‘They will,’ insisted Kit. ‘I wouldn’t be a part of this if I didn’t believe it would help the world.’
Stikes rattled the case. ‘But they need these first, don’t they?’
Sophia glanced back at the blond man watching from the top of the steps. ‘There was a suggestion – not mine, I’ll point out – that we should take them from you by force.’
Stikes gave her a lupine smile. ‘That would be a bad idea.’
‘I know. We used a thermal scanner to see who else was here before landing. Mikkel is very good, but I doubt even he could pick off all three of your men before they killed us.’
‘He’d be lucky to draw his—’ Stikes broke off abruptly. ‘
Three
men?’
Sophia responded in kind to his sudden concern. ‘What is it?’
‘I only have
two
men.’
‘Then who’s the third?’
‘Ay up,’ said a Yorkshire voice.
The trio whirled to see Eddie climb on to the catwalk, carrying a SCAR. Mikkel’s hand flashed into his jacket to draw a gun – but Eddie had already whipped the rifle up and fired. The blond man collapsed, two bullet wounds in his chest.
The SCAR came back to the three people on the walkway. ‘So,’ said Eddie, advancing, ‘interesting little meeting. My ex-comrade, my ex-wife, and,’ a searing glare at Kit, ‘my ex-friend.’
‘Eddie, this isn’t what you think,’ said Kit, raising his hands. ‘Interpol authorised me to make a deal with Stikes for—’
‘Shut up!’
Eddie roared. Kit flinched. ‘Don’t give me any more of your fucking lies and bullshit. You’ve been working with him the whole time to get those fucking statues – and you killed Mac for them!’
Silence, Kit frozen with an expression of shocked guilt. Stikes finally broke it. ‘McCrimmon’s dead? What a shame.’
Eddie’s mouth tightened with anger. He snapped up the rifle and fired. Stikes’s beret flew off and disappeared into the darkness. The mercenary staggered, dropping the case and clutching his head as blood ran down his face.
‘You missed?’ said Sophia, affecting casualness as she recovered from the shock of the gunshot. ‘Not like you, Eddie.’
‘I don’t miss what I’m aiming at from this range,’ he growled.
Stikes felt the wound. The bullet had carved a deep gash in his scalp, red spreading through his fair hair like ink on tissue paper. ‘That was a mistake, Chase. If you want to kill me, you should have done it then. You’ll never get another chance.’
He stared at the other former SAS man, anticipation growing as he waited for the crack of a distant rifle, an explosion of blood and bone . . .
His expectancy faded. Nothing happened.
‘Oh, were you waiting for one of your sniper mates to shoot me?’ asked Eddie sarcastically. He held up the SCAR. ‘Got this off the bloke on top of the tank. And I killed the guy on the cliffs over there before I got here. You’re getting sloppy, Stikes, putting your men in the most obvious positions.’ A gesture with the rifle. ‘Okay. Weapons. Chuck ’em.’
Stikes reluctantly pulled the Jericho from his holster and tossed it past Eddie, where it hit the machinery below the catwalk with a dull clank. Eddie moved the gun on to Kit. ‘I’m unarmed,’ he said.
Eddie nodded; the Indian wouldn’t have had the opportunity to acquire a new weapon. The SCAR lined up on Sophia. ‘So am I,’ she said.
Her ex-husband gave her an irritated look. Sophia sighed and reached into her coat, drawing out a matt-black Glock 36 compact pistol, which she dropped over the edge of the walkway. There was something odd about her left hand, Eddie noticed; some of her fingers seemed unnaturally stiff inside the leather glove. And looking more closely, besides the scar, there was something different about her face: her cheekbones looked sharper, the line of her nose more curved. Had she had plastic surgery?
‘So, what are you going to do now, Eddie?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to kill us?’
‘Him?’ said Eddie, nodding towards Stikes. ‘Yeah. For what he did to Nina. You, I haven’t decided yet. Since I already thought you’d died twice, might have to make it third time lucky – but I wouldn’t mind seeing you back in prison either.’ He rounded on Kit. ‘As for you, though . . . Is
should
kill you. But first, I want to know why. Why did you do it – why shoot Mac? Why?’
Despite the cold wind blowing down from the hills, Kit was sweating. ‘I didn’t want to do it, Eddie, you have to believe me. But he didn’t give me any choice. He was going to destroy the helicopter – and the statues.’ His eyes flickered towards the fallen case.
‘The statues,’ Eddie echoed quietly – before suddenly erupting. ‘Those fucking statues! Am I the only one who doesn’t put all this stupid archaeological shit above people’s
lives
? What’s so important about the fucking things?’ He aimed the rifle at the case. ‘Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow them to fucking pieces right now.’
He noticed Sophia tense – she had a reason, at least. But Kit spoke first, taking a step closer with his hands spread, almost pleading. ‘I . . . I can’t tell you, Eddie. I wish I could. But it’ll change the world. We have to have the statues. For . . . for the sake of all humanity.’
Eddie regarded him for a moment . . . then his eyes narrowed. ‘Not good enough.’ His finger tensed on the trigger—
Bright lights washed over him.
He looked round. Another car was pulling up beside Kit’s—
The instant of distraction gave the Indian an opening. Kit leapt at him, one hand grabbing the SCAR and shoving it away from the case. Eddie fired, a burst of bullets twanging off the pipework below. Stikes jumped away from the line of fire, Sophia hurriedly taking cover behind him.
With both hands on the rifle, Eddie couldn’t defend against a punch that jarred his vision. He and Kit grappled for control of the SCAR, lurching back along the catwalk. The gun’s ejection port was facing the Interpol officer; Eddie pulled the trigger again, more rounds ripping into the pumping machinery - and showering Kit’s face and neck with searing cartridge casings.
Kit shrieked and jerked back, still trying to wrest away the SCAR. Another burst of fire, but this time the spent brass sprayed over his shoulder as he forced the gun upwards. Eddie kicked at his legs, trying to trip him—
A shrill screech came from a pipe below, followed by an earth-shaking thud and a thunderous roar of flame.
The bullets had damaged one of the pumps, gas escaping through a cracked valve . . . and igniting as more red-hot rounds flashed through it.
Nina and Macy exited the taxi – and jumped in shock as an explosion rattled the vehicle, a fireball boiling skywards from the pumping station. Beneath it, a forty-foot-long line of fire blasted out almost horizontally from the machinery, the force of the flame seething against a complex knot of pipes.
Stikes and Sophia recoiled from the heat. The two fighting men were almost directly over the burning gas jet – which was acting like a blowtorch, slicing into the neighbouring pump’s pipework.
‘Time to leave, I think,’ said Sophia. She reached for the case – but Stikes was quicker. The former soldier snatched it up and opened it, moving as if to tip its contents over the guardrail.
‘Do we have a deal?’ he demanded. ‘Because if not, I’m going to throw these things into the fire and get the hell out of here before this whole place goes up!’
Sophia gave him a sour look, then nodded. ‘We have a deal.’
‘Excellent. Then I’d appreciate a lift!’ He looked at the helicopter, which was already rising from an idle to takeoff revolutions as its pilot realised the danger.
‘Well, it does seem that I have a spare seat.’ She hurried up the steps with Stikes behind her, passing Mikkel’s body without a second glance.
Racing through the open gate, Nina saw someone jump into the helicopter. A man, blond hair standing out in the firelight: Stikes? The brief glimpse wasn’t enough for her to be sure.
Macy, behind her, looked fearfully around the compound. ‘Do you see Eddie or Kit?’
Dismay filled Nina’s voice. ‘Oh, yeah. I see them.’
‘Where?’
She pointed above the flame as she ran faster. ‘Take a guess!’
The detonation had knocked both Eddie and Kit down – with the Indian landing on top. He threw another punch at Eddie’s face, knocking the Yorkshireman’s head back against the walkway’s grillework floor. Eddie’s grip slackened, and Kit managed to prise one of his hands off the SCAR. He struck at the Englishman’s face again, bloodying his mouth, then rolled back on to his haunches, pulling the gun with him.
He turned the bulky weapon round, pointing it at the man who had been his friend—
The conflict in his mind made him hesitate, just for a split second. He didn’t want to do this, but he
had
to – Eddie had deduced the truth of what happened to Mac, had seen him with Stikes and Sophia Blackwood. It was the only way to maintain his cover at Interpol and prevent anyone else from learning of his involvement with the Group.
The only way
, he told himself. Finger on the trigger—
One of Eddie’s legs lashed upwards, striking the rifle just as it fired. Two shots exploded from the barrel, whipping just above his head – then the SCAR clicked impotently, its magazine empty.
Eddie didn’t hear it; the gunshots, practically in his face, had left him deafened and half blind from the flash of the muzzle flame. But he could still see well enough to slam his other foot hard against Kit’s chest. Kit fell backwards, head smacking against the guardrail.
Spitting out blood, Eddie kicked the other man again before using the railing to pull himself to his feet. The heat from the flame jet was like standing at an open oven.
He looked along the catwalk. Stikes and Sophia were gone - as was the case containing the statues. The chopper was at full power, about to take off. No way he could stop them from escaping.
That left Kit.
Even as part of his mind protested at leaving Mac’s killer unpunished, Eddie knew he would have to bring Kit in alive. He was the only link to whatever the hell was going on, the only way to learn the truth behind the Scot’s murder. He grabbed Kit by his black hair and slammed his head against the railing again, then hauled him upright—
A sudden noise, loud enough to break through even his addled hearing. Straining metal, something giving way under immense heat and pressure . . .
Nina was almost at a ladder up to the catwalk, Macy a few yards behind, when a very threatening sound made her stop abruptly. ‘Get back!’ she shouted, turning and diving to the ground—
The damaged pump exploded.
Shattered sections of pipe were thrown hundreds of feet into the air as a pillar of fire blasted skywards like an erupting volcano. The entire facility shook, the noise of burning gas a jet-engine roar as it sucked in air to feed the conflagration. The explosion was powerful enough even to jolt the helicopter as it took to the sky and wheeled away.
Eddie’s slowly recovering hearing had been obliterated again – but that was the least of his worries. The new geyser of flame was forty feet away, but he didn’t need to touch it to be burned. The combined heat from it and the ruptured pipe below was horrific. He could feel his exposed skin stinging, his hair scorching.
But worse was to come. The walkway juddered, joints snapping—
The world suddenly rolled around him, a whole section of catwalk giving way like a giant hinge. He fell, hitting the guardrail – which broke. Nothing below but the blazing gas—
He jerked to a painful stop as one of the severed rail’s stanchions speared through his flapping leather jacket, almost wrenching his shoulder from its socket. Six inches to the side, and it would have gone through his chest. Eddie hung helplessly, dangling only feet above the line of flame . . . then with an agonising effort managed to twist and claw the fingers of his right hand into the grated floor.
The catwalk was tilted at a seventy-degree angle. Eddie pulled himself higher, shrugging his left arm out of his ruined jacket and finding a secure hold with that hand before tugging the other sleeve inside out to free himself. Something dropped from one of the pockets.
His father’s business card, still in its evidence bag. It landed in the fire and was instantly incinerated.
He would go the same way if he didn’t move fast. The grillwork cutting into his fingers, he hauled himself up until he could stand on the support, and looked round. An intact section of the walkway was six feet away in one direction; in the other . . .
Kit hung from the catwalk’s edge, his feet closer to the flame jet than Eddie’s had been. He struggled to climb, but couldn’t get a firm enough grip.
His panicked eyes met Eddie’s.
The Englishman hesitated, looking across to the nearby catwalk, and safety . . . then he stepped across to the next stanchion to reach Kit.
Ears ringing, Nina sat up to see a spear of fire at least a hundred feet high roaring into the dark sky. Smaller blazes were already spreading across the pumping station as debris fell all around like burning hailstones.