The Tomb of Hercules

by Andy McDermott

  Chase knew from its weight alone that his own gun only had one bullet left. The grenade was a hard, cold bulge in his jacket pocket, but even if he lobbed it perfectly through the other car’s open window they would still have time to cut him to pieces.

  He checked the view ahead. His car was about a quarter of the way along the cable, ascending quickly. It would only take another two minutes to reach the top.

  Whether he could survive for two minutes was another matter entirely …

  The gondola had room for about twelve people, padded bench seats running around the interior. The bench beneath the rear window acted as a lid cover for a compartment containing rescue equipment.

  Chase smashed the overhead fluorescent light with the butt of his pistol to mask himself in darkness, then seized the top of the rear seat and ripped it loose. He dropped it on its long edge against the front of the compartment and threw himself onto the floor beside it—

  The rear windows blew apart as streams of bullets spat through them, the guards firing their AUGs on full auto. The rapid-fire clank-clank-clank of more shots puncturing the sheet-steel skin of the gondola sounded like a hailstorm.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” Chase yelled, arms raised to protect his face from the blizzard of glass as the other windows were smashed by the onslaught. Behind him, the contents of the emergency compartment were ripped to pieces by gunfire, the bullets smacking through the metal side of the box and the padding of the bench seat—before embedding in the sturdy wood of the bench itself.

  The seat kicked with each impact, but Chase knew that the chances of an AUG bullet passing through five layers of protection—the skin of the gondola, the coils of rope and chain escape ladders, the side of the emergency compartment, the seat padding and the wooden bench—were low enough to give him a hope of survival.

  A slim hope—but he would take whatever he could get.

  His attackers sprayed the gondola with burst after burst. Every window was already destroyed, holes erupting in the walls, the ceiling, even the floor. A lump of wood blew off the corner of the bench inches from his head. The makeshift barricade wouldn’t last much longer.

  A brief pause in the barrage. The guards were reloading. But that would only take a few seconds. And there wasn’t much he could do in that time.

  Except—

  Chase jumped up and grabbed the bottom rung of the emergency ladder running along the gondola’s ceiling, swinging it down. He dropped back to the floor just as the firing began again.

  The entire car suddenly jolted, swinging like a pendulum from the cable. Tortured metal groaned and creaked.

  Chase risked opening his eyes as shrapnel sprayed through the gondola. His vision was adjusting to the darkness, the interior lit by the unearthly blue-white glow of the moon—and in the half-light he saw the perforated ceiling flex, crumple lines radiating out from the center like strained kitchen foil.

  The gondola was tearing loose from its support arm!

  The metal was giving way, the bullet holes weakening it so much that it could no longer support its own weight—

  And more holes appeared every second.

  Chase looked at the emergency ladder. He hadn’t intended to go into the open to jump from the car until the last possible moment—but if he didn’t do so within the next few seconds, the only direction he would go was several hundred feet straight down.

  Wood splintered behind him, broken pieces hitting his legs.

  Metal screeched, and the back end of the gondola dropped a few inches. There was a rip in the ceiling, a gash torn across it behind the base of the suspension arm.

  It was going to fall—

  The firing stopped.

  Reloading—

  Chase raced up the ladder and flung open the top hatch. He jumped onto the roof, throwing himself against the bulky steel suspension arm.

  With an almost human scream, the metal roof tore apart. The pockmarked gondola dropped away, tumbling towards the valley floor far below and smashing onto the rocks with a bang that echoed off the towering face of the dam.

  The suspension arm swung madly, the entire cable whipping with the sudden loss of weight. Chase clung desperately to the cold metal, fighting for a foothold on the mangled remains of the roof. He saw the gondola behind juddering as well, one of the gunmen falling to the floor.

  He strained to look over his shoulder at the car ahead. Maybe Sophia had been pitched out of a window as her gondola shook. No such luck. Bracing herself on a handrail, she glared back at him, having seen that he’d escaped the falling cabin.

  The shuddering eased, though the suspension arm was still swinging. Chase tried to get a better handhold, but there was nothing.

  He looked around again, not at Sophia but at the top station beyond her. Over two-thirds of the way there now—

  Gunfire!

  Bullets from the lower car flew past him with fwips of seared air, hammer-clangs striking against the suspension arm.

  The metal Chase was pressed against was a foot wide at most. He twisted, turning sideways to shield as much of his body as possible.

  But his hands and upper arms were still exposed, reaching around the sides. If a bullet even clipped him, he would lose his grip and fall to his death.

  Sophia’s car was approaching the upper station. What was left of Chase’s would reach it in thirty seconds—

  A bullet struck the suspension arm just above his left hand, shock waves buzzing through the metal. His fingers slipped on the grimy surface. He clawed for grip, feeling his other hand sliding, the remains of the roof beneath his feet bending under his weight…

  His fingertips caught protruding metal: a bolt.

  Arms burning, he pulled himself up by a couple of inches, just enough to stop the roof from giving way.

  Another flurry of shots spanged against the suspension arm.

  Sophia was nearly at the station, its lights washing over her gondola. Chase could see the building clearly now, another open-ended concrete structure, perched almost on the edge of the cliff.

  Almost.

  There was a steep rocky ledge, just a few feet across, between the thick foundation of the terminus and the sheer drop away to the valley floor.

  Something hard nudged his side, caught between his body and the suspension arm.

  The grenade…

  The cable vibrated as Sophia’s car detached. More gunfire. Shots cracked against the cliff face. Ten seconds, less. The guards kept firing.

  With a yell, Chase let go of the support with one hand, pain slicing through the fingertips of the other as they took his entire weight. The metal beneath his feet buckled. Flailing, he managed to reach into his jacket and pull out the grenade.

  The cliff was just feet away.

  Chase pulled himself up, teeth clamping around the ring attached to the grenade’s pin to tug it out. The curved metal spoon sprang away and disappeared into the darkness below.

  Four-second fuse—

  “Going down!”

  He thrust the grenade upwards, jamming it into the runner hooking the gondola onto the cable. Then he threw himself onto the rocky ledge.

  Loose pebbles skittered and slithered beneath him. He scrabbled for grip as if swimming up a waterfall of stones—

  The suspension arm passed overhead into the station. The guards took aim—The grenade exploded.

  The blast severed the main cable. The suspension arm dropped, smashing onto the station’s concrete floor before being yanked backwards with tremendous force. It shot over Chase’s head like a giant anchor as the full weight of the line and the third gondola snatched it into the valley.

  The terrified screams of the security guards faded to nothing as they plunged hundreds of feet to splatter on the rocks far below.

  Chase was still sliding down the scree, grasping for anything that might stop him from following them. His legs went over the lip of the cliff, his waist…

  One hand locked around a rock.

  Chas
e brought up his other hand. The rock held firm.

  He pulled himself back up, managing to get a foothold. Another few seconds, and he was on the ledge proper, feeling his whole body shivering with the adrenaline aftershock.

  But he couldn’t stop. Not yet. He still had to reach Sophia.

  He clambered up the ledge to the foot of the building, spotting metal rungs set into the concrete nearby. He began a rapid ascent, pausing just below the final rung to draw his gun. Ready …

  Go!

  He whipped up and swept his gun across the station, locking on to a target.

  “Don’t move!” he shouted.

  Sophia was kneeling near the back of the room, frozen by his command. She had realized what Chase had done with the grenade just in time to throw herself into cover behind one of the stationary gondolas, and was only now recovering from the earsplitting shock of an explosion in a confined concrete space.

  “Eddie,” she said, scowling as he climbed up and walked towards her, the gun never wavering. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You never could take a hint that you weren’t wanted.”

  “Where’s the bomb, Sophia?” Chase demanded.

  “Still in the cable car.” She smiled thinly. “It’s a little heavy for me to carry. Would you mind getting it out for me?”

  “Shut up!” She was taken aback by his shout, her defiant expression faltering as she saw that he was deadly serious. Still keeping his gun locked on to her, Chase walked to the gondola and peered inside. The bomb rested in the center of the floor.

  It was his first opportunity to take a proper look at the device. A truncated cone of shining steel acted as a base, three metal rails rising from a hole in its center to a squat, overhanging cylindrical cap of the same polished metal. A slot in the base looked as though it would house the arming system, but it was currently empty. Standing close to three feet tall, the bomb appeared to weigh at least a hundred pounds—but with its uranium core, it would be considerably more than that.

  The design was unusual, but Chase knew enough about the basics of nuclear weapons to recognise the type. It was a “gun” device, the simplest and crudest kind of nuke—but also the easiest to build, transport and maintain. Other types of nuclear devices were precision instruments, engineered to minuscule tolerances and requiring every part to function perfectly in a sequence of events measured in microseconds to achieve a proper detonation.

  Gun bombs, on the other hand, were blunt instruments needing little more than raw force to work. Take two pieces of enriched uranium-235 of a certain combined total mass. Smash them together, hard. Critical mass is reached, and a nuclear explosion results. The type’s name came from the first example of the kind, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima; it literally was a length of gun barrel, a uranium slug fired from one end into a larger piece at the other.

  Yuen’s bomb was smaller and more refined, but the principle was exactly the same. Chase guessed that the slug was in the base—an explosive charge beneath it would fire it up the guide rails like a bullet and into the uranium target inside the steel cap. Simple, crude… but effective.

  And deadly. If Yuen’s boast had been accurate, the bomb had a fifteen-kiloton yield—slightly more powerful than Hiroshima, and enough to level the heart of any city and cause a firestorm that would raze buildings for miles around, to say nothing of the radioactive fallout that would be produced.

  He looked back at Sophia. “What do you want with a nuke, Sophia?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “My dry cleaner ruined my Prada skirt, so I wanted to show my disapproval.”

  He strode over to her, snapping the gun up almost against her forehead. “Tell me!”

  “You won’t hurt me,” she said quietly. Chase just stared at her stonily. The gun didn’t waver by so much as a millimeter. Uncertainty crept into her eyes. “Eddie …”

  “This is over, Sophia,” Chase told her. “Give me your phone. I’m going to contact the authorities, then—”

  The gun was smashed out of his grip and spun away across the room. A moment later, the sound of a supersonic rifle shot reached him from outside the open end of the station.

  Clutching his hand, Chase looked for the shooter. No sign of anyone, just the dam stretching away across the valley. He threw himself into a roll to make himself a more difficult target, diving for his fallen gun.

  Even before he reached it, he saw that it was a pointless move. A hole had been blown straight through the Steyr just above the trigger, severing the linkage to the hammer and rendering the weapon completely useless. Whoever had shot the gun from his hand was either unbelievably lucky—or an almost supernaturally skilled sniper.

  Chase changed tactics. He had no weapons—and there was only one thing in the station that could protect him from a high-velocity rifle bullet.

  He leaped back the way he had come—and landed behind the kneeling Sophia. Right hand going numb from the shock of impact, he clamped his left around her throat. “Get up!” he snarled, pulling her to her feet.

  “Eddie!” she shrieked, genuine fear in her voice.

  “Whoever’s out there, tell him to stand down!” Chase ordered, dragging her around to act as a human shield. “I know he can see you—tell him!”

  “If you hurt me, he’ll kill you!”

  “If he doesn’t stand down, I’ll kill you!”

  Neither of them moved, statue still for an eternal two seconds. Then: “You won’t,” said Sophia, voice choked but recovering her former arrogance. “You couldn’t. I know you too well—”

  Chase squeezed her throat tighter, cutting her off. “You killed Mac. You killed Nina. Give me one good reason why I should let you live.”

  “Didn’t—kill—Nina,” she rasped.

  “What?” He eased his grip, very slightly.

  “She’s not dead. Yet.”

  His hand tightened again. “Nor are you. Yet.”

  “Phone,” Sophia managed to whisper, reaching into a pocket. “Show—you …”

  Chase’s right hand still had enough sensation left in it for him to tell that she was indeed taking out a phone rather than a knife or a gun. He eased the pressure on her throat a little. “Go on.”

  She held up the phone and thumbed the touch screen, which lit up. Another couple of pushes, and she entered the photo album. There was only one stored image.

  Even from the little thumbnail of the picture Chase knew who it was, but that didn’t stop a horrible chill of fear hitting him when Sophia zoomed it to fill the screen.

  Nina.

  Face grazed, mouth stuffed with a gag, eyes wide in fear. She was lying on her back, red hair strewn out across the floor like a splatter of blood.

  “If anything happens to me,” Sophia hissed, “she dies. Don’t imagine for a moment that I won’t do it. I just killed my own husband—your parvenue ginger fuck-toy means nothing to me. Now, let go.” Chase didn’t move. “Let go, Eddie. You fought to the end—but this is the end. The fight’s over. You lost.”

  With a snarl of fury and anguish, Chase pulled his hand from her neck. Sophia stepped away, giving him a sour sneer of triumph as she rubbed her throat. “Kneel down, Eddie. Hands behind your head. We don’t want to give my friend out there a reason to blow off a limb or two, do we?”

  Chase reluctantly got to his knees, looking across the dam—and for the first time saw the sniper. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but be impressed by his enemy’s shooting skills. The man, a silhouette against the pale gray of the dam, stood on a viewing platform halfway across the structure, at least four hundred yards away. Just scoring a hit on a person from that distance was an achievement in itself; hitting a pinpoint target on that person was the stuff of a world-class marksman.

  Sophia dialed a number and raised her phone. “I have it,” she said. “I need someone to come and pick me up, though—there’s been a spot of bother with my ex-husband.” She listened to a surprised question from the other end of the line, then smiled. “No, the other one. Don’
t worry, Joe’s got him covered. Just get the car here. Quick as you can, thank you.”

  She disconnected, then walked to Chase, taking care not to cross the line of fire. “This actually works out rather well,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to make that whiny little Yank tart do what I need her to do, but now that I’ve got you, well…”

  “I dunno,” said Chase, forcing himself to stay calm and not rise to her bait. “The way things were between us when I left her, she’ll probably be glad to see the back of me.”

  Sophia smirked. “Nice try. But I could tell how she really felt about you—and how you felt about her. I knew you wouldn’t risk anything happening to her. She’ll do the same for you. Just because somebody drives you mad doesn’t mean you don’t care deeply for them.”

  “What would you know about caring for anybody?” Chase demanded. The jab worked, her face hardening. She turned and walked away, leaving Chase pinned in the sniper’s sights until a car pulled up outside and more of her men entered the station.

  20

  France

  Lying on a bench, Chase looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. The cellar he was in wasn’t precisely a cell, but it was windowless, the thick door securely locked. He knew from the brief occasions over the past day when they had opened it to give him food and water that there were at least two of Sophia’s men on guard outside.

  One of the sets of footsteps belonged to Sophia. The click of her high heels, the strutting, impatient pace… he remembered them well. So he wasn’t the least bit surprised when the door opened to reveal her, with an armed man at her side. It was the sniper from the dam, a dark-skinned, muscular giant wearing a black leather waistcoat, rows of silver piercings running back over his bald head.

  “Hello, Eddie,” said Sophia. Sultry, confident, back in command.

  “Hi, bitch-face.”

  She pouted. “Really, Eddie. There’s no need to be childish. Not when I’m about to reunite you with your beloved.”

  He sat up. “Is she all right?”