The Valhalla Prophecy (61 page)

But all that was of less concern to Eddie than the people inside the chamber. Lock, Hoyt, and their team had descended almost to the surface of the foul lake, using the crystals as walkways. As Tova had warned, there were six other men with them. All were armed, this time with SIG 516 assault rifles rather than submachine guns; after what had happened in Norway and at Valhalla, Hoyt was taking absolutely no chances of being outgunned.

They were not expecting an attack, though. Instead, all eyes were on the man closest to the lake. Unsurprisingly, Hoyt and Lock had delegated the dangerous task of actually obtaining a sample of eitr to an underling. The mercenary, wearing protective yellow haz-mat overalls and a filter mask over his face, was kneeling on a sloping slab of black crystal just a foot above the rippling oil. In front of him was a steel canister closely resembling the one containing Thor’s Hammer, its hinged lid open. The man was operating a pump, carefully sucking up eitr through a snake-like metal hose and depositing it in the container.

Which was almost full.

Lock was twenty feet away, higher up. “How much longer?” he called impatiently.

“Almost done,” the pump operator replied, voice muffled.

“About time. I want this stuff back in our lab by the end of the day.”

Hoyt, farther back, held in a cough. “Sooner we get out of here, the better. We’re probably gettin’ cancer just breathing this shit.”

“Volkov told the CIA it was harmless,” said Lock.

“Yeah, but that was in the ’60s, and they said cigarettes were harmless back then too.” He coughed again, then retreated up one of the spars.

Lock ignored him, watching the cylinder fill up with an expression of near-awe. “The Vikings were right,” he said, almost to himself. “Life and death in one substance.” The awe turned to expectant greed. “And we control it …”

Kagan made a sound of angry disgust, then glanced back across the bridge. Nina and Berkeley had found enough room to let Pravdin past, and the Russian was now moving to join the other three armed men. “We will need to take them out quickly,” he told Eddie in a low voice. “Can you hit them from here with that?” He glanced at the Wildey.

“Piece of piss, mate,” Eddie replied. “Hoyt’s mine, though. That bastard’s finally going down.” He lined up his weapon on the oblivious American.

“When I say,” Kagan ordered. “We must get them all at once.”

The Englishman reluctantly held his finger off the trigger. “You’ll need to be fast—you’ve got to get two of ’em each before they can react.”

“We will,” Kagan assured him. The officer issued rapid instructions, then took aim with his own weapon. “We have our targets—we will fire on three. Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Eddie replied. Below, Hoyt hopped across to another ledge. The Wildey tracked him.

The second soldier finally reached the rest of the team, readying his AK-12. He nodded to Kagan. “Okay,” said the Russian. “One, two—”

A loud bang echoed around the shaft—but it was not a gunshot.

Eddie felt the crossing jolt beneath him. “Shit!” he gasped, instantly realizing what had happened. Pravdin’s arrival had put too much weight on the unsupported middle of the bridge—and the stress lines were now becoming fractures. Below, Hoyt looked up in surprise at the unexpected sound. “Move, get off the—”

The crystal sheared apart.

Eddie was already moving, about to dive for safety—but Kagan blocked his way, his accumulated injuries making him fractionally slower to respond. The crystal span fell, taking them with it.

Pravdin had realized the danger. He leapt back at the ledge on which Nina and Berkeley were standing—

And fell short.

He clawed desperately at the side of the protruding outcrop. His fingertips found purchase on the scales—only for them to crumble under his weight. The soldier fell with a horrible scream, the sound abruptly cut off as he smashed against another crystal bridge below and tumbled into the eitr, kicking up a viscid splash and a cloud of steam as the black ooze swallowed him.

The other men on the collapsing bridge barely fared better. The great chunk of crystal beneath Eddie and Kagan pulverized a narrower structure as it dropped, the impact slowing its fall—and throwing the Russian clear to land heavily atop a steep ledge on the shaft’s side.

Eddie was also sent flying, plunging past Kagan to crash down on a lower crystalline span. He skidded across it, just barely clamping his left hand around a
protruding spike in time to stop himself from going over the edge. Maslov landed beside him with a pained cry. Shattered chunks of the demolished bridge pounded both men.

The chaos continued below. “Jesus
Christ
!” yelled Hoyt as the huge crystal block plummeted into the cavern, disintegrating more black spires in a glass-shattering cacophony as it fell. He ducked behind one of the larger columns as shrapnel scythed past.

One of his men was not so quick to react, looking up in shock at the noise—

The falling slab hammered him flat. The crystal he was using as a walkway exploded into pieces, splashing back into the eitr from which it had been formed. The broken bridge rolled over, demolishing more spars and black stalagmites and crunching over the tops of spikes growing just beneath the lake’s surface before coming to rest in a nest of rubble.

Nina watched in horror. “Eddie!” she cried, darting to the edge of the outcrop to see him sprawled precariously thirty feet below. It was hard to be sure in the pale light of the globes, but it seemed possible to climb down and circumnavigate the shaft’s outer wall in a spiral to reach him. “Hold on, I’m com—”

Another sharp crack, this time under her feet.

The outcrop’s edge splintered away. She threw herself backward, but was already falling—

One hand caught the newly torn edge—and she shrieked as razor-like shards cut into her skin. Her grip faltered …

And failed.

Fear punched her heart as she dropped, nothing below but the simmering black pool of eitr—

Berkeley grabbed her wrist.

Nina yelled again as her shoulder joint abruptly took her full weight, muscles and tendons crackling. “Hold on, hold on!” Berkeley gasped. He had dived to catch
her, lying on his belly with both arms over the edge of the broken outcrop.

“Pull me up!” she wailed.

“I can’t—get enough leverage!” He strained to wriggle backward, but couldn’t raise his arms any higher. “Grab the wall!”

“I’m trying!” She flailed her free hand, trying to find purchase, but the newly exposed surface was glassy-smooth. In the corner of her eye she saw a more ragged piece of broken crystal level with her thigh. She stretched for it—but in the process her Kalashnikov slipped from her shoulder.

She flicked her arm up just as its strap slithered over her fingers, casting it across a gap to clatter onto one of the spans below. Freed of the unbalancing weight, she managed to reach the protrusion and steady herself—but with no footholds she couldn’t lift herself any higher. The eitr pool swayed hungrily below her.

The man at the lake’s surface had almost fallen into it as the slabs around him shuddered, having to drop the pump to grab the sample container’s carrying strap before it toppled into the ooze. “Keep hold of it, for God’s sake!” Lock yelled, clinging to a narrow crystal pillar. “What the hell just happened?”

“You won’t fuckin’
believe
this,” Hoyt snarled, emerging from cover and looking up the shaft. “It’s
Chase
!” He unshouldered his assault rifle.

Eddie felt nothing beneath his feet. He looked around to discover that his legs were hanging out over the side of the crossing. Wincing from the pain of his landing, he pulled them back—

Bullets ripped into the crystal under him.

“Chase, you motherfucker!” bellowed Hoyt as he blazed away with the SIG. Both Eddie and Maslov scrambled along the top of the natural bridge as more
rounds chipped away at its underside. “Come on, you limey bastard!”

The other mercenaries joined the attack. The cavern echoed with the deafening roar of automatic fire. But even over the noise, Eddie still heard the shrill crunch of fracturing crystal as the bridge beneath him weakened …

More gunfire—but from higher up.

Kagan’s AK-12 blazed. One of the mercenaries reeled backward as the Russian’s bullets ripped through his torso, flopping into the black lake. The others ducked for shelter behind the snaking pillars.

Eddie seized his chance and leaned over the bridge to take aim with his Wildey. He had lost track of Hoyt’s position in the confusion, but the light from one of the floating globes cast a crouching shadow from behind a small crystal spire—which exploded like a bomb as a Magnum round hit it, the bullet continuing through the stalagmite to hit a lurking mercenary in the throat. The last Russian soldier joined the assault, sending bursts of Kalashnikov fire at the mercenaries.

Above, Berkeley was still struggling to pull Nina back up. “Hold on!”

“Whaddya
think
I’m doing?” she protested.

“There’s a—a rock,” he rasped. “Going to try to—brace myself against it.” The scientist changed tack, squirming sideways rather than backward. One leg found purchase against a chunk of stone …

Bumping the steel canister as it did so.

Berkeley had dropped it when he dived to save Nina. The only thing preventing it from rolling away was a wedge-like stone chip—and now that had been knocked away.

The container clunked across the ledge, picking up speed. Berkeley let out a stifled shriek as he saw it trundling toward oblivion, but could do nothing to stop it without dropping Nina. “Thor’s Hammer!” was all he had time to gasp before it went over the edge.