The first booming gunshot sent stinging chips of concrete at its rear legs. It dropped Singh’s body, whirling to face them with a snarl of fury.
Eddie fired again, and again, each shot blasting little craters out of the floor at the tiger’s feet. Overcome by the noise and the painful insect-bites of shrapnel, it turned and fled.
Up the stairs.
The shouts above quickly turned to screams. ‘Okay, sounds like they’re busy,’ said Eddie. ‘If anyone gets between you and the door, shoot ’em!’
They hurried up the stairs. Someone fired a shot, only for a voice as enraged as the tiger to yell at them: Vanita. More screams, then a loud crash followed.
Eddie reached the top to see that the tiger had pounced on one of the guards, knocking over a table. Other people were fleeing out of the main doors and up the stairs to the observation level. A guard cowering behind a workbench saw him and whipped up his gun, but a single shot from the USP sent him tumbling with a bloody hole in his forehead.
Nina spotted Vanita halfway up the stairs, screeching orders for someone to get a tranquilliser gun. Her husband was higher up, watching the chaos with an unbelieving expression - which changed to fear as he saw Nina point her gun towards him. She didn’t know if she could have pulled the trigger, but the threat was enough; he turned and ran out of sight to the upper floor.
‘Nina!’ Eddie pointed to the doors. ‘Go!’ He took down another armed guard before they both burst out into the open, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Where now?’
‘We can drive out of here,’ said Nina. She ran to a nearby golf cart.
‘In
‘There’s a garage under the palace - we can get something faster.’ She climbed into the driving seat, Eddie jumping aboard behind her and pointing his gun back at the doors, although another scream from the building suggested that the tiger was still everyone’s biggest concern.
Nina stamped the accelerator to the floor. The golf cart lurched away, electric motors whining as it powered up to its top speed of twenty miles an hour. ‘It’s not exactly a Ferrari, is it?’ Eddie complained.
‘It’s better than running. Just.’ She guided the cart down the road to the palace. Even at its less-than- scorching pace, it still covered the distance in just over a minute. The ramp to the garage was off to one side - but she swerved away from it, heading for one of the doors into the huge house itself.
‘Where are we going?’ Eddie demanded.
‘The Codex - we need to find it.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’
‘I know where it is,’ she insisted, stopping and jumping from the cart. With a noise of frustration, Eddie ran ahead, kicking open the door and darting through with his gun raised.
The hallway was clear. They hurried inside. ‘Where’re we going?’
‘The infotarium.’
‘The
‘Khoil’s name, not mine.’ They reached the high-tech room, where Nina held back again as Eddie burst in, confirming that nobody was inside before nodding for her to enter.
The lights were low, the sphere of screens displaying stylised clouds. Nina ran to the desk where her hand had been scanned, seeing the Codex in its open case. She slammed it shut and picked it up. ‘Okay, got it.’
She turned to leave, but Eddie’s attention was caught by another piece of equipment beside the laser scanner. A rapid prototyper . . . with something in the tank. He snatched it out, finding that unlike the silicone liquid he had used in New York, the medium this time was extremely fine grains of plastic. ‘This looks familiar.’
Nina grabbed it from him. ‘It’s from the Codex’s cover - the key! He’s made a copy of the key!’ One side of the thick and surprisingly heavy circular object bore the faces of the five Hindu goddesses, their husband Shiva at the centre. She opened the Codex case and shoved it in, slotting it into the impression in the orichalcum cover before snapping the case shut again. ‘We’ve got to delete the pattern so he can’t make another—’
‘No, we don’t,’ Eddie countered at the sound of pounding feet outside. ‘What we
The footsteps came closer. Eddie brought up his pistol—
A man bearing an MP5 sub-machine gun rushed into the room - and took two shots to his chest. Eddie ran to him, shoving the USP into a pocket and picking up the MP5, then glanced at the display cabinet containing Khoil’s first computer. ‘A Spectrum, eh?’ He smashed the glass with the gun’s stock, making Nina jump, then did the same to the little computer inside it.
‘What was that for?’ she gasped, startled by the petty vandalism.
He grinned. ‘I was a Commodore 64 kid. Now where’s this garage?’
They ran from the infotarium, Nina directing them to the elevator. Another guard charged round a corner ahead - and took a burst from the MP5 across his chest. Shouts echoed behind them; more people were coming.
A short side passage led to the elevator. Nina pushed the call button, but Eddie booted open the door beside it and waved for her to go down the stairs. She took them two at a time, the heavy case banging against her legs, and emerged in the basement.
Eddie arrived a second later, eyes widening in admiration as he took in the gleaming cars. ‘Wow. This lot’s nearly as good as Kari Frost’s collection.’
Nina was in no mood for comparisons between maniacal billionaires past and present. ‘All I care about is: does he have anything
‘Oh, yeah.’ He indicated a two-tone slate and charcoal-grey hunk of sculpted, purposeful curves - the Bugatti Veyron. ‘Fastest production car ever built. Well, except for one by some little American company—’
‘We don’t need the Guinness World Records, just start it!’
A glass-fronted cabinet near the elevator contained numerous keys, each with the fob displaying the manufacturer’s logo. Eddie searched for the distinctive ‘EB’ of Bugatti, then smashed the glass with the MP5 and snatched out the keys. He tossed them to Nina. ‘Your turn to drive.’
‘Me? But—’
‘Unless you want to shoot.’
‘I’ll drive,’ said Nina quickly, running to the Veyron. She threw the gun and case inside and lowered herself into the low-slung, luxurious interior as Eddie rounded the supercar, the MP5 raised.
A chime as the elevator arrived—
Eddie fired before the doors had even fully opened, a guard thrashing backwards into the confined cabin. He glimpsed Tandon and released another burst, but the Indian squeezed himself flat against the side wall. For a moment Eddie considered running across to finish him off, but then the Veyron started with a growl from its massive sixteen-cylinder engine. He swung into the car. ‘Go!’
Smoke belched from the screaming tyres as Nina pressed the accelerator. ‘What the hell’s with this gearstick?’ she cried, trying unsuccessfully to shift into second gear.
‘It’s a sequential - push it forward to change up!’ Eddie leaned out of the door, seeing Tandon running for cover behind the McLaren. He fired another burst - just as Nina figured out the gears and upshifted. The car leapt forward, throwing off his aim. The McLaren’s windscreen shattered as Tandon dived behind it. Eddie cursed and pulled himself inside the Veyron, lowering his window as the supercar shot towards the ramp.
Nina kept accelerating, the engine note thunderous in the underground space. There was a horrible crunch as the Bugatti’s front air dam scraped the foot of the ramp, then they powered towards the square of daylight ahead —
One of the Range Rovers skidded to a halt at the entrance, broadside on to block their escape.
Nina fought her instinct to brake, instead jamming the accelerator all the way down and bracing herself . . .
The Veyron reached the top of the ramp - and went airborne. It smashed into the Range Rover at window height, slicing off the 4x4’s roof in an explosion of glass. The driver ducked just quickly enough to avoid decapitation, the supercar’s underside clearing his head by an inch as it arced over him and smashed back down to earth.
Airbags fired, punching Eddie and Nina back into their seats. Dazed, Nina tried to straighten out, and found
