The Tomb Of Hercules

11

Nina, Chase and Sophia were taken to the administration building by Fang and four of his men. Inside, they were brought to Yuen-who, as Sophia had predicted, had been meditating in a private room adjoining one of the executive offices.

Yuen rolled the uncut diamond between his fingers. “Tsk, tsk, Dr. Wilde. Didn’t they tell you at the airfield about the seriousness of diamond theft?”

“Screw diamonds,” said Chase. “What about running an illegal uranium mine, Dick? Who’re you selling it to-Iran? North Korea?”

Yuen sighed and nodded to Fang, who smashed Chase on the back of the head with the butt of the Wildey. Chase gasped in pain and dropped to his knees.

“Eddie!” cried Nina. She tried to help him up, but one of the uniformed guards pulled her away.

“That was long overdue,” said Yuen with a satisfied smirk. He glanced at the Wildey. “Ridiculously large gun, huh? Compensating for something, perhaps? No wonder Sophia left you.”

Chase staggered to his feet. “Do that again and I’ll rip your fucking head off,” he snarled at Fang, who just looked smugly unconcerned.

Yuen went to a desk, on which lay the trio’s personal possessions, plus Nina’s backpack and the briefcase Fang had been carrying. “I gotta say,” he went on, almost laughing as he took the binder from the pack and flipped through the pages, “I never thought you’d actually bring the rest of the map right to me! There I was, about to tell Fang to track you down, and boom! Here you are!” He put the binder in the briefcase with the bound section of the Hermocrates text. “Although I guess my security arrangements need overhauling if you were able to get into the mine so easily. I assume my lovely wife had a hand in that.”

He walked over to Sophia and cupped her chin in his hand. “And you, Sophia! My darling wife, the flower in my garden, the light of my life! What am I going to do with you?” She narrowed her eyes in a disdainful sneer. He lowered his hand and addressed one of the guards. “Keep her somewhere out of sight until the speeches are over, then take her to my helicopter.”

The guard nodded and led Sophia from the room.

“Where are you taking her?” Chase demanded.

“Marriage counseling,” said Yuen. “Now, President Molowe and his minister of trade have just arrived to give some very boring speeches. You should be grateful to me-I’m going to spare you from having to sit through them.” He turned to Fang. “Take them to the processing plant and throw them into the crushers-”

Chase whirled, striking at the nearest guard. He wrested the gun from his hand-

Fang clubbed him again, harder. Chase dropped face-first onto the carpet, blood oozing down his neck. He groaned, moving weakly.

“You son of a bitch!” Nina shouted at Fang. “You gave your word you wouldn’t kill us!”

Yuen looked surprised. “You did?”

Fang nodded, almost apologetically. “I did.”

“Oh.”

“But,” Fang continued, a cruel smile spreading across his face as he toyed with his cane, “I never specified for how long.”

“Well, that’s all right then.” At Yuen’s nod, Fang and the guards picked up Chase, then took him and Nina from the room. “Oh, by the way,” Yuen called after them, the men pausing, “give me his gun.” Fang tossed it to him. “Cool souvenir.”

Nina kicked at her captors, but they were too strong for her, whisking her and the semiconscious Chase out of the building.

To their deaths.

The diamond mine’s processing plant was similar in function to the one in the secret uranium mine-only on a vastly larger scale.

The enormous trucks dumped their loads onto broad conveyors, which directed the hundreds of tons of rubble brought by each vehicle into a series of gargantuan crushers, each of which could swallow one of the house-size trucks with room to spare. Stone was smashed into smaller and smaller fragments at each stage, washed and shaken through ever finer filters, until nothing was left but dust…

And diamonds. The hardest naturally occurring substance on earth was the only thing able to withstand the relentless pounding of the machines. Under constant security, the precious stones were taken into a closed section of the plant for grading.

There was security at the crushers too-raw diamonds could simply be jolted loose from the rubble and drop onto the floor-but the guards normally on duty had been relieved on the direct orders of the mine’s owner. Any questions were forestalled by the promise of a bonus in the next paycheck. Whatever went on inside the huge building for the next few minutes, it was no longer their business.

Fang led the way into an elevator cage, which took the group to a gantry overlooking the crushers. By the time it reached the top, Chase was recovering from the blow to his head, though still groggy. “Are you okay?” Nina asked.

“I’ve been better.” He looked down as a truck tipped out the contents of its dumper, rocks and dirt rising up the conveyor before cascading into the jaws of the crusher. Car-size boulders exploded under the relentless pressure of the machinery within. “Going to feel a lot worse in a minute, though.”

Fang slipped his black cane under one arm as he took out a silenced pistol. “You have two choices,” he said as the guards carrying Chase dumped him on the gantry floor. “Either you can be shot in the head and then thrown into the crusher. Or,” he added as Nina helped Chase stand, “you can do something stupid, be shot in the stomach, and then thrown into the crusher. While you’re still alive.”

“How about option C?” Chase asked. “Holiday for two in the Caribbean, and not being thrown into the crusher?”

Fang smiled. “I’m afraid not. On your knees.”

The three other guards all had their guns at the ready, moving back just out of striking range. Chase woozily weighed the odds. The only person he had a chance of reaching before being gunned down was Fang, and it might be worth it just to take the ponytailed bastard into the crusher with him…

But that would leave Nina alone. And he didn’t want the last thing she saw to be his bullet-riddled corpse, the last emotions she felt to be grief and anguish.

He turned to her. “Nina. I…” The words he had in his mind didn’t want to emerge. “It’s been an experience,” was all that came out.

Nina shot him a disbelieving look. “Is that all you’ve got to say? They’re going to kill us, and the best you can manage is ‘It’s been an experience’?”

“Well, what do you want me to say?” He knew, but for some reason couldn’t speak the words.

Her eyes filled with sadness, even through the fear.

“Eddie…”

Fang moved to stand behind them. He raised his gun, aiming at the back of Chase’s head. His finger tightened on the trigger-

The head of one of the guards exploded, spraying the man next to him with chunks of jagged bone and brain matter. A moment later, the unmistakable crack! of a high-powered rifle reached them, the bullet having hit its target at supersonic speed.

Fang spun to hunt for the origin of the shot, hunching down behind one of the other men-

The back of a second guard’s head blew out in a pink mist as a bullet hit him precisely between the eyes.

Chase looked down the length of the huge building. No sign of the shooter.

A third shot. The man Fang was using as cover flew backwards, blood gushing from the wound that had blossomed over his heart. He tumbled over the railing to land in the crusher and burst apart like the pulverized rocks.

Realizing he was exposed, Fang dropped and grabbed Nina around the neck. He pulled her up, turning so she was between him and the unseen sniper. “Don’t try anything, Chase,” he warned, stepping diagonally across the gantry, cane squeezed under his gun arm. “Tell your friend to put down his gun, or I’ll kill her.”

“I don’t even know who he is!” Chase protested. He now had a good idea where the shots had come from, but still hadn’t seen the shooter.

Fang jammed the gun into Nina’s back. “Tell him, now, or-”

Nina grabbed the head of his cane, pulled-

And stabbed the sword back into Fang’s side.

Fang howled, reflexively writhing away from the pain as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet shot between Nina’s arm and her torso, hot gas searing her skin. But despite the pain she was already moving, releasing the sword and twisting at the waist to smash her elbow into Fang’s jaw. Dazed, spitting blood, he staggered back-

Chase punched him in the face. The blow was so hard that Fang’s feet actually left the floor before he crashed against the guardrail. He teetered for a moment, almost falling over the edge, then collapsed on top of one of the dead guards.

“You okay?” Chase asked Nina, picking up a fallen pistol.

“Yeah, but…” She looked at the bodies. “What the hell just happened?”

“Dunno, but I’m pretty fucking happy that it did!” He looked down the plant again, finally spotting the sniper silhouetted in a distant skylight. Tough angle, Chase realized-whoever he was, he was an outstanding shot.

The sniper moved. For a moment Chase got a look at him-a tall, muscular black man, glints of reflected sunlight from a row of piercings on his bald head-then he was gone.

Nina rubbed her aching elbow. “Ow. That move never hurt as much when we practiced it…”

“I’m just glad you remembered how to do it. Come on.”

She quickly followed Chase to the elevator.

The sound of rifle fire had carried all the way to the area behind the stage, where Yuen was talking to President Molowe and Minister of Trade and Industry Kamletese. Soldiers immediately surrounded Molowe and pushed him down, while others spread out, weapons raised, searching for signs of danger. Yuen’s own guards moved to shield their boss.

“What was that?” asked Kamletese, worried.

Yuen looked in the direction of the processing plant. “Some people were caught earlier trying to breach security,” he said, thinking fast. “I’d been told they were under arrest. Apparently, I was misinformed. Mr. President, you should stay out of sight until they’ve been dealt with. I’ll find out what’s going on.”

Molowe nodded, then with a human cordon around him went back to the marquee as Yuen and two of his men raced for the administration building. The president paused at the entrance to the tent. “Go with him, find out what’s happening,” he ordered Kamletese.

The portly politician blinked. “Me?”

“Yes, you! Go on!” Molowe disappeared inside the marquee, leaving the flustered Kamletese to stand there under the glares of the soldiers guarding the entrance before he hurried off in Yuen’s wake.

“What do we do now?” Nina asked as she and Chase ran towards the open end of the processing plant.

“We’ve got to find Sophia. Then we get the fuck out of here!”

“Can’t we, you know, do it the other way around?” Chase frowned at her in disbelief. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes! Yuen won’t hurt her, I could tell. You can get her later!”

“I’m not leaving her with that twat,” Chase insisted. They emerged into daylight, squinting at the brightness. “Okay, we need some wheels.”

“I can’t see anything,” said Nina. There were no cars or 4×4s anywhere in sight.

“What, are you blind?” Chase pointed at the huge yellow Liebherr dump truck approaching the building. “What do you call that?”

She blanched. “A very bad and stupid idea?”

“My speciality. Come on.” Ignoring Nina’s protests, he ran towards the truck, waving his arms for it to stop.

The driver, twenty feet off the ground in the cab, gestured furiously for him to get out of the way, but Chase stood his ground. Brakes squealing, the truck slowed but didn’t stop, still coming right at him.

Chase began to think that Nina had been right. “Oh. Oh, shit.” He hopped back a few steps, then started to run as the truck’s angular shadow swept over him. “Oh, shit!”

The tumult of a massive diesel engine filled his ears, almost drowning out the piercing screech of the brakes. Nowhere else to run, Chase threw himself flat on the ground and covered his ears as the giant vehicle swept overhead…

And stopped. Chase let out a relieved breath. He was under the front of the truck-but, he realized almost with amusement, he had only needed to crouch to fit safely beneath it. He moved back into the open and headed for the steps leading to the cab.

Nina joined him. “Idiot!” she snapped, hitting his arm.

“Ow! What was that for?” The steps-almost steep enough to qualify as a ladder-crossed the front of the radiator grill, which itself was the size of a panel truck. Chase hurried up them, Nina following.

The driver came down, jabbing an angry finger. “What the hell are you doing? And why aren’t you wearing a hard-”

“Sorry, mate,” said Chase, punching him in the groin. He let out a pathetic little groan and bent double, and Chase tossed him bodily over the railing.

“Why did you do that?” Nina said. “You have a gun, you could have just told him to get out!”

“We’re kind of in a rush,” Chase replied as he ran up the remaining steps into the cab. “Anyway, he’ll be okay. As long as I don’t run him over.”

“Do you even have a clue how to drive one of these things?”

Chase took in the controls. Steering wheel, accelerator, brake pedal, a number of levers that he assumed controlled the dumper, and several monitor screens showing the view from video cameras all around the vehicle. Judging from the surprisingly carlike lever beside the driver’s seat, the transmission was entirely automatic. “I think I can manage.”

“How the hell did they escape?” Yuen demanded.

“They had help,” Fang said painfully on the other end of the phone line. “Somebody shot my men. A sniper.”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see him. He got away.”

“Find them! And kill them! If any of these bastards get away and tell the U.N. about the uranium mine, we’re all fucked!”

He slammed down the phone, looking up to see Kamletese flanked by two security guards in the office doorway, face full of bewilderment. “Uranium mine?” asked the minister. “What uranium mine?”

Yuen pressed a palm to his forehead. “Aw, hell,” he sighed. “Minister, I don’t suppose you’d be open to a very large bribe, by any chance?”

Kamletese boggled. “What? No, of course not! What’s this about a uranium-”

“I thought not.” Yuen picked up Chase’s Wildey from the desk and shot him. “You,” he said to one of the guards, who looked almost as surprised as the late government official, “go give the president the tragic, tragic news. A pair of diamond thieves called Eddie Chase and Nina Wilde have just murdered the minister of trade!” When the guard didn’t move immediately, he frowned and waved the smoking gun in his direction. “Well, go on!”

“Yes, sir!” gulped the guard, stepping over the dead body and hurrying from the room.

Yuen wiped his fingerprints from the gun, then dropped it and took the briefcase containing the Hermocrates pages. “Take me to my wife,” he ordered the other guard.

Figuring out the surprisingly simple controls for the mammoth T282B truck was one thing. Actually controlling it was something else entirely, Chase rapidly discovered. With its load bed filled with more than four hundred tons of earth and rock it took a long time to build up speed-and just as long to lose it. One of the largest warning gauges on the dashboard showed the brake temperatures of each of the twelve-foot-diameter wheels, and every time he touched the brake pedal to slow for a turn, the needles shot up into the red.

But now the truck was on course for the administration building, and Sophia.

“We’ve got company,” Nina warned nervously, gesturing at one of the monitors. A Land Cruiser was coming up fast on the truck’s left. One of its doors was partly open, a man’s head protruding through the window. “He’s going to try to jump aboard!”

“Bloody fare dodgers,” said Chase. He spun the steering wheel, sending the truck lurching to the left. The Land Cruiser hurriedly dropped away.

Nina grabbed the back of Chase’s seat for support. Even though he’d straightened out, the contents of the giant dumper were still shifting, the truck rolling like a ship in rough waters. “Jesus! I thought we were going to tip over!”

“We need to dump the load.” He indicated the levers on the control panel. “See if you can work the tipper-Christ, he’s trying again!” The Land Cruiser pulled alongside, a security guard reaching out for a handrail.

Chase turned again. This time, the Toyota’s driver wasn’t fast enough, and the truck’s giant front wheel clipped the back of the 4×4. The entire rear quarter sheared away, the guard barely managing to throw himself back inside the vehicle as the door was ripped from its hinges and crushed as flat as tinfoil. One wheel gone, the Land Cruiser flipped onto its side.

Chase grinned. “Okay, next time I’m driving in London, I want one of these!”

Nina pointed ahead. “Watch out!” Two more Land Cruisers charged down the dirt road at them, security men leaning out of the windows.

Guns in their hands-

“Duck!” Chase shouted, but Nina had already seen the danger and hunched down behind the seat. Shooting from a moving vehicle was a lot harder than Hollywood made it seem, but the T282B was not exactly a small target. Bullets clonked around the cab, one side of the windshield cracking as a shot punched a hole through it and hit the back wall.

“Okay, you want it that way…” Chase growled. He pushed harder on the accelerator, the engine shrilling beneath him, and aimed the truck at the oncoming 4×4s. One of them immediately decided that survival outweighed orders and swung away, but the other kept coming. More bullets hit. A section of the windshield shattered, chunks of laminated glass showering over the dash. Chase flinched, but held his course.

The Land Cruiser’s driver finally realized that he was playing chicken with an opponent three hundred times his weight and tried to turn away, but too late. The Toyota disappeared from view below the base of the windshield, but an explosive crunch of metal-and a very small bump-told Chase that he’d scored a hit. A moment later, the remains of the Land Cruiser appeared on one of the rearview monitors, only the severed wheel bouncing away from the wreckage giving away that the flattened roadkill had once been a vehicle.

Chase winced. “Ouch.”

The admin building was coming up ahead, the stage and marquee beyond it. He saw what he assumed was Yuen’s helicopter on the pad in front of the building, rotors whirling, figures running for it-

“Shit!” One of the figures was very familiar. “They’re taking Sophia!”

“Wait, what are you doing?” Nina asked as he changed direction, heading straight for the helicopter.

“Stopping them from taking off!”

“How? By crashing into them? You’ll kill her!”

Chase knew she was right, but couldn’t think of anything else to do. “I’m not letting him take her!”

“You can’t stop him!” The helicopter was already rising, dust swirling beneath its skids. “We’ll never get there in time!”

“We’d be going faster if you’d dumped the load when I told you!”

“Oh, don’t you start blaming me for this!” Nina snarled.

Yuen’s helicopter cleared the pad and wheeled around, nose dipping as it turned for the airfield. “Shit!” said Chase, banging a fist on the wheel. He watched helplessly as the chopper gained height and flew over the marquee.

“Eddie!” Nina pointed. President Molowe’s helicopter was parked in their path near the tent, its rotors building up speed, and in front of it was a line of soldiers.

Taking aim…

Chase didn’t need to issue a warning for Nina to throw herself flat on the cab floor. He dropped too, leaning almost horizontally to shield himself behind the dashboard as rifle bullets ripped into the cab. The rest of the windshield exploded, fragments cascading over the dash like a crystal wave. Shots punched through the cab’s steel walls, one of the video monitors blowing apart. The accelerator pedal kicked beneath his foot, the mechanism hit somewhere, but the engine kept roaring at full power.

Unable to see, all he could do was hold the wheel steady and keep going-

The firing stopped, the soldiers breaking ranks and running as the truck surged towards them. The helicopter’s main rotor hadn’t quite reached takeoff speed-the aircraft’s occupants jumped out of the cabin and fled in panic, a soldier practically dragging Molowe out of the juggernaut’s path.

The rotor blades sliced into the front of the truck, ripping the stairs to pieces before striking the solid steel framework of the truck’s body and shattering like glass.

An instant later, the Liebherr slammed into the helicopter.

The chopper flipped onto its side, the fuselage disintegrating and the long tail boom snapping off to cartwheel away. Fire bloomed inside the engine compartment. The crushed wreckage was bowled along by the bumper for a moment-

Then it exploded, a dull thump of igniting fuel followed almost instantly by a louder, sharper detonation as the engine blew apart. Debris showered the front of the truck.

“Bloody hell!” Chase gasped as a burning shard of metal bounced off the cab roof and hit his arm. He kept the accelerator pressed down. There was a jolt as one of the wheels ran over the remains of the chopper, then the crushed wreckage was strewn out in their wake. He sat up-and saw something large directly ahead. “Oh, shit!”

Nina had just raised her head when the truck swayed violently, banging her against the cab door as Chase tried to avoid the marquee.

He wasn’t successful. The giant vehicle swept through the VIP end of the tent, tables and champagne bottles shattering beneath the mighty wheels. Nina caught a brief glimpse of the marquee’s interior, waiters fleeing for the exits at the far end, before the tent roof was ripped free and the whole thing collapsed.

Checking the remaining video monitors, Chase saw the crumpled marquee falling behind, and beyond it the burning wreckage of the helicopter. “Great,” he moaned as he aimed the truck back towards the road, “that’s another African leader who wants me dead.” He squinted into the dry wind rushing through the broken windshield. Yuen’s helicopter was still in sight ahead, now descending at the end of its short flight.

Nina levered herself upright. “He might still get the chance.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s got tanks at that checkpoint, remember?”

Chase made a dismissive noise. “There’s no way they’ll be able to ready them this fast. Besides, they’re just for show.” He brought the truck onto the road to the airfield, hitting the celebratory banner spanning it like a runner breaking the tape at the finish line. The banner was ripped free of its support poles and snagged on the truck’s cab-level walkway, ropes snaking from it as it flapped furiously in the wind.

He turned towards the gate-to see both of the Leopards moving to block the road beyond the checkpoint, turrets swiveling to bring their main guns to bear.