Robert Liparulo - The 13 th tribe

Security-and-protection: that interested him, and through stints as an Army Ranger, a military investigator, and then a personal protection specialist-aka an executive bodyguard-he’d discovered a knack for it. Whether protecting a dignitary or an archaeological dig, he took his responsibilities seriously. More seriously, it seemed, than most archaeologists were accustomed to. When he’d arrived, the four guards already on site might have been recruited from a Cairo shopping mall. They’d worn no uniforms, except for what Jagger thought of as high school grunge, and, incredibly, spent most of their time playing cards on the other side of the monastery, where the gardens provided a measure of shade but no way to do their jobs.

It bugged him that here in Egypt the word gun was merely a metaphor for his profession. Firearms were stringently regulated, and Ollie had told him to anticipate at least a year for the government to approve his application, if it was approved at all. Used to be, Jagger wouldn’t go a week without firing a weapon on a range. Now it’d been four months since he’d last felt the weight of a gun in his hand or smelled the clean fragrance of gun oil. He felt naked without firepower. He touched the hilt of a collapsible baton in a quick-release holster hanging at his hip where a pistol should have been. For crying out loud.

He tossed the stone, watched it clatter over larger rocks and settle among a thousand like it, and he changed his mind: this inhospitable land wasn’t godforsaken; it was God- embraced, the perfect representation of the God he knew, a God more inclined toward punishment than compassion. Emotion stirred in his chest: not anger this time, but a grief at having lost something he’d once cherished.

Before he worked it into a melancholy that would carry him through the rest of his shift, he was yanked out of himself by a woman’s screams.

She screamed again, and Jagger ripped off his glasses, scanning for the source. Workers were turning toward the tents, and he saw a canvas wall bulge out, then flutter back. He leaped forward, scrambling deftly over the treacherous surface-unlike his first few weeks here, when he’d spent most of the time twisting his ankles and landing on his butt.

No more screams, but the tent was shaking as though caught in a wind much stronger than the breeze coming through the valley. Jagger hit the strip of earth that had been cleared and leveled for the tents and picked up speed. Skidding to a stop, he whipped back the tent’s entry flap.

A man was holding a woman facedown against the tent’s plastic groundsheet, pulling an arm behind her back, pushing her face into the floor. Jagger recognized her kinky red hair: Addison Brooke, a doctoral student from Cambridge, here to work as Oliver’s assistant.

Jagger grabbed the back of the man’s collar and hoisted him off her. The man turned, swinging a fist at Jagger, who parried it with his prosthetic left arm. The man’s face twisted in pain at the blow to his wrist. Jagger, still with a fistful of collar, got hold of the man’s waistband. He spun, ready to hurl the guy into a shelving unit.

“No!” Addison yelled. “Not the shelves!”

At that moment Jagger didn’t give a lick for the artifacts on them

… but everyone else did, so he continued to whip his hostage around in a circle. He stuck out a leg, tripping the man. He put his muscles into making sure the guy hit the ground hard, then dropped his knee onto the man’s spine. He rose enough to roll his adversary over, then pinned his knee into the attacker’s sternum. Still the man struggled, ramming a fist into Jagger’s thigh.

Jagger clamped the hooks that had replaced his left hand over the man’s neck, an act that effectively hit the off switch on the guy’s movements. Jagger glanced up at Addison, sitting near the front corner of the roomlike tent. “You okay?”

She brushed hair away from moist eyes and nodded.

“You know him?” he asked.

She said, “M-muscle.” It was what the arcs called a local hired to move dirt and do grunt work.

The tent flap pulled away and Hanif, one of the site’s guards, rushed in. Ollie followed and knelt beside Addison. “What happened?”

“He… he…” She closed her eyes, covered her mouth with a shaking hand, and pulled in a deep breath. “I caught him stealing artifacts.” Her voice was thin and tiny, like a little girl’s.

The workman rattled out something in Egyptian. The words were raspy, squeezed through a windpipe pinched under Jagger’s grasp. Jagger eased up on the pressure… a little.

“He says it’s not true,” Hanif translated, his own speech heavily accented. “He was simply putting away some new finds.”

Addison shook her head. “Look in his satchel.”

Jagger rose up off the man. He yanked him to his feet, but didn’t release him.

Ollie grabbed the canvas bag hanging from the man’s shoulder and pulled out what looked to Jagger like a broken ashtray. He shook it in front of Mume’s face. “A potsherd. We uncovered it this morning.”

Hanif reached behind him and produced a set of handcuffs-a piece of equipment Jagger had insisted his guards carry, along with walkie-talkies, canteens, and batons. He’d also instituted uniforms-Desert Storm-style fatigues-and weekly training sessions. Hanif stepped behind the workman and forced his hands around.

When Jagger heard the ratcheting of the cuffs he let go, leaving a red mark on either side of the man’s neck. He went to Addison and held his hand out to her. She grabbed it and smiled up at him. Bloody teeth caused his heart to skip. Her bottom lip had split open. Blood oozed out, and it was smeared across her chin. He turned and swung his fist into the culprit’s face. The man flew back, out of Hanif’s grip, and crashed into a makeshift table. He broke through cheap plywood, sending tools, papers, and unidentifiable debris flipping into the air. By the time they rained down, he had hit the floor and slid halfway through the bottom of the tent wall.

Hanif grabbed his feet and tugged him back in. The workman was shaking his head in agony, splattering blood from a shattered nose and wailing out a string of sharp words Jagger didn’t understand.

Rubbing his knuckles on his hip, Jagger took in Ollie’s stunned look and said, “Sorry.”

Ollie grinned. “Only thing to be sorry about is beating me to it.” He patted Jagger on the shoulder and turned to Addison. “Come on, I’m taking you to the clinic.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “Go back to Annabelle. Just let me clean up a bit.”

Ollie squeezed her arm, then slipped out. His voice returned, “Okay, everyone, back to work! Nothing to see here.”

Hanif got the workman to his feet. Snot and blood covered the guy’s lower face like a veil. “I’ll bring him in,” Hanif said.

“Don’t bother,” Jagger said. The village’s tiny police force didn’t give a squat what happened at the dig and would let the guy go as soon as Hanif was out of sight. “Send him on his way and tell him if I see his face again, it won’t be just a busted nose.”

Hanif gripped his prisoner’s waistband and tugged him out of the tent.

Addison touched Jagger’s hand. “Thank you.”

“You sure about the clinic?” It was in the village a mile from the monastery.

She made a face. “I’ve fended off boyfriends rougher than him.”

Jagger didn’t believe it-she was way too smart to get entangled with people like that. But he understood.

“You didn’t have to punch him, you know.”

“Yeah, I did.” What he shouldn’t have done was grip the guy’s neck with his hooks. That could have gone terribly wrong. “Is the artifact he tried to steal worth much?”