He climbed the rope, hand above hand, gripping it with his knees, moving fast. Frey was waving his machine-pistol and laughing as he took careful aim, but then Hayden shouted from Odin’s Tomb. Drake saw her standing there, aiming Wells’ gun at Frey — the old Commander slumped next to her but still breathing, thank God.
Hayden half-rolled the gun at Frey. “Let him climb!”
The chopper was still hovering, its pilot unsure of his orders. Frey hesitated, snarling — a child parted from its favourite toy. “Okay. Hundin! Bitch! I should have dropped you out the damn plane!”
Drake smirked when he heard Hayden’s reply. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Kennedy, Ben, and Parnevik were staring wide-eyed at the proceedings, hardly daring to draw breath.
“Go get him!” Frey then screamed at Alicia. “Hand to hand. Get him and let’s go. The bitch won’t shoot you. She’s government issue.”
Drake gulped as Alicia leapt off the sarcophagus and grabbed a parallel rope to Drake’s, but even so found time to glance at Ben, gauging how the boy was reacting to the revelation about Hayden’s status.
Ben, if anything, looked at her with more fondness.
Alicia scooted down the rope like a monkey, soon level with Drake. She faced him, perfect face full of malice.
“I can swing both ways.” She leapt into the air, feet first, drawing a graceful arch in the gloom, totally airborne for a moment. Then her feet connected solidly with Drake’s breastbone and she whiplashed her body forward, briefly grabbing his own rope before swinging off it onto the next.
“Fuckin’ baboon,” Drake muttered, his chest on fire, his grip weak.
Alicia used her momentum to swing around the rope, legs levelled at chest height, and crashed into his belly. Drake managed to swing to the right to lessen the blow, but still felt his ribs bruise.
He snarled at her, compartmentalised the hurt, and climbed higher. A glint entered her eyes, along with a new respect.
“At last,” she breathed. “You’re back. Now we’ll see who’s best.”
She shuffled up the rope, confidence radiating from her every move. With a single leap she bypassed Drake’s own rope, and again used her momentum to come back on the return swing, legs aiming this time for his head.
But Drake was back, and he was ready. With supreme skill he let go of his rope, locked away the intense vertigo, and caught it two foot further down. Alicia sailed harmlessly by above him, stunned by his move, still flailing.
Drake leapt up the rope a foot at a time. By the time his adversary realised what he had done he was above her. He stomped hard on her head.
Saw her fingers let go of the rope. She fell, but only for a few inches. The hard-nut within her kicked in and she regained her grip.
Frey bellowed from above. “No good! Die, you English unbeliever!”
Then, in less than a heartbeat, the German whipped out a knife and cut Drake’s rope!
Drake saw it all in slow motion. The glint of the blade, the wicked shine of the cutting surface. The sudden unravelling of his life line — the way it started to bulge and wriggle above him.
The immediate weightlessness of his body. The frozen instant of terror and disbelief. The knowledge that everything he had ever felt and everything he might have done in the future had just been eradicated.
And then the fall… seeing his arch enemy, Alicia, climbing hand over fist to get back on top of the Sarcophagus… seeing Ben’s mouth twist into a scream… Kennedy’s face turning into a death-mask… and through his peripheral vision… Dahl… what the. ?
Torsten Dahl, the mad Swede, running, no sprinting across the platform, safety harness strapped to his body, literally launching himself out into the black pit just as Drake himself had done a few minutes before.
The safety harness unravelling behind him, anchored around a pillar in Odin’s niche, held tightly by Hayden and Wells who had braced for maximum effort.
Dahl’s crazy dive… bringing him close enough to grab Drake’s arms and hold on tight.
Drake’s rush of hope quashed as both he and Dahl fell together, safety line playing out… then the sudden, painful jerk as Hayden and Wells took the strain.
Then the hoping. The slow, painful strokes of rescue. Drake stared into Dahl’s eyes, not speaking, not emitting an ounce of emotion as they were hauled inch by inch to safety.
The chopper pilot must have received orders, for he began to rise until he was ready to fire a third missile, this one out of the mountain, designed to widen the gap enough to fit the sarcophagus through without risking it being damaged.
Within three minutes Odin’s coffin was gone. The chopper’s thudding rotor blades a distant memory. As now were Ben, Kennedy, and Parnevik.
At last, Dahl and Drake were dragged over the rocky edges of the precipice. Drake wanted to rush off in pursuit, but his body wouldn’t respond. It was all he could do to lay there, letting the trauma absorb into him, re-routing the pain to a cordoned-off part of his brain.
And as he lay there, the noise of the chopper returned. Only this time it was Dahl’s chopper. And it was both their means of rescue and pursuit.
Drake could only stare into Torsten Dahl’s exhausted eyes. “You are a God, mate,” and the significance of the place they were in was not lost on him. “A true God.”
FORTY-ONE
Every time Kennedy Moore so much as shifted her ass around in the hard seat, Alicia Myles’ sharp eyes noticed. The English bitch was an uber warrior blessed with that cop’s sixth-sense of constant anticipation.
They had stopped only once during the three-hour flight from Iceland to Germany. Early on, only ten minutes after they had exited the volcano, they had winched up and steadied the coffin and brought everyone on board.
Abel Frey went immediately to a rear compartment. She had not seen him since. Probably greasing the wheels of theft and industry. Alicia had practically thrown Kennedy, Ben and Parnevik in their seats, then perched next to her boyfriend, the injured Milo. The chunky American seemed to be clutching every part of his body, but chiefly his balls, a fact Alicia seemed to find alternately amusing and worrying.
Three other guards were on the ‘copter, flicking their watchful eyes between the captives and the odd companionship that existed between Alicia and Milo — in turns sad, then meaningful, and then brimming with fury.
Kennedy had no idea where they were when the chopper began to descend. Her thoughts had drifted throughout the last hour — from Drake and their adventures in Paris and Sweden and in the volcano, to her old life at the NYPD, and from there, inevitably, to Thomas Kaleb.
Kaleb — the serial killer she had freed to kill again. Memories of his victims assailed her. The crime scene she had walked a few days ago — his crime scene — remained fresh in her memory like newly-spilled blood. She realised she hadn’t seen a news report since.
Maybe they had caught him.
In your dreams….
No. In my dreams they never catch him, never get near him. He kills and kills and taunts me and my guilt rides me like a damn demon until I give it all up.
The chopper dropped fast, yanking her out of a vision she couldn’t bear to face. The private compartment at the rear of the chopper opened and Abel Frey strode out, issuing orders.
“Alicia, Milo, you’ll be with me. Bring the prisoners. Guards, you will accompany the coffin to my viewing room. The custodian there has instructions to contact me as soon as it’s ready for viewing. And I want it fast, guards, so don’t dally. Odin may have awaited Frey for thousands of years, but Frey doesn’t wait for Odin.”