Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

Philippe’s gun clicked empty. Without a moment of hesitation Chase dropped it, still firing with his own automatic at the last clean room. One bullet took out both walls-he ran faster through the debris, free hand pulling out the key card as he charged for the door.

Guards were running after him. He fired a single shot into the throng, as much to force them to seek cover as to kill. They scattered.

Swipe-

Green light. Chime. Go!

He ran through and immediately turned down the corridor leading to the lobby. A security guard stood in his path, but Chase blew him away with a single shot before the man even had time to take aim.

The lobby was an anonymous corporate space with murals of microcircuitry on the walls. No more guards. Chase turned again, running for the double doors. Yuen’s Mercedes was still parked outside, the driver now standing outside the car, waiting anxiously for his boss.

Chase didn’t waste the second it would have taken to open the doors. Instead he simply fired a shot both to shatter the glass and to warn the driver to get the hell out of his way, and vaulted through the empty frame to land by the car’s open door. The driver had taken the hint, already making good time towards Bern.

He jumped into the Mercedes, finding the engine running; the driver had been prepared to get his employer to safety as quickly as possible. But Chase didn’t intend to head for safety as he floored the accelerator, the car fishtailing away from the microchip factory in a trail of smoking rubber.

He had to stop Sophia from getting away with the nuke. No matter what.

Chase knew where Sophia was heading. To get the bomb to her plane, she would have to take the cable car up to the top of the dam.

The lower cable car station was at the facility’s northwestern corner. He made a screeching turn onto the road running parallel to the river and powered towards it. The station was a tower with a high sloping roof, easily distinguishable from the industrial units.

A white van was parked in front of it. Its rear doors gaped open, the interior empty. The nuke had already been transferred.

Chase’s gaze flicked to the cable stretching away to the upper station. There were no cars moving along it.

Sophia hadn’t set off yet. There was still a chance to stop her.

Headlights flashed behind him, an SUV skidding around a corner in pursuit. A few hundred yards back, but it wouldn’t take long to catch up once Chase stopped the Mercedes.

And now movement ahead-the second bodyguard, Eduardo, appeared in the station’s entrance.

Chase ducked as a shot smacked into the windshield, spiderweb cracks instantly obscuring his view. The bullet zipped past him and hit the backseat with a whump of tearing leather.

A second bullet blasted the rearview mirror from its stalk with a tinkle of broken glass. Seven years’ bad luck, thought Chase, but one of them would run out of luck in considerably less time, well under seven seconds-

He swerved the Mercedes, charging at the ramp up to the entrance.

Eduardo fired two more shots, one gouging a hole in the hood, the other shattering the windshield.

A freezing gale hit Chase. He braced himself.

Engine screaming, the Mercedes plowed up the ramp. Eduardo was trapped in the doorway, nowhere to go-

The car rammed into him, folding him over the hood as the Mercedes hit the doors and crashed into the interior of the cable car station.

Chase stamped on the brake, but the car was already swerving uncontrollably towards a wall-

It hit at an angle, the left front fender crushed to scrap in an instant. Eduardo flew from the hood and bounced off the wall in a spray of blood.

The air bags all inflated simultaneously with rifleshot bangs of expanding gas. Chase felt as though he’d been punched in the face by the Michelin Man. Even over the crunch of the collision, he heard cartilage crackle inside his nose.

The car spun to a standstill. The air bag deflated and Chase sat up. His nose throbbed. It wasn’t a break-he knew that painful sensation all too well-but it felt like a hairline split that would be sore for some time.

But if he didn’t get out of the car fast, an aching nose would be the least of his worries. The pursuing guards would be here in thirty seconds, less…

He snatched up his gun and scrambled from the wrecked Mercedes. The white-painted interior of the cable car station was bland and functional, the only color a literal splash of red where Eduardo’s body had been flung against the wall. No sign of Sophia-or the bomb-but a flight of stairs led upwards.

Chase ran up them, emerging in a large and chilly open-ended room-the terminus for the cable cars. It was technically a “gondola lift” rather than a traditional cable car system, the gondolas able to detach from the line so passengers could board and disembark while other cars on the cable kept moving. Two boxy enclosed gondolas sat stationary, waiting to rejoin the line.

A third was in motion.

Sophia stood at its rear window. She smiled at Chase, waving as the gondola swept from the brightly lit terminus and out into the moonlit night.

Chase whipped up his gun, aiming it at her head. She didn’t move.

And neither did he. He couldn’t pull the trigger. Whatever she’d done, whatever she was planning to do, she had still once been his lover, his wife-

“Shit!” Chase snarled, angry as much at himself as at her. The gondola ascended, Sophia now just a silhouette in the window. The moving cable sang over the rumble of the machinery driving it.

The SUV squealed to a stop outside. Chase jumped into the first of the waiting gondolas and found a control panel by the front window. A large red button was marked “Starten.”

He hit it.

Chains and gears rattled. The gondola lurched along its track around the huge horizontal wheel at the end of the cable, then jolted as it slipped back onto the line. Ratchets clunked above him, and the gondola locked onto the steel cable to begin its ascent.

Sophia’s car was about a hundred feet ahead. They would reach the top station at most twenty seconds apart-meaning Sophia would barely have time to get clear of the gondola before he arrived, never mind transfer the bomb to another vehicle.

She looked back at Chase. He gave her a wave that was considerably less cheery than the one she’d given him. Sophia cocked her head in a once familiar expression of annoyance. Then she raised a hand, not waving this time but pointing at something in his gondola.

Or, he realized, behind it.

Chase rushed to the rear window. Another gondola had just mounted the cable. He could see three security guards aboard.

Armed guards.

And not just armed with handguns. They were carrying Steyr AUG A3 carbines-and were already opening the windows of their car, preparing to fire up the cable at him and turn his own gondola into Swiss cheese!

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-