King Solomon's Curse

26

‘Get down!’ Eddie shouted, pushing Nina back as he used the trees for cover to scurry to Howie’s position. He peered around one to see the young American sprawled on the ground, blood oozing from an exit wound over his heart. Shot in the back — but by whom?

A second shot thudded into the tree just above him. Eddie jerked back, but the sound had revealed the shooter’s position—

Brice!

The MI6 officer had beaten them to the river. He was untying one of the militia’s clustered craft. Two more shots at Eddie to pin him down, then the mooring line came free. He jumped aboard.

Eddie sent a round back at him. Brice rolled behind the boat’s cargo, the bullet striking it with a flat smack of lead on lead.

The Yorkshireman instantly recognised it: the Shamir’s container. The ancient weapon was now in the hands of the British spy.

The outboard roared. The boat surged away, Brice staying low as he swung it into the river. Eddie fired again, aiming for the engine, but only blew a piece of fibreglass from its casing. ‘Shit!’ he barked, racing down the slope after him.

But by the time he reached the bottom, Brice was out of range, the boat kicking up a frothing white wake as he threw it into the bend around the promontory. Eddie opened the revolver’s cylinder. Only one unused round remained. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’

‘Eddie!’ Nina cried as the others hurried down the slope. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. But Howie’s dead. And Brice shot the fucking laptop!’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Lydia. ‘Who cares about the laptop?’

‘It had Howie’s drone footage on it,’ Nina told her. ‘We filmed Brice confessing to supplying Mukobo with weapons, that he was behind the civil war!’

‘But Mukobo’s dead,’ said Rivero. ‘Without him, the civil war’s pretty much over, right?’

‘Tell that to those arseholes up there,’ Eddie countered, gesturing back towards Zhakana. The Insekt Posse would certainly have heard the exchange of gunfire.

‘Fortune!’ Nina shouted. ‘Get the laptop!’ The tall Congolese gave her a questioning look, but collected the computer from beside Howie all the same.

One of the expedition’s boats was penned in by the Insekt Posse’s moored craft, but the other seemed to have been left alone. ‘What good’ll that do?’ Eddie said as he untied their free vessel. ‘The bullet went right through it. It’ll be fucked!’

‘The laptop might be — but the hard drive could be okay.’ Nina came to help him. ‘If it’s not damaged, we’ll be able to get the recording off of it. We’ll still have the proof!’

Rivero and Paris went to one of the militia’s vessels and quickly unmoored it as Lydia climbed aboard. ‘That’s if we live to show it to anyone,’ said the American.

Fortune headed for Nina and Eddie’s boat, but the Yorkshireman waved him away. ‘Drive the other one! After what happened in Burundi, I know you can handle a boat.’

‘Better than you, my friend,’ the Congolese replied with a small smile.

‘What does that mean?’ Nina asked as Fortune hopped into the second craft and started the engine.

Eddie grimaced at the reminder as he freed the rope. ‘Nothing. Just a small… explosion.’

‘What?’

They both boarded, Eddie going to the motor. ‘Dunno why you’re worried. You’ve been with me in boats loads of times.’

‘Yeah, and how many of them blew up?’

‘Not even half! Probably…’ He yanked the starter cord. The engine rasped to life.

The other boat was already moving, but rather than swing away from the bank, Fortune drew alongside. ‘Eddie! You may need this.’

Paris held up an empty Kalashnikov; the militia had brought spare weaponry. ‘Thanks!’ said the Yorkshireman, shoving the revolver back into his jacket as the mercenary threw the rifle to him. ‘Any ammo?’

‘Here.’ Paris tossed a couple of magazines after it.

‘Nina, load up,’ Eddie told his wife. ‘We’re gonna need it.’ She took the AK from him, slotting a mag into the receiver and tugging the charging handle to load the first round. ‘You’re getting pretty good at that.’

‘Not a skill I ever wanted on my résumé,’ she said unhappily.

Both boats swept out into the middle of the river. The Insekt Posse charged down the hill after them. ‘Take over from me, give me the rifle.’

She switched places, puzzled. ‘You know I don’t really worry about your driving, right?’

‘Good to know!’ He took careful aim, then sent several shots back at the remaining boats. Shattered wood and fibreglass spat up — and one of the craft blew apart, an oily fireball rising from the thunderous explosion. ‘Bollocks!’

‘Why? You hit one.’

‘I was hoping to blow up all of ’em so they couldn’t follow us!’

Another detonation — this of shearing rock — rang across the jungle. A house-sized chunk of the clifftop tumbled into the river. The trees at the promontory’s edge came with it, for the first time exposing the Palace Without Entrance to view from below. ‘Look!’ Nina cried. One of the towers crumbled, its ancient stones crashing through the roof. A second followed, demolishing most of the lead-lined ceiling… and the Mother of the Shamir’s furious roar grew even louder.

The boat rolled as the wave kicked up by the falling debris hit it side-on. Nina grabbed the gunwale for support, Eddie bracing himself as he turned the craft into the crest to keep it from being swamped. Fortune did the same, the speedboat’s prow leaping from the water before smacking back down. Rivero, still filming, yelped as he was pitched from his place.

Both vessels straightened out as the wave passed — but bigger ones would soon follow. Nina saw the entire promontory shudder as they rounded it, shedding loose rocks like a wet dog shaking itself off. At its base, the Insekt Posse’s boats raced out in pursuit.

Boulders cascaded down the cliff into the water. Eddie swung towards the far bank, gambling that the risk of hitting something in the shallows was less than that of being capsized by a rogue wave. Fortune did the same, cutting across Brice’s wake. The Yorkshireman glared after his countryman. There was not much difference in speed between the boats, but the MI6 man still had an advantage, and was edging away from his pursuers.

Gunshots from behind as the militia opened fire, bullets smacking into the water around them—

The rolling thunder reached a crescendo — and the promontory burst apart.

It was as if solid rock instantaneously turned to sand, the whole cliff — the whole escarpment — collapsing. What remained of the Palace Without Entrance vanished into the maelstrom, the surrounding jungle falling with it in a storm of shredded foliage. Zhakana was consumed too, the ancient ruins disintegrating before also being swallowed.

Countless kilotons of falling stone hit the water — and hurled up a huge wavefront, an enormous wall of white froth surging outwards at terrifying speed. Nina looked back, and wished she hadn’t. ‘Oh my God!’

Eddie glanced astern. The wave raced after them, bursting the opposite bank and sweeping away towering trees as if they were dry twigs. The last of the Insekt Posse’s boats was snatched up. The driver tried to turn to escape, but there was nowhere to go. The craft flipped over, its two occupants flung screaming into the seething waters.

The Englishman knew they would soon follow them — unless—

‘Fortune!’ he bellowed over the rising noise from behind. ‘Turn into it! Turn into it!’

He yanked at the tiller, bringing the boat around in a sharp turn to point back upriver. Some of the Insekt Posse saw his move and did the same. But others were panicking, trying to swing out of the wave’s path or simply outrun it—

They failed, their boats smashed by the furious flume.

The other craft met it head-on. One had not turned far enough and was bowled over, but three of the enemy speedboats managed to ride up the charging wall of water, tipping almost vertically before disappearing over its crest.

Eddie looked at Fortune — then both men shoved their outboards to full power and drove directly at the wave. Nina held on as hard as she could as the bow pitched upwards—

The hull jolted as it was pounded by debris. Spray soaked them, a broken log lancing past like a spear… then there was a sickening moment of freefall as they crested the tsunami.

The landing threw Eddie from his seat. He tumbled down the boat’s length—

Though half-blinded by spray, Nina saw her husband bowl past — and desperately grabbed his leather jacket. He thumped to a stop with his legs over the prow.

The boat spun around, smaller waves throwing it about like driftwood. Nina shook wet hair off her face and pulled Eddie back. ‘Thanks,’ he panted. ‘Where’s Fortune?’

She saw the second boat off to port. ‘They’re all okay — and crap, so are those guys,’ she added. The jungle around them had been swamped, the river itself littered with flotsam, but those Insekt Posse who had cleared the wave were still afloat.

Eddie scrambled to the stern. To his relief, the outboard was still running. He pulled the boat back downstream, Fortune following.

Nina looked back. The landscape had completely changed. The entire promontory was gone, swirling dust all that remained where high cliffs had stood. The plateau on which Zhakana had been hidden for three thousand years was now a shattered crater, only the chewed remnants of trees poking through the rubble. The entire City of the Damned had been swallowed by the earth.

Something else had been buried too. The Mother of the Shamir had fallen silent. The chasm had collapsed on top of it, hundreds of feet of debris blocking whatever caused the destructive effect far better than a few inches of lead. The power it represented, the temptation and the danger it posed, had now been removed — permanently.

The threat from the parent was over… but that of its child still remained. Brice had the Shamir — and the British agent had also brought his boat safely over the tidal wave. ‘There’s Brice!’ she said, pointing ahead.

Eddie powered after him. ‘His boat’s faster,’ he warned. ‘He’ll get away — unless—’

‘Unless what?’ asked Nina, sure she would not like the answer.

‘Unless we cut some corners.’ He altered course. The rushing wavefront had broken the banks on both sides of the river, flooding the swampy lands downstream. Brice was still following the waterway’s curves to stay clear of the trees — but Eddie was already angling to cut as closely as he could around the inside of the next bend.

‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said, eyeing floating debris in their path.

‘You want him to get away with that thing?’

‘No, but I don’t want to crash either!’

The boat bounded over Brice’s wake, broken wood clattering against the prow. ‘I can try not to crash into anything big. That do you?’

‘Not really, no!’ she cried as they surged around the bend. One side of the hull scraped against what had been the riverbank, spraying up mud — then Nina saw vines hanging from a low branch rushing at her. ‘Aah! Duck!’

They both hurriedly dropped, the dangling creepers whipping at the top of Eddie’s head as they roared beneath. He glanced back, cringing. ‘See? Doddle.’

‘Doddle, my ass!’ Nina retorted.

He grinned, then looked past her at the river ahead as he pulled away from the waterlogged bank. His plan was working; they had made up ground on the fleeing spy. If they cut a few more corners, he would soon be in effective rifle range of the other Englishman…

Brice came back into view — closer than Eddie had expected. He wasn’t taking the shortest possible route through the curves, instead following the deeper, safer middle of the waterway. The Yorkshireman realised why. The spy’s full attention wasn’t on piloting the boat because he was multitasking, one hand raised to his head—

Holding the satellite phone. ‘Shit! The bastard’s calling for help!’

‘I don’t care,’ Brice barked into the phone. ‘Get that chopper to me ASAP. If Sir Robert kicks up a stink, remind him who set up his deals in the first place. Just get it done!’

He disconnected and pocketed the phone — then heard another engine. He looked back.

A boat was following him, two familiar figures — one bald, the other red-haired — aboard. ‘Really?’ he said with a faint huff that was as much grudging admiration as exasperation. ‘What does it take to kill you, Chase?’

The engine at full power, he changed course to cut more tightly through the river’s bends. Another look back as he sliced around a muddy bank. Chase’s boat disappeared behind trees.

Confident that he would reopen the gap, he checked his watch. The helicopter he had summoned should reach him within half an hour, less if his contacts hammered home the urgency of its mission.

And once he was airborne, he could arrange to take care of any loose ends — including those pursuing him.