Annja drew the sledgehammer back for another strike. Perspiration streamed down her body. Dust, fine as talcum powder, stuck to her exposed skin and drenched clothing.
Hu closed his eyes and turned his head away. His left hand was wrapped around the chisel poised at the center of the crack. The professor hadn't wanted the responsibility of swinging the sledgehammer while someone else held the chisel, so he'd volunteered for that task. But he couldn't watch.
"Steady," Annja said.
"I am." Hu's hand wasn't trembling as much as it had the first time. It was almost still.
Behind and to Annja's side, Roux and Hu's assistant held high-beam lights that splashed over the wall. So far she'd struck the chisel three times. The crack they'd discovered had grown wider. Dust swirled from the chamber on the other side of the wall.
Setting herself, Annja swung the hammer again. Metal crashed against metal, a sharp noise that rung inside the cave. Sparks flashed and died before they hit the ground.
This time the chisel sank into the wall several inches. The crack split, fragmenting in different directions. Stone splinters peppered Annja's face.
The cave wall held. More powder whirled into the air.
Hu tried to withdraw the chisel but couldn't get it to move. "It's stuck."
"Do we have another chisel?" Annja breathed deeply, hoping the mask was protection against whatever poison might be seeping from the room on the other side of the wall.
"Not one that big." Hu's assistant knelt at the toolbox they'd brought in. He held up a much smaller chisel.
"That's too small." Frustration chafed at Annja. She couldn't wait to see whatever was on the other side of the wall.
This was what she lived for, what she studied and why she researched and put in countless hours – the find. There was no drug like it. No other feeling she'd experienced came close to what she was feeling. Adrenaline, hot and insistent, pounded through her.
"Stand back." Annja lifted the sledgehammer to her shoulder again, set herself, and swung, putting all of her weight and muscle behind the effort.
The sledge hammered the wall. The fractures deepened and grew longer.
She drew back and hit again and again, turning into an automaton, not stopping until she couldn't lift the hammer any more. A pile of pebbles, stone splinters, and the powder collected where the wall met the cavern floor.
Breathing hard, the caked mask impeding her, Annja stepped back and dropped the sledge. She held her arms over her head to open her rib cage and let her lungs work more easily.
"It's all broken," Hu said, examining the wall, "but the weight is keeping the pieces locked in place." He turned to Annja. "We could send for some dynamite or plastic explosive."
"You have those at the camp?"
Hu shook his head.
That frustrated Annja even more. Getting those things would take too much time.
She turned her attention to the toolbox and found a long crowbar, bent like a shepherd's crook at one end and slanted at the other. Returning to the wall, she looked at the pieces like they were a jigsaw puzzle.
Somewhere in there, there's a rock that will give. A piece that will allow the others to fall. Annja ran her hand over the cracked mass bound together by its own weight. She made a selection near the top, extending her hands well above her head. Then she tightened her grip on the crowbar and slammed the slanted end into the crack beside the rock she'd chosen.
Rock and steel met in a loud, grating rasp. The crowbar sank into the crack a few inches.
Annja tried wiggling the crowbar and didn't feel much give at first. She focused and concentrated, drawing all the strength she had. In her mind, she felt for her sword, almost touching it. She felt stronger then, and she pulled even harder.
With a grumbling crush of noise, a rock the size of Annja's head tumbled from the wall.
Powder swirled for a moment, then poured to the floor.
Roux moved his flashlight beam to the hole Annja's efforts had made. "You're through." He walked forward, shining the light into the chamber beyond.
The room was small, and it seemed to be – as Annja had guessed – a storeroom. Cloth bags sat heaped in arranged stacks.
"If that's all poison," Roux said in French, "Sha Wu Ying had been planning to kill a lot of people."
"What did you say?" Hu joined them.
Annja interpreted for the professor. "It may not all be datura powder," she went on. "They could be other herbs, as well."
Some of the bags did look different.
"Look." Hu redirected his light. "There's a door."
Peering through the darkness, Annja spotted the door leading from the chamber.
She wondered what lay beyond.
****
Hu brought the work crew in and set them to the task of carefully clearing away the powder and debris. They used shovels and wheelbarrows to haul it outside and dump it down the front of the mountainside.
Annja worked at the opening, digging more and more rock out of the way. It was hard work, but she wouldn't back off and let anyone else do it.
She monitored her own feelings, though, alert to any change in her perceptions. There was no sign of anyone succumbing to the hallucinogen's effects.
In just a few minutes, although it certainly felt longer, the opening was large enough to crawl through. Annja stepped back and put the crowbar down.
"Where do you think it goes?" Roux asked.
"It could be just a few rooms," Annja answered. "But if the legend was right, if this really was a city of thieves, then I'll bet it goes deep underground and stretches back toward Loulan."
"Why Loulan?" Hu asked.
"Because they'd have needed a source of water. Loulan had the canal that supported the city."
"They could have dug wells," Roux said.
Annja nodded. "That's a possibility. But TarimBasin dried up. It was primarily created by collected rainwater, not an underground river or reservoir. I doubt there's much groundwater in this area." She felt certain she was right.
"There's a helicopter," one of the workers shouted.
Wary at once, remembering there had been no sign of Garin Braden or Ngai Kuan-Yin so far, Annja went to the cave's mouth and peered up into the sky. She used a hand to shade her eyes against the bright sun.
Looking waspish, the aircraft swooped in low, coming in from the dark cloudbank that was now almost upon the mountains. The gathering wind swept across the open desert, bringing dust devils to life and causing the helicopter to bob in the air.
****
Strapped into the passenger seat, Garin cursed the windstorm that had swirled into being around him. If he didn't know better, if he hadn't learned to get over so many of his superstitions, he would have sworn that the fates had decided to intervene.
The helicopter closed in on the mountainside. Garin watched as one of the workers dumped another wheelbarrow full of detritus over the side.
Ngai's voice came over the headset. "Kill them."
Angered, Garin turned to look into the back, intending on arguing the point. Instead, whatever attempts he might have made to forestall the wholesale slaughter died as the pilot opened fire.
Once they'd arrived in the desert outside the Loulan dig site, Ngai's men had mounted machine guns under the helicopter and a digital weapons system had been added that fed directly to the pilot's controls.
Furious, Garin considered drawing his pistol and shooting Ngai through the heart. But he knew Ngai's men wouldn't have allowed him to escape.
The heavy machine-gun bullets chopped into the camels and the people who were tending to them. Most of the camels went down at once, huge bloody holes torn in them, sagging on legs that would no longer hold their weight. Two men ran, but they didn't get far.
Then the pilot pulled his craft up, taking aim on the cave mouth.
****
Kelly Swan acted on instinct as the sounds of the heavy machine-gun fire echoed around her, reverberating in the cave and mixing with the sounds of the continued assault. She scrambled for her bedroll, watching from the corner of her eye as the helicopter came up to address the cave as she knew it would.
They were trapped in the cave, there was nowhere to go. She knew the machine guns would chop them to rags if they tried to flee down the mountainside.
Diving to the ground, Kelly yanked the bedroll open. It didn't matter who knew her secrets now. They were all about to die.
In her haste, she spilled her pistols from the bedroll. They slid across the exposed rock and dust collected on the cave floor. The bag of bones skittered free, as well, and the ivory sphere tumbled free of the cloth bag, landing in plain sight.
A hand reached out and caught the bone sphere.
For a moment, Annja Creed locked eyes with Kelly. Kelly knew instantly that the archaeologist realized she wasn't just a laborer picked up in Dunhuang.
Move! Kelly told herself. There's nothing you can do about that now!
Sliding forward Kelly grabbed both of her pistols, flipped the safeties off, and charged toward the cave mouth. Two of the workers stood frozen in the opening, staring at what was happening in stunned disbelief.
Kelly threw herself at the two men, hitting them at knee level and knocking them to the ground. She yelled at them, cursed at them, telling them to get moving. Then she pushed herself up from their midst, throwing her pistols before her as the helicopter swelled to fill her vision.
She pulled the triggers, aiming almost point-blank.
****
Garin saw the woman in the cave opening before the pilot did. In the bright light, he couldn't see the muzzle flashes of her pistols, but he knew they had to be there when the Plexiglas nose of the helicopter suddenly spiderwebbed.
Most of the bullets glanced off the rounded surface, but two or three of them tore through. One of them cut by Garin's head and stuffing exploded from his seat.
"Get us out of here!" he roared at the pilot.
The machine guns silenced as the pilot jerked the yoke back and brought the tail section sharply around. Ngai's men slid the cargo door open.
Wind howled into the helicopter, jostling the craft even more. A few of the men fired and the hot shell casings ricocheted inside the helicopter. Ngai cursed them and sank into his seat, taking cover.
Glancing across the pilot, at the cave mouth, Garin saw the woman duck back inside. "She's out of bullets. Quickly. Turn the helicopter – "
He stopped speaking as he saw Roux step from the cave with a hunting rifle in his arms. The old man took aim. Garin knew from experience how deadly Roux could be in a fight.
"Get out of here!" Garin yelled.
The pilot's head disappeared in a rush of blood and bone that sprayed the inside of the Plexiglas. Garin felt the sticky heat spread over his face and tasted the salt of the man's blood. His left eye went dark. He didn't know if the bullet had hit him in the eye or if it had just filled with blood.
With a sickening lurch, the helicopter swerved out of control as the corpse draped the yoke.