Her eyes widened. ‘Macy, grab on!’ she cried—
Eddie kicked away the stone.
Freed at last, the weight of the large cylindrical block pulled the chain through the pulley - and turned the cogwheels.
Nina and Macy wrapped their arms round the bridge as the cogs’ teeth bashed at the protrusions on each side of the stone beam, making it jolt violently. Hashem, furthest from the pounding wheel, staggered, then dropped his gun and dived for the far ledge. He caught the edge, scrabbling for grip.
Kralj was not so lucky. Caught completely off guard, he plunged down the shaft with a terrified, echoing scream. Behind Macy, two troopers were thrown into the void, a third man desperately trying to hang on before he too disappeared into the darkness below.
The last man on the bridge managed to throw himself backwards, colliding with Eddie and Diamondback and sending the remainder of the group tumbling down the sloping passage. Eddie shoved the man off him and kicked Diamondback in the stomach. ‘Nina!’ he yelled as he jumped up. ‘Get across, get out!’
She was already edging forwards, Macy following. ‘What about you?’ Nina shouted back. ‘Come on!’
But his end of the bridge was rocking too forcefully for him to get on. Instead, he slammed a boot into the cultist’s stomach and looked for his gun. The MP7 had landed near the edge of the ledge. He lunged for it—
Diamondback’s revolver boomed. The American’s shot was wild - but it was close enough. The bullet ripped a fingertip-sized chunk of flesh out of Eddie’s muscular forearm. He roared in pain and clutched the wound, any thought of grabbing the gun forgotten as he wavered on the edge.
‘Eddie!’ Nina screamed.
‘Get out of here!’ he shouted. ‘Get the jar!’
She looked round, and saw Hashem clinging to the ledge a few feet away. The case was still on his back. She scrambled to solid ground and stood before the trooper. He had managed to pull his shoulders above the shaft’s lip, but with the bulky case affecting his centre of gravity he was having trouble finding enough purchase to climb higher.
‘Gimme the case and I’ll pull you up!’ Nina cried. She reached for the container, finding it was firmly attached to his equipment webbing. Thinking he wouldn’t be so dumb as to fight her from his precarious position, she pulled at it—
He grabbed her ankle.
‘You gotta be kidding me!’ she said.
He leered up at her and gripped her ankle with his other hand, getting enough leverage to twist her leg out from under her. She stumbled, landing on her backside. He clamped one hand round her calf.
Macy reached the end of the bridge and jumped up to kick at his arms. ‘Let her go!’
‘No, get the case!’ Nina said. She drew back her other foot, her eyes meeting the cultist’s. ‘Don’t make me do this.’
His only reply was a look of angry determination as he hauled himself higher, fingers digging painfully into her leg.
Her expression hardened. ‘Your choice.’
She smashed her boot into his face. Hashem’s head snapped back, and his hands slipped down her leg - then closed vice-like round her ankle once more, his weight pulling her towards the edge.
Macy grabbed the case, but couldn’t get it free of the webbing. She yanked at the straps, trying to release them.
Nina kicked again, the crack as his nose broke loud enough to be heard even over the booby-trap’s pounding. ‘Get!’ she yelled, punctuating each word with another strike. ‘Off! Me! You! Asshole!’
Even through his pain, Hashem clung with the strength of the fanatical. He kept wrenching at Nina’s leg, every tug bringing her closer to the vertiginous shaft.
Another kick, and one hand slipped free - only for him to reach to the webbing on his chest and pull a knife from a sheath, preparing to stab the blade into Nina’s leg—
She kicked him again.
Not in the face, but on his other hand.
The pain as her boot heel hit her shin was intense - but it was nothing compared to the snap of a broken finger. The knife clanged to the floor as the cultist finally screamed, whipping away as gravity pulled him over the edge . . . just as Macy released the clip securing the webbing. He slipped through the harness and vanished into the void, shrieking all the way down.
Macy fell on her butt, dropping the case at the edge of the shaft. Heart racing, Nina looked across the bucking bridge. Diamondback held the wounded Eddie at gunpoint as the rest of the group struggled upright.
Shaban would use Eddie as a hostage, she knew, forcing her to surrender the canopic jar in exchange for his life . . . then kill him anyway. The same would happen if she kicked the case into the shaft.
There was only one possible choice she could make. It was the same choice Eddie had made in a similar situation not long after they first met, only with the players reversed. If she wanted to save him . . .
She had to abandon him.
Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the fallen knife and yanked the case off the floor by its harness straps. ‘We gotta go!’
Macy stared at her in shock. ‘But Eddie—’
‘Run!’ Clutching the case, she sprinted into the passage. Macy gave Eddie a desperate look - then ran after Nina at the sight of guns coming up. Bullets blasted chunks out of the stonework behind her.
Shaban was red with rage. ‘Kill them! Kill them!’ he screamed, grabbing an MP7 from one of his men to unleash the remainder of the magazine himself. But the women were gone. With an incoherent scream of pure fury, he hurled the weapon to the floor so hard that its plastic handgrip cover shattered. Fists balled, he looked up and saw Eddie.
For a moment, the Englishman thought he was going to throw him off the ledge personally, before some semblance of self-control returned. ‘Shoot him!’ Shaban ordered. Diamondback grinned.
‘Sebak, wait!’ shouted Khaleel. Diamondback hesitated at the officer’s bark of authority as Shaban whipped round to glare at his unexpected challenger. ‘You can use him to bargain for the jar. She won’t destroy it as long as she thinks she can get him back.’
Shaban took several long, deep breaths, still shaking with volcanic anger. ‘You’re right,’ he finally said. ‘Thank you for stopping me, my friend.’
‘I always had your best interests in mind. And mine, of course,’ he added with a small smile.
‘So we’re not gonna kill him?’ Diamondback sounded disappointed.
‘Of course we are,’ Shaban growled. ‘When we have the jar.’
‘I’ll live to be a hundred, then,’ said Eddie, holding his wounded arm. ‘You’ll never catch her. She’ll get back to Abydos, tell the Egyptian government what’s happened . . . and then you, mate, will be fucked.’
‘I don’t think so.’ The faintest hint of amusement creased Shaban’s scarred face as the chain finally jolted to a stop. The remaining troopers rushed across the bridge. ‘You don’t know how we got here, do you?’
‘What the hell is that?’ Macy gasped as she and Nina climbed a ladder out of the pyramid and ran to the Land Rover, squinting in the brightness of the desert sun.
‘Bad news.’ About a hundred yards away was an enormous military hovercraft, its forward landing ramp lowered and gaping like a huge dull-witted mouth. Khaleel had provided Shaban with more than moral support. ‘But if we can get to the canyon, there’s no way it’ll be able to follow us.’ Nina climbed behind the wheel and put the case on the centre seat, shoving the knife back into the sheath on the harness.
Macy got in the other side. ‘But what about Eddie?’ she protested as Nina started the engine. ‘They’ll kill him - they might have killed him already!’