The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [189]
She looked back at Khoil, seeing that his blank, expressionless android mask had finally been completely stripped away, leaving nothing but anger and hate. Then he was gone as they descended to the walkway, then hurried to floor level. They started for the hole in the dome wall—
‘Chase . . .’ said a low, straining voice. Eddie whirled. Zec. The mercenary was still alive - just. He had broken his neck in the fall, his head twisted round alarmingly, but the break was at a vertebra low enough for him to keep breathing. His body was limp, however, still splayed as he had landed. Paralysed.
Eddie hesitated, then went to him. ‘What’re you doing?’ said Nina, reluctantly stopping halfway to the hole in the dome. ‘If we don’t have time to get Khoil out, we don’t have time for him either!’
She was right, he knew, but the situation was different. Zec had helped them - saved them. Abandoning him felt wrong . . . even though attempting to get him out of the dome would probably result in them all being killed.
Zec also knew the score. ‘No, leave me,’ he whispered, before the Englishman could pick him up. ‘Just tell my family . . . that I did the right thing. Tell my son he can be . . . proud of me.’
‘I will,’ Eddie promised.
‘Thank you.’ A feeble smile. ‘I hope . . . Hugo will not be disappointed when I see him. Now, go. Go!’
Eddie backed away, giving him a nod of silent thanks before turning to follow Nina. She was already at the exposed section of dome, kicking at the fibreglass panels. He joined her, slamming his sole against one of the geodesic struts. Metal bent, then snapped under a second below. The panels shattered, freezing wind gusting round them.
The resulting hole was now large enough to fit through. Nina went first, finding herself on a narrow ledge, looking down at the composite building’s roof close to thirty feet below. ‘Whoa! It’s higher than I thought.’
There was no sign of a ladder. ‘We’ll have to jump,’ said Eddie.
‘Are you kidding? We’ll break our legs!’
Another explosive crackle of electrical fury came from behind them. ‘Well, we could just stand here and watch the aurora, but we won’t have long to appreciate it.’ He ran to one corner. ‘Here!’ he said, pointing down. Though the heat from inside the radar station had melted most of the snow off the sloping roof, the elements had still maintained a hold on some areas, a steep drift having built up against the northern wall.
‘It’s not very deep.’
‘Better than nothing!’ He clambered over the rail, hung from it . . . then dropped. There was a flat whumph as he hit the piled snow, followed by a string of expletives.
‘Are you okay?’ Nina called as he crawled from the drift.
‘You were right - it’s not very deep. Come on, jump down.’
She reluctantly dangled from the railing, muttering darkly before releasing her hold. The drift exploded round her as she landed, the mound of snow doing little to cushion her landing. ‘God damn it!’ she gasped, spitting out ice.
Eddie helped her up. ‘It’s going!’ He indicated the little windows above them. Actinic flashes from the sparking, overloading transformers stabbed through the orange flicker of flames. ‘Come on!’
Nina couldn’t see any skylights or other ways back into the building, only the jutting tops of the station’s eight blocky support legs. ‘Where?’
‘Behind that!’ He pointed at the nearest leg. ‘Get down and cover your ears!’
They rounded the structure, finding another snowdrift on its exposed side. Eddie practically threw Nina into it, diving after her—
The remaining transformers, hulking Cold War relics filled with hundreds of gallons of mineral oil coolant, exploded.
The floor of the dome erupted with liquid fire, the blast from below ripping the geodesic structure apart. Zec was killed instantly; Khoil, higher up, screamed and thrashed as the flames consumed him in his own personal funeral pyre. The walls of the central core collapsed on to the roof and smashed through it into the floors below, the burning remains of the dome tumbling down on top