The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  A grenade—

  Mac saw it arc through the air towards him. He turned and dived into the bathroom.

  Nina loosened her grip and slid down the rope, barely able to control her descent. Her hands seared. Above, she heard a clack as the grenade landed just outside the bathroom.

  Mac dropped his gun and the makeshift crutch, using his one good leg to propel himself over the rim of the bath—

  The grenade detonated.

  This was no stun grenade, but a lethal explosive.

  The balustrade was blasted to pieces, shattered wood spinning through the air into the hall below. The blast ripped through the open door of the bathroom, the window blowing out.

  The rope shuddered in Nina’s hands, then went slack, severed. She was still more than ten feet above the unforgiving marble floor, and unprepared for the fall. She plummeted—

  And landed on the body of the man Mac had shot in the thighs. The impact knocked the breath from her, her ankle flaring with pain.

  Gasping, she looked up as the echo of the explosion died away. The man who had thrown the grenade was running back down the stairs after her. On the top floor, she saw another black-clad figure toss something considerably larger than a grenade onto the floor outside the bathroom, then run like hell back into the library, slamming the door behind him.

  Covered in broken pieces of wood and plaster and tile, Mac sat up. The thick sides of the old bath had shielded him from the direct blast of the grenade. Dust and smoke swirled through the room, but he could still see clearly enough to make out what was outside the broken doorway, a squat cylinder lying on its side on the smoldering carpet…

  “Bastards!” he hissed.

  He knew what it was. He’d used similar devices in his own career.

  It was a fuel-air explosive charge. An antiterrorist weapon, designed to clear large but confined spaces like cave systems by releasing a cloud of highly flammable vapor and then detonating, creating a massive fireball that raced outwards to fill every nook and cranny, consuming whatever lay in its path.

  And it would work just as well in a London house as an Afghan cavern.

  A gray mist spewed from the cylinder.

  “Nina!” he yelled as he stood. “Get out of the house! Get out!”

  The desperate urgency in his voice spurred Nina to action even more than the sight of the gunman racing down the stairs. She jumped up, fear overcoming the pain as fragments of stained glass stabbed into her bare foot, and sprinted for the front door.

  The man charged after her, rapidly closing the gap—

  A small electrical arc cracked across the nozzle of the explosive cylinder.

  A millisecond later, the vapor cloud ignited, expanding at near-supersonic speed into a ball of liquid fire that incinerated everything it touched as it swept outwards to fill the bathroom, the upper landing, the entire hall—

  Nina cleared the front door and ran down the stone steps as the bomb detonated. She threw herself flat.

  The house’s windows exploded in rapid floor-by-floor succession, huge jets of flame bursting through them and boiling skywards. Another burst of fire erupted from the front door as the gunman hurtled through it, the blast propelling him over Nina to land in the street. He yelled and rolled frantically onto his back, trying to smother his burning clothes.

  Nina looked up. One of her attackers was occupied with his own survival, the other had escaped through the back of the house and would have to run around the block to reach her—this was her chance to flee and find help.

  She stood—

  And a metal dart thudded into her thigh.

  There was a white van parked across the street, another man climbing out of its side door with an odd-looking gun in his hand.

  “Son of a bitch …” Nina just had time to mumble before blackness swallowed her senses.

  17

  Switzerland

  Chase panned the binoculars up the length of the valley. The moon was high in the night sky, the snowy mountains bathed in a vivid ghost light—a spectacular sight.

  But natural beauty was the last thing on his mind. Instead, he focused on something man-made and charmlessly utilitarian.

  “So Yuen’s in there?” he asked, breath steaming in the cold air as he surveyed the factory complex sprawled across the valley floor below.

  “As far as I know,” said his companion. Mitzi Fontana was a long-haired and pretty Swiss blonde in her early twenties. “He’s been there a few hours. I persuaded one of the staff to tell me when he left the hotel.”

  Chase took a moment to glance at the low-cut blouse beneath her partly fastened coat. “I won’t ask how.”

  She smiled. “Oh, Eddie! They had no luggage with them, so they haven’t checked out. This is the only place they could have gone.”

  “Unless they wanted some quiet time on the piste, but somehow I don’t think Yuen came here for the skiing. Any chance he left before we got here?”

  “My friend at the hotel promised to call me if he came back. So far, he hasn’t.”

  “Could be en route, but …” There was no sign of any traffic traveling down the road to the nearest town, two miles away. Chase raised the binoculars to confirm that there was no other way out; about half a mile beyond the factory, the valley was abruptly truncated by a sheer wall of concrete, a hydroelectric dam. The generating station at its base was lit up as brightly as Yuen’s facility.

  More lights at the top of the dam caught his attention, a building right at the edge of the sheer valley side. “What’s that up there?”

  “A cable car station,” Mitzi told him.

  Chase perked up. “A cable car?” Now that he knew what to look for, he picked out a seemingly gossamer-thin line catching the moonlight, running from the building down to a similar station within the factory’s boundary fence.

  “Please, Eddie,” she sighed, “don’t start talking about Where Eagles Dare.”

  “Aw, come on, it’s one of my favorite films—and the scenery’s perfect for it.” He laughed briefly, before returning to business. “Where does it go?”

  “There’s an airstrip about a mile from the dam.”

  He frowned. “So Yuen could have left that way?”

  “No, I checked. There is a private jet at the airstrip, and it has not left yet.”

  “That’s something, then.” He turned the binoculars back to the factory. Security looked tight; tighter than he would have expected for just a microchip manufacturing facility. “What about Sophia? Is she with him?”

  “According to my friend at the hotel, there was a woman with him, but he did not get a good look at her—she was taken straight from the suite to the car by two bodyguards.”

  “It has to be her. Do you know what kind of car it was?”

  “A black Mercedes. I’m afraid I don’t know the model.”

  “Whatever’s the most expensive, I bet.” Chase lowered the binoculars. “Thanks for helping me with this, Mitzi. I know it was short notice.”

  “And rather pricey!” She nodded at the bundles in the backseat of her SUV. “My skydiving club was rather surprised that I needed a parachute so urgently. And somehow I suspect I won’t be able to return it for a refund …”

  “I’ll pay you back,” Chase assured her.

  She patted his arm. “I’m joking, Eddie. I already owe you much more than the price of a parachute.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything. I’ll take care of it when I get back.”

  “If you get back,” Mitzi said hesitantly. “Eddie, don’t you think you’re rushing into this?”

  “If I didn’t rush into things, you and your mother wouldn’t be alive,” he snapped, more harshly than he’d meant to. “Sorry. But Sophia’s down there, and I’m going to get her out. That’s all there is to it.”

  “In that case, all I can do is wish you good luck and help you on your way,” she said resignedly. “But Eddie, please don’t blow up the dam. My grandparents live down the
valley.”

  He grinned. “I’ll try not to.”

  Mitzi laughed, then suddenly fixed him with a stern stare. “Really. Don’t.”

  “I dunno where I got this reputation,” Chase said with a nonchalant shrug, then opened the car’s rear door and moved the parachute aside. He nodded approvingly as he saw a gun and a hand grenade.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “I go rock climbing as well. One of my instructors used to be in the army. He kept a few souvenirs.”

  Chase grinned. “Skydiving, rock climbing … you’re turning into a right action girl.”

  “All because of you, Eddie,” Mitzi told him, beaming.

  Slightly embarrassed by her attention, Chase picked up another bundle which he unrolled and spread out on the ground. Then he took an aerosol can and shook it.

  Mitzi wrinkled her nose as he knelt and started work. “I see that’s something else I won’t be able to get a refund for…”

  A few minutes later, Mitzi pulled her Porsche Cayenne out of the scenic vantage point from where she and Chase had surveyed the valley onto a four-lane highway slicing through the mountains. At the height of the skiing season it would be packed with vacationers, but now, in the middle of the night, it was deserted.

  Ahead, stretching across the valley in the direction of Bern, was a bridge, an elegant span with a single central support rising more than five hundred feet above the valley floor. Mitzi checked that the road was clear, then accelerated towards it. “Are you ready?” she shouted to Chase.

  He wasn’t in the SUV with her—he was on top of it, crouched on the roof with one hand holding the roof rack. “Go for it!” he yelled, extending his other arm out behind him for balance. The one-piece garment he was wearing over his clothes rippled as the wind rapidly increased, the car passing forty, fifty miles per hour as it reached the bridge.

  Mitzi gingerly drifted the Cayenne almost to the barriers at the center of the highway, still accelerating. Sixty, and they were coming up to the center of the bridge, its highest point—

  “Now!” Chase bellowed.

  Mitzi swerved the car hard across both lanes, seemingly on a suicidal course to plow straight through the concrete wall—then at the last possible moment swung back into line, the whole vehicle swaying—

  Giving Chase an extra boost as he leaped from the roof into empty space.

  He threw his arms and legs wide into a star shape, the triangles of fabric stretching between his wrists and waist snapping open like the wings of a bat. Another nylon wedge between his legs filled with air as he fell.

  The wing suit couldn’t stop his descent—the amount of extra lift the material provided was far too small—but it could slow it.

  And let him direct it.

  Chase tilted his outstretched arms to bring himself into a turn. The lights of the microchip plant wheeled into view below.

  Not as far below as they had been just seconds before. Although he was now gliding up the valley at an ever-increasing pace, his rate of vertical descent was practically pure free fall.

  Icy wind slashed at his face. He had already dropped below 350 feet, three hundred—

  He tore at the rip cord.

  The parachute erupted from its pack like a slow-motion explosion, black as the night sky. Chase braced himself, swinging to an upright position as the straps yanked tight, and grabbed the control lines.

  The barbed-wire top of the high perimeter fence swept past below. The black paint he had sprayed over the vivid yellow panels of the wing suit would reduce the chance of his being seen, but if some guard had heard the thump of the parachute opening and recognized its cause, he could still be spotted, highlighted by the glow of the moon…

  He shot over the roof of a building. If he descended any farther he would come down in the middle of a brightly lit area—

  Chase tugged the lines to collapse the chute, legs out ahead of him as he slammed onto the roof and rolled to absorb the impact. Pain bit at the stitches in his calf. He gritted his teeth, trying to suppress it.

  Even as he shrugged off the parachute he had already drawn the black Steyr GB pistol. He turned in a fast circle, hunting for exits from the roof.

  The top of a ladder rose above one corner. He aimed the gun at it, listening for movement below. If he heard the clang of ascending feet, what he’d hoped would be a stealth mission would turn into a battle…

  No clanging, no footsteps. The only noise was the faint rush of the wind and the whine of electrical equipment.

  He relaxed, slightly, and unzipped the wing suit, stepping out of it to reveal nothing but black beneath; black jeans, black polo neck, his battered leather jacket. After bundling up the parachute, he trod quietly across to the ladder and looked down.

  The building below contained offices, all but a few of the windows dark. Across the broad road was a large white two-story structure. Its windowless walls suggested industrial use, and from the large number of airconditioning units on the flat roof Chase guessed it was a chip fabrication facility. The most expensive microchips could be rendered utterly worthless by the tiniest speck of dust introduced during the manufacturing process, so the air had to be filtered to be as pure as possible.

  He looked for signs of life. At the far end of the road to the right was a high chain-link fence, beyond it the river running from the dam. A white SUV drove past, then disappeared behind another building. A security patrol, checking the perimeter. Chase grinned. They obviously hadn’t expected anyone to drop in from above.

  He turned and slid down the ladder, then brought up his gun again. Still no sign of anyone. He raced across the road to the corner of the industrial building and darted into a long alley.

  Chase knew the factory’s general layout from a printout of an aerial photo Mitzi had taken from the Internet. He reached the end of the alley. There should be another, larger complex of buildings ahead …

  He was right; there were more of the anonymous structures across another road. And something else—a black Mercedes S600 parked in front of one of the buildings, a bored-looking chauffeur at the wheel.

  “Good to see you again, Dick,” Chase whispered. He looked back at the building. Unlike the one he was flanking, this had windows on its upper floor, only one of them illuminated. There was a set of large glass doors close to the Mercedes, but there was also a security guard visible in a reception area beyond and a video camera staring down at the doors. That entrance was not an option, then.

  But there was a ladder running up the side of the building, away from any cameras …

  He checked the road again, then sprinted across it to the ladder and rapidly ascended.

  The roof was a metal forest of air-conditioning ducts and rumbling filtration units. There were no skylights or other possible access points that he could see, so instead he went to the front of the building and, lying flat, looked down over the edge. A darkened window was directly beneath him.

  Chase inched forward until his waist was level with the edge of the building, then carefully leaned down and peered through the window. The glare from the streetlights was enough to let him see that it was an office, screen savers drifting on idle computers.

  The nearest lit window was several rooms away. He hoped nobody would hear him …

  He pressed one hand flat against the glass. Then with the other he sharply rapped the butt of his gun against the window to punch a jagged hole by the side of the frame. The glass beneath his palm shuddered and cracked, but he had absorbed most of the vibration, preventing the whole pane from shattering and dropping noisily to the ground.

  He carefully reached through the hole and fumbled with the handle. The window swung open. Chase extracted his hand, then quickly lowered himself through the gap. Feet thumping onto the floor, he shut the window and drew his gun again.

  The corridor outside was lit by cold compact-fluorescent lights.

  He advanced quickly, gun in hand. At the end, a flight of stairs led downwards, and o
pposite it were doors to male and female lavatories.

  He looked down the stairs. At the bottom, a corridor led away to one side, presumably to the lobby. There was another door directly opposite the foot of the stairs, but Chase instantly saw that it had an electronic lock. A card reader. If he wanted to get onto the factory floor, he would need somebody’s ID. “Bollocks,” he muttered.

  He opened the door next to the stairs and entered an office. The overhead lights were off—but there was still plenty of illumination. One whole wall was glass, overlooking the building’s interior.

  Chase crouched and moved closer to the window, using a chair as cover as he looked out over a huge space. Rows of brilliant lights in the ceiling lit every corner with an intense, even whiteness. To each side of a central aisle were dozens of rectangular chambers, their walls and ceilings all glass.

  Clean rooms. Each unit had an air lock at one end, and pipes leading up to the filters on the roof. Inside, newly manufactured silicon wafers—each containing dozens or even hundreds of chips—were being carefully examined and tested for flaws.

  Tested by humans, not machines. To Chase’s dismay, the night shift at the plant was busy; he could see at least two dozen people, all covered head to toe in white “bunny suits,” their faces hidden behind filter masks. So much for sneaking through the building …

  The thought was instantly dismissed from his mind as he saw someone else. Yuen.

  He was in another glass-walled room on the first floor at the far end of the factory, some kind of executive conference chamber to judge from the large circular table and black leather high-backed chairs. He appeared to be engaged in a discussion with two other men, one suited and the other in a white lab coat. There were two more men in black suits on the far side of the table, apparently not involved in the conversation—Yuen’s bodyguards, he guessed—and seated between them—

  His heart pounded.

  Sophia!

  He backed away from the window. He was sure he could handle the two bodyguards flanking Sophia, and he doubted either of the other men with Yuen would pose a threat, especially with a gun waved in their faces. As for Yuen himself, he was going to get a proper kicking, whether he offered any resistance or not.