Beecham deployed the first of the flash bangs into a tightly packed group of Wolf-Heads. He could not see into the chamber, and Franks did not want to get any closer. There were seven of them, and there was a risk of being heard.
The rearguard of Wolf-Heads dropped to the ground, disorientated. Others, further into the chamber, tried to fight on, despite the instant deafness, disorientation, and visual impairment.
Carter dropped hard to a low crouch, wrapped his arms around the canisters strapped to his chest as best he could, and tucked his head low. He hoped that none of the canisters were damaged. If they were, he prayed for a quick and painless death.
A moment after he went down, Carter felt a weight drop onto his shoulders, and a moment after that he felt a tugging on the strap of the knapsack on his back. He reached around, blind, and grasped the knife that was sawing through the strapping. Part of the exposed blade cut deep into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Instinctively, he let go and threw back his head, hard. It connected with the Wolf-Head’s face with a crack, breaking the man’s nose and sending him reeling.
As the rearguard of the Wolf-Heads peeled away, towards the Division Eleven squad, Beecham deployed a second flash bang. It penetrated deeper into the chamber, momentarily pausing the skirmish.
With fewer bodies between him and the entrance, and the burst of bright light, Beecham also got a good view into the chamber.
“Bloody hell!” he said, as he took in the scene, as if it was some fantastical tableau. He was rooted to the spot for a moment, as his colleagues surged towards him, weapons raised, ready to take out the Wolf-Heads.
Having removed the four remaining canisters in the rack and placed them on the platform, Baris and Rugova set to work on the final rack of canisters. It was below the last batch and to the rear of the payload bay. It was the most difficult to reach, in the tightest space.
“It’s enough,” whispered Rugova.
“Nothing’s enough so long as there are canisters in the plane,” said Baris. “We do what the boss tells us.”
“And we die.”
“So we die for the cause,” said Baris. “It will happen anyway, one day.” He beamed at Rugova, and put his hands back inside the crushed fuselage.
He reached for the cradle furthest from him in the top row of the rack, put both hands around the nose of the canister, and pulled. Nothing. He tried turning it anti-clockwise, but it wouldn’t move. He adjusted his grip on the canister and tried again, this time rotating clockwise. The canister moved a few millimetres, metal squealing on metal.
“Stop,” said Rugova. “You have to stop.”
“It’s moving,” said Baris.
“No.”
Baris took his hands out of the payload bay and turned to Rugova.
“What?” he asked. “You want to do it?”
“If it breaks, we die,” said Rugova.
“Easy ones first?” asked Baris.
Rugova wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.
“Okay,” he said.
Baris put his hands back inside the airplane and tried the canister to the right of the one he’d just been handling. After some manoeuvring, it began to make the scraping sounds that had signalled the removal of the last four cylinders, and it was retrieved after a couple of minutes. The other two in the same row were collected in a similar fashion.
Baris turned his attention to the row beneath. The first two canisters barely moved, and when they did, they squealed horribly. Rugova insisted that he stop, but Baris became impatient. So did Vata.
“What are you doing? What’s going on up there? Where are my canisters?” he called out to them.
Baris turned and waved to his boss.
“You see?” he rasped at Rugova. “Coward!”
He plunged his hands back into the broken plane and went straight for the canister on the top row, furthest from him, the first that had squealed, the first that Rugova had rejected.
He took the nose firmly in his hands and rotated it a few millimetres anti-clockwise to its original position. It squealed exactly as it had before. Then it stuck. He adjusted his grip and rotated hard in the opposite direction. The shriek of metal on metal was appalling.
Tugging and twisting, Baris wrestled with the canister, wiggling it a centimetre or two in either direction, exerting as much lateral and forward pressure on it as he could to try to free it from the constricting cradle. His bared teeth were gritted, and beads of sweat gathered on his forehead from the exertion. The last squeal ended in the sound of tearing metal and a faint hiss.
Baris pulled his hands away, his face turning to Rugova in a wide-eyed stare. Rugova’s mouth dropped open.
A great ball of lightning and a crash of thunder filled the forest.
Lara’s senses were almost overwhelmed by the majesty of it. The Wolf-Heads fell away around her, blinded, deafened, disorientated. Lara was no longer under attack. It was a sign. This was only the beginning. The battle would begin again, and it would rage more fiercely; her adversaries would grow in force and numbers. She needed to redouble her strength, to grow in might and vigour. She must prevail.
There was another great crash of thunder and another bolt of lightning.
Lara stood tall, feet shoulder-width apart, firmly planted in the rich sod, her home soil. She threw back her head, her hair swinging in the breeze, and cast her eyes up into the canopy and the sky beyond. She raised her arms at her sides, Gwynnever’s sword...her sword...extended wide, the blade gleaming in the unearthly light.
The words came from somewhere deep in her heart. She did not think them, she only felt them, and they poured from her lips without her bidding.
Right must be done for the good of the world. Peace and order must be restored and preserved. She did not seek the fight, but when it was laid at her door, she would defend tolerance, compassion, and peace. There was no room for the ambitious, the ruthless, the unforgiving in her world.
After the words came the energy. It drove out of the ground and infused everything it touched, everything from her world.
Lara’s beloved wolves stopped circling, sat, and looked up at her, their paws reaching into the sky. Then they began to stretch and morph into the air, becoming one with it and with each other, forming two dense clouds, one grey, one tawny. They were the very essence of wolves, their claws and teeth, their savage, carnal rage.
The wild boar stopped snuffling and gazed at Lara. Their eyes fixed on her, their forms began to mingle and shift with the breeze around them. They grew into one great, airy beast—broad shoulders, a massive hump, and great, gleaming tusks—ready to defend its mistress. It was as light as air, there and gone in an instant.
Lara turned to her bear and smiled. He dropped from his full height on hind legs and shambled over to her. She placed a hand on the top of his head, and he cast his soft eyes up to meet hers. She glanced past him at Carter, crouching, doubled over on the ground.
Her family would defend him now.
Division Eleven were already upon them when the Wolf-Heads were able to defend the attack. The rearguard had not gained entry to the chamber, but had been jostling in the space outside, trying to get in and join the fray.
They were being beaten and subdued with coshes and batons, but they were tough, battle-hardened soldiers, and they would not give up without a fight. Many of them had also come prepared, well-equipped with partial body armour.
Franks soon wished he had been able to give the order to fire, but ballistics were out of bounds for this engagement, for any engagement at the Candle Lane site.
Despite Division Eleven going in hard and fast, the Wolf-Heads were beginning to get up and fight back. They fought hard and dirty.
Franks allowed one of the Wolf-Heads to drive him back, away from the chamber into more open space. He ducked a blow to his left shoulder and swung his b
aton in a horizontal arc at hip height, coming in under the Wolf-Head’s body armour and hitting him hard in the hip joint.
Off balance, the Wolf-Head made little impact with his next attempt, and Franks was able to parry and then drive the end of his baton hard into the man’s groin, felling him. The Wolf-Head reached, instinctively, for the pain, dropping his weapon, which Franks kicked away. It took him mere moments to put a knee in his victim’s back, cable-tie his hands and ankles, and move on to the next.
The rest of his squad followed Franks’s lead, drawing the fight out into the areas around the crowded chamber, turning the battle into a series of hand-to-hand combats instead of a free-for-all brawl.
Watkins went down hard, caught by a baton to the kidneys by one Wolf-Head, and then punched hard in the sternum by a second. He was laid out by a second punch to the head. The second Wolf-Head drew a knife to finish him off, but Corbett tripped him, straddled him, and got in two good punches to the man’s face before he could slit Watkins’s throat. Watkins recovered, shook his head, and then reached out for a leg that was inching close to his position. He grabbed and pulled hard, tossing another Wolf-Head to the floor.
Division Eleven worked together and separately, fighting their own battles, but taking any opportunities they saw to attack the opposition.
Watkins was back on his feet, lunging, head down, at the next Wolf-Head, and the fight went on.
There were more Wolf-Heads than there were men in Franks’s squad, and he was the only one who had taken a man out of the battle.
There was not a third bolt of lightning nor a third crash of thunder. It didn’t matter. Lara’s work was done.
The Wolf-Heads could rise again, and she was equipped for battle.
They did rise.
The Wolf-Heads got to their feet, before her, and then they divided. To the rear, they no longer tried to enter the chamber. She could see them, turning, fleeing.
Those who were left kept coming, bearing down on her.
The mist wolves reared and spun through the air, stalking their prey and pouncing. The horrified Wolf-Heads froze or tried to back away, terror written all over their faces. There was no mercy. The mist wolves attacked with claw and tooth, ripping throats and tearing limbs.
The cloud boar tossed its prey on shredding tusks until they were torn to pieces, and then grunted and snuffled through the remains of the Wolf-Heads it had destroyed.
The bear shambled over to Carter, shielding him from the Wolf-Heads, looming over them, swiping its great paws at heads and chests, snagging its claws in their flesh if they tried to attack Lara’s friend.
Gwynnever’s blade yet sang, cutting the air with impossible agility, defending attacks from two more Wolf-Heads brave or foolish enough to think they could take on this woman and defeat her.
They came together, wielding knives, ducking for cover behind the stone that had housed her sword, circling the great tree where the obelisk had once stood. They tried to evade her blade, and failed. The tree shifted its roots to trip one of the Wolf-Heads, and then curved a branch to throttle him as he fell forwards.
The second man had a cosh in one hand and a stiletto in the other. He bounded onto the altar to fly at Lara. The rubber soles of his shoes melted instantly to the molten-hot surface of the rock as the enemy’s weight landed on it. The Wolf-Head lost momentum and balance and wheeled his arms frantically as he tried to free his feet.
Instead of the flying tackle, the Wolf-Head fell off the stone, collapsing onto Lara’s outstretched sword, and another of Vata’s men was dead.
He was the last.
Lara looked around at the devastation. The bodies of the dead Wolf-Heads, and of Florence Race, were strewn on the forest floor. Only Carter Bell sat, unharmed, a few metres to Lara’s right.
The air trembled. Thunder spoke.
The pair of mist wolves flew around Lara, weaving between the trees, dancing an elaborate pattern midway between the ground and the tree canopy. The cloud boar joined the dance, and Lara’s bear rose on his hind legs, turning circles and swatting playfully at them.
Lara sheathed her sword, strode over to Carter, and offered him her hand.
Rugova knew that the canister had broken. He had heard the sound of metal tearing and splitting, and he had heard the hiss of the gas escaping from a pressurised container. He would be sick or dead in moments. Worse, he would be insane.
Rugova strode with a purpose back along the narrow platform, past the row of canisters that he and Baris had already collected from the plane, and towards the ladder.
“Where are you going?” shouted Vata.
Rugova did not answer. Baris stood up beside the payload bay and turned to face his boss. Vata glanced at him, and Baris shrugged.
Vata slid his hand into his jacket and pulled out the Glock 42.
“Stop right there,” he shouted. “You bring me the canisters, or you die.”
“I’m already dead,” said Rugova. “We’re all dead. We have to get out. Now!”
Rugova did not wait for his boss’s assent. He turned his back on him to descend the ladder.
Vata aimed the compact squarely at Rugova’s back, following his progress down the ladder, his aim never wavering. He could have shot him dead at any moment. He wanted to punish him. He wanted to kill him for insubordination. Rugova was useless to him now, and useless to the cause.
Vata knew that he could not fire his weapon. While the canisters were believed to be intact, firing guns was a risk. Damaging a canister by accident was a risk, but there was also the danger of a slow leak, of toxic gases already being present in the air.
Foolishly Vata had taken that risk once, already. He could not take it again.
Baris waited for his commander’s instructions. When Vata made one of his micro-gestures, he knew exactly what to do. He pulled two more net bags from a pocket in his pants, walked along the platform, and began to gather the remaining canisters. The ones still in the payload bay of the plane would not be recovered.
Rugova had to walk past Vata to leave the chamber where the Dornier was situated. He hesitated in front of his commander, and stopped. The two men looked at each other.
“We’re all dead, now,” said Rugova. “A canister is broken. The gas is in the air.”
“You disobeyed a command,” said Vata.
“So, kill me,” said Rugova, raising his arms at his sides to show that he was defenceless and that he didn’t plan to attack his boss. “We’re all dead anyway.”
“We die for our cause. Others will take our places,” said Vata.
“What others?” asked Rugova. “We are few. Times change. I am here for my grandfather, but old hatred dies.”
Vata said nothing.
Rugova bowed his head slightly and walked around Vata.
The clamour of fighting nearby meant that Rugova did not hear Vata turn. He did not hear his commander reach for the stiletto in his boot. He did not hear him take the two long strides that separated them.
Vata lunged at Rugova, the stiletto held high above his head, and plunged it deep into the back of Rugova’s neck, leaving it there so that he didn’t spray his suit with blood.
Rugova saw, heard, felt nothing. He fell to his knees, his mouth dropped open, and his eyes closed. He knelt on the clammy duckboards for a second or two and then fell dead onto his face, with a clatter.
Vata turned back to meet Baris, to check the net bags and count his haul.
Two additional eight-man squads of Division Eleven finally arrived at Candle Lane. The first squad was deployed to secure the street aboveground. The second gathered at the station entrance.
“Squad eight to command. Jenkins reporting. Request latest on hazardous materials.”
Jenkins looked at the members of his squad while he listened to command’s reply. His expression was serious, and he was nod
ding.
“Please verify. Repeat, verify HAZMAT update,” Jenkins said into his comms unit. He listened again for several seconds as command repeated the information.
When the report was repeated and verified, Jenkins said, “Understood. Deploying squad eight, Candle Lane underground site. Stand by.” He clipped his comms unit to his jacket.
“This is it,” he said. “Formation B. Remember our men are already down there. Let’s give them a hand and show them how it’s done, shall we?” He beamed, and his squad let out one hard, short roar.
They went in hard and fast and were onto the platform and down on the tracks in less than half the time it had taken Franks and his men to deploy.
When they reached the site, Jenkins gave the signal, and four of the men peeled off in the direction of the Dornier while the remainder went on to the main chamber.
“Put the canisters down and step away,” said the Division Eleven man, pointing his 9mm Sig Saur semi-automatic at Vata’s back. His colleagues all had weapons drawn and were covering the group.
Vata turned. The expression on his face might have been a smile.
“The gas is released,” said Vata.
“Do I look like I care?”
“You’re not wearing masks,” said Vata, shrugging and turning back to the canisters.
“You could just shoot him, Bhaskar,” said one of the other men.
“I could just do that,” said Bhaskar. He aimed his gun again and fired on auto, blasting a flurry of shots.
Vata fell hard, facedown, on the duckboards, and Baris flopped over onto his commander’s back. A rain of dirt fell on them from the damage done to the ceiling where Bhaskar had fired into it.
“Do you want to do the honours, Taylor, as the shooting was your idea?” asked Bhaskar. “You, too, Bacon.”
“It’ll be my pleasure,” said Taylor, shouldering his gun and walking over to the prone bodies, pulling cable ties from a pouch.
In one last-ditch effort, Vata rolled free of Baris and tried to pull the gun from the holster under his jacket, but Taylor saw the move and stomped a booted foot down hard, trapping Vata’s hand on his chest and winding him at the same time.