The suspension arm swung madly, the entire cable whipping with the sudden loss of weight. Chase clung desperately to the cold metal, fighting for a foothold on the mangled remains of the roof. He saw the gondola behind juddering as well, one of the gunmen falling to the floor.

He strained to look over his shoulder at the car ahead. Maybe Sophia had been pitched out of a window as her gondola shook. No such luck. Bracing herself on a handrail, she glared back at him, having seen that he’d escaped the falling cabin.

The shuddering eased, though the suspension arm was still swinging. Chase tried to get a better handhold, but there was nothing.

He looked around again, not at Sophia but at the top station beyond her. Over two-thirds of the way there now-

Gunfire!

Bullets from the lower car flew past him with fwips of seared air, hammer-clangs striking against the suspension arm.

The metal Chase was pressed against was a foot wide at most. He twisted, turning sideways to shield as much of his body as possible.

But his hands and upper arms were still exposed, reaching around the sides. If a bullet even clipped him, he would lose his grip and fall to his death.

Sophia’s car was approaching the upper station. What was left of Chase’s would reach it in thirty seconds-

A bullet struck the suspension arm just above his left hand, shock waves buzzing through the metal. His fingers slipped on the grimy surface. He clawed for grip, feeling his other hand sliding, the remains of the roof beneath his feet bending under his weight…

His fingertips caught protruding metal: a bolt.

Arms burning, he pulled himself up by a couple of inches, just enough to stop the roof from giving way.

Another flurry of shots spanged against the suspension arm.

Sophia was nearly at the station, its lights washing over her gondola. Chase could see the building clearly now, another open-ended concrete structure, perched almost on the edge of the cliff.

Almost.

There was a steep rocky ledge, just a few feet across, between the thick foundation of the terminus and the sheer drop away to the valley floor.

Something hard nudged his side, caught between his body and the suspension arm.

The grenade…

The cable vibrated as Sophia’s car detached. More gunfire. Shots cracked against the cliff face. Ten seconds, less. The guards kept firing.

With a yell, Chase let go of the support with one hand, pain slicing through the fingertips of the other as they took his entire weight. The metal beneath his feet buckled. Flailing, he managed to reach into his jacket and pull out the grenade.

The cliff was just feet away.

Chase pulled himself up, teeth clamping around the ring attached to the grenade’s pin to tug it out. The curved metal spoon sprang away and disappeared into the darkness below.

Four-second fuse-

“Going down!”

He thrust the grenade upwards, jamming it into the runner hooking the gondola onto the cable. Then he threw himself onto the rocky ledge.

Loose pebbles skittered and slithered beneath him. He scrabbled for grip as if swimming up a waterfall of stones-

The suspension arm passed overhead into the station. The guards took aim-The grenade exploded.

The blast severed the main cable. The suspension arm dropped, smashing onto the station’s concrete floor before being yanked backwards with tremendous force. It shot over Chase’s head like a giant anchor as the full weight of the line and the third gondola snatched it into the valley.

The terrified screams of the security guards faded to nothing as they plunged hundreds of feet to splatter on the rocks far below.

Chase was still sliding down the scree, grasping for anything that might stop him from following them. His legs went over the lip of the cliff, his waist…

One hand locked around a rock.

Chase brought up his other hand. The rock held firm.

He pulled himself back up, managing to get a foothold. Another few seconds, and he was on the ledge proper, feeling his whole body shivering with the adrenaline aftershock.

But he couldn’t stop. Not yet. He still had to reach Sophia.

He clambered up the ledge to the foot of the building, spotting metal rungs set into the concrete nearby. He began a rapid ascent, pausing just below the final rung to draw his gun. Ready…

Go!

He whipped up and swept his gun across the station, locking on to a target.

“Don’t move!” he shouted.

Sophia was kneeling near the back of the room, frozen by his command. She had realized what Chase had done with the grenade just in time to throw herself into cover behind one of the stationary gondolas, and was only now recovering from the earsplitting shock of an explosion in a confined concrete space.

“Eddie,” she said, scowling as he climbed up and walked towards her, the gun never wavering. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You never could take a hint that you weren’t wanted.”

“Where’s the bomb, Sophia?” Chase demanded.

“Still in the cable car.” She smiled thinly. “It’s a little heavy for me to carry. Would you mind getting it out for me?”

“Shut up!” She was taken aback by his shout, her defiant expression faltering as she saw that he was deadly serious. Still keeping his gun locked on to her, Chase walked to the gondola and peered inside. The bomb rested in the center of the floor.

It was his first opportunity to take a proper look at the device. A truncated cone of shining steel acted as a base, three metal rails rising from a hole in its center to a squat, overhanging cylindrical cap of the same polished metal. A slot in the base looked as though it would house the arming system, but it was currently empty. Standing close to three feet tall, the bomb appeared to weigh at least a hundred pounds-but with its uranium core, it would be considerably more than that.

The design was unusual, but Chase knew enough about the basics of nuclear weapons to recognise the type. It was a “gun” device, the simplest and crudest kind of nuke-but also the easiest to build, transport and maintain. Other types of nuclear devices were precision instruments, engineered to minuscule tolerances and requiring every part to function perfectly in a sequence of events measured in microseconds to achieve a proper detonation.

Gun bombs, on the other hand, were blunt instruments needing little more than raw force to work. Take two pieces of enriched uranium-235 of a certain combined total mass. Smash them together, hard. Critical mass is reached, and a nuclear explosion results. The type’s name came from the first example of the kind, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima; it literally was a length of gun barrel, a uranium slug fired from one end into a larger piece at the other.

Yuen’s bomb was smaller and more refined, but the principle was exactly the same. Chase guessed that the slug was in the base-an explosive charge beneath it would fire it up the guide rails like a bullet and into the uranium target inside the steel cap. Simple, crude… but effective.

And deadly. If Yuen’s boast had been accurate, the bomb had a fifteen-kiloton yield-slightly more powerful than Hiroshima, and enough to level the heart of any city and cause a firestorm that would raze buildings for miles around, to say nothing of the radioactive fallout that would be produced.

He looked back at Sophia. “What do you want with a nuke, Sophia?”

She narrowed her eyes. “My dry cleaner ruined my Prada skirt, so I wanted to show my disapproval.”

He strode over to her, snapping the gun up almost against her forehead. “Tell me!”

“You won’t hurt me,” she said quietly. Chase just stared at her stonily. The gun didn’t waver by so much as a millimeter. Uncertainty crept into her eyes. “Eddie…”

“This is over, Sophia,” Chase told her. “Give me your phone. I’m going to contact the authorities, then-”