The Secret of Excalibur

like! Bunch of fur-hatted nancy boys, poncing about in the snow—’

With an enraged growl, Maximov lunged upwards, and his hand clamped round the end of the bar. ‘Ha! Yes!’ Chase cried, pulling back with all his strength to lift the Russian. Maximov gripped the railing, then reached down to unravel the wiring round his ankle before climbing on to the catwalk.

Chase ran to the elevator controls and hammered at the call button. The platform began to descend. ‘Come on, come on!’ he called to the Russian. ‘Sorry about the Shitsnaz thing, by the way.’

‘No problem,’ Maximov rumbled. ‘But maybe one day I tell you what we say SAS stands for, eh?’

The platform arrived; they jumped aboard even before it stopped, pounding at the controls. After an apparent eternity, it ascended again. Electrical arcs flashed past them, the very air seeming to tremble as the power built up.

They reached the top catwalk. Chase leapt from the elevator and rushed up the ladder to the control room, Maximov right behind him. Mitchell had gone, and so had Nina. The only people in the room were corpses.

And two soon-to-be corpses if they didn’t get out, fast. ‘Leg it!’ Chase yelled.

They raced through the checkpoint, Chase flicking an anguished look at the locker holding his belongings before running on to the doors, the darkness outside now pierced by unearthly flashes of light. They crashed through them and sprinted out into the cold.

The funicular station was ahead. The car they had ridden up in was gone, its empty counterpart just arriving at the summit on the adjacent track. Beyond it, great fluid coils of energy danced over the hundreds of antennas on the hillside, sparks spitting from their tips. He could see his own shadow ahead of him, not cast by the spotlights around the facility but by something far brighter, less stable, more deadly.

It was about to blow—

Chase reached the crest of the hill and dived headlong over it. With a blinding flash and an earth-shaking crack of thunder a wall of lightning blazed directly upwards from the antenna array, a sheath of unimaginable energy surrounding the entire facility.

The flash lasted only a moment, many of the antennas melting, but as Chase rolled down the scrubby hillside he was already protecting his ears, knowing there was more to come.

A spear of intense blue-white light lanced down from the heavens into the dome, which exploded into splinters as the beam seared through it to hit the machinery below.

All the remaining earth energy still in the system was released at once. The generator disintegrated, the force of the blast shattering the concrete walls of the pit and ripping a massive crater out of the hilltop. The circular building above was pulverised, the shockwave reducing the entire structure to rubble in a split second and hurling it outwards in a huge swelling ring of destruction.

The force of the blast hit Chase through the ground itself, a colossal whump from within the hill knocking him into the air in a shower of soil and stones. He landed hard on a leg of the road below amidst a blizzard of churned earth, having just enough time to realise that he was almost beneath the steeply sloping trackbed of the funicular and roll into whatever protection it offered before the shattered remains of the generator building fell round him.

A cloud of choking dust swirled downhill. The ground shook again, a continuous bone-shaking drumming like an artillery barrage as debris smashed down all around.

Then it began to fade.

The rain of rubble fell to a drizzle. Chase sat up and coughed, squinting through the dust as the cold wind from the coast gradually wafted it away. The entire hillside was spotted with fires where molten metal from the twisted, blackened antennas had dripped on to the grass.

He stepped out from beneath the track. The slope above him was shorn to the bare earth, the topsoil and grass blown loose by the explosion. Below, the lights of the dock still shone brightly. The submarine pen had been built to withstand anything short of a direct nuclear strike. There were other lights closer to him: a vehicle on a lower leg of the road, lying on its side.

He heard a muffled Russian curse. ‘Hey!’ Chase shouted, scrambling down the hillside to the source of the swearing. ‘Thingy, Bulldozer! You okay?’

Maximov was slumped against one of the track’s supporting girders, covered in dirt. He dizzily raised his head and peered at Chase. ‘Oh. Is you.’

‘Can you move? Are you hurt?’

He grinned. ‘Da. What was that? It was like . . . fire from God!’

‘It wasn’t God, it was Mitchell. But I’m going to kick his arse straight to God when I catch him. You still with me?’

Maximov nodded, and Chase helped him stand. ‘What are we doing?’

‘Going after Mitchell. He’s kidnapped Nina and stolen the sword - and I’m not going to let that bastard have either of ’em. Come on.’

They picked their way down the hillside between the fires and warped antennas, following the funicular railway. The sea breeze had by now cleared most of the dust, giving Chase a better view of the base. He saw movement on the jetty.

‘Shit!’ Even though the figures were only tiny at this distance, Chase knew there was only one person who would be carrying another over his shoulder - especially when the person being carried had long red hair.

It was clear where Mitchell was taking her. A couple of small boats were moored at the far end of the wooden pier. The DARPA agent’s escape route wasn’t by air, it was by sea.

He had to go after him - or stop him from leaving with her.

‘We’ll never catch him!’ Maximov said, but Chase was already thinking otherwise as they reached the overturned car. It was another Mercedes GL Class, a man whom he recognised as one of the control room technicians hanging bloodily through the broken windscreen. He had escaped Mitchell’s onslaught and tried to drive to safety, only for the SUV to be flipped over by the subterranean shockwave. As they got closer he realised the engine was still running, fumes putt-putting from the exhaust.

‘How strong are you?’ he asked the Russian. ‘Are you like Arnold Schwarzenegger strong?’

‘Arnie? He is girlie-man compared to me!’ Maximov said proudly, flexing his massive arms.

‘Great! Then you can help me tip this thing back over!’

They reached the Mercedes, Chase grabbing the front wing and Maximov taking hold of the back as they forced the two-ton SUV back on to its wheels. ‘You will never get there in time. The road is too long,’ Maximov protested as the vehicle tipped over and bounced upright.

Chase opened the dented door and dragged out the driver’s corpse. ‘We don’t need roads.’ He climbed in and fastened the seatbelt. The cabin was strewn with broken glass and the airbags hung limply from their compartments, but everything else appeared to be working. ‘Coming?’

Maximov squeezed into the Mercedes and gave Chase an uncertain look. ‘Can we make it?’

‘We have to.’ Mitchell was now about a third of the way down the jetty. Chase pointed the SUV down the hill. ‘Let’s off-road!’

He stamped on the accelerator.

The Mercedes leapt off the edge of the road and bounded down the steep, bumpy hillside. Chase yanked the wheel back and forth to guide it through the antenna forest.

The next leg of the road was coming up fast. Chase swerved, hitting the frost-cracked asphalt in a shower of soil. The SUV shot over the edge of the embankment, airborne for a moment . . . then slammed down on top of the funicular line.

He aimed the car straight down the steel track. Maximov swore again, bracing himself against the dashboard. Chase glanced at the jittering speedo. Over sixty kilometres an hour and quickly picking up speed - and his foot wasn’t even on the accelerator.

But he couldn’t slow down, not yet. Mitchell was now over halfway along the jetty with Nina.

The track was perfectly straight, heading to a vanishing point at the bottom of the tunnel. The semicircle of light was partially obscured by a dark box - the funicular car, blocking his path. And there was a gap between the two tracks, making it impossible for him to swing into the open lane.

He looked to the side. Just before the tunnel was a concrete expanse running to the edge of the cliff. Some kind of fuel storage, tall cylindrical tanks lined up along it.

No choice—