“Yuri, do you have the bolt cutters?” Jordan called over his shoulder.
“Hold on; let’s not be hasty,” Blair said, waving his free hand. “We want to get inside, don’t we? This might be part of the process.”
“Or it could be a trap,” Bridget countered, moving from Steve’s side to inspect the statue. She shot him a worried glance. “I don’t see a way to loosen it. We’ll have to break the hand off. Jordan is right about the bolt cutters.”
“You might be right. It’s getting hot now. Really hot,” Blair grunted, tugging as hard as he could. The statue held him fast. He gave Bridget an earnest look. “Just be careful. I write with this hand.” Sweat flowed freely down his face. The generator’s acrid exhaust stung his eyes. His nerves were jagged glass, like the early stages of a migraine.
“Have bolt cutters, but stone too thick,” Yuri explained, gesturing with a two-and-a-half-foot tool. “Explosives, maybe. Or bullets if desperate.”
Jordan moved behind the statue, examining the wrist. “I can shatter this with a few well-placed shots. Marble is tough, but it can’t handle this kind of ordnance.”
“Are we that stupid now?” Sheila said, muscling her way past Jordan to the statue. “If you fire at that arm, the bullet will ricochet through the room. Even if it didn’t, it’s going to send chips of high-velocity stone right at Blair. Not to mention damaging the most priceless archeological find in history. No, what we need to do is—“
The statue grew hot, as if it had been left in the afternoon sun for the weight of the day. Blair twitched and flopped, fire flowing up his arm and into his chest. It surged through his body like flame over gasoline, obliterating all except the pain, a deep white agony. Even his eyes were thick with it.
In the first instant, he longed for death. What felt like an eternity later, he knew death had betrayed him, unwilling to free him from the pain. So he endured. The inferno rampaged through him as though he were a dry forest. When its fury was finally spent, he found himself huddled at the base of the statue.
“Commander, south wall. Ten o’clock,” Yuri barked, ducking behind an obelisk.
“Handle it,” Jordan called back, looming over Blair with outstretched hands. The Commander’s eyes had widened. So odd, that tiny gesture. The man had a level of control Blair had never witnessed, yet something he’d just seen had rattled him. The soldier was shocked. Shock. Blair was in shock, wasn’t he?
“Blair?” Bridget called. She seemed a hundred miles away. She knelt next to him, her clean fragrance a welcome balm to the echoes of pain haunting his limbs. “Look at me. I think you’ve just been electrocuted. Can you tell me your name?”
She seized his chin, forcing him to look her in the eye. Such pretty eyes. Pools of brown. Some of his happiest memories dwelt there.
“Gash. Abnat,” Blair said, shaking his head to clear it. A distant part of his mind recognized the aphasia, but he was powerless to articulate that.
“Jordan, how quickly can you get a doctor out here?” Bridget asked, looking up at Jordan.
Something rumbled behind him, but Blair was too weak to find out what. The best he could manage was to loll his head to the side. Instantly alert, Jordan and Yuri snapped their rifles up. Sheila had stumbled backward, both hands clasped over her mouth. Clean white light burst all around Blair, overpowering the sad stand lamps.
Bridget squatted next to him, squeezing his shoulder. “You’re going to be all right. We’ll get you out of here.”
“No,” Blair croaked, pausing as he gathered another breath. “I want to…to see. Show me.”
“Jordan?” Bridget called. Her voice was further away now. “Jordan, can you carry him inside?”
Inside? Inside where? Jordan’s daunting arms were suddenly around him, hoisting him effortlessly into the air. Blair’s vision spun, finally coming to rest on a wide
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