“Not far.”
“And all this rigmarole is just because Janus is scared of surveillance?”
Ash shrugged. “He’s got a point. I bet there isn’t even a phone signal down here.”
“You’re his handler, you should have told him to meet you somewhere more convenient and less,” Jemma shivered, “chilly.”
“No skin off my nose. And if he feels more comfortable talking to me here …”
This stretch of tunnel was muddy, so Ash placed her booted feet with care. Jemma copied her.
“Didn’t I see something about this place being used as an air raid shelter once?”
“Mmm,” said Ash. “During the war. Not this section though.”
“Must have been grim.”
“Safer than being up top.”
“True.”
They were approaching the rendezvous. Ash halted and pressed a finger to her lips.
“What?” whispered Jemma.
“Wait here. It’s just round the corner, and I don’t want to spook Janus.”
“What if he’s not there?”
“We’ll just have to play ‘I Spy’ until he arrives.”
“I spy something beginning with C. Chalk. That’ll keep us occupied for all of two seconds.”
Ash gave Jemma a look. “Now who’s babbling?”
“Sorry. It’s just the thought of you leaving me here on my own.”
She pulled Jemma into a one-armed hug. “You’ll be fine, sweetheart. I’ll call you when the coast’s clear.”
A reluctant Jemma returned the hug. “You’d better.”
Switching off the torch and keeping close to the tunnel wall, Ash moved on alone. As her eyes adjusted, she detected a faint illumination coming from the cavern up ahead.
She peeked around the entrance, and called softly, “Janus?”
No one answered, but she could hear breathing. She switched on her torch, and its light cast an elongated shadow against the cavern’s far wall. The shadow moved and shrank, resolving itself into her informant as he came towards her. He was wearing his usual shabby parka, torn jeans, and well-worn trainers.
“You’re late,” he said, his Cockney voice accusing.
“Sorry.”
“Did anyone follow you?”
“Don’t think so. Didn’t spot anyone, anyway.”
He scratched his chin stubble, then shoved his hands into his pockets. “Okay. Same deal as usual?” His eyes glittered in the torchlight.
“Depends.” He frowned, and she shrugged. “Hey. You’ll get what it’s worth. That’s all I can promise. Okay?”
“Okay.” He grinned, his buckteeth giving him a rabbity look. “Hope you’ve got plenty of cash on you.”
She held up a hand. “Before we get down to business, my partner’s waiting. May I call her?”
“Jemma Jacobs?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “How did you know her name?”
“Didn’t you tell me?”
“No.”
“Must have heard it somewhere then.” Under Ash’s scrutiny his gaze became shifty. She wondered whether to press him further, but decided against it.
“So. May I call her? If I can’t keep a rendezvous for any reason, she’ll come in my place. You should know what she looks like.”
“Whatever.” He made an impatient gesture. “Let’s get on with this.”
Ash ducked back out of the cavern and called softly, “Jemma.” There was no reply, so she called again, louder.
This time lamplight appeared, and Jemma hurried towards her.
“Come on. He says it’s okay.” She re-entered the cavern with Jemma at her heels.
“This her?” Janus ignored Jemma’s extended hand and studied her. She threw Ash a look and let her hand drop. “Okay. So I’ve met her. Big deal.” He turned back to Ash. “Now can we get on with the reason we’re here?”
She nodded. “What do you have for me?”
“It’s about you.”
Ash blinked. “Me?”
“Yeah. Someone is after you.”
“Who?”
“That’s the interesti—” His eyes widened in astonishment, and he clutched his stomach and crumpled to the floor.
“Shit!” said Ash from the crouch she had instinctively adopted. The pistol shot had been faint, but its echo was still reverberating, amplified by the cavern’s acoustics. Must have used a suppressor.
Jemma stood frozen.
“Get down,” said Ash, yanking her to the floor. A muzzle flash from the other side of the cavern preceded a sinister zing, and a bullet smacked into the wall behind them. But her attention was already elsewhere.
There was blood on the front of Janus’s parka, and it was spreading. As she ripped the parka open followed by his bloody shirt, he stared at her in confusion and began to whimper. She sucked in her breath.
“Is it bad?” he asked. His face was as ashen as the chalk walls surrounding them.
Stomach wounds were tricky. If the bullet had hit the kidneys or the liver …
“Can’t tell. Doesn’t look too bad, but … Could be internal bleeding.” Ash cast an anxious glance towards the shadows where the gunman lurked, then rolled Janus onto his back.
“What can I do?” asked Jemma. “I didn’t bring my gun.”
Ash ripped off a cleanish piece of Janus’s shirt, made a pad, and pressed it against the wound. The bleeding slowed. Good. She felt for the pulse at his neck. It was racing.
“Ash?” said Jemma.
“I heard you.” She thought for a moment. “Can you take over?” Jemma nodded. While Ash wiped her fingers on her jeans and drew her Browning, Jemma pressed the pad against Janus’s wound.
“The shock will wear off soon,” Ash told her, keeping her voice low so Janus couldn’t hear, “and then the pain will hit. What with that and the blood loss, chances are he’ll black out.” Jemma nodded her understanding. “You need to keep him warm and his airway clear—watch out for his tongue. If there’s internal bleeding … Well, just do your best to keep pressure on the wound.”
“Okay. What are you going to be doing?”
Another muzzle flash made them both duck, and once again a bullet ploughed into the wall. Then came the sound of running footsteps, but to Ash’s relief, they were receding into the distance. Done what he came to do, out of ammo, or decided not to risk it? She got to her feet. “Taking care of whoever it was shot Janus and fetching help.”
Torch in one hand, gun in the other, she sprinted towards the far exit.
“Be careful, Ash,” called Jemma after her.
Ash nodded but didn’t look back. “I’ll try.”
ASH’S BOOTS SPLASHED through puddles, and her torch beam bobbed and bounced, illuminating now flint fragments protruding from the walls, now the dark openings of yet more tunnels. The chase had led her northeast into the Druid part of the cave system. She had never been in this tunnel before, and the roof was getting steadily lower. The muscles in her neck and shoulders burned, her ankle twinged, and she had a stitch in her side, but she gritted her teeth and kept going.
Her quarry tried to throw her off the scent, zigzagging, stopping, and hiding in the hope she would go blundering past, even doubling back on one occasion. But the muddy floor made tracking him (if it was a him) straightforward and she soon picked up his trail again.
The seconds were ticking away, though, and she had yet to find help. Janus could be bleeding to death. She thought of Jemma in a cavern one-hundred-and-forty feet underground, alone with a dying man, a finite supply of paraffin, and no idea of the direction out. I shouldn’t have left her.
Ash slowed, and was considering giving up the chase, when she heard the echo of footsteps directly ahead. She picked up speed again. But she was having to stoop ever lower to avoid cracking her head on the tunnel ceiling, and ten paces later the clearance dipped to barely four feet. It dawned on her then where she must be—the bastard was taking her down the infamous ”lumbago alley.”
/> She was crouching to ease under the bulging ceiling, when something—realisation that the footsteps had stopped, a flicker of movement, perhaps—made her throw herself sideways. The wind of the bullet’s passage was hot on her cheek. It missed her, but she banged her shoulder against the tunnel wall and caught the back of her head a resounding crack.
A roaring filled her hearing, and specks of white flecked her vision. She had no time to coddle herself though. I’m in his sights. Swallowing against the pain-induced nausea and aiming blindly, she fired off two quick shots, then tried to make herself as small a target as possible as she waited for another bullet to come zinging out of the darkness. It didn’t. And as the seconds passed, the agony in her scalp and shoulder eased to a dull throb, and her vision and hearing returned.
The sound of running footsteps, fading into the distance, echoed back to her. Why didn’t he take the shot? She blew out a breath. Who cares? That was much too close for my liking.
Ash holstered her gun and, on hands and knees, retrieved the torch—none the worse for its tumble, fortunately. Then, with a grunt of effort and using the clammy wall for support, she got to her feet. This time she had no intention of following her fleeing quarry. She had promised Jemma to fetch help, and she intended to do just that. In her mind’s eye she called up the map from the entrance to the cave system, located “lumbago alley” on it, and plotted a route out. Then she headed southwest …
For the past few minutes, the ceiling had been rising. Now traces of electric wiring appeared along the walls, and dim light bulbs lit the way. Ash’s spirits lifted as she recognised her surroundings. The exit from the system wasn’t far now. Thank God!
A man’s voice, faint at first but familiar, grew louder. “This brick wall here,” the tour guide was saying, “is all that remains of the hospital, which was fully staffed throughout the Second World War by a doctor and two nurses of the British Red Cross …”
Ash broke into a jog.
“ … the only baby girl to be born down here during the war. She was afterwards christened in the Caves Chapel, and named after the caves, her second name being Cavina—”
He stopped midsentence, his eyes widening, and the party of schoolchildren listening to him turned to follow his gaze, then gasped and huddled closer to their teachers.
They’ve just been through the haunted cavern, thought Ash, jogging towards them, and here I am with chalk all over me, looking like a ghost. “There’s been an accident. A man’s badly injured.” No need to scare them with mention of gunshot wounds. “In the Roman part of the caves. Call an ambulance. Now.”
“What?” The guide blinked at her. “The Roman section? But—”
She snatched his pen and his notes from him, flipped them over, and drew a rudimentary map. “Here. I have to get back. My friend needs me.”
“But—”
Her patience was at an end. “Look, a man’s bleeding to death back there, so just do it. Okay?”
Then she turned and once more headed into the dark.
JEMMA’S RELIEF WAS plain as she looked up at Ash. Blood had soaked the unconscious Janus’s shirt, coated her hands, and pooled on the floor beside him. It glistened black in the lamplight and the cavern reeked of its coppery tang.
“Thank God!” Her breath steamed in the cold air. “He started bleeding again, Ash. I couldn’t stop it. I tried everything Mac taught me but it didn’t make any difference.”
Hysteria tinged her voice, and Ash knelt and placed a comforting arm round her shoulders. “I shouldn’t have left you alone with him for so long. I’m sorry.”
Jemma leaned into her. “ ’S okay.” Her nose sounded stuffed, and Ash wondered if she had been crying. “What other choice was there?”
“I could’ve gone for help straight away,” said Ash, “instead of being a macho idiot and chasing whoever it was shot at us.”
She took hold of Janus’s bony wrist—his pulse was so faint she almost missed it. If he survived this much blood loss, it would be a miracle. “Here. Let me take over.” She replaced Jemma’s icy hands with hers. The bleeding from the stomach wound was sluggish now. Whether that was good or bad, she didn’t know.
Jemma shook the feeling back into her fingers. “I tried to call 999, but you were right, there’s no signal.” She stamped her feet and paced, groaning as the circulation returned to cramped limbs. “Did you catch him?”
“Hmmm?” said Ash, distracted by something on the cavern floor next to Janus’s right hand.
“Did you catch the man who shot him?”
“Oh. No. He got away.” Janus had tried to write something on the chalk with a finger, using his own blood as ink. “What’s that?”
Jemma followed the direction of Ash’s gaze. “Looks like initials. When did he do that?” She directed the beam from Ash’s torch at it for a better look. “Just before he lost consciousness, he was trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand him. Maybe it was then …”
As Ash deciphered the scrawl, her heart sank. “Is that a ‘K’ followed by an ‘A’?”
“Could be.” Jemma pursed her lips. “Does that mean something to you?”
“Khaleb Abdusamad?”
Jemma’s eyes widened. “Oh God, Ash. Do you think he’s followed us back to London?”
“It’s possible. Janus said someone was after me. And after the way we messed the Libyans about in Brazil …”
“But why would he shoot Janus when he could have shot you?”
Ash shrugged. “He’s a lousy shot?”
For the past thirty seconds, voices had been growing louder, and now a party of paramedics carrying a stretcher burst into the cavern, filling it with noise, and bustle, and lights. That was quick.
“He’s been shot in the stomach,” said Ash, glad to relinquish Janus into more expert hands. She stood back as paramedics shouted incomprehensible jargon, slapped on a temporary dressing, moved the patient onto the stretcher, hooked him up to an IV, and covered him with a blanket.
“The police will want to question the two of you,” warned the man in charge, as his subordinates hefted the stretcher waist-high and started back through the labyrinthine tunnels.
“Of course.”
Jemma wiped her bloody hands on a tissue someone had handed her. It was hard to tell in this light, but Ash thought her colour looked better, and she had recovered her composure.
“Come on.” She glanced around the rapidly emptying cavern, her gaze skipping over the dark pool of blood. “There’s nothing more for us here.”
Jemma grabbed her lantern, which was beginning to flicker—the paraffin couldn’t last much longer—and slipped her arm through Ash’s. Together they followed the stretcher crew.
“Are you all right?” whispered Jemma, after they’d gone a little way.
“I’ve been better.” Ash fingered the egg-sized bump on the back of her head. “Why?”
“You’re covered in chalky mud and you’re limping.”
“All that running aggravated my ankle.” Ash sighed. “And I banged my left shoulder again.”
“Oh, Ash.”
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
“And we’re supposed to be on leave,” grumbled Jemma.
They reached the exit at last, placed the doused lantern on the table with its fellows, and headed for the doorway and daylight. Ash shaded her eyes against the dazzle. A police car, lights flashing, was waiting in the carpark next to the ambulance. The police officers were talking to the chief paramedic, who pointed at Ash.
“Which hospital are you taking him to?” called Jemma, as the paramedics stowed Janus’s stretcher in the back of the ambulance.
“Chislehurst General,” came the reply.
“We’ll call later, to check on his progress.” She glanced at Ash to see if that met with her approval, and Ash nodded.
As the ambulance pulled away, the police officers strode towards Ash. “Here we go again,” she muttered. The phone in her pocket rang, and she pulle
d it out and answered.
“Blade?” came a man’s voice. Though it was familiar, she couldn’t place it.
“Speaking.”
“Forensics here. We’ve been trying to contact you, but your mobile wasn’t answering.”
“Sorry. Had no signal for a while.” The police officers stopped in front of her, and she gestured in apology at the phone. “What is it?”
“It’s about your Mercedes. That was no accident. We found traces of plastic explosive and a fragment of detonator—short range, wireless-activated, by the look of it.”
Ash’s thoughts raced. “So whoever triggered it must have been close by?” Lurking near the level crossing, or behind a hedge or wall?
Jemma’s eyebrows shot up, and Ash mouthed, “Tell you later.”
“That would be our guess,” said the man from Forensics. “I’ll get back to you when we know more.”
“Do that. And thanks.”
Ash returned the phone in her pocket, plastered on a pleasant smile, and returned her attention to the two men waiting to speak with her. “Yes, officers? Can I help you?” What is it about me and the police these days?
Chapter 6
A RAY OF sunlight woke Jemma, and she shaded her eyes while awareness returned, then studied the woman lying next to her. Ash looked younger and more carefree in sleep. The crease that had appeared between her brows as she waited for news of Janus had smoothed—he was critical but stable, the last they’d heard. She looked as though she hadn’t aggravated the knife wound in her shoulder or bashed her head on a rock ceiling—Jemma had caught her dabbing TCP on the egg-shaped lump.
“Are you having sweet dreams?” Jemma brushed a lock of dark hair out of Ash’s eye and planted a fond kiss on her cheek. “My sleeping beauty.” At her touch Ash’s eyelashes fluttered and her breathing caught before smoothing out again. Jemma eased herself out of bed and headed for the bathroom.
As she brushed her teeth, she regarded her tousled reflection in the mirror and saw her own brows were creased. Not surprising. If they were right, Abdusamad had followed Ash back to London and tried to kill her, twice, with no concern for bystanders. Jemma discounted the danger to herself—she was an agent, paid to take risks—but Janus … A memory of trying to stop the rush of blood from his wound made her heart pound, and she pushed it away and took a calming breath.
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