The Sacred Vault

knocking him back into the support frame. It shook, rattling the video screens. ‘Oi! I’m not finished with you!’

‘Yes!’ Nina cried triumphantly as her husband turned the tables - only for Vanita to throw herself at her with a shriek, overcome with rage as blood ran down her ruined face. She slammed the American back against the video wall, driving a knee up into her stomach. Nina groaned, winded - and Vanita clamped her hands round her throat. The fingers tightened, taloned thumbs digging deep into her neck.

Eddie attacked again, the metal pole thudding against the Indian’s ribs. He grinned nastily as his opponent’s face twisted in pain. A couple more blows would knock Tandon down, and then he could deal with Khoil. He pulled back the railing for another swing—

Tandon leapt - and grabbed a horizontal cross-member above. He pulled himself sharply upwards, swinging his legs up like a trapeze artist as the pole whipped past an inch beneath him. He hooked one foot round a strut, using the support to haul himself round, spider-like, and climb higher.

Eddie swung again, but Tandon was just out of reach. The railing smashed a video screen, which fell to the floor with a bang. Tandon glared down at him as he clambered across the framework. Its aluminium joints squeaked and juddered under his weight.

The projector rig at the top of the dome also shook, causing the images on the big screens to wobble. Khoil glanced round to find the cause of the disruption. 02:25 remaining on the countdown.

The framework had been designed to support the screens and the overhead rig, Eddie realised - nothing more. The extra weight of a grown man was straining it to its limit . . .

He swung his makeshift bat - not at Tandon, but at the exposed metal structure where the screen had fallen away. A vertical strut broke at the joint with a sharp snap of metal. A whole section of the framework jolted violently, screens flickering. The projector rig lurched. Khoil looked round again, this time in alarm as Eddie kept bashing at the weakened frame. Another screen broke from its mount, swinging on its power cord before shattering on the floor. ‘Chapal! Stop him!’

Tandon dived at the Englishman from above, deadly hands outstretched like claws—

Eddie whipped up the pole.

Fear flashed in Tandon’s eyes - but too late.

The broken end of the railing punched through his chest, spearing out through his back with a gout of blood. Even impaled, though, he still knocked Eddie down, dead weight slamming him to the floor.

Both Khoils stared at the length of metal jutting from their bodyguard’s back in disbelief. ‘Chapal!’ Vanita cried, for a moment the woman she was choking forgotten—

Nina drove the heel of her palm up against Vanita’s chin. The Indian woman’s open mouth snapped shut - catching the end of her tongue between her teeth. Vanita spat out blood, a half-inch of muscle hanging only by a few threads of mangled tissue.

‘Bite your tongue!’ Nina gasped, throwing a punch. It only caught Vanita a glancing blow on the cheek, but it was enough to make her stagger backwards and slip on the film of frost that had formed on the metal floor as the icy wind shrilled through the hole in the dome. She stumbled . . .

Landing beside the MP5K.

Vanita grabbed the gun and jumped up—

Nina dived at her, skidding on her stomach along the frost. She wrapped both arms round Vanita’s ankles and twisted. Already unbalanced by her missing shoe, Vanita staggered and fell . . .

Down the stairs.

She screamed - then the cry was cut off abruptly by an echoing bang as she hit hard metal. More thumps followed as she tumbled down the steps. The MP5K fired at each impact, bursts of bullets clanging off the machinery. A fierce eruption of sparks came from one transformer as a round shattered an insulator, the resulting short circuit causing an angry, sizzling hum to rise within it. Several screens in the dome above flickered. But Vanita didn’t hear the sound or see the flashes as she crashed to the floor, unconscious.

Nina heard and saw them, though. ‘Oh, crap,’ she gasped, crawling to the stairs and looking down. Vanita was sprawled at the bottom, the gun beside her . . . but the spraying sparks and ominous crackling noise changed Nina’s mind about going down to get it. The short circuit was causing the mineral oil used to cool and insulate the old transformer to boil - to ignition point. It could explode at any moment.

Eddie kicked away Tandon’s corpse and looked up at the platform. Khoil broke through his shock, whirling to check the still-trembling images on the main screens. The drone was closing on its target: 02:05 to impact. He made several rapid hand gestures; no longer controlling the flight of the stealth aircraft, but calling up a menu screen.

Nina realised what he was doing as commands flashed up on the giant video wall. The game was almost over - and the billionaire was trying to fix the result. ‘Eddie!’ she yelled, voice rasping in her bruised throat. ‘He’s locking the controls!’ Even without anyone guiding it, the drone would still carry out its preprogrammed mission.

Eddie sprang up, but knew that by the time he reached the upper platform Khoil would have completed his task. He needed a faster way to stop him. Shoot him - but the guard’s fallen gun was nowhere in sight.

Which left—

He stamped a foot down on Tandon’s ribs and grabbed the length of railing, yanking it out of the dead man’s chest. He spun to smash the metal pipe against the dented framework—

The aluminium strut he hit broke in two. The effect on the rest of the weakened structure was instantaneous; a chain reaction rippled upwards as the weight of the video screens caused the horizontal supports to collapse one after the other. Eddie ran as the larger screens above him fell, smashing on the floor and blowing out with gunfire cracks and sprays of sparks and smoke.

The breakdown reached the top of the dome. The images on the two big screens jolted crazily as the projector rig shook - then tipped sharply as one side broke free, swinging above Khoil with a shrill of tortured metal. He looked up—

The rig tore loose. It dropped the thirty feet to the platform before Khoil could manage more than a startled scream, pounding him to the floor like a piledriver.

Nina winced. ‘Guess you really can be crushed by the weight of information.’

Eddie went to her. ‘Jesus! You okay? Looks like you got bitten by a vampire!’

Nina was confused, until she put a hand to her neck and realised that Vanita had broken the skin with her sharp thumbnails. She wiped off the blood. ‘Yeah, but we need to—’

A loud bang cut her off. Smoke swirled up from the stairs. The crackling sizzle from the transformers below grew louder, more agitated. More of the screens flickered. ‘Not keen on that,’ Eddie muttered. He looked back up at the dome. With the projectors gone, the two largest screens were now blank - no way of knowing how close the drone was to its target. ‘Come on!’

He ran for the platform, Nina following. They reached the upper level to find that Khoil was still alive, groaning weakly under the projector rig. ‘How do we stop the plane?’ Nina demanded.

Despite his pain, Khoil somehow managed a twisted smirk. ‘You can’t,’ he gasped, blood on his teeth. ‘The autopilot is set. In less than two minutes, the Kali Yuga will end . . .’

35

A large patch of dark blood was swelling across the chest of Khoil’s Nehru jacket. Eddie jammed his heel down on it, making the Indian scream. ‘Tell us how to unlock the controls!’

‘No,’ Khoil rasped as Eddie eased the pressure.

‘You’re not going to live much longer no matter what, but I can make every second of it really hurt.’

‘It . . . doesn’t matter. I will be reborn in a new golden age . . .’

‘As a dung beetle, if there’s any bloody justice.’ Realising that Khoil was utterly committed to his plan, he gave him one more jab before turning to Nina. ‘What the fuck do we do now?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, scanning the active screens in desperation. Maybe Khoil had made a mistake, leaving some way they could divert the drone. But she saw nothing helpful . . .

Her gaze flashed back to one screen in particular. The display showing the live news feed from the presidential palace was still active. The British Prime Minister was shaking hands with his hosts. Only a few more world leaders still to appear, the last being the President of the United States, and everyone would be in place for