Grabbing April"s left arm, Jaz levered it behind her back while she bent low, clamping her forearm around her throat like a vise, forcing her head back as her knees kept April"s torso pinned to the floor.
Jaz"s arm was like a steel band, constricting tighter and tighter like some of kind of inexorable machine, crushing April"s carotid artery. Blackness crowded her vision. Desperately she clawed at the blonde woman"s rigid muscles with her free hands. From somewhere far away behind her she could hear the sound of Flinders" screams, drowned out by Jaz"s s.a.d.i.s.tic laugh loud in her ear and the pulsing roar of blood inside her skull.
Giving up on trying to tear the arm away, she jerked her fist up, smashing again and again at Jaz"s shattered nose, but she was only rewarded with more laughter.
Digging her knees deeper into April"s back, Jaz squeezed tighter, bending her spine like a bow. Black shadows loomed all around the edges of April"s consciousness. Her lungs screamed for oxygen. Her neck felt like it was going to snap in two.
Then suddenly the pressure was gone. A horrible cry of pain filled April"s ears. With the last of her strength she rolled free, pushing herself to one knee, fists up, her chest heaving with wracking breaths, seeing Flinders kneeling next to Jaz, her hand jerking back from the hypodermic sticking from the woman"s chest, its plunger depressed to the maximum.
Flinders had injected a full syringe of steroids into Jaz"s heart!
Jaz shrieked like a wounded animal. Blood gushed from her mouth. On her temple, the vein twitched and writhed. She had sunk her knees, her back ramrod-straight, her hands thrust apart in front of her, the fingers open as if in supplication.
Through a haze of blood the verdigris eyes shifted to look at them.
Then she toppled forward to the floor.
Slowly, Flinders moved her head up to meet April"s eyes. Blinking, she found her gla.s.ses and climbed to her feet, turning- She kicked Jaz"s prostrate body...once, twice...
Then with a frenzy of repeated kicks, she struck her over and over and over...
Abruptly she stopped, her foot hovering in mid-swing. She was shaking, looking down at the dead woman. "I told you I"d kill you."
Then waves of shudders shook her body and tears cascaded down her cheeks.
Shoving to her feet, April put an arm around her shoulders.
Emotions tore across Flinders" face. For several long heartbeats she stared into April"s black eyes. "I thought you were dead. Is Park-?"
She broke off as footsteps pounded outside the door. Skarda burst into the room, his rifle raised. His gaze swept over the scene.
Flinders stared at him as if he were a ghost. "You"re not dead..."
He grinned at her. "Not yet." Glancing over at April, he said, "Eleven minutes to go."
Behind him, Rachel stepped into view.
Seeing her, April"s eyes narrowed.
"She"s with us," he told her. "I"ll fill you in."
"Okay," she said. "Let"s move."
___.
From the doorway at the eastern end of Great Hall, Belisarius scanned the battle. Jaz"s blonde head was nowhere to be seen.
That meant she was dead or wounded.
Either way, she was of no further use to him.
Ducking out of sight, he ran along the corridor of the T, coming to the gold storeroom that Tomilin had shown him. Without flicking on the lights, he stepped inside. On the brief prior visit his brain had already catalogued each artifact where it lay, and he"d already decided which pieces to take with him.
Cracking open his steel case, he looked down at the Emerald Tablet he"d already stolen from the mummy"s throne room. An artifact like that would be worth millions on the black collector"s market.
With an indulgent smile of avarice, he began to fill the case with gold.
___.
In the weapons storeroom, Rachel helped Flinders into an armor-plated vest, then handed her an AK-47 and spare magazines.
April hefted what looked like a shotgun with a Tommy-gun-style drum attached. "It"s an AA-12 combat shotgun," she said, smiling. "It can fire five twelve-gauge shotgun sh.e.l.ls a second, plus FRAG-12 rounds, which are basically little warheads. Good weapon."
Shouldering the shotgun, she ran an eye over her three companions. Each wore a tactical vest whose pockets were loaded with grenades. Flinders and Rachel carried AK-47"s, while Skarda had his Barrett.
And Rachel had filled an ammo bag with extra grenades. "These might come in handy," she said.
April nodded in satisfaction. The distant boom of explosions reached their ears over the insistent wail of the klaxons. "It looks like we"ve got a war going on up there. But our objective is to reach the command center and stop them from firing the lasers."
She turned to Rachel. "I rigged the satellite dish to blow. Is there any other way Tomilin can activate the lasers?"
Rachel thought about it for a few seconds. "I overheard him talking about a second dish on Roman-Kosh. If you wreck this one, they can probably use that."
April shoved explosive frag rounds into the AA-12. "I guess we"ll just have to stop him the old-fashioned way."
___.
Reaching the top of the stairs, April stepped into a short corridor that led to doorways on either end. On their left was the doorway to the Great Hall. Through the opening they could hear gunfire and the screams of dying men echoing from the marble walls.
Skarda glanced at his Stealth. "Six minutes," he said.
Pulling out the remote detonator, April pressed the b.u.t.ton.
Nothing. Even with the battle raging, the explosion on the roof should have been audible.
"The walls are shielded!" she yelled. "I"m going to have to go outside and blow it from there."
She took off down the stairway.
___.
A wind-driven snow howled around Belisarius" bare head. Ragged plumes of breath shot from his nose and mouth as he staggered over the uneven ground, struggling with the gold-laden case. His eyes were fixed on the landing strip and the Dussault Falcon, barely visible through the curtain of snow. It had been years since he"d flown a plane, but with Jaz gone, now he had no choice.
The muscles of his arms ached and his legs felt like sticks of lead.
But he was carrying a fortune.
He bent his head against the storm and drove himself on.
___.
April hauled herself to the lip of an eroded slab of rock, then swung her legs onto the flat roof of the fortress. Wind lashed at her. In her head a mental clock was counting down the seconds to the firing of the laser.
Less than a minute left.
About thirty feet in front of her the satellite dish was a bulky gray shape in the night.
She reached for the remote detonator.
Then she froze.
An Atlantean soldier in a bulky parka had moved out of the lee side of a boulder, heading for the dish. Even through the snow he must have seen the block of C-4 attached to the base.
Thirty seconds.
She lifted the AA-12- A rifle muzzle jammed hard against her spine.
Another solider had sneaked up behind her, the sound of his approach m.u.f.fled by the wind.
Twenty seconds.
His blunt voice snapped out a command in Russian. She couldn"t understand his words, but their tone was clear: drop the weapon. Gloved fingers reached out and ripped the detonator from her hand.
At the dish, the other soldier yanked off the block of C-4, holding it out in triumph to show to his companion.
Ten...
April dropped straight down in a crouch, ramming the back of her head into the man"s crotch, hearing him bellow in pain. She struck back with the point of her right elbow, connecting with his kneecap.
Five...
A howl of agony burst from the guard"s lips as the bone shattered with an audible crack, his finger involuntarily twitching the trigger. The rifle rattled, loud in her ears, firing a burst of slugs at the sky.
At the dish, the other soldier whipped his rifle in her direction.
Two...
But she was already launching herself toward the rock wall, yanking the snout of the AA-12 towards him.
One...
She pulled the trigger. The mini warhead streaked toward the Atlantean, rocketing towards the block of explosive.
It hit dead center.
With a booming roar the C-4 detonated, blowing the soldier into b.l.o.o.d.y slabs of meat and sending a storm of metal fragments sizzling through the air. A section of the parabolic antenna shot free, spinning like a frisbee. It sawed through the kneecapped soldier"s neck with a grisly tearing noise, severing his head from his body.
Before his corpse hit the roof April had disappeared over the wall.
___.
In the command center, Tomilin swore. "You"re sure it"s offline?"
A technician looked up. "Signal"s dead. The dish isn"t functioning. It"s totally shut down."
"Did the laser fire?"
The man shook his head. "We can still access the dish on Roman-Kosh."
"Do it," Tomilin said. "And make it fast."
SIXTY-FOUR.
FROM the shelter of the doorway, Skarda glanced into the Great Hall. The destruction was staggering. Clouds of smoke drifted above shattered marble. Through the haze muzzle flashes licked out like lightning bolts. Men yelled and screamed, their voices m.u.f.fled by the crack of gunfire and the thunder of explosions. Charred corpses in red and black uniforms littered the floor.
Hearing footsteps, he swung around to see April bounding up the stairs. "Done," she said. "Now we need to take out Tomilin before he can access the other dish." She pointed out across the hall at the open doorway that led to the western wing. "The command center"s through there, so that"s our target. They"ll have armed men, so it"s not going to be easy."
Pulling out his Stealth, Skarda typed out a message to Candy Man: "Need status update on satellites."
The words "NO SATELLITE SIGNAL" flashed across the screen.
He glanced at April. "No good. We need to be outside."
Peering around the edge of the doorway, she eyed the expanse of open ground between the safety of their position and the entrance to the T. "I"m going to make a run for it. Cover me."
From the doorway on the opposite wall men in red jumpsuits burst into the hall, their rifles spraying lethal rounds at Charbonnet"s commandos. One of the Atlanteans stopped, crying out a warning as he spotted April. Shouldering an XM25, he aimed it and fired.
"Back!" she yelled.
Dragging Flinders and Rachel to the floor, Skarda threw himself next to them, flattening his back against the wall. Its trajectory set by the laser-guided rangefinder, the 25mm grenade exploded ten feet from the doorway, sending a hail of metal fragments flying into the stairwell, tearing up the hallway.
April waited for a count of three, then stepped out into the open, bringing up her Barrett in a blaze of fire. b.l.o.o.d.y wounds ripped across the soldier from head to thigh, driving his riddled corpse back through the doorway. Across the hall AK-47 fire stuttered and the wall next to her splintered into chips of stone. A line of bullets slashed across the marble at her feet.
Leaping back, she sprayed the hall on full auto just as the drumbeat of helicopter rotors rose above the h.e.l.lish din of the firefight. Skarda scuttled out, craning his neck, seeing the two Atlantean Mi-25"s circling outside the blasted ceiling, swinging into firing position. Their Gatling guns rattled, the armor-piercing rounds tearing through Charbonnet"s troops. Men fell, their bodies twisting in obscene dances as the heavy bullets shredded their body armor and tore through muscle and bone.
One of the black-suited men snapped a LAW rocket launcher to his shoulder and fired. The missile streaked toward the nearest chopper. From the nose of the Mi-25 a laser beam shot out, striking the rocket. Its instrumentation scrambled, the missile veered off course and blasted into the ceiling, blowing up huge chunks of stone that crashed to the floor with earth-shaking force.
Another man jumped out into the open and raced for the wall, shouldering a LAW. From this vantage point he could look up at the underbelly and pilot canopy of the gunship. He aimed and pulled the trigger. The rocket zoomed almost straight up, too close for the operation of the laser.
The pilot saw it coming. Desperately he yanked back his cyclic, at the same time pulling up on the collective control to increase alt.i.tude. But it was too late. The rocket struck the chopper at the bottom of the canopy, blowing the windshield and pilot"s compartment to fragments and igniting a yellow-orange fireball that roared over the gunner, engulfing the entire nose of the gunship in a sheet of fire. Smoke poured from the engine cowling.
Yawing left at a crazy angle, the Mi-25 seemed to flip in mid-air, driven by the force of its main rotor, tipping over and ramming the second chopper broadside with an ear-deafening roar of secondary explosions. Two men toppled from the cabin door, screaming, their arms flailing as their bodies smacked against broken columns. Then both aircraft dropped in violent spins, smashing against the fortress ceiling and wall, tearing away the already-weakened masonry as another blast blew the side of the building apart. The rotor of the first gunship detached, spinning through the air in a devastating arc, finally striking the marble floor with a screech of metal against stone and plowing a lethal path of destruction through the men, Atlantean and attacking force alike, cutting bodies into b.l.o.o.d.y chunks like a giant meat cleaver.