Temple of the Gods

9

Nina froze, shocked — and afraid. Eddie’s expression was one of pure hatred. ‘What are you…’ she started to say, but her mouth had gone dry.

Then she realised that he wasn’t looking at her, but something behind her. ‘Nina, move,’ he growled.

She whirled. Stikes had just come from the dining room — and also had a gun raised. She was directly between the two men, blocking their lines of fire. A standoff.

‘Yes, step aside,’ said Stikes. ‘I should have known you’d turn up sooner or later, Chase. It’s a bad habit of yours.’ A smile of cruel anticipation twisted his mouth. ‘One I look forward to breaking.’

‘Move, Nina,’ Eddie repeated. ‘I’ve been hunting this shitbag for three months. He’s not getting away this time.’

‘Why don’t you just shoot, Chase?’ taunted Stikes. ‘I gather you’ve been having marital problems — it would save you the cost of a divorce.’

Eddie clenched his jaw angrily, about to risk darting sideways for a clear shot in the hope of catching the other man by surprise… before a thought struck him. Why didn’t Stikes shoot?

Nina started to step aside. ‘Wait!’ Eddie snapped. ‘Stay still.’

‘Uh, Eddie,’ she said with a nervous glance between the two guns, ‘what’re you doing?’

Eddie’s gaze remained fixed on Stikes, whose eyes began to betray his frustration. For whatever reason, he couldn’t risk killing Nina, even if that cost him the chance to eliminate one of his enemies.

Now it was Eddie’s turn to smile slightly, confusing Nina and infuriating Stikes. ‘Nina, come over here. Trust me,’ he added, seeing her hesitancy.

‘I dunno if you noticed, but the guy who hates us both is aiming a gun at me,’ she pointed out.

‘He won’t shoot. He can’t shoot. He needs you alive. Come on.’

‘Alive isn’t the same as unharmed,’ said Stikes as she started to move.

Nina cringed. ‘Oh, I was so hoping he wouldn’t say that.’

‘He wounds you, you fall, I kill him,’ Eddie told her. ‘He loses.’

‘I don’t exactly come out a winner either!’ She was now two-thirds of the way between the former SAS men.

A faint sound from the other end of the hall. The elevator was descending. ‘That’ll be more of Takashi’s security,’ said Stikes, his arrogance returning. ‘You can’t get away. I’ll tell you what — just drop your gun and I’ll make it painless. One bullet, right in the forehead. For old times’ sake.’

‘How about I give you one bullet right in the bollocks? For old times’ sake.’ But Eddie knew Stikes was right — he was rapidly running out of time before reinforcements arrived. He needed to break the deadlock…

A bright light suddenly filled the hallway.

From outside.

Eddie looked round in alarm as an approaching helicopter’s spotlight swept over the penthouse. He whipped back to face Stikes, but the mercenary was just as surprised as he was—

The windows shattered as gunfire raked the building.

Nina shrieked and ran to Eddie, who dived on top of her to shield her from the flying glass and bullets. Stikes also threw himself to the floor. Wood panels splintered, the drywall behind erupting with great sprays of fragmented plaster as more shots carved through the hallway.

The firing stopped. Eddie raised his head, seeing the helicopter hovering about fifty metres from the skyscraper. The glare from its light meant that he couldn’t identify the type, only that it was painted black — and had a machine gun protruding from an open hatch in its side.

But the aircraft was now turning to face the building head-on. The gun wasn’t its only weapon…

Eddie flattened himself over Nina again as a flash of orange fire streaked out from the chopper. A rocket hit the building above the hallway and exploded, the remaining windows shattering. Debris cascaded from the ceiling between the couple and Stikes.

Nina screamed as a second missile struck overhead, the floor pounding like a drumskin. ‘Holy shit! Who the hell are they?’

‘They’re shooting at us, so bad guys!’ Eddie shouted back. He shook off lumps of fallen plaster and lifted his head. They were dangerously exposed here; if they ran towards the elevator, the building’s central core might provide some protection. But that would mean covering almost the entire length of the hallway, making them an easy target for the gunner—

The floor shook again. Not from an explosion, but a deep, ominous creak of metal and concrete. The helicopter hurriedly retreated. The sound grew louder, joined by the groans and cracks of failing structural supports…

Nina realised the cause with horror. ‘Oh, crap! Eddie, move, move!’

One of the wind turbines outside toppled like a felled redwood, scything down through the ceiling and tearing a great gash out of the skyscraper as the enormous steel tower ripped through storey after storey before finally being dragged to a halt by the sheer mass of tangled wreckage.

But the danger wasn’t over. Nina and Eddie suddenly found themselves sliding towards the widening hole as the floor, its supports severed, sagged beneath them. They slithered helplessly down the polished wood—

Another loud crack — a floorboard springing up at one end as it buckled. Nina grabbed it, Eddie catching her legs and clinging on.

She was still holding the case in her other hand. ‘Get rid of that fucking box before we both fall!’ he ordered.

‘Not a chance!’ After what she had experienced earlier, there was no way Nina was going to give up the statues now. Instead she tossed the case back up the sloping floor to land in the corner near the doors. For a moment, it looked as though it was going to slide back down again… then it wedged against another warped board.

She clawed at the wood with her now free hand until her fingers found purchase. ‘Okay, just hang on,’ Eddie grunted as he stuffed the gun into his jacket and began to pull himself up her body.

‘Oh, ya think?’

He held back a sarcastic response of his own, concentrating on survival. Boots scraping against the floor, he brought himself high enough to reach the board. ‘Got it,’ he said, releasing Nina and edging sideways to support his foot against a cracked plank. As she squirmed up, he twisted to locate the other threats.

The helicopter was shining its light into Takashi’s office. As for Stikes—

His former superior officer was on the far side of the gap, scrambling back to level ground. He straightened, brushed off dust, then looked back. His gaze met Eddie’s. A brief twitch of anger, then he smirked and reached for his gun…

It wasn’t there. His look changed to outright anger as he realised he had dropped it — and it had fallen into the hole. All he could shoot at Eddie was a scowl, which he delivered before turning and running for the lift. A flashing red ‘no entry’ symbol on the display warned that it was no longer in operation; the fire alarm had been sounded, and the elevators were programmed to stop in response. Instead, Stikes rounded a corner and passed out of sight, heading for the emergency stairs.

Eddie cursed at having missed his chance to kill Stikes, then clambered back up the slope to join Nina. They exchanged relieved looks — which were instantly replaced by concern as the machine gun fired again.

In the office, Kojima desperately tried to push Takashi into the open escape capsule. ‘You’ve got to get out!’ he cried as the piercing spotlight sliced across the windows.

Takashi resisted, shouting into a cell phone, ‘Two hundred and sixty degrees west! Have you got that? Two hundred and sixty degrees!’ Receiving confirmation, he finally addressed Kojima. ‘The statues, and Dr Wilde — they must be saved! The plan is more important than any one member of the Group. Find them and get them to safety!’

‘No, Takashi-san! You have to—’

The beam locked on to them, pinning the two men in its harsh gaze. Eyes narrowed against the glare, Takashi stared back with a mix of defiance and acceptance. ‘Glas,’ he said. ‘That traitor Glas is behind this—’

The machine gun spat fire. The windows shattered, a storm of bullets shredding Takashi and his secretary into bloody chunks.

Eddie regarded the oak doors with concern as the gunfire stopped. ‘Definitely don’t think we want to go in there.’ The pitch of the helicopter’s engine changed, suggesting that it was circling the building.

Looking for more targets.

‘That doesn’t leave us with many options,’ Nina replied. There was another, single door in the corridor wall on their side of the chasm, but reaching it would require going back down the dangerous slope before hopping on to the stub of a beam at what had been floor level. She retrieved the case. ‘Keep hold of my hand until I can jump across.’

‘For Christ’s sake, just leave the case, will you?’ He frowned. ‘Wait, what’s in it? It’s those fucking statues, isn’t it!’

‘Yeah, and after everything I’ve been through to get them I’m not letting go of them now.’

‘After all the trouble they’ve caused, the world’ll be well rid of them,’ he countered. ‘Give ’em here.’

‘No, Eddie,’ Nina insisted, clutching the handle more tightly. ‘I don’t have time to explain right now, but they’re a part of something big — something amazing. I have to find out what it is.’

He shook his head. ‘No, you—’

‘You asked me to trust you a minute ago,’ she cut in firmly.

‘Well, trust me. Please, Eddie. It’s very important.’

‘All bloody right,’ he said after a moment. ‘I won’t smash ’em, I promise. Now get moving, will you? If that chopper comes back—’

‘I’m moving, I’m moving,’ she protested, extending her free hand to him and starting down the slope. He held on to her, leaning forward as far as he dared. She neared the broken beam and took a deep breath, swinging the case in her hand. ‘Okay, and a-one, a-two, and a-three!’

He let go and she jumped as the case reached the end of its upward arc, its momentum helping carry her all the way to the stub in the wall. She landed — and wobbled, waving her arms before steadying enough to hop across to the open door. The room beyond was a lounge, minimalistically furnished. Nina entered as Eddie made a running jump on to the beam, then without a pause leapt the rest of the way into the room. ‘All right, now what?’ she asked.

‘Try to find another way out of here.’ He recognised the room as where he had seen Stikes earlier; that meant there was a way back to the maintenance shaft through the ventilation grille overhead, but it would take more time than they could afford. There was a second door across the lounge, however. ‘You know where that goes?’

‘No — but Takashi took me through the rooms on the other side of the building,’ she remembered. ‘If we carry on past the vault, we might be able to get to the stairs from there.’

‘Probably run into trouble coming up ’em, but it’s better than being stuck here.’ He drew the gun and went to the door. Beyond was what appeared to be a conference room. More doors led off it, but the one that seemed the best prospect was in the opposite wall. ‘Okay, come on,’ he said, crossing the room. Nina followed, the case in her hand.

Eddie opened the door a crack and cautiously peered through. Beyond was the Zen garden. The white spire of another wind turbine was visible through the windows, the lights of Tokyo beyond. ‘Okay, it’s clear,’ he said. ‘Which way?’

‘That door,’ Nina said, pointing to the right. They jogged towards it—

And were dazzled by the spotlight beam as the helicopter descended outside.

They both dived for cover as the gunner opened fire. Wind shrieked through the windows as they burst apart in a crystalline spray, trees shattering under the pounding onslaught. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ Nina wailed as she scrambled behind a boulder. ‘Why do people in helicopters always try to kill me?’

The gunfire stopped. Eddie peered out from behind a rock and saw what he had feared — the chopper was turning to bring its rockets to bear.

‘Stay down!’ he shouted as he ran to the windows, opening fire with the Makarov. The gunner ducked back into the cabin as a bullet clanged off the fuselage, but the helicopter was almost a hundred metres away, and the Russian gun was sighted for much closer ranges — he couldn’t aim it accurately enough to hit a specific target.

The chopper’s nose came round, the spotlight dazzling him. He could now barely make out the aircraft itself through the glare, never mind its pilot.

But there was something closer that he could see, and hit…

He snapped up the pistol and emptied the magazine into the wind turbine’s hub.

Machinery blew out in a shower of sparks. The whirling blades juddered, their vibration rapidly increasing, loud clangs rising even over the helicopter’s roar. Another burst of sparks from the crippled generator — then with a screech the rotor sheared away from the hub.

Still spinning at high speed, it dropped to the tier below — and bounced away into the night sky.

Straight at the helicopter.

The horrified pilot tried to take evasive action as it arced at his aircraft, but it was too late. The hefty blades sliced off the chopper’s tail boom as if it were made from damp paper. Without its tail rotor, the helicopter immediately went into an uncontrollable spin. Wobbling like a top, it whipped around faster and faster, losing altitude as it careened towards the skyscraper—

Eddie hurled himself back out into the garden as the tumbling aircraft crashed through the building’s outer wall six floors below and exploded. A huge fireball surged up the tower’s side behind him. He scrabbled to join Nina, shielding his face from the heat as the roiling inferno ascended. ‘You okay?’

She nodded, still stunned by what had just happened. Oily black smoke boiled upwards beyond the broken windows, leaving the edge of the carpet aflame. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried. ‘What about all the people downstairs?’

‘Soon as the fire alarm sounded, they’ll have evacuated,’ said Eddie, hoping that the Japanese reputation for efficiency extended to Takashi Industries’ emergency procedures. ‘And I think we ought to join ’em.’

He helped her up, and was about to head for the exit when the ceiling sprinklers burst into life, drenching them. ‘Great,’ Nina moaned, flicking strands of wet hair from her eyes. ‘What next, an earthquake?’

The building shook.

Eddie shot her an accusing glare. ‘That was not me tempting fate!’ she protested as she retrieved the case. ‘I’m not a fate-temptress!’

Another jolt. The sound of more windows splintering came from below — followed by a deep groan of buckling metal and crumbling concrete. The sprinklers died as pipes were severed. They both felt another movement, their inner ears warning them that they were leaning over — even though they were standing still. Through the smoke, the glowing Toyko skyline slowly began to tilt. ‘The whole fucking building’s going over!’ Eddie yelled.

More noises of imminent collapse reached them as girders broke from their joints and concrete slabs sheared apart. The doors through which they had been about to leave creaked in distress as their frame warped — then they shattered, chunks of wood flying into the room. The ceiling behind the exit collapsed, ventilation hoses thrashing angrily amongst the falling rubble.

They were cut off from the stairs.

The floor of the now visibly tilting room trembled. Another deep destructive boom from below and the lights flickered, then went out. The burning carpet provided enough illumination for Eddie to see, but even with that they still had nowhere to go…

Nina grabbed his hand. ‘This way!’ She pulled him down the ever-steepening slope towards Takashi’s office.

‘How’s that going to help?’

‘He’s got an escape pod!’

‘He’s got a what?’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought too!’ She reached the door and tried to open it. It didn’t move. Like the set at the other end of the room, the frame was warping under the structural stress. ‘Damn it!’

Eddie solved the problem by kicking the doors open. ‘Go on!’

Nina recoiled at the sight of what was left of Takashi and Kojima in the firelight. Suppressing her nausea, she crossed the blood-splattered floor to the booth. The bright orange capsule was still inside, door raised and a light glowing within. To her dismay, the padded interior only looked big enough for one person.

‘Get in!’ Eddie barked, pushing her towards it.

‘I’m not leaving you behind!’

‘Too bloody right you’re not! I meant get in and shove over!’

She clambered through the hatch and lowered herself on to a thickly cushioned seat. Eddie followed her. He bashed the case. ‘Can’t you just dump that fucking thing?’

‘No, I — aah! — can’t,’ she grunted as he squeezed into the cramped space. ‘Okay, so how does this work?’

Eddie spotted a small control panel. It had two buttons, the top one flashing. The crash of another section of collapsing ceiling told him that there was no time to figure out what they did. Instead, he jabbed at the lit button. The clamshell door descended with a mechanical hum, pressing him even more tightly against his wife.

‘Well, not quite the reunion I’d hoped for,’ she mumbled into his butt—

Eddie pushed the second button.

Rockets set around the capsule’s door fired. More pyrotechnics on the window behind it shattered the safety glass a fraction of a second before the pod blasted through and sailed out into open air. The G-force squashed Eddie hard against the door, Nina screaming as she was jammed against him.

A moment later, the skyscraper crumbled.

A wedge-shaped chunk eight storeys high sheared away from the top of the tower, sliding diagonally down the fault line created by the exploding helicopter before plunging towards the ground in a trail of smoke and dust. Evacuees ran screaming across the lawns as it fell. The mass of steel and concrete and glass smashed down, the shock of the impact destroying every window on the bottom twenty floors and sending a choking cloud of pulverised debris across the grass after the fleeing workers. More office detritus rained down on the mangled girders and rubble.

The escape pod was also falling — but far more slowly. The rockets had burned out in seconds, their job of propelling the capsule away from the building completed. After a brief but terrifying period of freefall, a trio of parachutes deployed. Twirling gracefully like a sycamore seed, the orange sphere descended and thumped down on one of the lawns well clear of the scene of destruction.

The door opened. Eddie fell out backwards, a dizzied Nina crawling after him and flopping on to the grass. She regarded the smoking wreckage with horrified amazement as people staggered out of the billowing cloud like walking ghosts. ‘I think… I want my office moved to the first floor,’ she gasped.

Eddie sat against the pod, recovering his breath. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah. Somehow.’ She looked up at him, taking in his bruised face and torn, bloodied clothes. ‘My God! You look…’

‘Like I got beat up by ninjas?’

‘I was going to say “weird with a beard”.’

‘Tchah!’

‘But yeah, you need to get to a hospital.’

‘They might be a bit busy tonight.’ He nodded towards the fleeing workers. ‘And anyway, that could cause me a few problems if the police want to ask me any questions.’

Nina sat up. ‘I’ve got some questions. Where have you been for the past three months? What have you been doing? And why are you here — I mean, this exact place, right now, at the same time as me?’

‘In order? All over the place, tracking down Stikes—’ He stopped mid-sentence, instantly angry.

‘Stikes?’ Nina looked round nervously, as if the mercenary might suddenly appear and try to finish the job, but there was no sign of him.

Eddie shook his head. ‘He’ll be gone. He’ll be fucking gone! Bastard, that — fuck!’ He banged a rage-clenched fist against the pod. ‘I had him, I had my chance to fucking kill him, and I missed it!’

‘That’s why you were here?’ said Nina in disbelief. ‘To kill Stikes? Not — not what you told me in Peru, that you were going to prove you didn’t murder Kit?’

Her disappointment, almost disgust, immediately poured cold water on his burning fury. Several moments passed before he spoke again, more calmly. ‘It doesn’t matter, ’cause I think I’ve been set up. We both have.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone told me Stikes would be here — in return for me doing something for them.’

‘Destroying the statues.’ Nina pulled the case from the pod and opened it. The three stone figures inside were all intact.

‘Yeah. Only I don’t think it’s a coincidence, that chopper showing up as well. Somebody wanted all of us dead — Takashi, Stikes, you… and me. I need to find out who.’ Flashing lights caught his attention, emergency vehicles racing along the nearby roads. Ambulances, fire trucks — and police cars. ‘Can’t talk about it now, though. I’ve got to go.’

‘No, Eddie, you can’t! Look, Interpol know that Kit was up to something — if you come in, we can try to clear you—’

‘Sorry, love, but I can’t. Not yet.’ He stood, searching for an escape route. The wind turbine’s rotor had stabbed into the grass like an enormous lawn dart; beyond it, streets led into Tokyo’s urban maze. ‘I need to have words with somebody.’ He turned, about to run — then, before Nina could react, snatched the case from her hand.

She jumped up, but he was already sprinting. ‘Eddie!’

He looked back. ‘Remember something else I said to you in Peru? The last thing? I still mean it!’

Nina was too shaken to pursue him. All she could do was slump against the pod and watch as he disappeared into the night.

She did indeed remember his parting words as he fled the gas plant. They were ‘I love you’.

‘Oh, God, Eddie,’ she sighed. ‘What have you gotten involved in?’

It was a question she could also ask of herself.