Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

“I will return soon,” Popadopoulos assured her as he went to the door.

She jangled the chain. “Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

The member of the Brotherhood keeping watch in the lobby looked up as a stranger entered. Instantly alert, he surreptitiously brought his hand closer to his concealed gun. “Can I help you?”

The unexpected visitor appeared to be Chinese, a gray-haired, bull-shouldered man in his fifties with a long ponytail swinging behind him. He walked with a black cane, tapping the metal tip on the tiles. “I hope so,” he said in a throaty voice as he stopped, both hands resting on the cane. “My name is Fang. I’m looking for the offices of Curtis and Tom?”

The guard frowned. That was one of the Brotherhood’s shell companies, ostensibly headquartered in the building, but as far as he knew the law firm never did any actual business. “This is the right place,” he began, “but-”

Fang’s right hand flashed upwards with lightning speed, a thin line of silver trailing it. The guard shuddered, then collapsed to his knees, his clothes sliced cleanly open from crotch to neck-as were the skin and organs beneath. Blood and entrails gushed from the wound.

In a single smooth movement, Fang returned his blade to its sheath inside the cane, the sword making a metallic ringing sound as pure as a musical note. “Thank you,” he said to the dying guard. He took a gun from inside his long black coat, a compact Heckler & Koch MP-7 machine pistol with a fat silencer attached to the barrel. Three more men entered, all Chinese, drawing identical weapons.

“Find her,” Fang ordered, heading for the stairs.

Nina was already regretting her decision. Every time she tried to turn a page of the ancient text, she instinctively reached out with her left hand-only to have it jerked to a stop by the chain. She wondered about lifting the desk to pull the chain out from under the leg, but after an experimental shove decided against it. The table was every bit as heavy as it looked.

Chase would have been able to lift it easily, she thought-and her anger at him, forgotten in her concentration upon the Hermocrates text, flooded back. She still couldn’t believe what he’d done. Storming out was one thing, but storming out to China …

She hadn’t believed a word of his story, but when she’d called Amoros to demand answers he’d told her the same thing-it was an IHA security issue. She didn’t need to know.

Which, of course, had only made her angrier.

Fuming, she rapped her manicured fingernails on the desk, now unable to focus on the text-or anything except the idea of strangling Chase when he finally returned.

A bell suddenly rang, making her jump.

Was it a fire alarm? Worried, she made another attempt to lift the desk. She managed to slide it a little across the floor, but actually raising the unyielding leg high enough to pull the chain free proved more difficult. “Hey! Rocky! I could use some help here!”

No reply. But she heard shouting elsewhere in the building. She pulled at the chain again. Maybe if she put the book on the floor to give herself more slack-

A noise, closer than the shout. She froze.

It sounded familiar. Frighteningly familiar. Like a bullet smashing into a wall.

But it couldn’t be! There had been no gunshots…

Another shout from nearby. Only it wasn’t a shout, it was a scream-cut off abruptly by more of the flat cracks of bullets against wood and stone.

Popadopoulos sat in the lavatory, waiting for nature to run its course as he read his newspaper. There was no point trying to rush things, he’d long since learned. Things would take as long as they would take…

He raised his head at an odd noise, like rapid hammering. As he listened, he became aware of another sound at the limits of his hearing. Higher pitched-a bell?

The noise suddenly became louder as someone opened the door of the men’s room. It was definitely a bell…

His attention distracted, he lost his grip on a couple of pages and they slipped to the floor. Annoyed, Popadopoulos bent down to retrieve them-

The wooden door of the stall burst into splinters just above his head as a stream of bullets ripped through it, tiles on the back wall shattering and covering him with porcelain fragments.

Popadopoulos decided to keep his head down for a while longer. But at least now he didn’t need to wait for nature.

“Shit! Shit!” Nina threw herself against the table, trying to move it to block the door.

Someone was outside. The door handle turned…

With a final desperate effort, she forced the desk against the door, slamming it shut. Instinctively she ducked below the tabletop, pulling the book down with her-

The door erupted with ragged holes as whoever was on the other side blazed away at it with a silenced machine gun. Nina shrieked, throwing herself to one side. Bullets tore into the desk, blasting holes through the solid wood.

Armor piercers!

The desk wouldn’t provide her with any cover, and neither would anything else in the room-even if she could reach it.

The shooting stopped. The man outside shouted, calling others to him.

She wedged her shoulder under the edge of the table and pushed upwards, straining her muscles to their limits-

The leg lifted. Barely a centimeter-but it was enough.

Nina yanked the chain clear and grabbed the book, hunting for a way out or somewhere to hide. There was neither. She ran to the window and looked out. There was an alley behind the building, but it was five floors down and with no fire escape in sight.

There was a loud bang as someone barged against the door. The desk jolted. More blows, and the door began to open, a little at a time.

If she tried to push the desk back, they could shoot her straight through the door.

The book was like a lead weight in her arms. She’d underestimated how heavy it was; it felt more like thirty pounds than twenty, glass and brass and sheets of metal under the leather combining to turn the thing into her own personal anchor.

But on the other hand, it was solid…

Closing its clasp, Nina rammed one end of the book against the window, shattering the glass. She knocked out the largest shards and looked back. The door was open wide enough for her to see a man with Asian features on the other side peering through at her. His lips curled in expectant triumph as their eyes met and he read her trapped expression. He tried to squeeze a gun through the gap-

Nina scrambled through the window.

There was a very narrow ledge outside, a Deco demarcation of floor level, but it was barely wider than her foot. And apart from the window frame, there was nothing to hold on to. There was no way she could reach another window.

But there was a telephone line, a thick trunk cable serving the whole building, running down from her building across the alley…

Behind her, the banging started up again. The desk scraped across the floor as the door was forced open.

She was over forty feet up, and if she fell she would almost certainly die.

Not that she had a choice.

“Oh, crap …” Nina gasped as she hoisted the book over the phone line, then grabbed the chain as tightly as she could-

And stepped off the ledge.

She dropped almost two feet before the drooping cable snapped taut. Fire seared through her left wrist as the cuff ground against it.

Nina hung on as she slithered down the line. The alley whirled below. She was too scared to scream, watching helplessly as the wall of the building opposite rushed at her-

She pulled up her feet just before impact. The heel of her left shoe broke with a loud crack as it slammed into the brickwork, the jolt driving a hot spike of pain into her knee. The book was jarred from her grip and shot upwards, the chain rasping over the phone line. She fell with a shriek until the book slammed against the cable. The cuff bit into her wrist.