Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

Another length of flaming wood hit the floor. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ Nina cried.

The gunfire paused as one of the mercenaries ran down the hallway towards them. ‘How?’ Eddie demanded. ‘If we come out from behind this thing, they’ll shoot—’ An idea came to him. ‘Okay, we don’t come out from behind this thing!’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, but he had already risen to a crouch. He put both hands against the prayer wheel and pushed.

Metal creaked, and the cylinder started to roll. ‘Help me!’

Nina shoved the phone into a coat pocket, then slapped her palms against the metal beside Eddie’s and dug her soles into the carpet. The prayer wheel picked up speed. They pushed harder—

The advancing mercenary opened fire again. More bullets pounded the cylinder, stitching lines around its circumference as it rolled towards him. ‘Come on, come on !’ Eddie yelled as his pace increased to a hunched jog. ‘Faster!’

‘I’m fastering!’ she snapped. The gunfire ceased. Eddie risked raising his head. The mercenary had burned through another magazine, clumsily changing it before looking back at his targets — and realising they were closing on him. He pulled back into a gap between two prayer wheels.

‘Stop!’ Eddie told Nina. She immediately halted and ducked. He kept going, sidestepping to one end of the rolling drum and pushing harder on that side. It changed course, angling towards the wall.

The mercenary poked his head out to see the great cylinder growling towards him. He fired again. Eddie dived flat to the carpet, letting the juggernaut’s momentum carry it onwards—

It struck the mount of one of the standing prayer wheels, knocking it over to pound down on the mercenary’s head like a sledgehammer. He fell to the floor — and the bullet-riddled cylinder rolled over him. The man’s scream was abruptly cut off by a horrible crack as his ribcage collapsed under the weight.

The big wheel kept on turning. It deflected off another stand to continue down the hall. The second man hastily retreated through the doorway as it thundered towards him—

Another crack, much louder — and the floor gave way, carpet tearing and planks splintering apart as the prayer wheel plunged through to the stone corridor below with an almighty clang. More candles went flying, tapestries now alight at both ends of the hallway.

‘Bloody hell, it’s Flat Stanley,’ Eddie said, glancing at the corpse as he stood. ‘Nina, come on! Down the hole!’ They ran to the ragged gap in the floor.

The second mercenary reappeared at the doorway—

Nina and Eddie leapt into the hole as bullets cracked above them.

They landed on crushed boxes eight feet below. The now-buckled prayer wheel had flattened more supplies before blocking a door at the passageway’s end.

Nina helped her husband up. ‘We can get out down there,’ she said, pointing back at the stairs they had descended earlier in the day.

‘If we can reach them!’ he replied, hearing footsteps above. He pushed Nina ahead of him into the narrow aisle between the stacked provisions as the merc fired down into the hole. Flour exploded from ruptured sacks behind them.

A thump told Eddie that the man had jumped down into the stone hallway. He toppled the stacks in his wake to block their attacker’s line of fire. ‘Down!’ he yelled as the Kalashnikov’s flat hammering started again.

Wood splintered, bullets tearing into boxes of canned food and sacks of dried rice. But none of the rounds made it through the makeshift blockade. The shooting stopped, the mercenary snarling in frustration as he clambered after them.

Loud cracks echoed from the blazing hall above as more wooden supports surrendered to the flames. Nina weaved down the claustrophobic aisle, finally reaching the stairwell — only to stop in alarm as she looked up it. ‘Oh, great!’ The fire had already spread beyond the prayer wheel hall, the stairs ablaze.

Eddie tried the door to the room containing the gold furnace. Locked — but there was no keyhole, so it had to be bolted from inside. He pounded on it. ‘Hey! Let us in!’

No reply, and the door remained firmly closed. Crashes came from the corridor as the mercenary kicked aside obstructions. ‘In here!’ said Nina, opening the neighbouring storeroom door. ‘There might be something we can—’

She gasped as she was driven back by a wave of heat. A fallen beam from the floor above had punched through the ceiling, setting the room ablaze. The mere act of opening the door had fanned the flames, streams of fire swirling through the air like miniature dragons. ‘Or maybe not!’

Eddie shielded his face as he looked into the smoky storeroom. Its contents were all related to the furnace: crucibles of various sizes, moulds, bags of sand… and numerous cylinders of propane. As he watched, the valve on one of them started to squeal in protest at the rising temperature, jetting out a thin stream of gas.

But he saw something else: a large waist-high metal chest, faded olive-drab paint covered with stencilled symbols. Chinese, a container for some sort of military supplies that had passed through various hands to end up here. He hurried to it and opened the lid. Cardboard cartons of what he guessed were metalworking consumables were inside, taking up about a quarter of the space…

‘Nina, get in!’ he shouted. ‘Quick!’

‘Are you crazy?’ she cried. ‘We’ll get cooked!’

‘It’s the only way!’ He strained to tip the chest on its side, spilling its contents across the floor. He was surprised to see that some rusted old rifle parts had been at the bottom, but had no time to wonder what they were doing in a monastery, instead shoving the case into a corner near the door.

Nina was about to voice another objection when the crash of falling boxes warned her that the mercenary had forced his way through the obstacle course. She darted into the storeroom. Eddie slammed the door as a bullet splintered the frame behind her. ‘Get in!’

She clambered into the overturned chest and curled up as tightly as she could. Eddie squeezed in with her and swung down the lid. ‘If the fire doesn’t kill us, he will!’ she gasped, the heat already rising. ‘It’s not as if there are many places we could have hidden!’

He gripped the lid’s inner lip, holding it shut. ‘He won’t even get in here.’

‘Why not?’

‘You ever seen Backdraft ?’

‘What, the movie?’ She suddenly realised his plan. ‘Oh my God! We’ve been together for ten years — how did I not notice that you were completely fricking insane ?’

The mercenary kicked open the door—

Fresh air rushed in — and the fire became an inferno.

The man’s skin was seared from his face as a wave of flame gushed over him, but he didn’t even have time to scream before the leaking propane tank exploded, taking its neighbours with it. The blast tore through the doorway and blew a hole in the monastery’s outer wall, hurling the mercenary’s charred remains into the open as debris rained down on the snowy slope outside.

The chest was slammed against the corner, its lid buckling — but it held, the pressure actually forcing it even more tightly closed. Eddie nevertheless maintained his hold until the noise from outside died down, then cautiously opened it a fraction of an inch. He took their not being instantly incinerated by an inrush of flame as a good sign and pushed it wider.

The little in the storeroom not already ablaze had joined the rest of its contents. But the smoke was swirling upwards through the now-larger hole in the ceiling as clean air was drawn through the ragged gap in the outer wall. The explosion had also blasted open the furnace room’s entrance, the thick wooden door hanging off its hinges. Eddie stood up, then helped Nina out of the chest. ‘We can get outside. You’ve still got the phone?’