For a moment, hope rose inside Chase-Sophia had just been playing along with Yuen, waiting for the right time to help him…

The hope was crushed as she lifted her gun again, aiming at him. The two bodyguards stepped away, keeping their weapons trained on his chest.

“So,” said Chase, recovering from his shock, “I guess couples counseling didn’t work out.”

“Show some tact, Eddie,” Sophia said in a clipped tone of mock offense. “I’m recently bereaved! I need some time to grieve for my late husband.” She looked down at Yuen’s corpse for half a second, then back at Chase. “There, that should do. Thank you, boys,” she told the bodyguards, who nodded respectfully.

Chase regarded the two men warily. “So what now? You going to kill me too?”

“Don’t be absurd. I never discard something I need. If I’d wanted you dead I would have had you shot while you were still dangling from your parachute. Yes, I knew you were coming,” she added on seeing Chase’s expression. “I hid a tracking device in that awful leather jacket of yours while we were on the flight to Botswana. I knew you’d keep wearing it.”

Chase cautiously lifted his hands to search his pockets. “Outside chest pocket, left side,” Sophia told him. “Where you used to keep your cigarettes before you stopped smoking. You never used that pocket for anything else, so I knew you wouldn’t check it.”

His fingertips touched metal and plastic, and he took a small rectangular device from the pocket before tossing it in disgust to the floor. “The question still stands, Sophia,” he said. “What do you want with the Tomb of Hercules?”

She smiled coldly. “You’ll see. But for now, I need to collect my own personal Hiroshima.”

“Why?”

“As I said, you’ll see.”

Chase looked towards the window and the assembly line below. “There’s only one completed bomb.”

“I only need one.” Sophia addressed one of the bodyguards. “Philippe, you stay here and watch Eddie until we’re ready to leave. If he tries anything, shoot him in the legs, but try not to kill him. For now.” She gave Chase a little grin, which he didn’t return, before turning to the larger man of the two. “Eduardo, come with me. I need you to carry something to the plane.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Eduardo. With a final triumphant glance back at Chase, Sophia strode from the room, the hulking bodyguard following her.

The other man, Philippe, waved his gun, directing Chase to take a seat at the circular table. “So, Philippe,” he said as he reluctantly obeyed, “on first-name terms with Sophia, are you?”

Philippe said nothing, moving around the table, out of his reach.

“’cause I know that she doesn’t normally get too familiar with the help,” Chase went on. “Unless…you’re something more than that?” He noticed a very slight twitch around the bodyguard’s eyes. “Or you think you’re going to be. Is that it? You think that if you help her, you’ll get to shag her?”

“Shut up,” said Philippe, annoyed.

“Yeah, I thought so. You know, she’s crap in bed. Just lies there like a dead fish.”

Philippe stepped forward and struck Chase painfully on the base of the neck with the butt of his Glock-19 pistol. “I told you to shut up! Talk again and I will shoot you!”

Chase stayed silent, rubbing his neck, but knew he’d found a potential weakness. Sophia almost certainly had promised the bodyguard favors, including sex. The question was, how could he turn this to his advantage?

A couple of minutes passed, neither man speaking. Chase slowly swiveled his chair to get a better view over the bomb factory, and with dismay saw the other bodyguard pushing a cart bearing the completed weapon towards the far end of the chamber, Sophia strutting ahead of him. There was presumably another exit, hidden from view by the machinery. Neither wore a hazard suit, suggesting radiation levels in the room were safe for short exposures.

They passed out of sight behind the furnace. Chase frowned. He couldn’t let her leave with the bomb…

“She’ll betray you,” he said.

Philippe was unprepared for the comment. “What?”

“Sophia. She’ll betray you, same as she did to me… and Yuen.” He pointed at the corpse on the floor. “Once she’s got what she wants from you, she’ll dump you-and if she thinks you might cause trouble, she’ll kill you.”

“I told you to be quiet.”

Chase turned the chair, his back to the bodyguard. “I mean, do you seriously think she’d be interested in a bloke like you? You’re just a bit of rough, mate. Soon as she gets bored with you, you’re gone! She’s like one of those insects that bites off the poor bastard’s head once they’re done-”

Philippe stepped forward again. “Shut up!” The gun whistled down-and Chase’s hands snapped up, locking around Philippe’s hand and arresting the blow less than an inch above its target. The bodyguard froze, confused for the briefest moment, and Chase pulled forward with all his strength. Philippe slammed into the high back of the chair.

The bodyguard’s head was above Chase’s left shoulder. He smashed his right fist into Philippe’s face three times, knuckles coming away bloodied. His left hand closed around the gun, tearing it from his opponent’s grip.

Philippe’s free hand clamped around Chase’s face, fingers stabbing for his eyes. Chase punched him again, hearing something crunch-his nose or a tooth-then grabbed the bodyguard’s forefinger before it could plunge into his eye socket and bent it back as hard as he could. Faced with the choice of releasing his grip on Chase’s head or having a finger broken, Philippe chose the former, letting out an anguished screech-and in the split second he was distracted, Chase kicked out, heels hitting the floor and propelling the chair backwards on its casters across the conference room. The gun slipped from the grip of both combatants, but it was too late for either of them to act upon that fact-

The chair and its occupants crashed through the window and fell into the bomb factory. Philippe was on the bottom, having just enough time to begin a horrified scream before it was abruptly cut off as he hit the floor and the combined weight of Chase and the chair crushed his rib cage flat.

The impact flung Chase from the chair. He slammed down on his side, broken glass showering all around him. A stinging pain burned across the side of his head-he’d been cut. Shaking off fragments, he got to his feet and looked around.

The two men in hazard suits stood about fifty feet away, regarding him with astonishment. Then one of them dashed to the nearest wall, hand flailing at a panel, and a warbling alarm burst from loudspeakers around the chamber. The two men ran as best they could in their bulky suits for the exit.

If the technicians got through the door and it closed before Chase reached it, without a key card he’d be trapped in the factory with no weapon, easy prey for the security force when they arrived.

Chase broke into a sprint, chasing the yellow figures. They were at the door, one of them already swiping his key card. He passed the exposed laser they’d been working on, running faster as the door opened and they threw themselves through it. It swung shut behind them.

Twenty feet, ten, his arm outstretched-The lock clunked.

Chase reached the door a moment too late. “Fuck!” He pulled the handle, but it didn’t budge.

He turned to see where Sophia had gone. At the far end of the chamber was another door, identical to the one beside him. Undoubtedly with an identical clearance level.

He was trapped. And despite the fact that he was in a room where devastating weapons were being built, there was nothing he could use to defend himself.

Unless…

He ran back to the condenser chamber on which the technicians had been working. The laser, inside a steel tube about the length of his arm and four inches in diameter, had been pulled out of the end of the chamber on a metal rail, heavy-duty electrical cable still connected to its side. Attached to it by a ribbon connector was some kind of calibration device, a box festooned with buttons and gauges.