Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

No response.

The fear returning, he started a second round of chest compressions, fighting not to rush. Ten, twenty, thirty. Tipping her head back again, another two breaths, anxiously waiting for any kind of reaction-

She convulsed, gasping hoarsely. Chase squeezed her hand. “Nina! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Nina took in several deep, whooping breaths, Chase feeling her pulse race as he held her hand more tightly. “Eddie…” she finally managed to wheeze.

“Are you okay?”

“You know something?” she whispered.

“What?”

“That’s the first time we’ve kissed in ages.”

Even though Chase couldn’t see her face, he could tell she was smiling. “Well, this is the second,” he said, lowering his head.

“Are you all right?” she asked when they finally moved apart.

“Fine as I can be,” he said. “Hold on, I’m going to get up. Can you stand?”

She cautiously moved her limbs. “I think so.”

Chase stood. The dust had settled somewhat, but the faint illumination from the ruined tomb was no brighter than before. He took her hand. “Ready?” On her vaguely positive response, he straightened, bringing her up with him.

“Ow, shit!” she complained. “Goddamn it, son of a bitch! Oh, God, my ankle hurts again. Shit!”

“Lean against me,” Chase told her, putting an arm around her waist to take her weight.

“Thanks,” Nina gasped. “Oh, that bitch. I’m so going to kick her ass.” She looked around, seeing nothing but the weak light in the blackness. “Where are we? Is that daylight?”

“Yeah,” said Chase, “but there’s about a hundred tons of rock in front of it. We’re in the room with the dog statue.”

“Then only the actual tomb collapsed, not the whole thing?”

“Far as I can tell.”

Excitement entered Nina’s voice. “Then we can still get out! All we have to do is backtrack through the labyrinth!”

“Well, that’d be dead easy if we could actually see anything. Unless you’ve got some night-vision goggles hidden in your knickers.”

She batted a hand lightly on his chest. “Don’t start. We only have to get to the room with Hippolyta, and then we can get a flashlight. One of Corvus’s men had a little accident after you left. They didn’t pick up his gear. Once we’ve got a light, we can work back through the maze just by following the tracks we made coming in.”

Now it was Chase’s turn to sound excited. “Did he have a radio?”

“I think so. But it’ll only be short range, surely?

Unless you were planning to ask Sophia for a ride in her helicopter.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Chase assured her. “You just try to remember how to get us back through the maze. I don’t want to survive all this only to make a wrong turn and fall down some bloody pit…”

To Chase’s relief, Nina was able to guide them back through the labyrinth.

By the time they finally emerged from the tomb, the sun was low on the horizon behind the hill. The temperature was still searingly hot, however, heat haze rippling the endless dunes.

Nina stayed in the shade of the rock passage as Chase warily emerged with the F2000 rifle he’d taken from the dead man in the chamber of Hippolyta, in case Sophia had left anyone lying in wait for them. But there was no sign of life other than flitting insects.

“So now what do we do?” Nina asked. “It’s a long way to the nearest town, and this”-she held up the man’s half-liter water bottle-“isn’t exactly going to see us through. Unless you know some kind of super SAS desert survival techniques?”

“I know something even better,” said Chase with a sly grin, switching on the radio and setting it to a particular channel. He looked skyward as he pushed the transmit key and spoke into it, Nina becoming more puzzled with each word. “Bravo, Romeo, Delta, Sierra, Whisky, Romeo, Delta. The pipes are calling. I say again…” He repeated the bizarre message twice more.

Nina’s eyebrows rose in utter incredulity. “What the hell was that?”

“That,” said Chase, “was Mac’s MI6 exit code. Every spook’s got one-it’s a sort of absolute last resort, ‘I’m in deep shit, get me the fuck out of here!’ message. Soon as MI6 hears one, they do whatever they can to extract whoever sent it. And since we’re not in the middle of a war zone or in some country with massive border defenses, hopefully they shouldn’t have too much trouble getting to us.”

Nina pointed at the walkie-talkie. “But how are they going to hear it on that little Radio Shack piece of crap?”

“They won’t. But the National Security Agency in the States will . American spooks are usually even bigger dickheads than British ones, but their technology’s bloody amazing-they can hear a sparrow fart on the other side of the Atlantic. They’ll have pinpointed where it was sent from by satellite, and they’ll know it’s an exit code, so they’ll pass it right on to their poodles at Vauxhall Cross.” He squinted up at the deep blue sky as if expecting to see one of the satellites passing overhead. “I’ll repeat it every hour, but they’ll have got it already. We just need to sit tight and wait for ’em to show up.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I don’t have money for a cab ride home,” said Nina.

“Well, not with that code-they’re a one-shot deal. But it’s useful to know.” He returned to the shade, sitting down next to Nina. “So, we’ve got a bit of time to kill. Anything you want to talk about?”

“I think there’s something we both need to talk about,” Nina said. They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Actually,” said Chase, “I don’t think you need to say anything. I do, though. About how I’ve been acting like a complete twat for the past few months.”

“I wouldn’t say complete …” Another exchange of looks, and they both smiled. “But I haven’t exactly been the model of understanding either. I got so obsessed with finding the Tomb of Hercules that I wasn’t paying any attention to anything-or any one -else. And it was purely for my own gratification, as well. Just because I couldn’t go public about finding Atlantis, I ended up fixating on something that I could brag to the world about discovering. And look where it got us.”

“You did find it, though,” Chase reminded her.

“For what it’s worth. You were right, I was putting it above everything else. And I’m sorry. And not just for the whole evil-ex-wife-steals-gold-and-nukes thing either.”

Chase sighed. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry too. This whole bloody mess is my fault. If I hadn’t gone running off to help Sophia…Christ.” He banged his head against the rock. “All this ’cause I thought my girlfriend wasn’t paying enough attention to me. Any normal bloke’d just go to a strip club with his mates, but no, I have to start World War fucking Three.”

“Sophia was right,” Nina said sadly, prompting Chase to look questioningly at her. “We weren’t communicating. I was obsessing, you had cabin fever…and it wasn’t that we didn’t tell each other. We just didn’t listen.”

“Well, I’m listening now. Just hope it’s not too late to make a difference.”

Her tone became hopeful. “I don’t think it is. What about you?”

“I think…” His voice filled with barely contained emotion. “There was a moment back there, after the roof fell in, that I thought I’d lost you. And… I think that was the worst moment in my entire life.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “We’ve had some problems, but fuck it. Once we get out of this, I want to fix them. Whatever it takes.”