The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [132]
‘Helicopter,’ said Eddie.
Nina glanced at him. ‘I don’t think that’s quite right, Eddie.’ ‘No, I mean I can hear a helicopter. Listen.’
She strained to hear as Shankarpa called for silence. A faint thudding became audible, the unmistakable chop of rotor blades. ‘And I thought you were worried about your hearing,’ she whispered to Eddie.
‘It’s high frequencies that’re knackered. Low ones aren’t a problem. Yet. And choppers aren’t exactly quiet.’
‘Is it Khoil?’ asked Kit, standing.
Nina anxiously stared at the ragged banner of blue above the canyon. There was an outside chance that the helicopter’s arrival at the hidden valley was just a coincidence . . . but she wouldn’t have wasted even a single dollar betting on it.
The noise drew closer, echoing from the valley walls. The whine of engines rose beneath the pounding blades. A shadow flicked across the sunlit summit of one of the cliffs as the helicopter passed overhead, and was gone. The engine shrill faded.
Nina exchanged a look of relief with Eddie . . .
The sound’s pitch changed. The helicopter was coming back.
‘Get into cover!’ said Eddie, waving the guardians into the shadows. The approaching rotor noise was louder, the aircraft descending.
The shadow reappeared on the cliff, moving more slowly. The helicopter was above them. A fine spray of snow whipped down from the overhanging rock, caught in the downwash.
Eddie watched as the crystalline fall moved from one side of the ledge to the other. ‘It’s circling,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to get a better look into the valley.’ He advanced a few steps, looking up past the overhang. ‘I can see it - they’re coming round! Everyone get back!’
He retreated as the helicopter’s lazy orbit brought it over the far end of the valley. It was civilian, painted red and white with a rather bulbous fuselage that reminded him of a fat, short-billed bird in flight. He didn’t know the type, which meant it had entered service after he left the SAS; aircraft recognition was a standard part of military training.
One thing was clear, though. It belonged to the Khoils. The Qexia logo was emblazoned on its side.
The chopper drifted across the canyon. Eddie glimpsed a face behind the side window, sunlight glinting off a camera lens. It disappeared from view behind the cliff above, blowing down another swirling sheet of snow, then the engines increased power and it flew off to the south.
Nina ran to the top of the stairway, but it was already out of sight. ‘Did they see the statue?’
‘Even if they didn’t, they still got pictures,’ Eddie said grimly. ‘Couple of minutes in Photoshop and they’ll be able to brighten things up enough to spot it. And soon as they do . . .’
‘They’ll be back. In force.’ Nina hurried to the door. ‘We don’t have much time,’ she told Shankarpa. ‘We’ve got to figure this out, fast.’
Girilal resumed his work with more urgency, Nina hurriedly scribbling down each new word. The remainder took only twenty minutes to translate. ‘Okay,’ she said, flicking back through the pages, ‘we’ve got five goddesses, and six hundred possible words to describe them. Let’s narrow it down.’
It was a tortuous process. Shankarpa told the other men what they needed to do, but everybody had slightly different views of the goddesses. There were multiple words that could apply to each of them; Kali, for instance, fitted the descriptions of ‘black’, ‘death’, ‘terrifying’, ‘salvation’, ‘rage’ and ‘uncontrollable’, and the other four Hindu figures had similarly varied lists.
Nina wrote each set on a separate page, tearing them from the notebook and lining them up in front of the door. ‘Well, it’s a start,’ she said. ‘Eddie, how long do you think we have before that helicopter comes back?’
‘Depends where it’s going, and if Khoil’s all set up to go or if he needs to put a team together.’
‘If he’s flying from Delhi,’ Kit said, ‘it would take about an hour. And that would be the logical place for him to assemble his men.’
‘Then we need