Gunfire above. Eddie glanced up to see Paris return fire at an attacker on the roof as the militia started to descend from the second hole. ‘The nearest sounds good!’ More men lowered themselves from the first set of ropes. ‘Fortune, hurry up or they’ll cut you off!’
Fortune fired at the rappellers, one falling with a scream that was abruptly truncated as he hit the cave floor. ‘Running low on ammo!’
‘Me too!’ added Paris as he sent a couple of shots at the other opening.
‘Some extra mags down here!’ Eddie shouted, pointing at the bodies below. He and Nina crossed the last bridge and headed as quickly as they could for the first tier of buildings.
Movement below it: Brice, at the Shamir chamber’s entrance. The Yorkshireman halted sharply to take aim—
Nina, unprepared for his sudden stop, ran into him as he pulled the trigger. The Magnum round blasted a chunk of stone from the wall beside the British agent. His countryman reacquired his target and fired again, but Brice had already darted into the opening. ‘Bollocks! Not your fault,’ Eddie quickly reassured her as he moved again.
‘Are you going to go after him?’ she asked.
‘No time.’ It would be touch and go whether everyone reached the terrace before the rappelling militia touched down.
He jumped the last few stairs to the cavern floor. The village spread out before them, a ghostly maze in the shafts of half-light. ‘Where’s the nearest drain?’
Nina had hoped the drainage tunnels — if that was what they were — would be evenly distributed, but the closest she could see was above the next tier down, unreachable without scaling the rock face. ‘Dammit! It’s on the other side of the village.’
‘Come on.’ He ran for one of the narrow alleys between the little structures.
‘That one’s closer!’ said Nina of another.
‘A guy fell over here,’ Eddie countered. They raced along the confined street. It zigzagged, the dwellings seemingly not constructed to any orderly plan, but he soon saw what he had hoped for. ‘There!’
The broken corpse of one of the Insekt Posse was slumped over a roof, his lower jaw mashed grotesquely up into his mouth. Nina grimaced as Eddie dragged him to the ground. A rapid check of the rifle on his back proved it had withstood the fall far better than its owner. ‘Take this,’ he said, giving Nina the golden revolver as he hefted the AK.
A burst of bullets fired from above struck nearby rooftops like deadly hailstones. Eddie and Nina flattened themselves against a wall, then ran again. A side alley gave them a glimpse of the lower level — and the men on the ropes descending towards it.
‘Eddie, keep going!’ cried Fortune, trailing his group across the final bridge. More shots came from the palace’s roof, Paris and Ziff firing back to force the snipers to retreat. ‘We will be right behind you!’
‘So will they,’ Nina said in alarm. More figures dropped from the roof, descending spider-like on their lines.
As if that were not bad enough, now gunfire came from a new direction. The Insekt Posse had made it through Solomon’s challenges. ‘Shit, we’re gonna get swarmed,’ Eddie said. ‘We’ve got to find that way out!’
The alley opened out into a small square. A stone bowl surrounded by oil casks sat in its centre, other streets angling out of it. ‘Which way?’ asked Nina.
‘Think there was another dead guy down here,’ Eddie said, heading for one passage.
Nina started after him, but stopped as she heard Howie shout her name. She turned to see the young man breathlessly enter the square, still clutching the laptop. ‘Wait, wait!’ he gasped.
‘We can’t!’ she replied. More rifle shots echoed down the cavern, a round ricocheting off a nearby building. ‘Come on!’
She followed Eddie, Howie in her wake. The light from the first hole in the roof made it easier to negotiate the confined alleyways — but it also made them easier to see from above. Bullets smacked against stone—
A high-pitched cry from behind — Lydia. ‘Jesus, she’s hit!’ shouted Fisher.
‘It just clipped her arm!’ Ziff quickly responded. ‘She’s okay.’
The New Zealander replied with a screech of both pain and anger. ‘That’s easy for you to say!’
‘Move, quickly!’ Fortune snapped. ‘Eddie, we are almost at the bottom.’
‘So are the militia!’ warned Paris.
Eddie scrambled on to a nearby roof. He spun to take in the whole cavern — and did not like what he saw. The first wave of Insekt Posse coming from the palace roof had just reached the ground, with more on the way, and the group descending from the tunnels were now on the second bridge. The expedition was outnumbered at least four-to-one — and outgunned by a much greater ratio. ‘Get to the tunnels!’ he yelled as he jumped back down. ‘Get out of here — just run!’
24
Brice heard Eddie’s shout from inside the Chamber of the Shamir. ‘Yes, you run, Chase,’ he said with a smirk. ‘We’ll see how far you get.’
He had removed the lead box’s lid to examine the Shamir. If it was reacting to the infusion of daylight into the chasm, he couldn’t tell — the growing vibration of the much larger mineral deposit in the mine was overpowering anything he could feel from its child — but his primary concern was that it was intact and undamaged.
It was. And it was his.
Other shouts outside. ‘In here!’ he called in French.
Three members of the Insekt Posse ran in. ‘Le Fauchet!’ shouted one. ‘Where are—’
The trio froze as they saw their leader slumped dead. Horror turned to fury, guns coming up to exact vengeance — but Brice was prepared. ‘They killed him,’ he gasped, feigning shock. ‘They murdered Philippe! The bald one executed him, right in front of me — and he would have killed me too if you hadn’t blown the roof!’
The militia men stared at him, unsure what to do. All three were obviously on drugs, eyes red — and minds dulled. Mukobo himself never used, Brice knew, but ensuring a ready supply for his men kept them both loyal and unthinking. ‘They’re getting away!’ he went on, taking advantage of their confusion. ‘You’ve got to make them pay for killing Le Fauchet! Cut them up, butcher them like pigs!’
One seemed less addled than the others, hostility in his eyes as he glared at the MI6 agent. Brice felt a moment of worry that the African either didn’t believe or didn’t care that he wasn’t responsible for Mukobo’s death… but then the other two ran from the chamber, shouting to their comrades. The last man gave him a nasty look, then followed.
Brice turned back to the Shamir. Once Chase and the others were dead, the only people other than himself who knew the ancient relic’s power would be a gang of drug-crazed savages — a small smile both at the use of the politically incorrect term and his certainty that it was entirely justified — whose wild stories about a magic stone that could destroy buildings would never be believed.
That suited him perfectly. A plan had developed in his mind after he witnessed what the Shamir could do, and ironically, by killing Mukobo Eddie Chase had made it possible.
He replaced the lid and took hold of the box. The combination of dense stone and lead plates made it a strain to lift, but it was still portable. And he only had to carry it as far as the boats. After that, he could use the satellite phone to call his contacts and get both the Shamir and himself out of the country…
He hauled the casket towards the exit as gunfire resumed outside.
‘Go, let’s go!’ Eddie yelled as he hurriedly backed through an alleyway. Nina and Howie were ahead of him, Fortune and his group on a parallel path.
But the Insekt Posse were closing in.