Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

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.

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.”