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“You just got Sarah’s permission to kill us,” said Remi. “Once you do, then anybody who knows about it owns you. That includes all of those men who just left.”
“No,” said Russell. “They own you if they see you do it.”
“Oh come now,” said Sam. “You march us off, they hear gunshots, and only you come back. Not exactly the perfect crime.”
“Keep walking,” said Ruiz.
Remi said, “We’re a bit too well prepared to be the sort of people you can just kill and nobody asks questions. The United States Embassy knows the exact GPS position where we were going to be today.”
“Don’t worry about us,” said Russell. “We’ll manage.”
“By the way, what happened to your face?”
“You did.”
“Really?” said Sam. “How did I do that?”
“Your little booby trap in Spain. The blue ink didn’t come off, so I had a chemical peel.”
“Does it hurt?” asked Remi.
“Of course it hurts. But it’s feeling better every second. Pain is easier to take when other people feel it with you.”
He led them into the jungle, and they walked on a path that took them through thick stands of trees and across a couple of ditches that must have been streams during the rainy season. When they were a mile or more from the archaeological site, they reached a secluded valley with a dry streambed at the center of it. Russell said to Ruiz, “Give him the shovel.”
Ruiz kept his distance and tossed the small olive drab tool at Sam’s feet.
“Dig,” said Russell.
Sam looked at Russell and Ruiz, never at Remi. He was beginning the process of getting them to forget about her. Sam and Remi had, for some years, known that when they were in dangerous places, they were always possible targets of kidnapping, robbery, or other violence. They had discussed and practiced a number of different tactics to use in tight situations and many of them involved getting opponents to underestimate Remi.
She was a slim, delicately beautiful woman. She was also very smart. Now Remi was waiting for the proper moment to do what she had always done in athletic competitions: match her superior reflexes, speed, balance, flexibility, and coordination against an opponent who didn’t dream that her advantages even existed and who was—only for the moment—living under the mistaken impression that all the advantages were his.
Sam dug. He was right-handed, and he pushed the shovel’s blade in with his right boot, lifted the dirt and tossed it to his left, the side where their captors stood. He didn’t look directly at them or at Remi, but he could see that she had already picked out the right kind of stone. It was at her feet, and she had worked it free as she’d sat there, looking weak and weepy.
As he dug, Sam thought he heard the faint sound of a helicopter. No, he thought. It’s more than one this time. The sound was deeper and throatier, and, as they approached, he became sure they weren’t Sarah Allersby’s helicopters.
Ruiz looked up in the air, but the tall trees formed a roof above them. Ruiz observed, “That noise could help cover a gunshot.”
As Sam and Remi both instantly knew he would, Russell reflexively turned to look in their direction while he considered Ruiz’s suggestion.
Sam moved his shovel in exactly the same arc as he had fifty times before, except faster and higher, and propelled a few pounds of fine, sandy dirt toward Russell’s raw, wounded face. Then he charged out of the shallow hole, swinging the shovel toward Ruiz’s legs.
Russell raised both hands and forearms to fend off the dirt flying toward him. That kept his hands up and far from the pistol in its holster at his belt, and it kept his eyes closed as Remi hurled the stone at him and leapt.
The stone hit the side of Russell’s head and knocked him off balance. Remi leapt forward and, as Russell toppled, she was already plucking the pistol out of his holster.
Sam completed his swing, slicing the shovel in hard at Ruiz’s right leg. The fear made Ruiz jump to avoid it, and the impact brought him to the ground. As Ruiz reached for the pistol stuck in the front of his belt, Sam jabbed that hand with the shovel blade, dropped his knees on Ruiz’s chest, snatched the pistol and stepped backward, aiming at Ruiz.
The helicopter rotors beat harder and louder as Sam and Remi stood over their two injured opponents.
“Now that we’ve got them, what do we do with them?” asked Remi.
“Hold this.” Sam handed her his pistol so she now had one pistol aimed at each fallen enemy. Sam knelt, tugged off the two men’s boots, then pulled the long leather laces out and used them to hog-tie the two. He stood. “I guess that’s the best we can do for the moment,” he said. “We’ve got to get back to the site while they search. We’re the only ones who’ve seen the codex.”
Sam walked up the jungle path, carrying the two pairs of boots. Remi looked back once at the two incapacitated men, then hurried after him.
THE RUINED CITY
