‘What, so now we’re even more outnumbered?’ Nina said unhappily. ‘Great!’
The sound of gunfire reached them — Kalashnikovs on single shot against similar rifles on full auto. Another grenade exploded, the detonation ringing through the tunnels. Now the militia had explosives, it would take more than a few boulders to form a defensible position — and Eddie wasn’t even sure if there was anywhere inside the palace that could be defended.
They had to try, though. He and Nina hurried across the lowest bridge. He glanced down — and saw Brice climbing from the mine. He couldn’t spare the time to take a shot at him, though. ‘Buggeration and fuckery!’
Nina looked to see what had drawn his ire. She spotted the British agent — but then saw something else, newly revealed in the light from on high. A faint mark on the rock, perfectly level, ran all the way around the chasm’s walls just above the upper tier of buildings. Water, she realised; the residue of flooding, long-drained. But had it escaped naturally over time, or…
The thought was interrupted by another gunshot — from overhead. Howie yelped in fright as a bullet struck the cliff near him.
Silhouettes appeared in the hole in the roof. More shots cracked downwards. ‘Whoa!’ Nina gasped as a round whipped past. ‘Now what do we do?’
‘Get into cover,’ Eddie said. They reached the next ascending ledge cut into the rock face, the overhang partially shielding them. He flattened himself against the wall and sidestepped upwards, Nina following. ‘Dunno how the fuck we’ll—’
He broke off as a rope dropped from the hole and uncoiled into the buildings below. It fell still — then juddered as someone began to climb down it.
Eddie leaned out to see a militia man with an AK slung over his back making a clumsy descent. A second rope made the long fall from the hole’s other end. ‘That bastard Brice,’ he growled as he continued upwards. ‘He was just buying time for them to plant the explosives and get ready for an assault!’
A shout came from the uppermost ledge. ‘Eddie!’ cried Ziff. ‘Nina! They’ve broken in!’
‘Yeah, I noticed!’ the Yorkshireman shouted back. ‘You got ammo left?’
‘Yes!’
‘So bloody use it!’
The Israeli took the hint, aiming at the first of the descending men. He hesitated when he found his target, the Congolese completely defenceless as he lowered himself, but the sight of both the Kalashnikov on his back and a savage machete hanging from his belt brought home the threat. Ziff fired, sending the man screaming to the rocky ground far below.
The second man hurriedly wound his rope around one wrist before fumbling for a pistol with the other. Ziff took aim — only to duck behind a wall as someone on the roof sprayed shots at him.
One shattered a cask of oil, splashing its contents across the ledge — and igniting them. The archaeologist gasped, scrambling out of cover to escape the flaming liquid.
The man on the rope brought up his handgun—
Two bullet holes burst open in his chest as Paris rushed from the passageway, his rifle propped in the crook of his right arm. The militia man tumbled after his late comrade, smacking on to the roof of a building below.
Ziff found less fiery cover. ‘Good shot,’ he told his rescuer.
The scruffy little man gave him a dark smile. ‘I’m left-handed.’
Fortune emerged from the passage, firing two shots at the ruptured roof. One struck a sagging block at the hole’s edge — and the other a man lying on top of it, smashing his shoulder. He shrieked, flopping face down as his arm gave way — and the jolt caused the lead sheet supporting the stone to split. The carved block fell away, the wounded man following it into the darkness below.
The other Insekt Posse around the opening hurriedly withdrew as more stones ground ominously against each other. ‘They’re pulling back!’ Fortune shouted.
The documentary team arrived behind him. Rivero was still filming, Lydia equally unwilling to abandon her own equipment. ‘That’s not gonna help us!’ the cameraman objected. ‘There’s no way out of here!’
Eddie halted at the end of a bridge, assessing the situation. The militia above had retreated, but would come back the moment they realised the remaining blocks were holding in place. ‘Fortune! How many behind you?’
‘At least ten,’ the African replied.
‘How long before they catch up?’
Even from a distance, he could see Fortune’s gold-tinted smile. ‘It could be some time. We reset the traps.’
‘At least two guys got squashed in the first one,’ Paris added.
‘Best thing to do to an Insekt,’ said Eddie. ‘But if we can’t go back that way, I don’t have a fucking clue how we’re going to get out. Short of climbing those ropes,’ he gestured at the two dangling lines, ‘and it’s a long-arse climb!’
‘Eddie, wait,’ Nina said urgently. ‘There might be another way out!’ She pointed at the bottom of the chasm. ‘The drainage tunnels come out on the cliff, above the river — the waterfalls are fed by them.’
‘Maybe, but there’s one little problem — they’re full of water! And the waterfalls are fifty, sixty feet high. The fall’d kill us.’
‘I think there are more tunnels, higher up.’ She indicated the tide mark. ‘There, you see?’
Eddie peered down. Beyond the upper tier of buildings was a patch of blackness that could have been a tunnel entrance — or nothing more than a shadowed recess. ‘If it’s higher up in the cave, it’ll come out even higher on the cliff.’
‘I know, it’s a risk. But if we stay in here, sooner or later we’ll run out of bullets — and then they’ll massacre us.’
‘Okay, we’ll try it,’ he reluctantly said, before shouting: ‘Get down to the village! There might be a way out through the drainage tunnels!’
‘Might be?’ wailed Lydia.
‘You can bloody stay here if you want! But it’s the only chance we’ve got.’
‘He is right,’ Fortune said firmly. ‘Everyone, across the bridge. Quickly!’
Panting, Howie reversed direction. ‘Great, just… ran all the way up here, now gotta… run all the way back down!’
‘What about Brice?’ Nina asked Eddie as they hurried back. ‘He’s still down there.’
Her husband hefted the revolver. ‘If I see him, I’ll shoot him. Pretty simple.’
Fortune took up the rearguard position as his group headed downwards. ‘I can hear them in the tunnels,’ he warned. ‘They must have made it through the traps — if any were with Mukobo when we first came down, they would know how to beat them.’
‘If we got a couple of ’em, that’s still a help,’ Eddie called back to him as they crossed another bridge. ‘The less we have—’
Another explosion ripped through the palace’s roof.
Everyone ducked as gritty debris showered them, stone blocks plummeting past to explode on the cavern floor. Eddie looked up at the new rent overhead. The Insekt Posse reinforcements had this time planted their explosives with considerably less precision. The hole was bigger and more ragged than its predecessor, a loose block slowly bending the lead beneath it before falling away.
But this did not deter the militia. Ropes were hurled through the second opening. A third line also dropped from the original hole, armed figures crouching at its edge to cover those about to descend. ‘There’s more coming — go, go!’ cried Eddie.
Nina looked down at the terraces as they hurried deeper. ‘I think there’s more than one drainage tunnel,’ she said. ‘So which do we take?’