The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  24

  Nina shrieked as Corvus toppled from the plinth and hit the stone floor face-first. Sophia raised her gun to her lips and blew away the smoke. “I’ve been waiting such a long time to do that. Pompous old bastard.”

  “Well, I did warn him not to turn his back on you,” said Chase. He noticed that none of the other men had done anything more than flinch at the sudden gunshot. They weren’t Corvus’s people, but Sophia’s, knowing about her plan all along. “Two dead husbands in one week? That’s got to be a record.”

  “It’ll be three soon enough, Eddie,” Sophia told him pointedly.

  An eager smile appeared on Komosa’s face, his diamond-studded tooth glinting as much as the treasures of the tomb. “Does that mean I can kill them now?”

  Sophia shook her head. “I think it’s only fair to Eddie that I be the one who kills him. For old times’ sake. Business before pleasure, though—we need to start moving the gold. Eddie, Nina, sit down. This may take some time.” She hopped from the plinth. “Joe, keep an eye on them.”

  Komosa’s smile disappeared, but he did as he was told, directing Chase and Nina to sit with their backs against the ramp next to one of the piles of treasure. “So what do you want with all of this?” Chase asked Sophia.

  “René was a megalomaniac idealist,” said Sophia, with a disdainful glance at her husband’s corpse, “which is a rather deluded combination. His plan would never have worked, anyway—putting that many arrogant, ultra-ambitious, ruthlessly competitive people into the same confined space would be a recipe for disaster. My plan is somewhat more realistic.”

  “And what is your plan?” Nina asked.

  Sophia smiled. “To paraphrase my two late husbands, I’m not a James Bond villain. So I’m not going to tell you.” She walked to the man with the tablet computer, who was talking into his radio. “What’s the situation?”

  “The helicopters are just landing, ma’am,” he told her. “Once they’re down, they can take a ground sonar reading to find the best penetration point.”

  “Good,” said Sophia. She addressed the other men. “Start collecting the gold. Get the ingots first; they’ll be the easiest to handle.” They moved to obey.

  “Well, this didn’t turn out too well,” said Chase, watching as the men stacked up the gold bars in a section of open floor near the plinth.

  “We’re not dead yet,” Nina reminded him, picking up a large golden bowl and reading the Greek letters inscribed around its side. “‘In honor of the mighty Heracles, our savior and friend.’ Huh. Shame he can’t help us now.” She put the bowl down next to Chase and picked up a diamond. She was no expert, but from its size alone she guessed it had to be at least five carats, worth tens of thousands of dollars. “It’s amazing. He really existed, even if his achievements were mythologized over time. And he must have been incredibly highly thought of, for people to have paid him this much tribute. This is as big an archaeological discovery as Atlantis.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not going to get to tell anyone about finding this either,” Chase told her ruefully. She closed her fist around the diamond and leaned against him, holding his hand.

  It wasn’t long before they heard a muffled thump from overhead: a small explosive cartridge being fired into the ground to act as a sonar source, reflected sound waves telling those above the thickness of the sand and rock covering the roof of the tomb. Within minutes, the results were relayed to Sophia, the man with the computer pacing to a spot several yards to one side of the plinth.

  “Clear that area,” she ordered. Her men quickly moved the nearby treasure aside to leave an open space. Everyone moved well clear. A few minutes later, there was a much louder detonation. Large chunks of stone dropped from the roof and smashed on the floor, sand streaming down through a hole in the ceiling. A spear of blinding daylight lanced into the tomb, the gold lighting up as if aflame.

  There was a wait while the team on the surface used their sonar device again to check the ceiling’s structural integrity; then, satisfied that it was safe, they widened the hole with picks and mallets, causing more stones to fall into the chamber. Before long, an opening some ten feet by six feet had been knocked through the ceiling. Another wait, shadows dancing through the beam of daylight as men worked above to set up a heavy-duty winch system, and then a metal platform was lowered into the tomb.

  “Good work, boys,” said Sophia. “Start loading the gold. How much will the choppers be able to carry? Bearing in mind that there’ll be five fewer passengers on the return trip, of course.”

  “About five thousand four hundred kilos per helicopter,” said the man with the computer after a few seconds of calculations. “It will take the platform … twenty-three trips to carry that much.”

  “Then we’d better get started.” She watched as ingots were loaded onto the platform, until a shout from above told the men that it had reached its weight limit. With a strained electric whine, it slowly rose to the ceiling, blotting out the light when it reached the top. The men in the tomb began moving more bars into place ready for the next trip as their counterparts above unloaded the cargo for transport to the helicopters.

  “That was really quite a sight,” said Sophia to Chase as she stood next to Komosa. “Twenty million dollars in gold, all fitted onto one little platform. And that was only the first load.”

  “You should have brought red, white and blue Mini Coopers instead of choppers,” Chase said unenthusiastically. “So, now what? Is this it? You going to kill us?”

  Sophia drew her gun. “I think it’s about time, yes. Get up.” Chase started to stand, but she waved him back down. “No, no. Her first.”

  Nina stood, fists clenched. “Nina, don’t,” Chase said.

  “It’s okay, Eddie,” she told him, fixing Sophia with a defiant glare. “There’s no way I’m going to die on my knees. Not in front of this bitch.”

  Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “I told you what I’d do to you if you called me a bitch again.”

  “Yeah? Bring it on, bitch!”

  The whirr of the descending platform came from the other side of the ramp, unnoticed, as Sophia turned angrily to Komosa. “Joe, give me your knife.”

  Nina’s gaze flicked down to meet Chase’s, just for a moment—but it was all the time they needed to communicate. Chase shifted position, very slightly.

  Komosa looked away from his prisoners down to the sheathed knife on his belt as he reached for it. Sophia impatiently held out her left hand, her gun moving slightly away from Nina—and Nina lashed out, slicing a gash across Sophia’s cheek with the sharp tip of the diamond she had pushed out between her clenched fingers. Sophia gasped in pain, clapping her free hand against her face. Anger flared in her eyes, momentarily overpowering reason, the gun forgotten.

  But Komosa hadn’t forgotten his gun. He snapped around to shoot Nina—

  Chase jumped up and hurled the heavy golden bowl like a discus.

  Not at Sophia or Komosa, but over the end of the ramp, at the statue of Hercules.

  It struck the golden club with a sound like a ringing gong and spun away, dented. The club wobbled … then fell from the statue’s hand.

  And all hell broke loose.

  The dull clanks made by the wedges restraining the heavy carved discs as they dropped down into their sockets were drowned out by the crunch of stone against stone. The discs began to roll inexorably down the ramps, rapidly picking up speed.

  Nina and Chase barged Sophia and Komosa aside and sprinted for the exit from the tomb. Behind them, one of the discs hit a weighty chunk of ceiling debris that had fallen on the ramp and tipped over the edge, smashing onto the tomb floor like a stone bomb.

  But the other three stayed on course for the pillars surrounding the sarcophagus—

  The bases of two of the pillars were pulverized, immediately collapsing. The third suffered a more glancing blow, a section knocked sideways so that it still barely held up the column above.

  But it would not hold for
long.

  An entire section of roof on the far side of the plinth plummeted downwards, the stone slabs of the ceiling and the tons of loose rock and sand covering it hitting the floor with earth-shaking force. Cracks radiated outwards, widening the jagged gap, more spears of daylight stabbing into the tomb as smaller holes ripped open in their wake.

  Komosa recovered from his shocked paralysis and turned to aim at Chase and Nina as they fled—only to see Sophia hurdling across the bottom of the ramp, running as fast as she could for the winch platform. Eyes widening as he realized he was being abandoned, he raced after her.

  Weaving through the meteor storm of falling stones, Nina and Chase kept running.

  Sophia rushed past her men, most of whom had dived to the floor to avoid the broken disc as it came off the ramp, and leaped onto the platform. Several bars of gold had already been loaded, but she ignored them and hit the green button to start the winch.

  The platform began to ascend. A second later, Komosa vaulted over one of the bewildered men and landed beside her. He gave her a dirty look, which she ignored, instead throwing one of the ingots from the platform. Komosa got the idea and did the same, the heavy ringing thud of the soft metal bars hitting the floor joining the clash of more falling stones.

  Another man tried to jump onto the platform as it rose, slamming into it at chest height and scrabbling for a handhold. Sophia and Komosa exchanged glances, then as one kicked him in the face. He screamed as he fell back to the ground. The extra weight gone, the platform picked up speed.

  The exit was a dark rectangle ahead of Nina. Chase was right beside her.

  Stone above splintered like breaking bone. Another section of roof tore loose, slabs crashing down in a solid wave behind them.

  The damaged pillar finally collapsed. The ceiling above it held for a moment, then succumbed to gravity.

  Even before the platform reached the surface, Sophia and Komosa threw themselves from it and raced desperately away across the stony hill as the holes behind them widened and merged, gaping mouths in the ground swallowing everything up.

  The platform disappeared back into the earth from which it had just emerged, the winch following. One of the helicopters was consumed as well, teetering on the edge of the expanding sinkhole before being pitched nose-first into the maelstrom of churning rubble and dust below.

  All support gone, what remained of the tomb’s ceiling gave way at once, a square 150 feet across suddenly collapsing with an impact so huge that one of the other helicopters was thrown on its side, rotor blades snapping like dry sticks.

  Chase and Nina dived at the archway as the roof dropped, all light abruptly blotted out by hundreds of tons of stone—

  Sophia sat up, panting, and squinted through the dust cloud. Inches from her feet was the edge of a crater. Komosa’s diving escape had been even narrower, his shins actually extending over the rim of the great hole.

  “Jesus Christ!” Sophia gasped, her normal composure shaken. “That… that fucking maniac!” She staggered to her feet and moved to a safer distance from the angular crater before surveying the scene. The tail of one of the helicopters poked up from the rubble below. On the far side of the hole, the handful of her men who had managed to get clear of the collapse milled about in confusion around the surviving chopper.

  Komosa joined her, wiping dust from his face and bald head. “Now what do we do?”

  Sophia took a long breath to settle herself. “Well, we’ll need some more helicopters, for a start,” she finally said, voice returning to her usual clipped, even tones. “But this can still be excavated and the gold recovered; it’ll just take a little more time. And I don’t actually need the gold to be in my possession—as long as I know where it is and can still get to it, that’s what’s important. But we’ll need to get a trustworthy team of diggers out here as soon as possible. I don’t want to delay the plan.”

  Komosa peered down into the pit. Broken slabs of roof jutted out of the rubble like the bones of some vast animal carcass. “And what about… them? Do you think they could have survived?”

  Sophia frowned. “Even if they survived, which I very much hope they didn’t, and even if they manage to get back through the maze… they’ll be stuck in the Sahara a hundred miles from anywhere with no food, no water and no survival equipment. Eddie’s good, but he’s not that good.” She looked back at the destroyed helicopters. “Just to be safe, as well as recovering the gold, have everything that could be used for survival stripped out of the wrecked choppers.”

  Komosa nodded, then set off around the edge of the hole. Sophia remained still for a moment, gazing into the crater. “Good-bye, Eddie,” she said, before turning away to follow the Nigerian.

  25

  Chase opened his eyes … to see nothing but blackness.

  He knew he wasn’t dead, though. The stitches in his leg ached too much.

  The collapsing roof had felt like a bomb exploding behind him, a shock wave of displaced air blasting him through the gilded archway into the passage beyond. Ears still ringing, he got to his knees. The air was full of dust; he coughed, putting a hand over his mouth and nose to filter the worst of it.

  Eyes adjusting, he saw a feeble scrap of daylight through the stone and sand now blocking the archway, dust swirling in the soft glow.

  That was the end of the Tomb of Hercules, he thought. Anything inside would have been hammered flat as the ceiling collapsed. Nina wouldn’t be happy … “Nina!”

  The name burst from him, shocking him back to full awareness. She had been beside him just before they reached the exit—where was she now?

  He groped blindly through the rubble on the floor of the passage, feeling nothing but hard stone, the dry and gritty rasp of sand. The faint light didn’t even provide enough illumination for him to make out his own fingers.

  A fear rose inside him, the cold horror of loss. He’d felt it before, in combat, the growing certainty that somebody from his unit wasn’t coming back.

  But this wasn’t combat. And Nina was more than any comrade in arms …

  “Nina!” A scream this time, but still unanswered. His hands clawed harder through the smashed stones, scattering them aside in an increasingly desperate search for anything that wasn’t unyielding and cold—

  His fingers brushed soft cloth. Nina’s shirt.

  Under a lump of stone.

  “Shit!” Chase pulled the fractured slab off her, throwing it aside. He still couldn’t see, but felt her lying on her back.

  Unmoving.

  “Oh fuck,” he gasped, reaching for her neck, searching for a pulse. “Shit, come on, come on…” Nothing—“Come on!”

  A pulsation beneath his fingertip, weak but definitely there.

  Relief exploded within him. “Oh, Jesus, yes!” he cried, clearing the rest of the rubble from her. “Nina, come on, wake up …”

  Chase hurriedly checked her for the wetness of blood or the jagged bulge of a broken bone beneath the skin. Not finding either, he bent to feel for her breath against his cheek.

  Nothing.

  Without light, there was no way for him to tell why she was unresponsive. He didn’t even know how long she had been unconscious, having lost track of time while he’d been dazed. It could have been just seconds, or over a minute…

  He began CPR. Heel of his hand on Nina’s chest, pushing down firmly. Thirty compressions. Then he tilted back her head and pinched shut her nose with one hand, delivering two breaths into her open mouth.

  No response.

  The fear returning, he started a second round of chest compressions, fighting not to rush. Ten, twenty, thirty. Tipping her head back again, another two breaths, anxiously waiting for any kind of reaction—

  She convulsed, gasping hoarsely. Chase squeezed her hand. “Nina! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

  Nina took in several deep, whooping breaths, Chase feeling her pulse race as he held her hand more tightly. “Eddie …” she finally managed to wheeze.


  “Are you okay?”

  “You know something?” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “That’s the first time we’ve kissed in ages.”

  Even though Chase couldn’t see her face, he could tell she was smiling. “Well, this is the second,” he said, lowering his head.

  “Are you all right?” she asked when they finally moved apart.

  “Fine as I can be,” he said. “Hold on, I’m going to get up. Can you stand?”

  She cautiously moved her limbs. “I think so.”

  Chase stood. The dust had settled somewhat, but the faint illumination from the ruined tomb was no brighter than before. He took her hand. “Ready?” On her vaguely positive response, he straightened, bringing her up with him.

  “Ow, shit!” she complained. “Goddamn it, son of a bitch! Oh, God, my ankle hurts again. Shit!”

  “Lean against me,” Chase told her, putting an arm around her waist to take her weight.

  “Thanks,” Nina gasped. “Oh, that bitch. I’m so going to kick her ass.” She looked around, seeing nothing but the weak light in the blackness. “Where are we? Is that daylight?”

  “Yeah,” said Chase, “but there’s about a hundred tons of rock in front of it. We’re in the room with the dog statue.”

  “Then only the actual tomb collapsed, not the whole thing?”

  “Far as I can tell.”

  Excitement entered Nina’s voice. “Then we can still get out! All we have to do is backtrack through the labyrinth!”

  “Well, that’d be dead easy if we could actually see anything. Unless you’ve got some night-vision goggles hidden in your knickers.”

  She batted a hand lightly on his chest. “Don’t start. We only have to get to the room with Hippolyta, and then we can get a flashlight. One of Corvus’s men had a little accident after you left. They didn’t pick up his gear. Once we’ve got a light, we can work back through the maze just by following the tracks we made coming in.”

  Now it was Chase’s turn to sound excited. “Did he have a radio?”