Tear of the Gods by Alex Archer

something to keep the gunmen occupied. And she knew just how she was going to do it. She summoned her sword.
    As she drew closer to the entrance to the tent, the flap was suddenly pulled back and Annja found herself staring down the barrel of the gun held in the lead mercenary’s hand.
    She didn’t stop to think, didn’t look where she was going or what she might land on, just reacted on instinct and threw herself to the side.
    He pulled the trigger.
    The bullet that should have killed her merely grazed her instead.
    It was enough to save her life, but not enough to keep her conscious.
    The darkness claimed her before she even hit the ground.

9
     
    Trevor Jackson was furious.
    They’d been searching the camp for over fifteen minutes and still hadn’t located the necklace that he’d been sent to find. Perhaps he’d been a little too hasty in dealing with the prisoners, especially their inside guy, Novick.
    The professor had led them to the tent containing the bog mummy and the artifacts that had been found alongside it, but the torc wasn’t there. Novick had sputtered in surprise, putting on a good act, but Jackson hadn’t believed a word he’d said. When the man wouldn’t reveal the location of the necklace, Jackson had grown impatient and put a bullet through his skull, figuring he didn’t need the man and that he’d simply find it himself.
    Now he was starting to regret that decision.
    With Novick dead, Jackson focused his attention on the other prisoners, fully expecting one of them to tell him what he wanted to know. It only took a few minutes for him to realize that there was a problem, however; they really didn’t know anything. The majority of them had spent the day down at the dig site and had only been rounded up when he and his men had shown up and forced them back to camp at gunpoint. Those who’d been in camp all morning said the same thing Novick had—the torc should be with the rest of the artifacts in the main tent.
    Jackson had never been a patient man and at that point his day’s supply exhausted itself. “Get rid of them,” he’d told his men, and walked out of the tent where they were holding the prisoners just as the chorus of gunfire started at his back.
    Now he stood in the center of camp, weighing his options. Shaw would be expecting him to report in shortly and Jackson didn’t want to do that without having the torc in hand. Shaw was a harsh taskmaster; admitting he’d failed to secure the necklace might have some unhealthy consequences. No, the best thing to do was to hold off on making the call until he had the stupid thing in hand.
    That would be better for all involved.
    “Sir, I think we’ve got a problem.”
    The sound of the man’s voice pulled Jackson out of his reverie. He turned to find one of his men standing nearby, extending a cell phone toward him. He took it, noting as he did that it was a recent-model BlackBerry much like his own, and then glanced at the screen. The number displayed there, the last number the phone’s owner had apparently dialed, was the emergency line for the regional police.
    His man was right; this complicated things considerably.
    Jackson checked the phone’s log and noted that the call had gone through about twenty minutes earlier. He guessed the phone belonged to the chick with the sword; the call had been right before she’d done her best to throw a wrench in his entire operation and it made sense that she’d have tried to get help before moving to stop them on her own.
    He wondered what she’d said. She hadn’t been on the phone very long; the call had lasted less than a minute according to the log. How much information could a person relay to another in less than a minute? Had she had time to give the police their descriptions? Had she told them what they were looking for?
    He didn’t know. That meant he had to treat it like a worst-case scenario and go from there, hoping that he covered all the bases.
    With that in mind, he