The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

  “Yes, I remember.” Also in the picture was someone she recalled much less fondly. “Oh. And that’s Jason Starkman.”

  “Yes,” said Mac disapprovingly, “shame about him. Having an affair with a fellow soldier’s wife, that’s the sort of thing a man should be horsewhipped for.”

  “Actually …” Nina began, before pausing, not sure if she wanted to discuss the topic. Mac’s quizzical look encouraged her to press on. “Eddie told me that Starkman didn’t have an affair with Sophia. She made it up to hurt him.”

  Mac nodded almost imperceptibly. “You know, that doesn’t surprise me. I always thought Sophia had rather a cruel streak. She had an inflated sense of entitlement, and got quite nasty if anything wasn’t exactly how she wanted it. Not that Eddie noticed it until it was too late, the poor sod.”

  “Didn’t you or Hugo think to, y’know, drop a hint?”

  “What could we say? He was in love with a rich, cultured and very beautiful young woman. I don’t think there’s anything we could have done to change what he thought about her. Only she could do that…and it still took a long time for him to admit it to himself. The whole experience changed him quite a bit, unfortunately.”

  So Chase wasn’t as immutable as he claimed, Nina thought. “Hugo once told me that Eddie used to be… chivalrous?”

  Mac laughed. “Oh good God, yes! A true knight in shining body armor. Went out of his way to help women in need, and never asked for anything in return. That’s the kind of behavior that wins a man a lot of admirers.”

  “He does seem to have rather a lot of, ah, lady friends around the world,” Nina said.

  “And with good reason. A lot of people owe Eddie their lives. But he was also enough of a gentleman to see that they were just friends—until Sophia. Then after that, while he still always tried to help people, he’d also developed a rather tiresomely crass attitude.”

  “A defense mechanism.”

  “I suppose.” Mac gave Nina a look. “But somebody was clearly able to break through it.”

  “For what it was worth,” she said unhappily.

  “You’ve been together for, what, eighteen months now?”

  “More or less.”

  “Which is longer than Eddie was with Sophia.” He left Nina to consider that as he crossed the library, a dividing beam on the ceiling showing where two smaller rooms had been knocked together into one, and reached up to brush a speck of dust off a set of bagpipes mounted on a large shield-shaped plaque of dark wood.

  “Can you play them?” she asked, taking the opportunity to change the subject.

  Mac smiled wryly. “Not a note. My family actually left Edinburgh when I was ten and moved to Chingford. But soldiers are rather unimaginative when they buy retirement presents. Either that, or they take the piss. I’m not really sure which case this was. But it’s the feeling behind it that counts.”

  He smiled again, more warmly, then left the bagpipes and went into an adjoining room. Nina followed, finding herself in a game room, a full-size snooker table occupying most of the space. Mac picked up a white cardboard box from the green baize, snooker balls rattling inside it. He toyed with it for a moment as if about to lay the balls out for a game, then turned to face Nina.

  “The thing with Eddie,” he said, “is that yes, he can be… let’s be generous and say annoying. Even before Sophia left him, there were times when I thought a bullet in the head would be the only way to get him to shut up.”

  “He does kind of go on,” Nina admitted, half smiling.

  “But at the same time, he’s quite possibly the most loyal, courageous and downright indomitable man I ever served with.” He took a cue from the table and tapped it against his left shin. There was a clack of plastic and metal against the wood. “Got this in Afghanistan. It was the reason I had to retire from active duty and go into spook work. Blown clean off below the knee by RPG shrapnel.”

  “My God,” said Nina, wide-eyed.

  “It was Eddie who got me out of there. Not only did he run into enemy fire to pull me out of a burning Land Rover, and then pick me right up over his shoulder—well, I was a leg lighter, I suppose—but he also took out the men firing at us. That’s the kind of man he is. When it comes to protecting the people he cares about, he’s determined and fearless, and will go to any lengths to do it. From what you said over dinner about how you met, I got the impression you know that from firsthand experience.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said, remembering how Chase had boarded a plane—while it was taking off—to rescue her.

  “He’s a man of action,” said Mac, returning the cue to the table, “which unfortunately sometimes means that he acts without thinking. And speaks without thinking. I suppose for the people close to him, it’s a matter of balancing the negatives against the positives … and dealing with the negatives.”

  “People like me, you mean?”

  He gave her an innocent look. “Perhaps.”

  She smiled. “You know, I never really thought of SAS men as relationship counselors.”

  “Not every battlefield is out of doors,” he said, returning the smile—

  A very faint noise came from above, a brief scrape. Nina barely registered it, but Mac’s head snapped up to search for the source, his smile instantly vanishing. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Come with me. Quickly.” His voice was commanding, all business. He headed through the door onto the landing and hurried down the stairs to the first floor, Nina right behind him. “We’ve got to get to the study.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “There’s somebody on the roof. I heard a footstep on one of the slates.” They reached the study. Mac dropped to a crouch, for the first time showing signs of awkwardness on his prosthetic leg. “Keep your head down. They might be watching the window.”

  Nina ducked and followed him across the room to a cabinet. He opened it and took out a sinister black pump-action shotgun, which became even more menacing as he racked the slide. Ka-chack. The sound alone sent a chill down Nina’s spine.

  “You make enemies in the SAS,” Mac offered by way of curt explanation. “Some of them have been known to make house calls.” The gun held in one hand, he kept low and made his way to the desk to pick up the phone.

  Another noise, a dull whump from the street outside.

  Mac instantly dropped the phone and dived at Nina, tackling her to the ground to protect her with his body.

  The window broke, a neat round two-inch hole punched through it—

  “Cover your ears!” Mac shouted. Nina just barely managed to bring her hands up to her head—

  The stun grenade exploded with a deafening bang.

  16

  Nina’s ears were ringing as Mac dragged her to her feet and pulled her onto the first floor landing, the shirt flapping around her legs. There was a loud crash from below, and she looked down to see two armed men, dressed all in black and wearing balaclavas, burst through the front door. Another bang of splintering wood came from the kitchen as the back door was simultaneously smashed open.

  The two intruders already knew where she and Mac were, immediately looking up at the balcony. Mac aimed his shotgun at them—

  Stained glass suddenly rained down from above as both skylights shattered. Mac ducked back from the jagged shards as two black nylon ropes dropped through the holes in the ceiling, uncoiling as they fell all the way to the floor of the hall. A moment later, two more men rapidly started descending the ropes. Boom!

  Mac’s shotgun went off almost as loudly as the stun grenade. One of the hanging men flew backwards as the full force of the blast hit him in the chest, swinging from his rope over the balustrade. He smashed against the wall of the top floor landing and dropped to the floor.

  But there had been no blood. The attackers were all wearing body armor. The man Mac had hit was dazed, but he was still alive, still a threat.

  The wooden banister burst into splinters as the men below opened fire. Nina thr
ew up her arms to protect her face. Next to her, Mac pumped his shotgun and raised it again as the other man above twisted to aim his MP9—

  Mac fired first. But not at the armored man. Instead, he aimed above him, red-hot shotgun pellets shredding his rope. The man plunged downwards, his scream abruptly cut short by a crack of breaking bones.

  The firing from below stopped. Nina’s hope that the two gunmen in the hall might be helping their fallen comrade was dashed when she realized they were running for the stairs.

  “Upstairs!” Mac yelled, grabbing her arm and racing up to the top floor. His left foot made a metallic thud each time it hit the carpet, but the Scotsman was barely slowed by the prosthetic.

  “There’s still one of them up here!” Nina warned him. The rappeller Mac had blasted in the chest was on the other side of the landing across the atrium, groggily lifting himself to his knees.

  “And there’s four of them down there!” There was another crash from the ground floor as a door was kicked open, the men who had entered via the kitchen advancing through the house. “The library—there’s a passage to the back staircase!”

  He pushed Nina ahead of him as they reached the top of the stairs. The library was at the rear of the landing, the door of the game room open to one side as they ran.

  Automatic fire from the rappeller’s gun raked the wall ahead of Nina, shattered plaster and lath fountaining out. She screamed and dived into the game room, skidding across the wooden floor to end up at the head of the snooker table.

  Mac ran through the door behind her. The MP9 chattered again—and a stream of bullets tore into his left leg above the ankle. Ripped cloth and shredded plastic flew in all directions as his foot was blown off.

  Mac fell heavily to the floor. The shotgun was jolted from his grip and bounced away across the room.

  Nina jumped up, adrenaline overcoming the resurgent pain from her ankle. Mac was sprawled on his front a few feet inside the door, the jagged metal “bone” of his severed artificial leg poking into the air above his bent knee. She looked for the shotgun. It was at the far end of the room against the wall. It would take her a couple of seconds to run around the table, more to pick up the gun and bring it about.

  And the gunman was charging across the landing, almost at the door—

  She grabbed the box of snooker balls and whipped it around. A cascade of brightly colored spheres flew over the fallen Mac to bang down on the floor and skitter towards the door just as the black-clad intruder ran through it, gun raised—

  His foot shot out from under him as he slipped on the balls, falling forward.

  Onto Mac’s upraised leg.

  Mac’s yell of pain as the remains of the prosthesis crunched against his stump was nothing compared to the startled gasp of the gunman as the sharp metal spike burst through his rib cage into his heart. He convulsed for a moment, then slumped over Mac’s legs, a circle of dark blood rapidly swelling across the floor beneath him. Several snooker balls rolled through it, leaving thin red trails in their wake.

  Nina only had a moment to stare before the sound of feet pounding up the stairs yanked her back to the remaining dangers. She grabbed the dead man’s gun, then ran to the end of the room to retrieve Mac’s shotgun.

  “Get to the back stairs!” Mac ordered, twisting to kick off the impaled corpse.

  “But you—”

  “They want to catch you, not kill you! Go! I’ll hold them off!”

  Nina hesitated, then gave him his gun and ran to the door. She glanced out. Two men were halfway up the second flight of stairs, another pair having just entered the hall. She gave a last look back at Mac, who frowned at her for still being there, then turned and ran through the connecting door to the library.

  Another deafening retort from Mac’s shotgun blew a chunk of the balcony rail to smithereens as the first man ran past the door. But the shot was a fraction of a second too late to catch him. The second man jerked to a standstill just before reaching the door, the ka-chack of another shell being chambered deterring him from crossing in front of it.

  “Get her!” he yelled to his companion. “I’ll nail the old bastard!”

  He pointed his MP9 around the door frame, unleashing a devastating spray of fire into the room. Wood cracked and baize shredded as bullets ripped into the snooker table, the slate bed beneath the green surface splintering under the onslaught.

  Already ejecting his spent magazine and reloading, the gunman jerked his head around the edge of the door for the briefest moment, not so much to see the results of his assault as to draw any fire, making his target waste both a round and the time it took to reload. The room remained silent. More confident now, the intruder swung through the door with his gun at the ready.

  No sign of the old man, just one of the other members of the snatch team dead on the floor and a battle-scarred snooker table—

  The shotgun blast from under the table ripped his thighs into bloody mince. Screaming in agony, the man staggered back—and toppled through the hole blown in the railing. He fell, still wailing, to land with a neck-breaking crunch beside the first of his dead compatriots.

  Mac bumped an appreciative fist against the underside of the slate that had protected him as effectively as any armor, then crawled out from beneath it.

  Nina ran across the library to the nearer of the two doors at its rear, throwing it open to find herself in a narrow passage that vanished into darkness in either direction. Only then did it occur to her that she didn’t know whether to go left or right to reach the stairs.

  Her pursuer entered the library from the landing …

  She went left. The light from behind her provided just enough illumination to pick out the door to the other half of the library as she passed it, then another door directly ahead. She grabbed the handle and threw it open, expecting to see the promised stairs—only to find a cupboard, dusty suitcases squatting on its shelves.

  “Shit!”

  The level of illumination plunged. She whirled, seeing the man standing in the open doorway, blocking the light. The gun was a menacing black shape in his hand.

  The gun—

  She had one of her own!

  Nina snapped up the stolen MP9 and yelled a battle cry of pure fury as she hosed the passage with the entire contents of the clip. Spent shell casings pinged off the wall and sizzled past her as she swung the gun back and forth, almost blinded by the muzzle flash.

  The hail of fire ceased abruptly as the magazine ran dry. Her shout died as she tried to blink away the wafting afterimages of flame, hoping to see the man lying dead on the floor…

  He wasn’t. He wasn’t even in sight. He must have flung himself back into the library just as she started shooting—

  The second, nearer library door opened, more light filling the passage. The man stepped through it, gun raised. Through the hole in his black balaclava, his mouth twisted into an unpleasant smile.

  “Ooh, out of bullets,” he said in a patronizing tone. “Never mind, I’ve still got plenty.”

  “You won’t shoot me,” said Nina, faking defiance. “You need me alive.”

  The gun tilted down to aim at her bare legs beneath the long shirt. “You can shoot someone and not kill them, you know.” He advanced on her. “Just give me an excuse—”

  There was a discordant squeal from the other end of the passage as something flew through the far door and hit the wall before dropping to the floor. The startled gunman whirled, gun blazing—and blew Mac’s wailing bagpipes to shreds.

  He stepped forward. “What the fu—”

  The shotgun boomed from the library, blowing the man’s knees to a gruesome pulp. He fell, howling in agony.

  Mac hobbled over with a snooker cue wedged under his arm as a makeshift crutch. “Oh, shut up,” he growled at the screaming man, slamming the butt of his shotgun against his head. The noise stopped immediately. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” Nina said.

  “Get to the stairs. Go!”
r />   She didn’t hesitate this time, running for the far end of the corridor to find another door. To her relief, there were stairs beyond this one. She started to run down them—only to stop at a noise from below. Someone was running up them!

  She turned back, reentering the library. “They’ve cut us off!”

  Mac muttered a curse. “Onto the landing!”

  “But they’ll be coming up the stairs—”

  “Come on!” The tip of the cue banging against the floor, he staggered to the door. Nina followed.

  Another man was on the landing below. Mac loosed a shotgun blast at him, forcing him to dive back behind a support pillar for cover.

  The intact rope still hung from the broken skylight. “Can you climb a rope?” Mac asked, swinging the barrel of his gun to snag it.

  “I can hang on to a rope,” Nina said nervously, realizing what he had in mind, “but that’s not the same thing!”

  “It’s your only way down! Just get out the front door, and run!” He thrust the black line into her hands, then pumped another round and fired again at the man on the floor below. Plaster spat from the pillar. “Go!”

  “Oh, God!” Nina wailed as she gripped the rope as tightly as she could …

  And swung out from the landing over empty space.

  If she hadn’t trained with Chase, she would have lost her grip. Shirt billowing in the breeze, one slipper falling from her foot, she lowered herself hand over hand as quickly as she dared.

  It wasn’t quickly enough. Even as she heard Mac reloading, the man leaned out from behind the pillar and saw her. He jerked his gun towards her, then hesitated, remembering his orders to take her alive. He ducked back as Mac fired again, pellets cratering the walls. “She’s going down on her own!” the man yelled, Nina for the first time seeing the line of a radio microphone curving in front of his mouth.

  She increased her pace, dropping faster. Her hands, damp with sweat and fear, started to slip on the rope, friction burning her palms—

  “Fire in the hole!” The man, now level with her, swung out of cover to throw something up at Mac’s position.