Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

One prize was secured. But that still left the other. His boss had been very clear about wanting both.

He turned back to the cave. The smaller Crucible had gone.

The sight of the little hut’s door closing told him where the redhead had taken it. ‘You two!’ he called to the nearest of his men. ‘The woman’s in there — get her!’

The cramped shack offered no place for Nina to hide. Shelves held the equipment the monks needed to make use of the Midas Cave, but nothing more. It wasn’t even properly weatherproofed, with wide gaps between some of the planks.

And through one, she glimpsed two mercenaries hurrying towards her.

‘Shit!’ she gasped, searching for anything she could use as a weapon. There was nothing.

All she could do was run, but there was nowhere to go—

The stacked items started rattling against each other. Even over the noise of the helicopters, she heard the rising rumble from within the mountain.

Nowhere to go, but somewhere to go past …

Clutching the Crucible, Nina burst back outside. The tunnel was filling with vapour, the sound of the impending steam blast still growing. She looked back as she ran towards it.

The mercs were gaining.

Eddie saw the Mil’s cabin door open as the helicopter swept down to hover a hundred feet from the ledge. A man leaned out.

The Englishman instantly recognised his weapon as a Russian Dragunov sniper rifle, or a Chinese copy of one. His only chance of survival was to keep moving, and hope the chopper was unsteady enough in the shifting wind to affect the mercenary’s aim—

Muzzle flash. Eddie had already darted sideways, the bullet smacking like a hammer against the rock right beside him. The rifle tracked him. This time the Yorkshireman dropped to the ground as the next round impacted where he had been standing. The mercury canister was only a few feet away; some instinct prompted him to grab it as he rolled to dodge a third shot. He wasn’t even sure why — it wasn’t as if he could throw it at the helicopter…

Not throw. Shoot .

He sprang up and dived into the crevice. Steam roiled from the vent, the angry hiss of pent-up pressure growing ever louder. A round shrilled off the rock face, but the crack in the cliff was just deep enough to block him from the helicopter’s view. He jammed the container as far as he could into the opening, then turned and crouched, waiting.

The Mil returned, hovering directly in front of the crevice. It was close enough for Eddie to see the frustration on the sniper’s face — which changed to sneering pleasure as he took aim again. He hadn’t expected his prey to be so hard to hit, but now there was nowhere else for him to go…

Nina kept running, but the snow was like the ground in a nightmare, bogging down each step. Another look back. The two mercenaries were at the cave mouth, guns rising—

The rumble became a roar — and a searing blast of steam consumed them.

Eddie dropped flat as the thunderous noise reached a crescendo, tugging up his hood and burying his face in the snow to protect himself. ‘Start the reactor!’ he yelled.

With the vent plugged, the first jets of superheated steam gushed out around the mercury container with the shriek of a hellish kettle — but then the pressure became too much and the blockage was blasted clear.

It shot over the Englishman like a cannon shell — straight at the helicopter.

The pilot didn’t even have time to scream before it punched through his window and hit him. The impact left little of his skull intact, the gory spray of blood and pulp mixed with shimmering quicksilver as the canister burst open. His body slumped, foot spasming on the rudder pedal — throwing the Mi-2 into a spin.

The sniper had unfastened his lap belt for greater freedom of movement, but now he was granted the ultimate freedom as he was thrown from the open door. His terrified shriek echoed off the uncaring wall of rock as he fell to the ground far below.

The helicopter kept whirling, reeling drunkenly towards the higher ledge…

The thunder of steam escaping the cave faded, the billowing cloud wafting upwards to reveal the two mercenaries writhing on the ground. Their faces had been scoured red-raw, horrifyingly blistered, with strips of skin hanging off as if they had been flayed alive. Airways seared shut, they couldn’t even cry out in their agony. Nina felt a pang of appalled pity, even knowing that they had been about to kill her.

The venting steam had caught the other attackers by surprise. Most had dived to the ground in panic, one man on the fringe of the blast howling in pain at a burn to his cheek.

She looked around for Eddie — and instead saw the helicopter careering towards the ledge.

A moment of shocked paralysis — then, still clutching the Crucible, she ran for the ladder. Some of the stunned mercenaries reacted as she passed, only for any thoughts of shooting her to vanish in favour of self-preservation at the sight of the spiralling aircraft. Mercs and monks alike scattered.

The shrill of the Mi-2’s engine grew louder. The chopper plunged towards Nina as if drawn by a magnet—

She screamed and dived as it swept over her, blowing up a blinding swirl of snow in its downdraught before its rotor blades hit the unyielding cliff face. The impact flung the helicopter around, slamming it hard against the cave entrance. The fuselage was smashed flat, fuel tanks rupturing—

The aircraft exploded, scattering burning debris across the ledge. One mercenary was impaled through the torso by a javelin-sized shard of rotor blade. The ageing wooden beams inside the tunnel were blasted apart, the ceiling collapsing with a pounding boom of falling rock.

Burning shrapnel struck Nina’s shoulder. She cried out, rolling over to extinguish the flames. Her coat was torn and singed, but the pain was more from the blow than the fire.

She recovered the Crucible and sat up to see the Gurkha nearby, his guards sprawled around him. ‘Jayesh!’ she called. She was about to tell him to head for the ladder, but he was already moving, launching himself at the nearest dazed mercenary and cracking an elbow down on the back of his head with brutal force. The man slumped into the snow. Jayesh pulled his kukri from the merc’s belt and turned towards Nina — then suddenly hurled the blade.

It whooshed just inches above her head. Before she could even be shocked, she heard a solid chut and a truncated scream from behind. Whirling, she saw the gunman at the top of the ladder facing her, his AK dropping from numbed hands as blood pulsed from the machete embedded in his throat. He collapsed, twitching.

‘Go! Go down!’ Jayesh ordered, before yelling more commands in Nepalese. Amaanat hurried to the cliff edge and called for his fellows to follow him.

Nina held the crystal in the crook of one arm and rapidly descended the ladder, to her immense relief finding a familiar face waiting below. ‘Eddie! Oh, thank God!’

He saw the rip in her coat. ‘Are you all right?’

‘It’s nothing. What happened to the helicopter?’

‘Things got a bit steamy. Come on, we need to move before they come after us.’ He picked up the Kalashnikov from the snow as the monks came down the ladder.

‘No bullets?’ said Nina at his grimace when he checked the magazine.

‘Not enough. Is Jayesh okay?’ Single-shot cracks from an AK at the top of the ladder gave him an answer. ‘Yep, he is. Jayesh! We’re going!’

‘So don’t wait — shift your arse!’ the Nepali called back.

‘I guess he picked up some English slang in training,’ said Nina as Eddie led her to the first of the wooden platforms.