Path of the Tiger, стр. 446

‘You can’t kill me,’ Hrothgar muttered, smiling grimly.

‘Oh yes I can. Not even you can survive your head being separated from your body, I assure you that.’

‘That’s not what I mean, crusader. You see, if you kill me you die. You all die.’

‘What are you talking about?!’

‘Attached to my heart is a transponder; call it my insurance policy. You didn’t think Sigurd and I would be stupid enough to not have insurance policies, did you? In short, if my heart stops beating, this building explodes. Do you know how much C4 is packed inside these walls and attached to the supporting pillars? If I die this little device will send out a signal, and that signal will detonate every fucking package of C4in here, bringing the entire place down in seconds. You and your friends will be blown up or crushed, as will the thousands of people downstairs. Tell me, Zakaria, do you really want the blood of that many innocent souls on your hands, for the sake of just one life? Do you?’

Zakaria’s hands started to shake; it was as if his muscles were trying to contain the immensity of the volcanic pressure of Vesuvius on the eve of its eruption.

‘No … no … NO!’ he roared.

Hrothgar chuckled darkly, keeping his eyes locked into Zakaria’s and injecting his mamba poison into Zakaria’s mind and soul through the medium of this invisible conduit.

‘Go on. Cut my chest open right now to see if I’m bluffing.’

Hrothgar slackened his grip on his axe with his left hand, and raised his right hand, palm up, to his chest.

‘Here crusader, I’ll even take this bulletproof vest off for you. I’m sure your sword is sharp enough to cut through my sternum to have a look inside.’

‘You … you…’ Zakaria croaked, his voice hoarse with pent-up wrath and a crippling frustration.

‘What are you going to do? Take my head off and sign the death warrants of all of your friends and all the innocent people downstairs? Or will you do the sensible thing and lower that fucking sword and let me walk away?’

Zakaria gulped down a slow, dry swallow of emptiness, trying to overcome the anger that was shaking him to his very core, the wrath that was as a seismic force rocking a great skyscraper. He was beyond words now; he could not communicate the frustration that was boiling his blood within his arteries and veins. He had waited so long for this moment, so very long – and now the culmination, the finale of everything had been snatched so cruelly from within his grasp.

‘Your choice, Zakaria. Make it … make it now. Make it NOW!’ Hrothgar roared, spittle flying from his lips and blood pumping from his wounds, while hellfire raged an unearthly inferno in his eyes. ‘Do it!’ he howled again. ‘Make your choice! Make your choice, crusader! MAKE YOUR FUCKING CHOICE!’

Zakaria’s hands were trembling with the violence of night leaves shaken by a storm-driven gale. He drew his sword back from Hrothgar’s throat, pausing for a split-second with maddening indecision.

It was just enough of a hesitation for the Viking. In that nanosecond he abruptly tightened his grip on his axe, whipping it up and out of Zakaria’s temporarily loosened grasp, and with a vicious, trap-snap blow he slammed it into the side of the knight’s helm. The axe crunched through the steel and smashed into Zakaria’s skull, burying itself in his head. Hrothgar held both his axe and his gaze firmly in place, his eyes locked with fervent focus on Zakaria’s seeing eye, watching that single orb rolling up into the top of its socket as his opponent’s limbs became limp. Zakaria’s hand opened and his sword clattered on the floor, but Hrothgar did not look down; instead, he kept his eyes on Zakaria’s as the huge man’s knees buckled beneath him and his torso slumped. His head lolled on his neck, with only the deeply buried axe, still gripped tight by Hrothgar, holding it upright.

Finally, Hrothgar moved. He released his grip on the axe haft and watched as Zakaria’s body crumpled to the floor, limp as a clubbed fish. He stared for a while at it, with the weapon protruding obscenely from the armoured head as if it were some sort of grody bionic deformity.

‘You gullible idiot,’ he whispered to Zakaria. ‘Did you really think we’d be suicidal enough to fill this building with C4?’

Then he reached down, picked up Zakaria’s sword and strode into the red-pulsing shadows.

***

On the other side of the wall of rubble Ranomi and Njinga had already fled; their part in this mission was over, and although Zakaria should have been with them at this point, they trusted that he would be able to deal with Hrothgar on his own and then make his way to the rendezvous point for their exit.

Ranomi was still in her rhinoceros form, while Njinga was running alongside her in her combat suit, carrying an M-16 from one of Joao’s fallen soldiers. Both were bleeding, wounded and breathing hard, with only their final reserves of strength pushing them through the fog of battle-fatigue that was making their limbs more leaden with every step, and sapping what little energy they still possessed, each beastwalker feeling as if she was encased in a living cocoon of greedy, sucking mosquitoes, draining her of life as she struggled onwards.

‘Let’s go,’ Njinga urged, her voice cracking. ‘We gotta move, we gotta move!’

Their exit point was two floors below, where their inside contact, the Cambodian janitor, had strung a zipline from this building across to the next one. Via the zipline the Rebels would land on the balcony of an apartment they had rented out. From there they would race up to the rooftop of that skyscraper, and again take another zipline – this one much longer, at over three hundred metres – over an entire city block to another apartment building, in the basement of which they