Alex Archer - Paradox (Rogue Angel #21)

Paradox
Rogue Angel
Alex Archer

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Levi began to twist alarmingly in his ropes
Annja reached up and grabbed his right boot to stabilize him. Whether the experience unnerved him or not, he didn't continue the conversation. That suited Annja fine.
In the early afternoon the storm clouds returned with a suddenness that halfway tempted Annja to believe in Levi's dueling mountain deities. At almost the same moment a soft cry came from above and Annja looked up to see Larry's head silhouetted against the ominous boiling clouds. She could tell he was grinning.
Less than five minutes later Levi and Larry were helping her scramble onto the top of a gently sloping plain of ice, pierced by snow-mounded juts of rock. A mile and a half ahead of her rose the snow-covered peak of Ararat. And there, a quarter mile away to the south and west of them, the long, dark mound of the Ararat Anomaly seemed to hang over the edge of the abyss.

The heavy car flew skyward on a column of yellow flame.
At the same instant a sharp crack hit Annja's eardrums. She was already dropping onto her palms on the sidewalk, preparatory to flattening herself like a lizard on a hot rock. As a louder, heavier boom rolled over her on a breath of hot wind she realized she'd just seen a two-stage explosion going off. The first, sharper blast had been to rupture the car's fuel tank and turn the gasoline inside into an aerosolwhich when ignited itself served as a high explosive.
The movies loved using two-stage blasts because they were showy, with lots of bright yellow fire. But out in the big bad world Annja knew they were relatively rare because they took extra effort and knowledge to plant. That meant they were reserved for those people who had really annoyed somebody who was really, really skilled.
I guess this means the Turkish government disapproves of our little scheme, she thought as chunks of debris began to rain down around her.
The blasts were still echoing around Kavaklidere when she thrust herself upright. She wasn't superstitious but she sure believed in bad luck. As in, it was bad luck to be the only person visible on the street when a car containing a reasonably major public figure blew skyward atop a pillar of fire.
With her usual gymnastic grace she snapped to her feet in a single spasm of effort. Time to get off the street and find a nice dark corner to fold myself into, she thought. She figured her next priority after that was a call to the Sheraton to let her friends know they needed a brand-new set of plans. In one heck of a hurry.
Before she could take a step a heavy hand clamped her right bicep. Another got her left one. They felt like iron bands.
Despite the length of her legs and her lean muscle weight, she felt herself picked up bodily off the ground. She smelled stale male sweat and harsh tobacco. Not a good sign. Not one little bit.
Looking hurriedly around, as she was dragged back down the street and around the corner, she saw she'd been seized by a pair of burly, swarthy goons in ill-fitting suits. One had a shaved head; the other took the opposite tack with a shaggy head of hair. Both had thick moustaches. Both also wore impenetrably dark mirror shades.
"I don't suppose the fact I've got an American passport will make much of an impression on you gentlemen, huh?" she said. "Huh. No. Thought not."
It had been purely quixotic to askmostly to reassure herself with the sound of her own voice, and assert her personal power with a smart-ass remark.
They bundled her into a four-door Mercedes sedan, black and shiny and imposing. Keeping a low profile didn't seem to be high on the agenda for this team.
One of Annja's captors slid in beside her, staying firmly latched to her arm while the other went around to the other side and got in, pinning her between their bulky bodies. The car slid away from the curb.
"Just to be fair," she said, "I'm giving you gentleman one last chance to let me go. Fair warning."
Dark sunglasses still on, they exchanged looks past her. Then as one they started laughing.
Annja formed her right hand into half a fist. The sword's hilt filled it with cool reassuring metal hardness. She leaned back against the luxuriant leather-upholstered seat, and jabbed before either man could comprehend what they had just witnessed.
The man to her right screamed shrilly as the blade's edge bit into his face. The man to her left was struggling to shift his bulk. She felt him bunching to deliver some kind of retaliatory attack. She couldn't get much hip into her own blows but she did the best she could, swinging her body hard to ram the sword's pommel into his face. She felt teeth splinter.
The other guy was thrashing and bellowing. Glancing back she saw his face fountaining blood from a long gash. Seizing the hilt with both hands Annja did quick nasty work in the tight confines. Periodically she gave his partner a quick slam with the hilt. The man on her right shrieked and convulsed. The inside of the driver's-side window and the rear window were sprayed with blood.
As he slumped into a bubbling mass of torn cloth and violated flesh his compatriot recovered from his facial battering enough to grab Annja's arm again. He was still strong; she couldn't break free, especially with too little room to really get her hips into it.
She opened her hand. The sword vanished. The astonishing sight made the assailant relax his grip slightly. Then she turned and jabbed him in the eye. He squealed.
His shades were broken and askew on his face. Half-blind he tried to grab her again. He still hadn't given up the notion that he was big strong man and she was mere weak woman; he was relying on muscles and now adrenaline rather than going for the gun whose butt she could see tucked beneath his left armpit.
As she fended off his blows Annja flicked a glance at the driver. He looked smaller than the two bruisers who'd picked her upliterallybut that was a relative thing. He was veering around some narrow street, dividing his attention between steering the big black SUV, looking in the rearview mirror to try to see what was going on in the backseat and bellowing what she thought were alternate curses and advice at the top of his voice.
The guy on her right cocked a fist to smash her in the side of her head. She couldn't afford to lose consciousness now or even focus.
Her problem was the car wasn't quite six feet side to side, internally. The sword was four feet long and there was no room to maneuver. She leaned way over the now quiescent, sodden body of her other assailant, held her right hand up and back at a wonky angle and formed it into a half fist again.
Again the sword came to her call. The way her wrist was bent her grip was very weak. She wrapped her left hand over the pommel again and, turning hard, drove the sword with all her strength into her enemy's thick throat.
She overdid it. She barely felt the blade's passage through the cartilage muscle and sinews of his neck, nor the seat padding. Only when the sword began to bite deeply into the metal of the car's body itself did she feel a shock of resistance.
And then the blade was well and truly stuck. The driver had finally turned his head to see firsthand what was happening behind him.
His eyes were wide with shock. The olive facial skin around his dark eyebrows and moustache was suffused with a dark hue that she figured was red; his blood pressure was headed toward detonation. Spittle flew from his mouth along with sounds Annja suspected weren't intelligible in Turkish or any other known human language. It was the primal speech of rage and terror.