She had no clue. The impending attack on the museum had caught her wholly off guard. She was in a setting that she never thought she’d have to defend, though she’d thought about it before. The fact that the Scales of Anubis had been able to cut the power so effectively told her that they were more than a group of gun-toting thugs. These guys knew exactly what they were doing.
Zahra needed a weapon, but England’s strict gun laws prohibited a civilian from owning a pistol. Not that something as
“What are you doing?” Grant asked, watching her.
She knelt and buried her arm up to her elbow into the top drawer of her desk-side, metal filing cabinet. Zahra grinned when she felt it. There, at the rear of the cabinet and magnetized to the underside of the lid, was her Seal Pup knife. It had been a gift from a friend who had been in the American military, a retired Navy SEAL. The perfectly balanced, all-black armament was nearly ten inches long from tip to butt. Half of that was its razor-sharp blade, which was partially serrated near the hand guard.
It was a gift that had come with training, as well. She could wield the blade as deftly as any trained operative.
Zahra then opened a box that had been sitting next to her desk for the last week. Its contents had arrived from an obscure address in America, from the name ‘Tommy.’ She had yet to test out the updated model.
While she was good with a knife,
She quickly snapped her wrist and opened its four imposing blades, inspecting their agile, yet rugged construction. Zahra nodded, approving of Tommy’s design. Following the instructions in his email, she gently pulled on the cable and watched as the blades folded back into place. The grappling hook was now built around a load-bearing, spring-back system. Tommy had included the blueprints in the email, but even after reading them several times, Zahra didn’t fully understand them.
He had also mentioned that it would only support up to twenty percent more than her current body weight and to not overload it, or it could fail.
“Well,” she had said, closing the email, “no more Taco Tuesdays for me.”
Zahra attached the hook and its coiled, seventy-foot-long cord to her belt on her left hip. Last, but not least, was Zahra’s high-powered handheld flashlight. Adding her trusty Glock to the belt, she would feel ready for anything life could throw at her. Zahra was also wearing her customary all-black attire, though her current clothing wasn’t as rugged as her typical outdoors gear. Her outfit included a pair of well-worn jeans and a shirt featuring her favorite band, a Canadian hardcore group named, Counterparts.
Grant cautiously eyed Zahra as she flipped the fixed-blade knife into the air, nonchalantly catching it by its handgrip. The weapon and its sheath buckled onto her belt right next to the grappling hook. “Um, what did you say you did in the army?”
Zahra rolled her eyes.
“I was a linguist… Now, stay here and keep your mouth shut, or I’ll come back here and curse you out in every language I know.”
Grant swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple visibly rose and fell as he backpedaled into the center of the room. Slowly, Zahra opened the door and peered out into the hallway. She looked left, and then right. Nothing moved. Satisfied that all was clear, Zahra slinked out and whispered back to her assistant.
“Lock the door, and don’t open it for anyone besides me.” He nodded. She playfully winked. “Be back in a jiff.”
