The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [96]
The Wildey fired with a colossal boom, the bullet narrowly missing Nina to blast a fist-sized chunk of bark out of a tree - but the effect of the gun’s recoil on the drone itself was nearly as damaging. It was thrown backwards, spinning wildly into another tree trunk. If its rotor blades had not been shrouded inside impact-resistant plastic its flight would have ended there; as it was, it bounced off and wobbled drunkenly back into a hover.
‘If you’re talking, you’re not reacting,’ Eddie said by way of terse explanation as he and Nina crashed through the bushes. Any animals nearby would certainly be able to hear them, but he hoped the tiger had reacted like the birds that had burst in fright from the trees and fled from the sound of the shot.
‘Where are we going?’ Nina panted.
‘Outer wall - I saw where we were on that map. There might be a way out.’
They emerged from the trees. Ahead was a twenty-foot grey concrete wall: the preserve’s boundary. About sixty feet distant Nina saw a ladder attached to the wall - but its lower section had been raised like that of a fire escape, the lowest rung almost twelve feet up. ‘Eddie, over there.’
‘If I give you a leg up, you can pull it down—’
A rifle cracked above them, the bullet kicking up a small explosion of earth at their feet. Two men with guns ran along the top of the wall, a third aiming another shot. Nina and Eddie bolted as a second round slammed into the dirt.
More gunfire spat from the wall as they ran. ‘Back into the trees!’ Eddie yelled.
‘That’s where the tiger is,’ Nina protested.
‘Tigers don’t have guns!’ He vaulted a fallen log back into the shadows, Nina just behind. The firing stopped. Eddie slowed, getting his bearings - and hunting for any nearby movement. The immediate area seemed tiger-free. ‘Okay, so the wall’s out - we need to get to another one of those bunkers. Next one was, er . . . this way.’
He pointed in what seemed to Nina to be a completely random direction. ‘You sure?’
‘Sure-ish.’ He set off. Nina looked round nervously in case anything striped and clawed was watching from the bushes, then scurried after him.
‘What do we do when we get to the bunker?’ she asked in a near-whisper. ‘We can’t lower the elevator from outside.’
‘If we nobble that drone and get my gun back, I can shoot out a window. There was a phone in that first bunker - if the others’re the same, we can call Mac or Kit. We just have to steer clear of Hobbes and his mates.’
A faint whine caught Nina’s attention. She looked up into the trees, but saw nothing. It had to be close, though; Khoil had boasted that the drone’s rotors were inaudible past six metres. ‘I can hear the plane.’
Eddie stopped. ‘Where?’
‘Up there somewhere.’ She pointed.
‘I can’t hear it.’ He stared intently into the foliage, seeing nothing.
The noise grew louder. ‘It’s definitely there,’ Nina hissed. ‘There, there!’
‘Wait, I hear it—’ Eddie began, only to stop as the drone dropped down through a gap in the branches and hovered ten feet away. It turned slightly, pointing the gun at him . . .
But it didn’t fire.
‘What’s it waiting for?’ he wondered out loud.
Nina tugged frantically at his arm. He turned his head - and saw a bush, no more than fifteen feet away, lazily lean over with a faint crackle of bending branches as something pressed against it.
Something large.
‘Uh . . . tiger,’ Nina whispered. ‘There’s a goddamn tiger behind that bush!’
Eddie was already looking elsewhere. ‘That tree,’ he said, nudging her. Off to one side was a broad saman tree, its thick trunk forking a few feet above the ground, providing a step. ‘Move towards it, slowly.’
He put himself between Nina and the predator, then they sidled towards the tree. The bush became still. ‘I can see it,’ Nina whispered, voice tremulous. A shape had taken on form amongst the slashes of sunlight and shadow, crouching low behind the bent branches. Black lines over white and orange converged