Beyond them was an open metal door - and a flight of stairs leading up. It was where Eddie and Nina had been brought into the tiger preserve, the passage to the first bunker off to one side.
Waving Nina back, he rounded the corner, gun aimed at the stairs. Some of the goats backed away from him - then stopped, unwilling to go further.
Was someone hiding in the doorway? Was that what was scaring them?’
Eddie moved past the stacks of supplies, quickly checking that nobody was lurking behind them before crouching for a better view up the stairs. No one in sight. ‘I think it’s clear.’
Nina warily rounded the corner - then froze at a faint squeak of wood from the farthest stack of crates. ‘Eddie!’
He looked round - but at her, not the sound. ‘What?’
Singh leapt from atop the crates and slammed him to the ground.
The goats scattered, one of them almost knocking Nina over as it barrelled past. By the time she recovered and brought up her gun, Eddie and Singh were grappling on the floor, too intertwined for her to shoot without risking hitting her husband.
The Dalit was on top of Eddie, hand clenched round his gun arm. Eddie twisted his wrist and fired. The USP’s muzzle flame scorched the back of Singh’s neck, but the bullet missed him, cracking off the wall. Singh yelled, then lunged with rage-driven strength - and bit Eddie’s forearm.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Eddie roared as the sharpened teeth sank into his flesh. The pain was so intense that he couldn’t keep hold of the gun. It clanked across the floor. Singh grabbed for it, but couldn’t reach without releasing his animalistic hold on Eddie’s arm. He opened his mouth, blood running down his chin as he groped for the USP once more.
Nina kicked it away just before his fingers closed on the butt. She jumped back as the clawing hand snatched at her legs. ‘Eddie, what do I do?’
‘Fucking shoot him!’
‘I’ll hit you!’
Eddie struggled, managing to land a punch against Singh’s side. In response, the wiry maniac jerked up a knee at his groin. Eddie did his best to twist away, but was still caught a painful enough blow to make him flinch involuntarily - giving Singh an opening. He drove his fist and forearm down into a hammer blow on Eddie’s face, cracking his skull against the unyielding concrete floor.
Eddie’s vision jarred, unnatural colours silently exploding over Singh’s face as the blood-dripping grin widened and dropped towards his throat. He willed Nina to jam her gun against the other man’s head and pull the trigger - but she was no longer there.
He felt Singh’s breath on his neck, the razor teeth about to tear into his throat.
19
Singh suddenly felt breath on his neck.
He looked round - and the tiger that had followed the scent of blood and the bleating of frightened animals into the bunker ripped its mighty fangs deep into the throat of its unsuspecting prey before he could even scream. The huge predator dragged the flailing Indian across the floor, slashing at his abdomen with its claws.
Nina had run backwards in pure reflexive fear when she saw the tiger. Heart slamming like a pneumatic drill, she pulled the bloodied Eddie away from the carnage. ‘Come on, we gotta move.’
‘You’re not kidding!’ he said, seeing the tiger tear out Singh’s throat. The fearful symmetry of its face was marred by a gush of bright red blood. ‘Where’s my gun?’
‘Here.’ She retrieved his USP.
He was about to fire it to scare away the tiger when someone shouted in Hindi from the stairs. ‘Cover your ears,’ he said, pulling Nina away from the exit, past the tiger and its quivering meal. The yellow eyes stared coldly at them with the promise that they would be next, but it didn’t move to attack.
Nina put her hands to her head as Eddie raised the gun. He aimed - not at the tiger, but the floor behind it. The first booming gunshot sent stinging chips of concrete at its rear legs. It dropped Singh’s body, whirling to face them with a snarl of fury.
Eddie fired again, and again, each shot blasting little craters out of the floor at the tiger’s feet. Overcome by the noise and the painful insect-bites of shrapnel, it turned and fled.
Up the stairs.
The shouts above quickly turned to screams. ‘Okay, sounds like they’re busy,’ said Eddie. ‘If anyone gets between you and the door, shoot ’em!’
They hurried up the stairs. Someone fired a shot, only for a voice as enraged as the tiger to yell at them: Vanita. More screams, then a loud crash followed.
Eddie reached the top to see that the tiger had pounced on one of the guards, knocking over a table. Other people were fleeing out of the main doors and up the stairs to the observation level. A guard cowering behind a workbench saw him and whipped up his gun, but a single shot from the USP sent him tumbling with a bloody hole in his forehead.
Nina spotted Vanita halfway up the stairs, screeching orders for someone to get a tranquilliser gun. Her husband was higher up, watching the chaos with an unbelieving expression - which changed to fear as he saw Nina point her gun towards him. She didn’t know if she could have pulled the trigger, but the threat was enough; he turned and ran out of sight to the upper floor.
‘Nina!’ Eddie pointed to the doors. ‘Go!’ He took down another armed guard before they both burst out into the open, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Where now?’
‘We can drive out of here,’ said Nina. She ran to a nearby golf cart.
‘In that?’
‘There’s a garage under the palace - we can get something faster.’ She climbed into the driving seat, Eddie jumping aboard behind her and pointing his gun back at the doors, although another scream from the building suggested that the tiger was still everyone’s biggest concern.
Nina stamped the accelerator to the floor. The golf cart lurched away, electric motors whining as it powered up to its top speed of twenty miles an hour. ‘It’s not exactly a Ferrari, is it?’ Eddie complained.
‘It’s better than running. Just.’ She guided the cart down the road to the palace. Even at its less-than-scorching pace, it still covered the distance in just over a minute. The ramp to the garage was off to one side - but she swerved away from it, heading for one of the doors into the huge house itself.
‘Where are we going?’ Eddie demanded.
‘The Codex - we need to find it.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’
‘I know where it is,’ she insisted, stopping and jumping from the cart. With a noise of frustration, Eddie ran ahead, kicking open the door and darting through with his gun raised.
The hallway was clear. They hurried inside. ‘Where’re we going?’
‘The infotarium.’
‘The what?’
‘Khoil’s name, not mine.’ They reached the high-tech room, where Nina held back again as Eddie burst in, confirming that nobody was inside before nodding for her to enter.
The lights were low, the sphere of screens displaying stylised clouds. Nina ran to the desk where her hand had been scanned, seeing the Codex in its open case. She slammed it shut and picked it up. ‘Okay, got it.’
She turned to leave, but Eddie’s attention was caught by another piece of equipment beside the laser scanner. A rapid prototyper . . . with something in the tank. He snatched it out, finding that unlike the silicone liquid he had used in New York, the medium this time was extremely fine grains of plastic. ‘This looks familiar.’
Nina grabbed it from him. ‘It’s from the Codex’s cover - the key! He’s made a copy of the key!’ One side of the thick and surprisingly heavy circular object bore the faces of the five Hindu goddesses, their husband Shiva at the centre. She opened the Codex case and shoved it in, slotting it into the impression in the orichalcum cover before snapping the case shut again. ‘We’ve got to delete the pattern so he can’t make another—’