Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

“The guy’s still a pain in the arse when he’s dead!” Chase exclaimed. “Okay, pull!”

They hauled at his arms once more, straining to break him free. The wet noise came again, this time accompanied by a drier crackling. “Come on!” Chase yelled at the body. “Come loose, you fucking great-”

With a sharp crack of bone as the rib that had been impaled by the bolt finally snapped, Komosa jerked away from the wall and toppled over. Off balance with their feet against the wall, Nina and Chase fell with him. Nina shrieked as the huge man landed on top of her, his dead hand splayed over her face like a giant fleshy spider. She batted it aside, revolted.

Chase kicked himself out from under the corpse, then lifted it off Nina. “Come on, we’ve only got-” He checked the timer. “Shit! We’ve only got a fucking minute!”

They each grabbed one of Komosa’s wrists, then pulled him across the hold. Too slowly. At six feet eight of solid muscle, he was no lightweight. Nina looked over her shoulder at the timer.

Fifty seconds…

“Are all-his bloody piercings-made of lead?” Chase grunted between each nightmarishly sluggish step. The bomb was six feet away, five, four…

Forty seconds…

“Okay!” Chase gasped as the corpse finally thunked against the bomb’s solid base. “Shove his arms in above the guns-we’ve got to block at least a foot of that gap!” He crouched and grabbed one of Komosa’s hands, forcing it through the rails. Nina did the same with the other.

Thirty…

Chase reached around to grab Komosa’s fingers and feed his hand out through the other side of the bomb. It didn’t move.

The Nigerian’s forearms were too thick to fit between the rails.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Chase moaned. He shifted position and gripped the dead man’s elbow, trying to shove his arm farther through the gap. Nina let go of the hand she was holding to help him.

No luck. Only the first few inches of Komosa’s wrist would go through before his bodybuilder’s muscles wedged tight against the steel.

Twenty…

Nina switched her efforts back to the other arm, managing to get the hand and wrist into the gap-but nothing more. She jumped back and desperately kicked at his elbow, trying to hammer the arm in deeper, but with no success. Ten…

“Fuckfuck fuck! ” spat Chase as the timer dropped into single figures. Even with the two guns and both of Komosa’s hands obstructing the rails, it wasn’t enough to stop the uranium slug from reaching a critical distance. He needed something else, something at least four inches thick.

But there wasn’t anything.

Except-

Five…

“Get back!” Chase yelled at Nina, shoving her away from the bomb. Three, two…

With a roar, Chase thrust his own left arm into the gap.

One…

Zero .

The explosive charge beneath the uranium slug in the bomb’s base detonated. The can-size cylinder of superdense U-235 leaped upwards like a cannon shell, fire spewing out beneath it as it cleared the base and raced up the rails, hitting the bolt gun and the Browning and carrying them upwards with it.

They hit Komosa’s dead hands, breaking bones with the force of the impact.

And slammed them up-

Into Chase’s arm.

Still roaring, he had tensed every muscle to prepare for the pain he knew was about to come-but it was still beyond anything he’d imagined as his forearm was smashed against the underside of the cap. Even with Komosa’s hands cushioning the impact, both the bones in his forearm broke as the slug flew up the rails towards the waiting supercritical uranium mass…

And stopped short.

Just over ten inches from the cap.

It hung there for a moment, then dropped back into the base, a doughnut of acrid smoke billowing out around it. The mangled bolt gun fell after it and clattered onto the deck-even the machined steel of the pistol had been bent by the impact.

Komosa’s hands were a crushed and bloody mess as they slapped down on top of the broken pistol. That just left Chase.

Eyes watering from the smoke, Nina scrambled over to him. “Eddie! Oh, Jesus, Eddie! Are you okay?”

Face completely white, he very slowly and carefully moved his right hand between the rails to support his left wrist, then even more delicately slid both arms out. Nina clasped her hands over her mouth in horror when she saw his arm, a sharp spearhead of broken bone jutting through the mottled, purpled skin, trails of blood running from the wound.

He whispered something, but she couldn’t make it out. “Eddie, I’m here, I’m here,” she assured him, helping him support the injured arm. “What is it?”

He whispered again, just loudly enough for her to hear. “Now that’s… sorted… think I’ll… have a nap,” he said, before his eyes closed and his entire body went limp.

Nina kept hold of him, protecting his arm. “You do that,” she whispered, kissing his cheek.

She stayed like that until an emergency search team in yellow radiation suits finally found them in the hold.

Well,” said Chase as Nina helped him through the door, “it’s good to be home.”

“I thought you didn’t like this apartment,” she said mischievously.

“You know what? So long as you’re there, we could live in a fucking cave for all I care.”

“Yeah, right. As long as it’s a cave with cable, I bet. Oh, by the way…” She pointed at the coat hook behind the door.

Chase’s bruised face split into a delighted smile. “Oh, fucking awesome!” he cried on seeing the new black leather jacket hanging there. He kissed her. “Thank you. Pity I won’t be able to wear it for a while…” He held up his left arm, which was encased in a plaster cast and supported by a sling.

“It’ll be there when you need it.”

“Fantastic. Don’t suppose you got me a new Wildey as well?”

She smiled. “You don’t need to compensate for anything, Eddie.”

“Tchah!”

She laughed and guided him to the couch.

Six days had passed since they had been rescued from the Ocean Emperor -six days of hospital treatment and radiation exposure tests, all of which had been within safe limits… and six days of intensive questioning by Homeland Security and the FBI. The numerous agents finally convinced that they had stopped the bomb plot rather than been a part of it, Nina and Chase had at last been released.

From what they’d been told, the Swiss and Algerian governments had been contacted so that Yuen’s factory and the remains of the Tomb of Hercules could be investigated. The Botswanan government had also been contacted, partly so that the uranium mine could be sealed off prior to a U.N. examination-but also, to Nina’s and Chase’s intense relief, to see that the murder charges against them were dropped.

Also to Nina’s relief, Matt Trulli had been rescued. He had released the Wobblebug’s emergency beacon just before climbing out of the hatch, managing to don a life jacket as the submarine sank. After spending a couple of hours adrift in the Atlantic before a Coast Guard helicopter located him, the unconscious Australian had hypothermia to add to his cracked rib, but was expected to make a full recovery.

The only loose end was Sophia. After leaving the yacht, the tilt-rotor had landed on Staten Island close to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge so she could view the explosion from a safe distance-but once it became clear that the bomb wasn’t going to go off, the aircraft took off again and headed for JFK airport. When its unusual behavior and lack of a flight plan raised an alarm with air traffic control, it had hurriedly set down on an empty plot of land not far from JFK in the outer borough of Queens and been abandoned, its passengers fleeing. Two of them were later arrested in a stolen car, but of the others-including Sophia-there had been no sign.