THE MAHABHARATA QUEST:THE ALEXANDER SECRET Read Online Free PDF

shakily and tottered to the window, sliding out and onto the grassy lawn just as the latch gave way and Peter burst into the room.
    ‘On the lawn!’ Peter yelled, as he dashed to the window.
    Alice didn’t wait to see what was happening behind her but grabbed Marco’s hand and sprinted away from the villa. She didn’t know if the two co-directors were accompanied by anyone but she was guessing they weren’t by themselves.
    Two soft coughs sounded and bullets whistled past
their ears.
    Alice realised that someone was shooting at them and the gun was fitted with a sound suppressor.
    She raced across the lawn, dragging Marco behind her, to where the Land Cruiser, which was their official transport, stood.
    As she ran, Marco suddenly seemed to grow heavier. One moment she was pulling him forward, the next he was an immovable object, as if set in stone.
    Alice glanced back at Marco as he slumped to the ground. His face was a mask of red and his hair was drenched in blood. The bullets had found their mark.
    For a precious moment, she hesitated, tears welling in her eyes. She was torn between her own safety and the tragedy she was witnessing now. A young boy, his life brutally cut short. And for what?
    More coughs rang out and her instinct took over. Reluctantly, she let go of Marco’s hand and slid swiftly into the driver’s seat.
    The key was in the ignition. Marco must have left it there, in anticipation of driving the co-directors to the tomb site. The engine complained and then revved up as she accelerated, heading out onto the dirt road that led to the tomb.
    As she raced down the dirt track, she heard shouts behind her. The coughs rang out once again, and bullets thudded into the Land Cruiser as she pressed the accelerator to the floor. She had to get to the tomb. There were two armed guards at the tomb site and they would protect her from the madness that suddenly seemed to have broken loose here.
    It didn’t take long for her to arrive at the excavation site. To Alice’s surprise, it was dark and silent. The floodlights which had been fitted to light up the excavation were off and so were the generators powering them.
    Where were the guards?
    She jumped out of the vehicle and stumbled across the uneven ground. Though she knew her way around, she had never been here after dark, aided only by the light of the stars.
    Abruptly, she tripped over something heavy on the ground and just about managed to regain her balance.
    Shocked, she realised that it was Geordi, one of the guards. She bent down to check on him but there was no pulse. He
was dead.
    She stood up warily, confused; caught between the need to understand what was happening here, and her instinct, which was telling her to flee.
    Even as she struggled with her thoughts, a dark shadow clambered out of the shaft that led to the underground tomb.
    Alice froze. Only now did she see the helicopter, an immense shadow off to one side.
    Her mind was a whirl of confused thoughts of which one stood out clearly. She was trapped.

4
    A call for help
    Anwar!
    Imran stared at the email he had just received, unable to believe his eyes.
    Anwar and Imran had grown up together in Meerut before Anwar moved to Lucknow to stay with his uncle, after losing both his parents. That was years ago, but the two boys had kept in touch as they grew up. While Imran had joined the IPS, Anwar had started a small business in Lucknow that hadn’t done too well over the years. But the two had remained good friends.
    Until five years ago when Anwar had suddenly vanished without a trace.
    And now, he had turned up out of nowhere. A ghost from the past.
    A surge of anticipation coursed through Imran’s being as he felt the exuberance of connecting once more with his old friend. He opened the email. And felt like someone had punched him in the face.
    It contained two words.
    Help Anwar
    … and into the fire
    Alice stood, immobilised, as the shadow emerged from the shaft and advanced towards her.