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 realized she was lying in a puddle of lukewarm water.
She woozily looked around, seeing that she was in one of the ice channels. The ruins of the bridge blocked it in one direction, while the other coiled toward 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 that he was still alive. That she hadn’t been found by now suggested that the Covenant troops had encountered more resistance from the Yorkshireman than they’d bargained for; she knew firsthand 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’d 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 like he was 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 chilly 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 realized 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 toward 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 farther 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 channeled a constant stream from its tip …
Onto 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 downward. He broke out of his paralysis, throwing himself backward—
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, beneath them, the gory remains of Hammerstein. “Eddie?”
“Yeah?”
“I think you got him.”
Chase jabbed a finger at the bloodstained heap of ice. “Stop! Hammerstein.”
Sophia groaned. “Your sense of humor 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, his 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 he got 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 won’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 toward 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 wen
t on, “we’ll 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 paracrafts, 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 toward the dam as they emerged from the hypogeum.
“Yeah, but the sledge is this way,” Chase replied.
“So are the rest of the Covenant men.”
“They’re not here yet,” said Chase, with a glance toward 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 range finder’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 barreled around 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?” With the sled rasping over the ice behind him, he clomped toward the shaft entrance, his 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 lake water 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 pressurized, 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 had lurched off course and was riding up the side of the shaft—
Chase joined in the screaming as the sled corkscrewed up the wall, onto 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, her 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 adrenaline 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.
TWENTY-NINE
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 around him like the bones of some giant glass monster. He realized 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 water refroze.
And he and Sophia had ended up in the middle of it, slamming down on the ice and skidding into the surreal amphitheater before crashing to a halt.
He staggered upright. The sled’s journey was over; one of its runners had been torn off, the frame bent around the lump of ice that had brought it to an abrupt stop and catapulted its passengers into the weird cave. He took a step, wincing at a sharp pain in his shin. The sled’s contents were strewn all around. He picked up the tripod to use as a makeshift crutch, its spiked metal feet digging into the ice as he turned.
“Sophia!” She was sprawled about twenty feet away in a pile of fragmented ice. He limped over to her. She was still breathing, little clouds drifting from her nose. Blood ran from a deep cut on her chin. “Sophia? Come on, wake up.”
“Eddie, not now,” she mumbled in complaint; then her eyes snapped open and she clutched at her jaw, her glove coming away with a Rorschach patch of blood on the palm. “Ow, oh God! My face, Eddie, you’ve wrecked my bloody face!”
“If that’s all you’re bothered about, you’re probably fine,” Chase growled. “You should put some ice on it.” He looked at their frozen surroundings, then gave her a theatrical shrug. “Dunno where we’re going to find any, though.” He smiled as he turned away from her look of fury and raised the walkie-talkie, hoping it had survived the beating. “Matt! Matt, it’s Eddie. Are you still there?”
Silence for a long moment, then: “Eddie! Christ, mate, you’re cutting it fine—your hour’s almost up! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“We’re in the crevasse, where the drainage shaft came out. How long will it take you to get here?”
“We’re about five miles away, so …” A pause as he consulted Larsson. “About five minutes.”
“We’ll be here.”
“Okay, on our way.”
“Make it quick. Out.” He turned back to Sophia, who had scraped up some loose ice and was pressing it to her face. “Think you can stand up?”
She jabbed both feet at him. “If you were any closer I’d kick your arse.”
“For fuck’s sake, stop moaning,” he said, lifting her. “I’ve had my face bashed up tons of times, and I never worried about it ruining my looks.”
“Yes, but you were hardly starting from a high baseline, were you?”
“Bloody hell, shallow much?” They picked their way across the cave, using the tripod for support. “It didn’t bother you when we were married.”
“I can only put that part of my life down to temporary insanity.”
“What, as opposed to the permanent insanity you’ve got now? You’re not a bunny boiler, you’re a bloody bunny nuker!”
“If you have such a problem
…” Sophia trailed off as they heard a low buzzing. “Is that the plane? That was quick.”
They emerged in the ice-slathered crevasse, the high walls casting everything into deep, cold shadow. “It’s not the plane,” Chase said, looking south. The noise grew louder, echoing off the walls—and revealing two distinct engine notes. “Shit! They’ve found us!”
A pair of gleaming black shapes swept over the top of the crevasse and wheeled around under their blood-red rectangular parachutes, heading straight for them.
Chase had seen similar machines before. Invented in New Zealand, home of crazy and dangerous leisure activities, the paracrafts were a mutant combination of paraglider and hovercraft, the latter’s main fan used to inflate the fabric wing at takeoff and provide forward thrust like a propeller. The differences between a paracraft and an ultralight were that the former was larger, the squared-off, stubby wings protruding from its sides giving it much greater lift at low altitudes through ground effect—and that its hovercraft base meant it could not only take off and land on almost any terrain but travel overland at speed by releasing the chute.
Making them ideal pursuit vehicles for the Antarctic wastes.
He saw two men in each paracraft: one pilot—and one gunner. The gunner in the lead paracraft was carrying a sniper rifle, while the man in the second aircraft had a Swiss SIG assault rifle.
Sophia started to back into the cave. Chase grabbed her wrist. “No, get between those.” He pointed at several huge boulders of ice that had fallen from the ravine walls.
“I don’t think we’ll be any better off,” she said as they hurried down the slope.
“If they land and trap us in the cave, we’re fucked. At least this way we’ve got some room to maneuver.” The paracrafts were three hundred feet away, closing fast. The lead paracraft dipped its nose, descending into the canyon. Good, Chase thought—in the relative confines of the walls, they wouldn’t have enough room to turn, meaning it would take them time to swing about and make another pass.