Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

Chase bared his teeth. “Well, I’m fucking well fucking swearing now, aren’t I, so what the fucking fuck does that fucking tell you?”

“I know what it tells me,” Nina said coldly. “I’ve always known. It’s a defense mechanism. That’s something else Hugo told me about you. You get crude and offensive whenever you can’t handle dealing with people emotionally and want to push them away. I guess it’s about the only thing Sophia gave you from the divorce.”

“That’s bullshit,” Chase spat. “Absolute fucking crap.”

“Then how come I’ve been hearing a hell of a lot more of it from you recently? Eddie…” She looked at him, wanting him to look back at her, softening her voice slightly. “You’ve fought in wars, faced terrorists, had so many people try to kill you that you’ve probably lost count… but the thing you’re most afraid of is talking to me?”

He was silent for a moment. Then: “I’m not afraid of anything. Fuck that, and fuck you too.” Before Nina could express her shock, he pressed on, a hint of quite deliberate cruelty in his voice that she’d never heard before. “You know what? After I get us out of here, I’m going to go and rescue Sophia, and if I’m lucky then maybe she’ll fall in love with me all over again. But even if she doesn’t, at least I’ll know that she’s not going to waste her life afterwards on some bloody idiotic, empty obsession.”

“How dare-”

Chase stopped walking, pulling Nina to a halt and turning to face her. “It’s not even a real obsession! For fuck’s sake, Nina! The only reason you ever gave a shit about this stupid fucking Tomb of Hercules in the first place was that you had a big hole in your life after you found Atlantis! This was just something to fill it! You had your new job, you had me , but that wasn’t enough for you because you didn’t have some great mythological quest anymore. All your life you’ve been trying to be like your parents because they had an obsession too, and look where they ended up because of it-dead in a fucking cave!”

Nina hit him. It wasn’t a slap, but an actual punch to his face. Although it hurt, he was more startled by it than anything. “Fuck you, Eddie,” she snarled, tears welling in her eyes. “Fuck you! You want Sophia? Have her, I don’t care. Go and pretend to be something you’re not with somebody who looks down on you. I don’t care anymore.” She turned away and limped down the slope, feeling pain shoot through her with each step but refusing to show it to Chase.

“Nina!” Chase called after her. “Nina! Shit.” He quickly caught up.

“Leave me alone, Eddie,” she said, angrily shaking him off when he tried to support her.

“I can’t right now, can I? We’re kind of in the middle of a situation. You remember, men with guns? Look, let’s get out of here first, and then we can…” He realized he had no idea what his true feelings were, anger and confusion still boiling inside him. “We can do… whatever.” He pointed at the hut. “Come on, it’s not far now.”

Nina stared at the building, refusing to look at him. She too was unable to resolve her feelings, a mixture of betrayal and humiliation failing to cover the true regret beneath. “All right,” she finally said. Reluctantly, she let him take hold of her again to ease the load on her leg. “Let’s go.”

The hut turned out to be a ranger station, a work-place-cum-residence for one of the Okavango’s game wardens. The vessel moored at the jetty was an airboat, a flat metal hull with an aircraft propeller mounted above its stern inside a protective metal grid, controlled from a spindly elevated seat in front of it. Chase had driven similar craft before; they were noisy and tricky to control, but their extremely shallow draft meant they could easily negotiate marshland that a conventional boat would find troublesome.

That the boat was there at all suggested the ranger station was occupied, which proved to be the case when Chase knocked on the door. An elderly, potbellied Botswanan wearing a khaki uniform of short-sleeved shirt and shorts opened it, looking surprised to have visitors, and more so as he took in their battered and bloodied state. “Hello?” he said cautiously.

“Hi,” said Nina as Chase helped her limp into the room. A radio was playing music. “We’re so glad you’re here! We had an accident, and we’re kind of stranded. Is there any chance you could give us a ride out of here?”

“Are you hurt?” the ranger asked, a moment later rolling his eyes as if wondering whether he could have asked a question with a more obvious answer. “Let me get the first-aid kit.”

“We’re okay; it looks worse than it is,” Chase tried to assure him, but with no luck. The man opened a cabinet and took out a medical kit, gesturing for them to sit down.

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Our truck rolled over,” Nina told him as she sat, being technically truthful. “So, about that ride?”

The ranger opened the kit and took out a bottle of antiseptic and some bandages. “The nearest place where you could get proper help is the diamond mine, about six miles south of here.”

“Actually, we were sort of wanting to go the other way. As in, as far from the mine as possible.” The ranger gave her an odd look. “Because, uh, we’re very strongly ethically opposed to diamond mining. You know, cartels, price-fixing, blood diamonds, all that. Diamonds are, um, for never! Yeah.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” Chase remarked quietly.

“Oh, shut up. Ow.” Nina winced as the ranger dabbed antiseptic onto the cut across her forehead.

“We do not have blood diamonds in Botswana,” said the ranger, offended.

Chase smirked. “You see, Nina?” he said patronizingly. “I told you we were in the wrong country to protest about blood diamonds, but would you listen? Women,” he added to the ranger, with a sigh and a shrug. The ranger nodded knowingly.

“Hey!” snapped Nina.

The ranger finished with the antiseptic, and carefully applied a bandage over the cut. He was about to turn his attention to the wound on Chase’s cheek when the music coming from the radio stopped and an announcer said, “We interrupt this program for some breaking news.” Nina and Chase exchanged glances.

A dramatic musical sting played, followed by a newsreader. “An attempt has been made on the life of President Molowe, in an attack which also saw the murder of Minister of Trade and Industry Michael Kamletese. The president was attending a ceremony at a diamond mine in the Northwest Province when the attack took place. The assassins are both white, a man and a woman in their thirties. They escaped the scene, but security sources have named them as Edward Chase and Nina Wilde-”

The ranger’s mouth fell open as he realized the identities of his visitors, but Chase had already pulled out the gun he’d taken from the dead guard at the processing plant and aimed it at him. “Okay, stay calm, mate.”

“What?” Nina spluttered. “What? We didn’t assassinate the minister of trade, we didn’t assassinate anybody! What the hell’s going on?”

“We’re being set up,” Chase told her, standing.

The ranger stared at the gun, wide-eyed. “Now, ah, you’re not going to do anything unreasonable, are you?”

“Not if you don’t. Where’re the keys to your airboat?”

“And I’m only twenty-nine,” Nina added indignantly.

“Media accuracy’s not really our biggest worry right now,” Chase told her as the ranger nervously handed him a set of keys. “You got a two-way radio?”

The ranger indicated a radio set at the rear of the room. Still keeping the gun aimed at him, Chase went to it and yanked its power cord from the wall before throwing it to the floor, putting his foot on the case and ripping out the other end of the lead. “Okay, take a seat, mate. Nina, tie him to the chair.” He tossed the cord to her.