The Sacred Vault (44 page)

‘We still need to shut down that jammer,’ said Eddie. ‘Soon as we do, Probst can send an SOS.’

‘Or we could do it here.’ Nina moved back to the sensor unit, raising her hand to her ear to make another virtual phone call. The keypad reappeared on the screens. ‘We’ll just call—’

An earsplitting bang came from below, a shower of sparks spitting up from the stairwell with a fierce electrical crackle. Smoke spewed into the dome as all the remaining screens flickered, then went dark.

‘What the hell was that?’ Eddie yelled.

‘A transformer’s blown!’ As a child, Nina had once been evacuated from school when a faulty transformer on a neighbouring building exploded, starting a fire and knocking out the power for three blocks. The same was happening here, only on a much larger scale - and flames rose higher as she watched. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

‘How? That’s the only exit!’

She looked across to where she had slammed Vanita into the outer wall. ‘Not any more. Come on!’ She hurried over to Khoil.

‘What’re you doing?’ Eddie demanded.

‘He’s got to stand trial—’

He pointed at the blood pooling round the billionaire’s broken body. ‘He’ll be dead in five minutes without a medic, and nobody’s going to run through a fire to help this little turd. Especially not me! Besides, he believes in reincarnation, right? He can find out if he was right.’

‘But we can’t just leave him,’ Nina protested.

Khoil’s breathing became more laboured. ‘You . . . you have condemned the world to remain in the Kali Yuga,’ he spat. ‘Shiva will reward me in the next life. He will punish
you
for eternity!’

Another loud detonation from below shook the dome, a screen dropping from the support frame and smashing on the floor. The flames in the stairwell rose higher. ‘If we don’t get out of here, we’ll die with him!’ Eddie shouted. He grabbed her arm, pulling her to the steps.

She looked back at Khoil, seeing that his blank, expressionless android mask had finally been completely stripped away, leaving nothing but anger and hate. Then he was gone as they descended to the walkway, then hurried to floor level. They started for the hole in the dome wall—

‘Chase . . .’ said a low, straining voice. Eddie whirled. Zec. The mercenary was still alive - just. He had broken his neck in the fall, his head twisted round alarmingly, but the break was at a vertebra low enough for him to keep breathing. His body was limp, however, still splayed as he had landed. Paralysed.

Eddie hesitated, then went to him. ‘What’re you doing?’ said Nina, reluctantly stopping halfway to the hole in the dome. ‘If we don’t have time to get Khoil out, we don’t have time for him either!’

She was right, he knew, but the situation was different. Zec had helped them -
saved
them. Abandoning him felt wrong . . . even though attempting to get him out of the dome would probably result in them all being killed.

Zec also knew the score. ‘No, leave me,’ he whispered, before the Englishman could pick him up. ‘Just tell my family . . . that I did the right thing. Tell my son he can be . . . proud of me.’

‘I will,’ Eddie promised.

‘Thank you.’ A feeble smile. ‘I hope . . . Hugo will not be disappointed when I see him. Now, go. Go!’

Eddie backed away, giving him a nod of silent thanks before turning to follow Nina. She was already at the exposed section of dome, kicking at the fibreglass panels. He joined her, slamming his sole against one of the geodesic struts. Metal bent, then snapped under a second below. The panels shattered, freezing wind gusting round them.

The resulting hole was now large enough to fit through. Nina went first, finding herself on a narrow ledge, looking down at the composite building’s roof close to thirty feet below. ‘Whoa! It’s higher than I thought.’

There was no sign of a ladder. ‘We’ll have to jump,’ said Eddie.

‘Are you kidding? We’ll break our legs!’

Another explosive crackle of electrical fury came from behind them. ‘Well, we could just stand here and watch the aurora, but we won’t have long to appreciate it.’ He ran to one corner. ‘Here!’ he said, pointing down. Though the heat from inside the radar station had melted most of the snow off the sloping roof, the elements had still maintained a hold on some areas, a steep drift having built up against the northern wall.

‘It’s not very deep.’

‘Better than nothing!’ He clambered over the rail, hung from it . . . then dropped. There was a flat
whumph
as he hit the piled snow, followed by a string of expletives.

‘Are you okay?’ Nina called as he crawled from the drift.

‘You were right - it’s not very deep. Come on, jump down.’

She reluctantly dangled from the railing, muttering darkly before releasing her hold. The drift exploded round her as she landed, the mound of snow doing little to cushion her landing. ‘God
damn
it!’ she gasped, spitting out ice.

Eddie helped her up. ‘It’s going!’ He indicated the little windows above them. Actinic flashes from the sparking, overloading transformers stabbed through the orange flicker of flames. ‘Come on!’

Nina couldn’t see any skylights or other ways back into the building, only the jutting tops of the station’s eight blocky support legs. ‘Where?’

‘Behind that!’ He pointed at the nearest leg. ‘Get down and cover your ears!’

They rounded the structure, finding another snowdrift on its exposed side. Eddie practically threw Nina into it, diving after her—

The remaining transformers, hulking Cold War relics filled with hundreds of gallons of mineral oil coolant, exploded.

The floor of the dome erupted with liquid fire, the blast from below ripping the geodesic structure apart. Zec was killed instantly; Khoil, higher up, screamed and thrashed as the flames consumed him in his own personal funeral pyre. The walls of the central core collapsed on to the roof and smashed through it into the floors below, the burning remains of the dome tumbling down on top of the devastation.

Shielded by the support leg, Eddie and Nina were still pounded by the force of the explosion as the colossal building shook. Flaming fibreglass fragments hailed down around them. Eddie hurriedly brushed cinders from his scalp and crawled to peer round the leg, seeing the communication masts topple and crash to the ground like great steel trees. ‘I think that’s the jammer sorted out, then.’

‘And everything else,’ Nina added. ‘This whole building’s going to burn - we’ve got to . . .’ She tailed off.

‘What?’ Eddie demanded, suspecting that he wouldn’t like the answer.

‘The vault,’ she gasped. ‘We left the vault open - if the building burns down, the debris’ll fall down the elevator shaft and destroy all the treasures!’

‘So let me guess - you want us to go down there and save everything? We’ll have a sod of a job carrying that statue back to the lift!’

‘We don’t have to take anything out, just make sure they’re protected. Eddie, we
have
to,’ she went on, pleading. ‘We can’t let them be destroyed, not now. You saw how thick that door was - all we have to do is close it. Even if the building collapses, someone can still recover everything later.’

‘Yeah, and they might recover what’s left of
us
if we’re down there when it happens!’ But he saw her point. The war the Khoils had hoped for might have been averted, but if their private collection of stolen cultural treasures was destroyed, they would still get one last laugh from beyond the grave. ‘Okay, okay. But we’ll have to be quick. I don’t know how long this place’ll hold together.’

Nina stood. ‘First thing we need to do is get off this roof.’ She gingerly made her way to the edge and looked across the aurora-lit plain. Far below, several people were running for one of the smaller structures at the base’s periphery. ‘Where are they going?’

‘Emergency shelter, probably,’ said Eddie, more interested in the building on which they were standing. At one end of the roof, metal stairs led downwards: access so that the flat expanse could be checked for weather damage. ‘C’mon.’

Skirting pieces of burning debris, they ran for the stairs and descended to a short catwalk. At its end was a door; Eddie kicked it open. A narrow stairwell led down through the composite building. The air was already hazy with smoke.

They hurried down the stairs, Eddie wincing at the pain from Tandon’s beating. At the bottom, he held Nina back, feeling the door for heat on the other side, then cautiously opening it a fraction in case anyone was still in the building. But the corridor was empty. The way clear, they headed for the elevators.

Both of the cage-like cars waited at the top of the shaft. Eddie regarded them dubiously. ‘Bad idea, using a lift when there’s a fire . . . but I’m not climbing down that bloody ladder again.’ They entered one of the elevators, which began its rumbling descent into the glacier.

‘Now that the jammer’s down, how long before help gets here, do you think?’ Nina asked.

‘Couple of hours, probably.’

‘I hope Walther can hold out that long.’

‘I hope
we
can hold out that long. The Khoils are dead, but some of their staff’re still around, and they seemed pretty big on loyalty. I don’t want to have got through all this and then get shot by their pastry chef. When we—’

They both looked up sharply at a noise from above, a deep metallic groan punctuated by ominous thumps and bangs. The elevator shook, the vertical tracks rattling as the building’s weight shifted on its support legs.

‘So,’ said Eddie, hovering a hand over the emergency stop button, ‘are some bits of old junk
really
that important to the world?’ Nina glared at him. ‘Yeah, thought so.’ He stepped back - then froze as he spotted something in the adjacent shaft. ‘Shit!’

The cables of the other elevator were moving. They looked up again - and saw that the second car was descending after them. It was moving at the same speed as theirs, meaning it would arrive at the bottom some thirty seconds later. Someone leaned over the guardrail.

Vanita.

Holding a gun—

Nina and Eddie dived in different directions as she opened fire with an MP5K. They were far enough below her to be beyond the range at which the compact weapon could be aimed effectively - but she was unconcerned about accuracy, spraying the lower elevator with bullets. Rounds clanged off the metal floor like hailstones, stray shots striking the girders between the two elevator tracks.

‘Jesus!’ Nina cried, wedging herself tightly into a corner in the hope that the car’s frame would give her some protection. ‘I thought she was dead!’

‘No such luck,’ Eddie growled, doing the same on the other side. He winced as a shot ricocheted off the guardrail above him. ‘But she’ll be out of ammo any second—’

The firing stopped. Nina cautiously raised her head. ‘Yes!’

‘Unless she’s got another mag . . .’

The gunfire resumed.

‘Why do you always have to tempt fate?’ Nina shrieked, cringing back into what little cover she had as more bullets ripped into the elevator.

‘You were the one fighting her! You should’ve hit her harder!’ Eddie fired back.

The onslaught stopped. Eddie had been counting the shots; Vanita had only used about two-thirds of the gun’s thirty-round magazine. That suggested she didn’t have any more mags - but she still had more than enough ammo remaining to kill them.

They were almost at the bottom of the shaft. ‘She’ll be right behind us,’ he warned, ‘so get ready to run.’

The elevator stopped. Eddie rolled through the gate as it opened. Nina sprinted after him, a three-round burst of bullets riddling the floor just behind her.

The vault door gaped at the other end of the corridor just as they had left it, the stolen treasures visible beyond. Eddie went to the alcove containing the security station and pressed himself against the wall, planning to ambush Vanita when she arrived, but Nina waved furiously at him from the vault entrance. ‘No, get inside!’ she shouted. ‘I’ll close the door!’

‘And she’ll just open it again!’

‘At least it’ll slow her down! Come on!’

Eddie hesitated, then ran for the vault. Another rumbling boom from high above roiled down the shaft as the second elevator reached the bottom.

The gate opened. Vanita stepped out, the gun raised. The left side of her face was burned, hair singed away where flames from the exploding transformer had caught her as she fled. The other half was twisted into a snarl. She shrieked in Hindi as she fired, a blood-spitting outburst of rage and vengeance.

Eddie dived through the open door as the shots seared over him. One of the terracotta warriors was hit, a hole exploding in its chest. ‘Shut the door!’ he yelled, scrambling out of Vanita’s line of fire.

Nina hit the button on the inner control panel. With a thrum of powerful motors, the massive door began to close.

Vanita broke into a run. ‘You can’t hide! Shiva will find you!
I
will find you!’ She fired again, another burst striking the thick metal door as it swung shut. Reaching the control panel, she raised her hand to push the
Open
button—

A much louder noise from the surface, the sharp boom of an explosion - followed by crashes as debris plunged down the elevator shaft, clanging off the girders as it fell. Vanita whirled, seeing an orange light through the open gates, rapidly getting brighter—

Burning wreckage smashed into the elevator cars and burst apart on impact, a wave of fire and shrapnel surging down the confines of the concrete corridor. It hit Vanita, slamming her violently against the door as shards of wood and metal stabbed into her like flaming arrows.

Even inside the vault, the pounding sounded like an animal clawing at the metal. Nina jumped in shock, then slapped her hand firmly back on the
Close
button. But the door showed no signs of moving. Eddie stood and went to her. ‘I don’t think she’s coming in.’