The Atlantis Code (44 page)

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.