords and the drumheads, the drummers could dramatically change the tone produced.

None of those drums had been made of ceramic, though.

“May I?” Lourds held his hand out for the drum.

“Be very careful,” Adebayo said. “The ceramic body had proved very resilient over the years, but it is fragile.”

All the instruments were, Lourds reflected. How any of them had survived thousands of years was beyond him. Yet there were the eight thousand terra-cotta soldiers and horses that had been buried with Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, that had lasted over two thousand years.

Of course, they hadn’t gone anywhere, and some of them had broken. But they had survived a revolution in which rebels broke into the tomb and stole the bronze weapons they’d been armed with.

It seemed to Lourds that the only explanation for the instruments to have survived, as unscientific as it was, was divine providence.

He studied the ceramic core, turning the drum gently in his hands and peering through the leather cords, to find the inscriptions he knew had to be there.

He wasn’t disappointed. At the sight of them, remembering all that Adebayo had said about the Drowned Land and the story of God’s wrath, the hair on the back of Lourds’s neck stood up.

It was true. All of it.

Having to relieve herself au naturel in the forest was one thing Leslie Crane swore she’d never get used to. Nor did she ever want to.

She squatted down in the bush and let her bladder go while trying to hold her pants out of the way. It wasn’t easy. There was a whole balancing demand that wasn’t an issue on a proper toilet. Men definitely had a much easier time when they were roughing it.

She couldn’t wait until she was back in the city. A proper toilet, a bubble bath, and a good meal would set her to rights. And maybe another evening in Professor Lourds’s bed. The man had an uncanny ability to satisfy her, and he stayed longer in the saddle than she’d expected for a man of his years. Honestly, she’d been hard-pressed to keep up, and that wasn’t something she was used to.

She liked being with him.

Trekking through the bushes with him was simply horrible, though. The whole time she’d felt like someone was watching her.

Maybe someone was…

Dirty, pathetic pervert, she thought as she used the toilet paper roll she’d brought.

As she hiked up her pants, she caught a flash of motion from the corner of her eye. Someone had been watching her. Anger boiled through her. The first inclination that struck her was to find the Peeping Tom and give him a good piece of her mind.

She almost did that. Then she realized she didn’t speak the language well enough to really take him down. Nor did she know exactly what one of the Yoruba tribe would do if he suddenly found himself face-to-face with a flamingly furious European woman.

That was when she caught sight of the man back in the bush. It was only for a brief second. Hardly more than a glimpse, actually.

But it was enough to know that his skin color was a swarthy tan, not black. She wasn’t being spied on, she realized. All of them were.

Fear pricked the back of Leslie’s neck. She held on to the toilet paper roll and made herself walk back to the village as calmly as possible when every instinct she had screamed at her to run.

When she arrived back at the four-by-four, Leslie found Gary seated in the back with his feet propped up. His attention was focused solely on his PSP as his thumbs drummed across the buttons.

“Any snakes?” he asked when she fired the toilet paper roll into the back of the vehicle.

“No, but I found a Peeping Tom or two.”

Gary grinned. “Is it the native lads, then? Going to grow up to be mashers, are they?”

“No.” Leslie forced herself to be calm. “It was not. Maybe a suntanned white man. Maybe Chinese or Arabic. But definitely not black.”

That caught Gary’s attention. He looked up from the game. “What’re you saying, love?”

“I’m saying Gallardo has managed to find us out here.”

Gary cursed and brought his feet down. “We need to tell Lourds.”

“Do you think?” Leslie asked sarcastically. She looked around. “I don’t want to tip off Gallardo’s goons. Where’s the Russian witch? This is her area of expertise.”

Gary looked around as well. “Don’t know. She was here a moment ago.”

“Well, this is absolutely brill.”

“I can look for her.”

“Maybe you could run up a flag and announce to Gallardo that we’re on to him while you’re at it.” Leslie sighed. “No. Stay put and stay ready. I have a feeling we’re going to be getting out of here very quickly.” She headed toward the house where Lourds and Diop had gone.

Gallardo watched the young blond woman through the rifle’s sniper scope. Something felt off. She seemed more tense and driven than she had been while tending to the call of nature.

He pulled away from the scope and searched the village with his binoculars. “Farok.”

“Yes,” the man responded.

“Have you seen that Russian she-devil?”

“No.”

“How long has she been missing?”

“Ten, fifteen minutes.”

Gallardo thought that over. If, like the blond woman, she’d gone to the bathroom, she was taking her sweet time about it. When she wasn’t visible, she was more dangerous than at any other time.

“What do you think Lourds and that old man are talking about?” DiBenedetto asked. His pupils were pinpricks and Gallardo knew he was riding a cocaine high.

“I don’t know.”

“Lourds wouldn’t have come out here for nothing.”

Gallardo grunted. He picked up his radio and pressed the TALK button. “Stay alert. The Russian woman has dropped off the radar.” He kept thinking about how she’d caught his man off-guard on Île de Gorée two nights ago. “When you see her, let me know.” He started to put the radio away and thought better of it. “If you get the chance to kill her — quietly — get that done. There’s a bonus in it for the man who succeeds.”

Lourds’s sat-phone rang as he watched Adebayo place the ntama into a protective airline case with a high-impact liner. He glanced at caller ID, wondering who would be calling him now.

“Lourds,” he answered.

“Gallardo and his men are encamped around the village,” Natasha said without preamble in Russian. “He’s hired an army. I think they’re waiting for us to leave before they try to stop us.”

Anxiety vibrated through Lourds. He walked to one of the windows and peered out.

“That’s great,” Natasha said in disgust. “Go stand at the window so you’ll make a great target.”

Lourds stepped back hurriedly. “Where are you?”

“Out in the bush with them. I intend to be your diversion when you make your break.”

“When am I going to do that?”

“Five minutes ago.”

Lourds thought about that. The idea of being caught in the open out here by Gallardo and his men wasn’t appealing. Nor did it promise much in the way of life expectancy.

“They’re still tailing us,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Leslie’s no longer staying in contact with her production team.”

“So Gallardo has found another way. At this point he might be tailing us through the phones.”

“He can do that?”

“It’s possible, if he can buy off the right people. A good computer geek could do it — though these goons don’t strike me as the type to be hackers. At this point I’m inclined to think that he’s attached to some deep pockets that aren’t going to stop at anything.”

The fear inside Lourds stepped up a notch. “If you have a suggestion, I’m listening.”

“Keep calm. Walk out like nothing has happened. Get in the car and get out of there. Do it quickly. Put your foot down on the accelerator and don’t let up until you reach Lagos. The city is full of armed men. We should at least be safer there with the police and military all around.”

“What about you?”

“I’m fine. I’ll meet you there.”

The phone clicked dead in Lourds’s ear just as Leslie entered the room.

“We’ve got to go,” Leslie said.

“I know.” Lourds picked up his backpack. “Gallardo’s found us.”

A perplexed look darkened Leslie’s face. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Natasha just called,” Lourds explained. “She’s out there with them. I think she’s about to attack.”

Leslie’s eyes widened. “I don’t know how she does that.”

“Just be glad that she does.” Lourds turned to Diop and Adebayo and spoke in Yoruba. “Our enemies have found us again. We have to go.” He looked at the old man. “If we leave you here, they may try to take you.”

“I will go with you. Besides, you will need me to speak to the other Keepers.”

Lourds flashed him a smile. “Good. I will be glad of your company. I think you’ll be safer that way.” But probably not by much.

“They’re leaving,” Gallardo said into the radio handset. “Everybody stand ready. We’re going to take them on the road back into Lagos when there’s less chance of interference from all those villagers.”

“It would be better if we took them here,” Farok commented. “Once they start moving, everything becomes more fluid.”

“We can handle this,” Gallardo said. “We have the upper hand.”

DiBenedetto smiled. “Of course,” he said, “we could kill the Russian here. Maybe freak the others out a little more and make them easier to manage in the long run.”

The idea appealed to Gallardo for a number of reasons. He’d been hoping for the opportunity to personally end the bitch’s life. He reached out for the rifle and brought it close to him. Then he started searching for the red-haired woman as Lourds slid behind the old wreck’s steering wheel and started the engine.

Lourds took off hell-for-leather and scattered a platoon of chickens and goats when he laid on the horn.

The woman isn’t with them. The realization caused Gallardo to worry. Then he thought furiously. If the woman wasn’t with Lourds, that meant she was outside the village. He scanned the brush quickly.

“Find the Russian woman,” he ordered. “She’s out there. She’s spying on us.”

Farok and DiBenedetto began searching.

“Check in with the men,” Gallardo said. “See if anyone is missing.”

Then he spotted her. But only because she was aiming at him with a rifle of her own.

Gallardo framed her in the sniper scope for a split-second. It wasn’t even long enough to slide his finger over the trigger.

She was smiling in anticipation below her sunglasses. Her head was tilted behind the sniper scope and she looked at him through her viewfinder.

Abandoning his rifle, Gallardo rolled to the side. “Look out!” he shouted, sending Farok and DiBenedetto diving for cover as well.

Natasha knew from the way Gallardo disappeared just before the powerful hunting rifle thumped against her shoulder that she’d missed. He’d seen her just in time to dodge away. She cursed and worked the bolt action to smoothly slide another cartridge into place.

She stood beside a gnarled baobab tree that had a trunk nearly four times as wide as she was. The thin limbs looked arthritic and twisted, as if stunted from giving up everything they might have had to make the trunk so thick.

Even though Gallardo had evaded her, Natasha still had targets marked in her mind. She hadn’t confirmed for certain how many men Gallardo had brought with him, but she knew where nine of them were. She’d hoped to take Gallardo out of the action.

Calmly, she settled the crosshairs over a man firing at Lourds’s car. The shooter’s rifle bullets chopped into the ground slightly behind the vehicle, which told her he was trying to blow out the tires.

Too bad for him.

She squeezed the trigger and rode out the recoil. The bullet punched the man down to the ground. She worked the bolt action again and sent the empty brass flying before seating another round.

A pair of jeeps loaded with armed men roared out of the underbrush. Natasha had missed them in her headcount. She’d accounted for two other vehicles she’d found.

With careful deliberation, she focused on the driver of the first pursuit car and led him just a little as he screamed off after her allies. Her finger slid onto the trigger, took up slack, and squeezed through.

The bullet caught the driver in the side of the head and slammed him over against the passenger, covering him in blood spatter and brains. Immediately the jeep went out of control and crashed into a baobab tree. Two men flew free of the wreck.

She took aim at the second jeep, but it was moving fast and nearly out of range.

She’d get to them later.

Natasha worked the action and moved to her next target. She barely got it off and knocked the man out of position with a center mass shot before a dozen rounds chopped into the tree she was using as cover.

Stay here and you’re dead, she told herself. Her impulse was to stay, though. She wanted Yuliya’s killer. If she stayed, he’d certainly come after her. She could kill him then. But that wasn’t going to happen yet.

She slung the rifle over her shoulder and skidded down the small drop-off behind the tree. She’d chosen the man she’d taken out first with care. He was one of the few that had driven an Enduro motorcycle. And he was the only one who’d taken up a position by himself.

At the bottom of the slight drop-off, Natasha hauled the motorcycle up on its tires and thumbed the electronic ignition. The big engine warbled to life and shuddered between her thighs. She paused only long enough to pull on the helmet, knowing that while it wouldn’t stop a direct shot, it might at least serve to turn a glancing blow from a bullet.

She dropped her left leg onto the gearshift lever and pressed it down into first gear when she pulled in the clutch. Twisting the accelerator, she released the clutch and felt the rear tire bite into the earth. Staying low, she roared up over the rise and changed gears as she accelerated quickly in pursuit of Lourds.

Gallardo ran through the forest and used his rifle to knock branches and brush out of the way. When one of his motorcycles roared past with the Russian woman astride it, he paused to fire, but all three shots went wide of her.

Then she was gone, speeding through the dust cloud left by the military-style jeep chasing Lourds’s vehicle.

Setting himself into motion again, Gallardo ran for the area where they’d left the vehicles. He cursed the decision he’d made to leave them so far from the village, but at the time it had seemed the wisest thing to do.

By the time he reached the Land Cruisers, he was out of breath. He stumbled to the SUV and hauled himself behind the wheel.

“Keys!” he yelled to DiBenedetto, who was right behind him.

DiBenedetto fished the keys from his pocket and threw them across. Then he stopped and shook his head. “The keys aren’t going to do you any good. We’re not going anywhere.”

Gallardo got out of the vehicle and looked down. All four tires had been slashed.

“She found the vehicles first,” Farok said in grim appreciation. “This woman you’ve decided to hate so much, Patrizio, she’s well worthy of your attention.”

She was also thorough. Even the spare tires had been slashed. And the fuel lines. All Gallardo could hope for was that the jeep she’d missed would catch Lourds.

“Come on!” he shouted. He jogged back toward the road and the sound of roaring engines. It was a long way to run, but there was nothing else to do.

As he drove, Lourds checked his rearview mirrors for any signs of pursuit. He silently cursed himself for not taking a weapon when Natasha had offered. But guns weren’t his weapon of choice. He preferred using his mind.

Except you can’t really do a lot with your mind in situations like these, he told himself grimly.

Leslie sat in the passenger seat beside him. She was turned around, peering behind them anxiously.

Gary, Diop, and Adebayo sat in the middle seat and hung on to their safety belts. The old man had his arms wrapped protectively around the ntama case.

At least they’ll have to be careful of the drum, Lourds thought. If they know we have it. But that still wouldn’t prevent them from killing everyone.

“They’re coming,” Leslie said softly.

Lourds glanced at the rearview mirror in time to see a jeep pull onto the road after them. He tried to press the accelerator down harder, but his foot was already on the floor, pedal to the metal. The engine whined in protest. As he watched, the jeep began to gain ground. So far, they weren’t shooting, but he expected that—

A bullet took off the side mirror and dropped it away from the four-by-four in a swarm of flying pieces.

Leslie yelped and ducked. The others crouched down as well.

Two other rounds pounded the back glass from the vehicle. One of the bullets, or a third — Lourds wasn’t sure, ripped through the front windshield and left a hole that he could fit his thumb through.

In the next moment, a motorcycle raced through the swirling dust clouds left by the speeding vehicles. It caught up with the jeep easily. The rider pointed a pistol in her left hand at the driver.

As Lourds watched, the jeep driver’s head jerked violently. Then the vehicle lost control. The passenger scrambled for the steering wheel, but then the motorcycle rider shot him as well.

The passenger on the rear deck tried to get his rifle into play, but the jeep pulled hard to the left, causing the motorcycle rider to nearly lose control. The jeep rolled on the roadside, skidded across the ground, and bounced like a pinball between the trees.

If anyone had been left alive after Natasha’s attack, Lourds doubted they were still breathing now.

Natasha — and Lourds knew it was her now from the clothing she wore — accelerated and pulled alongside the four-by-four. She opened her helmet’s faceplate and shouted across to him.

“I think that’s all of them! Gallardo’s still alive, but he and the rest of them won’t be able to pursue us any time soon.”

Lourds nodded. He didn’t know what to say, but he knew he had to say something. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to check up ahead and make certain the way is clear.” Natasha closed the faceplate again and shot ahead of him.

“Great,” Lourds said, not that she could hear him.

“That’s a most incredible woman,” Diop said from the backseat.

“I’m just glad she’s on our side,” Gary commented.

Lourds silently agreed.