If she couldn’t . . . her mission might fail. Maybe she should detonate the bomb manually, while she still could . . .

She shifted position to see the control panel. It was set into the boxy protrusion, a twenty-button keypad glowing softly beside the main activation switch. A small LED display showed the timer. It flicked down to twenty-eight minutes. The two minutes already gone had felt like an eternity. Again, maddeningly, Chase was right. She wouldn’t stay conscious until the end.

So the end would have to come sooner.

A six-digit code was needed to switch the detonator from the timer to manual control. Once correctly entered, all she had to do was flick the switch. She started to tap it into the keypad—

Noise from the tunnel. Chase was moving.

Two digits left, but she didn’t have time to put them in. A figure lunged around the corner into her spotlight—

She fired – but it wasn’t Chase.

Eddie hauled the dead man from the floor, awkwardly holding the corpse in front of his body. ‘Come on, Bernie,’ he muttered as he brought his ungainly cargo to the corner – and swung out into the open.

Wu’s MP7 fired. Bullets smacked into the human shield’s torso, making it twitch and flail – but some of the armour-piercing rounds penetrated to hit the man behind.

Eddie cried out as he felt searing metal tear into his chest. He lurched back – but saw the glaring tactical light over the corpse’s shoulder. He aimed his gun to the side of the dazzling spot and held down the trigger—

A scream, abruptly cut off – and Wu’s fire stopped. The light reeled away from him and clattered to the floor.

His gun fell silent. He dropped the body and staggered forward. The Chinese woman lay on her back behind the bomb. Blood covered her neck and chin. She was not dead, red bubbles swelling and bursting in her mouth with each wheezing breath.

He kicked Wu’s weapon clear of her twitching hand. His furious burst of fire had stitched a line diagonally across her chest, blood flowing from ragged wounds. She would not be alive for long without medical help – which he had no intention of giving.

Instead he crouched to examine the weapon. A display showed the timer ticking down. Below it was an illuminated keypad . . . with every key blank.

‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ he growled. Without knowing the function of each button, all he could do was tap in random codes, running the risk of triggering an anti-tampering system – and detonating the bomb. ‘How do I stop it?’

‘You . . . can’t,’ Wu gurgled.

‘You can, though.’

‘But I will . . . not.’

‘Let’s try again.’ He jammed his thumb into one of her bullet wounds. She screamed, squirming. ‘How do I stop the bomb?’