The Covenant of Genesis

And slipped. Before he could recover his balance, the Covenant soldier hit him in the chest. His coat deadened the impact - but it was enough to pitch him on to his back.

The soldier raised a foot high to stamp his spiked boot down hard on Chase’s face—

A bright light flashed across the room and locked on to the trooper’s crotch.

Which exploded, splattering Chase with blood as Sophia fired a single shot from the TAR-21 into the man’s groin. He staggered backwards, screeching horribly. Sophia made a disgusted face - not at the blood, but at the noise - before firing a second shot between his eyes. At such close range, the force was enough to blow out the back of his skull, his hood bulging obscenely before he collapsed.

Wiping blood from his face, Chase looked up at Sophia. The rifle was still in her hands, her expression unreadable. He held his breath. Then—

She turned the weapon round, presenting it to him. ‘As I said, my chances of survival are much higher with you than without you. Now get up, Eddie. His friends will be along any minute.’

Chase got up and snatched the TAR-21 from her. ‘For fuck’s sake, Sophia! You shot him in the balls!’

‘What are you complaining about? It did the trick.’

‘Shooting him in the chest would have been quicker! Why didn’t you do that?’

Sophia gave him a feline smile. ‘Curiosity.’

‘Sadism, more like.’ He noticed the pistol lying by the entrance and stepped over the body to pick it up, shoving it in a pocket.

And he saw something else: more men in white running across the hypogeum, having heard the shots.

Chase whipped the rifle up and fixed the glowing red dot at the centre of the circular sight on the nearest man. He squeezed the trigger twice, using the first shot to judge the recoil of the unfamiliar weapon before instinctively compensating and adjusting his aim with the second. Another red dot, this one dark, burst open in his target’s chest. The trooper fell. The man behind him realised their prey was no longer defenceless and tried to drop behind the castellations, but Chase blasted off another three quick shots, the last catching him bloodily in the forehead.

But more men were following them, rapidly finding cover behind the stonework.

Chase ducked back into the guardhouse. ‘Go that way,’ he said, pointing at the doorway opposite. ‘Go on, go!’ As Sophia set off he stopped by the body, looking for extra magazines, but saw none. They were probably in the dead man’s pack, and he didn’t have time to search. Instead, he ran after Sophia, water dripping on to him from high above as he left the shelter.

Hammerstein looked at the two dead men, a twinge of fury twisting his lips. He had known them for years, trained them, commanded them on numerous missions for the Covenant . . . and now they were gone, cut down by a surprise ambush. Which meant that his third man was also dead - he would never have allowed his weapon to be taken as long as there was life in his body.

He briefly raised his head above the parapet, seeing that Chase had retreated, then turned to the two remaining members of his squad - like their late comrades, former members of the Israeli Special Forces or Mossad, true believers in the Covenant’s cause. And like Hammerstein himself, they would want vengeance. An eye for an eye.

But with caution. They had underestimated Chase; he might have left active military service some years earlier, but he was clearly not out of practice.

Hammerstein spat out the stub of his cigar and raised his rifle, like those of his men a menacing black Tavor . . . but with an extra attachment. Beneath the barrel was the broad tube of an M203 40mm grenade launcher. He loaded it, pulling back the sliding barrel to cock it with a clack. ‘I want them dead,’ he hissed.

Chase quickly caught up with Sophia. ‘Did you get them?’ she asked.

‘Got two, but there’s at least three more. How’s your side?’

‘Still hurting - but I don’t think anything’s broken.’

‘Good, ’cause you’re going to have to keep up. I can’t support you and shoot at the same time.’

‘As sympathetic as ever.’ She increased her pace, gritting her teeth. The swirling steam grew thicker, rivulets of hot water cutting channels through the ice in the pit below. ‘Do you have a plan?’

Chase pointed at the steam cloud. ‘If we can lose them in that, we can double back and get Nina. Then we’ll head for the hole in the dam and get the fuck out of here.’

‘That’s not a plan,’ Sophia complained as they crossed a bridge. ‘That’s an objective. Plans generally have some how amongst the what.’

‘God, you’re as pedantic as her! Okay, the how is that we kill these Covenant arseholes and don’t get shot by them. That do you?’

‘It’s the best I’ll get, I suppose.’ She let out a faint laugh. ‘This is rather like how we first met, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t even start—Shit!’ Chase pushed Sophia aside as a chunk of falling ice the size of his head smashed on the flagstones just in front of them. Another, larger lump landed with a splash in a steaming channel that had been melted through the ice beneath the bridge. ‘Jesus, that was close!’

Sophia looked up, flinching as droplets of cold water fell on her face. ‘It’s turning into a bloody monsoon!’

‘Hope the ceiling holds,’ said Chase. He checked for their pursuers. ‘Shit, they’re coming! Leg it!’

They ducked into another guardhouse. Chase looked through one of the slit-like windows. Three men were coming after them, moving in a protective ‘leapfrog’ formation: two taking up positions to cover the third as he overtook them, then the rearmost man repeating the cycle.

He crossed to the doorway to the right of where they had entered. Off to the left was the arena-like area he’d noticed earlier, the icy expanse riddled with twisting trenches carved by hot water. Clouds of steam wafted over it, thick enough to obscure the view. A bridge ahead crossed over a broad passage divided by two deep, winding channels of glossy ice, more steam rising from them. On the bridge’s far side was a larger building - abutting the hypogeum’s outer wall. ‘If we get across there, we can get outside and head back to the temple.’

Sophia shook her head. ‘If they haven’t killed Nina by now, they’ll have captured her.’

‘They might not have found her. I’ve got to look - and I don’t want to hear any more fucking arguments,’ he said as she opened her mouth to object. ‘We’re doing it.’ He moved back across the guardhouse to observe the Covenant advance, then pointed along the bridge. ‘Okay, you go first - keep down below the wall. I’ll be right behind you.’

She got on her knees, sloshing through puddles. Chase looked through the narrow window, but saw no sign of the approaching men. ‘Shit,’ he whispered, moving to the doorway and glancing out. Now he saw them - or rather, two of them, a black gun barrel pointing towards the guardhouse round the end of a wall as the top of another hunched man’s hood bobbed towards it.

If the last trooper was advancing, then where the hell was the man who had taken point?

He leaned out further, trying to find him—

Fire bloomed from the rifle’s muzzle. Chase jerked back as bullets pitted the stone beside his head. But he had seen enough to know that the third man was not coming along the walkway towards him - which meant he had crossed the junction to another bridge parallel to the one Sophia was traversing.

He rushed to the other doorway, seeing that Sophia was just past the halfway point. Poking his head out, he finally spotted the third man. He was on the other bridge, kneeling at the parapet with his rifle at the ready.

He wasn’t firing bullets. Chase recognised the attachment below the barrel, saw Hammerstein tilting the weapon upwards to give the grenade a perfect firing arc . . .

‘Sophia!’ he yelled. ‘Grenade! Run!’

He jumped out from cover, swinging his rifle towards Hammerstein as Sophia sprang forward like a sprinter off the blocks—

Hammerstein fired.

The grenade shot from the launcher - to explode against the bridge’s central support.

The ancient civilisation had built its structures to survive the elements . . . but not high explosives. Pulverised rubble blew outwards, debris scattering over the ice.

The bridge fell.

Chase started shooting - just as the floor dropped out from under him. Flying stones pummelled his body. He glimpsed Sophia falling into one of the channels in the ice before he tumbled into the other one, sliding helplessly down its curved side to splash through the steaming water at its bottom.

The remains of the bridge crashed down behind him, blocking the channel. He staggered to his feet. Hammerstein was watching him from the other bridge.

Gun moving—

Chase fired first. Hammerstein ducked. But he was already shouting to his comrades. Chase tried to climb out of the channel, but the walls of recently melted ice were too slick.

No way out, no way to retreat. He was boxed in.

Hammerstein reappeared, another man running up to him, rifle ready—

Chase slammed the spikes on his boots into the glossy ice - and hurled himself into a headlong dive down the channel, skidding along almost frictionlessly as if on a waterslide.

Bullets tore into the ice, water spraying up - but behind him as he shot under the bridge.

Arms outstretched, spray in his face, Chase skidded down the channel. A curve rose ahead - he hurtled round it, flying up the wall like a human bobsleigh before landing back in the water and zooming onwards. More gunfire as the Covenant members ran to the other side of the bridge after him, but it quickly stopped as he swept out of sight behind the wall of ice.

Another channel shot past where a hot tributary had carved its own path. He was coming into a maze. Steam overhead, and shadows - the passage had taken him beneath one of the hypogeum’s roofed sections.

The ice suddenly dropped away, the hot water having melted all the way down to the stone. Chase came to a stop in a foot-deep pool with a huge splash. Shaking water out of his rifle’s barrel, he stood, quickly taking in his surroundings. He was in a roughly circular bowl in the ice, the surface over ten feet above him, out of reach. As well as the channel that had brought him here, there were several others; the widest, stone at its bottom rather than ice, was carrying the flowing water away. Most of the others were feeding it, streams running from them into the pool.

One, though, had dried up, crystalline sparkles along its floor. As far as he could tell, it headed back in the general direction of the collapsed bridge - and Sophia.

He sloshed out of the pool and hurried into the frozen channel.

One of Hammerstein’s men ran back to him. ‘No good, sir - I lost sight of him.’

Hammerstein glowered at the wrecked bridge. He had seen Sophia Blackwood trying to jump from it as it fell - but she had landed on the far side of the rubble, out of sight. For the moment, she was unreachable.

But not for long. ‘Follow me,’ he said, climbing over the wall and dropping on to the ice below, then climbing down into the nearest channel. ‘We’re going after them.’

Despite the cold, Chase was sweating, steam filling the darkened ice channel. The large building was, he guessed, where the volcanic vent emerged; the Veteres had presumably used it to supply this part of their city with hot water, an ancient form of central heating. Nina would be fascinated, he knew, but his concerns were more prosaic.

Foremost on his mind: how the hell was he going to get out of this maze?

The channel twisted and coiled, others splitting off it to form a confusing labyrinth. Unable to get his bearings from the cavern’s ceiling, he was no longer sure if he was heading in the right direction to find Sophia - or even if the passage he was following joined up with hers. He had tried to climb out, but again the smooth, slippery walls defeated him.

He moved on. In places the walls between channels were thin enough to become almost transparent; in others, they were more like mirrors, his reflection rippling confusingly around him. The beam from his gun’s light bounced off the glittering walls, making it seem as though there were dozens of men prowling through the ice around him . . .

He stopped, statue-still.

One of the lights was still moving.

Chase flicked off the spotlight. The passage plunged into near darkness, the all-pervading blue of the cavern coming faintly through the surrounding ice. The moving light paused, casting faint echoes of itself all around.

Chase took his best guess of the gunman’s true position, then crept into the gloom.

The trooper looked cautiously round. He was sure he had seen a light - which had then disappeared - but the distortion of the surrounding ice walls made it hard for him to be sure of its exact location. Gun raised, he lifted his radio. ‘This is Reiss,’ he whispered. ‘I’m in the eastern part of the covered section - are either of you near me?’

Hammerstein responded quietly. ‘No - I’m at the south end, and Munk is north of me.’

‘I just saw a light go out - he’s here, close by.’

‘We’ll come to you. Be careful. Out.’

Reiss clipped the radio back to his belt, then moved step by step along the passage, his gun’s spotlight illuminating the way. Steam curled past as he rounded a corner and entered an intersection, other channels twisting away in different directions.

He advanced, pointing the light down each passage in turn. Movement in one - he snapped the gun to it, before realising it was just the glint of his own beam. Tensing, he continued his sweep, moving onwards to check a second channel, a third . . .

A shadowy figure behind a translucent wall—

Reiss fired - and the thin wall burst apart, shattered chunks cascading everywhere to reveal . . .

Nothing.

He aimed his spotlight at the ragged hole, seeing another shiny wall of ice beyond it. His radio crackled. ‘Reiss!’ called Hammerstein. ‘Did you get him?’

Reiss unclipped the radio. ‘No, it was just a reflec—’

Chase stepped up behind him and snapped his neck with a brutal crack.

The soldier collapsed, head lolling horribly. ‘Ice to see you,’ said Chase in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, immediately wishing he’d thought of something better. He took the magazine from the dying man’s TAR-21, then continued deeper into the maze.

‘Reiss!’ Hammerstein shouted. ‘Reiss, answer!’

No reply. But the abruptness with which he had been cut off told Hammerstein his subordinate was dead. ‘Man down,’ he warned his remaining team member. ‘Munk, watch yourself. These tunnels are like a damn hall of mirrors - don’t fire unless you’re sure it’s him.’

‘Roger,’ replied Munk. He had increased his pace through the maze on hearing gunfire, but the sudden termination of Reiss’s message brought him to a sudden stop. The echoes made it hard to judge, but the loudness of the shots suggested they had been no more than twenty metres away, to the east.

The channel he was traversing curved in that direction. He peered round the corner. No sign of anyone. He rounded the bend and moved warily along the frozen passage, his distorted reflections slithering along the glassy walls alongside him. The gun’s spotlight beam flickered back at him, diamond-glints trapped within the ice. He stopped, listening.

A faint crunching. Boots on ice. Close by.

It couldn’t be Hammerstein; the noise was coming from the wrong direction. And there was no sign of another spotlight.

Chase.

Munk brought his gun up to his shoulder, the scope’s glowing dot a floating holographic point. Ahead, the channel he was in criss-crossed another. Another muffled crump, another step by his quarry. Getting closer . . .

He switched off the light, not wanting to give Chase any advantage. Reflections became sinister twisted shadows as he slowly advanced. He reached the intersection and looked round the first corner.

Movement. His heart thumped. A figure was creeping along the passage. But it rippled as it moved, merely a reflection. The channel twisted sharply; Chase was round the corner . . .

Munk stepped out, taking aim at where he would emerge, the red dot hovering at head height as the reflection turned—

Shots tore through the ice, ripping into Munk’s head and chest. He fell, his dying thought the realisation that the reflection hadn’t been a reflection at all - it was Chase’s silhouette, the Englishman on the other side of the thin wall of ice . . .

Hammerstein heard the shots. Not far away. But had it been Munk firing, or . . .

‘Munk,’ he said into the radio. ‘Munk, respond.’ Silence. ‘Munk!’

It had been Chase. Hammerstein spat a Hebrew curse and reloaded the grenade launcher. If it took overkill to bring him down, so be it.

28

Two down, one to go, but even with the improved odds Chase didn’t feel like celebrating. The man he had just killed wasn’t the leader, Hammerstein - which meant he still had to face the most dangerous member of the unit.

He moved on through the ice tunnels. The steam grew steadily thicker; the icy walls started to drip, water building up on the floor. Ahead, Chase saw the corner of a stone wall protruding through the ice - he had reached the building’s entrance. From inside came an irregular rushing hiss that reminded him of a steam locomotive. Whatever it was, it was violent, and loud.

Water dripped on to him as he went through the entrance, feet splashing in puddles. The heat was rising to sauna-like levels.

There was only one other way out that he could see. He followed it, steam swirling as the hissing noise grew louder. The stench of sulphur hit his nose, and he realised the cause - heat from the volcanic vent was melting the ice, which was draining into the fumarole, flashing into steam and blasting back out again in angry spurts.

He heard another hiss to one side. The builders had apparently channelled the heat to different places; more steam huffed forcefully from a vent in the floor. Clambering over a slushy mound, Chase saw two more exits from the underground room. Both seemed equally dense with drifting vapour. ‘Eeny, meeny, miney . . . mo,’ he decided, pointing at the right-hand opening. Hefting the gun, he entered the billowing steam.

Hammerstein wiped his forehead. Being too hot in the Antarctic was the last thing he had expected, but the steam was getting thicker, corroding the maze around him. He saw he was approaching a wall, the clammy ice passage leading into a structure.

He switched off his gun’s light in case it gave Chase advance warning, then moved inside.

The room Chase entered was already dark enough without the steam further obscuring his vision - but a diffuse blue glow told him there was an opening above. A chimney for the fumarole?

The noise was coming from below, loud enough to make the room tremble with each enraged blast. There was obviously some kind of larger vent in the floor through which the steam was escaping; he decided to give it a wide berth, free hand outstretched to grope for the wall.

Despite the heat, there was still plenty of ice in the room; his fingers brushed over icicles, water dripping from their tips. Something loomed out of the mist, a bench rising to waist height, more icicles dangling from its overhanging top. He sidestepped it, moving on—

He wasn’t sure what made him stop - some sixth sense, the hairs on his neck rising as he got the feeling he had just passed uncomfortably close to something unseen. He looked round, another gusting jet of steam dissipating to reveal . . .

Hammerstein, barely two feet away, looking back at Chase with the same expression of jangled combat awareness.

They both whirled—

Their rifles clashed against each other like swords, too close to bring them to bear. Both men fired anyway, the shots forcing each to flinch back.

Chase swept up his gun, trying to yank Hammerstein’s weapon out of his hands by using the magazine as a makeshift hook. He succeeded - but the rifle’s strap snagged on Chase’s sights.

And by raising his arms, he had opened himself up to a different kind of attack.

Hammerstein punched Chase in the stomach, hard enough for the blow to hurt even through his coat. He lurched backwards, fumbling to keep his hold on the TAR-21 - but slammed into the jutting bench, the gun slipping from his hand. Both rifles clattered to the floor.

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.

And he and Sophia had ended up in the middle of it, slamming down on the ice and skidding into the surreal amphitheatre 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, before 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 eight clicks 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 pressed 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 tailed 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 - 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 round 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 paracraft 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 manoeuvre.’ The paracraft 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.

Assuming they missed on the first one.

‘Down!’ Chase yelled, dropping the tripod and pulling Sophia behind the fallen boulders. The SIG’s harsh bark filled the crevasse, a three-shot burst blasting chunks from their cover. But the bullets didn’t penetrate it, the millennia-old blue ice compressed almost as densely as stone.

‘Come on!’ He crawled into a narrow gap between two larger blocks. Another burst of gunfire, ice cracking and splintering. He pushed Sophia under the overhang, peering upwards as the rasp of the first paracraft’s engine grew louder - and part of the ice above exploded, hit by a high-power bullet from the sniper rifle. Fist-sized chunks of ice bombarded him. The paracraft roared overhead, a flash of black. The second followed a few seconds later, another burst of bullets pounding their hiding place.

‘Wait there,’ Chase told Sophia, shaking off the shattered ice and scuttling along the narrow passage until he reached a spot where he could see down the crevasse. Keeping low in case the sniper was still aiming back at him, he looked out. The second paracraft, higher up, was rising to breach the top of the crevasse and turn about for another attack, while the first had been forced to continue flying along the ravine.

It wasn’t trying to gain height, though. Instead it was descending rapidly. ‘One’s landing!’ he called to Sophia.

‘I don’t know why you sound so happy about that.’

‘Because as long as they’re in the air, we can’t touch ’em. If they’re on the ground, at least we’ve got some chance of fighting back.’

‘With what? Snowballs?’

The lead vehicle touched down in a cloud of spray, having inflated its rubber skirt just before landing. The parachute collapsed, a huge red flag drifting to the ground as its lines were released. The second paracraft, meanwhile, had reached the top of the ravine, briefly disappearing from sight before swinging round.

Chase quickly unfastened his coat and shrugged it off, ignoring the numerous aches in his upper body. Sophia watched, puzzled. He found a chunk of ice the size of a football and stuffed it into the coat’s hood, bundling the rest of the garment up tightly and holding it below the neck.

Another glance down the crevasse. The first paracraft was making a great skidding turn with a huge feathered trail of ice crystals blowing out behind its main fan. The second dropped towards him.

He ducked back into cover. ‘Okay, stay under there until it goes overhead!’ he shouted. ‘Soon as it’s gone past, throw me the tripod!’

‘The tripod?’ Sophia asked, looking at the metal frame lying nearby. ‘What for?’

‘Just do it!’ Still holding his coat, the cold already biting through his damp clothes, Chase turned back to the opening. The engine note grew steadily louder. Keeping himself behind the frozen boulder, he raised his coat, slowly moving it into the open . . .

The hood blew apart in an eruption of pulverised ice and shredded quilting. Chase yanked the ruined coat out of sight, shaking out the ice and pulling it back on.

The paracraft roared overhead, rasping back up the crevasse. ‘Now!’ Chase shouted, but Sophia was already tossing him the tripod. He grabbed it, then looked down the valley. The first paracraft was racing along the icy surface. Thirty seconds away, less—

He leapt up, jamming one spiked boot against the ice boulder opposite and ascending the narrow gap in a rapid chimney climb until he reached a jagged ledge. Another scramble over a broken outcropping and he was almost at the top.

Engine noise from two directions. The second paracraft had also landed, dumping its parachute. Its gunner thought he had made a kill, and was eager to see the results of his marksmanship. Ahead, the first paracraft was closing. Chase hefted the tripod. He had only one chance, and even that was a long shot. If he failed, then the only weapon he would have really was a snowball.

Closer, closer, the sniper aiming at the base of the boulders, closer—

Now!

Chase sprang up and hurled the tripod like a javelin.

It arced through the air, spearing down over the top of the paracraft’s windscreen - and hit the driver, the spiked metal feet stabbing into his face.

He screamed, clawing at the tripod. His hands off the controls, the paracraft charged onwards at full speed, heading straight for the giant boulder. The gunner tried to grab the throttle lever, but by the time he reached the control it was too late.

The paracraft smashed into the wall of ice. The tripod had ended up wedged between the dashboard and the driver’s chest; he was instantly impaled upon it as he was hurled forward by the sudden stop. The gunner fared no better, whiplashing face first through the windscreen. The engine kept running despite the crash, blindly grinding the vehicle against the ice.

Chase slithered down the frozen mass, landing beside the paracraft and reaching in to pull back the throttle. The engine note dropped to a dull rasp, just enough to keep the skirt inflated. ‘Sophia, come on!’ he shouted as he dragged the two bodies from the vehicle. ‘I’ve got us a ride!’

Sophia emerged from the boulders. ‘The other one’s still coming.’

‘Yeah, but we’ve got guns now - that should even things up a bit.’ The scope of the sniper rifle had been broken in the crash, but the driver’s weapon, a SIG SG-551 assault rifle, seemed undamaged. ‘It’s not like hunting pheasants, but you remember how to shoot, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but I may be a little rusty - for some strange reason, they never let me use the practice range at Guantánamo.’ Chase pulled the floating craft round to face down the crevasse. ‘Do you know how to drive this thing?’ she asked.

‘Not really. You?’

‘Not at all.’

‘In that case, I’ll drive, you shoot.’ He climbed into the driver’s seat, the paracraft wallowing with the extra weight. The steering column dipped as he brushed it, hinged to act as a flight control. Sophia sat beside him, hefting the SIG. Over the engine’s grumble, they could hear the buzz of the other paracraft. ‘Ready?’

‘Hardly, but—’

Chase rammed the throttle forward.

The engine screamed, a freezing backblast whipping round them from the wall of ice behind. The paracraft leapt forward, slewing almost sideways before Chase managed to redirect the steering vanes behind the fan and straighten out.

‘—I doubt that makes any difference,’ she finished.

Chase looked back, his view partly obscured by the cloud of ice particles the paracraft was kicking up in its wake. They were leaving the boulders behind with surprising speed - but their new ride was already showing its weaknesses. Hovercraft had very little grip at the best of times, only the friction of the thick rubber skirt against the ground, and on newly frozen ice it was practically zero. ‘Jesus!’ he gasped. ‘It’s like trying to steer a bar of soap along the bottom of the bath!’

‘They don’t seem to be having any trouble,’ Sophia said. The second paracraft had rounded the barricade and was sweeping after them in a long, carefully controlled drift.

‘Bloody show-offs!’

They burst out into the sunlight, the crevasse’s walls falling away as they reached an ice plain. In the distance, Chase saw the tilt-rotor heading in their direction. Holding the wheel with one hand, he raised the radio. ‘Matt! We’re moving - we’re in a hovercraft!’

‘Hovercraft, huh?’ Trulli’s voice crackled. ‘You know, nothing you guys do surprises me any more. I see you.’

‘But we’ve got company - hold back until we get rid of them!’

‘How’re you going to do that?’

Chase gave Sophia a pointed look. ‘Shooting at them would be a good start.’

‘I was waiting for a decent shot,’ she sniped. ‘But I can just hose them with bullets if you like. It’s not as though I only have one magazine or anything.’

‘Just shoot them!’

Sophia fired, keeping the SIG on single-shot to improve her aim. It didn’t make much difference, the buffeting of the paracraft throwing both her shots wide.

The new threat spurred on their enemies, however. The gunner fired back - on full auto, bullets cracking the fan’s fibreglass casing. Sophia gasped and ducked. ‘Shit!’ Chase yelped as a piece of debris spun past him. He looked over his shoulder to see the other paracraft change course and fall in behind them - so that Sophia’s line of fire would be blocked by the fan.

He tried to bring the vehicle back into her view. The paracraft turned - too fast, spinning round its centre of gravity while still racing across the ice field in a straight line. He attempted to compensate, but they had already made a half-turn so that they were facing their pursuers . . . and with the fan pointing backwards, they were rapidly slowing.

‘Oh, nice driving!’ Sophia sneered as she squeezed off a pair of three-round bursts at the approaching paracraft. She and Chase both ducked as the gunner returned fire. The windscreen shattered, bullets plunking through the hull. There was a flat whap! and a shriek of escaping air as the skirt was punctured, the paracraft’s nose dipping as the bullet hole widened and split the rubber.

Chase steered one way, the Covenant driver the other as the two paracraft whipped past each other. Sophia tracked the other vehicle, still firing and scoring hits - but only to the bodywork, not its occupants. She glanced at the SIG’s magazine, which was made from a translucent plastic, showing how many bullets she had left. It was half empty. ‘Running low!’

‘So make ’em count,’ was the only advice Chase could offer her as he fought with the controls. The damage to the skirt had made the paracraft even more unwieldy, the nose pitching downwards. ‘Get in the back. I need to balance this thing!’

The other paracraft turned with considerably more grace, performing a sweeping ballet across the ice compared to his duck-on-a-frozen-pond manoeuvring. He searched for anything that might help him. The BA609 was circling, holding back out of rifle range. There were some ice ridges that might provide partial cover, but everything else was smooth and glossy where the lake water had frozen over the past day.

There had been a hell of a lot of water, though. The plain wasn’t that big - some of it must have drained away elsewhere . . .

Sophia dropped on to the rear seats, the shift in weight raising the paracraft’s nose slightly. She reacquired her target and fired another burst, this time hitting only ice. Chase clutched the radio. ‘Matt! I need a spotter - can you see any crevasses or cliffs?’

‘Yeah, about ten o’clock from you,’ came the reply. ‘There’s a cliff - a big cliff.’

‘Thanks!’ He changed course, making a quarter-turn to the left to see the cliff edge in the distance, a thin bite out of the horizon. Quickly getting closer.

He adjusted his heading, the second paracraft disappearing behind the fan. The spray would obscure its view of what lay ahead, hopefully until it was too late. He looked over the paracraft’s other controls, finding a lever that might prove helpful . . .

‘They’re catching up,’ Sophia warned.

‘Get down,’ Chase told her, reducing the throttle. The paracraft’s engine, mounted beneath the fan, would give them both some protection. But not much.

‘Why are you slowing down?’

‘I need to get them closer.’

‘Closer?’

‘I’m going to turn so they’ll come round on our left.’ The cliff was now clearly visible ahead, the absence of any landscape beyond it suggesting quite a fall. ‘Shoot if you get the chance - otherwise just hold on tight!’

She braced herself across the rear seats as Chase kept driving. One hand on the wheel, the other on the control lever, he readied himself for the inevitable gunfire. The Covenant men were gaining fast, moving in for the kill—

Shots hit the back of the paracraft, splintering the bodywork and ripping into the engine bay. Chase flinched as a bullet whipped past him and punched through the dashboard. The engine noise became raw, ragged.

More shots—

‘Now!’ Chase shouted, slamming round the wheel.

The paracraft spun - and Sophia blindly fired the SIG’s remaining bullets on full auto as it swept round. The gunner was hit in the shoulder, blood and shattered bone spraying into the air. He fell back, screaming.

Chase’s paracraft kept spinning, pirouetting about in a half-turn—

He pulled the lever.

The paracraft switched from ground to flight mode, all power being transferred to the main propeller as the smaller lift fans under the body were shut off. The rubber skirt instantly deflated, dropping the paracraft down hard on to the ice. It grated along, the combination of friction and the rearward blast from the fan rapidly slowing it. The other paracraft shot past, zooming out of the obscuring spray to see the cliff edge dead ahead—

Chase’s paracraft ground to a stop less than two feet from the drop. The other vehicle wasn’t so lucky, shooting over the edge of a vast frozen waterfall and arcing towards the ground hundreds of feet below.

Chase watched it fall, Sophia sitting up behind him. ‘Nice of them to drop by, eh?’

She made a disgusted noise. ‘Eddie, even Roger Moore would think that joke was—’ Her eyes widened as the plunging paracraft sprouted a second parachute, the scarlet canopy snapping open to arrest its fall. Engine roaring, it spiralled back up towards them. ‘—premature!’

Chase revved his own engine, yanking the lever back to re-inflate the skirt. The paracraft slithered away from the cliff. ‘Matt!’ he said into the radio, seeing the tilt-rotor changing direction. ‘It didn’t quite work out like I’d hoped - how long’ll it take you to land and pick us up?’

‘About a minute,’ said Trulli. Too long, Chase realised - the gunner might have been hit, but the driver was probably a good shot in his own right, and if he damaged the tilt-rotor they would be doomed.

‘You’ll have to pick us up on the move,’ he decided. ‘Lower a line from the winch. We’ll grab it and you can pull us up.’

‘You think that’s a good idea?’

‘No, but it’s the only one I’ve got!’

Ahead, the Bell descended, engines now in hover configuration, and Chase made out a black cable descending from one side. He looked back. A red slash rose above the edge of the cliff, the paracraft following it a moment later - and dropping amidst a huge cloud of blown spray, the parachute flapping away behind it. But the black vehicle didn’t hit the ground, instead gliding along less than a foot above it, the stubby wings trapping air beneath them and providing just enough lift to support it in wing-in-ground effect mode.

And without the drag of the fabric ’chute, the paracraft could go much faster.

‘We haven’t got time.’ The Covenant craft was rapidly gaining, and he had no idea how to make his own paracraft lift off and do the same. ‘Matt! We’ll come to you - just fly in a straight line and I’ll aim for the cable!’

The BA609 dropped to around a hundred feet and slowed, the cable skittering over the ground. Chase turned the paracraft towards it, checking the other controls for anything that might help. A black button turned out to be the release for the backup parachute, but that was no use to him now, as it would just act like a giant airbrake and slow them even more.

All or nothing. He lined the paracraft’s battered nose up with the tilt-rotor, seeing Trulli looking out of the door. ‘How close are they?’ he asked Sophia.

‘A hundred and fifty metres, less - they’re catching up very fast.’

‘Get into the front,’ he told her. ‘When I say, grab the line. Soon as you’ve got it, I’ll tell them to climb - they’ll pull you with them.’

‘What about you?’

‘Still working on that part!’

Sophia climbed back into the front seat. They were gaining rapidly on the tilt-rotor, which tipped forward to match their speed. The end of the cable was a hook, part of the winch system they had used to recover Trulli’s submersible. It bounced along the ice, kicking up chips with each impact. ‘Go up,’ Chase told Trulli. ‘About two feet.’

The Bell ascended slightly, the heavy hook rising with it until it was wavering in the wind just above the ground. Chase adjusted course to follow it, the freezing spray kicked up by the tilt-rotor slashing at his face. ‘Where are they?’

‘Fifty metres.’

The cable danced just ahead of the paracraft. ‘Get ready to grab it!’

The engine noise of the second paracraft changed sharply. A moment later there was an oddly muffled bang from behind. ‘What happened?’ Chase demanded, unable to risk looking away from the cable.

‘They just landed.’ The Covenant craft had dropped back on to the ice, the air cushion absorbing most of the impact. The gunner, face filled with pain, had nevertheless managed to prop his SIG on the windscreen, swinging it towards his target. ‘Eddie, he’s going to shoot at the plane!’

Chase said nothing, grimly urging the paracraft forward . . .

The hook clunked against fibreglass. Sophia grabbed the line and pulled it to her, shoving a foot into the hook.

A burst of gunfire. Two shots missed, the third clanging off the tilt-rotor’s fuselage. The gunner adjusted his aim—

‘Climb!’ Chase roared.

Larsson responded immediately, the Bell’s engines whining as he increased power. The cable snapped taut and whisked Sophia out of the paracraft.

The gunner’s finger tightened on the trigger—

Chase hit the black button and leapt from his seat, kicking down the steering column and clamping one outstretched hand round Sophia’s ankle as she soared away.

The paracraft’s reserve ’chute burst from the back of the hull. The backblast from the fan immediately snapped it open and it shot into the air, pulling the empty paracraft with it.

Chase’s last kick to the controls had moved the wing flaps to their limit, pitching the paracraft into a steep climb - too steep. It backflipped into a stall, falling back to earth . . .

On to the other paracraft.

Fibreglass shattered, shards tearing flesh, then the fuel tanks of both craft ruptured and exploded, scattering ragged hunks of burning debris across the pristine ice.

Chase felt the heat of the explosion. He looked up, seeing Sophia clinging to the line, the underside of the tilt-rotor spinning above her. He tried to bring up his other hand to the hook, but in the gale from the rotors couldn’t quite reach. His other hand was slipping, inexorably losing its grip on Sophia’s boot. He looked pleadingly up at her . . .

She looked back, but her expression was one of annoyance. She pointed at the ground. Chase lowered his gaze - and saw he was hanging only a foot above the ice, Larsson having slowed and descended. Sheepishly, he let go of her foot and dropped. Sophia jumped down beside him. The tilt-rotor moved off, Trulli giving them a thumbs-up as it turned to land nearby.

‘All right,’ said Sophia, ‘can we go now?’

‘Yeah,’ Chase replied. ‘We need to get back to Australia . . . and then on to Africa.’

‘We’ve found the paracraft,’ said one of the remaining Covenant members over Vogler’s radio. ‘Both destroyed.’

‘What about Chase and Blackwood?’ Vogler asked.

‘No sign. But there are marks from landing gear nearby. They must have got away.’

Vogler’s normally impassive face revealed frustration. ‘Understood. Get back here. Out.’

‘Wow,’ Nina said. ‘Not your day, huh? That’s, what, eleven guys and two hovercraft?’

‘Luckily for you, Dr Wilde, we still have enough seats in the other paracraft for you. Otherwise this,’ he indicated the library around them, ‘would be your permanent residence. For as long as it remains, at least.’

She regarded him sourly. ‘You’re still going to destroy it?’

‘When we have what we need, yes.’ He glanced across the huge room. An impromptu production line had been set up, two of the Covenant troopers bringing over stacks of clay tablets that Ribbsley had decreed of interest, so that a third could take high-resolution photographs of them.

‘We shouldn’t take her at all,’ growled Zamal from nearby. ‘We should kill her right now.’

‘Not this again,’ Vogler sighed. ‘You know procedure.’

‘Procedure doesn’t count now Hammerstein is dead. And he would have voted to kill her as well.’

‘You don’t know that,’ he said. Nina was certain Zamal was correct, but decided it best to keep it to herself. ‘And I will not allow anyone to take action against her until the Triumvirate has reached a majority verdict.’

Zamal laughed sarcastically. ‘Which will be hard, since there are only the two of us left. Or were you thinking of granting a field promotion?’ He looked across at the three men working with the tablets - all Arabs. ‘One of my men, perhaps? I have three to your one. The odds are in my favour.’

Vogler shook his head. ‘I was thinking of someone we both trust, whose opinion we respect.’

Another harsh laugh. ‘Not Ribbsley, surely? Or Callum?’

‘The Cardinal.’

Zamal looked surprised. ‘The Cardinal? He is no longer a member of the Covenant.’

‘Nobody leaves the Covenant, Zamal. Not really. And I know you value his opinion. And trust him.’

‘I do,’ Zamal said with reluctance. ‘But since he was your mentor, I don’t think his decision will be unbiased.’

‘He’ll decide based on the facts. And I think he is just as likely to vote with you as with me. Until our Jewish comrades appoint a new member to the Triumvirate, this will be the fastest way to reach a decision. And since Chase and Blackwood have the location of Eden, we need to move fast.’ He looked at Nina. ‘You will come with us.’

‘So I get to stay alive, huh?’ she said.

His hard smile did not reassure her. ‘For now.’

30

Vatican City

It is the smallest independent state in the world, less than a quarter of a square mile in area. A city within a city, completely surrounded by the Italian capital of Rome. Yet for all that, it is also one of the most powerful states in the world, transcending boundaries of nationality and race and politics to hold influence over more than a billion people across the globe: the followers of the Roman Catholic Church.

Both Rome and Vatican City were places that Nina had long wanted to visit. But she had planned to do so as a tourist, not as a prisoner. And especially not with the threat of death hanging over her.

A threat that would be dismissed - or carried out - based upon the word of one man. A man she was about to meet.

Once Ribbsley had all his photographs, the Covenant moved out, making a long and cold flight in the remaining paracraft. Their destination was the bleak Wilkins ice runway some forty miles from the Australian Casey research station, the only place for hundreds of miles able to support aircraft capable of crossing the Antarctic Ocean. Two Hercules transporters waited there, one of them taking Nina, the two surviving Covenant leaders, Ribbsley and Callum to Hobart on the Australian island of Tasmania, from where a jet carried them on the lengthy journey to Europe. It was night when, exhausted and jet-lagged, she was finally brought to the Vatican in an Audi Q7 SUV with blacked-out windows. Zamal and Callum flanked her, each holding a gun. The Audi passed through a side entrance, Nina catching the barest glimpse of the majesty of St Peter’s basilica before being driven to a nondescript building near the tiny city-state’s railway station.

The guns were put away, but Nina felt no less threatened as she was taken inside, Vogler leading the way. Men in dark suits stood guard within, with the same cold, hard faces as Vogler’s team at the frozen city. Former Swiss Guards, now tasked with a more secret objective. Was this the headquarters of the Covenant, right inside the Vatican itself ?

The building’s interior was elegant yet austere. This was a place of work, not worship. Though it was quiet, their footsteps echoing through the polished hallways, Nina got the sense that a lot went on behind each of the closed doors she passed. There was a feeling of power, understated yet undeniable.

Vogler took her up a flight of steps to a door at the end of a long hallway. He opened it. ‘Go inside.’ Nina hesitated, then steeled herself and went through. Vogler followed her, the others remaining outside.

The room was a mix of office and study, two walls lined with book-filled shelves and tall filing cabinets, high windows in the third giving a view of the dome of St Peter’s. The fourth wall was dominated by a beautiful marble fireplace, flames crackling gently in the grate. Before it were two armchairs of time-polished red leather.

An elderly man dressed in black sat in one of them, gazing into the fire. Vogler stood beside him, respectfully lowering his head. ‘Cardinale,’ he said. The man looked up, replying in Italian. Nina didn’t know the language well enough to understand what they were saying, but from their tone it was clear they knew each other well.

Vogler handed the old man the cylinder containing the recording of the song. He examined it, then carefully placed it on a small table and stood to face Nina, revealing that his clothes were the robes of a cardinal. There was something unusual about them, however, and it took a moment for her to realise what: they were devoid of any kind of colour or decoration, even a crucifix.

‘Dr Wilde,’ he said, gesturing to the empty armchair. ‘Please sit down.’

She eyed it suspiciously. ‘Not until I know what’s going on.’

He shrugged. ‘As you wish. I simply thought that after your long journey you might want to be comfortable. I hope you don’t mind if I sit.’ He lowered himself back into his chair, the leather creaking. ‘I am Jonas di Bonaventura, and I’m sure you have many questions. But the question that has brought you all this way is a simple one: should you live?’ He fixed her with a piercing, crystal-clear gaze that belonged on a much younger man.

‘You want me to answer that?’ Nina replied. ‘Because in that case: a big fat yes!’

Di Bonaventura smiled. ‘You live up to your reputation, Dr Wilde. Do, please, sit down. It will make my neck ache if I have to keep looking up at you.’ The smile darkened. ‘And you would not want that to affect my decision.’

Nina paused, then perched on the edge of the chair. Vogler moved to stand behind her - in a position, she realised, that would give him the easiest shot should he choose to draw his gun. ‘So,’ she said, trying not to let that intimidate her, ‘this is the headquarters of the Covenant of Genesis, huh?’

‘The Covenant has no headquarters,’ said di Bonaventura. ‘It does not even exist. Officially, at least. It is a shadow, a phantom, its work known only by a few.’

Nina looked through the windows towards the great floodlit dome of St Peter’s. ‘Including, you know . . . him? The man in the hat?’

Vogler made a faint sound in his throat, enough to indicate his displeasure at her disrespect. Di Bonaventura, however, merely leaned back in his chair. ‘Of course not. That is our firmest rule - he must never know. That would make His Holiness a hypocrite, and that cannot, must not, be allowed to happen. What we do, we do in secret. I am a cardinale in pectore, a secret cardinal - but not in the way most people would use the term, even His Holiness. Popes are chosen from the ranks of the cardinals, but simply by knowing of the existence of the Covenant I am disqualified from ever being nominated. I am, you might say, an agent of the Church, just as governments and corporations have their agents who work to protect them. And keep their secrets.’

‘Like the secret of the Veteres. Yeah, I know all about them,’ she said, catching a slight upward twitch of the cardinal’s white eyebrows.

He smiled again. ‘You do? I think not.’

‘Well, let’s see now,’ said Nina. ‘They date back to well over a hundred and thirty thousand years ago, they expanded across the world all the way from Africa to the Antarctic, they built cities that wouldn’t be equalled in scale for over a hundred millennia, they had a complex written language, a numerical system that would be adopted by the Atlanteans, they worshipped a single god . . . and something else too, what was it?’ She pretended to search her memory. ‘Oh, and they came from a little place called the Garden of Eden, that was it,’ she finished. ‘I think that about covers it.’

Di Bonaventura regarded her silently . . . and then, to her growing dismay, laughed long and hard. It wasn’t sarcastic, or mocking - he was genuinely amused, in the same way that a parent might be at a display by a precocious child. ‘My apologies, Dr Wilde,’ he finally said, still smiling broadly. ‘You do indeed know a great deal about the Veteres, some of which, yes, the Covenant did not. So I congratulate you on that. But despite everything you have learned, there is one thing you have not - the secret of the Veteres themselves!’

‘What?’ Nina demanded, realising that he had just effortlessly manipulated her into revealing part of her hand - the limits of her knowledge. ‘What secret?’

Di Bonaventura merely smiled again, infuriating her. ‘None of what you have discovered matters to the Covenant. If that were all it was, the Covenant would not even need to exist.’

‘So what’s the secret?’ He said nothing. ‘Okay then, it’s something you think is such a threat to the Abrahamic religions that all knowledge of it has to be suppressed and all evidence destroyed. Am I right?’

He nodded. ‘Go on.’

It struck Nina that if she did deduce the truth, she could be signing her own death warrant. But something drove her on: she had to know. ‘But it’s not just that this civilisation existed long before Abraham. There’s something about it that contradicts Genesis - that can be proved to contradict Genesis,’ she realised. ‘That’s the threat, isn’t it? And you know what it is.’

‘But do you, Dr Wilde? Do you have that knowledge?’

‘Why?’ She glanced at Vogler. ‘Are you going to have him shoot me if I do?’

Di Bonaventura chuckled. ‘Certainly not in here - the carpet would have to be cleaned.’ He regarded her with another intense look. ‘And perhaps not at all. But that depends on you.’

‘So if I give you the right answer, you might not kill me?’

‘It is not the answer that matters, but the beliefs that lead to it.’

‘Thanks for that, Yoda,’ she scoffed, before frowning in thought. ‘So what could contradict Genesis so much that the Covenant would kill to stop it becoming known? Genesis has been contradicted by science often enough in the past, in everything from geology to zoology to astrophysics, but you didn’t send out commandos to assassinate Stephen Hawking. So it must be something huge . . .’ She tailed off. ‘It’s . . . it’s not aliens, is it?’

A long silence, only broken by the snapping of the fire. Then: ‘Of course it’s not aliens!’ said di Bonaventura, somewhere between mirth and disbelief that she could entertain such a ridiculous suggestion. ‘And I thought you were a serious scientist. Aliens!’

‘Hey!’ Nina protested. ‘I am a serious scientist! I found out more about the Veteres in two weeks than that jerk Ribbsley did in fifteen years, or however long he’s been working for you. How long has the Covenant been around, anyway?’

Di Bonaventura was still amused. ‘Subtlety is not one of your investigative tools, is it, Dr Wilde?’

‘And it’s not one of the Covenant’s methods, either. So how long? If you’re going to kill me anyway, there’s no harm in telling me.’

‘And if I decide to let you live?’

‘Then you need me for something, and I might be more inclined to co-operate if you give me something in return.’

‘So you’re saying you are willing to co-operate with the Covenant?’

‘I said might. But that’s a pretty small might. Tiny.’

‘You may surprise yourself, Dr Wilde. But to answer your question, the Covenant, in its current form, has existed since the 1950s. But a similar secret organisation has existed within the Church for over a hundred years, since the first discovery of the Veteres.’

‘So Judaism and Islam weren’t always part of it?’

‘No, though they had their own equivalents.’

‘It must have been something big to unite them. I mean, Christianity, Judaism and Islam aren’t exactly noted for their mutual co-operation.’

‘There have been examples,’ said di Bonaventura. ‘Have you heard of the Declaration of Alexandria?’ Nina shook her head. ‘It was an agreement between the faiths signed in 2002, to end their mutual hostilities in an attempt to bring peace to the Holy Land.’

‘Wow, it’s been a roaring success so far, huh?’

For the first time, di Bonaventura betrayed a hint of defensiveness. ‘You may mock, Dr Wilde, but the intentions of its signatories were sincere. They were all men of God, working for a common goal. Just like the Covenant.’

‘The Covenant - men of God?’ Nina cried. ‘After all the people you’ve killed, you’ve got the nerve to say you’re doing it in God’s name? Yet you daren’t even tell your own leader that the Covenant exists? That certainly makes you a hypocrite.’

‘It does,’ he admitted, his face revealing a long-held shame. ‘And when the time comes, we will all be judged. Perhaps we will even be damned. But for now, protecting the faith seems the right path to follow.’

‘Protecting the faith? Or protecting the Church?’ Nina fixed him with her green eyes, a look as intense as the one he had earlier given her. ‘Is that what this is about? You’re afraid that what I’ve discovered will destroy the Church? And not just yours, but the Jewish and Islamic ones too?’

‘You over-estimate yourself,’ he replied. ‘The Church has survived Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. It will survive Nina Wilde as well. As will the other faiths. If anything, your discovery of Eden will strengthen them, by turning the story of Genesis from an allegory to historical fact.’

‘My discovery?’ said Nina, feeling an odd spark of triumph. ‘So the Covenant didn’t actually know for sure?’

‘We . . . suspected,’ said Vogler. ‘Finds at other sites, Ribbsley’s translations, they were leading in that direction. But it wasn’t until you found the audio recording in Antarctica that we had proof of its existence.’

‘But you don’t know where it is,’ she said. ‘And Eddie and Sophia do. And they’re probably already on their way there - I mean, I haven’t heard anyone saying they’re dead.’ A glance at Vogler. ‘Gonna set me straight?’

He shook his head. ‘They seem to have escaped Antarctica.’

‘Good for them. Well, good for Eddie. I don’t really care what happens to Sophia.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ said di Bonaventura. ‘Do you really want her to find the Garden of Eden? A murderer, a terrorist, a blackmailer . . . yes, I know why your president is so afraid of her,’ he went on, seeing Nina’s surprised look. ‘It is my job to know such things.’

‘To protect the Church, I guess.’

‘Yes. We rarely use such influence directly, but because of Gabriel Ribbsley’s lust we were forced to make a . . . request to President Dalton, to give him what he wanted in return for helping us.’

‘Release Sophia or we end your presidency with the scandal of the decade?’

‘Something like that. But Gabriel was already greedy, and this has proved he can no longer be relied upon. So we need someone else to uncover the secrets of the Veteres.’ His intense gaze returned. ‘Perhaps you.’

‘Me?’ Nina gasped. ‘What, are you nuts? First you try to kill me, and now you’re offering me a job?’

‘Not a job, exactly. An arrangement.’

‘Find Eden for you and not get killed, right?’ He nodded. ‘And if I turn down your generous offer?’

Di Bonaventura gazed into the fire. ‘Now that we know it exists, we must find Eden. One way or another, we will know what you know. You can tell us willingly . . . or we can give you to Mr Callum.’ He turned back to Nina, eyes hard. ‘There is an empty cell at Guantánamo Bay, formerly occupied by Sophia Blackwood. He could see that it becomes occupied again.’

Nina’s mouth went dry at the threat, but she tried not to let her apprehension show. ‘But by the time I talked, Eddie might already have found Eden.’

‘Which is why I would prefer your co-operation. Dr Wilde, I have made my decision, which both the surviving members of the Triumvirate have agreed to accept. I believe it is in the current interests of the Covenant for you to . . .’ He paused. ‘Live.’

‘Great,’ said Nina, understandably relieved. ‘Pity Zamal wasn’t here to hear that. I’d have loved to have seen his face.’

‘I would not be so smug,’ said Vogler. ‘Zamal may find some other reason to end your life. And perhaps next time, I will agree with him.’

Di Bonaventura waved him down. ‘I think she understands the threat. I hope she also understands the opportunity she is being given.’ He stood to address Nina. ‘Agree to help us find Eden, and you will go too. You will be the one to discover Eden. Imagine it, Dr Wilde - it would be the single greatest archaeological discovery in history. Not even Atlantis compares.’

‘You might be right,’ she replied. ‘But discovering Eden isn’t much use to me if I’m dead five minutes later.’

‘There may be no need to kill you. If you find Eden, and if it contains what we suspect, then you may understand why the Covenant was created. You may even agree with its purpose.’

‘Somehow I doubt that. But why don’t you just tell me what the big secret is, right now?’

The cardinal smiled. ‘Because then you would have no incentive to find out for yourself. I know what kind of person you are, Dr Wilde. I understand you. You are driven by the need to know, to discover that which is hidden. You have an urge to expand the boundaries of your knowledge - of all knowledge. I understand you, because I am the same.’

‘We are not the same,’ Nina insisted vehemently. ‘I’m a scientist, I deal in fact - the tangible, the provable, things I can hold in my hand and show to the world. You’re doing the opposite, you’re trying to suppress knowledge. To protect your faith.’

‘My faith is strong enough not to need protection.’

‘Then why are you trying to destroy all trace of the Veteres?’

‘Because not everyone’s faith is as strong as mine.’ As Nina took in the implications of that, he continued, ‘Dr Wilde, science and faith are not mutually exclusive. The Church is not opposed to science, far from it. Astronomy, cosmology, genetics, evolutionary biology . . . the Church has embraced them all.’

‘After long battles,’ Nina pointed out.

‘Sometimes, yes. Controversial theories cannot become accepted overnight. But in the end, only a fool denies the undeniable. And that is when science and faith come together. They are two sides of the same coin - the search for truth. Through science, you can answer the question: what is this? And then through faith, you can answer the other: what does this mean? Only when you know both answers can you find the ultimate truth.’

‘The ultimate truth being . . .’

‘The purpose of the Covenant. The secret of the Veteres. And the hope . . .’ he looked away, at the ceiling - or something beyond it, ‘the hope that one day, we will understand how it fits into God’s plan.’

‘Cardinale,’ said Vogler - and this time there was a warning tone to his voice. The balance of power in the room had subtly shifted from the Covenant’s former leader to his protégé. Had di Bonaventura said too much - or was he expressing another long-withheld regret over his actions?

His words at least confirmed to Nina that whatever the secret of the long-dead civilisation might be, it did indeed conflict strongly with the words of Genesis - so much so that the Covenant was afraid of the damage it could cause to all three Abrahamic religions. But what could that secret be?

One thing was clear. For now, her only chance of survival was to accept di Bonaventura’s offer - and hope she could string out the meagre amount of information she could remember from the destroyed map long enough to escape.

And there was something else. What if . . . what if she actually did discover the Garden of Eden? The cardinal was right - it would be the greatest discovery of all time. And if she were the one to make it . . .

‘All right,’ she said, standing. ‘Cardinal? I accept your offer.’ She held out her right hand.

For a moment he seemed almost surprised. But then he took her hand, shaking it. ‘Very well. Killian,’ he said, turning to Vogler, ‘it was good to see you again, and I hope I was of one last service to the Covenant.’

Vogler bowed his head. ‘You were, cardinale. Thank you. Though I suspect Zamal will not be pleased with your decision.’

‘Zamal will see the wisdom of it. In time. He always does.’

‘Yes, he does. In time.’ The two men shared the smile of a private joke, then shook hands. ‘Cardinale,’ Vogler said again; then he led Nina to the door.

‘Dr Wilde?’ di Bonaventura said as they reached it.

‘Yes?’

‘Good luck.’

Her surprise at his apparent sincerity was such that all she could think to say was, ‘Thank you.’

As Vogler had predicted, Zamal was less than pleased about the cardinal’s decision.

‘He is wrong!’ he bellowed, slamming a fist down on the table. The group had left the Vatican and gone to a large house in Rome, the dome of St Peter’s still visible in the distance through its windows. ‘I knew he would side with you!’

‘You agreed to abide by his decision,’ said Vogler. ‘And now the deadlock has been broken, we have a new objective. Dr Wilde will guide us to Eden.’

Ribbsley snorted. ‘I doubt that very much. Even if she knows its location, which is unlikely, she’ll just try to delay us to give Chase a chance to get there first.’

‘She knows the risks of wasting our time,’ said Vogler, looking to where Nina was sitting apart from the others, her face stony. ‘And surely,’ he continued, turning to Callum, ‘the intelligence resources of the United States have been able to track down Chase and Blackwood by now?’

The white-haired man sat up stiffly, bristling at the challenge - but unable to respond to it. ‘Unfortunately, not yet.’

‘Not yet?’ echoed Zamal. ‘Satellites, computers, spies, trillions of dollars - and you have nothing?’

‘No, not nothing,’ Callum said through tight lips. ‘The Southern Sun arrived at the French ice station of Dumont d’Urville about five hours ago. The surviving members of the UNARA expedition are going to be flown back to Australia from there. But Chase and Blackwood weren’t aboard - and the ship’s tilt-rotor was missing. It wouldn’t be able to reach land from off the Antarctic coast, so either the ship headed north to the limits of its range and then turned back to Dumont, or they stripped out the plane and turned it into a flying gas can. Even so, the only place it could have reached is Tasmania - but so far it hasn’t been found.’

‘Maybe they crashed in the sea,’ muttered Zamal.

‘I doubt we are that lucky,’ Vogler said. ‘But there’s been no trace of them? Nothing at all?’

Callum shook his head. ‘Either they’re still in Australia, or they’ve used false IDs to get out of the country.’ He glowered at Nina. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that.’

Nina leaned back and put her hands behind her head. ‘Lawabidin’ citizen here.’

Zamal banged his fists on the table. ‘I can make her tell us.’

‘It’s not important,’ said Vogler. ‘We have far more resources - we can still beat them.’

‘If she co-operates,’ Callum said.

‘I believe she will.’

‘You have a great deal of faith,’ rumbled Zamal.

‘Isn’t that the reason we are here?’

‘It’s not the reason I’m here,’ said Ribbsley, going to a window to gaze out at Rome. ‘And if you think I’m going to trek across the bloody deserts of Sudan, you can think again. Khartoum’s a backwater hellhole, but at least the hotels have air conditioning and room service, even if you can’t get a drink. I’ll fly myself to the site once she finds it.’ He turned, giving Nina a suspicious sneer. ‘If she can find it.’

‘I’ll find it,’ she snapped back, partly to maintain the fiction that she had both memorised and translated the map, but also out of affronted professional pride. ‘I’ve been doing better than you so far, haven’t I?’ He huffed and turned away. ‘Hah!’

‘In which case,’ said Vogler, ‘it is time you gave us a starting point. Sudan, you said, but you will need to be more specific. Since it is the largest country in Africa.’ He slid a map across the table to her. ‘So. Shall we begin, Dr Wilde?’

31

Sudan

‘So, do you actually know where you’re going?’ asked Tamara Defendé, ‘TD’ to her friends, as she guided her battered Piper Twin Comanche to a landing on the dusty runway.

‘More or less,’ said Chase, taking in the landscape. The desert surrounding El Obeid in central Sudan looked as desolate as the surface of Mars. ‘Okay, maybe less than more.’

The plane touched down, wheels squawking. Chase jolted forward in his seat. ‘Sorry,’ said TD, braking. ‘I’m not exactly thrilled to be here. Hardcore fundamentalist Islamic state on one hand, independent African businesswoman on the other - not the best mix.’

‘Do you have a problem with the Sudanese?’ Sophia asked from the Piper’s second row of seats.

‘Yes, if they’re paying the Janjaweed to rape and murder African women,’ TD said with angry sarcasm. ‘Maybe you hadn’t heard in your cell, but there have been some problems here. A little place called Darfur.’

‘We’re not going to Darfur,’ Chase said, trying to head off any further conflict between the two women. TD was an old friend, who at first had been happy to fly to meet him at Nairobi in Kenya - but she became less keen when she learned his intended destination, and outright appalled on discovering the identity of his travelling companion. He got the feeling that TD disliked Sophia more for betraying him personally than for any of her crimes.

‘Close enough. That part of the desert you showed me on the map, it might look empty, but it’s still Janjaweed territory.’ She mimed spitting. ‘You should stay well away.’

‘We don’t have a choice, unfortunately.’ TD turned off the main runway. Several planes were parked on the dirt, white-painted trucks and Land Rovers lined up nearby. ‘Those are UN trucks. What’s all this?’

‘Relief effort,’ TD told him. ‘It’s supposed to be going to Darfur. But quelle surprise, it has stopped here.’ Her attractive face took on an uncharacteristic hardness. ‘I hate this country.’

‘Just another African basket-case,’ Sophia said dismissively. ‘The entire continent was much better off in the colonial days.’ TD gave her a look suggesting that had she not been occupied with the controls, she would have reached back and hit her.

‘Soph, shut up,’ Chase said, tired. The last few days of travelling on false passports using bogus credit cards had been long, and tense, the possibility that they might be identified and captured - or killed - constantly hanging over them. And with Sudan being run by Islamic fundamentalists, there was a danger that the Covenant, at least Zamal’s branch of it, had influence. He patted TD’s shoulder. ‘Thanks for doing this for us.’

‘I’m doing it for you, Eddie,’ she replied pointedly. ‘And Nina. I hope she’s okay.’

He put on a stoic front. ‘So do I. But they took her prisoner when they could have just killed her, so hopefully she’s stringing them along about the map. The further away she tells them Eden is, the longer we’ll have to find it.’

‘You really believe that?’ TD asked. ‘The Garden of Eden, the actual one from the Bible? Here, in Sudan?’

‘That’s what Nina thought, so yeah. No idea what we’re going to find, though. If there’s some magical oasis out in the desert, I’m pretty sure it’d have showed up on Google Earth by now.’

‘There are only two things you can be sure of finding out there,’ said TD, bringing the plane to a stop. ‘Sand, and death.’

‘I can cope with the first one, even if it’s a pain when it gets in my arse crack,’ said Chase, the deliberate crassness of the comment producing a hint of a smile from his pilot. ‘Second one, though, I’d rather be the one causing it. Will your mate be able to sort something out?’

TD switched off the engines, the silence unsettling after the continuous buzz of the flight. ‘I spoke to him before I met you in Nairobi. He’s got you a jeep, and some guns. I don’t know what state they’ll be in, though.’

‘So long as the wheels turn and bullets come out when I pull the trigger, they’ll do. Thanks.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘What’re you going to do now?’

‘Personally, I’d like to fuel up and get as far from here as possible. But . . .’ she tipped back the bill of her baseball cap, ‘I might stay around for a couple of days. Just in case you need me.’

Chase grinned. ‘Appreciate it.’

‘Try not to get killed, Eddie. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And Nina.’

They climbed out and headed for the rundown terminal building.

A hundred and fifty miles to the north, a convoy of five Humvees pulled off a rough dirt road and came to a stop. Painted black rather than in camouflage colours, the oversized 4x4s appeared to be civilian vehicles. But beneath the paint, its gloss dulled by dust following the westward drive from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, they were ex-military M1114 models, armoured and powerful.

Despite their size, each Humvee only had four seats. Nina rode in the lead truck, accompanied by Vogler and two of his men, more former Swiss Guards replacing the ones killed in Antarctica. She had noticed, however, that Vogler’s contingent consisted of only four men, rather than the five he had had before. Did the Covenant only have limited manpower remaining? The absence of a new leader to replace Hammerstein, despite the presence of another group of six hard-faced Israeli troopers, suggested that was the case; if so, then the Covenant had its limits, and was far from the omnipotent organisation it had once seemed to be.

Zamal’s squad was at full strength, however. They emerged from their Humvees, forming an armed cordon as the Arab strode across the sand to meet the four horsemen waiting for them. ‘So who are those guys?’ Nina asked. ‘The apocalypse?’

‘Our guides,’ said Vogler. ‘The Janjaweed.’

Nina knew the name: the United States government had declared the militia group to be guilty of genocide in Darfur. ‘The Covenant sure is friends with some really nice people,’ she said, not concealing her disgust.

‘They would not have been my first choice. But this is their territory; we will need their support. Get out. They want to see you.’

‘I don’t want to see them,’ she said. But Vogler had already exited, rounding the Humvee to open her door. She reluctantly left the cabin.

The Humvee’s interior was air conditioned; opening its door was like opening that of a furnace. She hurriedly donned a floppy-brimmed hat to protect her pale face and neck from the sun’s searing glare, tugging her sleeves as far down as they would go. The occupants of the other Humvees also emerged, all in desert camouflage except for Callum, who was wearing civilian khakis. He regarded her from behind the blank quicksilver of his sunglasses.

Zamal was talking to the riders in Arabic. All wore thick headscarves and layered clothing to protect themselves from the sun, the top layer military fatigues in green and brown camouflage patterns. Their guns were AK-47s, the near-universal rifle of the Third World. One man had a rocket-propelled grenade launcher slung from his saddle; brand-new military equipment in the hands of a purportedly civilian militia. Despite the heat, there was one cold thing in the desolate landscape - their eyes, the narrow, unblinking gaze of men who expected to be feared, and had done much to justify it.

All four pairs of eyes locked on to her.

One of the riders said something to Zamal. He replied, his sneering smile directed at Nina. The four men all laughed malevolently.

‘These are the Janjaweed,’ Zamal said, turning to stand imperiously before her. ‘I can tell from your expression that you have heard of them.’

‘Yeah, you could say that. At the United Nations. Usually in connection with words like “mass murder”, “gang rape”, “genocide” . . . Real good company you keep for a supposed man of God.’

‘They serve a purpose. They will take us across the desert to where you say Eden will be found.’ His lips curled back, exposing his teeth in a sadistic grin. ‘And if it is not there . . . I will give you to them.’

‘I’ve heard it all before,’ said Nina, outward defiance not quite concealing her dread. The horsemen were still watching her, leering. ‘And it’ll be there.’

‘Perhaps you should show them where we are going,’ said Zamal, producing a map. ‘Before we meet the rest of their group.’

‘There’s more of them?’ she asked nervously. Four Janjaweed - the name literally meant ‘devil on horseback’ - were ominous enough, but an entire militia group . . .

‘Oh, yes. Many more.’ He placed the map on the Humvee’s hood, Vogler and Callum coming to look. ‘So. We crossed the Nile at Khartoum . . .’

‘So they crossed the Nile,’ said Chase, holding a digital print of the map from the frozen city. ‘Then if we backtrack west, they started from an oasis between three mesas.’ He looked at one of the satellite images Sophia held. ‘I don’t see an oasis, but they can come and go in a couple of years, never mind a hundred thousand. But the mesas . . . it’s got to be these.’ He tapped at a trio of formations on the printout.

Sophia gazed into the shimmering desert to the northwest. ‘We’re at the end of the road, then. Literally.’

‘If you call this a road.’ Chase looked back along the rutted track they had followed after heading northwards from El Obeid. ‘Going off road’s not going to be any worse for the truck.’ He banged the bonnet of the rusting, sand-scoured, 1980s-vintage Toyota Land Cruiser that TD’s contact had acquired for them.

‘Or our spines. So how far have we left to go?’

Chase swapped the Veteres map for a considerably more recent representation of the area. ‘About a hundred miles.’

‘How long will it take?’

‘Over this terrain? No way we’ll get there today. We’ll have to camp for the night.’

‘And we only have one tent,’ Sophia said with a playful smile. ‘Cosy.’

‘One tent and one truck,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m not bloody telling Nina that I slept with my ex-wife.’

‘Your loss. Do you have a preference, or shall we toss for them?’

‘You can have the tent.’

‘Then you can put it up. What?’ she said as Chase shook his head in exasperation. ‘You got to choose where to sleep. It only seems fair.’ She looked into the truck. ‘And what about the guns?’

‘They’ll be sleeping with me,’ he said firmly. As well as the truck and some survival gear, they had been furnished with a pair of weapons: a battered Browning High Power automatic that Chase guessed was a couple of decades older than he was, and an even more ancient Lee-Enfield rifle, its wooden body chipped and scarred, that almost certainly dated back to the Second World War.

‘Yes, I thought they might be.’ She smirked. ‘Sleeping with something cold, hard, inflexible, with awkward knobbly protrusions . . . it’ll be as if you’ve got Nina back.’

‘Har fucking har. Just for that, you can put up your own tent.’ Ignoring her look of displeasure, he gathered up the sheets of paper and got back into the Land Cruiser. ‘Coming?’

‘A long journey through a hot desert over awful terrain in a truck with worn-out suspension to spend the night in a tent? I can’t wait.’ She climbed in and slammed the door.

They picked their way northwest for hours, slowing over the harsh, rocky plains littered with sharp stones that threatened to rip through the Land Cruiser’s tyres, then speeding up to avoid getting bogged down in mile after mile of soft sand. Despite Chase’s best efforts, they still had to stop and dig themselves out a couple of times, further slowing their progress. By the time the sun neared the horizon, the Land Cruiser’s milometer told him that they had barely covered two-thirds of the distance to their destination.

The sunset itself was something to behold, though. The dust and sand in the air turned the western sky a lurid, dripping-blood red, swathes of orange running through it as though the heavens had caught fire. ‘Look at that,’ Chase said. ‘That’s a hell of a sunset. Wish we’d brought the camera.’

‘This isn’t going to become your new “night sky in Algeria” story, is it?’ Sophia yawned. Chase spotted a rock poking from the sand and swerved the Land Cruiser so that the wheels on her side slammed over it, jolting her hard. ‘Ow! Did you do that on purpose?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Chase, suppressing a smile as he looked back at the splendour of the setting sun.

He spotted something else, though: a column of black smoke rising into the sky two or three miles away. ‘Soph, check the map - the proper one. Were there any villages near the route we were going?’

She had seen the smoke too, and consulted the map. ‘Not for a long way. Are you off course?’

‘Don’t see how; I’ve been following the compass.’ He tapped the compass ball attached to the dashboard, which showed them to be heading northwest. Looking at the distant smoke, he saw a second column starting to rise beside it. ‘We’d better take a look.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Sophia asked, her tone making it clear she thought it was not.

‘There’s not supposed to be anyone out here. Someone might be in trouble.’

‘Which is hardly our problem. And if it’s the Janjaweed?’

‘Then I want to know where they are before they know where we are.’ He aimed the Land Cruiser towards the smoke.

Fifteen minutes later, Chase stopped the truck. They were close to the base of a rocky rise. The smoke was coming from the other side, more dark stalks having sprouted during the drive. He wound down the window, listened for a moment, then took both guns from the back seat. ‘Come on.’

‘What is it?’ Sophia asked as he got out.

‘I heard shouting. Keep your voice down, and stay low.’ He clambered up the shadowed face of the dune. Sophia followed.

The shouts became clearer as they approached the low summit. Men, the yelling of a mob. And others cutting through it, higher-pitched: the screams of women.

And children.

Chase crawled the last few feet to peer over the top of the dune. ‘Shit,’ he hissed when he saw what lay below.

He’d seen similar scenes in different countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, half a dozen others where the rules of civilisation had been broken down by war. Over the dune was a rocky hollow, a small pool of rancid water at its heart, round which had been built a pathetic collection of shelters. A makeshift village, a camp for refugees fleeing the violence in Darfur to the west. A few dozen people at most, most of them women and children, trying to find safety.

They had failed.

The shelters were on fire, bodies strewn around them. Some had been shot, but most had been hacked down by machetes, or simply bludgeoned to death with clubs and rifle butts. Some of their attackers were on horseback, circling the doomed encampment and forcing back those of the dwindling group of survivors who tried to flee, laughing and shouting abuse as they rode to block and strike at them.

Those who had dismounted were in groups, three or four to each of the refugee women. They too were laughing, egging each other on.

Chase watched, a seething rage rising, as one of the women was thrown to the ground, the men holding her down and ripping away her clothes. She screamed, begging for mercy that would never be given as the Janjaweed leader, a man in a white headscarf and teardrop mirrorshades, tugged at his own clothing, belt flapping from his waist. More laughter, a cheer from the others as the screams rose into hysteria.

Chase brought the rifle to his shoulder, locking the cross hairs on the back of the man’s head—

Sophia shoved the barrel down. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘The world a favour,’ he replied angrily. ‘Let go of the gun.’

‘There must be fifteen of them, and they’ve all got AKs. If they realise we’re here, they’ll kill us.’

‘We’ll see how many I get first.’

‘This isn’t your fight, Eddie. We have to find Eden before the Covenant. And we’ve got no chance of doing that if the Janjaweed know we’re here.’ She looked him in the eyes. ‘You want to save Nina? Then we need a bargaining chip we can use against the Covenant. Being a white knight here will get us killed, and it will get her killed.’

Chase’s face tightened with fury . . . but he lowered the gun. ‘Fuck!’

Below, the screaming woman managed to pull one arm free, flailing it in panic - and knocking off her attacker’s sunglasses. The other men holding her laughed mockingly, but he punched her brutally in the face once, twice, blood spurting from her mouth and nose - then pulled back, drawing a gun and shooting her twice in the chest. He adjusted his clothing, then picked up his sunglasses and spat on the corpse.

Then the group moved on to another woman.

Sophia was already sliding back down the slope. ‘We should go,’ she said. ‘Wait for them to leave - and hope they’re not going the same way as us.’

‘They’d fucking well better not be,’ he growled as he descended after her.

Behind him, the screams stopped, one by one.

The horsemen led the convoy of vehicles through the empty desert. The sun was a fat, shimmering semicircle on the horizon by the time they stopped. Nina saw on the Humvee’s GPS screen that they were still at least thirty miles from the possible location of Eden, but the break in the journey was being called by their escorts.

They had arrived at the Janjaweed’s camp.

Nina watched nervously through the tinted window of armoured glass as the five vehicles pulled into a circle like a wagon train. There were at least fifty men in the camp, mostly young, all with the same predatory eyes as the horsemen as they watched the 4x4s come to a stop in their midst. The Janjaweed had trucks of their own, though they were the antithesis of the military vehicles in terms of sophistication - half a dozen ‘technicals’, elderly pickups stripped to the bone with machine guns affixed to mounts welded into the rear beds.

Zamal was the first out of the Humvees, the waiting horsemen now joined by a man whom Nina assumed to be the group’s leader. White headscarf, mirrored sunglasses, AK-47 over his shoulder and a machete across his back . . . and a face of cold, merciless stone. After a minute of discussion, Zamal gestured for the vehicles’ other occupants to emerge.

Nina was even more reluctant than before to do so, but had little choice. ‘This is Hamed,’ said Zamal of the Janjaweed leader. ‘He and his men will escort us to where we are going tomorrow. But tonight we are their guests. We are invited to share their shelter.’

‘Thank him for his generosity,’ said Callum, sarcasm creeping into his voice. Nina could see why; the collection of shabby, patched-up tents looked anything but inviting. ‘But we brought our own tents. Thank God,’ he added under his breath.

‘He also invites us to join them for their evening meal. Hamed has just returned from a successful mission, and wants us to share in the celebrations. Especially you, Dr Wilde. He is particularly keen for you to join him.’ Behind Zamal, Hamed’s face showed expression for the first time: a sadistic lust.

‘I’d rather sit in the Humvee’s trunk and eat dog food,’ she said.

Zamal smirked. ‘It can be arranged.’

To Nina’s surprise, Vogler came to her defence. ‘It would be best if Dr Wilde were kept apart from our . . . hosts. To avoid any unfortunate incidents.’ The two Covenant leaders stared at each other, an unspoken challenge.

‘A shame,’ said Zamal after a moment. ‘The Janjaweed will be disappointed not to have the pleasure of her company.’

‘I don’t want to be a part of any kind of pleasure these guys have,’ Nina said in revulsion.

‘Nor do I,’ Vogler told her. He issued orders to his men. They unpacked large quick-erect tents, kicking aside stones and deadwood in the wide circle formed by the parked Humvees to make space for the dome-shaped shelters.

Zamal turned back to Hamed, apparently telling him that he would be having one guest fewer for dinner. The Janjaweed leader scowled, before launching into a discussion of something else . . . but his eyes never wavered from Nina.

Despite the heat, she shivered.

‘Well, shit,’ muttered Chase, scanning the firelit encampment through the rifle scope.

‘What is it?’ Sophia asked from beside him. It was night; they lay just below the crest of a low dune, observing the activity in the distance.

‘It’s not just the Janjaweed. I don’t think they could afford five new Humvees.’

After returning to the Land Cruiser and driving to a safe distance from the ravaged refugee camp, they had waited to see in which direction the Janjaweed left. With a certain inevitability, they had gone northwest - the direction in which Chase and Sophia needed to head.

Chase had waited longer to give the horsemen time to open up the gap between them, then followed on a parallel course, hoping to skirt round them before night fell. But then he saw more smoke silhouetted against the dying light of the dusk sky - ahead of them. A Janjaweed camp. They would have patrols watching the desert, so the Land Cruiser’s lights would be spotted from miles away if he tried to drive round it - and driving without lights in this terrain was a recipe for disaster.

‘The Covenant?’

‘It’s not tourists, that’s for bloody sure.’ He panned across the camp, seeing horses, pickup trucks, tents, far too many armed men for his liking . . . and a familiar face. ‘Ay up,’ he muttered. ‘It’s the Covenant all right. There’s Zamal - and he’s talking to that rapist fucker from the refugee camp.’

‘Well, that’s marvellous,’ said Sophia. ‘You know what Nina’s done, don’t you? She’s given the Covenant the directions to bloody Eden!’

‘She can’t have done,’ Chase said defensively. ‘She didn’t know. Not accurately enough.’

‘She didn’t need to. She saw the general location in Antarctica. If we could figure it out from modern maps, so could they.’

‘She wouldn’t have helped them,’ he insisted.

‘Then they tortured it out of her, if that makes you feel any better. But it doesn’t change the fact that they’re here. Even if they don’t know the exact location, they’ve got enough manpower to search the desert until they find it. Damn it!’

‘We can still beat ’em,’ said Chase, continuing to scan the encampment. More Janjaweed men, pushing the number to over fifty, sitting in groups round the fires; Covenant troopers in desert camo; dome tents inside the circle formed by the Humvees—

‘Buggeration and fuckery,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

He adjusted the focus, picking out some very familiar red hair through the half-open flap of one tent. ‘They’ve got Nina.’

‘She’s there?’ Sophia said in disbelief. ‘They actually brought her with them?’

‘They must need her to work out where Eden is.’ He shifted the sights, pinpointing her exact position.

‘Or,’ Sophia countered, ‘she made a deal with them. Her life for the location of Eden.’

Chase glared at her. ‘She’d never do that.’

‘Are you sure? For all she knows, you’re dead. She might have thought she had nothing else left.’

‘Bullshit,’ Chase snapped, looking back through the sight. There were a couple of Covenant men patrolling inside the circle of Humvees . . . and more Janjaweed on the outside, the two sides regarding each other with clear mutual suspicion. He surveyed the camp’s perimeter. Away from the fires, everything was in flickering shadow.

He sat up and handed the rifle to the surprised Sophia. ‘Here.’

‘You’re giving me a gun?’ she asked, as if expecting some trick.

‘Yeah. I need you to cover me.’ He had donned his black leather jacket when the temperature fell after nightfall; now he removed it and gave it to Sophia as well. For what he was planning, he couldn’t allow the creak of leather to give him away.

‘Why?’

‘’Cause I’m going to rescue Nina.’

‘From there? There must be at least sixty men!’

‘Not for long.’ He drew the Browning. ‘I’m going to get a knife from the truck, then I’m going in.’

Sophia shook her head. ‘Do you seriously think you can just stroll in there, get Nina and walk back out without anyone noticing?’

‘No. I don’t.’ He flicked off the automatic’s safety. ‘Let’s start the violence.’

32

Chase crept across the sand, hunched low. He had watched the camp from the dune long enough to get an idea of the routes of any patrols - and their attitudes to their job.

Both were sloppy. There were only two men strolling the perimeter, clearly bored and annoyed at missing out on the loud, macho camaraderie going on round the fires. They didn’t expect anyone else to be out here. Even obvious hiding places - behind rocks, among gnarled and scrubby bushes - were being ignored.

Their loss.

Chase dropped into a dip, lying flat as he heard plodding footsteps pass. Raising his head, he saw one of the guards heading away, spending more time looking longingly towards the fires than into the darkness of the desert. Nobody in the direction the man had just come. He crawled along the shallow ditch until he reached a long-dead bush, and lay behind it. The nearest tent was about fifty feet away, a pair of horses tethered beside it.

One of the Janjaweed came round the tent - and walked towards Chase.

Chase very slowly lifted his gun. Even in the low light the man would be able to pick out sudden movements.

He was still advancing, one hand hovering near his holstered pistol. Had he seen him? Chase couldn’t imagine how, but he was striding right for the bush. He brought the Browning up, ready to fire.

The man stopped, less than six feet from him, only the twisted branches of the bush between them. He looked down . . .

And opened his fly.

Chase forced himself not to flinch away from the spray as the man unleashed a splattering stream of urine on to the bush. Which just kept coming. How much had the bastard drunk?

Finally, the torrent eased off . . . then started again, a second wind before it finally trickled to nothing. The man made a satisfied sound, then fastened himself up and turned away. By now, the other guard had come round the camp; the two men exchanged a few words before the urinator went back to join his fellows and the patrol trudged on.

Chase disgustedly wiped his face, then peered round the bush. Pisso’s little excursion would work to his advantage: he could follow the new set of tracks straight into the camp without the guards wondering where they had come from.

He waited for both men to move out of sight, then quickly crossed the sands to the nearest tent. He was uncomfortably aware as he traversed the open space that Sophia was almost certainly tracking him through the rifle scope - if for any reason she decided that he had outlived his usefulness to her, he could be dead before he even heard the crack of the Lee-Enfield.

But he reached his destination. Glancing round the tent, he saw the circle of Humvees not far away. He also saw reflections of flames in their windows; they were close to one of the Janjaweed campfires.

Giving the horses a wide berth in case his presence spooked them, he hurried to another tent, then into cover between two of the parked technicals. One of them, a Toyota Hilux pickup, was missing its cab. The bent stubs of metal poking up from behind the gaps where the doors had once been suggested it had rolled over at some point, and rather than waste a still-working engine the Janjaweed had simply sawn off the flattened roof. He glanced inside, seeing the key still in the ignition - with a plastic Hello Kitty key ring dangling from it. He almost smiled at the incongruity, then moved to the front of the truck.

The nearest Humvee was not far away. The men round the fire nearby mostly had their backs to him. Nobody in sight in the other direction. He rose to his full height, looking for signs of movement inside the circle of Covenant vehicles—

One of the Janjaweed emerged from a tent - and saw him.

For a moment, neither man moved. Chase’s gun hand was hidden from his view behind the Hilux. He slowly raised it . . .

The man stared at him disdainfully, then turned and walked away towards one of the other groups of loud, whooping thugs. Chase realised what had happened. The militiaman had assumed he was one of the Covenant troopers - in the shifting orange half-light, his pale, dusty clothes could easily be mistaken for their camo fatigues.

He held back until the man moved away, then strode to the Humvee. He made sure nobody was watching, then dropped and rolled underneath it. The Covenant men inside the circle wouldn’t be as gullible.

He could see one of them approaching. He waited for the patrol to pass, then rolled out from under the Humvee and scurried between two of the domes. He knew where Nina’s tent was, and stayed low as he headed for it.

He stopped as he saw another Covenant trooper sitting on a folding chair outside Nina’s illuminated tent. A TAR-21 rifle lay across his lap. ‘Bollocks,’ Chase whispered. There was enough open space between the tents for the soldier to see him and bring up his gun before he could get close enough for a knife attack, and if he fired a shot the entire camp would be alerted.

He needed another way . . .

He backed up, weaving between the tents as he followed a circuitous route to bring him round behind Nina’s tent, watching for the men on patrol. One passed; Chase darted to his destination and took out the knife. He wouldn’t have long before the other man came round - if he didn’t make it inside in time, he would be in plain view. Jabbing the knife through the fabric at the base of the curved frame, he quickly drew it across to cut a slit. When it was wide enough to fit through, he ducked inside—

The heavy base of a battery-powered lamp came within an inch of smashing down on his head.

‘Eddie!’ squeaked Nina, just barely arresting the blow.

‘Shh! Chase hissed frantically, a finger to his lips. He glanced back through the hole, seeing the patrolling trooper walking past.

Nina put down the lamp beside the slit and hugged him. ‘Oh my God!’ she whispered. ‘You found me, I can’t believe you found me!’

‘I can’t believe it either - we didn’t expect the Covenant to be out here ahead of us.’

‘We?’ She made a face. ‘Oh, so Sophia’s alive too?’

‘’Fraid so. But what about you? Not that I’m complaining, but why’d they bring you along?’

‘They needed me to find Eden, since I was the only one who’d seen the map.’

Chase frowned, noticing a map, several pages of notes and the cylinder she had taken from the frozen city on a folding table. ‘And you told them?’

‘Not . . . exactly,’ she answered hesitantly. He stared at her. ‘What? I don’t know where the damn place is. I was stringing them along!’

‘Yeah, and you strung them along to thirty miles from it!’

‘It’s a big desert!’

‘They’re a big organisation!’

‘Actually, I don’t think they are - they’ve started running out of goons . . . and can we discuss this later? Once I’m, y’know, out of here?’

‘Yeah, I think we ought to,’ he snapped as he went to the door flap. The zip was slightly down, giving him an eyehole through which he could see the back of the sitting guard’s head. He hadn’t heard anything - yet.

He moved back to Nina as she gathered her belongings, including the cylinder, and stuffed them into a backpack. ‘Okay, once the patrol goes past, go out and hide under one of the Humvees.’ He realised she wasn’t looking at him, but the door. ‘What?’ He turned his head to see—

‘Shadows!’ hissed Nina, just as he realised what was wrong. The lamp was casting their silhouettes like shadow puppets across the fabric.

Two silhouettes.

And he heard the chair creak as the man outside stood and began to tug down the door’s zip—

Chase hurled his knife as the Covenant trooper looked inside. The blade stabbed deep into his neck with a wet thuk. The man let out a choked, gargling gasp, then toppled through the door. The entire tent shook.

‘Get ready to go,’ Chase told Nina as he pulled the trooper inside and picked up his assault rifle.

Nina dropped to all fours, lifting the cut fabric and peering through.

She saw a pair of boots. ‘Uh-oh.’

The guard outside yanked up the slit, revealing Nina behind it. She looked up at him as he pointed his gun at her face—

Chase fired the TAR-21, sending a sweep of bullets through the tent’s wall above Nina. The Covenant soldier screamed and fell backwards.

‘Get under the Humvee!’ Chase shouted, rushing to the door to locate the other patrolling guard. Nina scrambled through the slit, vaulting the fallen soldier and diving beneath the nearest 4x4. Shouts rose all around, Janjaweed and Covenant responding to the gunfire.

Chase spotted the remaining guard ducking behind a tent. Another burst of fire from the stolen TAR-21, the taut nylon puckering as bullets slashed through it, and the soldier tumbled back into view with several bloody wounds across his chest.

More movement, beyond the Humvees. A group of Janjaweed running to investigate, AK-47s raised.

Chase fired again. Blood puffed from the head of one of the running men, who fell. The others scattered, taking cover behind the armoured vehicles. One militiaman looked round a Humvee and recognised Chase - it was the man who had ignored him earlier, assuming he was a member of the Covenant.

He wasn’t ignoring him now, ducking back and yelling. More men were coming. Chase fired a last couple of shots, felling another Janjaweed, then retreated into the tent and exited through the hole.

Sophia heard gunfire from her vantage point atop the dune. She had been tracking Chase through the Lee-Enfield’s scope until losing sight of him amongst the tents; now, she swept her sights back and forth, hunting for targets.

She found one. ‘Well, well,’ she said as she lined up the crosshairs on the white hair. ‘Goodbye, Mr Callum . . .’

Callum stood with Vogler and Zamal, the latter engaged in a shouting match with Hamed. Covenant troops had moved to protect their leaders, facing off against the militiamen. ‘One of your men shot at us!’ the Janjaweed leader yelled in Arabic.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ Zamal replied, ‘but it wasn’t us.’

One of Hamed’s lieutenants, the man who had seen Chase, ran to them. ‘I saw him! It was a white man, like him!’ He shoved Callum in the chest, knocking him back a step—

Half the man’s head blew apart in an explosive shower that splattered across the crowd of Janjaweed.

For a moment, nobody moved, frozen in shock.

Then the guns on both sides came up.

The Covenant forces, better trained, fired first, taking down eight men in an instant.

But there were more than eight men facing them. AKs blazed, the Janjaweed firing wildly on full auto. Three Covenant troopers went down, spouting blood.

Vogler, Zamal and Callum ran, their remaining soldiers covering them as they fired into the crowd. Hamed dived the other way, using his men as shields. ‘Defensive positions!’ Vogler yelled. ‘Get to the Humvees!’

Sophia humphed at the results of her shot. She tried to track Callum, but the scene below was too chaotic. ‘Arse,’ she muttered, searching for other targets.

Chase joined Nina beneath the Humvee. ‘Not quite what I planned, but it’ll do,’ he said, hearing the thudding bark of AKs against the crisp chatter of the Covenant’s more modern weapons.

‘Great, they’re fighting each other,’ said Nina, ‘but we’re still right in the middle of them! How are we going to get out of here?’

He looked over at the parked technicals. ‘We’ll nick one of those.’

More gunfire and shouting from behind. The Covenant survivors were forming a protective circle, using the Humvees for cover. ‘If we can get to them.’

Chase saw another Janjaweed run from a tent, carrying a rocket launcher. ‘Now’s a good time to try!’ They crawled out and ran for the pickups.

Shots whipped past as a Janjaweed saw them. Chase grabbed Nina and dived behind a tent as more bullets tore through the tattered material. ‘Stay down!’ he told her, switching the gun to full auto and twisting to return fire. The spray of bullets carved across the gunman’s stomach.

A sound, close by, the clack of a rifle’s charging handle. Chase rolled to see another Janjaweed run out from behind the technicals, the fear and confusion on his face replaced by anger as he saw the Englishman.

Chase whipped up his gun, pulled the trigger—

It clicked.

Empty.

The Janjaweed gave Chase a sadistic smile - and a ragged hole blew open in his chest, the impact of a .303 rifle bullet slamming him to the ground.

The echoing crack of the Lee-Enfield reached Chase a moment later. ‘Cheers, Soph,’ he said, dropping the empty TAR-21 and drawing the Browning. ‘Okay, Nina, we—’ He saw one of the Janjaweed hoisting a rocket launcher on to his shoulder, lining it up on the Humvees. ‘—need to get the fuck down!’

He threw himself on to her as the rocket-propelled grenade streaked from the tubular launcher.

It slammed into one of the Humvees, the explosion tearing off the wheels and flipping the whole vehicle end over end amongst the Covenant’s tents. One trooper was torn apart by shrapnel, another crushed under the massive 4x4. It came to rest with its smouldering underbelly pointing into the air at an angle, nose half buried in the sand.

Whoops and cheers came from the Janjaweed. ‘Jesus!’ Nina gasped. ‘Glad you didn’t decide to take that truck!’

‘Didn’t like the colour,’ said Chase. He helped her up, then picked his way towards the technicals, pistol at the ready. Gunfire sounded all around as the Janjaweed moved in on the Covenant, bullets clanking off the Humvees’ armour. Screams pierced the firelit night.

Chase crouched lower, coming round a half-collapsed tent to reach the technicals. He indicated the one with a key in its ignition. ‘That’s our ride.’

‘It’s pointing the wrong way.’ The Hilux was facing into the camp, towards the Humvees.

‘That’s why they invented steering wheels. Come on.’

The militiamen’s attention was focused on the Covenant, nobody watching the fringes of the camp. They reached the first technical, a rust-pocked old Ford pickup. Chase moved round the truck’s rear, seeing one of the campfires, now abandoned, not far away. Waving Nina on, he headed for the decapitated Hilux—

A Janjaweed jumped from the back of another technical near the fire, carrying a case of RPG rounds. He saw Chase - and yelled a warning, dropping the box and clutching for his AK.

Chase snapped up the Browning and fired, hitting the man’s arm and spinning him against one of the petrol cans strapped to the pickup’s side. He reeled back, shrieking, before falling on to the fire in an explosion of flying embers. The shrieks became much louder as he leapt back up, clothes and hair aflame.

Half a dozen Janjaweed ran round the first pickup, guns raised.

Chase fired again - not at the militiamen, but at the petrol can.

A jet of fuel spurted from the hole - and splashed over the burning man as he staggered in blind agony. Flames surged back along the gushing petrol—

The can exploded, liquid fire sluicing out. The screaming man was consumed, as was a second, larger can, which blew up and bowled the pickup into the approaching gunmen inside a roiling fireball.

Chase reached the Hilux, shielding his face from the heat, and looked round to see if there were any more Janjaweed posing an immediate threat.

There were. A man on the edge of a group near the Humvees pulled the pin from a grenade, about to throw it at the Hilux—

His wrist was blown in half by one of Sophia’s bullets. The severed hand plopped to the ground at his feet, still clutching the grenade . . . which exploded, lacerated Janjaweed flying in all directions.

But there were still plenty more left, and the Covenant troops to worry about as well. Chase looked at the pistol in his hand - then up at the weapon in the pickup’s rear bed. It was an old Kalashnikov PK, a light anti-aircraft gun being used here as a heavy machine gun, a belt of ammunition already loaded.

Definitely more firepower than the Browning.

‘You drive,’ he told Nina as he climbed into the back of the Hilux. ‘I’ll shoot.’

Nina entered the open cab, searching for the key. ‘Cute,’ she said, finding Hello Kitty. ‘Drive where?’

‘I’ll tell you when I’ve shot a big enough hole to fit through!’ He swung the gun round towards the Humvees - and pulled the trigger.

The machine gun roared, the recoil threatening to rip the makeshift mount from the pickup’s floor. Chase held on and swept the PK back and forth. Every fifth round was a tracer, green lines from the Russian ammunition streaking across the camp like lasers, but Chase was barely able to see them through the staccato flames erupting from the muzzle. The flanks of the Humvees cratered, tyres bursting and dropping them with a crash on to their run-flat steel inserts. The onslaught was enough to shatter even the armoured windows.

A Covenant soldier aimed at him over the bonnet of a Humvee; he hauled the gun round and hosed him with lead. More movement, outside the circle of 4x4s - another group of Janjaweed, realising that the machine gunner wasn’t a militiaman. Chase turned the barrage on them before they could act on that realisation, bullet-riddled bodies tumbling.

The ammo belt reached its end, the thunder stopping abruptly. There were more ammunition boxes in the pickup bed, but he didn’t have time to reload. Nina was bent almost double in her seat, hands pressed against her ears to protect them from the deafening noise. ‘Start the truck!’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I said start the - never mind!’ He jumped into the cab and turned the key. ‘Go!’

She raised her head. ‘Which way?’

‘Left.’

Nina released the clutch, the Toyota kicking sand from under its tyres as it lurched into motion. She turned left - only to see a group of Janjaweed running towards them. ‘Maybe not,’ she said, spinning the wheel to the right.

‘I said go left!’ Chase shouted.

‘Yeah, and there’s a bunch of guys with guns that way!’

‘Have you seen what’s this way?’

She looked. ‘Oh, shit!’

The man who had destroyed the Humvee had reloaded his rocket launcher, lining up a second RPG round - not at the Covenant vehicles, but at the Hilux.

Nina tried to turn, but found nowhere to go, armed men on both sides and the burning wreck of the upturned Humvee directly ahead . . .

‘Go straight!’ Chase shouted. He shoved his foot down on hers, jamming the accelerator to the floor.

‘Eddie, what—’

‘Straight!’ he said, pointing forwards. The Humvee’s broad underside rose out of the sand like a ramp.

‘Are you out of your—’

The RPG leapt from its launcher, hurtling across the camp.

‘—fucking—’

The Toyota hit the inverted Humvee, shot up the slope—

‘—miiiiiind!’

The grenade slammed into the upturned Humvee just as the Toyota cleared the top of the makeshift ramp. It exploded, blasting the wrecked 4x4 into the air. It cartwheeled out of the swelling fireball to smash down on top of one of the other Humvees, ripping it in half - along with the Covenant trooper in cover against it.

The Hilux landed in a massive spray of sand, demolishing the dome tents as it ploughed through them. Every bone jarred by the impact, Nina looked up - to see another Humvee directly ahead. She yelped and spun the wheel, narrowly missing Vogler as the pickup swerved. Flaming debris rained down behind the Toyota.

She aimed the truck out of the encampment and switched on the headlights. ‘Where now?’

‘Northwest,’ said Chase, pointing. ‘Towards Eden.’

Sophia tracked the fleeing Hilux with the rifle, picking out the person at the wheel. Nina.

She lined up the crosshairs, finger hovering over the trigger . . . then lowered the gun. ‘Not just yet.’

Movement - much closer than the camp. She snapped her head round to see one of the Janjaweed running towards her. He had heard the rifle shots, worked out her position, and was coming for her.

The Lee-Enfield came back up. ‘Not tonight,’ Sophia said, looking through the scope again. The man was so close that his face entirely filled her magnified field of view - then suddenly there was a large hole in the middle of it. ‘You have a headache.’

She cycled the bolt, then ran back to the Land Cruiser.

Hamed struggled upright. An explosion had knocked him down, his head hitting a rock, but he had fared better than his men. Many had been massacred, the rest fleeing into the desert to escape the Covenant’s superior firepower.

He looked round. One of the technicals was barrelling out into the desert. The woman, he remembered - he had seen her at the wheel just before the blast threw him to the ground.

Anger surged inside him.

He grabbed an AK from a dead man and hurried to where his horse was tied. It was struggling to break free, frightened by the noise, but he quickly took control and mounted the animal, turning to pursue the retreating tail-lights into the desert.

Vogler bent low and moved along the side of one of the surviving Humvees to reach Zamal. The Arab unleashed a burst of automatic fire, then ducked back into cover. ‘What’s our status?’ he asked.

‘The Janjaweed are running,’ Vogler told him. ‘We’ve lost at least half our men, though.’

Zamal let out an angry breath. ‘Why did they turn on us?’

‘They didn’t. It was Chase.’

‘What?’

‘He was in that truck - and Wilde was driving it.’

Zamal swore loudly in Arabic. ‘If Chase is here, Blackwood must be as well - the sniper!’ he realised, looking towards the dark dunes. ‘It must have been her.’

Both men turned as Callum ran to them, firing a burst from a SCAR and taking down a man with a rocket launcher. ‘Wilde’s escaped!’

‘Yes, we noticed,’ said Vogler acidly. ‘With the help of Chase - and your former prisoner.’

‘Don’t try to pin this on me,’ Callum growled. ‘I didn’t turn this whole goddamn thing into a slaughterhouse. Your psycho friends did that, Zamal.’

Zamal’s face tightened, but Vogler interrupted before he could reply. ‘We need to secure this situation. How many Janjaweed are left?’

‘Forget the Janjaweed, we need to get after Wilde,’ Callum said. ‘Are the Humvees still driveable?’

Vogler looked at the vehicle they were crouched behind. Its bodywork was scarred with bullet holes, windows cracked and broken, and a tyre had been blown out. ‘Two destroyed, and the rest all damaged. Repairable, but I doubt we will be able to leave before morning.’

‘They could be fifty kilometres away by then,’ said Zamal. ‘We’ll never find them.’

‘I’ll take care of that,’ said Callum. ‘Just find me a satellite phone.’

‘Slow down, slow down!’ Chase yelped as the Hilux crested a rise and briefly took off, ploughing back with a suspension-straining crash.

‘Are you crazy?’ said Nina, grinding the pickup into a lower gear to keep up its speed. ‘I want to get as far away from them as possible!’

‘We need to wait for Sophia.’ He looked back. A pair of headlights was bounding across the desert towards them - not from the Janjaweed camp, but from the surrounding dunes. Sophia, in the Land Cruiser.

‘Do we really?’

‘Yeah, really. She’s got an extra gun, if nothing else.’

‘Right, and how long before it’s pointing at us?’

‘Not as soon as that one,’ Chase said with alarm, seeing something pursuing them, silhouetted against the fires. A man on a horse, AK-47 on his back.

Catching up fast.

Chase climbed into the cargo bed. ‘Okay, forget slowing down, go faster!’ He found one of the ammo boxes and pulled out the heavy belt of bullets. A glance behind: the horseman was still coming, but had veered to one side, moving to intercept the approaching Land Cruiser.

Sophia was slammed forward as the Land Cruiser hit another bump. The elderly vehicle only had a lap belt rather than a full seatbelt, and a threadbare one at that. She spun the wheel to straighten out, aiming for the tail-lights ahead. Nina was charging through the desert like a maniac, far too fast for the terrain.

But she wasn’t the only one.

Movement in her peripheral vision - a man on horseback galloping parallel to the Land Cruiser, a hundred feet away and closing as he swung an AK from his back and aimed it at her.

She tried to swerve away, but too late.

Only a few bullets from the wild spray of fire hit her vehicle - but one found a vital spot. The front tyre blew out, the wheel hub digging into the sand. The Land Cruiser skidded to a stop in a huge cloud of dust, almost rolling over before dropping heavily back on to its remaining three wheels.

Dazed, Sophia sat up - to see the horseman flash through her headlight beams, still pursuing the other truck.

‘Shit!’ said Chase as he saw Sophia’s 4x4 slew to a halt. The Janjaweed rider was still gaining - and now had his gun at the ready.

He struggled to load the machine gun, having to rely almost entirely on touch to figure out the unfamiliar mechanism in the dark. He managed to open the ammo feed’s cover, hinging it up and trying to load the first round—

The AK-47 spat fire. A bullet hissed past Chase’s head; he dropped, the ammo belt chinking down beside him as more shots hit the back of the Hilux. Nina ducked in her seat.

The gunfire stopped. Chase risked a look over the tailgate. The rider was a blood-red demon in the rear lights. He shouldered the AK - out of ammo.

But he had another weapon.

A machete. He raised the long, brutal blade high like a sword.

Chase retrieved the ammo belt and jumped back up to reload the machine gun, glancing at Nina to check she hadn’t been hit. She was only just sitting up . . .

And hadn’t seen what was rushing at them in the headlights.

‘Look out!’ he started to shout - but the Hilux had already reached the edge of the ditch.

The empty stream bed was shallow, the steep bank no more than eighteen inches deep - but it was enough to tip the Toyota over as its right wheels dropped into the depression. Nina braked hard and tried to stop the truck overturning . . .

Too late.

Chase threw himself out of the cargo bed as the truck rolled, landing hard in dry stream. The pickup hit the far bank and crashed to a standstill on its side.

He crawled towards it. Only one headlight was still working. No sign of Nina. He stood—

And was smashed to the ground as something huge and heavy hit him from behind.

Hamed pulled the reins to slow his horse and wheel round for another attack, preparing to trample Chase into the sand.

Chase dived into the ditch as the horse thundered at him, then scrambled clumsily back to his feet. The rider turned again, his horse jumping down into the red-lit arena of the stream bed.

They faced each other for a moment. Then the Janjaweed leader extended his arm, pointing his machete at Chase - and spurred the horse into a charge.

Chase grabbed for the Browning. It wasn’t there - he had lost it when he jumped from the truck. He turned and ran for the pickup, the pounding hooves closing fast, almost on him.

A swish—

Pure instinct made him dive and roll as the machete swept over his head. Hamed pulled up. The horse turned and reared, front legs swiping at Chase. He threw up his arms to protect his head, taking a savage kick and falling on his back.

Hamed jumped from the horse, slashing the machete at Chase. He rolled as the blade smacked down where his shoulder had just been. Another roll, springing up as the blade hacked again, narrowly missing his legs.

Behind Hamed he saw Nina crawling from the Hilux’s open cab. The machine gun was pointing towards him. If she could reach it—

No good. It wasn’t loaded, the ammo belt a coiled snake in the ditch.

Hamed advanced, jabbing the machete. Chase ducked back, the two men slowly circling.

Nina groaned, catching the Janjaweed leader’s attention. He leered. Chase had no doubt what his intentions were: kill him, then . . .

‘No you fucking don’t,’ he growled. Hamed might not have understood the words, but still knew what Chase was saying, and grinned malevolently as he lunged. Chase dodged the heavy blade as it whipped past. He tried to knock it from the Janjaweed’s hand, but Hamed anticipated the move and twisted the machete to rip through his sleeve, the blade’s ragged edge drawing blood. Chase jerked away, realising too late that the horse was right behind him.

Hamed shouted a command. The horse reared again, knocking Chase down.

The Janjaweed leader moved in for the kill, raising the machete high to cleave it down through Chase’s spine—

The tip of the ammo belt lashed across Hamed’s face as Nina swung it, tearing bloody gashes in his skin. He staggered back.

Chase jumped up. ‘Here!’ Nina tossed him the belt. He caught one end with his left hand, whirling it - and snagging it round Hamed’s machete arm. He cracked the belt like a whip. Hamed’s arm shot up, the machete flying out of his hand.

Chase yanked hard, pulling Hamed towards him - and delivering a nose-crushing punch.

The Janjaweed leader reeled, but didn’t fall, held up by the ammo belt as Chase caught the falling machete with his right hand . . .

And swung it.

Hamed’s body collapsed, blood squirting from the stump of its neck. His head bounced away down the stream bed, rolling to a stop - at Sophia’s feet. She eyed it. ‘This is no time for football, Eddie.’

Chase didn’t reply, instead going to Nina. ‘You okay?’

‘I think so . . .’ She saw the cut on his arm. ‘What about you?’

‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Just hope he washed his machete after he used it last.’ He crouched and unwound the ammo belt from Hamed’s arm.

Sophia reached them, the rifle over one shoulder, a backpack on the other. After exchanging looks of mutual loathing with Nina, she went to the horse, which had taken its owner’s death with a complete lack of concern, and patted the animal’s neck. ‘You found another ride, then. Although it might be a little cramped for three of us.’

‘Dobbin wasn’t what I had in mind. Give me a hand.’ He spotted and retrieved the Browning, then went to the pickup to push it back on to its wheels. The two women joined him; after a few seconds of effort, it toppled back down. He dropped the ammo belt into the rear bed, tossing other spilled items after it, then hopped into the cab and turned the key. To his surprise, the engine started first time. ‘Wow, these things really are indestructible.’

Sophia held up the bubble compass from the Land Cruiser as she and Nina climbed aboard. ‘And I’ve got the perfect dashboard accessory.’ She looked northwest. ‘That way.’

‘The gang’s all here,’ Nina said sarcastically, giving Chase a pointedly questioning glare when she realised Sophia was wearing his leather jacket. He took it back, to Sophia’s annoyance, and put it on.

‘Okay, then,’ he said. ‘Next stop . . . the Garden of Eden.’

33

They drove through the night, Chase guiding the Hilux across the desert. There was no sign of pursuit, by either the Janjaweed or the Covenant. Even so, the going was slow, with treacherous terrain and only one working headlight to guide them. More than once, they had to dig the truck out when it became bogged in soft sand.

The hours passed, Nina managing to doze fitfully despite the bumpy ride. By the time Chase was forced to stop to refuel from one of the battered cans in the rear bed, the eastern sky had started to brighten. At this low latitude, sunrise came quickly.

‘Okay,’ said Chase, throwing the empty can back into the truck and waking Nina with a start, ‘now we can see, let’s work out where we are.’ He surveyed the surrounding desert for landmarks. ‘Give me the rifle.’

Sophia handed him the Lee-Enfield. He peered through the scope, scanning the horizon. Distant shapes resolved themselves into flat-topped islands of stone rising above the sands. ‘Okay, I see one, two, three mesas.’

‘Let me see those,’ said Nina, taking the photo blow-ups of the Antarctic map from Sophia. The word that had been pronounced as ‘Eden’ on the ancient cylinder lay at the beginning of the Veteres’ long trail . . . between three trapezoidal symbols. Truncated mountains. ‘You think . . . ?’

Sophia examined the modern map. ‘It matches the terrain. Three bluffs - and these dry riverbeds. Four of them.’

Nina looked more closely. Four faint lines wound outwards from the centre. ‘Eddie, how far away are they?’

‘Five or six miles,’ said Chase. ‘It shouldn’t take too long to get there.’ He put down the rifle, regarded the machine gun for a moment, then started to reload it. ‘Just in case,’ he told Nina. ‘The Covenant’ll probably be able to fix some of those Humvees.’

‘But they won’t be able to follow us, will they?’ She looked back. The desert wind was already scouring away their tyre tracks.

Chase’s expression didn’t reassure her. ‘Like I said, just in case.’ He chambered the first round, then climbed back into the driver’s seat and restarted the engine.

‘Of course, Nina,’ said Sophia as they set off, ‘we wouldn’t have to worry about the Covenant if you hadn’t teamed up with them in the first place.’

‘I didn’t “team up with them”,’ Nina protested. ‘I was their damn prisoner, I didn’t have any say in the matter!’

‘All the same, they didn’t have the map.’ She held up one of the photos. ‘Without this, you could have told them Eden was in Ethiopia, or Egypt, or bloody Timbuktu, and they couldn’t have contradicted you. But no, you not only bring them to Sudan, but you even bring them to the right part of Sudan! What did they do, offer you a deal?’

‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Chase, giving Sophia a warning look. She made a dismissive sound and turned away. His gaze moved to Nina, holding on her for slightly too long before returning to the landscape ahead.

‘What?’ Nina said defensively, correctly guessing what he was thinking. ‘I didn’t make a deal, not like that. “Tell us what we want to know or we’ll kill you” isn’t really a deal.’

‘But you still brought ’em here.’

‘I told you last night, I didn’t have much choice. What was I going to do, say no and get killed?’

‘But why didn’t you give them the wrong location?’ Chase asked.

‘Because - because I . . . Look, they were going to kill me, all right?’ Nina drew her arms tightly around herself. ‘I thought that once we were out here, I might be able to get away.’

‘And then find Eden all on your own,’ Sophia said. ‘Since you conveniently brought them right to its doorstep. You used your friends, then you used your enemies to get here. You really are quite the little glory-hound, aren’t you?’

‘Jesus, shut up!’ snapped Chase. ‘Fucking non-stop snideyness, it’s like still being married to you!’

Sophia frowned, but fell silent. Nobody spoke for several seconds.

‘She’s got a point, though,’ Chase said quietly.

Nina’s response was louder. ‘What?’

‘I know you get obsessive about archaeology, but Christ, this is taking it to a new level! You’ve never voluntarily worked with people who want to kill you,’ a glance at Sophia, ‘to find something before. And I know Matt’s a soft touch, but you still walked all over him to get to Antarctica. He was lucky to get out of there alive - and Bandra and that other guy, David, didn’t.’

‘You’re blaming me for their deaths?’ asked Nina angrily.

‘No, the Covenant killed them.’

‘But you think it was my fault, right?’

‘I think this is a side of you I hadn’t seen before, is what I think,’ snapped Chase. ‘Remember on the Pianosa, when I asked you how far you were willing to go for this stuff ?’ He looked at her. ‘Looks like now I know.’ Nina couldn’t meet his eyes.

She hadn’t made a deal with the Covenant, she told herself. She had just done what she had to in order to stay alive.

Hadn’t she?

There was no conversation for the rest of the drive. The bluffs drew closer. Still no sign of pursuit. The Hilux bumped over the last dunes surrounding the mesas to find traction on harder, stonier ground, the landscape already shimmering as the sun heated it.

Nina looked up. The steep sides of the first mesa rose a couple of hundred feet above the surrounding desert, the others slightly higher. But the plain between them was devoid of anything but rocks.

‘So is this it?’ Chase asked, turning the Toyota towards the plain’s centre. ‘Not much of a garden spot.’

‘Not now, but it would have been, over a hundred thousand years ago,’ said Nina. ‘Even the Sahara was green once.’ But the area was so desolate it was hard to imagine anything growing here, never mind a garden worthy of God himself.

She looked at the photograph again. The text for ‘Eden’ was, she noticed, closest to the northernmost of the huge rocky outcroppings. ‘Head for that one,’ she said, pointing.

They drove across the plain, the sun beating down. The whole place seemed utterly lifeless . . . until Nina noticed a lone bird above the mesa ahead. It glided in a lazy circle, then dropped out of sight behind the flat summit. She waited for it to reappear, but it didn’t.

The technical jolted. ‘Sorry,’ said Chase, slowing as the Toyota descended a slope. ‘I think we found one of your riverbeds, though.’

‘It’s only narrow,’ said Sophia, speaking for the first time since Chase had snapped at her. ‘We must be near its source.’

‘Yeah, but where is it?’ Nina wondered. The shallow channel led to the rising cliff walls of the bluff . . . and stopped abruptly at its base.

‘Must have been a spring here once,’ said Chase, bringing the technical to a stop near the cliff and climbing out. Nina and Sophia followed, gazing up at the wall of grey and orange stone.

‘Maybe the Garden of Eden was on top of the mesa,’ Sophia suggested. ‘It would have been a good defensive position, especially if they were worried about animal attacks.’

‘Maybe,’ Nina replied, but the idea didn’t feel right. Shading her eyes, she slowly turned to take in the plain, the other mesas, the surrounding desert . . .

Something in the sky, a pale dot. ‘Is that a plane?’

Chase whirled. ‘Where?’

‘There.’ She pointed.

Chase ran back to the pickup and took out the rifle. ‘What is it?’ Sophia asked as he stared through the telescopic sights.

His reply, when it came, was a horrified whisper. ‘Buggeration . . .’

Nina grimaced. ‘If the next words I hear are “and fuckery”, I’m going to be very unhappy.’

‘And fuckery,’ Chase finished. ‘It’s a fucking Reaper!’

‘That . . . doesn’t sound good.’

‘It’s not. You know on the news, when the White House or the Pentagon show those videos of missiles zooming right at some terrorist and flying down his throat before they explode?’

‘Yes?’

He stabbed a finger at the approaching grey spot. ‘That’s what fires the missiles!’

Nina gawped at him. ‘It’s an American plane? Where did it come from?’

‘There’s a US Air Force base across the border in Uganda, at Entebbe. Either that, or a carrier in the Red Sea.’ He shouldered the rifle and picked up the rucksack, tossing it to Nina. ‘Doesn’t matter - it’s here, and in about five seconds some nerd in Las Vegas is going to try to blow us up!’

‘What do you mean, Las—’ Nina began, but was cut off as Chase hustled her away from the technical, Sophia hurrying after them. A dot detached itself from the Reaper and fell away - then lanced towards them at the head of a line of smoke.

An AGM-114 Hellfire missile, homing in at almost a thousand miles an hour.

‘Run!’ Chase yelled, but Nina and Sophia were already racing away from the pickup as the Hellfire streaked across the plain and arced down to its target—

The missile struck, nine kilograms of high explosive detonating on impact to gouge a crater twenty feet across out of the rock and sand. The front half of the Hilux disintegrated in a storm of torn metal, the remains of the pickup cartwheeling through the air to smash against the cliff wall. A shockwave of dust and stones tore past the trio as they dived to the ground.

Nina raised her head. What was left of the Toyota slid to the foot of the slope on its one remaining wheel, the machine gun nodding on its bent pole. ‘Son of a bitch!’

‘Get up,’ Chase said, already on his feet. ‘It’ll fire another one in a minute.’

‘How many missiles does it carry?’ Sophia asked.

‘Fourteen.’

‘Fourteen? ’ Nina gasped, looking nervously at the Reaper. It was still heading for them, less than two miles away.

‘Yeah - and now it’s taken out the truck, it’ll probably switch to an anti-personnel warhead to take out us.’ No cover on the plain, and against the steep face of the mesa the Reaper’s targeting laser would pin them like butterflies on a board . . .

‘Split up,’ he ordered. ‘Nina, go that way; Soph, go the other way.’

‘What about you?’ Nina asked.

He pointed at the mangled remains of the technical. ‘That way. Go on, run!’

Nina was about to object, but Sophia was already sprinting away. Chase shot Nina a ‘Move it!’ look, then ran for the wreck. Out of options, Nina took off.

Chase rushed through the field of blackened debris, glancing at the closing Reaper. The aircraft was a remote-controlled drone, its operator on the other side of the world in Nevada, watching on a screen. Warfare as videogame.

But unlike in a game, the targets could shoot back.

He reached the smouldering back end of the technical and swung the Kalashnikov round. The Reaper’s operator would already have seen him reach the gun, making him an immediate threat. Another Hellfire would be launched any moment—

Chase took aim - and pulled the trigger.

The PK still worked, a testament to its rugged design. Bullets roared from the barrel, the green lines of tracers shrinking to burning dots as they arced into the sky. He adjusted his aim, trying to ‘walk’ the tracers on to the Reaper—

Hellfire!

It dropped from beneath one of the long, slender wings, rocket motor flaring.

The tracers closed on the aircraft. Chase kept firing, knowing he had only seconds before the missile hit. Almost out of ammo, the last section of the belt clattering through the feed—

Smoke puffed from the Reaper’s fuselage.

A hit!

Chase didn’t know how much damage he had caused, and wasn’t going to stand and watch. Instead he jumped out and raced along the foot of the cliff, seeing a boulder part buried in the scree.

He flung himself over it.

The missile hit the remains of the technical, striking with such force that it punched straight through the wreck and into the cliff face before exploding. A huge eruption of sand and rock burst outwards, shattered stone smashing down in the dry stream bed.

The boulder had shielded Chase from the worst of the blast, but the shockwave had still felt like being hit by a bus. He groaned, squinting up at the sky. The missile’s smoke trail led back to its starting point, the Reaper . . .

It was no longer there.

‘Yes!’ he gasped triumphantly, seeing the crippled robot aircraft spiralling towards the distant dunes. The orange flash of a fuel explosion, a rising pillar of oily black smoke . . . and, after a few seconds, a thump as the sound of the detonation finally reached him.

Sophia and Nina came back to him, Nina limping. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘Just about,’ he grunted, finding several new sources of pain across his battered body. ‘But the Blue Oyster Cult were right.’

‘Let me guess,’ said Sophia tiredly. ‘Don’t fear the Reaper.’

‘Tchah! You spoiled my joke.’ He turned to Nina. ‘How’s your leg?’

‘Sore. But I can still walk on it.’

‘That’s good,’ Sophia said, gloomily regarding one of the Toyota’s burning tyres, ‘because you’re going to have to.’

‘We’ll nick a new truck from the Covenant,’ said Chase.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Callum must have called for that Reaper to look for us - they probably told the pilot we were high-ranking terrorists or some bullshit to justify crossing into Sudanese airspace. But it found us, which means they’ll have told Callum where we are. The Covenant’ll be on their way.’

Sophia swept a hand through her blonde hair. ‘Marvellous. But at least they won’t have any more luck at finding Eden than we have.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Nina said quietly. Chase and Sophia turned to see what she was looking at.

‘Bloody hell,’ they said in unison.

The missile hadn’t merely blown a crater out of the side of the mesa. It had blown a hole. Through the drifting dust and smoke, a cave entrance was now visible.

‘There was a spring here once,’ Chase realised. The dry stream bed began its journey across the desert directly beneath the opening. ‘It came out of there. But . . .’

‘Somebody blocked it up,’ Nina finished. A simple landslide would have piled debris outwards from the cliff, but the remaining rocks covering the entrance were inside the cave mouth. They had been deliberately placed to seal it.

‘From the outside - or the inside?’ wondered Sophia.

Nina started towards the entrance, the pain in her leg forgotten. ‘Let’s find out.’

‘If there isn’t another way out, we’ll be trapped in there when the Covenant arrive,’ Chase pointed out.

‘You’d rather wait for them out here?’ She climbed over strewn rocks to the opening. It was roughly five feet across and four high, dusty darkness beyond. ‘Is there a flashlight in that pack?’

Sophia produced a torch and tossed it to Nina. She caught it and switched it on, leaning through the opening. The drifting dust made it difficult to see, but beyond the broken rubble the cave went back into the rock for some distance.

Not a cave. The shape was too regular. A tunnel . . .

‘It’s man-made,’ she announced, excited. She bent to duck through the hole. ‘Come on, there’s a way through!’

‘Wait,’ Chase called, but she had already scrambled inside. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

By the time he reached the opening, Nina was already picking her way down the heaped debris on the other side. ‘Check it out,’ she said, shining her light round the tunnel. It was oval in cross-section, taller than it was wide, some twelve feet at its broadest. While the walls had clearly been carved by hand, it had been done to widen an existing channel, the floor grooved by once-flowing water. She directed the beam down the tunnel, which curved away out of sight. ‘It must go right into the mesa.’

Chase traversed the opening, Sophia following, and jogged after Nina as she started down the tunnel. ‘Slow down, will you? You don’t know what’s down there.’

‘And I won’t until I see for myself, will I?’

‘You won’t see anything if a big fucking rock falls on your head,’ he chided. ‘You’re so mad keen to find the Garden of Eden that you’re rushing things.’

She waved her hands in a mixture of enthusiasm and exasperation. ‘That’s because it’s . . . it’s the Garden of frickin’ Eden, Eddie! If it’s real, if it’s down that tunnel, then it changes everything! And I’ll have found it!’

‘We’ll have found it,’ said Sophia, giving Chase a pointed look.

‘All right, we’ll have found it, whatever! But this is our only chance to reach it before the Covenant. Unless you want to block up that hole behind us?’ She read his expression. ‘Yeah, I thought not. So come on!’ She set off again.

Chase blew out a long, frustrated breath. ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Sophia as she strode past. ‘You’re the one who wants to marry her.’

The remaining dust soon cleared, the tunnel curving back and forth as they progressed along it. The daylight from the entrance faded. But the torch beam wasn’t the only light . . .

Nina stopped, Chase and Sophia flanking her. She switched off the flashlight. Another source of illumination became clear - ahead. ‘It’s daylight,’ she whispered. ‘And listen - can you hear something?’

Chase strained to pick anything out over the residual ringing in his ears from the two missile explosions, but Sophia cocked her head curiously. ‘It sounds like running water.’

‘In the middle of a desert?’ said Chase dubiously. But now he could hear it too.

Nina relit the torch. ‘It’s not far away.’ She set off again, quickly stepping up to a jog in her eagerness to see what lay ahead. Chase had little choice but to keep pace.

They rounded another curve in the tunnel . . . and emerged into a vastly larger space, stopping in sheer amazement at the sight that greeted them.

‘My God,’ Nina whispered. ‘We found it.’

34

The Garden of Eden

‘Jesus,’ said Chase. ‘This can’t be real. Can it?’

‘It’s real,’ Nina replied, awed. ‘It’s really real.’

The cavern was huge, a massive space within the mesa, the walls sloping inwards to form almost a dome of rock overhead. But it was not complete; there were holes in the stone ceiling through which sunlight poured, great beams slanting down to illuminate the ground below.

To give life to the ground below. The tunnel emerged by a slight rise in the southwestern corner, giving them a view across the colossal chamber - and the lush green jungle filling it. Steam rose from the trees where sunlight touched the leaves, swirling as it rose . . . to condense on the rocky ceiling and drip back down on to the vegetation below. The source of all the water was easy to see, a large lake occupying most of the cavern’s southeastern corner, streams leading from it. The sound of running water came from a small waterfall dropping into a giant chasm that split the entire chamber seemingly in two, just east of their vantage point.

Sophia arrived behind them, for a moment also overcome by the incredible sight. ‘That’s . . . that’s incredible.’

‘You’re not kidding,’ said Chase. He walked to the edge of the chasm, looking down into it. And down. And down. The bottom was out of sight, lost in darkness. Only the distant rumble of churning water told him that there was any end to the fall. His gaze tracked along the opposite edge of the jagged canyon, a great tear in the ground that had even ripped a hole in the chamber’s southern wall. It narrowed as it cut through the jungle to the north, but the tree cover meant he couldn’t see if it extended all the way to the far wall.

Nina’s attention had been seized by something rising above the trees at the cavern’s eastern side, however. ‘Oh, my God . . . Eddie, give me the gun.’

‘What, you going to shoot something?’

‘I want to see it.’ She took the Lee-Enfield and looked through the sights at the shape in the far-off shadows.

A face stared back at her.

She stiffened in momentary surprise before the object in the cross hairs resolved itself. It was another statue, a representation of the Veteres’ god, like the one they had seen in Antarctica. Although it was unmistakably the same figure, the design of the giant sculpture was different, in some odd way simultaneously more primitive yet more refined. More naturalistic. Yet for all that, the shape of the skull and the facial features were just as elongated and stylised as on the statues in the frozen city.

Beyond the statue was a plateau, the top of a domed structure just visible on it. She moved the sights down, seeing that the statue had one hand held out, palm up as if scattering seeds, just like its counterpart at the South Pole. This one, however, was not within a temple - instead a circular wall, reaching almost to the lake’s shore, surrounded its feet.

‘It’s another statue of their god,’ she told Chase and Sophia, passing him the rifle so he could see for himself. ‘Looks even bigger than the one in Antarctica.’

‘The original?’ Sophia suggested.

‘Could be. And if it’s anything like the other one, there might be another library there - another Tree of Knowledge.’

‘Of Good and Evil,’ Sophia added. ‘We’re in the right place, after all. Watch out for snakes.’

Nina gazed across the jungle at the towering statue. ‘We need to get over there.’

Chase lowered the gun, pointing it into the chasm. ‘Bit of a jump.’

‘Maybe it’s narrow enough to cross further along. Come on.’ She walked down the small rise into the dry stream bed, which was abruptly truncated by the ravine, almost directly across from the waterfall. ‘Must have been a pretty big earthquake to cause a rift that deep.’

Ahead, several large boulders lay on the rocky ground, moss clinging to their sunward sides. Chase looked up. Directly overhead was a hole in the ceiling. ‘Probably made that too.’ The other holes above ranged from car-sized to easily large enough to fit a helicopter, some sections of the roof Swiss-cheesed with openings. ‘One more big shake and the entire ceiling’ll come down.’

‘It’s survived for well over a hundred thousand years,’ said Nina. ‘Why would it collapse now?’

‘Because we’re here? Stuff does have sort of a habit of going buhkoom around you.’

‘That’s so not true,’ Nina said, annoyed. ‘It only happens when idiots deliberately try to destroy things.’

Sophia cleared her throat. ‘Far be it from me to name the person who brought down the roof of the Tomb of Hercules . . .’

‘Oh, shut up.’ They continued, reaching the edge of the jungle. Condensation pattered down as they moved into it. ‘It’s incredible,’ said Nina, scientific wonder quickly overcoming her irritation. ‘A perfectly balanced ecosystem.’ She stopped, turning to the shafts of sunlight. ‘Look how the vegetation’s densest underneath the sun’s path during the day. Enough light gets in to sustain photosynthesis.’ They moved on through the thinner vegetation along the edge of the chasm.

The ravine narrowed as they progressed. On the far side, another large boulder had dropped from the ceiling, a great wedge of stone half buried in the earth and protruding out over the incalculable fall below. ‘Ay up, that might be handy,’ said Chase, pointing ahead. A tree had fallen, its trunk spanning the gap.

‘It looks a bit slippery,’ Nina noted dubiously as they reached it. The wood was slick with moisture and entwined with creepers.

Chase examined the broken end of the log, then the ground beneath it, before testing the wood with his foot. ‘Feels solid.’

‘You first, then,’ Sophia said.

Chase gave her a sarcastic look, then climbed on to the log. He began to walk across, arms outstretched for balance, then thought better of it and dropped to all fours, progressing at a slower - but safer - crawl. ‘You were right,’ he called from the other side. ‘It is a bit slippy. Come on over.’

Nina still didn’t like the look of it. ‘Y’know, I might see if there’s a longer way round instead.’

‘It’s fine. Trust me.’

Nina unwillingly got on to the log. The wood was damp, the bark squishing under her hands. But if it could support Chase’s weight, then . . . ‘Okay,’ she said to herself, eyes fixed on the trunk ahead rather than the vertiginous drop to either side. ‘It’s safe. It’s just like a bridge.’ She started across. ‘A wet, rotten, really narrow bridge . . .’

She edged along, dislodging patches of moss as she went - and trying not to watch them tumble into the darkness below. Instead she concentrated on the log, and Chase’s encouraging face at its far end. She could feel the wood bowing beneath her, but kept moving, advancing inch by inch, until she reached the other side.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, hopping back on to solid ground with relief.

Chase patted her shoulder. ‘Told you it’d be fine. Okay, Soph?’

Nina looked round as Sophia began to cross the log. As well as the constant splash of the waterfall, she heard another sound, a rustling in the treetops. Birds, she realised, flitting through the foliage. She saw one circling near the ceiling, soaring through a hole into the sunlight before swooping back down into another. ‘Look at those birds,’ she said to Chase. ‘I wonder if they live here permanently, or found it while they were migrating?’

‘So long as they don’t crap on my head, I’m not that bothered,’ Chase replied. ‘How you doing, Soph?’

‘Fine,’ Sophia replied. ‘I don’t know why Nina was so scared.’ She put one hand on the stump of a broken branch for support - and it snapped with a wet crack.

She lurched sideways. Her leg slithered off the log in a shower of mouldering bark, other hand clawing for grip as she fell—

Her fingers caught a knot of creepers, the thinner vines stretching and snapping as she swung from the makeshift bridge.

Chase ran to the edge of the chasm, gripping one of the log’s exposed roots and stretching an arm towards her. She struggled to bring up her free hand, but couldn’t quite reach. ‘Eddie!’ she cried. ‘I’m slipping!’

‘Hang on!’ Chase climbed on to the log. He gripped her wrist and tried to pull her up, but in his kneeling position couldn’t get enough leverage. ‘Nina, help me!’

She hesitated, then ran to him. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Hold that root,’ he said. ‘Then grab my arm so I can pull her up!’

Nina did so. The root creaked unsettlingly when she pulled it. Rotten. ‘I don’t think it’ll hold!’

‘It’ll have to! Come on!’

She gripped it, reaching out with her other arm to Chase. Their hands closed tightly. Chase took Sophia’s weight, Nina his as he strained to lift her. More of the knotted vines snapped, Sophia’s handhold breaking away—

Nina pulled, groaning at the strain on her shoulder muscles. The root groaned too - but held. Chase got to his feet, hauling Sophia up with him. She found purchase with one boot and leapt to the safety of the cliff edge, Chase jumping after her. ‘Oh, God!’ she gasped, holding him tightly as she fought for breath. ‘Oh, thank you, thank you . . .’

‘Ahem,’ said Nina, deciding their clinch had gone on long enough. Chase got the hint and pushed Sophia away.

‘And thank you too. I suppose,’ Sophia said to Nina, the words sticking distastefully in her mouth.

‘You’re welcome,’ Nina replied, taking the ‘compliment’ in kind. ‘Come on, let’s get moving.’

She set off in the direction of the statue. Chase caught up. ‘Can’t believe I just saved her life,’ Nina muttered.

‘I can,’ said Chase. ‘Because you’re not her.’

‘Y’know, that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’

Chase let out a muted laugh, then picked up a stick and swatted aside plants as they moved deeper into the strange little jungle. After walking for some time, at one point splashing across a stream, they were directly beneath one of the largest openings in the ceiling. The varieties and colours of the vegetation multiplied in the daylight, various fruits and berries ripening on the trees. ‘It really is beautiful, isn’t it?’ Nina said, pausing to smell an unfamiliar purple flower. ‘I can see why it was passed down through memory as a paradise.’

‘Prefer something a bit more open, myself,’ said Chase. ‘You know, with actual sky rather than just little patches of it overhead . . .’ He tailed off.

Nina picked up on his suddenly cautious stance. ‘What is it?’

Chase used the stick to bend back the branches of a bush. ‘There’s something here.’

Beyond the bush were the remains of a building, a tumbledown ruin barely standing beneath layers of vines and lichen. ‘It’s brick,’ she said. ‘Like the other Veteres structures.’

‘It’s the wrong shape,’ said Sophia. ‘It’s not round, it’s square.’ Nina saw she was right; what was left of the walls displayed right-angled corners. ‘And the bricks have just been stacked on top of each other - they’re barely even straight.’

‘Cowboys,’ joked Chase.

Nina moved past the crumbled walls, seeing more ruins amongst the plants. ‘There’s a curved wall, though - or what’s left of one.’ The reason struck her. ‘Of course! It’s like the site we found in Indonesia - the original Veteres structures were scavenged for materials by later settlers. They didn’t have the skills to build something as complex as a dome, so they used the bricks to make something simpler. That means someone was here after the Veteres left. But who?’

‘Who was in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve?’ asked Chase.

‘Nobody,’ Nina told him. ‘They were banished - and God made sure they wouldn’t come back by setting cherubim armed with flaming swords to guard it.’

Chase raised an eyebrow. ‘Flaming swords? Sounds familiar.’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘Flaming swords?’ Sophia asked. ‘Am I missing something?’

‘Excalibur glowed under certain conditions because of earth energy,’ Nina explained. ‘An early culture could easily have interpreted it as a kind of fire.’ She gazed at the ruins. ‘This must have been part of the Veteres settlement - where they lived. Where their civilisation started.’

‘So why did they leave?’ asked Chase. ‘They didn’t just expand across the world - they upped sticks and completely left this place behind.’

‘They were driven out,’ Nina remembered. ‘By “beasts”.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t get it. They must have been pretty advanced to have built all the stuff we’ve seen - so why couldn’t they master pointy stick technology and just kill these beasts? I mean, lions and tigers and bears—’

‘Oh, my.’

‘—are nasty predators, but they didn’t have a chance in the long run ’cause of the whole “opposable thumbs, motherfuckers!” thing.’ He raised his hands, thumbs aloft.

‘Charmingly put, as ever,’ said Sophia. ‘But you have a point - tools and weapons are great equalisers. Unless the beasts also had opposable thumbs, of course.’

‘The inscriptions did say that the Veteres tried to train the beasts, though,’ said Nina. ‘To give them the gift of knowledge. Maybe not a great idea to teach a gorilla how to use a spear.’

‘Gorillas didn’t build this,’ Sophia said, pointing at the wall. ‘And they didn’t build that giant statue, either.’

‘You’re right.’ Nina looked to the eastern wall. ‘If the answers are anywhere, that’s where they’ll be.’

The three Humvees, their black flanks pock-marked by bullet impacts, stopped near the base of the mesa.

Callum, riding in the lead vehicle with Vogler, checked the truck’s GPS. ‘We’re at the position where the missiles hit.’

‘You didn’t need the GPS to know that,’ said Vogler. Ahead, a crater had been gouged out of the ground, mangled metal scattered round it. A short distance away, more debris surrounded another hole - one that went much deeper into the towering mass of stone than anything a missile could have caused. ‘This is it. We’ve found Eden.’

‘In there?’ Callum said sceptically.

Vogler didn’t reply, instead climbing out and regarding the surroundings. The only sound was the wind, the plain desolate and lifeless. It didn’t seem possible that the end of their quest could be here. But then, he had never imagined that his missions for the Covenant would take him to a city frozen beneath the Antarctic ice either.

The doors of the other Humvees opened. Zamal emerged first, mood as black as ever. ‘No bodies? So much for the wonders of UCAVs.’ He made a disapproving sound, regarding Callum caustically. ‘War by remote control, using robots to do your killing? A cowardly way to fight. A true warrior of Allah looks his enemies in the eye.’ Issuing orders to his men, he started for the cave entrance.

‘Where are you going?’ Vogler called.

Zamal paused as the men went to the hole. ‘To look my enemies in the eye.’

‘We should wait for Ribbsley - he’ll be here in less than an hour.’

‘You should know by now, Killian,’ Zamal said with a thin smile, ‘I am not a patient man.’

One of his men reported that there was a wider tunnel behind the opening. ‘Wide enough to fit the Humvees?’ Vogler asked. The trooper nodded. ‘We should clear it. We don’t know what’s in there - they might be useful.’

‘I do know what’s in there,’ Zamal countered. ‘Wilde, Chase and Blackwood. It is time for them to die.’

‘We had an arrangement with Dr Wilde.’

‘Which was cancelled the moment she betrayed us. You can wait for Ribbsley,’ he said, turning away. ‘I am going to carry out the Covenant’s purpose - to kill anyone who threatens our faith.’ He unslung his rifle and gave Vogler an even colder smile as he prepared to climb through the opening. ‘God is great.’

Nina, Chase and Sophia emerged from the jungle on to the lake’s muddy shore. ‘There’s the statue,’ said Chase, seeing it towering over them to the east.

Nina looked up at it. ‘It’s bigger than I thought. Must be at least a hundred feet tall.’ It was higher than the small plateau behind it, the head rising above the edge of the steep cliff. The rockface itself, she now saw, was covered with a network of similar copper ‘branches’ to those they had seen atop the temple in Antarctica. And from this angle, she could see a feature behind the statue, seemingly cut out of the rock. ‘Eddie, give me the gun.’ She took a closer look through the rifle’s sights.

‘What is it?’ Chase asked.

‘It’s a path to the summit. Stairs, carved out of the stone.’

‘Like that spiral one in Antarctica?’

‘This is open on one side - it’s more of a zig-zag. A long zig-zag. There’s a hell of a lot of steps.’

Chase sighed. ‘Great. More climbing.’

‘At least it’s not covered in ice this time.’ She glanced across the lake. ‘Hello, what’s that?’

‘Another tunnel,’ said Sophia as Nina peered at it through the scope. ‘It looks flooded, though.’

‘It is,’ Nina confirmed. ‘Almost to the roof. And the water inside doesn’t look to be flowing - it must be blocked at the other end.’

‘Like the one we came in through,’ said Chase.

‘Yeah . . .’ She slowly turned clockwise, pointing across the lake at the near-submerged tunnel entrance. ‘One.’ Then to the waterfall falling into the chasm, and the opening beyond it. ‘Two.’ Further round, another stream running roughly northwest into the jungle - the one they had crossed earlier. ‘Three.’ And finally, turning back to face along the lakeside, a wider waterway between them and the statue. ‘And four. Four rivers, all fed from the same source - and I bet that at one time they flowed into the desert.’

‘Four rivers,’ echoed Sophia. ‘Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, Euphrates . . .’

‘The four rivers that according to Genesis flowed from the Garden of Eden. But they don’t any more - because the Veteres blocked them off.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Chase. ‘The Tigris and the Euphrates are in bloody Iraq! That’s not even on the same continent.’

‘Names get re-used. Paris, Texas isn’t the same as Paris, France. It could be another case of a memory being passed down through generations.’ She looked back up at the plateau. ‘We need to get up there. If this place is anything like the temple in Antarctica, then whatever’s at the top of those stairs will be the place that we couldn’t get into because of the ice - the Source of Life.’

‘Or the Tree of Life, if you use the alternative meaning,’ Sophia said. ‘Another reference to Genesis.’

‘And if there’s another library, then we’ve got our Tree of Knowledge.’

‘If there’s an apple tree in there,’ Chase said, staring up at the statue’s impassive face, ‘I might have to apologise to Nan for skiving out of Sunday school.’

They headed along the lake. Crossing the fourth stream, they splashed over to the far bank close to the wall surrounding the statue. The high stone barricade at first appeared to have no entrances, but then they saw that a huge lump of rock had fallen from the ceiling, demolishing a section of it.

‘Good job that happened,’ said Chase as they approached. ‘We’d have had a job getting over that wall.’

‘It’s not just a temple,’ said Nina, realising its purpose. ‘It’s a fort. The Veteres built it to protect something, just like they blocked off the tunnels into the cavern. Another line of defence.’

‘So did they block everything off from the outside . . . or the inside?’ Chase said. He pointed at the plateau behind the statue. ‘Are they still up there?’

‘Let’s go see.’ Nina led the way up the pile of broken stone to the damaged wall. She peered over it at what lay below. ‘Oh . . .’

It was another library, rank after rank of clay tablets and cylinders containing the knowledge of the Veteres. But unlike the carefully arranged archive in the Antarctic, this was chaotic, thrown together. Some of the tablets, those nearest the base of the statue, were carefully stacked, but the majority were simply piled up, increasingly randomly the closer they were to the outer wall. Some had fallen - or been knocked - over, smashed pieces littering the narrow pathways through the crammed collection. The whole place was covered with dirt, damp with dripping water, creeping plants laying claim to every surface.

‘God, what happened to it?’ Chase asked.

Nina felt a pang of sadness, recognising the growing desperation of the people who had made it. ‘It was their last stand,’ she said. ‘They wanted to preserve all of this, just like they did in Antarctica . . . but they were running out of time. They must have been building the wall around it even as they brought everything in.’ She indicated the stacks closest to the statue. ‘When they started, they tried to keep everything organised, but at the end, all they had time to do was just dump the tablets and hope not too many of them broke. Once they had as much as they could, they finished the wall. The knowledge of an entire civilisation, sealed in here . . . for ever.’

‘Presumably they took the most important records with them,’ said Sophia. ‘Like the audio cylinders, the voices of their prophets. As long as they had those, they knew they could eventually make copies.’

‘But they must still have lost so much.’ Nina contemplated the remains of the library for a long, quiet moment. Then she climbed through the wall.

Through binoculars, Zamal watched the three figures drop out of sight into the temple. After entering the vast cavern and overcoming his initial awe, the first thing he had done was get a sense of the topography of his new battle zone - and while surveying the landscape from a rise near the tunnel mouth, he had spotted the fugitives moving along a lake, heading for the enormous blasphemy that was the statue at its far end.

He and his men gave chase, running along the edge of the ravine splitting the chamber until they found a log bridge. Quickly traversing it, they moved as swiftly as they could through the jungle to the lakeshore - now only minutes behind Wilde and the others.

‘We have them,’ he said with a malicious smile.

Like its smaller counterpart in the Antarctic, the statue had a low passageway at its base, requiring anyone going through to prostrate themselves at the feet of their god. Unlike the ice-encrusted opening, however, this was teeming with life, insects scuttling out of the way as Nina crawled through the layer of filth that had built up over thousands of centuries. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t bring that machete,’ she said to Chase, behind her, as she ripped vines aside to reveal a taller, wider passageway beyond. Holes in the arched ceiling let in an indirect twilight cast, creepers hanging through them. ‘There’s a corridor, and what looks like a bigger room at the end of it. It must lead to the stairs up the cliff.’

She stood and brushed off the muck as Chase and Sophia emerged, then shone the flashlight down the passage. The sheen of copper and gold reflected back at her. ‘That’s new. There wasn’t anything like that at the other site.’

She moved down the corridor, directing the beam round the walls of what was revealed as a large circular chamber. ‘There was something like those, though. Exactly like those.’ The light fell on four metal bowls of different sizes arranged in a line directly across from the entrance - beside the spindle and copper horn of one of the primitive gramophones.

‘Is that a door next to it?’ Chase asked, walking past her, about to enter the chamber - before freezing in astonishment at what came into view. ‘What the hell are they?’

Nina and Sophia were equally amazed. The objects greeting their gaze were three statues - but unlike the other Veteres sculptures they had seen these were metal, not stone. They stood close to fifteen feet tall, elongated figures with their arms held out from their bodies, reminding Nina of the pose of the giant statue behind them . . . but where that had its hand open in generosity, these held a long, dangerous blade in each.