The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  Fang’s head suddenly snapped forward as Nina smashed her boot heel into the back of his skull.

  He staggered—

  And came within reach of Chase’s uninjured leg.

  Chase drove his foot hard against Fang’s kneecap. It crunched horribly, Fang’s face contorting in pain as he hobbled backwards. Nina swung her arm and delivered a backhand punch into his face as he drew level with her, knocking him back still farther—

  His ponytail caught in the propeller.

  Before he even had time to scream, Fang was snatched off his feet and dragged headfirst into the unprotected blades. A huge spray of gore spewed out from the airboat’s rear like a psychopath’s lawn sprinkler, the wet crunch as his skull disintegrated audible even over the noise of the engine. His headless body dropped to the deck beside the driver’s seat, still clutching the sword in its twitching hand.

  Nina had no time to react to the awful sight, because she had two other things to worry about. The driver of the speedboat, though looking just as shocked and disgusted by the death of his boss as she was, had gotten over his loss very quickly and turned back towards her, gun in hand.

  And the river itself was becoming rougher, the formerly placid waters starting to churn and froth as they picked up speed, rapids flowing towards a—

  “Waterfall!” she screamed.

  Ahead, the river swept over the edge of a vast bowl, a depression caused by the geological rifts that cut through the Okavango Delta. The cliff wasn’t high, the drop of the falls no more than twenty feet, but it would be more than enough to wreck the airboat and probably kill its occupants on the rocks below.

  Either the driver of the speedboat hadn’t seen the approaching falls, or he had but was angry enough not to care, because he powered toward the airboat.

  “Hang on!” Nina yelled to Chase, just as the two vessels collided. “Jesus!”

  She clung tightly to the control levers, all too aware that she hadn’t had time to fasten herself into the chair, and used them to redirect the vanes behind the propeller. The airboat swung around, slithering along the water’s surface like a stone on ice. If she had enough space, she might be able to bring the craft about in a long sweeping turn before it reached the edge of the falls.

  Another collision, harder, almost throwing her from the seat. Fang’s sword fell from his nerveless hand and clanged onto the deck. Chase dragged himself towards it, crawling painfully over the seats.

  Nina held her turn, the airboat finally starting to respond as the blast from the propeller pushed it around. She looked at the speedboat.

  The driver was aiming his gun at her—

  She ducked. The bullet burned the air just above her.

  Chase heard the shot, glanced across at the new threat and kept crawling.

  The speedboat closed in once more, bouncing through the choppy waters. The cliff was coming up fast, fifty yards, the thunder of the falls rising.

  The driver fired again. The shot hit the airboat’s engine with a loud spang. The engine immediately coughed and rasped as a fine spray of oil jetted from a crack in its casing. Smoke billowed from the exhausts, streaming out behind the propeller.

  Nina cringed as the man lined up a last shot—

  Chase grabbed the sword and flung it at the speedboat.

  It stabbed into the driver’s shoulder, sticking out like an oversized dart. He wailed and dropped the gun, fumbling to pull the blade out of his flesh as his boat curled away from the airboat.

  Nina pulled at the control levers, slewing the airboat around. The engine struggled behind her—but still had just enough power finally to bring the vessel into a turn, skipping over the surging water as it hurtled towards the edge of the cliff, now only ten yards away, five…

  The airboat skimmed through the mist of spray along the edge of the falls, parallel to the drop for a moment before turning away and sweeping towards the bank.

  The speedboat wasn’t so lucky. The driver spun the wheel in a desperate attempt to turn away, but with only one hand he couldn’t bring it about fast enough. The boat shot over the edge and smashed into the rocks beneath the stormy water. It blew apart in a splintered shower of wood and fiberglass and steel.

  Fighting the controls, Nina as much willed as guided the airboat towards the shore. The engine was on fire now, thick black smoke belching from it. She braced herself as rocks scraped the underside of the hull, the river shallowing to nothing—

  The airboat skidded out of the water onto the muddy bank, then banged against a steeper grass-covered slope and came to an abrupt halt. Nina jumped from the driver’s seat just before the crash. She hit the ground with a thud, bouncing once before coming to rest in a patch of tall dry grass.

  She sat up, head spinning. The airboat’s engine had stalled, a column of oily black smoke rising from it.

  Where was Chase?

  “Eddie!” she cried, slithering down the slope, her twisted ankle throbbing. Fang’s decapitated corpse lay in a broken heap over one of the seats, but Chase was nowhere in sight.

  “Down here,” came the wheezing reply in a familiar Yorkshire accent. Chase’s hand rose up from behind the other side of the boat and waved weakly at her before its owner levered himself into a sitting position. He indicated the body. “Used Shorty here as a cushion. Not exactly an air bag, but it worked, sort of.”

  Nina came around the boat to help him. “How badly are you hurt?”

  “Well, I got stabbed in the arm and had my leg cut like he was trying to carve a turkey, so take a guess.”

  She kneeled to examine the wound in his calf. His jeans were soaked with blood. “Jesus. This’ll need stitches.”

  “If you’ve got a needle and thread on you, go for it.”

  “All I’ve got’s an empty gun. Can you MacGyver anything from that?”

  “Only if I bang myself on the head with it until the pain goes away.” Chase tried to stand up, but grimaced sharply when he moved his leg. “Oh, fuck! That hurts. That really fucking hurts.”

  “Just keep still. I’ll see where we are.” Nina climbed back up the grassy slope, hoping to see some sign of civilization.

  All she saw was water. They’d landed on an island, rapids rushing over the falls on both sides.

  “I think we have a slight problem!” she called back to Chase.

  “No change there, then,” he said with a sardonic smile. “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re stranded! This is an island.”

  “You’re joking.” Nina shook her head. “Buggeration—”

  “And fuckery, I know.”

  “Right.” Chase twisted to get a better look at the air-boat’s engine, wondering if there might be a chance of restarting it, but the smoke pouring from a crack in the metal block immediately told him that its working days were over. “Well, this is fucking marvelous. They’re bound to get a chopper or a plane into the air to look for us before too long, and this”—he jerked a thumb at the pillar of smoke—“is going to lead ’em right to us!”

  “Not if somebody else sees us first!” said Nina, suddenly waving her arms above her head.

  Chase looked at her incredulously. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

  She pointed into the sky. “Look!”

  He turned his head to look back out over the falls … and saw something completely unexpected.

  It was the aircraft he’d noticed in the distance earlier—but it was something much more exotic than he’d thought.

  Descending towards them was an airship. Its fat cigar-shaped hull was emblazoned with several company logos, but the largest read “GemQuest,” the G represented as a stylized diamond. It approached with a spooky silence for something so large, the whine of its three vectoring propellers only becoming audible over the noise of the falls when it was less than a hundred yards away. The two props protruding from the lower sides of the hull above the gondola cabin tilted upwards, slowing its descent.

  “Okay,” said Chase, “I’m impressed.
”

  The mooring lines dangling from the seventy-five-yard-long zeppelin’s nose dragged over the island as it eased into position, blotting out the sun. The propellers shrilled, holding it in a hover with the gondola about twenty feet above the ground. A door in the cabin slid open and a blond man in a broad-brimmed safari hat leaned out. “Ahoy there!” he shouted, his accent South African. “We saw your smoke—you need a hand?”

  Chase had a sarcastic rejoinder lined up, but Nina spoke first. “We’ve got an injured man here! Can you get him to a hospital?” Chase mouthed “hospital?” to her—the last place they needed to go while wanted for murder was any kind of state facility—but she shook her head very slightly, indicating that he should keep quiet.

  The man exchanged words with the pilot, then looked back down at them. “We surely can, miss! Just give us a minute to come a bit lower. This is the tricky part! Can your friend stand up?”

  Nina hobbled back to Chase and carefully helped him up. He groaned at the pain from his calf when he straightened his leg. “How bad is it?” she asked, worried.

  “SAS one-to-ten pain scale? About a five,” he said, wincing.

  “And on a normal person’s pain scale?”

  “Somewhere in the aargh-Christ-kill-me-now range.”

  Nina assisting him as best she could with her own sore ankle, they made their way up to the top of the slope. The gondola was now hovering unsteadily about four feet from the ground.

  “Okay, let’s get you aboard,” said the man, jumping down from the door. His weight gone, the airship rose a foot before the engines reduced speed slightly and the gondola dropped again. He made a face when he saw the bloodstains on Chase’s tattered clothing. “Jesus, man, what happened to you?”

  “Boating accident,” Chase deadpanned. He reached into the cabin with his left arm, Nina and the South African lifting him inside. The back of the cabin was mostly occupied by electronic equipment, including a screen showing what he recognized as a ground-penetrating radar image. The zeppelin was being used to conduct an airborne geological survey, hunting for diamonds. The pilot revved the propellers to hold the aircraft steady, increasing power as first Nina and then the crewman climbed aboard.

  “Have you got everything from your boat?” the man asked, looking down at the smoking airboat. He did a sudden double take as he saw Fang’s body. “God’s balls! What happened to him? Where’s his head?”

  Chase flopped into a seat. “In the river, on the propeller, on my jacket…”

  The South African looked shocked. “This was no boating accident! What’s going on?” He fell silent when Nina pointed her gun at him. The pilot looked around, eyes bulging in surprise.

  “I’m sorry to have to do this,” she said, “but I’ve had a really shitty day—several days, in fact—and I need you to take us to…what was the name of that village?”

  “Nagembe,” Chase answered.

  “What he said. I know it’s not far, so if you could just take us there as fast as possible, I’d be very grateful. How about it?”

  Hands half-raised, the South African nervously backed up and sat in the empty copilot’s seat. “I think we can manage that for you, miss. Can’t we, Ted?” The pilot nodded repeatedly in confirmation.

  “Great.” Nina sat in the chair next to the survey equipment, noticing something in a tray on the desk. “Eddie, here,” she said, tossing him a phone. “Call TD, get her to meet us when we arrive. How long will it take to reach the village?” she asked as Chase started to dial.

  “About thirty minutes,” the South African told her. He paused, then gave her an incredulous look. “Are you really hijacking a zeppelin?”

  Nina managed a tired grin as the engine noise increased, the airship rising and turning north. “You know what’s weird? That’s not even the craziest thing I’ve done today.”

  “That’s one hell of a story,” said TD.

  Chase stretched his neck, working out a crick. “Tell me about it.”

  TD had hurriedly taken off from the airfield shortly after Yuen’s jet departed; the sight of one of the mine’s massive trucks smashing through the fence and heading off across the desert with tanks in hot pursuit had been something that, as she put it, had Eddie Chase written all over it. Still airborne when she got Chase’s call, she changed course for the airstrip at Nagembe and arrived a few minutes before the airship. At the prompting of Nina’s gun, the pilot brought the zeppelin down next to the Piper. A quick hobble between the two aircraft saw Nina and Chase aboard TD’s plane in time for a rapid takeoff, watched by a group of surprised locals who had come to find out why a gleaming airship had made an unscheduled stop at their little village.

  Now they were across the border in Namibia, sitting in a darkened room in an abandoned bush farmhouse. As TD gave Nina and Chase first aid, including stitching up the wound in Chase’s leg, they told her about the afternoon’s events. “I knew political assassinations weren’t your style, Eddie,” TD said with relief.

  “But how are we going to prove it?” Nina wondered miserably.

  “That’s not your biggest worry just now,” said TD. “It won’t take long for the story to get out of Botswana and into its neighbors. A lot of people will be looking for you—you need to get out of here before that happens. And I don’t just mean out of Namibia. I mean out of Africa.”

  Nina ran her hands back through her disheveled hair. “How are we going to do that? We’ve got no passports, no money—and we’re wanted for the murder of a senior government official! There’ll be pictures of us at every airport on the continent!”

  Chase looked thoughtful, but also somewhat troubled. “I might be able to sort something out… but it’ll mean calling in a big favor.” He frowned. “Maybe too big. Mac probably won’t go for it.”

  “Mac?” asked TD, surprised. “You want to ask Mac for a favor?” A sly smile crept onto her face. “In that case, I might be able to help. He was down here on business last year, and now he owes me a favor. Well, several favors.”

  “Who’s Mac?” Nina wanted to know.

  “Old friend,” Chase said, giving TD a suspicious look. “Why does Mac owe you a favor?”

  “Several favors.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

  Chase was appalled. “He’s twice your age!”

  “He has lots of experience,” TD countered.

  “He’s only got one leg!”

  “Which opens up all kinds of new poss—”

  He threw up his hands in horror. “Don’t! Don’t say another bloody word!”

  “Possibilities,” TD finished with a toothy grin.

  Chase made a pained face. “Oh, why’d you have to tell me that? You and Mac? Eehew!” He shuddered.

  TD folded her arms and pouted. “Do you want me to help or not?”

  “Yes, very much,” Nina cut in before Chase could reply. “Who’s Mac?”

  “He’s somebody who can get you and Eddie to England,” TD told her. “It might take a day or so, but he has the connections to arrange travel for people even without passports.”

  “How?”

  “Mac’s got friends in high places,” said Chase. “Or low places. Depends how you look at it.”

  “Either way, I’m sure he’ll help you,” TD said. She smiled at Chase as she took out her phone. “Do you want to talk to him, or shall I?”

  “You have a word,” Chase said. He put a hand to his forehead and sighed. “Or several.”

  15

  London

  Look who it is,” said the bearded Scotsman in a soft burr, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Eddie Chase, international assassin.”

  Chase smiled humorlessly. “Mac, I’m grateful for your help and everything, but seriously—sod off.”

  “Good to see you again too.” He grinned, opening the door wider to admit Chase and Nina to the hall of the terraced Victorian town house. “And you must be Dr. Wilde. Welcome to London—my name’s Jim. But my friends call me Mac.” He shook Nina�
�s hand.

  “Call me Nina. Glad to meet you,” she said. Mac was, she guessed, about sixty, six feet tall with bristling gray hair. Despite his age, he was still craggily handsome and in good physical shape. After Chase’s comment in Namibia she couldn’t help glancing down at his legs, but was unable to tell which one was artificial. “How do you know Eddie?”

  Mac arched an eyebrow. “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He’s very secretive about his past,” she said acidly.

  He closed the door behind them, and Nina took a moment to look around. The hall was actually more of an atrium, two floors of balcony landings running around it above them, topped by a pair of beautiful old stained-glass skylights. Like its owner, the house had a crisp, spartan air, the few examples of ornamentation she could see clearly valuable antiques.

  Mac ushered them into an adjoining living room. “I used to be Eddie’s commanding officer,” he explained. “Colonel Jim McCrimmon of Her Majesty’s Special Air Service. Retired now, of course. But I still work as a consultant for… certain agencies.”

  “He means MI6,” Chase said with a disapproving sneer. “Bunch of tossers.”

  Mac chuckled. “Eddie has a very low opinion of the Secret Intelligence Service, I’m afraid. But they’re not all bad—by spook standards, at least. You wouldn’t be here now if some of them hadn’t arranged a black bag flight to get you out of Namibia. Please, take a seat.”

  Although there was a sofa in the room, Nina and Chase sat on separate armchairs. Mac noted this with a twitch of his eyebrow, but didn’t comment. “So,” he began, voice becoming more serious, “you both made it in one piece, more or less. Now, perhaps you care to explain why I just pulled an awful lot of strings to get you here?”

  Chase did most of the talking, Nina occasionally chipping in to add information, or to correct him. The presence of his former commander seemed to temper his responses to her, though they still had a distinct sarcastic edge. It took some time for the full story to be explained, and when it was, Mac leaned back in his chair with an expression of concern.