The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  His fingertips touched metal and plastic, and he took a small rectangular device from the pocket before tossing it in disgust to the floor. “The question still stands, Sophia,” he said. “What do you want with the Tomb of Hercules?”

  She smiled coldly. “You’ll see. But for now, I need to collect my own personal Hiroshima.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, you’ll see.”

  Chase looked towards the window and the assembly line below. “There’s only one completed bomb.”

  “I only need one.” Sophia addressed one of the bodyguards. “Philippe, you stay here and watch Eddie until we’re ready to leave. If he tries anything, shoot him in the legs, but try not to kill him. For now.” She gave Chase a little grin, which he didn’t return, before turning to the larger man of the two. “Eduardo, come with me. I need you to carry something to the plane.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Eduardo. With a final triumphant glance back at Chase, Sophia strode from the room, the hulking bodyguard following her.

  The other man, Philippe, waved his gun, directing Chase to take a seat at the circular table. “So, Philippe,” he said as he reluctantly obeyed, “on first-name terms with Sophia, are you?”

  Philippe said nothing, moving around the table, out of his reach.

  “’cause I know that she doesn’t normally get too familiar with the help,” Chase went on. “Unless …you’re something more than that?” He noticed a very slight twitch around the bodyguard’s eyes. “Or you think you’re going to be. Is that it? You think that if you help her, you’ll get to shag her?”

  “Shut up,” said Philippe, annoyed.

  “Yeah, I thought so. You know, she’s crap in bed. Just lies there like a dead fish.”

  Philippe stepped forward and struck Chase painfully on the base of the neck with the butt of his Glock-19 pistol. “I told you to shut up! Talk again and I will shoot you!”

  Chase stayed silent, rubbing his neck, but knew he’d found a potential weakness. Sophia almost certainly had promised the bodyguard favors, including sex. The question was, how could he turn this to his advantage?

  A couple of minutes passed, neither man speaking. Chase slowly swiveled his chair to get a better view over the bomb factory, and with dismay saw the other bodyguard pushing a cart bearing the completed weapon towards the far end of the chamber, Sophia strutting ahead of him. There was presumably another exit, hidden from view by the machinery. Neither wore a hazard suit, suggesting radiation levels in the room were safe for short exposures.

  They passed out of sight behind the furnace. Chase frowned. He couldn’t let her leave with the bomb …

  “She’ll betray you,” he said.

  Philippe was unprepared for the comment. “What?”

  “Sophia. She’ll betray you, same as she did to me … and Yuen.” He pointed at the corpse on the floor. “Once she’s got what she wants from you, she’ll dump you—and if she thinks you might cause trouble, she’ll kill you.”

  “I told you to be quiet.”

  Chase turned the chair, his back to the bodyguard. “I mean, do you seriously think she’d be interested in a bloke like you? You’re just a bit of rough, mate. Soon as she gets bored with you, you’re gone! She’s like one of those insects that bites off the poor bastard’s head once they’re done—”

  Philippe stepped forward again. “Shut up!” The gun whistled down—and Chase’s hands snapped up, locking around Philippe’s hand and arresting the blow less than an inch above its target. The bodyguard froze, confused for the briefest moment, and Chase pulled forward with all his strength. Philippe slammed into the high back of the chair.

  The bodyguard’s head was above Chase’s left shoulder. He smashed his right fist into Philippe’s face three times, knuckles coming away bloodied. His left hand closed around the gun, tearing it from his opponent’s grip.

  Philippe’s free hand clamped around Chase’s face, fingers stabbing for his eyes. Chase punched him again, hearing something crunch—his nose or a tooth—then grabbed the bodyguard’s forefinger before it could plunge into his eye socket and bent it back as hard as he could. Faced with the choice of releasing his grip on Chase’s head or having a finger broken, Philippe chose the former, letting out an anguished screech—and in the split second he was distracted, Chase kicked out, heels hitting the floor and propelling the chair backwards on its casters across the conference room. The gun slipped from the grip of both combatants, but it was too late for either of them to act upon that fact—

  The chair and its occupants crashed through the window and fell into the bomb factory. Philippe was on the bottom, having just enough time to begin a horrified scream before it was abruptly cut off as he hit the floor and the combined weight of Chase and the chair crushed his rib cage flat.

  The impact flung Chase from the chair. He slammed down on his side, broken glass showering all around him. A stinging pain burned across the side of his head—he’d been cut. Shaking off fragments, he got to his feet and looked around.

  The two men in hazard suits stood about fifty feet away, regarding him with astonishment. Then one of them dashed to the nearest wall, hand flailing at a panel, and a warbling alarm burst from loudspeakers around the chamber. The two men ran as best they could in their bulky suits for the exit.

  If the technicians got through the door and it closed before Chase reached it, without a key card he’d be trapped in the factory with no weapon, easy prey for the security force when they arrived.

  Chase broke into a sprint, chasing the yellow figures. They were at the door, one of them already swiping his key card. He passed the exposed laser they’d been working on, running faster as the door opened and they threw themselves through it. It swung shut behind them.

  Twenty feet, ten, his arm outstretched—The lock clunked.

  Chase reached the door a moment too late. “Fuck!” He pulled the handle, but it didn’t budge.

  He turned to see where Sophia had gone. At the far end of the chamber was another door, identical to the one beside him. Undoubtedly with an identical clearance level.

  He was trapped. And despite the fact that he was in a room where devastating weapons were being built, there was nothing he could use to defend himself.

  Unless …

  He ran back to the condenser chamber on which the technicians had been working. The laser, inside a steel tube about the length of his arm and four inches in diameter, had been pulled out of the end of the chamber on a metal rail, heavy-duty electrical cable still connected to its side. Attached to it by a ribbon connector was some kind of calibration device, a box festooned with buttons and gauges.

  But only two controls caught his attention. One was a large dial with the stylized symbol of a lightning bolt above it, the other a red button.

  An electronic chime sounded.

  The door burst open, security guards pouring into the room. Guns raised and ready. They saw him—

  Chase grabbed the laser and swung it around, supporting it with his right arm as his left whirled the dial to full power and stabbed at the button.

  There was a blue flash and a noise like a muffled gunshot. For a moment Chase thought the laser had overloaded … then every single one of the guards keeled over dead, smoke billowing from neat holes in their chests. The fully powered laser beam, invisible in the filtered air of the factory, had burned straight through the line of men in a millisecond, leaving a smoldering dark spot on the far wall behind them.

  “Oh I like this!” Chase crowed, experiencing an incongruous moment of elation at his new toy before remembering what he had to do. He turned back around, taking aim at the protruding cabinet housing the laser of the farthest condenser chamber. Another touch of the button, and he saw the briefest flicker of intense blue light on the cabinet before the access hatch blew out with a huge bang and a cloud of smoke. Warning lights flashed red on the control panel.

  One down. He lined up the laser on the next condenser and fired again, ge
tting another satisfying explosion as the assembly blew apart. Two more shots took care of the remaining condensers.

  Another chime, more distant. The door at the other end of the room had opened, and he could hear men shouting as they ran into the factory. Chase brought the laser around to take aim, but he couldn’t see them from his position, blocked by the furnace.

  Time to leave.

  He hunted for an escape route. The broken window of the conference room was too high to reach, and there was nothing nearby he could climb onto.

  But there were pipes above it, conduits for the air-conditioning and filtration system …

  He pushed the red button again, this time keeping his finger firmly on it as he swept the laser across the suspended pipes, the blue spot of the beam burning with supernova fury and slicing through the metal. The severed conduits swung down like a giant hinge and hit the floor with an echoing crash.

  Chase threw down the laser to break it, and ran up the fallen pipe work. Momentum alone carried him most of the way up the steep slope before he started to lose his footing, the metal buckling beneath his feet.

  More shouts, a gunshot—

  He flung himself through the hole in the window as if performing a high jump, clearing the lower sill by an inch. He thumped onto the carpet and rolled to a stop, then sprang up to find the Glock that Philippe had dropped. He grabbed it, then rushed around the table to retrieve his possessions. The grenade he shoved into a pocket, then he hefted his pistol.

  A gun in each hand, he turned to face the door.

  Charging footsteps outside—

  Chase whipped around towards the window overlooking the chip fabrication plant and raised both guns, squeezed the triggers, then ran—

  The window shattered just before he reached it and leapt out. He arced towards one of the clean rooms, about to crash down onto its glass ceiling.

  He fired again, guns aimed downwards. The ceiling exploded, a razor-edged monsoon cascading into the clean room below. Chase’s feet thudded bone-jarringly onto a workbench, the pain of his leg wound flaring back to life. He ignored it and threw himself into a forward roll, racks of fragile silicon wafers tumbling and crunching beneath him, and flew off the end of the bench to land on both feet.

  His jacket was covered with the broken remains of glinting microprocessors. “Chips with everything,” he muttered as he got his bearings. He had landed near one side of the huge room, the door through which he’d originally entered in the center of the far wall. A warren of glass lay between himself and the exit.

  Shouting from above—the guards had entered the conference room and realized where he had gone. And more were spilling through the entrance off to his left, with a clear line of fire up the central aisle.

  But the shortest distance between two points was a straight line…

  Both guns raised in front of him, Chase ran again, heading directly for the far exit. That the route was blocked by clean rooms didn’t stop him—he kept firing, glass walls bursting apart in his path as terrified technicians dived for cover. He sprinted through the transparent maze as it parted, shimmering fragments spraying around his pumping legs like breaking waves.

  Philippe’s gun clicked empty. Without a moment of hesitation Chase dropped it, still firing with his own automatic at the last clean room. One bullet took out both walls—he ran faster through the debris, free hand pulling out the key card as he charged for the door.

  Guards were running after him. He fired a single shot into the throng, as much to force them to seek cover as to kill. They scattered.

  Swipe—

  Green light. Chime. Go!

  He ran through and immediately turned down the corridor leading to the lobby. A security guard stood in his path, but Chase blew him away with a single shot before the man even had time to take aim.

  The lobby was an anonymous corporate space with murals of microcircuitry on the walls. No more guards. Chase turned again, running for the double doors. Yuen’s Mercedes was still parked outside, the driver now standing outside the car, waiting anxiously for his boss.

  Chase didn’t waste the second it would have taken to open the doors. Instead he simply fired a shot both to shatter the glass and to warn the driver to get the hell out of his way, and vaulted through the empty frame to land by the car’s open door. The driver had taken the hint, already making good time towards Bern.

  He jumped into the Mercedes, finding the engine running; the driver had been prepared to get his employer to safety as quickly as possible. But Chase didn’t intend to head for safety as he floored the accelerator, the car fishtailing away from the microchip factory in a trail of smoking rubber.

  He had to stop Sophia from getting away with the nuke. No matter what.

  19

  Chase knew where Sophia was heading. To get the bomb to her plane, she would have to take the cable car up to the top of the dam.

  The lower cable car station was at the facility’s northwestern corner. He made a screeching turn onto the road running parallel to the river and powered towards it. The station was a tower with a high sloping roof, easily distinguishable from the industrial units.

  A white van was parked in front of it. Its rear doors gaped open, the interior empty. The nuke had already been transferred.

  Chase’s gaze flicked to the cable stretching away to the upper station. There were no cars moving along it.

  Sophia hadn’t set off yet. There was still a chance to stop her.

  Headlights flashed behind him, an SUV skidding around a corner in pursuit. A few hundred yards back, but it wouldn’t take long to catch up once Chase stopped the Mercedes.

  And now movement ahead—the second bodyguard, Eduardo, appeared in the station’s entrance.

  Chase ducked as a shot smacked into the windshield, spiderweb cracks instantly obscuring his view. The bullet zipped past him and hit the backseat with a whump of tearing leather.

  A second bullet blasted the rearview mirror from its stalk with a tinkle of broken glass. Seven years’ bad luck, thought Chase, but one of them would run out of luck in considerably less time, well under seven seconds—

  He swerved the Mercedes, charging at the ramp up to the entrance.

  Eduardo fired two more shots, one gouging a hole in the hood, the other shattering the windshield.

  A freezing gale hit Chase. He braced himself.

  Engine screaming, the Mercedes plowed up the ramp. Eduardo was trapped in the doorway, nowhere to go—

  The car rammed into him, folding him over the hood as the Mercedes hit the doors and crashed into the interior of the cable car station.

  Chase stamped on the brake, but the car was already swerving uncontrollably towards a wall—

  It hit at an angle, the left front fender crushed to scrap in an instant. Eduardo flew from the hood and bounced off the wall in a spray of blood.

  The air bags all inflated simultaneously with rifleshot bangs of expanding gas. Chase felt as though he’d been punched in the face by the Michelin Man. Even over the crunch of the collision, he heard cartilage crackle inside his nose.

  The car spun to a standstill. The air bag deflated and Chase sat up. His nose throbbed. It wasn’t a break—he knew that painful sensation all too well—but it felt like a hairline split that would be sore for some time.

  But if he didn’t get out of the car fast, an aching nose would be the least of his worries. The pursuing guards would be here in thirty seconds, less …

  He snatched up his gun and scrambled from the wrecked Mercedes. The white-painted interior of the cable car station was bland and functional, the only color a literal splash of red where Eduardo’s body had been flung against the wall. No sign of Sophia—or the bomb—but a flight of stairs led upwards.

  Chase ran up them, emerging in a large and chilly open-ended room—the terminus for the cable cars. It was technically a “gondola lift” rather than a traditional cable car system, the gondolas able to detach from the line so passengers could bo
ard and disembark while other cars on the cable kept moving. Two boxy enclosed gondolas sat stationary, waiting to rejoin the line.

  A third was in motion.

  Sophia stood at its rear window. She smiled at Chase, waving as the gondola swept from the brightly lit terminus and out into the moonlit night.

  Chase whipped up his gun, aiming it at her head. She didn’t move.

  And neither did he. He couldn’t pull the trigger. Whatever she’d done, whatever she was planning to do, she had still once been his lover, his wife—

  “Shit!” Chase snarled, angry as much at himself as at her. The gondola ascended, Sophia now just a silhouette in the window. The moving cable sang over the rumble of the machinery driving it.

  The SUV squealed to a stop outside. Chase jumped into the first of the waiting gondolas and found a control panel by the front window. A large red button was marked “Starten.”

  He hit it.

  Chains and gears rattled. The gondola lurched along its track around the huge horizontal wheel at the end of the cable, then jolted as it slipped back onto the line. Ratchets clunked above him, and the gondola locked onto the steel cable to begin its ascent.

  Sophia’s car was about a hundred feet ahead. They would reach the top station at most twenty seconds apart—meaning Sophia would barely have time to get clear of the gondola before he arrived, never mind transfer the bomb to another vehicle.

  She looked back at Chase. He gave her a wave that was considerably less cheery than the one she’d given him. Sophia cocked her head in a once familiar expression of annoyance. Then she raised a hand, not waving this time but pointing at something in his gondola.

  Or, he realized, behind it.

  Chase rushed to the rear window. Another gondola had just mounted the cable. He could see three security guards aboard.

  Armed guards.

  And not just armed with handguns. They were carrying Steyr AUG A3 carbines—and were already opening the windows of their car, preparing to fire up the cable at him and turn his own gondola into Swiss cheese!