Hammerstein ducked to grab them. Chase swept out one foot, the guns spinning away into the humid fog. Snarling, the Israeli pulled back and clawed at his holster. Chase grabbed for his own pistol - but it was stuffed into a pocket, and would take too long to pull out and aim.
Instead he whipped his hand back and snapped an icicle off the bench, flinging it at Hammerstein’s face like a glass knife. The pointed end stabbed into his eye - but it had been blunted, rounded off by dripping meltwater.
It still had an effect, though, the Covenant leader roaring and instinctively bringing up a hand to protect his sight. The gun was only halfway out of its holster. Chase saw his chance and sprang at Hammerstein. He grabbed his right hand, trying to get the gun as they grappled. The metal was already slick with condensation, his fingers slithering over it. A punch to Hammerstein’s jaw to encourage him to loosen his grip—
It worked. Chase got the pistol - and immediately lost it again as it slipped from his grasp. ‘Shit!’ It bounced across the floor, metal clattering on stone - then the clank of metal on metal as it dropped through the grating over the vent into the fumarole below.
Hammerstein recovered, two savage punches driving into Chase’s stomach. Chase lashed out again, hearing a satisfyingly toothy crunch as blood spurted from the other man’s mouth, but it didn’t stop a steel-capped toe from smashing into his shin. He stumbled back, only for a second, harder kick to lash across his knee, spikes tearing his trousers and the skin beneath.
Pain slicing up his leg, Chase fell, landing on his back. The impact blew away the surrounding steam for a moment, revealing that he was very close to the edge of the vent. Another ferocious roar of hot vapour blasted past him.
He tried to roll away from the volcanic furnace - but Hammerstein drew a knife and dived at him.
Chase caught his hand just before the blade plunged into his throat, but the Covenant member was on top of him, pushing down with all his weight. The knife wavered, then descended, razor-sharp tip two inches from Chase’s neck, one. Hammerstein leered bloodily, sensing triumph—
Chase spat into his scratched eye.
The Israeli flinched, just the slightest involuntary response - but the blink of distraction was enough for Chase to break his hold and ram the knife down point-first on the stone floor. It stabbed between two paving slabs, sticking out of the ground like a miniature Excalibur. Not the result Chase had expected - he had hoped either to jar the weapon from Hammerstein’s hand or break the blade - but it would do. He headbutted the Covenant man, knocking him back, then grabbed his jaw and throat to push his head over the edge of the vent.
Another vicious hiss surged from below—
Hammerstein shrieked as a blast of searing vapour hit his face, exposed skin instantly blistering and reddening. But Chase couldn’t hold him - the heat was biting at his hands and wrists, forcing him to let go. Thrashing and screeching, Hammerstein rolled away, half his face a mottled patchwork of scabrous red and white, one eye clenched tightly shut.
But the other was still open, glinting with rage as it locked on to Chase.
Hammerstein kicked, one spiked boot landing squarely on target. Chase was flung backwards, grasping painfully at his chest. He landed hard near the wall, catching a glimpse of another exit through the swirling fog.
Hammerstein saw something else - one of the fallen rifles. He scrambled towards it as Chase groped in his pocket for the handgun.
The Israeli reached the rifle. His rifle. No thought of mere bullets as he snatched it up and twisted to face his enemy - instead, his hand went straight to the grenade launcher.
Chase spotted the tubular maw swinging towards him and flung himself desperately towards the half-seen exit as Hammerstein fired. He barely made it through the opening as the grenade smacked against the wall behind him. At such a short range the explosive hadn’t even had time to arm itself, ricocheting off the stone and spinning past the doorway before detonating.
The explosion ripped apart a supporting pillar, a section of the floor above crashing down into the vent chamber, blocking the opening with tons of stone and shattered ice. Even shielded from the direct effects of the blast round the corner, Chase still felt as though a giant had flung him against a wall. He protected his head with his arms as chunks of broken stone pounded him.
The echoes of the detonation faded. Ears aching, Chase looked round. He was at the end of another frozen channel, stone walls giving way to glossy white ice. The channel led outside the building; he could see the cold blue light of the cavern.
He didn’t have to worry about Hammerstein coming after him - the collapsed ceiling had sealed the entrance. But after the maiming of his face, the Covenant leader would more than ever want him dead. And Chase was still no nearer to finding Sophia - or rescuing Nina.
He pulled himself upright and, gun in hand, went in the only direction he could - back into the ice maze.
Sophia slowly regained consciousness - then jerked upright as she realised she was lying in a puddle of lukewarm water.
She woozily looked round, seeing that she was in one of the ice channels. The ruins of the bridge blocked it in one direction, while the other coiled towards the large building. She dimly remembered Chase shouting something about a grenade . . .
Chase. She had to find him - if only to get the gun from his corpse.
But she suspected he was still alive. That she hadn’t been found by now suggested that the Covenant troops had encountered more resistance than they’d bargained for from the Yorkshireman; she knew first-hand just how lethally efficient he could be.
Head throbbing, she sloshed along the icy passage. ‘Eddie?’ she called. ‘Can you hear me?’
He could - and he could also hear Hammerstein’s radio, sending a message that chilled him to the bone.
The Covenant had Nina.
Hammerstein had called for backup, which Zamal was providing, his men on the way - and Vogler had added that they had taken Nina prisoner. He made it clear that her fate rested in Hammerstein’s hands, the other two Covenant leaders disagreeing about whether she should live or die.
The Israeli didn’t sound in a merciful mood.
‘I just heard Blackwood calling for Chase,’ he snarled. Having exited the vent chamber by a different door, he was on the other side of an ice wall from Chase, close enough for the latter to hear every word. ‘I’m going to kill her, then kill him, and then I’ll decide what to do about Wilde.’
‘Wait until Zamal’s men get there,’ said Vogler. ‘We can’t afford to lose you too.’
‘I’m not waiting. I want that little shit dead.’
Chase almost shouted something mocking, but decided against it - if Hammerstein had any hand grenades, he could just lob them over the wall. Instead he hurried along the channel in what he hoped was Sophia’s direction, out in the cold blue of the cavern once more. Water splashed under his feet, a chill rain spattering down from the ceiling.
‘I hear him!’ Hammerstein shouted. ‘He’s close - I’m going after him!’
‘Hammerstein, wait—’ began Vogler, but the Israeli cut him off and started running.
Chase quickly realised they were on parallel courses, the channels they were following almost side by side. ‘Sophia!’ he yelled.
‘Eddie? Where are you?’
She wasn’t far away - but was she on the same path? ‘There’s only one of them left, but I don’t know if I can get to you before he does!’
The channel curved, taking him away from her. He could hear Hammerstein splashing along the other route - carrying on in a straight line. ‘Shit! Sophia, he’s gonna reach you first! Go back, try and hide!’
‘There’s nowhere to hide!’
‘You didn’t have to tell him that!’ Another curve took him back towards her, but not quickly enough. Ahead, the wall of ice thinned, becoming translucent. A shape rushed along beyond it. Sophia. She was in the other channel.
And Hammerstein was behind her.
Chase reached the stretch of glassy ice just as the Covenant leader charged past on the other side. He looked ahead. The two channels didn’t join up - if anything, they were diverging again, taking him further away from Sophia.
A ringing clang of metal - a crampon had come off one of Sophia’s boots. She gasped in pain as she splashed down in the slush.
Hammerstein slowed, stopped. Chase could just barely see him through the wall, a blurred shadow - raising a rifle.
Chase brought up his own gun, but the ice was too thick for a handgun bullet to penetrate. He glanced at the top of the wall. Too high, too slick to climb.
He looked higher.
Water was still dripping from the ceiling. Almost directly above, a large icicle channelled a constant stream from its tip . . .
On to the other side of the wall.
He snapped up the gun and fired.
Hammerstein was about to fire his own weapon when he heard the rapid crack of gunfire. He spun to see a shape through the ice - shooting straight up at the ceiling. His confusion made him hesitate for a moment before he brought the TAR-21 to bear on the new target.
The delay cost him his life.
The bullet-riddled icicle broke from the ceiling with a splintering crunch. Hammerstein looked up at the noise - and froze in fear as a ton of dense, ancient ice speared downwards. He broke out of his paralysis, throwing himself backwards—
Too late.
The icicle hit like a bomb, exploding in a spray of crystalline white - and liquid red. The shock of the impact shattered the wall, knocking Chase to the floor in a storm of broken ice.
Sophia recovered her crampon and came to him, boots crunching over a billion ice cubes and the gory remains of Hammerstein beneath them. ‘Eddie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I think you got him.’
Chase jabbed a finger at the blood-stained heap of ice. ‘Stop! Hammerstein.’
Sophia groaned. ‘Your sense of humour survived intact, I see. Oh well.’ She regarded the jagged gap in the wall. One side was somewhat stepped, leading up to the surface of the ice filling the pit. ‘Think we can climb that?’
‘Definitely. But there’s more of them on the way - we need to get to that shaft.’
She lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’re not going after Nina?’
‘They’ve got her,’ he said, face emotionless. ‘But this isn’t over. One way or another, I’m going to fuck them up.’
‘The best way to do that is to find Eden before they do. Come on.’ She began to climb the ice.
Chase retrieved his gun and ejected the magazine. Empty, just one bullet left in the chamber. It would have to do. He replaced the mag and followed Sophia to the surface.
‘Hammerstein, come in.’ Vogler waited several seconds, but had no more response than on his previous attempts.
‘Y’know,’ said Nina, ‘I think Eddie’s put the hammer down.’
‘Shut up!’ barked Zamal. Vogler’s men had lowered a rope so he could climb up to the library. He drew his gun and pointed it at her head. ‘Where is Eden? Tell me!’
‘The hell I will,’ she said. ‘You’ll kill me either way - but at least this way you don’t get what you’re after.’
He ground the gun’s cold muzzle under her jaw. ‘You will talk, woman. And after you do, you’ll beg me to kill you.’
‘No one is going to kill her,’ said Vogler, standing beside Nina and staring hard at Zamal. After a moment the Arab backed away. ‘Not yet. The Triumvirate still has to vote.’
‘That’s going to be a tad difficult, isn’t it?’ said Ribbsley, striding through the endless stacks of the library towards them, Callum following. ‘Hammerstein’s obviously dead. That makes it one against one, and you’re deadlocked.’
‘Although,’ Callum said with evident reluctance, ‘keeping her alive might be a better option. For now.’
‘Why?’ Vogler asked. ‘What did you find?’
Ribbsley regarded Nina with an aggrieved expression. ‘We found the map. Unfortunately, part of it - the most vital part - has been destroyed. There was enough left to tell me that Eden is somewhere in eastern Africa . . . but I think we’d all come to that conclusion already.’
‘What about the rest of the library?’ demanded Zamal, waving a hand at the shelves. ‘There must be something here that can help us!’
‘Perhaps - but it would take months of study. And, unfortunately, Dr Wilde is probably right - the Veteres took the most valuable tablets with them. We might be able to locate some of the other sites on the map, but that’ll take time.’
‘Time we don’t have,’ said Vogler. ‘If Chase and Blackwood get away . . .’
‘They won’t,’ Zamal insisted. ‘My men will stop them.’
‘If they get away,’ Vogler went on, ‘we need to catch them.’ He held up the empty pouch of Nina’s camera. ‘They have pictures of the map.’ He turned to his men, gesturing at four of the five. ‘Get back to the surface, take two of the paracraft and find where that shaft leads. If Chase and Blackwood make it out of the cavern . . . I want you to be waiting for them.’
‘The shaft is that way,’ said Sophia, pointing towards the dam as they emerged from the hypogeum.
‘Yeah, but the sledge is this way,’ Chase replied.
‘So are the rest of the Covenant.’
‘They’re not here yet,’ said Chase, with a glance towards the road. He reached the sled and righted it. Most of the gear was scattered over the ground nearby, but some pieces - including the gas cylinder - had stayed secured. He picked up the rangefinder’s heavy tripod and tossed it aboard, then hurried back downhill, tugging the sled behind him like a recalcitrant dog. ‘Get a shift on!’
Sophia ran with him. ‘Shit! Here they come!’ Five men in snow camo barrelled round a building after them. ‘You’d go faster if you let go of that thing!’
‘We need it!’ They reached the edge of the ‘lake’ at the base of the dam, where water had pooled below the bottom of the shaft. Chase was fairly sure it would have frozen thickly enough to support their weight, but the ice still creaked alarmingly as they rushed across it.
The troopers were catching up. Ahead, the sloping face of the dam rose to meet the flat ceiling of ice, the dark circle of the drainage shaft at its foot.
Sophia headed for it. ‘Eddie, hurry up!’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ The sled rasping over the ice behind him, he clomped towards the shaft entrance, heart pounding. A look back. The Covenant soldiers had split up, three of them still running, spreading out, the remaining pair stopping, crouching, taking aim—
‘Incoming!’ he warned as Sophia reached the hole and ducked inside. Chase dived after her as the soldiers opened fire, bullet impacts showering him with cold soil and stones. The bottom of the shaft was caked with ice that had frozen as the last dregs of lakewater flowed away. A tiny point of light shone in the distance.
The sled bumped to a stop against his legs. ‘Okay, get on!’ he told Sophia as he drew the gun.
She gave him a deeply dubious look, but obeyed. ‘How many bullets have you got left?’
‘One.’
‘One?’
‘It’ll be enough.’ I hope, he didn’t add as Sophia climbed aboard the sled. He lay on top of her. ‘This doesn’t mean we’re back together, by the way.’
‘God forbid,’ she sighed. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Giving us a kick-start!’ Left hand gripping the frame, feet braced against the rear cross-member, he aimed the gun - not at the entry to the shaft, but at the gas cylinder taped to the sled. ‘Threetwoone - ignition!’
Two soldiers sprang into view, rifles at the ready—
Chase fired, blowing the brass valve off the end of the cylinder.
Highly pressurised, highly flammable gas jetted out - and was ignited by the gun’s muzzle flame.
A ten-foot-long lance of fire sprang from the gas tank, sweeping over the two men like a blowtorch - and sending the sled rocketing
down the shaft.
Chase dropped the gun, struggling to grip the sled’s frame as it hurtled down the passage. The roof of the shaft was less than a hand’s-width above him, his clothing scraping against it with every bump. Sophia screamed, and he could understand why - the cylinder was straining against their legs, trying to rip free of its restraints.
If it came loose they would be dead, crushed as the sled flipped or incinerated as the tank shot past . . .
Blue light surrounded them - they were through the dam, into the glacier on the other side. But if anything, emerging from the darkness only made the ride more terrifying: now they could see just how fast they were going.
And they were no longer going straight, the sled lurching off course and riding up the side of the shaft—
Chase joined in the screaming as the sled corkscrewed up the wall, on to the ceiling - and dropped down again on the other side, having made a complete rotation. It reached the bottom again, snaking from side to side before straightening out.
The roar of the flame stuttered and died. The sled began to slow.
‘J-Jesus!’ said Sophia, voice quavering. ‘You are a bloody maniac!’
Chase’s only response was a whoop of something between exultation and terror. He let the massive kick of adrenalin start to disperse, then looked up to see how much of the shaft remained ahead.
Not much.
‘Sophia?’
‘What?’
‘How high off the ground did this come out?’
‘Oh, God!’ she cried as they shot out into empty space.
29
Chase opened his eyes to find himself in an alien landscape. It took a few seconds for his mind to process what he was looking at, strange gnarled and twisted columns rising all round him like the bones of some giant glass monster. He realised where he was; the jet of water from the drainage shaft, coming out under enormous pressure, had carved a great cave out of the other side of the crevasse, the water then flowing away to leave a collection of bizarre blasted shapes as the ice refroze.