The Spirit Banner. Alex Archer

behind and ran in a crouch to the nearest tent that hadn’t been searched yet. Using her sword, she cut a long slit into the rear panel and then squatted at its edge, waiting.

      It didn’t take long.

      The rebel came into the tent as she expected he would, head down, eagerly anticipating another iPod, cell phone or laptop computer to claim as his bounty. When he bent over to paw through a backpack someone had left open on the cot, Annja made her move. Slipping through the hole in the back of the tent she headed directly toward the soldier’s unprotected back.

      She had almost reached his side when he straightened and turned. Seeing her, his eyes opened wide in fear.

       “¡Madre de Dios!” he whispered, frozen in place.

      Annja could only imagine what she looked like to him with her hair, face and body covered in drying muck, and a sword almost as long as she was grasped in one hand, like some vengeful spirit come back from the grave to right some ancient wrong. She didn’t give him a chance to make sense of what he was seeing, either, but rather jammed the point of her sword up under his chin and held a finger to her lips to indicate he should be silent.

      “Give me your gun,” she said in Spanish.

      Stiff with fear, he complied.

      “How many others are there?” she asked.

      His voice trembled as he said, “Five plus the captain.”

      That meant she’d already taken care of the captain’s only companion, since she’d counted four men looting the tents.

      Too bad for them that the odds were in her favor.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked.

      The soldier shrugged.

      Annja pushed the sword blade a bit harder and a thin trickle of blood ran down the man’s neck in response. “Don’t mess with me,” she told him. “What are you here for?”

      The soldier explained that they had stumbled upon the excavation while fleeing from the police. With no money and a need to resupply themselves with both food and ammunition, the captain decided that a quick raid was in order. If they discovered that the excavation had yielded gold or other precious artifacts, so much the better.

      She could hear the other soldiers laughing nearby and knew she didn’t have much time left. She was going to have to act and hope for the best.

      “Give me your shirt and hat,” she told her captive.

      Once he had, she made him turn around and then struck him hard on the head with the butt of his own weapon.

      Two down, four to go.

      Releasing the sword back into the otherwhere, she pulled his shirt on over her own muddy T-shirt and shoved her hair up under the hat. The shirt was bulky and hung down to midthigh, which should help hide her shape and size from casual view. She only needed to pass for the other man for a few moments, just until she was close enough to carry out her plan. In the dark, and with the soldiers feeling secure that they were not in any danger, it just might work.

      She left the man lying there unconscious and stepped out of the tent, the soldier’s rifle slung over her shoulder and the hat pulled down low over her face.

      The other soldiers were several tents away, a long stretch of darkness between them and her. They saw her emerge from the tent, but didn’t think anything of it, her disguise apparently good enough at this distance to keep them from noticing anything was wrong.

      The one in the middle turned to her, shouted for her to hurry up and gave a “come on” gesture with one hand.

      Annja grunted something indistinguishable, waved to show she’d heard him and then held her breath.

      This was the moment of truth. If they were going to notice something was wrong, it would most likely be now, while their attention was on her and they were addressing her directly.

      The soldier hesitated.

      Annja tensed.

      The soldier turned back to his companions, apparently satisfied with her response.

      They waited for her there in the center of the camp’s main thoroughfare as she approached. The men laughed and joked among themselves, their attention on one another and not on her.

      It proved to be a fatal mistake.

      She considered simply gunning them down where they stood as she moved closer; after all, they’d certainly killed Arturo and probably several others at this point, as well. She didn’t owe them anything. But the sound would easily carry across the camp and she wasn’t ready yet to let the captain know that his pack of hired guns had been taken out of the equation. Instead, she kept her right hand down at her side, ready to snatch her sword out of the otherwhere the moment she needed it. Thanks to the fact that they were standing directly in a pool of light cast by one of the overhead lamps, Annja was able to approach quite close to them while remaining shrouded in shadow the entire time.

      The man who’d spoken to her earlier turned as she approached, his eyes widening in surprise as she passed from shadow into light, revealing herself at last. His hand fumbled for the gun at his side as he pushed himself backward into the other two.

      Annja called her sword to her and thrust forward in the same motion, skewering him where he stood.

      By now the other two men had noticed she wasn’t who they’d been expecting and the fact that they were in danger was just registering in their surprise-addled minds. Using the precious seconds that surprise had given her, Annja spun to her left, withdrawing her sword from the body of the man she’d stabbed while at the same time bringing her elbow around in a vicious arc that connected with the head of the man on the far right, dropping him senseless to the ground.

      The man she’d stabbed dropped to his knees, his hands cupped across the savage wound in his gut.

      As often happened whenever she was in a fight for her life, Annja’s senses suddenly became hypersharp, giving the effect that she was moving incredibly fast in a world where time had suddenly slowed to a crawl. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the third man had managed to get his hands around his gun and was bringing it up in her direction. Without stopping her momentum she planted her foot and continued her spin, the hand holding the sword coming up and down again, her weapon whistling through the air like the keening of a hungry ghost. The edge of the sword struck the man’s arm just below his elbow.

      The gun dropped into the dirt at his feet.

      The soldier was opening his mouth to scream when Annja silenced him with one final blow of her sword.

      Heart beating madly thanks to the adrenaline coursing through her system, Annja took a few deep breaths to get herself under control. She collected the soldiers’ weapons and tossed them into the darkness. She stripped the belts from the bodies and used them to bind the hands and feet of the unconscious man, assuring that he wouldn’t make a sudden appearance and cause her future difficulties.

      When she was ready, she picked up her rifle once more and headed toward the mess area on the other side of camp. As she drew closer, the captain’s voice came to her clearly.

       “¿Donde esta el tesoro?”

      None of the hostages answered him. Annja knew that the vast majority of those working the dig spoke Spanish and she was surprised that they seemed to be pretending otherwise, but she was glad they were. It meant there was still some fight in them and that was good. The sudden attack hadn’t broken their spirit at least.

      The captain tried again, this time in English.

      “Where is the treasure?”

      By now Annja had reached the edge of the wide area that served as the camp’s main meeting place. Floodlights set up on the front of the mess tent lit the place up well, allowing her to get a good look at the rebel leader.

      He was about her height, with that wiry look to him that told her