The Sacred Vault

‘Way to make me look competent to the impatient guys with swords, Eddie,’ Nina muttered.

Other guardians threatened Kit with their weapons. At Shankarpa’s command, they forced the three visitors towards the edge of the ledge. Girilal protested, but his son angrily dismissed him.

‘If you kill us, you’ll be fucked when Khoil’s people turn up,’ growled Eddie.

‘We will deal with them as we will deal with you,’ Shankarpa promised. ‘Shiva will protect us.’

‘Shiva,’ Nina whispered. That was the clue! Something about Shiva had been literally staring her in the face the whole time she worked on the lock. ‘It’s Shiva! I know how to open the door!’

Shankarpa’s condescension was clear. ‘And perhaps you also know how to fly off this ledge. It is the only thing that will save you now.’

‘No, no, look!’ She pointed at the statue towering over them. ‘Look at Shiva! Look at his head!’

The certainty in her voice made him hesitate. Holding up a hand to signal the others to stop, he glanced at the colossal stone figure. ‘What about it?’

‘Don’t you see?’ Nina said desperately. ‘It’s tilted to one side!’

‘So?’

‘So the key’s in the wrong position! I put it in with Shiva’s head aligned vertically because . . . because that’s what you automatically do. But you’re meant to line it up with the statue.’ She demonstrated, turning an imaginary object in her hands. ‘The words are in the right order, but the wrong places. If you turn the key so Shiva’s head matches the statue, then all the goddesses move round by one position. That’s what we have to line them up with!’

Shankarpa looked between her and the statue. ‘Do you really believe this? Or are you just trying to save your life?’

‘Well, both! But I do think I’m right - I know I’m right. If I’m wrong, then you can throw us off the ledge.’

Eddie raised a finger. ‘Nina, love? Remember how now we’re married, we’re supposed to make big decisions together?’

‘I would also like to distance myself from that remark,’ Kit said hurriedly.

‘I’m right,’ she insisted. ‘Shankarpa, at least let me try. You might have to wait five minutes longer to kill us - but on the other hand, five minutes from now you could be walking into the Vault of Shiva!’

‘You should let her,’ added Girilal. ‘It is the right thing to do.’

Shankarpa shot his father an irritated glare, but acquiesced. ‘Do not fail,’ he told Nina curtly.

‘Yeah, really,’ Eddie added as the guardians, swords still raised, escorted them back to the door.

‘I won’t,’ Nina assured him. She removed the replica key from the central hole, then re-inserted it . . . rotated by one-fifth of a turn. She looked up at the statue. Shiva’s blank stone eyes gazed back at her, the faint smile on the tilted head encouraging her to continue.

Turning the wheels to match the new positions of the goddesses was now a purely mechanical task, taking just a few minutes. She rotated each smaller disc to what she thought - prayed - was the correct alignment. Love, motherhood, invincibility, femininity . . .

Death.

The last word was in place. Silence . . .

Click.

Something moved behind the wheels, a restraint finally released after countless centuries. More clicking, louder, then the rattling clank of chains—

With a swirl of escaping dust, the doors swung inwards.

The guardians let out exclamations of awe, some dropping to their knees to offer thanks to Shiva. Shankarpa was wide-eyed with surprise. Fully opened, the doors stopped with a crunch of stone.

‘So, my son,’ said Girilal quietly, ‘are you going to apologise to Dr Wilde?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘We will see what is inside first - what we are sworn to protect.’ He hesitated before reluctantly saying, ‘Come with me, Dr Wilde.’

Awestruck, Nina followed him into the darkness of the Vault of Shiva.

25

The space behind the doors was huge, on a scale to match the statue guarding it. The echo of Nina’s and Shankarpa’s footsteps as they moved through the entrance quickly disappeared, lost in a vast cavern.

There was something inside the doors. As Nina’s vision adjusted to the darkness, it revealed what she at first took to be two stone blocks, about five feet high and three feet apart, before realising they were merely the ends of larger constructs. Together, they formed the two halves of a steeply sloping ramp that rose a good thirty feet at the far end, dropping almost to floor level before rising back up; the comparison that leapt instantly to her mind was a ski-jump.

There was no snow inside the chamber, though. So what was it for?

An answer came as she and Shankarpa moved further into the cave, the others following. Something was perched at the top of the ramp, slender parts extending out to each side like wings . . .

Not like wings. They were wings.

‘It’s a glider!’ Nina cried, completely forgetting the threat of the guardians as she ran for a better look. ‘Khoil told me about the stories in the ancient Indian epics where the gods had flying machines. I thought they were just legends - but they were true!’

‘The vimanas,’ said Girilal. He laughed. ‘My father told me those stories when I was a boy - and I told them to my own son. Do you remember?’

‘I remember,’ said Shankarpa, amazed.

Nina started to climb the ramp, eager to see the craft at the top. ‘What Talonor said in the Codex all makes sense now. This is why it took the priests one day to get up here, and only an hour to get back - they flew! They released the glider, it slid down the ramp, then hit the ski-jump at the end and flew out down the valley.’ She examined the stone slide; it was smoothly polished, with a small lip at the outer edge to guide a runner on the glider itself.

Eddie looked back through the doors, seeing the cliff at the far end of the canyon. ‘They’d have to pull up pretty sharpish when they took off. Cock things up, and you’d smack into that wall.’

Nina shone her flashlight at the glider. It had an organic appearance, the wings formed from gracefully curved wooden spars. The wood itself was dark and glossy, given some kind of treatment to strengthen and preserve it. Between the spars, the fabric of the wings was still stretched taut. It appeared to be a fine, lightweight silk, covered in dust and yellowed with age.

‘This is incredible!’ she said as Shankarpa ascended the other ramp. ‘The ancient Hindus had actual, working flying machines before the Greeks even came up with the myth of Daedalus. And it took until the sixteenth century before Leonardo designed anything similar.’ The glider’s undercarriage was made from the same wood, a trapezoidal frame with ski-like metal runners attached. These weren’t as corroded as she would have expected; the cavern was dry as well as cold. The craft seemed designed to carry at least two people, lying prone on a slatted platform beneath the wing.

Girilal grinned up at her. ‘Well, it is often said that we Indians invented everything.’

‘Who says that?’ Eddie asked.

‘We Indians,’ Kit told him.

Nina directed her light along the ancient aircraft’s fuselage. At the end of the slender wooden body was a fan-shaped tail. There was something affixed beneath it, a long black cylinder protruding out past the end of the glider’s frame. At first she was puzzled as to what it might be . . . before a cord hanging from its end gave her a clue: a fuse. ‘Here’s something else you might have invented before anyone else,’ she said. ‘Rockets.’

‘You’re kidding!’ said Eddie. ‘I thought the Chinese invented them.’

‘I think they’ll be very annoyed when they find out someone beat them to it. They came up with gunpowder around the ninth century, but our friends here were using it thousands of years earlier. It must be how they got up enough speed to launch.’

Below, Girilal walked round the base of the ramp. ‘Look here,’ he called.

Nina aimed the flashlight down to find him prodding his stick at a stack of more black tubes. ‘Careful, don’t poke them! They’ve been here for who knows how long - they might be unstable.’

Eddie had a different opinion. ‘More likely they won’t work at all. Depends how they made the gunpowder - if they didn’t corn it properly, the different ingredients’ll probably have separated by now.’ He caught his wife’s surprised expression. ‘I did explosives training in the SAS - it’s handy to know this stuff if you’re going to blow things up.’

‘Well, either way, let’s not put any naked flames near them.’ She descended the ramp. By now, her eyes had become more accustomed to the low light. ‘Oh, wow. This isn’t the only glider - the place is more like a hangar.’ To one side were several more vimanas. Other mysterious objects lurked in the darkness. ‘This flashlight isn’t going to cut it,’ she said. ‘We need something bigger.’

‘This might do,’ proclaimed Girilal. The old yogi had wandered a little further into the cavern, and was standing by a metal brazier on a stone pedestal. Nina illuminated it - and discovered that a narrow groove had been cut into the floor behind it, leading deeper into the chamber. She followed it with the light until it split, and tracked one of the arms until it divided again, eventually reaching another brazier some distance away. There was a liquid at the bottom of the channel, but from Girilal’s excitement she knew it wasn’t water.

She went to him. ‘It’s oil,’ she said, stirring away the covering of dust with a fingertip and sniffing it. ‘A lighting system. Start one fire, and it spreads through the whole cave to light the other braziers.’

‘I thought we didn’t want to start any fires,’ said Eddie, looking at the pile of rockets.

‘We’ll be safe as long as nobody knocks this thing over. Let me get my stuff.’

She retrieved her pack from outside, finding a box of waterproof survival matches. ‘Shall we take a look?’ she asked Shankarpa.

‘Light it,’ he ordered.

She struck the match and touched it to the line of oil. It took a moment to ignite, but when it did the results made everyone flinch back. A line of fire raced away down the groove, splitting again and again at each branch as it spread through the cavern. Something hissed and fizzed inside each brazier in turn as the fire reached it - small packets of gunpowder catching light, the heat spreading to the tinder and coal above them. Flames began to rise.

The great chamber filled with a flickering amber light. Objects gradually took on form, incredible treasures; golden statues of gods and men and animals; elaborate carved friezes decorated with jewels and precious metals; beautifully painted frescos and gorgeous embroidered silks showing scenes from the lives of Shiva and his wives. Amongst the artworks were strange machines, as mystifying in the glow from the braziers as they had been as shadows. A giant wheel with dozens of leather pouches hanging from its rim; a great wooden framework, hundreds of glinting metal arrowheads protruding from it; a massive stone roller studded with long, thick iron bars. Not far from the ramp was what resembled a miniature palace, cupolas picked out in gold. Connected to a circular ring around its top was an enormous fabric bag, which stretched away, deflated and flaccid, almost to the Vault’s side wall.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Eddie. ‘Shiva’s got a big garage.’

‘This is amazing,’ Nina whispered. ‘What are all these things?’ She went to the little palace. It had a gate in one wall; she gingerly pushed it open to reveal another brazier inside, as well as several straight-bladed swords in a rack on one wall. ‘It’s like a dollhouse.’

‘Mayayantras,’ said Girilal. ‘“Magic machines”. The Vedas and the epic texts tell of them being used in battles.’

Shankarpa was more specific. ‘This is a sarvato-bhadra,’ he said, going to the great wheel. It was supported on each side by wooden beams. He held up a pouch, which had something heavy, about the size of a human head, inside. The leather had been cut into a shape strongly resembling a slingshot. ‘It throws stones, hundreds at a time.’

‘Everybody must get stoned!’ Eddie cried nasally and tunelessly. All eyes turned to him. ‘You know, Bob Dylan? Okay, you probably don’t know. Forget it.’

‘How did they get them in here?’ asked Kit. ‘None of them would fit through that cave into the valley.’

‘They must have been assembled in here,’ said Nina. ‘They’re exhibits - just as much Shiva’s treasures as any of these statues.’ She joined Shankarpa. ‘These things are all mentioned in the epics?’

‘Yes, and in the carvings in the valley,’ he said. He pointed to the grid of arrowheads. ‘That is a sara-yantra - it fires a hundred arrows at once. An udghatima’ - the stone roller - ‘to break down castle walls.’

Nina looked more closely at the ancient war machines. Stone and metal weights were suspended from chains running through pulleys to their axles. She had seen - and almost been the victim of - similar simple but effective gravity-powered mechanisms before; they were still primed even after the endless centuries. ‘Impressive. Just don’t touch them - they might go off.’ She indicated the ‘dollhouse’. ‘What about this?’

Father and son exchanged looks. ‘A flying palace,’ said Shankarpa.

‘From what was written in the Ramayana, I thought it would be a lot bigger.’ Girilal sounded almost disappointed.

Eddie and Kit, meanwhile, had been examining the interior. ‘You know what this is?’ said the Yorkshireman. ‘A hot-air balloon.’ He rapped the brazier. ‘Here’s your fire, and you’ve got the bottom of the balloon up there.’

Nina regarded the great mound of fabric in wonder. ‘It’s incredible. First the Chinese lose gunpowder to India, and now the French have to give up balloons. There’ll be some very angry historians once word about this place gets out.’

‘If it gets out,’ said Shankarpa, a warning tone returning to his voice. ‘All these are just toys compared to the power of the words of Lord Shiva. We must find the Shiva-Vedas - and then I shall decide what to do with you.’

‘Where would they be?’ asked Kit.

‘In the deepest part of the Vault,’ Nina suggested. ‘Come on.’ She led the way into the cavern, following the flickering trail of oil. They passed numerous other siege machines - some resembling ballistas and catapults, others battering rams shaped to look like elephants and goats, as well as more examples of those near the ramp - before approaching the rear wall.

It was immediately obvious where the Shiva-Vedas were kept. A figure guarded a narrow passageway cut into the rock, a statue twenty feet tall.

‘You know what?’ said Eddie. ‘Looks like Spielberg was right all along.’

Shankarpa was awed by the sight. ‘Kali . . .’ he whispered.

The jet-black goddess was almost something from a nightmare, mouth twisted in fury. Her eyes and protruding tongue were painted blood-red, her naked body adorned with a garland round her neck - not of flowers, but of human skulls. But the most prominent feature was her arms: all ten of them. Most of them clutched weapons, deadly blades shining in the firelight - several swords, a trident, the double-ended club of a huge vajra, even the disc of a chakram. One foot was firmly planted on the floor beside a small opening at the end of the passage, the other suspended threateningly above it as if ready to stamp on anyone trying to pass beneath.

The guardians responded to the sight with great reverence, even fear. Worshipping one Hindu god, such as Shiva, did not preclude also worshipping others, and as both Shiva’s wife and one of the most powerful deities in the pantheon Kali demanded respect.

Even Eddie felt a little intimidated. ‘I see why she’s the goddess of death. Ten arms to kill you with? She’s not messing around.’

‘No, no,’ said Girilal, almost amused. ‘There is much more to Kali than death. Do you see? Two of her hands are empty.’

Nina saw that instead of holding weapons, the thumbs and fingers formed symbols. ‘What do they mean?’

‘That one,’ he said, pointing with his stick, ‘is a sign that she will protect you. She may be fierce, but she is also a loving mother - and a mother will do anything to protect her children. The other means “do not be afraid” - you have nothing to fear if you trust her.’

Kit moved forward, gazing up at the towering figure. ‘So Lord Shiva left Kali to guard his Vault?’

‘Who else but Kali would he trust to destroy all intruders?’ Shankarpa said firmly.

Nina directed her flashlight at the statue for a better look. ‘The question is . . . will she destroy everyone who tries to get the Shiva-Vedas? Do you know how to reach them?’

‘That knowledge was also lost a long time ago.’

‘Swell. So we’ll have to figure this out too.’ She brought the light down to examine one of the statue’s weapons, but Kit blocked the beam. ‘Excuse me, Kit - I need to see.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ He moved away . . .

Into the passage.

‘Kit, wait!’ Nina shouted as she suddenly realised the danger - but too late.

The statue came to life.

The eight arms bearing weapons all moved at once as ancient mechanisms inside the statue ground into action, slashing down into the narrow tunnel. One of the swords stabbed at Kit. He jumped back in shock—

Not quickly enough. The giant blade’s tip hacked deep into his shin with a spurt of blood.

He screamed and fell, clutching the wound. Kali’s arms screeched back to their original positions and juddered to a stop.

Eddie was the first to risk advancing, pulling Kit out of the passage. ‘Let me see,’ he said, carefully easing up Kit’s blood-soaked trouser leg to find that he had been cut to the bone, a chunk of his calf muscle peeled back like dog-gnawed meat. ‘Shit, that’s deep. Nina, is the first-aid kit in your gear?’

She retrieved it, Eddie putting on a pair of disposable vinyl gloves and starting to clean the wound. ‘This’ll hurt,’ he warned Kit. ‘Sorry, but there’s no anaesthetic. I’ll go as easy as I can.’

Nina held the injured man’s hand. ‘Just try to stay calm.’

‘That is . . . easier said than done,’ Kit gasped through his teeth. ‘My parents always warned me that if I behaved badly, Kali would punish me. But I never imagined it would actually happen!’

‘You haven’t behaved badly. It would have happened whoever went into the passage.’ She looked up at the statue, its red eyes staring menacingly back at her. A booby trap, a last line of defence for the treasures at the heart of the Vault. But there had to be a way past it - the priests who had shown the Shiva-Vedas to Talonor obviously knew it . . .

‘Okay, I’m going to stitch it up,’ Eddie reported. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Like the goddess just chopped off my foot,’ Kit rasped.

‘You’ll be okay. Just try to breathe slowly.’ He pushed the needle through the flesh, and Kit’s entire body tensed.

Girilal and Shankarpa moved past to stare in awe at the statue. The old yogi hesitantly extended his stick into the passage, pushing the tip down on the first stone slab of its floor. Kali burst into movement again, the long sword arcing down. The blade chopped through the wood as both men jumped away, then returned to its original position.

‘And this was a very good stick,’ Girilal said sadly, holding up the truncated end of his staff.

Even while trying to comfort Kit, Nina couldn’t help turning her mind to the trap. ‘Anyone walking down the passage triggers it. And even if you could climb to the end without touching the floor, you still have to drop down to go through the opening at the end. And when you do . . .’ She indicated the giant stone foot poised above the gap. ‘You get stomped.’

‘Just like Shiva,’ said Girilal, thoughtful.

‘What do you mean?’

‘There was a demon called Raktabija,’ he told her, ‘who seemed impossible to kill in battle because every time he was cut, when his blood touched the ground another copy of him leapt up. Only Kali was strong enough to destroy him - she drank all the blood from Raktabija’s body, then ate his clones! But she became drunk with victory and danced across the battlefield, crushing the dead under her feet. To stop her, Shiva pretended to be one of the corpses, and when Kali realised she had stepped on her husband, she was ashamed and became calm again.’

‘Did she kill him?’ Nina asked.

‘No, she stopped just before she crushed him.’

Eddie finished stitching Kit’s injury. ‘Doesn’t help us get past, though.’

‘There has to be a way through,’ Nina said. She saw a spear beside another siege engine. ‘Shankarpa, try that. Maybe there’s a pattern to the way the arms move, a safe route.’

Shankarpa pushed the spear’s tip against the slab. The arms swung into action once more, blades flashing through the air. Nina’s hope that a route through the gauntlet might be revealed was rapidly dashed; the stabbing, hacking and crushing blows covered the passage’s entire width.

‘So much for that,’ she said as Shankarpa withdrew the shortened spear.

The leader of the guardians frowned. ‘But you are right - there must be a way. I will see if anyone remembers anything from our carvings.’ He turned to the other robed men.

Nina could tell from the tone of their responses that they were unlikely to be saying anything useful. She moved back to Kit as Eddie applied bandages. ‘Are you okay?’

‘This has not been my most fun day,’ he said in a strained voice.

‘Just hang in there. We’ve come this far, we’ve found the Vault of Shiva - we’ll get you home safely. Somehow.’ She looked at Girilal. ‘Is there anything in the stories of Kali that might get us past?’

He shook his head. ‘I am sorry, but I cannot think what.’

Her gaze moved back to the statue - and the two hands that had not moved during the attack. ‘The symbols she’s making: “I will protect you” and “do not fear”. Do not fear, I will protect you . . . from what?’

‘From her,’ suggested Eddie. ‘She’s the big threat.’

‘Kali is not a threat to those who trust her,’ Girilal insisted.

‘So how does she protect you if she’s the one attacking you in the first place?’ asked Nina. ‘Unless . . . if you believe she won’t harm you, you have nothing to fear?’

Eddie indicated Kit’s leg. ‘I don’t think a positive mental attitude’ll stop you from getting shish-kebabed.’

‘I’m not so sure. Girilal, can you look after Kit?’

‘Wait, what’re you thinking?’ Eddie demanded as the yogi took her place.

She picked up the spear. ‘I’ve got a theory - I want to test it.’

‘Couldn’t you just write a thesis, or whatever you PhDs do?’

Ignoring him, Nina went to the passage, stopping just short of its entrance. There was a splash of blood where Kit had been stabbed. Raising the spear, she held its broken end a few inches past the splatter. ‘Okay, let’s see what happens . . .’

She pushed the spear down - and held it there.

Another fearsome crash of ancient machinery, eight arms sweeping down—

And stopping short. There was a loud bang as something inside the statue arrested its movement.

Nina kept the spear held down. The arms retreated.

Shankarpa ran over. ‘What did you do?’

‘I believed that Kali would protect me,’ Nina replied. ‘And she did. Stand back, let me show you.’

She pushed the spear down again. The sword lunged - and this time she jerked the wood away. The blade continued to the limit of its travel, hacking another piece off the wooden shaft.

‘If you’re afraid, that’s what you do when Kali attacks you,’ she explained. ‘You jump back - and get hit anyway. But if you’re not afraid, if you stand your ground . . .’ She lowered the spear once more, keeping it pressed firmly to the stone. Another bang echoed through the passage as the sword stopped abruptly before impact. ‘If you stay in place, there’s something in the machinery that keeps it from hitting you. The symbols in her other two hands are the clue for how to get through. It’s like the key - you have to know the meaning of the stories about Shiva and the goddesses to get inside.’

Eddie waved an arm at the array of lethal weapons. ‘You want to take a stroll through that lot to see if you’re right?’

‘Well, uh . . . not particularly. But if it’s the only way we can get through, then someone’s got to do it.’

‘It’s not bloody going to be you, that’s for sure.’ He stepped up to the passage. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘What?’ Nina cried. ‘Oh, no you won’t! If you’re not going to let me go, I’m sure as hell not going to let you. One of these guys can do it.’ She jabbed a thumb at the guardians.

Shankarpa was not pleased by the suggestion. ‘You want us to risk our lives to test your . . . theory?’

‘You want to find the Shiva-Vedas as much as we do.’

‘Our lives do not depend on it.’

‘They might if the Khoils turn up.’ Between the excitement of opening the Vault and the danger posed by the statue, she had forgotten there was another threat hanging over them. ‘Damn it! They could be on their way already. We have to get inside!’ She faced Shankarpa. ‘Look, I’m sure that if you’re not afraid and just walk down the passage, you won’t get hit and you’ll be able to get to the inner chamber. But we’re running out of time to do it.’

‘Then we’ll have to stop pissing about and get on with it, won’t we?’ Eddie said . . . as he stepped into the narrow tunnel.

‘Eddie, no!’ Nina screamed, but the blades were already descending—

The longest sword jerked to a stop with its tip barely an inch from his groin.

‘Gah!’ he yelped as it withdrew, feeling certain parts of his body doing some withdrawal of their own. ‘I’m bloody glad that stopped when it did.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Nina shouted. ‘You could have been killed!’

‘Or worse! Look, someone’s got to go down here - and actually doing it’s better than arguing about it. Okay, next step.’ Suppressing a shudder, he advanced down the passage.

The long sword remained stationary as the other blades shot forward, a scimitar swooshing across at neck height only to stop as if hitting an invisible wall. The weapons retracted. Another step. This time nothing happened. Not all the slabs were connected to the trap. Warily, he moved on.

The vajra dropped like a wrecking ball, stopping so close to his head the displaced air ruffled his hair. Next was another sword, almost cleaving diagonally across his chest. Four arms had made their attack: halfway.

Another step—

The chakram sliced at him - and its circular edge bit through his sleeve into his arm.

Nina gasped, about to run to help him. ‘No!’ he growled through the pain. ‘Stay back! It’s stopped!’ The arm holding the chakram had been stopped by the mechanism restricting its movement - but Eddie had been just far enough out of position for it to catch him.

He leaned away, grunting as the metal pulled clear of his flesh. The chakram clunked back to its original position, a thin line of blood glistening on it. He peeled back the torn fabric of his sleeve to examine the injury. He had been much luckier than Kit; the cut would only need one or two stitches.

But that would have to wait. Forcing back his fear, Eddie slowly walked the rest of the way down the passage. Three more weapons struck at him - and each stopped just before impact. Kali was indeed protecting him.

But there was still one more obstacle. ‘Okay, now what?’ he called as he reached the raised foot. The gap beneath it was a little higher than the duct he had crawled through at the United Nations; he would fit, but it would be a tight squeeze.

‘Any ideas?’ Nina asked the men around her.

‘He must be like Shiva on the battlefield,’ said Girilal. ‘He must pretend to be dead and shame Kali into ending her rampage.’

Considering the legend, it seemed to fit, but she still wasn’t keen on the idea - and nor was Eddie when she relayed it to him. ‘I won’t be pretending to be dead if you’re wrong. Can’t I just wedge it with something?’

‘I’m sure whoever built it thought of that,’ she said. The floor beneath the foot was a mosaic of smaller tiles; she guessed that they were intended to give way if too much pressure was put on them, pressing any props into the ground as the foot descended. ‘But I think Girilal’s right. You have to slide under it and play dead - if you try to get out while it’s coming down, it’ll drop and finish you off. The whole trap is about trusting Kali not to kill you, however scary it looks.’

‘I’m not scared,’ he said, starting to wriggle under the statue. ‘I just don’t want my obituary to say that I died by being squashed by a giant foot like something out of Monty bloody Python. It’d be embarrassing.’

Despite her tension, the joke made Nina smile. ‘Your obituary isn’t going to be written for a long, long time, Eddie. Nobody would dare.’

‘Well, let’s hope you’re right.’ He was now fully beneath the foot—

A tile gave slightly, his weight tripping another trigger. With a nerve-scraping grinding, the foot started to descend.

His instinctual response was to get clear - but he suppressed it, summoning every ounce of self-control to hold still as the foot pressed down on him. He tried to stay calm as the pressure increased, controlling his breathing - but the weight began to force the air from his lungs. ‘Shit!’ he tried to say, but the word was choked short in his throat.

The rasp of stone continued, flesh and bone not slowing the statue’s relentless descent in the slightest. Pain coursed through Eddie’s ribcage as it was squashed against the floor. He struggled to writhe free - but was pinned in place.

Kali was going to crush him!

He turned his head to give Nina a last anguished look, seeing her staring back at him in horror, realising too late that she had been wrong—

The noise stopped.

The pressure suddenly eased, the foot rising slowly back to its original position. Gasping, he drew in several long breaths of cold, dusty air before crawling through the hole. ‘I’m in,’ he croaked.

‘Thank God,’ Nina said. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I feel like toothpaste, but I’ll be all right.’

‘What can you see?’

He glanced round; the new chamber was almost completely dark. ‘Nowt - a torch’d be handy. Roll one down to me.’

Nina drew back her arm as if throwing a bowling bowl and sent her torch skittering down the passage. Eddie caught it and switched it on. The new room was small, the walls engraved with images of Shiva, the paint on the ancient carvings still surprisingly colourful, and line upon line of Vedic Sanskrit. But the object that caught his attention was against one wall.

It was an ornate chest, standing upon gilded legs shaped like an elephant’s and decorated with pearls and small gemstones. Like the walls, it was painted: Shiva, seated in the lotus position, gazed serenely back at him.

‘Can you see anything?’ Nina called.

‘Yeah, there’s a fancy box, and . . .’ He panned the light round. Part of the statue’s mechanism was revealed: several large cogs. ‘I need something to jam up the works. A stone, or a metal bar, something like that.’

A quick search by Shankarpa’s men produced a thick iron rod from one of the siege machines. It was tossed down the passage with a clang. Eddie jammed it between the teeth of the cogs, then experimentally put his weight on the floor beneath the foot. There was another clang as the bar was slammed between the cogs when they tried to turn, but it held firm. After a few moments, the mechanism reset.

He leaned under the foot and waved. ‘Okay. Who wants a look?’

Shankarpa was first, cautiously advancing down the passage. The statue’s arms jerked, but again the metal rod held everything in check. Nina followed.

‘Check it out,’ said Eddie as they crawled through the entrance. He illuminated the chest. ‘You think Shiva’s diary’s inside?’

Shankarpa was too overawed to respond to Eddie’s lack of respect. He went to the chest, hands hovering just above the lid as if afraid to touch it, then looked back at Nina. For the first time, he seemed unsure of himself. ‘What should I do?’

‘Open it,’ Nina told him. ‘If the Shiva-Vedas are inside, we need to know - so we can decide how to protect them.’

He nodded, about to raise the lid - but again couldn’t bring himself to touch the box. ‘I . . . I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘I do not know if I am worthy—’

‘Oh, give it ’ere,’ Eddie snapped, flipping the chest open.

Shankarpa flinched back, and Nina glared at her husband. ‘Eddie!’

‘What? You said we needed to get a move on. Now, what’s inside?’ He held up the torch.

At first glance, the contents seemed almost unworthy of the effort and danger endured to find them. The interior was like a rack, metal dividers separating and supporting a row of stone tablets, each the size of a large hardback book, about half an inch thick. There were perhaps forty in all.

But Nina knew that they represented an incredible archaeological find, the ancient wonders in the cavern outside nothing more than baubles compared to the intellectual treasure in the box. While she didn’t personally believe they had been written by an actual god, the tablets were an account of a civilisation every bit as ancient as that of the Atlanteans - and one of the foundations of a religion that, unlike that of the long-lost race, was still alive and well today.

Delicately, she lifted out a tablet, finding text inscribed on both sides: Vedic Sanskrit, a language with which she had only a passing familiarity. She turned one face towards Shankarpa. ‘Can you read it?’

Awe returned to his face. ‘Yes. Yes! It . . . it is the word of Lord Shiva - about the great cycle of existence!’

Nina carefully returned the tablet to its place. Shankarpa eagerly gestured for her to remove another, but she shook her head. ‘We need to decide what to do with them. Pramesh and Vanita Khoil know where the lost valley is - so they’ll be coming. No matter what happens, we have to keep them from getting hold of the Vedas. Is there anywhere else you could hide them?’

‘There are some caves to the northeast. But I don’t know how safe they would be - they are not deep. If a storm hit . . .’

She put a hand on his arm; Shankarpa reacted to the touch with surprise. ‘Look, I know you still don’t exactly trust me, and I can understand that. But if you let me, I can take the Vedas somewhere completely safe - the Khoils won’t be able to steal them. It’s what I do, it’s the IHA’s mission: to find ancient treasures, and to protect them for the benefit of all humanity. Your father believes in me. Will you?’

Shankarpa looked between her and the chest, frowning . . . then coming to a decision. ‘You think we will not be able to stop these people?’

‘They’ll come in force,’ Eddie told him. ‘And they’ll kill every man here if you get in their way. There’s how many of you, twenty-odd? The Khoils’ll probably bring that many - and they’ll all have machine guns.’

‘Please,’ said Nina. ‘The IHA can protect the Vedas. You and the other guardians might be able to slow down the Khoils . . . but you won’t be able to stop them.’

The Indian made a little noise of self-disgust. ‘All right. I will let you take them to a safe place. But I will come with you.’

‘First, let’s start thinking about how we’re going to get them out of here.’ She closed the lid. ‘Eddie, can you help him move it?’

‘Great,’ he sighed. ‘Halfway up a mountain, cut up by a killer statue and squashed by a giant foot, and I still have to cart boxes around for you.’

Nina sheepishly regarded his torn sleeve. ‘Oh. Right. I forgot. Sorry.’

‘It’s okay. ’Cause it’s you, I’ll do it as a favour. Although I might want you to do something in return when we get back home.’ He grinned lecherously. ‘Maybe involving props.’

‘God, Eddie! Of all the times to be thinking about . . . that.’

‘What are you talking about?’ demanded the impatient Shankarpa.

‘Absolutely nothing,’ Nina told him as she took the torch. ‘Okay. Now, both of you, lift it up. Make sure you support it from underneath.’

They obeyed, Shankarpa taking hold of the chest before giving Nina an outraged look. ‘Wait, you do not give me orders! I am the leader here!’

‘This is what happens once you let a woman into your men-only club,’ Eddie said. ‘Next thing, it’ll be frilly bedclothes and putting the toilet seat down.’

‘Just move the thing,’ Nina snapped as she crawled back out. Eddie and Shankarpa carefully raised the chest and manoeuvred it to the passage. There was just enough room for it to fit beneath the giant stone foot, though the elephant legs scraped the floor as it was eased through.

Once both men were clear, they brought it into the cavern proper. Shankarpa gave an order to two of his men, who reverently carried the chest towards the doors. ‘They will take it down to the ground,’ he told Nina.

She indicated the other items around them. ‘What about everything else?’

‘We will close the Vault. Now that we know how to open the lock, I will decide what to do later. For now, we leave.’

Eddie crouched beside Kit. ‘How’s the leg? Think you can walk on it?’

‘I don’t think I’ll be able to get back down the ridge,’ he admitted. ‘But there’s a cell phone mast at Gaurikund - when you get into phone range, you can call Interpol and get them to send a helicopter.’

‘We’ll be able to take the Vedas as well,’ said Nina. ‘If we contact the Indian government, they can arrange security.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Eddie. He motioned to Girilal to help him lift Kit.

The Interpol agent gasped in pain, but managed a strained ‘I’m okay,’ as they supported him. Everyone followed the men carrying the chest. ‘I’ll give you my superior’s number. He’ll be able to—’

Eddie stopped suddenly. ‘Wait!’

‘What is it?’ asked Nina.

The echoing thud of rotor blades answered her question. Not one set: several.

The Khoils had found them.

26

‘Keep hold of Kit!’ Eddie ordered Girilal as he ran for the doors. The other guardians were already sprinting for the entrance to investigate.

Nina went after them. ‘What do we do? It’ll take ages to get the chest out of the valley!’

‘I don’t think we’ll even get the chance - no, get back!’ he shouted at the men ahead of him.

Too late. The noise of the blades got louder, pounding subsonic thumps that they could feel as much as hear - but it was another, more deadly sound that made Eddie throw Nina into the cover of one of the ancient war machines. A machine gun opened fire, tracer rounds searing through the open doors. Gouts of blood burst from the guardians’ bodies as the gunner sent a stream of death into the Vault.

Shankarpa flung himself back as bullets cracked into the stone floor. He scrambled to join Nina and Eddie behind the solid, spiky roller of the udghatima. ‘The chest! Where is it?’

‘There!’ Nina pointed. The two men carrying it had put it down beside the ramp before going to the doors.

A freezing wind blasted into the cavern as the helicopter descended. Eddie looked out from behind the roller. The chopper was a Chinook; a large, twin-rotor transport aircraft designed to lift heavy cargoes - or large numbers of troops. The rear ramp, facing them, was fully lowered, the gunner lying on his belly and letting rip with a bipod-mounted M249 machine gun. Behind him were at least a dozen more men, dressed in black combat gear and body armour, carrying MP5Ks.

The surviving guardians tried to run for cover, but the gunner cut them down. One man attempted to leap from the top of the broken stairway to the uppermost ledge. A burst of machine-gun fire and his legs exploded into bloody chunks of meat, sending him tumbling screaming to the ground.

The firing stopped. The Chinook’s engines increased power, and it climbed out of sight. Beyond it, Eddie saw the red and white helicopter that had overflown the valley earlier - and a third aircraft, a compact black and silver MD 500. That particular model was based on the US Army’s MH-6 Little Bird gunship - and its users were taking advantage of its military heritage. One of the cockpit’s doors was open, the barrel of another M249 aiming down into the valley.

He ducked back. ‘Christ, they’ve got three choppers out there! No idea how many guys in them, but it looked like a lot.’

‘We’ve got to get the Vedas somewhere safe,’ said Nina, glancing out at the chest. Shielded by the stone ramp, it had escaped damage during the onslaught, but now seemed terrifyingly fragile.

‘We’ll never be able to get it outside - not without getting shot to shit.’ He took another look round the udghatima. ‘We should - shit!’

Ropes dropped in front of the ledge. The Chinook was hovering above the overhang. At any moment, troops would rappel down. The MD 500 was also hanging above the valley, ready to provide covering fire.

‘They’re coming,’ Eddie told Shankarpa. The ropes wavered, snake-like, as the mercenaries began their descent. With his Wildey, he could have picked them off before they reached the ledge, but the only weapons to hand were knives and swords.

Unless—

He looked at the giant stone roller shielding them. ‘Nina, you said these things were ready to go - how do you set them off?’

‘How should I know? You’re the death machine expert!’ They hurriedly examined the machine. Once a lever was pulled to release a chock, a heavy weight on a chain would drop - and turn a sprocket to spin the roller.

But the wall-smasher would be no use against their attackers. It could crawl along on small wheels - but it wasn’t pointing towards the entrance, and there seemed no way to steer it.

‘This one’s no good,’ said Nina, ‘but we could use one of the others to hold them off. If we can get to them before—’

‘We can’t,’ said Eddie. ‘We’re out of time.’ The first of the black-clad troopers came into sight, slithering effortlessly down the rope and swinging on to the ledge. He raised his weapon and ran to the side of the entrance.

Eddie recognised him. Zec.

More mercenaries landed. Zec leaned round the door to check the interior, signalling another two men to cover him and his partner as they entered.

‘What can we do?’ Nina whispered.

Shankarpa drew his sword from his back. ‘We fight them.’

‘You’d be dead before you got within twenty feet,’ said Eddie. But they were fast running out of options as the mercs advanced. The only direction they could go without being seen was back into the Vault’s depths - and the chances of their evading discovery shrank with every extra man who touched down.

No choice. ‘I don’t like to say it, but all we can do is hide.’

‘But they’ll get the chest,’ Nina protested.

‘I don’t see how we can stop ’em - not without getting killed. Come on. You too,’ he added to Shankarpa, who seemed on the verge of rushing out in a kamikaze attack. ‘Move it.’

He directed Nina and Shankarpa towards the Vault’s rear, keeping the giant roller between them and the mercenaries as they investigated the bodies, hunting for survivors. The trio passed the miniature palace, skirting the fabric of the deflated balloon and angling back round to where Eddie hoped Kit and Girilal were still waiting. The hard part would be getting to them unseen; the braziers were burning hotter and brighter than ever, and there were still dashes of flame in the oil channels.

He peered through the wooden framework of a war machine. The Chinook had moved off, taking the ropes with it. That meant for the moment that no more mercenaries would be entering the chamber. The knowledge was far from reassuring; they were still outnumbered more than two to one by armed men.

The mercs divided into three-man teams, spreading out to search the cavernous space. Eddie spotted Girilal cautiously peering out from behind an elephant statue. He guessed that Kit was with him; the old yogi didn’t seem the type to abandon an injured man.

‘Okay, we’ve got to reach Kit and Girilal and find somewhere to hide,’ he whispered. ‘Maybe under one of those machines.’

‘How do we reach them?’ Nina asked. They would have to cross the open space around one of the oil channels - in direct line of sight of the entrance.

‘We’ll have to time it right.’ The nearest group of mercenaries had reached the udghatima, shining torch beams at the great roller. ‘If they go behind it . . .’

‘I will make them,’ said Shankarpa. Before Eddie could stop him, the Indian had picked up and thrown a small piece of gold jewellery. It clonked off something near the udghatima. The beams flashed round to find the source of the noise.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Eddie hissed, angry. ‘Now they know there’s still someone alive!’ Two of the men in the team moved out of sight to investigate, but the third was holding position, shining his light suspiciously round him. ‘Okay, we’ll have to risk it. Get ready. Soon as he turns away . . .’

He ducked as the beam swept round, scanning the path into the Vault before turning back to the roller. ‘Go!’ He pushed Nina out first, then followed Shankarpa across the aisle—

The torch beam whipped back, catching them before they were even halfway across.

‘Shit!’ Eddie dived behind the elephant statue as a shout and the chatter of automatic fire reached him simultaneously. Bullets pitted the stone behind him. More shouts from other directions, the rapid tramp of running footsteps as other mercenaries closed in.

Kit was there with Girilal. He tried to push himself upright, but gasped in pain as his leg gave way. He would have to be carried - making him and his helpers easy targets.

Nina looked round the other end of the statue, seeing more men running through the cavern. ‘Eddie, they’re coming!’

They were trapped; the approaching mercenaries had clear lines of fire on each side. Eddie searched desperately for a weapon, but there was nothing he could reach without exposing himself to gunfire.

No way out. The nearest group of mercs was seconds away, preparing to whip round the statue and blast everyone they found there—

‘Zec!’ Eddie shouted, startling his companions. ‘Zec, it’s Eddie Chase! Can you hear me?’

No reply for a moment, only the pounding boots closing in - then a Balkan-accented command of ‘Hold your fire!’ as three men burst round the corner, weapons raised, fingers tight on the triggers . . .

But no shots.

Another team of mercenaries appeared at the other end of the statue, boxing in the five survivors. Laser sights flicked on, green dots settling on heads and hearts. More footsteps, this time marching. Zec appeared, regarding Eddie curiously. ‘Chase. This is a surprise.’

‘For me too,’ Eddie replied, raising his hands. ‘I thought Khoil was going to fire you.’

‘He almost did. But for this operation, he needed a man with experience who could assemble a fighting force quickly.’

‘Well, even though he was wrong about you being a good bloke, Hugo seemed to think you knew what you were doing, so I suppose that makes sense.’

‘Hugo?’ whispered Nina, confused. ‘What is this, Mercenaries Reunited?’

He shushed her. ‘So where’s Slumdog Billionaire and his wife?’

The comment amused Zec. ‘They are in one of the helicopters. I think they will also be surprised to see you.’ He ordered the other mercenaries to continue searching the Vault, then gestured for the prisoners to pick up Kit and take him to the entrance.

‘What are you doing?’ Nina quietly demanded as the armed men ushered them along. ‘He’s the asshole who kidnapped me - why are you being all buddy-buddy with him?’

‘’Cause if I hadn’t been, we’d all be dead,’ Eddie replied. ‘Keeping him talking was the only way to keep us alive.’

Her face brightened. ‘You’ve got a plan, right? Tell me you’ve got a plan.’

‘Er . . . only if you count “see if something good happens before we get shot”.’

‘Riiiight . . .’ she said, hope fading as quickly as it had risen. ‘I was after something a bit more, y’know, specific.’

They reached the ramp, Nina glancing at the chest containing the Shiva-Vedas. The mercenaries obviously had no idea of its significance, but Khoil would be unlikely to overlook it. Was there any way they could hide it from him?

Zec brought them to the end of the ramp, where they lowered Kit so he could sit with his back against it. His men held them at gunpoint for several minutes while the other mercenaries continued their sweep of the cavern. Eventually they returned, reporting that there was nobody else alive. The Bosnian relayed this over his radio headset. ‘The Khoils are on their way,’ he told Nina and Eddie. Outside, the red and white helicopter flew up the valley.

‘I can’t wait,’ Nina said sourly. The bodies of the guardians were scattered nearby, rivulets of blood congealing on the floor, and even though she was trying not to look at them, just the awareness of the bullet-torn corpses was making her feel sick.

Eddie was looking at them, though; more specifically, at their weapons. Most of the fallen swords were too far away, but there was a long-bladed dagger that had ended up only a few feet from the stone ramp. With a distraction, he might be able to reach it and stab one of the mercenaries, giving him a chance to grab a gun . . .

He noticed Girilal watching him, the yogi following his gaze to the dagger. The realisation that the holy man knew what he was planning was somehow unsettling. He turned away, keeping the knife in the edge of his vision.

More snow blew through the doors. A figure was lowered into view: Tandon. Unlike the mercenaries, he was not rappelling, but being winched down in a harness. Zec signalled to two of his men, who hurried out and pulled him on to the ledge. They unfastened the harness, which quickly rose out of sight as the winch line was wound back in. A short time later it returned, now bearing the giant bearded form of Mahajan. The two bodyguards took up positions awaiting the arrival of a third person.

Pramesh Khoil.

His two servants quickly freed him from the harness. He brushed himself down, then entered the Vault. His triumphant march broke step when he saw who was waiting inside. ‘Dr Wilde,’ he said, the flat voice not quite concealing his surprise. ‘And Mr Chase. The recurring bugs in my otherwise flawless program.’

‘I told you knowledge and experience are more useful than any computer,’ Nina replied. ‘You’re too late - the Shiva-Vedas are already gone. The IHA airlifted them out of here.’

A smug smile crossed the plump face. ‘I think not. Until now, the weather conditions were too severe - and the only helicopters that have entered the airspace are mine. Where are they?’ He received no answer. ‘No matter. We will find them.’ He took in the vastness of the Vault, eyes widening. ‘It is here, it really exists . . .’

‘Sounds like you had some doubts,’ said Nina.

‘The failure to find anything at Mount Kailash was becoming a concern, yes.’

‘So what brought you here?’

Another smile. ‘Ironically, you did. Or more accurately, Mr Jindal did,’ Khoil continued, indicating the startled Kit, ‘and his mobile phone. My people learned that you had left Delhi, and that made me wonder: where had you gone? So I had my telecoms company track his phone through the cellular network, and discovered he had gone to Gaurikund. The only possible reason for you to go there was if you believed you had located the Vault. Once I put that new information into Qexia, everything made sense. I feel slightly foolish for not having thought of the connection to Mount Kedarnath sooner.’

‘Garbage in, garbage out,’ said Nina scathingly. ‘You were acting on bad data. That’s what happens when you rely on technology.’

‘Yet it was technology that allowed me to find you. And the Vault.’ The wind rose again, and he turned to see Vanita being winched down, Tandon and Mahajan helping her on to the ledge.

‘Great, she’s here. Now the party can start,’ Eddie muttered.

Khoil was about to say something in defence of his wife when he noticed Girilal, who had been standing behind Shankarpa, for the first time. ‘A Pashupati?’ he said, intrigued.

‘Girilal Mitra, at your service!’ said the old man, his voice shifting conspicuously back to the manic singsong. He danced round his son to meet Khoil. Zec and some of the mercenaries aimed their guns at him, but Khoil waved them down. ‘So you are Mr Khoil, the computer man.’

‘I am, yes.’

‘Ha!’ Girilal leaned on his stick, staring disapprovingly at the billionaire. ‘You are a very bad person.’

To Nina’s surprise, Khoil seemed stung by the allegation. ‘No! I am a loyal servant of Lord Shiva, like you. I am doing his will.’

‘And is this his will?’ asked Girilal, waving a hand at the bodies.

‘Why would one of his loyal servants kill his other loyal servants, hmm?’

‘A true servant of Shiva would know that death is of no consequence,’ proclaimed Vanita loudly, striding into the chamber with Mahajan and Tandon. She was wrapped in layers of cold-weather clothing, and seemed decidedly annoyed to be there, not even giving the wonders of the Vault a second glance. ‘Especially when it will help end the Kali Yuga. Now, where are the Vedas?’ She gave Nina an icy look. ‘I assume she knows.’

‘They are here somewhere, my beloved,’ Khoil assured her.

‘Somewhere is not good enough. Find them, now!’

Khoil turned back to Girilal. ‘I have no quarrel with a holy man. Do you know where to find the Vedas? If you tell me, I will let you go free.’

‘And what about my friends?’ Girilal countered. ‘Will they go free too?’

‘I am afraid that will not be possible.’

‘Ha!’ snorted Girilal, banging down his stick. ‘You are a bad man. Very bad.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Shiva wants nothing to do with you. And nor do I.’ Ignoring their guns, he shuffled past the mercenaries and sat huffily on the ramp, facing away from Khoil.

Zec glanced questioningly at his employer, but Khoil, seeming genuinely startled by the yogi’s rejection, shook his head. ‘Search the Vault. Find the Vedas.’

‘What do they look like?’ Zec asked.

‘According to the text from Atlantis, they are stone tablets with text in Vedic Sanskrit. They will probably be in a container for protection, a box or chest.’

Zec and all but two of the mercenaries spread out to begin their search. ‘You’ll never find them,’ said Nina as Vanita began to pace impatiently, her husband looking up in fascination at the vimana. ‘It’s a big cave, and they could be absolutely anywh—’

‘Found them,’ called Zec from beside the ramp.

‘God damn it!’

Zec and another man brought the chest to the Khoils and opened it. ‘These are them, yes?’ he asked.

Khoil, hands shaking in excitement, carefully lifted out one of the tablets and examined the ancient text. ‘Yes,’ he breathed. ‘The Shiva-Vedas! The words of Lord Shiva himself.’ He looked at Vanita, the light of the zealot in his eyes. ‘We have them! We will wipe away the corruption of the Kali Yuga. A new age - and we will create it.’ He delicately replaced the tablet in the rack, then closed the lid. ‘Chapal, Dhiren! Prepare it for transport.’

The two bodyguards came to him as the mercenaries returned. Mahajan carried a backpack, from which he took a roll of strong plastic netting and a bundle of harness straps. He and Tandon wrapped up the chest so it could be winched away.

‘Now, what about them?’ Vanita asked impatiently, indicating the prisoners. ‘I think they have lived far too long.’

‘I agree,’ said Khoil.

‘Good! Then kill them!’ She glared at Zec. ‘Now!’

Zec nodded, about to issue a command—

Shankarpa dived at Khoil with a scream of rage.

Zec swept up his MP5K, catching the guardian a savage blow across his face and knocking him down by the foot of the ramp. Another mercenary kicked Shankarpa in the chest and aimed his gun at his head—

Girilal snatched up the dagger and stabbed it to the hilt into the merc’s throat.

The other mercenaries whipped round to face the unexpected threat as the trooper fell, a spray of red spurting out from the wound. Zec fired at the old man. The burst of bullets hit Girilal in the chest and stomach, slamming him to the floor.

And in the moment of confusion, Eddie moved—

He grabbed the gun hand of the nearest man and twisted it round, clenching his trigger finger. The shots hit another mercenary at point-blank range, not even his body armour enough to stop them from ripping into his chest. He spun and collided with another pair of men, bowling them over.

Eddie slammed an uppercut into the first man’s jaw, hearing teeth snap under the impact, then tried to wrench the MP5K from his grasp. Even through the nerve-searing pain, the blood-spitting merc managed to resist, crunching an elbow into Eddie’s sternum and knocking him backwards. He tripped over Kit’s injured leg, making the Indian cry out, and fell heavily to the floor.

The other gunmen brought their weapons to bear, fingers tight on triggers, but Zec thrust his own gun into Eddie’s face before they could fire, shoving a boot on his chest. ‘Don’t move,’ he growled.

All eyes were on the two men.

Except Nina’s.

The sudden chaos had opened up an escape route, however briefly. She took it, throwing herself over the bottom of the ramp into the channel between its two halves. Some of the gunmen whirled at the movement, but she was already in the cover of the rising walls as they fired. Stone chips bombarded her like hailstones as she ran.

‘Kill her, kill her!’ Vanita screeched. The mercs rushed to the ramp and unleashed more bullets down the narrow passage, but Nina was clear, sprinting into the depths of the Vault of Shiva.

27

‘Get her!’ Zec ordered. Two of his men ran after the fleeing American.

Vanita turned to Khoil. ‘Bring the helicopter back, now.’

‘The chest isn’t ready,’ he said. Mahajan and Tandon had broken off from their preparations to protect their master and mistress when the shooting started.

‘I’m not talking about the chest. I want to get out of here!’

‘She won’t get away,’ said Zec.

‘I don’t care. Once I’m aboard, then we’ll collect the chest.’ She strode towards the doors, imperiously waving for her bodyguards to follow.

They looked at Khoil for instructions, caught between conflicting commands. ‘Chapal, go with her,’ he said, exasperation creeping into his voice. ‘Dhiren, go after Dr Wilde. Zec, finish securing the Vedas and take them to the ledge.’ Mahajan grunted and lumbered after Nina’s pursuers. Tandon followed Vanita, while Zec gestured for two of his men to continue preparing the chest.

The remaining mercenaries surrounded the prisoners. Girilal clutched weakly at the bullet wounds. Blood soaked his torn robes. Shankarpa, groggy from the blow to his head, pushed himself up - and saw him. He cried out in Hindi, trying to reach the dying man, but two of the mercenaries kicked him back down.

‘He’s his dad!’ Eddie protested. Khoil’s face remained dispassionate, but Zec relented, a silent nod prompting the mercs to back away. He released Eddie from under his foot, keeping his gun trained on him.

Shankarpa crawled to the yogi, horrified. ‘Father!’ he gasped, putting a hand on Girilal’s chest in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.

Girilal moaned softly at the touch. ‘Janardan?’ he whispered. Blood bubbled in his mouth.

Shankarpa gripped his hand. ‘I am here, Father. I’m here!’ ‘Oh, Janardan . . . what have I done? I have taken a life. How . . . how will I explain myself to Shiva?’

‘Lord Shiva is a warrior,’ said Shankarpa, in desperate insistence. ‘He has fought many battles, he has killed demons and evil men. It is not a sin to fight to protect—’ His voice caught. ‘To protect those you love.’

Girilal’s eyes closed, a tear running down one cheek. ‘You must . . . find your mother. Tell her . . . I am sorry, I am so sorry. Ask her if she can . . . forgive me. Please. Please, my son . . . say you will do this for me.’

Shankarpa’s eyes welled with tears of his own. ‘I will, Father. I will. I promise.’

‘Thank . . .’ He convulsed, a soft cough speckling his chin with blood. ‘Janardan, oh . . . my son . . .’ A strangled moan escaped him, his whole body shuddering . . .

Then he was still.

Eddie felt a tightness in his throat as he watched the devastated Shankarpa slowly release his hold on his father’s hand. Anger spiking through sorrow, he looked at Khoil and Zec. The Indian was still unmoved by the sight, but Zec appeared troubled, almost guilty.

Beyond them, Vanita had been fastened into the harness, ready to be winched to the helicopter. The chest was secure in its own straps, the two mercenaries carrying it to the ledge. ‘Pramesh!’ she shouted over the rotor noise. ‘What are you waiting for? Kill them!’

Khoil nodded to Zec. ‘Do as she says.’

‘Ready weapons!’ Zec barked. The mercenaries snapped into action, MP5Ks locking on to Eddie, Shankarpa and Kit. ‘Aim—’

Another shout - from the depths of the Vault. ‘Bob Dylan!’

The strange war cry was followed by a loud bang, then a series of thudding clanks, getting faster and faster—

Eddie realised what it meant. He grabbed Shankarpa’s arm. ‘Down!’

They dropped, Eddie covering Kit with his body and pressing against the side of the ramp - as a fusillade of stones rained around them.

Nina had used the Vault’s contents as cover to block her pursuers’ aim as she ran. But she knew she couldn’t evade them for ever - she had to take offensive action.

At the moment the thought formed, she found herself beside the great wheel of a sarvato-bhadra - a stone-thrower.

Like the other ancient war machines, it was still primed for action.

She yanked the lever to release the mechanism, yelling ‘Bob Dylan!’ as a warning to Eddie. The large weight descended, its chain rattling and screeching. The wheel picked up speed startlingly quickly, the leather slings attached to its rim whipped outwards by centrifugal force.

Something else also moved outwards as the machine spun faster, a metal block protruding from a slot running from the wheel’s centre to its rim. A trigger: another block was mounted on the support frame. As the wheel reached its full speed, they clanged together—

Releasing the slings.

The wheel was mounted on the axle a few degrees off vertical. As it turned, it swayed from side to side - hurling the stones across the cavern in a deadly bombardment. They flew over the ramp, barely missing the vimana at its summit . . . and smashed down at the entrance.

Zec threw Khoil aside as a head-sized chunk of rock arced down and shattered where he had been standing.

Others were less lucky. One mercenary was hit in the face with a sharp crack of splintering bone. Another took a blow to the chest, his bulletproof body armour no defence against the force of the rock that punched razor-sharp fragments of broken ribs into his heart. The other men scrambled for cover.

Vanita screamed for the winch operator to raise her as more stones bounced off the floor and flew out on to the ledge. Tandon flung himself out of the way as pieces hurtled past them. One of the mercenaries who had brought out the chest was struck on his knee, the joint bending backwards with a horrible snap and pitching him over the edge. The helicopter, an Indian-built Dhruv, ascended, yanking Vanita off the ledge.

The chest sat near the edge, stones skimming past it.

Shankarpa pointed back into the Vault. ‘Go!’ he shouted to Eddie as he leapt up and sprinted for the doors.

Eddie pulled Kit upright, vaulting into the gap between the ramp’s sides and dragging the Interpol agent after him. ‘We’ve got to find Nina!’ he said as he hauled him down the narrow channel. Ahead, he saw the stack of black rockets, the first burning brazier beyond. Nobody was chasing them - yet. But the confusion wouldn’t last long. With nobody to reload it, the sarvato-bhadra was limited to a single salvo.

Nina abandoned the war machine - the stones had passed harmlessly over the three men pursuing her. She fled deeper into the Vault.

Shankarpa raced for the open doors. A mercenary fired at him, but he was already through. He saw the chest at the top of the broken steps, but could do nothing about it. Instead, he ran past it as fast as he could.

Jumping—

Cold air whistled in his ears as he sailed over the gap, seventy feet of nothingness beneath him . . .

His foot reached the very edge of the topmost tier. He was moving too fast to stop, slamming against the wall and tumbling to the snow-covered floor. He forced himself back up and ran again, heading for one of the arched openings.

A roar of engines echoed through the valley - the MD 500, swooping down—

He dived through the entrance as bullets tore into the ancient carvings behind him. The shooting stopped, but the rotor noise remained constant. The gunship was waiting for him to reappear, the gunner assuming the chamber had only one way out.

He was wrong. Shankarpa headed into the darkness, the image of his father’s face filling him with a furious demand for vengeance.

The guardians of the Vault of Shiva would carry out their duty. To the last man.

The clatter of stones died away. Khoil cautiously looked out from behind the statue where Zec had thrown him, straightening his glasses. The three prisoners had disappeared - but the chest was still in sight outside. The empty harness reappeared, flapping in the rotor downwash as the Dhruv returned.

‘I - I think it would be best if I went to the helicopter next,’ he told Zec. ‘But have the chest sent up immediately after.’

‘As you wish,’ said Zec, concealing his contempt for his employer’s near-panic. ‘When it’s aboard, shall I evacuate the rest of the men?’

‘Yes.’ Khoil hurried to the doors.

The Bosnian followed him. ‘What about Wilde and Chase?’

The names made Khoil flare with anger. ‘Find them and kill them!’ He calmed, rationality regaining control. ‘If they are still alive by the time the Vedas are aboard the helicopter, we will evacuate - and use rockets to collapse the entrance.’ They reached the chest, and Tandon. ‘Go inside,’ he ordered his bodyguard. ‘I would like you to kill Dr Wilde and Mr Chase.’

Tandon smiled and bowed. ‘It will be my honour.’

‘We leave in five minutes. Go!’

Tandon ran into the Vault. Zec signalled for his men inside to join the hunt. As they scattered, he began to strap Khoil into the harness.

Eddie supported Kit as they hurried through the Vault, but the Interpol agent gasped in pain with every step. ‘I can’t keep going,’ he said, teeth gritted. ‘Leave me, find Nina.’

‘I can’t just dump you,’ Eddie replied. ‘If we—’

‘You have to! I’m slowing you down. Look, in there.’ He waved a hand at the balloon’s palatial gondola. ‘Hide me inside.’

‘If someone finds you, you won’t stand a chance on your own.’

Kit forced a smile. ‘I can take care of myself. Come on, quick!’

Reluctantly, Eddie guided him into the palace. The Indian took one of the swords from the rack before slumping in a corner. ‘Now, go, go.’

‘I’ll try to decoy them away from you,’ Eddie promised. He moved back outside, hearing sounds above the constant rumble of the helicopters.

Footsteps - close by. He scurried away from the balloon, moving into cover behind a statue. Peering round it, he saw four mercenaries advancing on his position. He had to draw them away from Kit; despite the policeman’s brave words, a sword was no match for a gun.

He looked deeper into the cave, the flickering glow of the braziers revealing a shadowy pathway between the Vault’s piled treasures. It was narrow, but the other end would, he thought from exploring the great space earlier, join up with one of the broader aisles.

The mercs were getting closer to the balloon. Eddie picked up a bejewelled vajra and ran for the passage, tossing the ceremonial weapon. The loud clang caught the mercenaries’ attention, as he’d hoped - and they ran after him.

But only three of them. The fourth hesitated, then moved cautiously towards the gondola, MP5K raised.

Eddie swore under his breath, but kept running, rounding a corner before his pursuers had a chance to shoot. But he heard gunfire anyway - from deeper in the cavern.

Mahajan and the other mercenaries had found Nina.

Nina shrieked as bullets shattered a wooden carving just behind her, splinters landing in her hair. She leapt behind a large statue of a cow. The great stone animal shielded her, the gunfire stopping - but she only had a few seconds’ respite before the men had her back in their sights.

The giant spiny roller of an udghatima lay ahead, her only possible escape routes to either side of it. The one behind the machine was narrower, hemmed in by elaborately carved friezes of dark wood, while the wider route ran alongside an even larger statue, this one of a bull, kneeling on all four legs to form a bovine wall. She raced down the latter path, searching for a way out at the far end—

There wasn’t one. The two paths converged beyond the udghatima, blocked in by more ornate friezes. She could climb them, but the mercenaries would catch up before she reached the top. An easy target.

Panic rising, she whirled and looked back down the narrower path. No exits or hiding places there either. But there was a large lever protruding from the udghatima, holding its mechanism in check for untold centuries . . .

Mahajan reached the corner first. A malevolent smile crossed his scarred lips as he advanced down the narrow path towards her. The two mercs ran round in front of the udghatima to cut her off.

She was trapped.

Unless . . .

Nina seized the lever and strained to move it. It creaked, long-frozen gears scraping against each other - then coming free with a jolt. The weight dropped, chain lashing in its wake.

The roller turned.

And the entire machine lurched, the small wheels set into its base driving it forward. Mahajan brought up an arm to protect his eyes as a spray of grit and dust flew off the thick metal bars jutting from the stone.

The mercenaries froze, just for a moment, the unexpected motion of the bus-sized siege engine catching them off guard. It was a moment too long. An iron bar smashed down on one man’s arm, breaking his wrist with a horrific crack. The other screamed, trying to back away - but was trapped between the udghatima and the bull statue. The gap closed—

The screaming stopped, replaced by several wet thumps. A crimson splatter encircled the spinning roller. The udghatima continued to rumble onwards until it struck the statue, the pounding iron bars tearing away chunks of stone.

One of the bull’s great horns broke off and fell, demolishing part of the frieze. Nina saw the dancing light from one of the oil channels through the mangled hole in the carvings.

Jagged wood clawing at her coat, she squeezed through the gap. Behind her, Mahajan snarled and ran after her, tearing at the broken frieze with his hands to widen the opening.

Clutching the sword, Kit heard someone approaching. The light from a nearby brazier cast a glow through the ornate gondola’s entrance: a shadow flicked past. The footsteps moved away . . .

Then slowed. Stopped.

Returned.

The shadow reappeared. Kit held his breath, forcing himself upright on his good leg. The mercenary’s curiosity had been piqued - the little parody of a palace would make a good hiding place.

An MP5K poked through the opening. The compact weapon had a second grip beneath its muzzle, the merc’s black-gloved left hand holding it tightly. The gun swept the interior, the mercenary about to step inside to complete the search—

Kit stabbed the sword into the back of his hand.

The blade’s tip ripped through skin and muscle between the bones. The merc yelled - as Kit twisted it through ninety degrees. The sword forced the bones apart with a crack before popping free in a spurt of blood. The mercenary’s howl became an agonised screech.

But he was far from immobilised, lunging into the gondola with the MP5K still held in his other hand. Kit swung the sword again in a desperate attempt to swat it away before he fired.

Ancient and modern weapons collided as the mercenary pulled the trigger. The first bullet scorched a line across Kit’s chest, the rest of the burst of fire punching holes in the walls before the final flash of muzzle flame ignited the wood and oil-soaked cloth in the central brazier.

Kit lunged at him. The gun flew across the gondola as both men crashed into a corner. The mercenary snatched out his combat knife, drawing back his arm to plunge it into Kit’s chest—

Kit struck first. The sword pierced the merc’s body armour and sank deep into his stomach. With a gurgling wail, he staggered and fell . . .

On top of Kit, knocking him down. The explosion of agony through the nerves of the Indian’s wounded leg was so great that he almost passed out.

The fire in the brazier flared as little packets of gunpowder amongst the kindling ignited, angry flames surging. Hot air swirled into the open mouth of the balloon, the fabric rustling . . .

Eddie threw himself between two large metal statues of Hindu gods, bullets clanging behind him. He had taken a wrong turn, finding himself in a dead end amongst the war machines and ancient treasures; it only took a few seconds to double back, but that was all the time his three pursuers needed to catch sight of him. Now they were homing in as relentlessly as foxhounds.

He burst out from the far end of the confined space, hopping over the faint licks of flame in an oil channel. A brazier was aflame to one side, the warm light revealing another udghatima - and beyond it a siege machine, a twin of one nearer the entrance, that could be the answer to his prayers.

If he could reach it. And if it still worked.

He sprinted for the wooden grid. Behind, the men charged through the narrow passage.

He passed the brazier, the huge stone roller . . .

A shout of ‘There!’ behind him—

Eddie dived, slithering across the stone floor as an MP5K crackled - and yanking a lever on the machine.

It was a sara-yantra - an arrow-firer.

A rapid-fire series of thwacks rippled through the framework as the firing mechanisms for a hundred arrows were triggered. The missiles hissed down the aisle, a horizontal storm of spiked death that bounced off metal, cracked against stone - and thunked deep into human flesh. The gunfire stopped, replaced by choked screams.

Eddie got up. Not all the ancient weapon’s arrows had fired, but he was still more than happy with the end result. Three twitching bodies were sprawled on the floor, so many arrows poking up from them that they looked like porcupines. ‘Bunch of pricks,’ he muttered, running to them and scooping up one of their guns.

Now that he was armed, he could find Nina and Kit. But there were still the other mercenaries to worry about, and if he called out to her he would give away his position. Instead, he went back towards the entrance.

Nina rushed through the shadows. She had meant to go back to reach Eddie, but was unable to find a route through the tightly packed treasures. All she could do was follow the side wall, heading for the back of the cavern.

And Mahajan was behind her, closing with every giant step.

Two mercenaries ran out in front of Eddie as he approached the entrance - and took bursts of bullets to their heads, the Englishman aiming above their body armour. He saw the ramp ahead, the open doors beyond it . . . and Khoil rising from the ledge as he was winched away.

Eddie dropped behind the incline and shot back as a mercenary outside opened fire. Zec sprinted for cover, but the other merc was caught in the open. With a more distant target, Eddie was forced to aim for the centre of mass rather than trying to score a lethal headshot, but the impact of the bullets was enough even against armour. The mercenary staggered, slipped on the snow - and fell over the edge. His echoing scream ended abruptly a couple of seconds later.

Eddie ran for the doors. He had spotted the chest, ready to be winched into the chopper. Nina would be mad, but shooting it to bits or flinging it over the edge would be one way to spoil Khoil’s plans—

A heel slammed into his back.

Tandon had been lurking behind the ramp, and made a flying leap from its raised end as Eddie ran past. If Eddie hadn’t been moving away from the punishing blow, it might have broken his spine. As it was, the impact was still hard enough to knock him down.

He rolled, bringing up the gun - only for Tandon to kick it out of his hand. Cobra-fast, the Indian struck again, his boot scraping Eddie’s cheek as the Englishman jerked out of the way.

He grabbed Tandon’s ankle, trying to twist it round and trip him, but Tandon threw himself into a somersault, wrenching his foot from Eddie’s grasp. He landed perfectly, spinning as the Englishman clumsily got up.

Zec aimed his MP5K at Eddie - but Tandon blocked his line of fire as he lunged, striking at a pressure point on his opponent’s chest. Only Eddie’s reflexes - and the thick padding of his coat - saved him from the paralysing punch, which hit a couple of inches off target but still felt like someone taking a hammer to his ribcage. He groaned, reeling.

Tandon spun again to deliver a high kick at Eddie’s head. This time, his foot made solid contact. Eddie spat out blood as the other man’s heel crunched against his jaw. Dazed, he staggered through the doors. Zec tracked him, but held his fire: his boss’s bodyguard wanted his fun.

Another kick, this time ploughing into Eddie’s stomach. He whooped for breath, almost collapsing - as Tandon struck once more, knuckles stabbing at his throat. Eddie brought up an arm just in time to block the blow, but it was still searingly painful.

A windstorm whirled around him as he stumbled towards the steps, the Dhruv moving into position above to winch up the chest. Any thoughts of sabotage were now forgotten as Eddie raised his fists. Tandon was fast, but if he caught him at just the right moment he could use the brute force of a punch to crush his nose, blinding him with pain, and toss him over the edge. He would still have Zec to worry about, but one problem at a time . . .

Tandon’s hand flashed at Eddie’s eyes. He swept up his bruised arm again to deflect the blow, then twisted with all his strength to smash his fist into the other man’s face—

The Indian’s palm snapped up, stopping the punch an inch short.

Before Eddie could react, another savage kick caught him in the midsection. Winded, he lurched backwards, wobbling at the top of the broken stairway . . .

With a cruel smile, Tandon darted at him to deliver a final strike. It wasn’t a kick, or a punch - insultingly, it was nothing more than a poke to Eddie’s chest.

But it was enough to push him down the stairs.

With a yell, Eddie bounced down the stone steps - and flew off the end into the void below.

28

The tiers along the valley sides flashed past as Eddie fell, one, two—

A white line rushed at him. He desperately grasped at his only chance of survival - and jolted to an agonising stop as he caught one of the ropes stretched across the valley.

The line shook, batting him like a cat toy as he clung with one aching arm - and saw Tandon looking over the edge of the steps above, the expectant satisfaction on his face replaced in quick succession by disbelief, then anger. The Indian shouted to Zec.

He was a sitting duck. He had to reach the valley’s side before Zec shot him—

A crack - and he fell again.

The rope had broken!

Only at one end. He was swinging like Tarzan - straight at a cliff face.

Eddie braced himself, but knew he had no chance of surviving the impact. The wind whistled in his ears as he followed his inexorable arc towards the wall. He would hit under the fourth tier, smacking against the carved rock.

But it wasn’t rock. An archway loomed, darkness beyond—

The rope caught on the edge of the fourth tier as he whipped beneath it - flicking him upwards through the doorway. He sailed across the room, bouncing off the ceiling before falling again . . . to land with a huge thump amid an explosion of something soft.

He choked, grains filling his nostrils and mouth. For a moment the fear of suffocation overcame any other thoughts and he thrashed wildly, coughing and spitting - to find that he had landed on a pile of rice sacks, the supplies secretly provided to the guardians by the villagers around Mount Kedarnath, the impact bursting them.

‘Saved by Uncle Ben,’ he groaned as he achingly stood, rice cascading from him like dried snow, and staggered to the entrance. He would have to climb all the way back to the Vault to help Nina and Kit—

Only the fact that he was looking up at the ledge as he emerged kept him alive. Several mercenaries were lined up across the top of the stairway - aiming down at him. Muzzle flashes bloomed like deadly sunflowers. He jumped back from the hailstorm of stone fragments that erupted round the archway.

Shit! He was pinned down, no other way out of the room - and now the MD 500 joined the assault. There was no way he could reach the Vault without being cut to pieces . . .

More shots - but from a new kind of gun. The onslaught stopped, and he heard a scream. A sharp clang of lead against thin aluminium, and the MD 500 hurriedly ascended.

Not a new kind of gun, he realised. A very old one.

The Martini-Henry. The weapons the guardians had taken from the unfortunate British explorers in the nineteenth century were not all rusting relics. Some had been well cared for.

The surviving .577/450-calibre ammo was easily powerful enough to penetrate a helicopter’s fuselage. The MD 500 might be acting as a gunship, but it was still a civilian aircraft, lacking any kind of armour. One good shot could kill the pilot, sever a hydraulic line, rupture a fuel tank. Retreating was the smart move.

But that still left the Chinook, an ex-military helicopter with armour where it was needed . . .

Another scream. Eddie risked a glance outside to see a mercenary tumble down the steps and plummet to the valley floor. The others had switched their aim to the new threat - but now they were at a disadvantage. With its short barrel, the MP5K - designed for compactness and easy concealment - had a limited effective range and comparatively low power. The Martini-Henrys, on the other hand, had proved their range, precision and fearsome punch in battles throughout the British Empire. He couldn’t see the guardians, but their gunshots told him they were in positions on both sides of the valley above, a good fifty yards from the Vault’s entrance - almost twice the accurate range of the mercenaries’ weapons.

Zec had apparently come to the same realisation. He shouted an order, and the mercs pulled back. The MD 500 opened up with its M249, trying to force the guardians to retreat into the caves.

Eddie steeled himself, then ran out on to the ledge, searching for a way back up the tiers.

Nina reached the back of the Vault. The statue of Kali glared down at her in the firelight, blood-red tongue extended mockingly.

Mahajan was right behind her. After what had happened to the two mercenaries, she knew there was no way she would be able to trick him into range of another siege engine. Instead, she ran down the narrow passage to the room that had contained the Shiva-Vedas. The goddess’s weapons jerked impotently as she tripped the triggers beneath the paving slabs.

She dropped and squirmed under the giant stone foot. Mahajan was already in the passage. There was no light in the chamber - she had to rely entirely on memory to find what she was after . . .

The iron rod jamming the machinery.

She pulled it - and it caught between the cogs as Mahajan’s weight set them in motion. ‘Shit!’ she cried, tugging harder, but still unable to free it. The Indian slithered beneath the foot—

The pressure on the rod was released.

Nina yanked it out - and the mechanism ground into action. The foot descended. Realising the danger, Mahajan reacted in fear and crawled faster . . .

Wrong move. The trap had fooled its victim - and the huge foot dropped like the stone it was, stamping down on Mahajan’s back with a terrible snap of crushed bone. Blood spurted across the floor. The final sound from Mahajan’s ruined mouth was an anguished gurgle . . . then he slumped, dead.

After a few seconds, the dripping foot slowly rumbled back up. Nina waited for it to stop, then shoved the rod back into the cogs. ‘Aw, jeez . . .’ she said, cringing in disgust and nausea at the sight greeting her in the entrance. She pushed Mahajan to one side, then gingerly slipped under the bloody statue to do the same with his other half before hurrying back down the passage.

Eddie reached the fourth tier, sheltering in an arch as he plotted his ascent. He was cut off from his original route up the valley sides by broken balconies on at least the next two tiers, meaning he would have to climb the carved walls all the way to the sixth level.

Not an ideal plan. Even though they had been forced back by the rifle fire, Zec’s men would still be likely to spot him as he ascended and pick him off. But short of making Olympic-length jumps over the gaps, he had no other way to get to the top.

The withering fire from the gunship eased off as the guardians moved into cover. None of the mercenaries were visible on the main ledge - though the Khoils’ helicopter was now lowering the harness once more to pick up the chest.

Once they had their prize, they would leave - and destroy everything left behind. He had to act now. He braced himself, ready to rush out and start his climb—

A hand clamped down on his shoulder.

He whirled to smash a fist into his attacker - and stopped just short when he saw it was Shankarpa. The guardian flinched. ‘Jesus!’ Eddie said. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I saw you fall,’ Shankarpa replied. He was carrying a Martini-Henry and a pouch of ammunition. ‘I came to find you.’

‘What about Nina, and Kit? Are they okay?’

‘They ran into the Vault - I do not know what happened to them.’

Eddie looked back up. Someone pulled the dangling harness on to the ledge. ‘I’ve got to get up there.’

‘That is why I came for you.’ He pointed into the darkness.

‘There is a tunnel - it will take you to the bridge on the fifth level. It is the fastest way back to the Vault. My men will give you cover as you cross.’

‘So you’re helping us now?’

‘My father trusted you. But these people, the Khoils - they are enemies of Shiva. They must be stopped. Come, this way.’

Hunched low behind the chest, Zec secured it to the winch line. The guardians were still directing intermittent shots at the ledge, but the suppressing fire from the MD 500 was holding them off. How long that would restrain them when they realised their treasure was being airlifted away he didn’t know, or care to find out. He fastened the last clasp, then spoke into his headset. ‘Take it up!’

The line tightened and the chest rose from the ledge, suspended in the web of netting and straps. As soon as it was airborne, the Dhruv sideslipped away from the cliff face so the chest could be winched up without fear of its swinging into the rock.

Zec ran back to the doors, another helicopter on his mind. ‘Chinook to recovery position!’ he ordered. ‘We’re evacuating. Ready rocket launchers!’

Kit tried to push the dead mercenary away, feeling another blinding burst of pain as the corpse’s limp arm bashed his wound. For all the effort and agony, he only managed to move him a short way; the sword poking from the man’s belly had wedged against the gondola’s wall. Cursing, he tried to wriggle out from under the body—

The floor lurched.

For a moment he thought it was an earthquake. But then he heard a metallic scraping beneath him - and realised the gondola itself was moving.

He looked up, seeing to his shock that the hot air from the furiously blazing fire in the brazier had partly inflated the balloon. No longer a flaccid bundle of fabric, it had swollen enormously, reaching the roof of the cavern.

The gondola jolted again, harder. Kit grimaced at another bolt of pain in his leg. The balloon’s envelope was taller than the Vault, meant to be inflated in the open. Trapped against the rocky ceiling, heat was building up too fast. Sparks and cinders swirled in the updraft as the fabric began to burn.

He kicked with his good leg, finally dislodging the dead man. He pulled himself upright - then fell again as the balloon left the ground, the flying palace swaying beneath it.

Nina was making her way back to the entrance, keeping to the shadows, when she heard loud noises to one side. Someone starting up one of the war machines? There was no reason for the mercenaries to do so - maybe Kit was still alive.

She climbed on to the plinth of a statue for a better view - and was startled by the sight of the great bloated grub of the balloon squirming against the ceiling. A fierce fire burned inside the elaborate little palace.

A fire that was spreading to the rest of the balloon. Glowing patches of light flickered inside the silken outer shroud . . . getting larger as she watched.

If the balloon ruptured, the burning fabric would land on top of the gondola - and Kit.

No longer concerned with stealth, she ran through the cavern to help him.

Shankarpa brought Eddie to the end of the steep, narrow tunnel, the other side of the valley visible through an archway. Eddie looked out. The rope bridge was off to one side. To his dismay, someone aboard the red and white helicopter was pulling the chest into the cabin. ‘Shit, they’ve got the box!’

Dark anger crossed Shankarpa’s face. ‘They will pay,’ he said, opening the old rifle’s breech and loading a round. He took aim at the Dhruv - then both men flinched back from the hurricane of snow and grit as the Chinook descended. The big helicopter slowly backed towards the giant statue, lines dangling from its open rear ramp.

Shankarpa fired at the Chinook. The boom from the old gun was painful in the confined space, but the only result for all the sound and fury was a clang as the round struck armour. The MD 500 had pulled away to let the larger chopper into the valley, but its gunner was still watching for telltale bursts of smoke from the rifles - a rattle of fire shattered the stonework outside the arch.

‘I need you to keep that gunship busy,’ said Eddie. ‘If it catches me while I’m crossing the bridge, I’m fucked!’

‘There is another tunnel that will take me to the other guardians. I will tell them to cover you as you cross.’

‘How long will it take you to get there?’

‘Two minutes.’

Eddie glanced out. The Chinook was moving into a hover - much lower than the Khoils’ helicopter, the whumping blades of its rear rotor actually beneath the overhanging rock, tips less than ten feet from the statue of Shiva. The pilots were trying to get the rear ramp as close as possible to the ledge so the mercenaries could jump in rather than having to ascend the ropes. ‘I don’t have that long. Go - get there as quick as you can.’

Shankarpa started for the tunnel. ‘What are you going to do?’

Eddie looked back at him. ‘Run like buggery!’

The downwash from the Chinook’s rear rotor blasted through the Vault, sweeping up the dust of centuries in a blinding swirl. Nina squinted as the gritty storm stung her eyes.

The wind caught the balloon, setting the palatial gondola swinging like a pendulum. She expected it to be blown further back into the great cave, but the combination of the gondola’s gyrations and air currents gusting round the cavern’s ragged natural roof instead sent it spinning towards the entrance.

Fire burst through the balloon’s skin. Either there was a hotspot above the brazier or the material had torn on the ceiling, but it didn’t matter - a rush of escaping air sent a huge spray of embers across the Vault, falling like glowing snowflakes. Nina hurriedly pulled up her hood as they dropped around her, scorching her parka.

Rapidly losing height, the gondola hit a siege engine near the launch ramp. She glimpsed Kit as he bailed - or was flung - out of the door, then the whole thing crashed to the floor, knocking over the brazier she had originally lit.

The balloon itself was being consumed with frightening speed, large parts already reduced to ash and motes of hellfire. The air filled with smoke. Coughing, Nina weaved through the flames, hoping Kit hadn’t already been swallowed by them.

Eddie looked out at the Chinook. It was hovering precariously with its rear ramp just above the lip of the ledge. He spotted Zec crouching low, waving his men into the helicopter.

He couldn’t wait for covering fire. He was out of time - the mercs would soon be gone, firing their parting shots to destroy the Vault.

And Nina.

He ran to the rope bridge, arms outstretched for balance as he traversed the planks two at a time. Still no booms from the Martini-Henrys. He looked for the MD 500—

The men aboard saw him, the little helicopter pivoting to bring the M249 to bear.

Laser-lines of tracer fire seared past him as he ran.

Zec heard the gunfire, and glanced down the valley to see the MD 500 unleashing a barrage at a figure running across one of the rope bridges.

Chase! The Englishman was certainly a survivor, he admitted with grudging admiration. But his luck had surely run out - the gunship could use the tracers to ‘walk’ its fire on to its target. One hit, and he would fall to his death - if the onslaught didn’t destroy the entire bridge under him.

But he couldn’t spare the time to watch. The last five men were jumping on to the ramp, others inside pulling them into the hold. Behind them was Tandon, but he wasn’t moving to board. ‘Get inside!’ Zec ordered.

‘We have to wait for Dhiren,’ Tandon insisted.

‘There’s no time! We need to—’

Two sounds hit him simultaneously. The first was a salvo of booms from the guardians’ rifles as they opened fire on the MD 500 - and the second was an explosion inside the Vault.

A few seconds earlier, Nina had found Kit, curled in agony as he clutched his injured leg. She dragged him away from the burning swathes of fabric draped over the treasures around him—

The next instant, they were knocked down by an explosion.

The rockets!

Stacked behind the vimana’s launch ramp, the burning debris scattered from the brazier had set them alight.

A second rocket detonated - then a third shot upwards, slamming into the ceiling and bursting apart like a bomb.

‘Jesus!’ Nina cried, pulling Kit under a statue as sparks rained down. Another rocket flew past, streaking towards the rear of the cavern like an enormous firework.

Eddie had no idea what was happening as he heard what sounded like explosives going off in the Vault - all he knew was that the guardians had saved him from being torn apart by the MD 500’s machine gun. At least two shots had hit the gunship, which was now hurriedly ascending.

He jumped over a bullet-riddled plank and continued across the bridge. Halfway there, but he still had to go up another two levels . . .

Zec grabbed Tandon. ‘Get aboard, now!’ He pulled the Indian towards the Chinook’s gaping maw—

Something black shot at them on a trail of flame.

The explosion of the first rocket had flung the others in all directions. One landed between the two high walls of the launch ramp, blunt nose pointing towards the open doors . . . and its fuse sparking and sizzling.

The fire reached the rocket’s tail—

It blasted off with a sizzling whoosh, the stonework on each side channelling it straight ahead. It shot through the entrance, searing past Zec and Tandon as they dived out of its way - and flew into the Chinook’s hold.

One mercenary was set aflame as it passed, another almost decapitated by the cylinder as it smacked into his head. The blow deflected it upwards to hit the ceiling - and ricochet down again.

Into the cockpit.

It slammed into the central instrument console, flicking round madly and blasting fire into the pilots’ faces. They screamed, flailing blindly in unbearable pain - and let go of the controls.

The Chinook rolled violently, slewing away from the ledge. The burning mercenary fell from the rear hatch, other men dashed against the cabin’s unyielding metal wall. Zec and Tandon hurled themselves flat as the rotor blades scythed above them.

The backwash of fire burned through the rocket’s silk-wrapped body - and it exploded, blowing out the cockpit windows. Pilots dead, controls smashed, the helicopter barrelled down the valley in a death-roll—

Straight at the rope bridge.

Eddie was three-quarters of the way across, coming up fast on the plank that had broken under him on the first crossing, when he heard another explosion, nearer but oddly muffled. He looked round for its cause—

‘Oh, fuck,’ he gasped.

The Chinook, smoke pouring from its shattered cockpit, rushed towards him.

He ran, not caring any more if the planks could take his weight. All he cared about now was staying ahead of the deadly blur of the front rotor, the blades a giant circular saw carving through the air . . .

29

Eddie dived as the rotor slashed through the bridge less than a foot behind him.

The severed ropes cracked like whips as their tension was released. The Chinook roared past, sucking a blizzard of loose snow into its rotors. The storm almost blinded him as he grabbed a plank with one hand, swinging with the collapsing bridge. The wall rushed at him through the whirling snow—

His other hand found a rope just as the bridge crashed against the valley side. The plank he was holding snapped, leaving him dangling by only his straining arm, swaying on the line like a human plumb bob. Chunks of smashed wood tumbled past.

A colossal boom shook the valley as the Chinook slammed into the cliff at its end and exploded. Boulders and burning wreckage tumbled down to block the passage beneath a huge cloud of dust and snow and black smoke.

Eddie struggled to find a new handhold. He managed to reach an intact plank above, only to wince as a splinter stabbed into his middle finger. He pulled himself up. The remains of the bridge had turned into a fractured ladder. Some of the planks - now rungs - were broken, others missing entirely, but there were enough left intact for him to reach the fifth tier.

Holding the rope tightly, he pulled the inch-long splinter out from his finger with his teeth, then began his ascent.

From the Dhruv, Khoil gawped at the Chinook’s blazing wreck. ‘What happened?’ he demanded into his headset. ‘Zec, what happened?’

It took several seconds before the Bosnian managed a reply. ‘A rocket - I don’t know where it came from. All my men are dead!’

‘What about Chapal and Dhiren?’

‘Your man Tandon is here with me. The other—’ He broke off at the sound of another explosion in the cavern. ‘The other one, I don’t know. He’s probably dead.’

‘Pramesh, we have the Vedas,’ said Vanita. She tapped the chest, now safely stowed in the cabin. ‘Let’s just go.’

‘Chapal is still down there - and I want to be sure Chase and Dr Wilde are dead,’ he replied firmly. ‘Pilot, move back to the cliff. Tell the gunship to cover us.’ The Dhruv turned and headed back for the Vault.

Eddie reached the top of the makeshift ladder, seeing footprints in the snow where the group had walked along the tier earlier in the day. More snow billowed past as the Khoils’ helicopter moved overhead, lowering the harness.

Nina poked her head out from beneath the statue. Most of the rockets had fired or exploded, the remainder duds, the gunpowder in them broken down by time as Eddie had predicted.

They weren’t out of danger, though. The explosions had stopped, but fires were still burning, the Vault filling with smoke. Most of its treasures would be unharmed beyond being blackened by soot, but there was still enough wood and fabric to keep the flames alive for some time. ‘Can you move?’ she asked Kit.

‘I think I will have to,’ he said, suppressing a cough as grey wisps coiled round him.

She helped him up. Together, they picked their way through the fires to the entrance.

They gave the area behind the ramp a wide berth in case a rocket went off - but then stopped as they saw two figures outside. ‘Damn it,’ Nina muttered, recognising Tandon. ‘We can’t go out there - they’ll kill us.’ She looked for anything that might help, spotting something near the overturned gondola. ‘Wait here,’ she said, propping Kit against a frieze. ‘I’ll be right back.’

The winch line descended above Zec. ‘You go up first,’ Tandon told him. ‘Dhiren might still come. And if Wilde or Jindal are still alive, I want to be sure that they do not stay that way.’

Zec nodded, watching the harness’s descent - then movement caught his eye, someone running along a tier below. He almost laughed. ‘Chase! He must have woken up very early this morning.’

Tandon was not familiar with the Bosnian proverb, but he understood its meaning. ‘His luck has run out. Give me your gun.’

Zec unslung his MP5K and handed it to the Indian. ‘Here,’ he said as he reached for the harness. ‘Wait until he is closer. Then we’ll see how awake he really is.’

Eddie reached the next flight of steps and pounded up them to the seventh tier. He saw two men at the top of the broken stairway: Zec and Tandon, preparing to be winched up to the helicopter . . .

Tandon was aiming an MP5K.

The nearest archway was behind him. Eddie skidded on the snow, turning to retreat—

Tandon fired as the Englishman stumbled, trying to back up and reach cover. Even with the MP5K’s short effective range, he could still hose the tier with automatic fire—

Another MP5K barked . . . inside the Vault. Two shots hissed past him - but a third hit his bicep, tearing out a ragged lump of flesh. Tandon roared, dropping the sub-machine gun, which cartwheeled down the steps to fall to the valley floor.

Zec had just fastened the harness. He spun to see Nina emerge from the Vault, holding the gun of the mercenary Kit had killed. That she had only scored a glancing hit from relatively close range told him all he needed to know about her shooting skills - and he gambled that unlike her husband, she didn’t possess a true killer instinct.

‘Bring me up now!’ he shouted into the headset. ‘Tandon, grab me!’

Even with a gunshot wound, Tandon was quick to react. As Zec was hauled off the ledge, he leapt up and clamped a hand round the Bosnian’s wrist. They swung out over the valley, the helicopter pilot immediately increasing power and banking away from the cliff.

Nina ran out on to the ledge, aiming at the two hanging men - but couldn’t bring herself to fire again. Both were unarmed, one was injured, and killing them would have no effect whatsoever on the Khoils’ plan. She knew that Eddie would have fired anyway, but it wasn’t something she could do. All she could do was hiss ‘Son of a bitch!’ as the pair were carried aloft.

Who had Tandon been shooting at? She looked across at the neighbouring tier, seeing nobody - then a familiar head cautiously peered out from an archway. Joy and relief filled her. ‘Eddie!’

He waved at her, then ran along the tier to leap over the gap on to the stairway. ‘Ay up, love!’

She kissed him. ‘Oh, God! I thought you might be dead!’

‘It’ll take more than this bunch of tossers. And Shankarpa and his boys helped. What about Kit?’

‘He’s okay - he’s inside. But we need to get him out of there - the place is filling with smoke.’

‘Yeah, I can see that.’ A dark cloud was billowing out from the top of the doorway. ‘Okay, let’s get him, then—’

A rising noise made them both turn. The gunship was approaching. As they watched, the M249 was drawn inside - to be replaced by another weapon.

An RPG-7 rocket launcher.

Aboard the Dhruv, the winch operator pulled Tandon into the cabin. Zec followed, rapidly releasing the harness and slamming the hatch. ‘Wilde and Chase are still alive,’ he reported.

‘Not for long,’ Vanita snarled. ‘Gunship! Destroy the Vault! Kill them, now!’

Kit limped out of the Vault - only to be scooped up by Eddie and Nina as they ran back inside. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing good, as bloody usual!’ Eddie told him. ‘Nina, give me the gun.’ He took the MP5K as they deposited Kit behind the shelter of one of the great stone doors. The MD 500 had turned to face them, the gunner leaning out to aim the tubular Russian weapon along the aircraft’s length; the backblast from the rocket would be devastating inside the cockpit.

Eddie fired first, aiming high to compensate for his gun’s lack of range. The bullets arced down to strike the approaching chopper’s canopy. It cracked, some of the shots piercing the Plexiglas, but they didn’t have enough power behind them to cause any major damage.

The same wasn’t true of the RPG-7. Smoke burst from the launcher, the dark dot of the rocket racing at the ledge—

Eddie dived back behind the door as it exploded, stone shards slashing past him. The gunship had veered just as the rocket fired, the pilot startled by the bullet hits, and the warhead struck short of the Vault’s entrance.

But it still caused plenty of damage. With a thunderous crack, the stub of the stairway toppled into the abyss, a swathe of the ledge following it.

Eddie looked outside. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’

‘My favourite words,’ groaned Nina, joining him. ‘What - oh . . .’

It was as if a giant had taken a great bite out of the ledge. A section covering more than half its width was gone, the remains of the stairway now in fragments far below.

And with the stairs gone, there was no way to reach the tiers on the valley walls. The gap was now well over thirty feet: impossible to jump even for the greatest Olympian.

The helicopter withdrew, the gunner pulling the rocket launcher back inside to reload it. Eddie checked his gun. Only three rounds left. He would need a great deal of luck to hit anybody aboard the MD 500 - and with the pilot now knowing he was armed, the next rocket would be fired from a safer distance. The RPG-7 had a range of over half a kilometre. ‘You didn’t find any other way out, did you?’

Nina shook her head unhappily. ‘What if we found some ropes and climbed down?’

‘It’ll take too long. We need a faster way . . .’ He tailed off.

‘Oh, no,’ she said firmly as she saw his gaze fall upon the vimana at the top of the ramp. ‘No way. We are not flying out of here on a goddamn ancient glider!’

‘We know it works,’ said Eddie, lifting Kit and hustling him towards the ramp. ‘That Atlantean bloke of yours said it got those priests back down the mountain.’

‘That was eleven thousand years ago!’ she protested.

‘Well, maybe this one’s not that old.’

‘It’s old enough! And you don’t know how to fly it.’

‘I’ve flown a glider,’ Eddie insisted as he started up the ramp. ‘Well, that one time. Kit, you’ll have to hop to it, literally.’

‘Just so you know, I am agreeing with Nina,’ said Kit, wincing with each step. ‘I don’t think this thing is safe.’

‘Nor’s being hit by a fucking RPG!’

‘Bad idea,’ Nina muttered as she hurried up the other side of the ramp. ‘Very, very bad idea.’

‘You were impressed by it before,’ said Eddie, reaching the vimana. He half helped, half pushed the unconvinced Indian on to the slatted platform under the wing, then examined the rocket.

‘As an archaeological find, it’s world-shaking. As a plane, it’s more likely to be bone-breaking!’

‘Those other machines still worked - maybe they built this to last as well. Give me those matches, then get aboard.’ He tweaked the end of the fuse as Nina produced the matches. ‘Okay, light the blue touchpaper and . . . hang on tight, I suppose.’

Nina lay down beside Kit. Leather straps hung from the wing’s wooden spars; she guessed they were meant to hold the passengers in place, but there wasn’t time to tie them - all she could do was wrap two round her wrists and grip them as tightly as she could, wedging her feet against the framework. The ramp dropped away before her, the ski-jump at its end seeming laughably inadequate to get them airborne. ‘Oh, crap, what are we doing . . .’

Eddie struck the match and touched it to the fuse. It flared with a hiss, spitting sparks. ‘Houston, we are go for launch!’ he cried, scrambling between Nina and Kit and yanking the cords to pull out the chocks from the vimana’s runners.

With a grating screech of corroded metal on stone, the glider lurched a few inches down the ramp - then stopped.

‘Okay, that didn’t work like I hoped,’ said Eddie, grimacing. He grabbed what he hoped were the control rods, looking back to see the fizzing fuse almost fully burned away. ‘Shake us loose before it fires!’

They jerked at the frame. The runners squealed, shifting slightly. ‘Harder, harder!’ said Nina. ‘This is one time I really don’t want to be stuck on the runway!’

One final combined push—

The rocket fired - just as the glider jolted free.

The flecks of corrosion spitting from the metal were replaced by a shower of sparks as the flying machine screeched down the ramp. Before they knew it, they were at the bottom, G-force pressing them down against the slats as the glider hurtled up the ski-jump . . .

And took off.

All three passengers screamed as the vimana cleared the doors, the broken edge of the ledge rushing past beneath them. The screams got louder as something else shot below - another RPG round. It hit the ramp and exploded in a shower of shattered stone. One side of the structure collapsed, crushing several of the parked gliders.

Their own glider was of more concern, however. The rocket was pushing it forward, but it was no longer gaining height - it had reached the top of its parabolic trajectory and was arcing inexorably downwards. The wooden wings creaked frighteningly. Eddie pushed the controls forward, hoping the vimana would respond like a hang-glider and level out, but it only steepened their descent.

Nina glimpsed Shankarpa and the other surviving guardians watching in wonder as they flashed past - then they disappeared from sight as the glider dropped below the uppermost tiers. ‘Up would be good. Up, up, up!’

‘I’m bloody trying!’ Eddie shouted. If pushing forward made them go down, maybe pulling back would do the opposite . . .

He hauled at the wooden levers. More alarming creaks came from the wings, the fabric rippling and flapping. But it seemed to be working - the vimana’s nose began to tip upwards—

‘Eddie, look out!’ cried Kit. The MD 500 came into view directly ahead, descending towards them.

‘Whoa, shit!’ Not having a clue how to steer, he jammed the controls sideways in the hope it would bank the glider. It worked - the vimana veered left.

But now it was heading for the valley wall, the carvings on the tiers reaching out to snatch at its fragile wingtip—

He yanked the controls back the other way, pulling them to gain height. The vimana was buffeted violently in the downdraught as they passed the gunship. The rocket was still burning, thrusting them along the valley with ever-increasing speed.

Towards the cliff at its end.

A column of oily smoke roiled from the wrecked Chinook, but it couldn’t mask the great wall of grey stone rising ahead. ‘Whatever you did to make us go up,’ Nina said fearfully, ‘do it more!’

Eddie strained to pull back the controls. Pops and cracks came from the overstressed wood. The snow-covered clifftop came into view as the vimana climbed, but the glider was losing speed, even the rocket’s power not enough to overcome the weight of three people. ‘Come on, you bugger,’ he gasped. If they didn’t increase their angle of climb, they would crash into the rock wall just short of the summit. ‘Come on, come on, fucking come on!’

The wings crackled, fabric stretched to tearing point - but they weren’t going to make it . . .

Nina screamed as they hit - and kept going, bursting through the thick snowdrift atop the cliff. She spat out snow. ‘Jesus Christ, Eddie!’

‘I wasn’t worried,’ he lied. They flew over the pass through the ridge, an updraught raising them higher. Mount Kedarnath rolled vertiginously before them. With the weather far clearer than on the previous two days, they could see all the way to the distant lowland plains. ‘Look at that!’ he whooped, laughing. ‘We did it, we got out of there! Yes!’ He took one hand off the controls for a moment to pump his fist. ‘So my hearing’s a bit knackered - so what? I don’t need ears to kick arse!’

‘That you don’t,’ Nina told him, managing a quick smile.

‘Without wanting to sound negative,’ said Kit, who had only just opened his eyes to take in the landscape wheeling below, ‘we are not exactly home and dry yet.’

Eddie gestured to the southwest. ‘We’re not far off, though. We can fly this thing back to Kedarnath. Maybe even all the way to Gaurikund!’

‘Just like the priests of Shiva,’ said Nina. ‘This is incredible! Terrifying, but incredible.’

Kit was more pragmatic. ‘You can fly it . . . but can you land it?’ ‘Find out soon, eh?’ Eddie said, turning southwest.

The rocket popped and fizzed, then burned out. Nina looked back to make sure nothing was on fire - and saw they hadn’t escaped all the threats in the lost valley. ‘Eddie! The chopper’s coming after us!’

The MD 500 had turned to follow its unexpected prey, accelerating after the vimana. The gunner withdrew the rocket launcher, the M249 returning in its place.

‘Bollocks!’ Eddie hissed. Even if the gunship didn’t shoot them out of the sky, it could simply follow until they landed and pick them off from the air - or even force them to crash by flying overhead and using the rotor downwash as a weapon. He had to lose the helicopter if they were to have any chance of survival - but how?

The view ahead gave him an answer. He banked the vimana back towards the towering mountain.

‘What are you doing?’ Nina asked, anxiety rising as the peak filled her view.

‘I’ve got a plan.’

‘Is it a good one?’

‘Probably not - but it’s all I’ve got!’ He glanced back. The chopper was about five hundred metres behind, and closing. ‘Tell me when he points the gun at us.’

Nina looked over her shoulder as Eddie’s attention returned to the looming mountain. While the sky was mostly clear, the ever-changing weather of the Himalayas had formed bands of clouds around Mount Kedarnath. One in particular had caught his eye. He banked towards it.

The wings shook as another gusting updraught caught them. But even though they were climbing, they were still getting closer to the ground every second as it rose up steeply before them.

‘Eddie, gun!’ Nina warned. He shoved the controls sideways, banking the vimana to the left. Tracer bullets whipped past on their right. He swung back in that direction before the next burst was unleashed, the bullets this time passing to the left.

Nearer than before. He pulled the rods back to gain more height, heading for the wedge of cloud jutting from the mountainside. Another cry from Nina and he banked hard right as more shots seared past, getting closer and closer as the gunner tracked the glider—

Flat whaps from the wing as bullets ripped through it were followed by a terrifying crack of wood: a support spar had been hit. The vimana lurched, veering left as it lost lift on that side. Eddie forced the control levers over even harder to compensate. They were now almost beneath the cloud, a great grey mass tilting upwards from the mountainside . . .

A flag cloud. The harbinger of a storm.

And they were heading right into it.

30

‘Hold together,’ Eddie begged the ancient flying machine as the creaks from the wounded wing grew louder.

‘They’re firing!’ Nina wailed. More tracers streaked at them, bullets smacking against rock just ahead of the glider—

A huge surge of wind suddenly seized the vimana and propelled it up the cliff with a terrifying rush of speed. Gale-force air currents were sweeping upwards, giving the flag cloud its distinctive appearance - and carrying them into its heart.

Visibility dropped to nothing as the screaming wind battered them. All Eddie could do was hope he was pulling the controls hard enough to keep the glider from ploughing into the mountain.

The cracks from the wing were joined by an almost explosive bang as another spar gave way. The vimana was disintegrating—

They burst out of the flag cloud - almost close enough to reach out and touch the cliff as it blurred past. Eddie forced the glider into a steeply banking turn away from the rockface. They were losing speed even with the boost of the wind from below, threatening to stall . . .

A shriek of engines and whirling blades - and the MD 500 blasted out of the cloudbank after them.

It too had been swept upwards by the wind, but while the vimana’s wings had carried it practically parallel to the steep cliff, the helicopter had emerged too close to the unforgiving rock—

Its rotors smashed into the mountainside and shattered. Instantly losing all lift, the fuselage hit the cliff face. The gunner, leaning out to find his quarry, was smeared up the rock in a long red line. Tumbling, breaking apart, the MD 500 blew to pieces, streaks of liquid flame raining back down into the stormcloud below.

One danger gone - but they were still in the grip of another. The wind howled past the vimana, the torn wing flapping angrily. Eddie hooked one foot over Kit’s ankle to help hold him in place as he aimed the glider back down the mountain. ‘Okay! Let’s hope this thing doesn’t fall apart!’ he shouted as he levelled out.

Nina looked ahead. Past the cloud, she made out the village nestling at the head of the valley. ‘How far is it?’

‘About three miles - but I’m going to get as far down the valley as I can - ah!’ The vimana dropped sharply, emerging from the gusty updraught into calmer air.

‘You, uh, might have to rethink that,’ said Nina.

‘After everything we’ve just been through, I’m not going to die in a sodding plane crash.’ He yanked back the levers. ‘Maybe we can catch an air current.’

‘Or we could just, y’know, land,’ she countered.

‘We just need a bit more height, then we can fly right down the valley.’

‘The valley that was full of boulders and rivers and other things we don’t want to hit?’

‘Picky, picky!’

‘I’m in favour of the “landing immediately” plan,’ Kit piped up.

‘And walk all that way on one leg?’

‘Better than on no legs!’

The wind picked up as they drew closer to the valley. Eddie raised the vimana’s nose; it slowly began to climb. ‘See? I know what I’m doing - I’m not just a pretty face!’

‘God, I hope you’re right,’ said Nina.

He huffed. ‘Name one time when I’ve been wrong.’

‘When you went to Switzerland to rescue Sophia and accidentally ended up helping her steal an atomic bomb?’

‘Yeah, I thought that might come up,’ he muttered, nudging Kit.

‘See, this is the problem with getting married. Wives remember every bloody little thing . . .’

‘I’ll remember that if I live to get married,’ Kit replied.

Eddie grinned, then turned his full attention to the delicate balancing act of keeping the glider in the air. He had to trade airspeed against altitude, risking a stall every time he climbed.

The village drifted past below, the winding line of the river heading down the valley. He made a gentle turn to follow it. ‘See? This is better than walking.’

‘We’ve still got eight miles to go,’ Nina reminded him. ‘And we’re getting lower.’

‘So’s the valley.’

‘We’re going down faster.’

‘Thought you liked it when I go down fast?’

‘Eddie!’

‘We’ll make it,’ he assured her.

But they had already lost almost half their initial height. Eddie angled upwards, the wind’s whistle dying away as they slowed. There was a roller coaster feeling of weightlessness as he levelled off, then they began to drop again.

More quickly than before. A faint hiss of tearing fabric came from the damaged wing, and the vimana listed. Eddie quickly compensated, but it took more effort than before. ‘Okay, maybe only some of the way.’

Nina searched for potential landing sites. They were past the relatively easy upland approach to the village, floating above rugged slopes through which the river had cut a gorge. ‘How long have we got?’

‘I dunno - two miles. If we’re lucky.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Nina, forcing herself not to panic. ‘Keep over to the right, away from the river.’ She squinted into the distance, seeing dark shapes taking on dimensionality against the snowscape. They were down to an altitude that could support more varied plant life than tough grass. ‘Eddie, those bushes - if we fly into them, they’ll cushion our landing.’

‘Hopefully,’ he replied. If they were moving too fast, they would tear straight through them - pitching the vimana’s passengers into the gorge. ‘Hold tight!’

They flew down the valley, the rough ground undulating beneath them - but drawing inexorably closer. The bushes were spattered across the valley floor like specks from a paintbrush. Eddie found a fairly dense patch, and judged the distance to it. If he pulled up almost into a stall, then descended sharply, it should catch them before they built back up to a dangerous speed.

Should being the operative word.

He made a final course adjustment. ‘Okay, here we go.’

Kit regarded the approaching vegetation with an increasingly unhappy expression. ‘What if it doesn’t stop us?’

‘Then we’ll find out which religion’s right! Ready, ready . . . hang on!’

He hauled the controls back as hard as he could. The vimana pitched up sharply, the wood groaning. They were gaining height, but slowing, slowing . . .

‘Now!’ He shoved the wooden levers forward. The nose dipped—

Too late. They had lost too much speed - and stalled, the vimana plunging almost vertically. ‘Oh, shit, shit!’

He yanked desperately at the controls. Something in the wing snapped. The ground rushed at them—

With a whump, the fabric of the wings filled with air and pulled taut one last time. The vimana shot forward like a daredevil bird swooping out of a dive just short of the ground. Nina shrieked and shielded her eyes as it crashed through the bushes in a burst of snow, stubby branches whipping at her face.

But they didn’t stop.

The vimana ripped the bushes right out of the ground. For a moment it seemed that it was going to take off again - then with a huge crack the wings finally collapsed, broken spars and shredded silk trailing behind the glider as it crashed down on its runners.

And still it kept going. It had turned from an aircraft into a sledge, slithering downhill at an ever-increasing pace.

Nina hurriedly unwound her wrists from the leather straps as she saw what lay directly ahead. ‘We’re gonna go into the river!’

‘Everybody off!’ said Eddie.

‘What do we do?’ Kit asked, eyes wide as he saw the rapidly approaching gorge.

‘Just jump!’ Eddie grabbed him and leapt from the back of the platform. Nina followed. Human snowploughs, they bounced and skittered down the hill after their former ride. Despite Eddie’s best efforts, he lost his grip on Kit. The two men separated, skidding along on their backs.

Nina, the lightest, was the first to be slowed by the mass of snow she had collected in front of her. Dazed, she lifted her head to see two white fountains continuing past. ‘Eddie!’ she shouted as the broken vimana sailed over the edge of the gorge and smashed on the rocks below.

Eddie had also witnessed the glider’s sudden disappearance. He spread his arms and legs wide for extra drag, digging his heels down through the snow.

He felt his soles tearing small stones from the iron-hard ground - then nothing . . .

It took a moment for him to realise he had stopped. He shook snow from his face, then cautiously sat up. Both legs were dangling over the edge of the gorge. Fifty feet below, the vimana’s remains were being swept away by the river.

He dragged himself back to solid ground. Nina staggered down the slope, while Kit lay to one side, having stopped barely a foot short of the gorge. ‘Everyone okay?’ Eddie groaned.

Kit weakly cradled his left wrist. ‘My arm . . .’

Eddie examined it. It didn’t seem broken, but he guessed it was badly sprained. Using his belt as a makeshift sling, he and Nina helped him stand. ‘We’re about four miles from Gaurikund,’ he said, remembering the lie of the land from their ascent. ‘You think you can make it?’

Kit managed a feeble smile. ‘Well, it’s downhill, at least.’

‘You’ll be fine. You got him, Nina?’

She supported him from the other side. ‘Got him. Ready, Kit?’

‘I’m ready.’ They started down the hill. ‘So . . . this is archaeology?’

‘Yeah. Ain’t it great?’ Nina said sarcastically. ‘Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, they do.’

A rumbling chatter echoed down the valley. ‘Like now,’ said Eddie. The Khoils’ red and white helicopter was visible in the distance - heading towards them.

‘Oh, man!’ Nina protested. ‘Why can’t they just leave us alone?’

‘Those bushes,’ Eddie said, pointing to a patch of snow-laden shrubs nearby. They hustled Kit over and crouched behind them, watching anxiously as the helicopter drew steadily closer. Had its occupants tracked the vimana as it made its descent - and was Zec now preparing to shoot the survivors? It kept coming, passing almost directly overhead . . .

And continued southwards.

‘They must be going back to Delhi,’ said Nina, watching it shrink into the distance.

‘Great,’ Eddie said. ‘They’ll be there in an hour, and we’ll be lucky to reach Gaurikund by nightfall. Maybe we should have thumbed a lift with them.’

Kit shook his head. ‘Even I would prefer to walk.’

Eddie and Nina both smiled, then with Kit between them began the long trek back down the valley.

Eddie’s estimate was accurate: it was dusk by the time they finally reached Gaurikund. First aid was quickly arranged for Kit, but his priority was phoning Interpol headquarters in Delhi. Unfortunately, the news he got after reporting events was bad - the Khoils had already left India aboard their private jet.

A helicopter was quickly arranged to fly the exhausted trio to the capital. After being debriefed at Interpol, Kit was taken away to have his wounds treated. Eddie and Nina also gave statements before their injuries, less serious, were checked by a doctor, but after that were left alone in a conference room, with nothing to do but wait as the bureaucratic machine ground into motion.

‘You okay?’ Nina asked, resting her head on her husband’s shoulder. A muted television mounted high in one corner was showing CNN, images of President Cole’s visit to Japan in the lead-up to the G20 summit flashing past.

Eddie fingered the bandage covering the cut he had received from the statue of Kali. ‘Still got all my important bits, so okay. You?’

‘Fine. More or less. I was thinking about Girilal. He didn’t deserve to die like that.’

‘He didn’t deserve to die, full stop. He saved our lives, though. Twice. That’s got to be good for his karma.’

‘I just hope his beliefs helped him at the end,’ said Nina morosely. ‘But at least he got to see his son again, and they settled some of their differences.’

Eddie gave her a sharp look. ‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning . . . what it sounds like.’ It took her a moment to realise what he was saying. ‘You know, if you don’t want to speak to your father that’s up to you, but it doesn’t mean everyone’s pushing you to do it.’

‘Yeah, yeah, okay. Sorry.’ He changed the subject. ‘Don’t know about the karma of Shankarpa and the others, though. They might have ended up on our side, but they still tried to kill us. And Christ knows how many other people they knocked off before then.’

‘The Indian government’ll have to decide what to do with them, I guess. But at least the Vault survived fairly intact. That makes a change for us.’

‘The Khoils still bagged those stone tablets, though,’ he reminded her. ‘So whatever it is they want to do, they’re free to do it.’

‘Bring about the collapse of civilisation, Pramesh told me. So that he can oversee the rebuilding on his terms - and push his particular apocalyptic brand of Shiva-worship on everyone.’

Eddie made an amused sound. ‘He seemed pretty upset when Girilal basically said he was being a huge arsehole.’

‘Pramesh is a true believer - having a holy man tell you that Shiva would be ashamed of what you’re planning to do must be hard on the ego. But what are they planning to do? He said it involved manipulating information, but it’d need a catalyst, something that would make lots of people want answers - answers that could be twisted to enrage them . . .’ She looked up at the TV. The piece about Cole’s Japanese visit was wrapping up, a graphic showing that the final leg of his international tour would bring him to Delhi. ‘It’s got to be the summit. It’d explain why they were so desperate to get the Shiva-Vedas - they had a deadline. And if you want to start global chaos, killing a group of world leaders would be about as good a catalyst as you could get.’

‘But how would they get past all the security?’ Eddie asked.

‘I don’t know, God damn it!’ He raised an eyebrow at her snappish reply. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry.’ She let out a frustrated breath. ‘I’m just pissed they got away. And we’ve got no idea where they’ve gone.’

‘Actually, we do.’ They looked round to see Kit, his sprained arm in a sling, limp into the room on a crutch. Behind him were Mac, who smiled broadly on seeing the couple, and another man, thin-faced with a drooping moustache, who appeared considerably less pleased at the sight of them - or of Eddie, at least.

‘Kit!’ Nina cried, jumping up. ‘Are you okay?’

‘The doctor said I will mend,’ said the Indian. He gave his bandaged arm a rueful look. ‘Eventually.’

She smiled, then greeted Mac warmly before giving the moustachioed man a peck on the cheek. ‘And Peter. Good to see you again.’

‘You too, Nina,’ he replied, before regarding Eddie with disdain. ‘Chase. Hello.’

‘Alderley,’ Eddie replied, with equal antipathy.

‘So,’ said the MI6 officer, ‘how was your party?’

Nina looked apologetic. ‘I am so sorry you didn’t get your invitation, Peter. Somebody,’ she glared at Eddie, ‘made a hash of things.’

‘Completely by accident,’ Eddie told him, not quite hiding a smile. ‘I was gutted that you weren’t there, obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ said Alderley, stone-faced. Mac chuckled.

‘In that case, you can apologise to Peter for the, uh, mix-up, can’t you?’ said Nina. When Eddie didn’t reply immediately, she jabbed him with an elbow. ‘Can’t you?’

‘I suppose,’ Eddie said, with a complete lack of contrition.

‘Sorry that you couldn’t come to our wedding do and drone on about restoring your Ford Capri, Alderley.’

Another jab. ‘Eddie!’

‘That’s okay,’ said Alderley sarcastically. ‘It’s the thought that counts. Anyway, I’ve got some information about your friends the Khoils.’ He put a briefcase on the desk, taking out several manila folders and a laptop. ‘While MI6 doesn’t have any specifically actionable intelligence on them, what Mac told me was enough to raise flags. And with the G20 summit going on, any potential threat has to be investigated.’

‘What did you find?’ Nina asked.

‘A lot of financial activity - hardly surprising considering the Khoils own a multinational company, but our banking boffins are always looking for suspicious patterns. They’ve been setting up various . . . well, they’ve described them as “protected archives”, but you could call them bunkers, I suppose. Isolated facilities with everything needed for long-term survival - exactly the kind of thing you’d want if you planned to spark off World War Three. An old salt mine in Montana, something in Australia, Mongolia - and a place in Greenland, which is, according to their flightplan, where they’re going.’

Nina turned to Kit. ‘Can you put out a warrant on them?’

‘I’m afraid not. At the moment, we don’t have enough direct evidence to issue a red notice. Based on our statements there is enough to issue a green notice, but that’s just a warning to local police of possible criminal activity, not a confirmation.’

‘Why the hell would they want to go to Greenland?’ Eddie hooted. ‘There’s not a lot there.’

‘That might be why they’ve gone,’ said Nina, a possibility striking her. ‘Pramesh said one of the reasons they stole those treasures was to protect them while everything else collapses. We saw in Iraq what happened to the country’s museums - they were looted, and most of the contents still haven’t been found. Imagine that on a global scale! But if you wanted to keep something absolutely safe, you’d put it as far away from civilisation as possible - like that seed store in Norway, the Doomsday Vault. Maybe they’re hiding everything they’ve stolen in Greenland. Peter, do you know exactly what kind of facility they have there?’

Already flicked through the folders, then shook his head. ‘Some decommissioned Cold War ice station. I don’t have the details.’

‘If that’s their bolt-hole, there must be some significance to it.’ She gestured at the laptop. ‘Can I use your computer?’

Alderley nodded, and Nina opened the machine. ‘What are you looking for?’ Mac asked.

‘Whatever they’re doing up there.’

‘How are you going to find that out?’ Alderley asked dubiously.

She went to the web browser - and loaded the Qexia search engine. ‘To quote their own commercials,’ she said with a grin, ‘just ask.’

It took only a minute for the network of links to produce a result that surprised everyone in the room. ‘That’s his data centre?’ said Eddie, reading the news article, translated from the Danish, that accompanied a picture of Khoil standing before a bizarre structure. ‘Bloody hell. And I thought his house was over the top.’

‘It says it’s over a hundred miles from the nearest settlement,’ said Nina. ‘If you wanted to keep something hidden, it’s a good place.’

‘So what do we do? Fly up there and knock?’

‘If Interpol find anything to tie the Khoils to the Vault of Shiva, then yes - it directly connects them to the attempted theft of the Talonor Codex in San Francisco. As soon as they have something, they can issue an arrest warrant. Am I right, Kit?’

‘The Indian government is flying a team to Mount Kedarnath first thing tomorrow,’ Kit replied. ‘There are two crashed helicopters there. If their tail numbers match the ones hired by the Khoils’ company, we have our connection. We can upgrade the green notice to a red, and work with the Greenland police to search’ - he indicated the strange building on the laptop screen - ‘this place.’

‘Will you be going?’ Nina asked.

He tapped the crutch on the floor. ‘I don’t think so. But we will still need an expert to identify any artefacts that might be found there. If you want to go.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Nina immediately.

‘That wasn’t what I was going to say,’ Eddie grumbled, only half joking. ‘We just got back from the Himalayas, and now you want to go somewhere even colder?’

‘It’ll be worth it to see the expression on the Khoils’ faces when they get arrested.’ She turned to Alderley. ‘Is there anything else you can do to protect the summit in the meantime?’

‘Without any specific threat, all I can do is try to persuade the Indians to raise the security alert level - and it’s already pretty high. But . . .’ He thought for a moment, rubbing his moustache. ‘All the countries at the G20 have intelligence officers in their delegations - my opposite numbers, you could say. I can have quiet words with them, try to get them to take a gander at the Khoils for themselves. If we pool information, we might be able to find something actionable.’

‘How long will it take, though?’ asked Nina. ‘The summit starts tomorrow.’

‘Yeah,’ Eddie added. ‘It won’t help much if whatever Khoil’s planning happens while you’re swanning about at some spooks’ cocktail party.’

‘That’s not quite what I’ll be doing,’ said Alderley irritably. ‘As a matter of fact, I was going to suggest that Mac comes with me to talk to some of these people. And Mr Jindal, too. Getting first-hand accounts from reliable sources can speed things up enormously.’

‘Will you be able to get us security clearance for the summit?’ Mac asked.

‘For an MI6 adviser and an Interpol officer? No problem. It’s not as though you’re disreputable types.’ He looked directly at Eddie, who mouthed an obscenity.

‘I’m happy to help as much as I can,’ said Kit.

‘Great. I’ll make the arrangements.’ He took out his phone. Mac stepped forward to speak to Nina and Eddie. ‘So, off to Greenland? Rather you than me. One of the best things about retiring from the Regiment was knowing that I’d never have to spend another minute on a glacier.’

‘Funny, I thought that too,’ said Eddie. ‘Didn’t quite work out.’

The Scot smiled. ‘Well, best of luck. And wrap up warm.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Nina assured him. ‘I’m not planning to spend one second longer than I have to in the cold!’

31

Greenland

Nina gazed out of the porthole of the de Havilland Twin Otter aircraft at the landscape ten thousand feet below. It was an unbroken, empty swathe of snow, and in the near-eternal night of the Arctic winter there should have been nothing to see . . . but instead, it was one of the most amazing natural sights she had ever set eyes upon.

The sky was alive with the shimmering glow of the aurora borealis, green and red and pink lights coiling across the dark dome above. The blank snowscape became a giant canvas, a piece of abstract expressionism on a grand scale as colours were poured over it from the heavens. ‘Eddie,’ she said excitedly. ‘You’ve got to see this.’

Eddie paused in his discussion with Walther Probst, Interpol’s Tactical Liaison Officer, to glance through another window, ‘Not bad,’ he grunted, turning back to the German.

‘That’s all you’ve got to say? “Not bad”?’

‘I’ve seen it before. The SAS does Arctic training in Norway. After a couple of days freezing your arse off, you stop noticing it. Actually, it’s kind of a pain because it makes you easier to see.’

‘I married a philistine,’ she complained before joining the two men. ‘How long till we get there?’

‘About ten minutes,’ said Probst. The de Havilland was nearing the end of its long northeasterly flight from Greenland’s capital of Nuuk, traversing the vast empty wastes of the huge island’s central glaciers. Its destination was, quite literally, in the middle of nowhere.

As Kit had expected, the tail numbers of the two wrecked helicopters on Mount Kedarnath confirmed that the Khoils’ company had indeed hired them. As a result, he had convinced Interpol to issue a red notice on the Khoils - and now it was going to be enacted.

There were two officers of the Rigspolitiet, the Danish police service, aboard the plane, but their presence was largely a formality; Probst’s team of eight men, all armed and wearing body armour beneath their Arctic clothing, would carry out the actual mission. The objectives were simple - serve the warrant, arrest the Khoils for extradition to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, and search for evidence linking them to the artefact thefts. No advance warning had been sent ahead; the hope was that by the time their lawyers were able to take action, the Khoils would already be on their way to France.

The final preparations were being made, the team examining pictures of the building they would be searching. ‘What is this place?’ one of the men asked.

‘It used to be an American radar station,’ said Nina, having found the background on the giant structure known only as DYE-A unexpectedly interesting, a piece of modern-day archaeological research. ‘Part of a chain going right the way from the Atlantic coast of Greenland across Canada to Alaska. There were four others like it in Greenland, but this one was also part of a secret operation called Project Iceworm, where they tried to hide nuclear missile bases under the ice.’

‘And everyone thought it was the Russians who were supposed to be sneaky,’ said Eddie, raising a few chuckles from those team members old enough to remember the Cold War.

‘It didn’t work out at the other sites because the glaciers weren’t stable enough,’ Nina continued. ‘The tunnels they built collapsed after a few years. DYE-A was the only place where they stayed intact, because it’s sited above an extinct volcano; the ice is trapped inside the caldera and can’t move. So they built an emergency bunker there as well, a sort of backup NORAD where they could keep running World War Three even if everywhere else got nuked. But it was never used. At least, not by America.’

‘You think the Khoils are planning to use this bunker as a hideout?’ asked Probst.

‘It’s definitely a possibility. It was designed to support people for years, if necessary.’

The German indicated a locker at the rear of the cabin where the team’s weapons were stowed. ‘Okay. As soon as we land, collect arms, and we will go to the building. Our friends from the Rigspolitiet will issue the warrant - we will make sure they are not, ah, obstructed in their duties.’ A small ripple of laughter.

The rasp of the propellers changed as the plane started its descent. ‘Better strap in,’ Eddie told Nina. He sat on one of a pair of rear-facing seats at the front of the cabin, Nina beside him. Outside the window, the spectacular auroral display played across the wings.

Pramesh Khoil stood in the eye of a hurricane of information. The infotarium around him, its hundreds of screens flashing at a dizzying rate, was a larger version of the one in Bangalore, constructed on a scale to match the huge chamber topping the former early warning station. The fifty-five-foot-high geodesic dome had once housed one of DYE-A’s three massive radar antennas; now, it was his command centre. He was raised twenty feet on a circular platform, a staircase curling down to a lower elevated walkway ringing it, from where two more sets of steps descended to the floor. Directly above him, hanging from the domed ceiling, was a large rig housing projectors for the biggest screens. A small lectern at the platform’s edge contained the sensors for the gestural control system.

Despite the visual overload, Khoil’s attention was focused on three screens in particular. One showed mostly darkness, the lights of a city seen from the air glinting like gems on black velvet; beside it, the same view was repeated with the benefit of night vision, the cityscape rendered in ghostly shades of green. Both giant projection screens were overlaid with the graphics of an aerial head-up display, an artificial horizon showing the aircraft’s course and speed, altitude and attitude.

The third, smaller LCD screen was a live feed from a news network. The President and Prime Minister of India stood on a red carpet at the majestic Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President’s official residence in Delhi, greeting the German Chancellor. The leaders of the world’s most powerful nations were assembling for the G20 summit, meeting for the evening’s opening ceremony and state banquet before the conference proper began the next day.

But, Khoil knew, there would be no next day for the attendees. The world was about to change for ever. The corrupt and decadent Kali Yuga would end, and a new, purified cycle of existence would begin.

Tonight.

Vanita stood beside him, trying to shut out the visual distraction of the other screens to concentrate on the news feed. ‘How much longer?’ she asked. ‘Are they all there?’

‘Not yet,’ said Khoil. He held out his right hand with the palm flat, fingers slightly opened, and tilted it. On the two main screens, the image of the city followed suit, the speed of the aircraft’s turn increasing slightly. ‘Be patient, my beloved.’

‘I am patient,’ she insisted, tight-lipped. ‘But it’s frustrating, waiting on . . . politicians!’ She almost spat the word, her earrings jingling.

Khoil lowered his hand, the artificial horizons levelling automatically. ‘It will not be long now. Just another—’

A trilling sound interrupted him. ‘What’s that?’ Vanita demanded. ‘A security alert.’ A gesture, and Zec’s face appeared on one of the screens. ‘What is it?’ he asked the Bosnian.

‘Radar has picked up a plane,’ Zec told him. ‘About five minutes out - and descending.’

Khoil immediately raised both hands, fingers playing a silent concerto in the air as virtual keyboards flashed up. A radar tracking display appeared, showing the intruder’s course. A dotted line predicted its final destination: DYE-A’s long ice runway. A flick of a finger, and the aircraft’s identity was revealed, its transponder code cross-checked in a millisecond against Qexia’s vast database. ‘A government aircraft,’ he said. ‘But they would not turn up unannounced, unless . . .’ His gaze snapped back to Zec’s image. ‘Jam its radio! Shoot it down - and send a team to eliminate any survivors!’

The de Havilland shuddered, buffeted by the winds sweeping across the ice plain. Nina grabbed Eddie’s hand. ‘Ow,’ he complained.

‘What?’

‘Bloody nails, digging into me!’ He pulled open her clenched fingers.

‘I’m just nervous - we’re about to land on a glacier hundreds of miles from anywhere, and I’m pretty sure we won’t get a warm welcome.’

‘Oh, come on. You’ve been to the Antarctic - this is like Central Park in comparison. Besides, we’ve got all these guys and their guns on our side - and the Khoils don’t even know we’re coming.’

Shouts of alarm in Danish from the cockpit, the plane banking sharply—

A bright flash outside the windows - then a hole burst open in the fuselage with an earsplitting bang and the shriek of shredding metal. One of the cops was hit in the head by shrapnel, a splash of blood flying across the cabin.

The plane dropped, loose items tumbling in freefall as a freezing wind screamed through the rent in the hull. One of Probst’s men had not fastened his seat belt - he was dragged through the torn hole, the jagged metal ripping his clothing and flesh before the slipstream snatched him away.

Another light outside, the orange flicker of flames. The engine was on fire. The de Havilland lurched, the rasp of its remaining propeller rising as the pilots increased power. ‘What the hell’s happening?’ Nina shrieked.

Eddie clutched his armrests. ‘A missile! Those fuckers are trying to shoot us down!’ He twisted to look into the cockpit. The co-pilot yelled into his headset, declaring a Mayday - but from his expression was getting no reply. Beside him, the pilot struggled with the controls. The plane was dropping fast, nose angled downwards. Through the cockpit windows, Eddie saw a light in the distance, a glowing blue sphere on the snow.

DYE-A. The Khoils’ base. They would crash within sight of it.

A loud whine and a shrill grind of metal ran through the cabin as the pilot extended the wing flaps. The de Havilland’s dive started to level out. ‘Can you land?’ Eddie shouted.

Panic cracked the co-pilot’s mask of professionalism. ‘We can’t make the runway! Crash positions! Brace for impact!’

‘Oh, shit,’ Eddie gasped. He faced the cabin, relaying the instruction to the others before turning to the terrified Nina, who was leaning forward with her hands on the back of her head. ‘No, no!’ he said, pulling her upright. ‘We’re facing backwards - crash position’s different. Sit up straight, keep your back against the seat. Sit on your hands so they don’t flap about.’ He demonstrated.

She followed his example. ‘Eddie, I’m scared!’

Eddie tried to think of something reassuring to say, but all he could manage was ‘I’m not fucking thrilled about it either!’ He glanced sideways, seeing the aurora-lit landscape rising to meet them. A cluster of lights rolled past the windows - they had passed the radar station. He looked back at Nina, meeting her frightened eyes. ‘Stay with me-’

‘Brace! Brace! Brace!’ screamed the co-pilot. The engine’s snarl echoed off the ice as the plane reached the ground . . .

The de Havilland hit. Hard.

The landing gear, fitted with skis for a touchdown in snow, collapsed. One of the struts stabbed upwards into the cabin and impaled an Interpol agent. The shock of impact pounded through the seats as the plane slammed down on its belly, skidding across the glacier in a huge spray of ice. Another agent’s seat belt snapped, flinging him across the cabin to crack headfirst against the wall.

Deceleration pressed Nina and Eddie into their seats, vibration battering them. Metal cracked, something wrenching away from the hull’s underside with a horrible screech—

The entire fuselage was ripped in half behind the wings. Two men, strapped helplessly into their seats, were yanked backwards as the floor was torn out from beneath them - and the tail section mowed them down. Its jagged leading edge gouged into the ice, making it tumble as it fell away behind.

More seats broke loose and spun into the trail of debris, another man screaming as he was thrown into the night. Nina gripped her seat as tightly as she could, eyes closed in terror.

The front section tipped over as it continued its uncontrollable skid, the undamaged wing dropping towards the ice - and stabbing into it. The sudden drag spun the fuselage round - then the entire wing was abruptly torn away at its root, wrenching a huge chunk of the ceiling with it. The weight of the remaining wing dragged that side down. Another slam of impact as the wingtip hit the ice, a crunching groan of metal as the wing buckled . . . and the plane finally bumped to a stop as the wrecked engine dug into the ice like an anchor.

The silence was so sudden that for a moment Nina, eyes still squeezed closed, thought she was dead. It wasn’t until she managed to draw a breath that she convinced herself otherwise.

Even that breath told her she was not out of danger. The air was bitingly cold - and laden with the heavy stench of aviation fuel. She opened her eyes. To her surprise, some of the emergency lights in the remains of the cabin were still glowing.

The scene they illuminated, however, was not one she wanted to see. A member of the Interpol team was sprawled over a broken seat, a jagged metal rod impaling his neck. Probst was still alive, breath steaming from his mouth, but from the unnatural angle of his foot it was certain that he had broken his ankle. The agent beside him was also breathing, apparently unconscious. The surviving cop was strapped in his seat facing her, a deep cut on his cheek. He groaned softly.

No sound from the seat beside her, though, no billowing condensation in the cold air. Nina almost didn’t dare turn her head to see what had happened to her husband - and when she did, she felt a sharp stab of whiplash pain. But she forced herself to look round . . .

Eddie was slumped in his seat, eyes closed, blood round his mouth.

Not breathing.

‘Eddie?’ she said, voice quavering. No answer, no movement. She reached out to touch his face, but stopped just short, afraid that she would find no warmth. ‘Eddie? Are you . . .’

Still no reply. More frightened now than she had been during the landing, she touched his cheek—

‘Buggery bastard fuck!’ he yelled, exploding to life and thrashing against his seat belt. Nina shrieked, flinching back. He clawed open the buckle and jumped up, fists clenched in fury.

‘Eddie, Eddie!’ Nina cried. ‘Jesus! Are you okay? Eddie!’

A plume of frozen breath hissed out through the gap between his two front teeth as he grimaced. ‘No, I’m fucking not! God! A plane crash! A fucking plane crash! That nerdy little bastard Khoil, when I get hold of him . . .’ Another, longer exhalation, then he took a deep breath before speaking again, more calmly. ‘Buggeration and fuckery.’

‘So . . . I guess you’re okay?’

‘Nothing broken. Feels like someone whacked me with a bat, though.’ He put a hand to his chest, finding that his coat was torn where some piece of flying debris had struck him. ‘What about you?’

‘Hurt my neck, but apart from that, I think I’m all right.’

The surge of rage fading, Eddie took in the other survivors, and hurriedly crouched beside Probst when he saw his foot. ‘Shit, that looks bad.’

The German’s eyes fluttered open. ‘Was ist pass . . .’ he began, before switching to English on seeing Eddie. ‘What happened?’

‘We were shot down,’ Nina told him, shakily standing. She heard electronic warbles from the cockpit and investigated. Her hopes that the pilots were still alive were quickly dashed; one man was bent over with his head twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. There was no sign of the other, but blood smeared across a broken window suggested he had been thrown out of the plane.

Eddie quickly checked the other two survivors, waking Probst’s associate as the cop groggily sat up. He looked back at Nina. ‘Is the radio working? We need to send an SOS.’

‘I don’t know. Something’s still switched on, though - there’s a weird noise.’

‘It . . . it’s a radio jammer,’ said Probst. ‘It must be at the radar station.’

‘Oh, great,’ Nina moaned. ‘That means the only people we can call for help are the ones who tried to kill us.’ She spotted a yellow box marked with a red cross under the empty pilot’s seat and pulled it out, finding not just first-aid gear but also survival equipment - packaged food, a Very pistol and flares, foil blankets, various tools. ‘Walther, I’ve got some bandages and a splint,’ she said, bringing the box to Probst. ‘We’ll try to fix your foot.’

Eddie moved to the torn end of the fuselage and looked out across the plain. They had landed on a slope, the long, wreckage-strewn gouge torn by the front section as it slid downhill clearly visible in the aurora’s ghost-light. The wing that had been ripped away was standing almost vertically, poking out of the ice like some strange flag. Beyond it, some distance away, he saw the broken tail section half buried by snow.

There was another source of illumination, something more than the auroral display. Over the crest of the hill was an unnatural glow. The radar station. The building itself was out of sight; the plane’s uncontrolled slide down the ice had carried it a mile past the base.

But they wouldn’t be alone for long. Two bright white lights appeared on the horizon.

Snowmobiles.

32

‘They’re coming,’ Eddie said. ‘We need guns. Who can move?’

The cop stood, grunting in discomfort but still able to walk. The other Interpol officer tried to get up, only to drop painfully back into his seat. ‘Okay,’ Eddie told the cop, ‘come with me.’

‘I’m coming too,’ said Nina.

‘No,’ he said firmly, indicating Probst. ‘Do what you can with his foot. We’ll take these bastards out before they get to you.’ He put a hand on the cop’s arm. ‘You ready?’

The Greenlander was only young, in his twenties, and his fear was clear. ‘I - I’m okay,’ he said.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Eddie reassured him. He pointed to the wreckage of the tail. ‘We get to the gun locker and kill any fucker who comes down that hill. Sound good?’ The cop nodded. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

He jumped out of the fuselage. The surface snow was surprisingly hard-packed, his feet only sinking a few inches before ice crunched beneath them. He started to run up the slope beside the ragged, debris-strewn gouge, kicking up a crystalline spray with each step. The cop followed.

The snowmobiles were speeding towards the crash site, roostertails of snow swirling in their wakes. Eddie pushed harder, skirting the severed wing. The stink of fuel filled his nostrils, as he passed it. More debris lay in his path, as did a dark splash of blood across the whiteness. He kept running. The tail section loomed ahead—

One of the snowmobiles veered towards the two men. The aurora’s light had betrayed them.

Eddie cursed and leapt into the channel, hunching down as he scrambled over the churned ice. He looked back at the cop - who froze as the headlight pinned him. ‘Get down!’ he shouted. The cop broke from his paralysis and jumped after him—

Gunfire spat from the snowmobile, bullets ripping into the young man’s head and chest. Blood splattered across the ice as he crumpled.

Anger surging, Eddie ran on, head down. Ice sprayed over him as more gunshots smacked into the snow.

The half-buried tail section was not far ahead. Its interior was dark, a black mouth surrounded by jagged metal teeth. He vaulted a large hatch lying on the ground and sprinted into the shadows. The open end of the fuselage was packed with snow, seats jutting through the mound - but beyond it the central aisle was more or less clear, the gun locker at its end.

He scrambled over the drift. No emergency lights here, but there was enough illumination from the aurora for him to find the locker. He grabbed the handle—

It turned - but the door only opened an inch before banging against something. He pulled harder. It flexed, but still refused to open. ‘Shit!’ He groped in the darkness . . . and found that the floor had buckled upwards in front of the locker.

He kicked at it, trying to bend it back down, but it was too solid. A harsh light shone through the portholes - the snowmobile was almost on him. The other vehicle roared on down the slope towards the plane’s front section. Two men on each machine.

The passenger on the one approaching leaned out from behind the driver, gun raised—

Eddie dropped flat as bullets riddled the wreck. A shot clanked off the seat frame just above him. Spears of light stabbed across the cabin through each new hole in the fuselage.

If he stayed put, he was a dead man - he would be pinned inside the hull. He slithered on his belly over the piled snow as more shots punctured the plane’s skin. Emerging into the faint auroral glow, he pulled himself round the torn edge of the fuselage to take shelter behind it.

The snowmobile’s snarl dropped to an idling stutter. The gunfire also stopped. Eddie risked a peek at his attackers. If the gunner were reloading, that would give him a few seconds to take action . . .

He wasn’t reloading. He was pulling the pin from a grenade.

Eddie sprang up and ran for the rear of the wreckage as something small but heavy clanged off metal behind him—

Nina had forced herself to keep bandaging Probst’s ankle even through the sound of gunfire - but she jumped up in horror at the explosion, seeing debris showering down round the tail section.

One of the snowmobiles was still barrelling straight for her. The other had stopped further uphill; a man hopped off, the driver revving up and turning to ride after his comrades.

No sign of Eddie. Had he been inside the tail?

She didn’t have time to consider the horrible thought. A man on the nearer snowmobile opened fire. ‘Jesus!’ she gasped, ducking. Bullets kicked up snow and peppered the fuselage

The other Interpol agent yelled in fright as a round struck the forward bulkhead. He lurched upright, clambering into the open and starting to run across the ice.

‘No, wait!’ Nina shouted, but it was too late. The gunman had spotted the fleeing figure, and shouted for the driver to angle after him. Flame flashed from his gun’s muzzle as he opened fire on full auto—

The running man tumbled bloodily into the snow.

The snowmobile swerved back towards the plane, driving alongside the trench. Nina crouched beside Probst, desperately searching for an escape route, any form of defence. But the wrecked fuselage offered no protection and no hiding places, and they had no weapons—

Yes, they did. She pawed through the survival kit. The orange-painted Very pistol might not have been designed as a weapon, but it was still a gun. She opened the breech and inserted a flare, then snapped it closed.

‘You’ll never hit them with that,’ Probst warned her weakly.

‘I’m not aiming at them,’ Nina replied, jaw set. She raised her head, judging the distance to her target. Waiting for the right moment.

The gunner fired again. Shots cracked against the seats. Nina flinched, but held her position.

Waiting . . .

Now!

She pulled the trigger.

With a thump, the flare sizzled away on a trail of red-lit smoke towards her target - not the snowmobile, but the severed wing, and the ruptured auxiliary fuel tank inside it . . .

And fell short.

She had overestimated the projectile’s power, not aiming high enough. The flare landed, sending up a plume of steam as the intense heat melted the snow. Nina ducked, fumbling for a second flare, but she knew that by the time she reloaded, the snowmobile would be past the wing.

She had missed her one chance.

Eddie was being hunted.

The gunman had quickly realised that his grenade had not caught anyone inside the fuselage. Now, he was circling the tail section, MP5K at the ready. There were no tracks in the surrounding snow, so his quarry was close by . . .

Eddie heard the crunch of his footsteps as he approached the stern. He was crouched on the other side of the high tail, unable to move - any sound would reveal his position. And at such close range, a burst from the Heckler and Koch would go straight through the plane’s aluminium skin. The other man didn’t even need to see him to kill him.

His only chance was a surprise attack as the gunman rounded the tail. But he could tell his hunter was cautious, unlikely to fall for such an obvious ploy. The icy crackles came closer, pausing. Listening.

Eddie tensed, ready to spring - but he knew that without a diversion, he had no chance of reaching his enemy before being shot . . .

Nina loaded another flare. But it was too late - the snowmobile had passed the wing—

A new light, brighter than the aurora. Startled, she looked between the seats - and saw flames spreading outwards from the sputtering flare.

The fuel!

It had trickled downhill - and now the fire was rushing back up the line of flammable liquid to its source—

The wing exploded, metal shards scything in all directions. The blast tore apart the engine, sending one of the propeller blades spinning away - to slam into the snowmobile. The driver’s upper body was reduced to a red pulp by the heavy piece of metal, his hands and the stumps of his forearms left clinging to the handlebars. The vehicle swerved out of control and crashed into the trench, flinging the other man into a pool of burning avgas.

Eddie heard the explosion - and the crunch of ice underfoot as the gunman whirled to see what had happened.

His diversion—

He threw himself bodily at the rudder, slamming it into the gunman on the other side. Swinging round the tailplane, he launched himself at the staggering figure and tackled him at chest height. The gun went off - but the bullets went wide. He pressed home the attack, driving a powerful blow into the man’s stomach.

The gunman crashed against the battered fuselage. Eddie grabbed for the MP5K, but only managed to get a hold on the other man’s wrist.

His adversary smashed his free hand down on the Englishman’s head. Another harsh blow to the base of his neck dropped him to one knee. Eddie was still gripping his attacker’s right wrist, but could feel him twisting the gun round at him—

He punched the gunman’s stomach again. From his awkward position it didn’t cause any real damage, provoking only a gasp and a flinch - but that was all he needed.

His hand slid up from the man’s wrist to the MP5K’s butt, finding his opponent’s forefinger . . . and squeezing as he yanked the weapon downwards.

The gun blazed on full auto. Its remaining bullets slammed into the ground between the two men, fire meeting ice - and lead meeting leather as the last bullet tore through the gunman’s boot and blasted off his big toe. He screamed, hopping as blood spurted from the neat nine millimetre hole.

Eddie wrested away the empty gun - and viciously smashed it into the wounded man’s face. Nose crushed, the gunman fell on his back. Eddie dived on him, pushing the gun down hard against his neck. The man struggled, spitting blood and thrashing at Eddie’s face . . . then there was a wet crunch deep inside his throat. With a final gurgling breath, he fell still.

The other snowmobile’s passenger was also breathing his last, flailing blindly in the pool of burning fuel before slumping, flames roiling over his body.

The force of the explosion had knocked Nina to the floor. Wincing at the unexpected wave of heat, she staggered upright. A swathe of the ice channel was now a lake of fire; the Twin Otter’s main fuel tanks were in its belly, and had ripped open when the fuselage broke in half, spewing out the volatile liquid. ‘Guess we don’t have to worry about freezing to death,’ she told Probst - before realising the danger was not over.

The second snowmobile was still coming. And she had dropped the flare gun when she fell.

Defenceless.

Eddie found a spare magazine on the dead man’s belt. He slapped it into place and pulled back the MP5K’s charging handle with a clack, then ran round the broken fuselage to see the remaining snowmobile’s red tail light passing the burning wreckage of the wing.

The rider was well out of the sub-machine gun’s effective range. He had to get down the hill fast to save Nina - but how?

The auroral glow shimmered over an intact piece of the plane on the ground. That was one way . . .

Nina dragged Probst into the cockpit. The bulkhead wouldn’t give them much protection, but it was better than nothing.

The snowmobile skidded to a stop. Nina cautiously looked round the doorway, seeing a shadowy figure climb off the idling machine. He had a gun in his right hand . . . then switched it to his left to take something from a pocket.

A grenade.

‘Oh, shit,’ Nina whispered. She backed into the cockpit, but there was no solid door that could be closed, just a flimsy sliding partition. No protection. She could flee through the broken window, but that would mean abandoning Probst to his death - and even if she did, there was nowhere to run, nothing but bleak ice for a hundred miles in every direction.

The man hooked a finger round the pin, pulled it out—

And whirled at a noise from behind.

Eddie hurtled down the slope, riding the de Havilland’s cabin hatch like a sledge and howling like a banshee. The startled man fumbled with his gun and the grenade, trying to switch the two weapons between his hands without releasing the latter’s springloaded spoon and arming the fuse. He brought up his MP5K—

So did Eddie. The compact weapon spat flame. Bullets twanged off the wreckage behind his target, but one shot hit, a puff of blood bursting from the man’s thigh. He screamed, instinctively dropping what he was holding to clap both hands to the wound as he fell . . .

On his own grenade.

Eddie dived off the hatch, covering his head with his arms. ‘Grenade!’ he yelled—

The explosion this time was considerably more muffled. Pieces of the luckless gunman splattered down around the steaming crater in the ice.

Eddie stood and circled the starburst of red to the broken fuselage. ‘Nina! You all right?’ She appeared in the doorway, face alight with relief, and embraced him. He kissed her, then saw Probst in the cockpit. ‘Are you okay?’ The German nodded. ‘What about the other guy?’

‘He’s dead,’ Probst said flatly.

‘Dammit . . .’ He noticed that some of the lights on the instrument panel were still active - including the radio. ‘Is that jammer still running?’

Probst listened to the electronic warbling. ‘Yes. This radio won’t have enough power to break through it, not on the emergency battery.’

‘Then we’ll have to shut it off.’ He regarded the glow on the horizon, then his gaze moved to the puttering snowmobile. ‘Think I’ll meet our new neighbours,’ he said, checking his gun’s remaining ammo.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Nina said.

‘No, you stay here with him.’

‘Eddie, I am coming with you,’ she said defiantly, taking more items from the survival kit - a pair of foil blankets, a small roll of duct tape and a compact oil heater. She started to tape one of the blankets over the broken cockpit window. ‘I think there’ll be more people than just Pramesh and Vanita in that place. You’ll need all the backup you can get.’ The makeshift windbreak in place, she helped Probst into the pilot’s seat and draped the other blanket over him, then propped the heater on the control yoke. ‘Walther, as soon as we take out the jammer, you send an SOS.’

‘How much time will you need?’ he asked. A glass tube set in the little heater’s side revealed the oil level; considering the small size of the tank, it was unlikely to last long.

‘If we haven’t done it in an hour, we probably won’t be doing it at all.’ Pulling the partition across the doorway as she exited, she faced Eddie. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

‘Seriously. You’re not coming,’ he said as she pushed past him and headed for the snowmobile.

‘Oh, I seriously am.’

‘You don’t have a gun.’

Nina picked up the exploded snowmobiler’s MP5K. ‘I do now.’ She trudged through the snow to the waiting vehicle and straddled it. ‘Whose turn is it to drive?’

33

They rode up the icy hill, Eddie at the controls. In the aurora’s ever-shifting light, it was easy to follow the trails of the two snowmobiles.

Not that there was any doubt about where to go. The glow grew brighter as they neared the hill crest. ‘So, do you have a plan?’ Nina said.

‘Let’s see what we’re dealing with, first.’ They reached the summit . . . and radar station DYE-A came into view.

Internet photos had not truly prepared them for the sight. The main structure, the ‘composite building’, was huge, an enormous black block over a hundred and twenty feet high - and that was without the radome elevated on the building’s central core atop it. The dome itself was lit from within; when Eddie had glimpsed it from the plane it had been a vivid blue, but now other colours pulsed inside, an amped-up electronic version of the aurora overhead. Communications masts festooned with dishes sprouted beside it.

Brilliant spotlights illuminated the surrounding ground, revealing that the composite building stood within a crater-like depression in the ice. The black walls absorbed what little heat came from the sun at this latitude, raising the air temperature around them just enough to slow the accumulation of snow. The main block was supported by eight massive legs - hydraulic jacks, able to lift the station higher if the drifts became too deep.

The radar installation was not the facility’s only structure. Several smaller buildings were clustered to one side, and at the end of the long ice runway was an aircraft hangar. A path marked by a line of lights on poles ran from it to the edge of the depression beneath the composite building, where a covered walkway extended across the gap to its lowest floor.

‘Looks like they’ve made themselves comfortable,’ said Eddie, taking it in. He indicated a line of large cylindrical tanks. ‘Those’ll be full of diesel - enough to keep them going for months.’

‘However long before they feel it’s safe to poke their noses out of their rat-hole after the apocalypse,’ Nina guessed. ‘What do we do?’

He scanned the area for signs of life. ‘Do you see anyone?’

Nina squinted into the wind. ‘Nope.’ She looked up at the windows, which in the interests of preserving heat were small and few in number; all were lit, but nobody was silhouetted in them. ‘Windows look clear too.’

‘Okay, let’s look for something to break.’

‘Did I ever tell you that I love you for your subtlety?’ Nina joked as they warily headed for the walkway. It would surely not be much longer before somebody realised the men sent to finish off any crash survivors were overdue. ‘Whoa, wait. Look at that.’

A broad ramp descended into the depression beneath the main building, where a path had been dug to a boxy metal structure extending down from the base of the radar station - and into the ice below. The path led to a pair of large sliding doors. ‘It’s an elevator shaft,’ she realised.

‘Big elevators,’ Eddie added.

‘Very big elevators. Big enough to take all the equipment for a Cold War bunker . . . or Michelangelo’s David, you think?’

‘Easily.’ There was a hatch beside the two doors. ‘We might be able to get in there. Maybe there’s a ladder.’

‘Or we could just, y’know, use the elevator,’ she said as they descended the ramp.

‘That might be a bit of a giveaway that we’re here. See? I’m being subtle.’

They reached the hatch. ‘Is it locked?’ Nina asked as Eddie tried the handle.

‘Who’s going to break in, Nanook of the North?’ He rattled it until the crust of ice over the jamb broke away. Opening it, he jabbed his gun inside.

Nobody lay in wait. The entrance led to an emergency ladder running parallel to the elevator tracks. He stepped on to the walkway inside, about to climb the ladder when he looked down through the gridwork floor. The shaft dropped into blackness, a line of small maintenance lights shrinking to pinpricks in the dark. ‘Bloody hell. How deep is it?’

‘I don’t know, but they would have built the bunker deep enough to survive a nuclear strike . . .’ She tailed off.

‘What’s the matter?’ Eddie began, before some form of spousal telepathy - or realisation of the inevitable - gave him the answer. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You want to climb down there, don’t you?’

‘If the US military’s built you a mini-NORAD, you might as well make use of it. Whatever the Khoils are doing, that’s probably where they’re doing it from.’

‘It’s a bloody long climb!’

‘Well, we could take the elevator . . .’

Eddie made a disapproving sound, then grudgingly mounted the ladder. ‘All right. But for God’s sake don’t slip.’ He began to descend, boots clunking on the metal rungs.

Nina followed suit. The descent was easy at first, but after a few minutes her muscles started to ache - and the bottom of the shaft didn’t seem any nearer. ‘I just had a depressing thought.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I want to hear right now,’ Eddie said. ‘What?’

‘What if they dug the bunker out of the actual bedrock? The Greenland ice sheet is over two miles thick in places.’

‘If we have to climb down a two-mile fucking ladder,’ he warned, ‘I’m going to throw you down the quick way!’

‘I, uh, don’t think it’ll be quite that far,’ she said. All the same, she looked down the shaft with increasing frequency, hoping for some sign of the bottom.

It came after another few minutes - still some distance below, but a dimly lit rectangle of grey was now visible at the end of the trail of lights. The sight rejuvenated them, and they increased the pace of their descent.

Finally, they reached the bottom. Eddie stepped on to another walkway and went to the hatch at its end. The bottom of the shaft proper was about six feet below, a concrete block covered by icy water. As Nina climbed off the ladder behind him, gratefully resting her arms, he opened the metal door a fraction of an inch.

More drab grey concrete greeted his eyes as warm air blew past him; a wide corridor, lit by sickly fluorescent bulbs. The hatch opened into an alcove in its side, blocking his view down the passage. Gesturing for Nina to stay still, he took hold of his gun, then stepped through and peered round the corner.

The corridor was about thirty feet long. At its far end was a huge metal door, painted a dull institutional green. Another, larger alcove on the opposite side contained a desk, the sleek laptop on it in marked contrast to the Cold War clunkiness of the surroundings. An Indian man was passing the time in exactly the same way as any bored worker in a regular office: surfing the internet.

‘There’s one guy,’ Eddie whispered to Nina, ‘and a huge bloody door. We’ve found the bunker.’ He brought up the gun. ‘Wait here.’

He checked that the man was still fixated on the laptop, then slipped round the corner and advanced quickly along the corridor. Unless the guard had the peripheral vision of a boiler-suited sentry in a Bond movie, he would spot the intruder at any moment . . .

Eddie made it almost halfway before the man’s eyes flicked sideways. He jolted in his seat, startled, then lunged for a control box on the wall—

‘I wouldn’t,’ Eddie said, MP5K fixed on the man’s head. He froze, outstretched palm stopped a few inches from a large red alarm button. ‘Sit back down. Hands in the air.’ The guard obeyed. Eddie came to the desk, keeping the gun locked on him. ‘Okay, Nina,’ he called.

Nina hurried to him, pointing her own gun at the guard as Eddie frisked him. ‘I see what you mean about the door,’ she said. ‘It must weigh ten tons! How are we going to get inside?’

‘Let’s ask Chuckles here,’ said Eddie. He shoved his gun’s muzzle under the guard’s chin. ‘How do you open the door?’

‘You - you push that button,’ the guard stammered, indicating the control panel.

‘Which one?’

‘The one that says Open.’

Nina examined the panel, finding that one of the buttons on it was indeed marked Open. ‘Huh. Whaddya know?’

‘You do the honours, love,’ Eddie told her. She glanced at the guard for any signs of treachery, but the only thought in his head appeared to be the very real concern that a bullet might go through it. Shrugging, she pushed the button.

Yellow warning lights flashed, and a low mechanical drone filled the corridor. With surprising speed for its size, the door smoothly swung outwards, revealing that it was over two feet thick. Beyond it, oddly, was darkness: Nina had expected to see some sort of control room. ‘That was . . . kinda easy.’

‘It’s a bunker, not a bank vault,’ Eddie replied. ‘You don’t want to wait five minutes to get inside while there’s a nuclear missile on its way.’

‘Good point.’ She looked at the guard. ‘What about him?’

Eddie cracked him sharply on the forehead with his gun. The man slumped to the floor. ‘What about him?’

‘The subtlety phase was pretty short-lived, I see.’ She stepped through the door into the chamber beyond.

Even without lights, she could tell it was large, her footfalls soaked up by the space. A small bulb beside the doorway illuminated another control panel. A bank of what looked like light switches was topped by a button marked Main L; she pushed it. With a clack, the overhead lights came on. She turned . . .

Her assumption that the Khoils were using the Cold War bunker as an operations centre had been wrong. They had found a more spectacular use for it - the chamber had been turned into their own personal museum, a display of some of the world’s greatest treasures. Eddie moved past her to investigate some doors in the far wall, but Nina’s eyes were only on its contents.

The statue of David dominated, but the marble figure was surrounded by other artefacts of equal - perhaps even greater - value. A quartet of terracotta warriors stood guard on each side, stolen from the vast archaeological dig at the tomb of the First Emperor in Xi’an. Before them, mounted on a stand, was a sculpted piece of polished silver standing roughly four feet high. At its centre, an oval orifice contained a large piece of what appeared to be dark glass. The Black Stone, the sacred Muslim artefact set into place in Mecca by Muhammad himself.

She recognised numerous other treasures as she entered the bunker. The Standard and Mantle of Muhammad stolen from Topkapi Palace in Turkey, the Antikythera mechanism from Athens . . . There were even artefacts she didn’t recognise, which the Khoils had presumably decided met their personal criteria for ‘protection’ - a painting on silk of a woman in feudal Japanese dress; some kind of stone altar carved with an unfamiliar script—

‘Holy shit!’ she gasped.

Eddie returned from his explorations, having found extensive living quarters beyond one of the doors. He regarded the incredible collection. ‘Took the words right out of my mouth. Not a bad lot at all.’

‘No, I mean - look at this,’ she said, hurrying to one item on the periphery of the display. A crude figurine, carved from an odd purple stone . . .

‘They nicked Prince out of your office?’ asked Eddie. ‘Cheeky bastards!’

‘It’s not the same one,’ Nina said. The figure was in a different pose from the primitive sculpture discovered in the Pyramid of Osiris. There was nothing to indicate why the Khoils considered it important enough to steal, or even from where it had been taken. It seemed as out of place amongst the incredible treasures around it as its near-twin had in the Egyptian god-king’s tomb . . . but the mere fact of its presence suggested there was more to the figurine - to both figurines - than met the eye.

But it was clear which treasure the Khoils thought most valuable. The centrepiece of the fantastic display was the chest from the Vault of Shiva. It was closed, but Nina found when she lifted the lid that all the stone tablets were still inside. No doubt the ancient texts had already been scanned, translated and analysed by Qexia. The Khoils had what they needed to spread their own warped interpretation of their god’s word.

She backed away. ‘We found everything - so now we need to make sure they get back to where they belong.’

‘We need to wreck that radio jammer first,’ said Eddie.

‘Sounds like your area of expertise. We’d better get moving.’ They left the vault, heading back past the unconscious guard. ‘Although I’m really not looking forward to climbing back up that ladder.’

Eddie gave her a weary smile. ‘Have to admit, I’m coming round to the idea of using the lift—’

Someone had beaten them to it.

One set of elevator doors rumbled apart - revealing Zec and Tandon. Both men pointed handguns at them, fingers tight on the triggers.

Neither Eddie nor Nina had their weapons raised. They froze. ‘Cock,’ Eddie muttered.

‘Drop the guns,’ said Zec. A half-smile as they obeyed. ‘You are really incredible, Chase. What does it take to kill you?’

‘A bullet to the head should do it,’ Tandon said, kicking the fallen MP5Ks away. He pushed his gun against Eddie’s temple. The Englishman tensed, Nina drawing in a sharp breath of fear. ‘But . . . Mr Khoil wants to see you first.’

‘Lucky us,’ said Eddie as the gun withdrew. ‘How’d he know we were here?’

Zec nodded towards the laptop. ‘It has a webcam connected to the security office. As soon as I saw the guard was not at his station, I rewound the stream. And there you were.’

‘Move,’ Tandon ordered. ‘Into the lift.’

The elevator was a wide square platform, surrounded by railings but otherwise worryingly open. Nina and Eddie unwillingly stepped aboard. While the Indian kept them at gunpoint, Zec dragged the unconscious guard into the lift. Once both men were inside, Tandon pushed a button and the doors rattled shut. With a whine of motors, the elevator began its long journey to the surface.

The ride ended at the lowest floor of the composite building. Two more armed men were waiting as the doors opened. One picked up the guard and carried him away as Zec and Tandon ushered Nina and Eddie out. ‘Up the stairs,’ said Zec, gesturing to a staircase.

The utilitarian, military-drab environment of the bottom level gave way to considerably more high-tech surroundings as they ascended. Two entire floors of the old radar station had been gutted and replaced by massive data centres, rank after rank of computer servers processing information.

‘Christ,’ said Eddie as they kept climbing. ‘All this just to play Tetris?’

‘It’s part of their plan,’ Nina realised. ‘Pramesh said he had archives storing information so it wouldn’t be lost when civilisation collapses. This must be one of them. He’s recording every bit of data that passes through the internet.’

‘Yeah, ’cause that’s what the world’ll need after the apocalypse - funny pet videos and porn.’

‘I’m sure he’ll be very selective about what survives and what “accidentally” gets lost to history.’

Zec gave them an odd look. ‘What do you mean, the apocalypse?’

Nina and Eddie exchanged glances. ‘Taking a dump during the briefing, were you?’ Eddie asked. ‘Or did they just not tell you that part?’

‘You’ve been told everything you need to know,’ Tandon said firmly to Zec as they continued upwards. The next level appeared to be living areas; the one above was the same, but more expensively appointed - the Khoils were reluctant to give up the comforts of wealth, even in the Arctic.