Kat slapped her face and the sound echoed off the smooth, concrete walls of the vast generator room. “You always were a coarse bitch.”
Zara wiped the blood from her mouth. “And you’re a fucking traitor. Jed’s totally destroyed. You ripped his heart out.”
“He can give as good as he gets, I’m sure.”
“You can believe it, Kat,” Caleb said, his voice low but firm. “He won’t stop until he settles his account with you. You must know that.”
“He’d be a fool even to try,” Linus crowed. He slipped his arms around Kat and they kissed on the mouth for several seconds.
“You make me sick,” Zara said. “If Jed doesn’t get you for what you did, you can count on me doing it.”
“Sadly, you will not be able to indulge your depraved revenge fantasies, my dear,” Linus said. “Because you will be dead in less than five minutes when that suitcase nuke detonates and triggers the greatest natural disaster in human history.”
“Why the hell are you doing this?” Caleb said.
“Money,” Linus said with a wink. “Greenbacks. My employers are very generous.”
“Your employers are an insane death cult,” Zara said. “You can’t be stupid enough to think they’ll actually pay a couple of lowlife bottom feeders like you two?”
“That’s our problem,” Linus said. After telling Brick to collect their weapons, he ordered everyone out the hall. “We’re locking you in here — for your own safety, of course,” he said with a chuckle.
Caleb watched as Linus, Brick and Kat started to ascend one of the stainless steel staircases beside the nearest turbine. “Dammit! They’re getting away!” he said.
“Not so fast, Tonto,” said Zara, and reached down for the snub nose pistol she had secured in her ankle holster. She shuffled behind Caleb’s broad body for cover as she raised it into the aim and then fired over his shoulder, striking Bjorn Brick in a direct hit and sending him tumbling over the staircase.
He smacked into the cold concrete floor with a wet crunch. A spray of blood exploded outwards from his body and flicked up the side of the turbine. His pump-action shotgun and shells skidded across the polished concrete floor toward Caleb and Zara.
Linus saw the disaster unfolding and screamed at Kat to leave.
“What about the bomb?” she cried out.
He glanced at his watch. “Ninety seconds! They have no chance, but we have to get airborne right now!”
Caleb skidded across the floor, stuffed the shells into his pockets and snatched the pump-action off the deck with a greedy swipe.
“Time to make it rain fire, baby.” Zara fired pot shots from her revolver but with only five remaining bullets it was empty in seconds.
Caleb took up the slack. Folding out the stock of the Mossberg 500 and clicking it into place, he loosed a savage volley of fire from the PA shotgun, blasting chunks of concrete out of the wall above Linus and Kat as they fled for the exit.
“Give me the gun, Cal!” Zara yelled. “I’ll go after them while you shut the timer off!”
As Caleb threw her the shotgun and ammo belt and ran over to the suitcase nuke, Zara pushed more shells into the bottom of the Mossberg and then racked the weapon, sliding a live round into the chamber. Supporting the fore grip with her left hand and gently tucking the stock into her shoulder she aimed down the length of the matte black barrel and fired the gun at Linus and Kat. She peppered the door in front of them but it was too late. Her aim was wide and they were through, slamming the steel door behind them and locking it.
She ran to Caleb who was now crouching beside the nuke.
“We’re locked in, Cal!”
Caleb barely heard her words. He was too focussed on the nuclear bomb in front of him. Linus had not been bluffing — the timer was now at sixty seconds and rapidly moving toward zero hour.
“Please tell me you know how to do this?” she asked.
“Sure, it’s a piece of cake,” he said, and started to remove a panel on the side of the weapon.
“Aren’t these things fail-safe?”
He shook his head. “A device like this is made to fail-fatally, not fail-safe.”
“You mean…”
They shared a glance. “I sure do. Like air brakes on a truck. In your car, if your brake fluid leaks then your brakes fail, so they fail fatally. With air brakes on a truck, they’re kept open by compressed air. If there’s a leak then the brakes close and the truck stops, so it fails safe.”
Forty seconds.
“Same with this. The timer’s a fail-fatally, and it’s connected to the conventional explosives that are required to trigger the core. If I cut it, then it goes off, so the only option is to cut the connection between the trigger and the core.”
Thirty seconds.
Zara watched as Caleb started his search inside the weapon. “I see what he’s done here, the bastard.”
“You can stop it?”
Twenty seconds.
“Pretty sure,” he grunted, and started to unscrew an internal panel. “The connection between the trigger and the core should be in here.”
“Pretty sure? Should be? Jesus.”
Ten seconds.
“Think I got the bastard,” Caleb said, and pulled his hand back out. “All we have to do is see what happens when the timer gets to…”
Zero.
Click.
Zara gasped.
Caleb smiled. “That was the trigger firing against nothing.”
“Christ, Cal. You’re an asshole sometimes.”
“I stopped it though. Don’t I even get a kiss?”
She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “I could kick your balls in for that little stunt.”
He pointed at the shotgun, which was now dangerously close to his head. “Is that thing still loaded?” he asked with a wink.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Got a little fazed right there.” Pushing the pump button, she pumped the gun back and cast an expert eye down the barrel to ensure the weapon was empty and then slung it over her shoulder. “We’re done here,” she said. “Let’s back to Virgil.”
Virgil watched as Ben Speers gently pulled the hammer back on his weapon and raised it until it was pointing at him. The young polymath looked at the barrel of the gun, glinting in the moonlight.
“I can’t let you destroy that helicopter, Virgil,” Ben said quietly.
“What’s going on, Ben?” Virgil said
“It’s time to die, said the Spider to the fly.”
“I don’t understand.”
Ben gave a fiendish smirk, and his next act was the brutal firing of his weapon at Virgil.
Virgil heard the sound of the discharge echo over the dam as he clutched his stomach and fell forward onto his knees. He was dimly aware of Cage and Molly running over from the chopper to Ben. They pounded up the concrete steps and made it to the base section of the crane.
He felt his life slipping away now.
Stared up at the moonlight glinting on the gantry crane.
Heard the distant sound of the turbines in the generator room.
He prayed Caleb and Zara had stopped Linus in time, and as he clenched his teeth in agony he knew he had to tell them about Ben, but knew there would be no chance because he was already losing consciousness.
Cage and Molly approached Ben, and they gave each other a hearty slap on the back. Comrades in arms.
“Those RPGs got a bit close for comfort, Kyle,” Ben said.
“It worked though, right? Delayed the landing and gave Linus time to set the bomb. If you hadn’t been on board I could have blown them right out the sky.”
“Am I coming with you?” Ben said.
Molly shook her head. “Nuh-uh. Linus says you stay with these guys and get cosy with them. He wants an inside man.”