“That is one weird-sounding language,” Milo said.
“It’s Coptic,” said Eva. “Kranz is better educated than I thought.”
“What happens if he finishes the spells?” Ella said. “Does he get to speak with the gods or what?”
“No one’s speaking with any gods today!” Milo yelled. “The ceiling’s collapsing!”
“Please tell me this is happening because of the grenades and not that freaky book!” Ella said.
Eva gave her a strange look, and Mason looked up and saw the ceiling finally give way under the tremendous weight of the water. Kept in place for millennia by the support pillars, it now tumbled through the hole in the ceiling in an awesome jet and immediately started to fill the chamber.
“Jed Mason,” Eva said. “You’d better have a damn good idea about saving our lives, you son of a bitch!”
Yes, Mason thought with an inward sigh.
If only I did.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Virgil felt his heart pumping hard in his chest as he sprinted along the top of the dam in pursuit of Kyle Cage, Iveta Jansons and Molly Cruise. It was one of those insane Raiders moments he could hardly believe was happening. Just a few days ago he was cuddling his newborn daughter in their New York home and preparing for his second PhD viva, and now he was on another job, working for Jed Mason. All the madness and excitement that usually entailed were here tonight in spades.
Ben Speers was ahead of him a short distance and Don French on his other side as they drew closer to the crane. It loomed into the starry sky, flashing dully in the Egyptian moonlight. Were it not for the terrorists taking refuge within its walls, it would have been almost beautiful.
“This way!” Ben said. “They’re up ahead.”
Don French raised his SIG 552 Commando and buried the stock in his shoulder as he paced forward, raising the muzzle and sweeping it from side to side. “We have to knock that Caracal out of action!” he said, referring to the Spiders’ chopper.
They heard the chatter of submachine gunfire.
“Up there!” Ben said.
“They’re using flash hiders!” French said.
It was too late. French took a hit direct to the chest, and then a second. He dropped like a rock onto the concrete, crashing into the side of the crest wall and gasping for air. When he spoke, his voice was thin and hoarse. “Dammit… take… cover!”
Virgil, Ben and Sharaf scattered to avoid the incoming fire.
They pulled up behind one of the support struts of the crane’s base tower section and took a second to reload and scan the area for the enemy’s location.
“There!” Sharaf said. “I see them over there behind one of the transformers.”
“One of them’s climbing,” Ben said.
Virgil saw it too. Iveta Jansons was scaling the side of one of the lightning arresters. Not only that, she was doing it with a wounded arm from the bullet she took in Paris. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. The arrester’s function was to protect the system’s conductors and insulation from the harmful impact of a lightning strike, but it stretched up into the sky hundreds of feet. One slip, and she was dead.
“Is she crazy? She must be silly as a sack of shit.”
“She wants a better angle to try and take us out,” Ben said. “She’s got a rifle over her shoulder.”
“She won’t get the chance,” Sharaf said, and started to climb up the side of the support strut.
Virgil stared up as he watched the Egyptian Special Forces sergeant ascend into the darkness above him. He reached the gantry crane at the top moments later, and was now even more elevated than Iveta over on the lightning arrester. Far below, the moonlight sparkled on the distant Nile silently collecting in the reservoir.
“Where the hell’s Cage and Cruise?” Ben said. “You see them?”
Virgil nodded. “They’re making a break for the Caracal! Are they abandoning Iveta?”
“Not a chance,” Ben said. “They’ll pick her up from the arrester.”
His words were drowned out by the crackle of gunfire. Sharaf and Iveta were exchanging fire high above them now. Virgil watched Sharaf’s muzzle flash high above him, but then he heard an agonized cry and watched in horror as the sergeant clutched his throat and tumbled off the gantry crane.
The man fell silently in the darkness before crashing down on top of a bank of circuit breakers, dead.
Virgil’s heart quickened. He had seen men die before on previous missions, but watching Sharaf’s dead body convulsing like a marionette as the electricity coursed through it was something else. Driven by rage, he raised his weapon and fired on Iveta, striking her several times with the automatic fire until his gun was out of ammo.
She cried out, released her rifle and fell backwards off the lightning arrester. Tumbling into the darkness, she fell out of sight behind the machine hall and landed with a cannon-crack smack on the concrete platform behind the access gallery.
Virgil ejected the empty magazine and looked up at Ben Speers, expecting a nod of support but instead he saw something which turned his blood cold.
Across the other side of the dam, Caleb Jackson led his team toward the enormous generator. There were twelve of them in total, each powered by the gigantic dam, and had during their time provided up to half of the entire country’s electrical output. “Keep going, everyone!” he said through the headsets. “We’re almost there.”
Passing the service gallery and a line of transformers, they finally reached the turbine generation room and made their way inside the colossal structure in search of Linus Finn and his bomb. “I see Linus and Kat,” Caleb said. “But where the hell is Brick?”
The Spiders saw them and opened fire with a savage volley of automatic rounds.
“Cover!” Caleb yelled.
They hid from the onslaught wherever they could: Caleb tucked down behind the generator’s rotor housing and Zara and Shafik slid deftly under the platform of an observation deck.
“Just give yourselves up!” Linus shouted from across the other side of the generator room. “Resistance is futile.”
“Why would I give up?” Zara called back. “Explain it like I’m five!”
“You’ll find out.”
“Fuck off, Linus,” Zara called back over.
“I hope you don’t kiss with that mouth, darling,” said a cool English voice.
Caleb peered over the concrete housing and saw Kat Addington beside Linus. She was holding a pump-action shotgun in her hands, and Linus was making the final adjustments to a suitcase nuclear device.
“My God!” Caleb’s eyes filled with terror. “It’s a pocket nuke!”
“That answers your question about how he’s going to blow a hole in the retaining wall from the powerhouse, I guess,” Zara said drily, but then she gasped.
Caleb looked up to see Bjorn Brick holding a gun to the back of her head.
“And I guess that answers your question about where Bjorn Brick was,” Caleb said.
Zara dropped her weapon. “It certainly does,” she said, deflated.
“You too,” Brick growled.
Caleb lowered his gun to the floor, but Shafik spun around and fired on Brick.
“No!” Caleb yelled. “You’ll hit Zara!”
Shafik was a crack shot, but this time his aim was off and the bullet plowed into the concrete wall behind Brick’s head. Brick fired back, hitting the Egyptian colonel in the stomach and chest and blasting him over the edge of the wall into the generator. He fell out of sight and they all heard the screams as he disappeared inside one of the turbines.
Linus ordered Brick to bring them forward, and moments later they were face to face with their old teammate and her new boyfriend.
“How the hell could you do this, Kat?” Zara said. “This guy’s a real cock holster, you know that?”