Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

“Yeah, I’m fine. Shoulder still hurts, but it won’t be a problem.”

“No, I meant…” She took his hand. “About Sophia. You might meet her in there.”

Chase smiled coldly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“No.” Nina shook her head. “You’re not. I know you’re not. Eddie, you might…you might have to kill her to stop her.”

“She’s tried to kill me. She tried to kill you.” Chase slipped a diving knife out of its sheath, examining the blade in the moonlight. “That makes her a hostile.” The knife made a nasty slicing sound as he thrust it back into the sheath. “Either she surrenders, or…”

“She’s not just some goon with a gun,” Nina reminded him softly. “Are you sure you’d be able to do it?”

Chase looked away from her, not answering. Nina was about to speak again when the burble of the outboard died down. They both looked around at Trulli.

“What’s up?” Chase asked.

“Safer not to get any closer,” Trulli replied. “We’re half a kilometer away-any nearer, they might get nosy.”

Chase nodded and donned his diving mask, then took a breath of air from the scuba tank’s mouthpiece to test that it was working. Satisfied, he moved to the side of the boat.

“It looks like a long way,” said Nina, handing him an underwater digital camera. “Will you be okay?”

“Half a click? No problem.”

“Eddie, I…” She trailed off.

“Hey.” He touched her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”

“You’d better be. Or I’m coming after you.” She pulled him to her, kissing him deeply before eventually releasing him, screwing up her mouth.

“What’s up?” Chase asked.

“You taste of rubber.”

He grinned, then popped in the mouthpiece and waved as he rolled backwards over the side of the boat and splashed into the sea. After taking a moment to orient himself, he swam away, quickly disappearing beneath the shallow waves.

“See you soon,” said Nina quietly after him.

Even in his battered state, it didn’t take Chase long to cover the five hundred yards, swimming only a few feet deep. He surfaced briefly when he was about a hundred yards short to check his bearing, then descended.

The seabed on which the habitat had been built, according to Trulli, was about twenty-five yards down. The Australian had sketched the experimental outpost for him: a hefty anchoring base of steel and concrete made up the lowest five yards, a central shaft housing an elevator, a stairwell and trunks for all the electrical and life-support systems rising vertically from it to the landing platform.

There were three more levels below the surface. On Trulli’s sketch they resembled doughnuts, a trio of tori making the habitat look to Chase more like some kind of space station than an underwater base. The upper and lower levels were the same size, the central one somewhat larger in circumference, but the basic designs were identical. Each was made up from four habitation sections shaped like swollen crescents, linked into a circle by another four connecting modules running outwards from the central core like spokes.

These levels weren’t Chase’s immediate concern, however. It was the concrete base that was his first destination. While some of the modules on the second circular deck had air locks, they were controlled by computers; being intended for use by tourists, the system had been designed to be as near foolproof as humanly possible so that, as Trulli had put it, “Some drongo can’t go ‘What does this button do?’ and flood the place.” Trying to open one of the locks would raise an alarm.

But there was another air lock, a maintenance hatch leading into the habitat’s base. And according to Trulli, it was manually operated-an unmonitored entrance.

Chase continued his descent among swirling shoals of fish as he neared the structure. Glowing ovals like blank eyes grew in brightness as he approached. He couldn’t help but be impressed as he got close enough to make out details. Trulli’s tourist-friendly design included lots of large acrylic resin windows set into the modules and smaller domes on their ceilings, through which he could make out the rooms inside.

He saw a figure moving in one of them. Caution and curiosity blending, he swam closer and peered down through one of the ceiling domes.

It was a control room. A man sat at a computer terminal; another walked back to his station with a cup in his hand. Chase carefully moved around the dome for a better look. As far as he could tell, there didn’t appear to be security monitors. All the displays were concerned only with the facility’s vital systems: tracking power consumption, checking the air. No CCTV cameras. One less thing to worry about once he got inside.

It occurred to him that he had the perfect opportunity to recce the habitat. He turned and swam around the inner circumference of the upper level, looking through each of the domes in turn.

No sign of Sophia, or the bomb. The other modules on this level were prototypes for different configurations of hotel suites. The first level checked, he descended and repeated the process on the second, largest deck. The habitation modules on this level seemed more technical in purpose, air locks and tubular docks for future tourist submarines jutting out from them. He saw a couple of more men repairing some piece of equipment in the first one he checked, nobody in the second-

Chase froze as he looked over the edge of the third section’s dome.

Sophia .

Not just Sophia. Komosa was there too… and so was the nuke.

What had originally been Corvus’s luxurious private suite was now being used as a glorified storeroom. The gold ingots recovered from the Tomb of Hercules were stacked in low piles along one curving wall, but the room’s three occupants-as well as Sophia and Komosa, there was the man with the goatee whom Chase had seen with Yuen at the factory in Switzerland-were not looking at them. All their attention was on the bomb.

The bearded man knelt before it as if praying, carefully inserting an electronic device into the rectangular slot in the bomb’s broad base. The device bore a small display screen and a keypad.

An arming system.

Chase’s heart raced, bubbles frothing from his mouthpiece with each breath. He’d been right. Whatever Sophia was planning to use the bomb for, she was going to do it soon.

His options were now down to just one. Even if he used the underwater camera, by the time he had returned to the boat, reached land and sent Alderley enough evidence to convince him to talk to MI6, Sophia could have left. With the tilt-rotor, she could take the bomb anywhere within a thousand miles in three hours.

So he would have to stop her. Alone.

The curve of the dome distorted his view of the room below, but he could see the bearded man entering a code on the keypad, a long string of numbers appearing on the display. An arming code: a security precaution. Even terrorists and rogue states wouldn’t want any low-ranking thug to be able to set off their expensive new toy.

The code entered, the man turned to Sophia and asked her something. He nodded at her reply and turned back to the keypad to enter another number.

Chase could see this more clearly. It was a time: 0845. Quarter to nine in the morning.

If Sophia planned to set it off in a city, that would be when the largest number of people were on the streets… and assuming the timer had been set for the current time zone, the bomb would go off in less than eleven hours.

The man turned a key in the arming device, and the screen went blank. He then stood and handed the key to Sophia. She regarded it for a moment, then said something that prompted a grin from Komosa. With that, she closed her fist around the key and walked away, passing out of Chase’s sight as she headed for the connecting module. The two men followed her.