general had never sounded panicked. She did hear the strain in his words though.
“Yes, yes. I am all right. How did you know?”
“CNN has a live feed coming from there. Are you in a safe place? You must see to your own safety.”
Anna looked around the cargo truck. Several wounded people lay on the ground. ANP corpsmen moved among them, trying to keep them alive.
“I am safe.”
“Good. I see the American Army has arrived.”
Anna glanced at the helicopters swirling through the air. She was close enough to see the soldiers manning machine guns at the cargo doors. Rockets shot out from the pods under the stubby wings again and again, pulverizing the mountainside. The Taliban ran from the area, but Anna felt certain few of the terrorists would escape.
“They have arrived, Father.”
The general fell silent, and Anna knew he didn’t know what else to say. Neither did she. They both still cared about each other, but they agreed on so few things these days that small talk did not come easily.
Seventy yards away, Thomas Lourds sprinted into view. He glanced over his shoulder, and Anna tracked the direction back to the Russia Today man as he raised a rifle to his shoulder, pointing it at Lourds.
“Father, I have to go.” Anna closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. She ran toward the American. “Professor Lourds, look out!”
***
Warned by the woman’s voice calling his name, Lourds threw himself to the ground and rolled behind a wrecked Jeep lying on its side. The front right tire had been blown off, probably from one of the Taliban rocket launchers, and the front end was a mess of twisted, blackened metal.
Lourds’s heart hammered inside his chest. He didn’t know why the man had killed Boris, or why he was now trying to kill Lourds himself. Especially after saving him only a short time ago. It didn’t make sense.
“Professor Lourds!”
Lourds turned at the sound of the young woman’s voice and spotted Anna twenty yards away and closing. She ran along a ditch enhanced by a snowdrift. For the moment, she was out of view of the Russia Today man.
“Anna! Stay back!”
She stopped and looked fearfully in the direction of the pursuer. “What is going on?”
“That man killed Boris.”
A stricken look filled Anna’s face. “Boris is dead?”
“Yes. In the cave.” Lourds thought she was going to cry.
“But why would he do this?”
Lourds shook his head. “I don’t know.” He peered around the Jeep and saw the Russia Today man break off his pursuit and go to the ground. A spray of bullets chopped into the snow where he’d disappeared. Lourds hoped that one of the ANP officers had seen what was going on and come to their rescue, but that wasn’t the case.
Evidently, some of the Taliban warriors had come down from the mountains and arrived at the dig site. Four of them lay spread out over the countryside, all of them firing at the Russia Today man, the ANP officers, and the wounded indiscriminately.
Unfortunately, the Taliban now lay between Lourds and Anna and the group of ANP officers clustered around the cargo truck with the wounded. Some of the ANP officers had spotted the Taliban and fired on them. If their aim improved, they would free up the Russia Today man to finish up his killing spree.
Anna evidently realized the same thing and dashed over to join Lourds. “Who is he?”
Lourds shook his head and looked around for his rental truck. He’d parked somewhere close by but couldn’t spot it in all the chaos. “I don’t know.”
“He told me his name was Yakov Fursin.”
“Probably an alias.” Lourds spotted the top of the white four-wheel-drive pickup fifty yards away. He had missed it among the snowdrifts. “Can you run?”
She frowned at him. “As fast as I have to.”
Lourds nodded at the truck. “I have a vehicle over there. If we can get to it, maybe we can elude this Fursin, or whatever his real name is.”
Grabbing Anna’s hand, he pulled her to his feet and raced toward the truck.
***
Frustrated, Linko lay pinned against the earth. He shifted the rifle and locked on to a Taliban who stuck his head up thirty yards away. Smoothly, Linko squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle butt kick into his shoulder.
The bullet caught the Taliban in the face but didn’t kill him. Panicked and in pain, the man dropped his weapon and clapped his hands to his shattered jaw to try and stem the blood. Linko shot him