Another sharp crack, this time under her feet.
The outcrop’s edge splintered away. She threw herself backward, but was already falling—
One hand caught the newly torn edge—and she shrieked as razor-like shards cut into her skin. Her grip faltered …
And failed.
Fear punched her heart as she dropped, nothing below but the simmering black pool of eitr—
Berkeley grabbed her wrist.
Nina yelled again as her shoulder joint abruptly took her full weight, muscles and tendons crackling. “Hold on, hold on!” Berkeley gasped. He had dived to catch her, lying on his belly with both arms over the edge of the broken outcrop.
“Pull me up!” she wailed.
“I can’t—get enough leverage!” He strained to wriggle backward, but couldn’t raise his arms any higher. “Grab the wall!”
“I’m trying!” She flailed her free hand, trying to find purchase, but the newly exposed surface was glassy-smooth. In the corner of her eye she saw a more ragged piece of broken crystal level with her thigh. She stretched for it—but in the process her Kalashnikov slipped from her shoulder.
She flicked her arm up just as its strap slithered over her fingers, casting it across a gap to clatter onto one of the spans below. Freed of the unbalancing weight, she managed to reach the protrusion and steady herself—but with no footholds she couldn’t lift herself any higher. The eitr pool swayed hungrily below her.
The man at the lake’s surface had almost fallen into it as the slabs around him shuddered, having to drop the pump to grab the sample container’s carrying strap before it toppled into the ooze. “Keep hold of it, for God’s sake!” Lock yelled, clinging to a narrow crystal pillar. “What the hell just happened?”
“You won’t fuckin’ believe this,” Hoyt snarled, emerging from cover and looking up the shaft. “It’s Chase!” He unshouldered his assault rifle.
Eddie felt nothing beneath his feet. He looked around to discover that his legs were hanging out over the side of the crossing. Wincing from the pain of his landing, he pulled them back—
Bullets ripped into the crystal under him.
“Chase, you motherfucker!” bellowed Hoyt as he blazed away with the SIG. Both Eddie and Maslov scrambled along the top of the natural bridge as more rounds chipped away at its underside. “Come on, you limey bastard!”
The other mercenaries joined the attack. The cavern echoed with the deafening roar of automatic fire. But even over the noise, Eddie still heard the shrill crunch of fracturing crystal as the bridge beneath him weakened …
More gunfire—but from higher up.
Kagan’s AK-12 blazed. One of the mercenaries reeled backward as the Russian’s bullets ripped through his torso, flopping into the black lake. The others ducked for shelter behind the snaking pillars.
Eddie seized his chance and leaned over the bridge to take aim with his Wildey. He had lost track of Hoyt’s position in the confusion, but the light from one of the floating globes cast a crouching shadow from behind a small crystal spire—which exploded like a bomb as a Magnum round hit it, the bullet continuing through the stalagmite to hit a lurking mercenary in the throat. The last Russian soldier joined the assault, sending bursts of Kalashnikov fire at the mercenaries.
Above, Berkeley was still struggling to pull Nina back up. “Hold on!”
“Whaddya think I’m doing?” she protested.
“There’s a—a rock,” he rasped. “Going to try to—brace myself against it.” The scientist changed tack, squirming sideways rather than backward. One leg found purchase against a chunk of stone …
Bumping the steel canister as it did so.
Berkeley had dropped it when he dived to save Nina. The only thing preventing it from rolling away was a wedge-like stone chip—and now that had been knocked away.
The container clunked across the ledge, picking up speed. Berkeley let out a stifled shriek as he saw it trundling toward oblivion, but could do nothing to stop it without dropping Nina. “Thor’s Hammer!” was all he had time to gasp before it went over the edge.
Kagan glimpsed the flash of metal above. “No!” he cried, breaking off from his attack to stare in helpless horror at the canister as it fell past Nina toward the oily lake—
It clipped a small crystal jutting out from the wall, snapping it off at its base—but the impact was just enough to jolt it to a new trajectory. It hit a span and bounced down it before falling again. This time, it made a solid landing on another crystalline bridge in the chamber with a noise like the ringing of a dull bell.
Lock heard the sound and looked up to find its source. “Sons of bitches,” he muttered on seeing the container. “Slavin was right—they were working on a counter-agent.” He raised his voice. “Hoyt! Don’t let them get near that canister!”
“Only thing they’ll be getting near is the Pearly Gates,” Hoyt shouted back. He changed his hold on the SIG, bringing his hand to the attachment mounted beneath its barrel.
An M203 grenade launcher.
He lined it up on the bullet-scarred span above. “Fire in the hole!”
Eddie heard the warning shout. “Oh, fuck!” he gasped, scrambling forward as a flat shotgun-like blast echoed from below—
The 40mm grenade hit the crystal bridge—and detonated.
Maslov was almost directly above the point of impact. The blast disintegrated the slab beneath him, sending his shredded body cartwheeling across the bottom of the shaft to slam into a dagger-sharp crystal growing from the wall, the black point bursting out of his chest in a spray of blood. The man hung grotesquely for a moment, limbs swaying, before his weight tore the spike loose. He fell into the cavern, landing with a crack of bones on a bed of shards.
Eddie was flung into the air as the broken bridge kicked upward beneath him. He made a hard landing on the stump of the destroyed crossing, his momentum sending him skidding over the edge.
He fell—
And landed on one of the inflatable light globes.
It ruptured with a flat bang, but still cushioned him just enough that he survived the drop without breaking any bones. The touchdown was far from painless, though, the battery pack and light clusters inside the globe leaving heavy bruises. The destroyed bridge plunged past him to crash down on top of the rubble piled up below.
Hoyt quickly reloaded the launcher. “Oh, I got you now …,” he said with a cruel grin, lining up his sights on the dazed Englishman—
“Don’t!” Lock shouted. Hoyt looked at him in surprise. “We still have to get out of here, you idiot! If you take out any more of the big crystals, we won’t be able to climb back up!”
Annoyed, the mercenary leader brought his hand back to the SIG’s trigger—only to see Eddie jump down and drop out of sight behind the debris. “Goddammit!” he snarled.
Kagan had flinched back from the explosion’s shrapnel. Now he recovered and brought his gun back toward the targets below—
Hoyt spotted the movement and fired, forcing the Russian to retreat as crystalline splinters stabbed at him.
“Orbach!” Lock shouted to the man at the lake’s edge. “Secure the sample! We’ve got to get it out of here.” The mercenary nodded, closing the lid over the black poison inside the steel jar and pushing a button. A latch snapped into place, and a red LED turned green to confirm that the container was sealed.
Nina looked fearfully down at the cavern below, then back up at Berkeley as he managed to brace his other foot against the rock. He strained to lift her, raising her by several inches, but still couldn’t maneuver her within reach of a firm handhold. “Nina, I—I can’t get you any higher!” Their eyes met. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, the apology completely genuine.
She saw helpless surrender in his gaze—but refused to accept it. “Swing me,” she gasped.
“What?”
“Swing me!” Instead of holding on to the broken nub, she pushed against it, rocking herself sideways. “I can reach that ledge!”
r /> “You’ll never make it!” The crystal spar she had spotted was about ten feet below her—and almost as far off to the side.
“I will if you throw me hard enough.” She gave him a pained grin. “Come on, I’m sure you spent your time in jail thinking about tossing me off a high cliff.”
“Don’t remind me,” he replied, but with a very faint hint of amusement. His grip tightened as he prepared himself. “Okay, you ready?”
Nina took a breath. “Yeah.” She tensed her arm. “All right, and … swing!”
She shoved against the rock as Berkeley hauled her sideways. Her legs swung across the gap. Not far enough; she pulled herself back, then pushed again. Another sweep of the human pendulum, wider this time—then again, going even farther. “One more!”
He complied, grunting with effort. Nina swept back, then pushed herself off the protruding rock for the last time. “Let go!”
Berkeley released her—and she sailed across the gap, gravity reclaiming her at the top of her arc. The crystal rushed past—
She threw out both arms to catch it, hitting hard. The impact felt like a baseball bat across her chest, the pain so intense she couldn’t breathe. Her nails rasped at the scabrous surface, but she couldn’t get a proper grip, her own weight dragging her inexorably over the edge …
A gasp of sheer terror—and she dug her clawed hands into a crack in the crystal. Fingernails snapped, but adrenaline blotted out the pain. Drawing on some deep reserve of strength, she dragged herself onto the span, exhausted.
Below, Lock looked around at Orbach as the masked mercenary, carrying the container of eitr, hurried up from the lake toward his employer. “Have you got it?” Lock demanded. The other man showed him the green light on the canister. “Okay, good. We need to get moving.” He raised his voice. “Cover us! We’re leaving!”
“I’m gonna take care of Chase,” Hoyt insisted, his tone making it clear that he would not accept any orders to the contrary. Lock frowned, but nodded. “Franks, with me—the rest of you give the boss cover!”
One of the mercenaries joined Hoyt, the pair hopping from spar to spar as they advanced on the Englishman. The other two resumed their assault on Kagan as Lock and Orbach ducked between the crystalline columns to reach an ascending span.
Kagan saw them go, but he was forced to pull back as more bullets smacked against his cover. “Chase!” he shouted in warning. “They’re coming for you!”
Behind the slabs of broken black crystal, Eddie had caught his breath, but he now faced other threats apart from the approaching gunmen. The heat at the bottom of the cavern was nauseating, and every inhalation stung as the rising fumes scoured at his nasal passages. He was only just above the surface of the eitr lake—and puddles of the deadly ooze swelled up through gaps in the raft of debris as his weight pressed down on them. He hurriedly sidestepped away from the nearest, horribly aware that a mere splash could kill him in minutes.
If he lasted that long. “Go ’round that end,” he heard Hoyt order. Footsteps crunched over broken shards on the other side of his cover, the two mercenaries separating to circle him. He raised the Wildey, but knew he would only have time for one shot—he would never be able to turn and aim fast enough to take out the second man behind him.
Unless he drove one of them back, even for a couple of seconds …
A section of smashed stalactite about two feet long poked up nearby, one end submerged in the eitr. As far as he could tell in the unnatural light from the globes, its upper end was free of splattered black oil.
If he was wrong, he would die. But that was about to happen anyway—
Eddie grabbed the stalactite. Momentary relief that it was dry, then he tugged it. Eitr glooped up from below as it came free. He swung it around, using centrifugal force to keep the deadly substance dripping off the crystal away from him—then lobbed it at one end of the makeshift barricade.
“Fuck!” Hoyt gasped. The American jumped back from the poisonous missile, arms swinging as he stumbled on the uneven surface.
Eddie took full advantage of his enemy’s moment of distraction, spinning as Franks rounded the opposite end of the broken bridge, SIG at the ready—
The Wildey boomed, the bullet blowing the man off his feet. He crashed down on his back—and part of the unstable floor shattered, the steaming ooze beneath welling up and swallowing him. Limbs flailing, the mercenary was sucked down into the lake.
The Englishman was already rushing in the other direction. He had to take out Hoyt before he recovered—
He rounded the smashed span—to find that he was too late.
Hoyt had regained his footing. The men’s eyes met as they swung their guns toward each other—
The American fired first—but his shot was not a bullet. His forefinger was on the grenade launcher’s trigger.
Another shotgun blast—and Eddie reeled in pain as the projectile struck his shoulder.
But it didn’t explode. The grenade needed to travel a minimum distance before arming, a safety feature to protect the shooter. Instead, it was deflected away across the cavern.
Hoyt saw Eddie stagger and drop the Wildey, grinning in triumph as he brought his hand back to the rifle’s grip to finish him off—
The grenade hit a cluster of crystals—and detonated.
Eddie was sent sprawling by the blast, broken fragments hitting his back. Though Hoyt was farther away, he was facing the explosion, and he screwed up his face in pain as shrapnel stabbed at his eyes. He lurched backward, this time falling. The rifle landed stock-first and was jolted from his hand.
Above, Nina heard the explosion and fought through her fatigue to look down into the cavern. A swelling cloud of smoke marked where the grenade had hit—and worryingly close to it she saw her husband lying facedown. Hoyt was a few yards away, one hand to his face—then he shook off the pain to search for his gun. “Eddie, look out!”
Eddie heard his wife’s voice through the ringing in his ears. He raised his head and saw Hoyt crawling for the fallen SIG. “No you fucking don’t,” he snarled, forcing himself up with a surge of pure hate-driven energy.
Face cut and bloodied, Hoyt reached the gun—just as Eddie dived at him. The two men rolled across the unstable ground, rivulets of eitr stabbing toward them as the crystals shifted and sank. “Twat!” the Yorkshireman spat as he drove a punch into Hoyt’s stomach. The American let out a strangled gasp. Eddie got on top of him, clamping one hand around his throat as he drew back his arm to deliver another brutal blow at Hoyt’s face—
Hoyt’s groping hand found a coconut-sized hunk of debris—which he smacked against the side of Eddie’s head. “Yeah, you son of a bitch!” he rasped as his opponent cried out. Another strike, and Eddie fell sideways, releasing his hold. “Come on, you bastard!” He jumped up, kicking the Englishman in the ribs and sending him tumbling toward the edge of the eitr pool.
Nina helplessly watched the brawl—then spotted something below her. Dull highlights along dark metal were picked out by one of the glowing globes.
Her AK-12. It had landed atop a crooked spar that crossed about nine feet below her position. “Logan!” she called. Berkeley peered over the ledge. “I’m going for the gun. You try to reach Thor’s Hammer—we’ve got to get it to the pool, no matter what!”
“But it’s all the way down there!” he objected, pointing at the canister. It was still wedged between two intercrossing arms of black crystal.
“You’ve got more chance of getting to it—the gap’s too wide for me to jump over. But you can reach it by going down that.” She indicated one of the snake-like columns, which in its growth had spiraled around part of the shaft’s circumference before a slow-motion collision with another rising crystal pillar had forced it back upward.
“It’s too steep! I’m not a monkey.”
“If you don’t, then in about ten minutes you’ll be a radioactive cinder!”
Berkeley rapidly reconsidered. “Okay, I’ll try.” He gingerly lowered
himself over the side of the outcrop.
“Good!” She crawled along the slanting span until she was above the gun, then gripped the crystal and slid over the edge—becoming acutely aware that her landing zone was barely a foot wide, and directly above the eitr …
No time to hesitate. The missile was still on its way. She looked down again, lining up with her worryingly narrow target, then dropped.
The actual fall was only a few feet, but that was still enough to jar her as she landed, making her tip backward over the void. She gasped, flailing—
The movement counterbalanced her, just for a moment. She seized it, bending at the knees to drop to all fours, gasping for breath.
The Kalashnikov was a few feet away. She scrambled to it.
“Nina!” Kagan shouted, seeing what she was doing. “Lock is getting away! I need cover!”
Nina retrieved the rifle. Her first thought was to help her husband, but as she looked down she realized that the Russian’s demand had to take priority. Lock and the man carrying the eitr sample were scaling the angled crystal pillars, zigzagging upward. She didn’t have a clear line of fire on them, the two men flitting in and out of her view between other black columns—but she could see the mercenaries still in the cavern, both of whom had their weapons locked on Kagan’s position.
She took aim at one of the men below, and fired.
The bullet missed by mere inches, cracking off a crystal. But it achieved its purpose. Both men swung their guns around to find the new threat. Nina jerked back as shots ripped into the span beneath her—
Kagan popped out from his own cover and fired. One man went down in a spray of blood as several rounds struck him in the head and chest. The other immediately realized where the greater danger lay and spun back to retarget the Russian.