I
f Angus was any judge, they walked on through those claustrophobic passages for miles. There was no sound except for the scuffling of their shoes on the rock and their labored breathing. Angus's back and neck were getting sore from his constant slouching posture the low ceiling made necessary.
At last Mulcifer stopped at a T-crossing. Angus, just behind him with Rob, could see that to the right the tunnel went steeply downward. They might have been able to walk down, but odds were they would have slid on their arses all the way to wherever it ended up. To the left, only a few feet away, was a cul-de-sac.
"End of the line," Mulcifer said. He pointed to the stone wall of the cul-de-sac. "We'll blow through that. It's only a few inches thick, so plant your charges accordingly."
"Now, wait a minute," Rob said. "You want us to set off charges down here? Christ, man, the whole place could collapse on us!"
"It won't. These walls are very strong. They've been down here . . . well, a long time. Just set the charges straight so it will kick the stone backward, down that shaft, or forward, into what's on the other side. The men can retreat back down the way we came when the blast goes off."
Angus and Rob did as they were told. Rob was good with explosives, and used a stone hammer to chip out small cavities in which to insert the C-4. After he had set three charges in a triangulation pattern and attached electronic fuses, he nodded to Mulcifer, and the three of them joined the other men who had already gone fifty yards back up the passage and around another corner. As Angus ran past the tunnel that went sharply downward, he thought he heard something, like a quick patter of claws on rock. He didn't stop to investigate.
Once they reached safety, Rob pressed the electronic trigger, and the shock of the concussion down the tunnel pushed against them like a quick, strong wind. Even though Angus had placed his hands over his ears, the sound was deafening, and his ears rang with it for a long time after.
The dust took several minutes to settle, and when they went back down the tunnel to the cul-de-sac, Angus saw that much of the stone that had been blown away had indeed rolled down into the steep declivity from which he had heard that odd sound. The cul-de-sac itself had been blown away, and a gaping hole six feet in diameter opened into darkness.
Mulcifer walked up to it fearlessly and stepped through. Rob and Angus shone their lights inside, and saw Mulcifer walking over a pile of rubble down into a cave fifty feet across and another forty feet deep. Its ceiling was fifty feet high. At the far end, where the ceiling sloped downward, was a huge pile of rubble that it would have taken several trucks to haul away.
But what drew Angus's attention most were the metal canisters on one side of the cave. There appeared to be a hundred or more, and they were stacked in four long rows on wide metal racks. Their light green color was not due to corrosion, for the metal still sparkled, and the only dust on them was what had settled from the explosion only minutes before.
Mulcifer continued to beckon the men to come closer and make room for those still in the tunnel. "Come in, come in, gentlemen. Nothing to bite you here. And I don't think we need to be concerned about being disturbed by the authorities. There are the canisters I require. They weigh one hundred pounds each. I really don't want to overburden any of you, particularly on such an arduous journey, so I suggest that two men carry one canister. That will allow us to remove five of them, which should certainly be sufficient for my purposes. Shall we?"
They paired off, Mulcifer and Rob taking the first canister and leaving through the opening. Angus and another man were next. Angus positioned the top of the six-foot-long canister under his left arm and followed Mulcifer and Rob, his partner behind him. Soon they were all winding their way up the gentle incline of the tunnel again.
So this was the gas
, Angus thought,
the shite that Colin hadn't ever wanted to use
. And here he was, disobeying his leader, not his clan chief, perhaps, but someone far more important to him. He felt like Benedict Arnold, another Judas for England. They had lost their purpose now, maybe their entire goal, and it was all the fault of this preening, poncy bastard who called himself Mulcifer, like he was some actual demon from the bowels of hell.
Well, he wasn't a demon, whatever he was. He was alive, and anything that lived could be killed, if only someone had the will to do it.
Maybe now was the time. Mulcifer seemed to be straining a wee bit under his load. It could be that he was concentrating so much on the physical that his guard was down. It would be so easy just to take out his gun and shoot the prick. He could at least try it.
With his free right arm he reached into his jacket where his pistol nestled in its shoulder holster. It was one sweet gun, a Glock 21, capable of spitting out ten .45 slugs as fast as he could pull the trigger, which was pretty damned fast. He tentatively wrapped his fingers around the butt and was surprised to find that he could do it, especially with the thought so strong in his mind of killing Mulcifer. Now, if he could only take it out . . .
He gave it a sharp tug, and it left the holster and rested in his hand, the metal warming to his touch. Then he brought it out and held it in front of him, against his chest. He'd have to be careful to avoid hitting Rob, but if Angus moved slightly to the side, he thought he could shoot past his friend easily enough.
Angus had no doubt that he could do it now. The bastard's guard was down, he was sure of it. He could pull the trigger, and he
would
. He raised the gun, gritted his teeth, put pressure on the trigger . . .
And the gun fired, slamming a slug into the back of Mulcifer's head, pushing him forward so that he dropped the canister with a ringing clatter. Rob dropped to the ground, and Angus kept firing, the bullets hitting Mulcifer in the neck, the head, the back, pushing him forward like a puppet, the bullets holding him up like strings as screams burst from him with each shot.
Then the magazine was empty, and Mulcifer, with one final agonized wail, fell straight down onto his face, and Angus heard his skull crack against the stone floor. Mulcifer's fingers and feet twitched spastically, then stiffened, and he was still.
"I'll be damned," Angus whispered in the sudden stillness, slowly lowering his end of the canister to the ground. Not one of the men had drawn his own gun to defend Mulcifer, and now they just stood there, all holding their canisters except for Rob. He still lay where he had dropped, but he was looking from Mulcifer's riddled body to Angus's emptied pistol and back again, hope slowly growing on his face.
"I'll be
god
damned," Angus said, a smile starting to crease his broad face as he walked slowly toward the creature lying on the stone floor of the tunnel. He stood above him, looking down at the back of his ruined head, the white shirt shredded by bullets. Then he crouched down next to him. "You go to hell, you bastard," he said softly.
Mulcifer turned over and smiled. "You first, you chubby Scottish bitch."
Angus felt bathed in ice. For a moment he could not move. Then he scuttled away from Mulcifer until he came up against the stone wall, still holding his doubly useless pistol in his hand. Mulcifer was getting to his feet now, and the damage that the bullets had done to his head and body seemed to be healing as Angus watched, the flesh knitting itself back together again seamlessly. Although the shirt remained torn, the blood that had stained it was vanishing, fading from crimson to pink to peach to the transparency of water.
"What did you think, Angus?" asked Mulcifer clearly and flawlessly from a throat that the bullets had torn apart. "That you could kill me? That somehow your bullets could succeed where all others had failed? That you were Wallace or the Bruce or some other dead Scottish hero whose magic could slay the evil prince? And did you think that I would not be aware of your feelings, your hatred? I knew what you intended, you fat fool—I
allowed
you to draw that gun, to shoot me down. Because I wanted them all to see that doing so causes me no harm, no, not even discomfort. And one thing more—I want them to see what happens to those who disobey."
"You . . ." Angus felt his words choke in his throat, but he would not let this vile thing know how afraid he was of it. He pushed the words out, broad and burred and Scottish. "You go and
fook
yoursel'."
"The word," said Mulcifer dryly, "is 'fuck,' and it's one that gentlemen shouldn't use. Therefore, you die no gentleman's death, you shortbread-sucking,
haggis
-gobbling,
kilt
-wearing, jock scotty
McAsshole
!"
Mulcifer's words had increased in volume and intensity, but now he dropped the volume again. "No offense intended, of course. Just as I'm sure you didn't intend to offend me with your little fusillade of lead. Everyone, turn your lights directly on our friend Angus here."
The flashlights that had not already illuminated Angus now shone on him, making it hard to see. "Now, Angus, let's see how those fine Scottish teeth can gnaw through fine Scottish flesh. I want you to chew through the veins in your wrist, Angus. Just ignore the pain and gnaw right through until the blood starts spurting."
Angus looked down at his right hand, still holding the pistol. He didn't think about what he was going to do, not about the horror of it, or the agony it would cause him, or the death that would follow from the loss of blood. He didn't wonder about how he had come to be doing such a thing. He simply did what he was told. He felt no anger, no terror, no desire to strike back at the man who had directed him to oblivion. He simply chewed.
T
he ones who felt all the emotions that Angus could not were the men watching him. Rob could only stand there as his friend scraped at the skin over his own wrist, piercing it with his teeth, and then tearing away small bits. The bleeding started quickly, and by the time Angus reached the artery, his face was already smeared red. The pulsing blood struck Angus in the eyes, but he merely closed them and continued to worry at his arm like a dog ripping meat off a soup bone.
After a few more minutes, he toppled over onto his side, but continued to chew weakly until his only motion was the blood that continued to run from the gaping wound in his wrist. His eyes glazed over, and Rob knew he was dead.
"All right," said Mulcifer. "Let's be on our way. We'll leave Angus here." He knelt and picked up the canister he and Rob had been carrying and slipped it under one arm as easily as if it had been inflatable. Then he nodded to Rob to pick up the front end of Angus's canister, turned, and walked leisurely down the tunnel, his head slightly bent.
Rob and the others followed. He could not remember ever feeling so much hatred, and knowing that hatred was what he must
not
feel. If the thing felt it, he might do the same to Rob as he had done to big Angus, and then Rob would never know the joy of avenging his friend, who would have fought a bear with a fork for the fun of it.
So Rob tried to think of other things, of heather and mountains and glens and the beauty through which they had come and through which they would return in daylight with their terrible burden. He hoped that the honor walking ahead of him could not see what was not consciously thought, and then, acknowledging his own dreams of revenge, tried to bury them deep under images of white clouds and blue skies.
When they arrived back at the barrow, early morning light was glowing through the opening they had dug. At Mulcifer's orders, they covered over the hole in the floor with the heavy metal sheet again and shoved the four boulders onto each corner. Then they replaced the stones and the dirt, finally putting the turf back over the bare earth so that unless one looked carefully, the barrow appeared undisturbed.
When they finished, Mulcifer had them load four of the five canisters into the rear of the first van, and the fifth canister into the other. Then he went up to Brian and Henry Baird, two brothers in their twenties who had been among the most militant of Colin's small cadre, and drew them aside, out of hearing of the rest of the men.
He talked to them for ten minutes, and they showed no response other than to nod when he was finished. The Baird brothers got into the second van, and Mulcifer told the other men to get into the first. "It may be cozy, but we're all brothers in the cause of Scottish freedom, now, aren't we?"
Rob drove next to Mulcifer, and the other men arranged themselves three in the backseat and two sitting on the floor in the rear, amid the canisters. The two vans pulled out onto the A837, but when Rob turned west to head back to Castle Dirk, the van behind went east. "Where are the Bairds off to, then?" Rob asked.
Mulcifer shook his head. "Don't worry about them. Just concentrate on the road. You wouldn't want to have an accident with what we're carrying, would you?"