synthetic radar imaging. A good pilot can fly by instruments alone, thanks to that. Takes a steady nerve, I understand, but these are brave men — and the Greeks wouldn't want to disappoint us, would they?'
In a lower voice, and with an expectant twitch of those circumflex eyebrows of his, he added, 'So? Sunday is here. Are we near an answer?'
'Almost,' said Sam, and Zeus seemed satisfied with this and turned away, and so did she. Suddenly all a- tingle, she focused her attention on last week's crate, which was sitting near the centre of the agora, ready for pick-up. It was sheathed in a cargo net whose corners were gathered together and attached to a figure-of-eight loop at the top. The cargo net's matrix of ropes would make it easy to scramble up the side and would provide something to cling on to as the crate was being flown away. If the pilot climbed quickly, Sam might just manage to disappear into the mist before the Olympians could react. Zeus wouldn't be able to zap the helicopter with lightning if he couldn't see it, and likewise Apollo, who was toting bow and quiver this morning, couldn't hit her with an arrow if his target was not clearly visible. As for Hermes, he might be able to teleport onto the crate but as long as she didn't let him grab her he couldn't teleport off again with her. He might, besides, think twice about landing on a moving object, especially if he was jumping blind and if the moving object was swaying around none too far from a set of whirring rotor blades. A slight miscalculation, and Hermes the Luck-Bringer would be Hermes the Headless.
The mist, then, far from being a catastrophe, might just be the best thing to have happened to Sam in ages.
All she had to go was get the timing right. Usually the Olympians were so eager to crack open the new crate that they didn't pay much heed to the old one as it was being hoisted away. She'd have to dash for it at the very instant it lifted off from the agora, though, and she'd have to keep an eye out, also, for Hephaestus. He alone never got particularly excited about the divulging of the new crate's contents, so his attention would not be fully on it. He, of all of them, might catch her in the act and raise the alarm. If she made sure to sneak round so that she was out of his line of sight… yes, then this could work. Sam could hardly believe it. Finally, finally, a chance of getting out of the stronghold. A slim chance, to be sure, the thinnest of slivers, but that was better than before, when there had been none whatsoever.
And now the beating of rotor blades could be heard, ever so faint but distinct nonetheless, like the purr of some gigantic cat, and the most wonderful sound in all the world as far as Sam was concerned. The sound of hope.
She sidled over to the perimeter of the agora, away from the Olympians, who were clustered together peering skyward, and then she diverted towards the empty crate, getting as close as she dared without it looking suspicious. The helicopter noise grew louder, becoming a pulsating roar, and then there it was, a dark shape looming overhead in the mist, a giant grey tadpole, and its downwash tore the vaporous air into sharp, spiralling vortices, and at last the Super Puma came clearly into view, searchlight ablaze, with the crate swinging below in its cargo-net papoose. The Olympians' robes whipped around them as the chopper descended, their hair thrashed in all directions, and then the crate touched down and Hermes darted on top of it and detached it from the winch hook. The cargo net slid away like a negligee, puddling around the crate's base. Hermes vanished and reappeared on the other crate, lifting up the figure-of-eight loop and beckoning to the pilot to come over. Ares, meanwhile, slotted the blade of his axe into the edge where two sides of the new crate met and started to jemmy them apart. The screech of nails being wrenched out of wood was audible even above the cacophony of the helicopter's vanes and turbines.
Sam braced herself. Thirty yards or so to the empty crate. How many seconds to sprint that far? Four? Five? She could do this. She just needed to choose the exact right moment to start her run. Wait for it. Wait for it.
The pilot seemed to be taking an abnormally long time manoeuvring over to the empty crate, or perhaps that was just how Sam perceived it with her adrenaline flowing and her heart rate speeding up with anticipation. The hook glided towards Hermes slowly, so slowly she began to think it was never going to get there.
In the meantime, Ares had set down his axe and was levering the side off the crate with his bare hands, and now it came free, and he stepped back to let it fall, and it did, an eight-foot-square slab of plywood boards swung outwards with a weird kind of grace, slumping flat onto the flagstones, and the Olympians craned their necks to look inside, and Athena was at the front, and Sam heard the gunshot, a loud and extraordinarily familiar percussive snap, and Athena's proud, large, magnificent forehead disintegrated, her helmet flew backwards as though yanked off by an invisible wire, and she reeled away from the crate with a shattered cavity where the front of her skull had been, and her eyes rolled white, and brains spilled like pink blancmange from a broken bowl, and she collapsed into Zeus's arms and he caught her, held her, and his expression was incomprehension, bafflement, as were all the Olympians' expressions, but not Sam's.
She understood.
Even before five TITAN-suited figures burst forth from the crate, she understood.
No bodies equals no proof.
Hyperion led the way, and he was yelling, 'Trojan horse! Trojan goddamn horse! We're in! We did it! Now let's plug as many of these motherfuckers as we can before they figure out we're not the weekly drop-off from the Athens Stop And Shop.'
71. RETURN OF
It was the enormity of it, the effrontery of it, that took the Olympians aback so. More than the fact that there were still Titans alive and they were pouring out of the crate with guns blazing: the sheer gall of these mortals, to hijack the Greek government's act of weekly tribute and use it as a method of gaining ingress into the stronghold.
The shock took several seconds to process, and during those seconds two of the Pantheon perished. Athena first, then Hades. As bullets began whipping towards the Olympians, the Lord of the Underworld raised his gloved hands defensively, as though somehow his death touch might ward off the hailstorm of ammunition and preserve him from harm. The bullets, however, raked through his hands, shattering them to pieces and also shattering the face behind them. His sallow, skeletal features disappeared as if flayed. He went down with nothing but a bloody mess between jaw and brow, jigsaw pieces of skull falling away, one eye socket a ragged hole, his other eye staring bleakly out through all the gore with a look that seemed to say, This can't be happening. I give, not receive. This can't be happening to me!
The less combat-orientated Olympians scattered to the edges of the agora, taking refuge among the colonnades of the buildings adjacent. The others — principally Ares, Apollo, Zeus and Poseidon — recovered their wits and marshalled themselves to retaliate. The five Titans, meanwhile, fanned out across the agora, still firing for all they were worth. Sam watched them with a dizzying mixture of gratitude and joy. They'd survived Bleaney. Not just Hyperion but Rhea, Iapetus, Theia and Cronus. All of them. They'd got away, and now they were here, heading up the international assault on Olympus.
And they'd infiltrated the stronghold in a time-honoured fashion, what's more. Xander Landesman, under any other circumstances, would surely have appreciated the irony.
Apollo nocked and loosed arrows, while Ares went on the offensive in his own way, charging at the Titans with axe aloft and letting out a battlecry as he went, a wordless ululation that was intended to intimidate but also to express a kind of ecstasy. He picked Iapetus as his target, but the Titan accelerated, side-stepping at speed as the axe came down. Blade sparked on flagstone, chips of limestone flew, and then Iapetus's shotgun shouted. The blast caught Ares between greave and thigh-plate, disintegrating much of the Olympian's kneecap. Ares roared and swung his axe sidelong. The blow was swift, and the shotgun was sliced in two near the top of its stock. Iapetus was lucky not to lose a hand. He backed off, fast, and Ares lurched after him, limping but not hobbled — too lost in bloodlust to be hindered by a small thing like a ruined knee.
The helicopter had risen swiftly once the crate deception was laid bare. The pilot wanted to get out of the vicinity as fast as possible, for fear of becoming embroiled in events below. Tragically for him, he failed. Hephaestus reached out with his mind and took hold of the Super Puma. First he stalled its engine, freezing the working parts.
