‘Or perhaps it’s another way of getting back into the lab if they had to.’
‘Whatever it is, I would like to know what’s on the other side of it . . . more so in a couple of hours from now when we could be freezing to death.’
Jason climbed the wall a few feet in order to inspect the box that the light was attached to. He pulled a side of the ageing box open to look inside. ‘It’s a sensor,’ Jason decided. ‘My guess is it’s a trigger. To warn if it’s opened.’
It made sense to Stratton. But it wasn’t much of a solution even if it was the lab. The occupants wouldn’t exactly welcome them with open arms. That was assuming they could get inside at all.
Jason pushed his fingers inside the gap as if feeling for something inside. There was a spark and he yelped in shock, snatching back his hand and jumping into the water.
The light began to blink on and off in a regular rhythm. Silence fell as the men stood in the glow of the flashing light, the water up to their knees. They looked at each other.
Jason shrugged apologetically. ‘I think I tripped something.’
The obvious question was: stay, or get out of there? Take the opportunity, or not? If they couldn’t get out of the tunnel any other way they would die, and none too pleasantly either. Getting recaptured might not be a whole lot better but it could mean that their demise would be a whole lot later. And time allowed for opportunities.
Yet as they stood there the minutes ticked away. Nothing happened.They waited. And waited. Hoping someone would come to the door and investigate. But this was Russia, of course. And they were miles from nowhere and the Cold War was over. No one was going to come.
Then, as if to prove it, the light stopped flashing and went back to glowing normally.
Stratton could no longer feel his feet. He estimated hypothermia would set in within twenty minutes or so. They would experience a surge of energy, perhaps even a sense of invulnerability, and then fatigue would set in. Their legs would give out and they would kneel in the water. That would speed things up but by then they would be delirious. They would die soon after. Their bodies might not be found for years, if ever. Their bones would rest beneath the water. With no identity on them they would be a couple of unexplained skeletons. It would remain a mystery to London too, another Buster Crabb story.
‘Would they send someone else, do you think?’ Jason asked. He wasn’t particularly interested in events that might occur after his death but a conversation might ease the pain of the cold a little.
Stratton didn’t care.
They remained silent for another minute, hoping to hear a sound from the other side of the door. But still no one came. It was so quiet that each man could hear his own heart beating in his chest.
‘I used to be afraid of the dark when I was a child,’ Jason said. ‘Were you?’
‘No. I always knew what was out there.’
Jason looked at the operative bathed in the red glow from above. ‘I’ll be honest about something. Not because this may be the only opportunity to say it. Do you know why MI16 was going to take over certain operations that your lot and the SAS consider their own?’
‘No.’ It was something else Stratton didn’t care much about.
‘We’re smarter than you, by a long way. We’re more accomplished athletes. I’d wager we’re probably all better shots than you.’
‘You think that’s all it takes?’
‘You have military experience, I grant you that, but we’re not talking about those kinds of operations. Take this one, for instance. All of it, from the beginning. None of it was a success. Your skills have only led to failure at every turn. You practically sank the platform with your arrival. Binning escaped with the tile. And we’re probably going to die in this tunnel, leaving the rest of the operation a failure.’
‘You would have done it differently?’
‘I would have reacted differently, sure - more intelligently, less like a bull in a china shop. Rowena was right. All you’ve ever been in your career is lucky. And it looks like that luck has finally run out.’
Stratton absorbed the insults. He even appreciated the conversation. It took his mind off the discomfort. Jason Mansfield might even have a point, he thought. He was right about the results. ‘It’s moot now.’
‘I don’t agree. Yes, this situation has put MI16’s plans back but the fundamental reasons why it’s necessary remain. My place will be taken and it will eventually happen.’
‘Jason, I was going to say this to you anyway. You’re a wanker. It’s not so much what you say, it’s the way you say it.’
Jason’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have an idea,’ he said, moving through the water to the middle of the cavern. ‘Maybe we should fight it out, here and now. See who’s the best. It’d keep us warm for a bit, at least. What do you say?’
Stratton simply looked at him in the glow of the light.
Jason moved closer to Stratton, shrugging his arms and turning his neck as if loosening up for a fight. ‘Come on. Let’s do it. To the death. Neither of us has anything to lose. None of your colleagues will know you were beaten by a mere scientist. Come on.’
Jason adopted a fighting stance and moved within range of Stratton. The operative remained still.
‘Take a punch. Or are you a counter man? Is that it?’
Jason jabbed at Stratton who moved enough to avoid the strike that was only intended as a probe anyway. Jason followed it up with another blow that struck Stratton on the shoulder. The scientist’s next punch was far stronger and hit Stratton hard in the chest. Stratton lunged at him, taking only a step, his heart not in it.
Jason kept his side-to-side stepping routine going, sloshing around in the water. ‘That’s it. Come on. Now hit me.’
Stratton was growing more irritated than angry but still not enough to be drawn in.
Jason dummied with one hand and struck Stratton in the face with the other, hard enough to send his head back. Stratton’s mounting anger went up a couple of notches.
Jason danced left and right. ‘You’re going down if you don’t defend yourself,’ he warned. ‘I sincerely plan on killing you. It’s something I often contemplated, ever since I began karate. What would it be like to kill someone using my bare hands? What better subject than you?’
Jason came in for another series of punches and outmanoeuvred Stratton’s unskilled defences, striking him with several hard blows. Stratton lunged forward again but Jason surprised him with a vicious kick to his ribs.
Stratton dropped to one knee in pain and glared at Jason. The scientist was grinning at him but did not waste any more time gloating. He came in with a low blow. Stratton moved back with it and grabbed the clenched fist, at the same time back-handing Jason across the mouth so viciously that it sent him back.
Jason stopped to feel the cut that had opened up on his lip. He felt the blood with the back of his hand and broke into a grin again. ‘That’s more like it.’ His eyes narrowed and he looked suddenly dangerous as he came forward to get stuck in.
Stratton stood against the door, poised to respond to Jason’s next attack. The idiot was serious about fighting to the death. Stratton didn’t know if he had flipped or what. The scientist’s issues clearly went a lot deeper than anyone knew.
As Jason moved to prepare for his attack, Stratton heard something other than feet moving through the water. ‘Quiet,’ he said, his voice lowered, his eyes looking up.
‘Not going to work,’ Jason said as he tensed.
‘Quiet! I heard something.’
Jason suddenly suspected that the other man might be telling the truth. He kept his distance but stayed alert as he listened.
A faint clanging sound came from beyond the door. Stratton turned to face it, ignoring Jason completely.
A heavy clunk was followed by the sound of an electric motor. A gear engaged and the door jolted. Bits of rust and debris fell from seams around the door.
Stratton stepped back.
The electric motor laboured heavily. The door jerked again and more debris fell from the hinges. The motor was beginning to sound as if it might fail when the entire door shuddered and then cracked open. The motor picked up and as the gap widened a bright light flooded the rock walls.
The two men instinctively moved out of the immediate view of anyone who might emerge from the opening. The water rushed in through the gap to fill a space on the other side and when the door was open wide enough to let a man through the motors went silent.
Stratton and Jason remained still, their senses straining to detect what if anything was on the other side of it.
A gloved hand reached around the door frame followed by its owner wearing a heavy-duty one-piece boiler suit and waders. He turned on a flashlight and aimed it up at the sensor as he backed out of the doorway. Stratton grabbed the hand holding the torch, almost giving the man a heart attack. As he cried out, Stratton covered his mouth. The frightened man shut up instantly.
Stratton released his grip and gestured for the man to stay quiet. He obeyed. Stratton stepped through the doorway into a brightly lit landing at the foot of a narrow concrete stairwell. His instinct suddenly warned him and he faced the steps to see a young Russian soldier partway up them aiming an AK-74 down at him. The soldier was as surprised to see the stranger as his engineer colleague had been but it did not divert him from his task. He pulled a radio from a pouch, put it to his mouth and talked quickly into it.
Jason stepped through the door and raised his empty hands in the air. ‘Well, at least I won’t freeze to death. And you’ve been saved from an embarrassing thrashing.’
15
Stratton and Jason stood in a large room that housed several noisy pieces of heavy equipment. Their hands had been chained around a thick metal bracing, part of a steel structure that supported a large pumping machine. Two sides of the rectangular space had been hewn out of solid rock, the other sides were constructed from cemented concrete blocks. The young soldier stood on the far side of the room by a wooden door, calmly watching, his gun in his hands. Puddles of water had collected around the feet of the two prisoners. They had been there for over an hour but at least the room was warm and they had stopped shivering.
The young soldier had made them wait at gunpoint at the foot of the emergency stairwell until half a dozen reinforcements had arrived. The response from the mine’s guards had been enthusiastic due to the novelty of such a visit. Every soldier not at a duty post had answered the call to action. They promptly led the bedraggled pair up and down several levels and through a labyrinth of corridors, their walls made of bare rock or brick, to the pump room, the nearest thing they had to a dedicated cell at the facility.
The mine, or laboratory, appeared to be a series of interconnecting halls dug out of the rock. A hundred miles of piping and conduits of all sizes wound along the ceilings and through the walls. Some halls housed pumps and generators while in others sat collections of weird-looking storage vats and drums of differing sizes and colours. The entire place had a feel of decay, as though it was in serious need of reconstruction, with chipping paint, broken fixtures and mildew everywhere. At intervals along the connecting tunnels between many of the halls stood airtight steel doors like those in a bank vault, so heavy that they could only be moved by hydraulic rams.
The wooden door to the pump room opened and Stratton and Jason looked up to see a grim-faced Russian officer in casual uniform walk in. He glanced at the soldier and then at the two Englishmen before stepping aside from the doorway to allow the man behind him into the room. Binning.
Stratton and Jason weren’t entirely surprised. During the time they had spent waiting they’d wondered if such a meeting might take place.
Binning wore a white technician’s coat and a smarmy grin as he put his hands on his hips and planted his feet astride. ‘Well, well, well. This is a surprise. I can’t tell you how stunned I was to hear the descriptions of the men they had found lurking in the tunnels. How the hell did you end up there?’
Neither man answered.
‘I just know you had something to do with the helicopter that crashed almost right on top of us. I can’t wait to hear how that all came about . . . Major,’ he said, addressing the officer. ‘This is John Stratton, British special forces. And this is Jason Mansfield, my boss, or should I say former boss, from MI16.’
The officer looked at the men with a hint of satisfaction in his eyes.
‘I suspect they came here to take back the tile,’ Binning mused. ‘Or kill me. Or both. What do you say, chaps? Does that about sum it up?’
Both prisoners remained stone-faced as they stared at the traitor.
‘Major, would you be good enough to unchain this one?’ Binning asked, indicating Jason.
A frown formed on the officer’s brow. ‘By what authority?’ he asked.
‘Can I remind you I have been given the equivalent rank of lieutenant colonel? Okay, it’s not yet official but that’s just a matter of procedure.’
The major still didn’t move.
Binning sighed. ‘Major, all I have to do is make a phone call and someone whose rank you
do
respect will simply order you to do it. Now do we have to go through all of that, and get someone annoyed with you? You have guards, you have guns. He doesn’t. Just do it, please.’
The officer gave a brief order to the soldier who handed him his weapon and walked over to Jason Mansfield. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the padlock connecting the chains that secured Jason to the bracing.
The chains dropped to the concrete floor and Jason rubbed his wrists where the metal had chafed them. He looked into Binning’s cold eyes as the man walked slowly towards him.
‘A few tense and interesting moments but we got there in the end,’ Binning said, his face cracking into a broader smile.