by Paul Finch
Assembly Area 2
Fleetingly, he wondered if he might have blundered into an old air raid shelter, but just as quickly dismissed the notion. More likely it was an old fire-evacuation chamber. These ruminations were shattered when he heard voices echoing down the stairway behind him. There was a tall, arched opening on his right. It was broad enough for two men to pass through, but led into inky blackness.
Again, Heck had no choice. He ventured forward into its depths.
Chapter 17
‘Fuck, mate … there were two of them,’ Brad Perkins said, hefting his TAR-21 and strapping a flashlight to the side of its barrel with duct tape.
He was a burly, broad-chested Queenslander, formerly of the Australian SAS. His rain-soaked denim jacket threatened to burst apart, it was so crammed with muscle. Now that he and the other two were in the privacy of the disused basement, he’d ripped off his ski-mask, to reveal a bull-neck, tanned, granite features, blue eyes and brown hair shaved in a stiff buzz-cut.
‘You sure?’ asked Shaun Cullen. He wasn’t as broadly built as Perkins, but was at least a couple of inches taller. He too had removed his ski-mask. His reddish beard, moustache and sweaty mop of long hair gave him a country boy air, yet his accent was solid Boston Irish, while his combat fatigues and the SIG-Sauer MX slung at his side proclaimed that anything he knew of the wilderness he owed to the US military, specifically the Navy SEALS.
Perkins nodded. ‘The other one must be back in the car.’
Cullen turned to the third member of the trio. ‘What is this place, Bruno?’
Bruno, real name Leon Fairbrother, was at least as strongly built as either of the others, and though of West Indian descent, he was a Hackney boy born and bred. His reputation as a fighter had extended from the mean streets of his youth into the Grenadier Guards, where he earned his nickname through his physical similarity to the former heavyweight champ. Bruno shrugged as he too taped a torch to his weapon, in his case a Sterling Mk. 5. ‘Tube, mate.’
‘Which station?’
‘Dunno. Feels derelict, but that should help us. One way in, one way out.’
‘Okay.’ Cullen pondered quickly. ‘Work your way through. Perk, take your lead from Bruno. Whatever it takes, find him. You know the RP?’
They nodded.
‘Good luck.’ Cullen scarpered back up the stairs. ‘I’ll find the other one.’
All Gary Quinnell knew when he came around was pain – and that he was drowning.
His aching body was ice-cold, but the heavy, waterlogged plastic slumped across his face was the main problem, not to mention the fluid trickling down his nostrils. He coughed and tried shifting to one side, but even small movements agonised him, his ribs in particular. It took several laborious efforts to shove a clutter of sodden, bulky objects off the top of him.
Initially, nothing made sense: the rain, the cobbles, the rubbish bags, pain and sickness akin to shattered bone and punctured inner organs.
And then it all came back – in a migraine-inducing wave of intense horror.
The Nice Guys, Heck …
Quinnell craned his neck to look up. There was no one in sight now. His Subaru stood alongside him, though even from this low angle it looked as if it had been through a wrecking machine.
‘B … bastards,’ he stuttered, the interior of his mouth filled with sludge. He spat out wads of clotted, purple blood. ‘Bastards …’
Slowly and dizzily, he dragged himself up – first into a sitting position, and then to his feet, but only by hooking his fingers into the bullet holes in the flank of his vehicle. The world swayed and tilted as he leaned against the car. He glanced down at his open shirt; much of his blood had congealed, but fresh streams seeped from a crimson rag bound to the side of his deeply bruised ribs.
‘Heck,’ he breathed again.
From somewhere nearby, he heard a banging and clanging – like someone clambering through rubbish.
‘Shit,’ he mumbled. ‘Oh … shit.’
Step after delicate step, he made his way around the front of the Subaru. At any second he thought he’d slip to his knees. But another clatter, another piece of rubbish being kicked over, goaded him to greater efforts. With breaths sounding like the rasping of a saw, and indeed feeling like rusty metal teeth chewing at the innards of his chest, Quinnell reached the other side of the car, bent down and slid himself through the open driver’s door.
He usually kept his mobile on a shelf under the dashboard. It puzzled him that it wasn’t there, but then he spotted it lying in the passenger side foot-well. He’d just reached feebly down for it when he glimpsed a red-bearded man emerge from the T-junction’s left-hand passage. Thanks to the shattered windshield, Red Beard didn’t glimpse him back – not immediately. Quinnell kept low, watching through blurred eyes as the menacing figure came forward, hefting a firearm under his unzipped khaki jacket, and halted five yards short of the Subaru, staring at the ground.
It was obvious what he was looking at: the blood-trail Quinnell had left coming back from the rubbish bags. Unlike the evidence of his outward journey, this would not yet have washed away. Even so, it took Red Beard several seconds, his eyes swivelling back and forth, to realise what he was seeing. As he glanced up, pulling a submachine gun from under his khaki, the Welshman turned the key and hit the gas.
He hadn’t been sure if the damaged Subaru would respond, but it leapt forward, smashing headlong into the gunman, its front fender impacting his knees with a bone-rending crunch! Red Beard slammed bodily onto the bonnet and was hurled backwards, his weapon bouncing across the passage to lie in a puddle some five feet from the driver’s door. Though all the pain in the world filled his body, his vision again darkening, Quinnell flopped out onto the cobbles. That impact alone almost killed him, but a sidelong glance at Red Beard, writhing on the floor with hands wrapped around his left knee, gave him new energy.
He got to the SIG-Sauer with time to spare, and swung it towards his target.
Unfortunately, focus was proving elusive as dizziness and nausea threatened to overwhelm him – for a few seconds Quinnell couldn’t even see the guy, but tried to bluff this out, gazing hard along the barrel. ‘Don’t move!’ he shouted.
Red Beard swam greasily into view, posed in a half-crouch, reaching slowly under his khaki, presumably for a second weapon.
‘Don’t fucking do it, boyo!’ Quinnell barked.
Red Beard paused, weighing his options.
‘I … I wouldn’t …’ Quinnell advised, but his voice was wavering, his world spinning, a kaleidoscope of blood, rain and brick.
The yowl of a siren made both of them flinch.
A uniformed patrol vehicle veered into the alley behind the Subaru. Quinnell was just sufficiently distracted by this – he half-glanced around, and Red Beard bolted, limping but still vanishing down the right-hand alley. Quinnell didn’t see him escape, simply heard the harshly whispered comment: ‘Next time, motherfucker!’ followed by the rumble of a car revving quickly away.
A split-second later, two uniforms were running in pursuit. A third, a female, dropped to her knees beside him, and gently attempted to wrest the weapon from his grasp. For no particular reason, Quinnell tried to resist this, but only for a few seconds – before he slid down into total oblivion.
Chapter 18
The corridor was stale and dank, the dust as thick as midnight fog. So thick in fact that, despite the dim blue glow of his phone’s fascia, Heck only knew it was a corridor by bouncing from wall to wall and occasionally encountering open doors, beyond which lay tiny spaces heaped with grime-encrusted junk. It wouldn’t be true to say there was no sound: rats scuttled away, squeaking and skittering; there were occasional dull booms denoting the reverberations of Tube trains.
He tried to place a call, but of course got nowhere. There was no signal beneath London’s streets. He pressed on, turning corner after corner, before seeing what looked like natural light. At first it was a dull smudge, a vaguely visible
streak on the wall opposite another open door. When he glanced through the door, he saw the light filtering out of a tiny square aperture where a ventilation fan had once been attached. Its faint radiance revealed what had formerly been an office, again buried under rubbish and masses of mouldy, filth-covered paperwork. It also showed a recognisable insignia on the passage wall: the traditional red roundel and horizontal blue band of the London Underground, complete with a name:
Shacklewell Street
Heck had vague memories of such a station. He thought it had ceased to operate sometime in the 1970s, having once been part of the Victoria Line. How much of it remained beyond this point was another question. It had been a deep-level station, and many of those now disused had been demolished and filled in. That said, it might be possible to work his way through to another station that was still in service. Half a second later it became imperative he at least try – because he spotted the flashing of torches at the end of the corridor. An explosive smashing of wood suggested that his pursuers were kicking in doors as they came steadily nearer.
He extinguished his own phone light and ran on – only for the passage to ramp downward and terminate at a barred gate hung with cobwebs so old and dusty they were more like tatters of rotted fabric. Heavy, corroded chains held the gate closed.
Heck halted in front of it, sweat pinpricking his face.
Only one other avenue presented itself: an open door on the left. Beyond this lay an even smaller room than those he’d previously seen. By the flickering torchlight, he glimpsed shelves crammed with bric-a-brac, a dog-eared girlie calendar hanging above a chair. The bountiful curves of Miss June 1979 were visible through a skin of mildew, but what stood behind her promised more.
A second door.
Heck threw the chair aside and pulled the calendar down, to find the second door had no handle, just a small hole. Frantic seconds passed as the torches outside drew nearer. He scrabbled along the shelves, initially ploughing nothing but foulness and dirt. There were tools here, but they were ancient and useless. And now he heard voices.
‘Time-check, mate?’
‘Five to eleven.’
The second voice was Cockney; the first voice different – Australian maybe?
‘Mate, this is fucked!’
Then Heck’s hand alighted on a familiarly angled shape: a lever door handle. There were no screws in it, but its squared-off turning bar remained. He spun around. The passage was now filled with light. Frantic, he slotted the bar into the hole and twisted it. The door clicked open.
Had they heard? It didn’t matter.
He withdrew the handle and slipped through into the blackness on the other side, easing the door closed after him. The voices became muffled, but at best he knew the door would only hold them for a couple of minutes. He quickly brought his own phone back to life. Its battery was low on juice, and the glow it emitted so poor that he now saw very little: just maintenance passages leading off; bare brick walls; exposed wiring; fallen plaster.
At least the light enabled him to walk quickly and freely, which was a relief as a furious banging now sounded behind him. Several bursts of gunfire followed.
Heck started running, rounding a corner and proceeding another twenty yards before stumbling into a section of roof-fall. Massed heaps of bricks and dirt prevented further progress. He doubled back, stopping en route to collect a shovel propped against a wall. He had no plans to dig, but it was the closest thing approximating a weapon he’d seen thus far.
The banging abruptly ceased. Heck halted to listen, trying to suppress the sound of his laboured breathing. It occurred to him that his light might be a giveaway, but then a brighter light burst to life at the end of the adjoining passage. It was one of the electric torches; again it was advancing.
Heck edged to the next corner, heart drumming. He shoved his phone into his pocket, dousing its light. Then he waited – and waited.
Padding footsteps accompanied the advancing torchlight. There was no chatter. Did that mean only one of them was present? It hardly mattered. There was nowhere else for Heck to go. Fresh sweat beaded his brow. His muscles coiled like springs – but it was only as the muzzle of a submachine gun, with a flashlight attachment, protruded around the corner, that he swung the shovel with both hands.
The flat of its blade made ferocious contact with the gunman’s face, the deafening CLANG echoing through the passages.
It was the big white guy. He went down onto his back, a crimson font spraying from his nose, and yet managed to retain consciousness. He even kept hold of his weapon, discharging a blind volley across the ceiling, bringing down plumes of dust and plaster.
Heck ducked around this and sprinted back the way he had come. The gunman twisted where he lay and fired after him, but was clearly groggy, drilling slugs harmlessly into the wall. ‘Pommie fucker!’ he howled in hoarse Australian.
Heck didn’t know where the other killer was; nor did he care. He turned a couple more corners and hammered along a much narrower passage, which had steel plates for a floor and wire-mesh on either side. Midway along this there was an aperture on his left. He ventured through it, finding steps dropping into blackness. He descended these for about fifteen feet before he alighted on flat concrete.
The rasp of his breathing reverberated eerily, and he realised he was in some large, vaulted chamber. He fumbled his phone from his pocket. Again, it didn’t illuminate much, but was sufficient to show that he was on a long, broad platform with deep black pits lying parallel on either side of it. When he edged left and glanced into the first of these, rat-tails lashed as furry bodies scampered away into holes and crevices. It was the old track-bed, though the rails themselves had long been removed. Overhead, most of the cream and brown tiling had fallen from the arched ceiling and lay scattered. The walls were adorned with aged movie posters. They were mouldy, blistered with damp, but the films were recognisable: Apocalypse Now … Mad Max … Moonraker … Alien …
With a low, dull rumble, everything shuddered. More dust trickled down.
Another train had passed close by.
Heck hurried along the platform, circling the bare frame of a billboard on which the tattered remnants of a Tube map hung. He couldn’t yet see the tunnel mouth at the far end, but it could only be a hundred yards or so. By the sounds of it, living London wasn’t too far away. But then he spotted something else a short distance ahead: a low, arched entrance with another stair rising behind it.
More importantly, a light was descending that stair.
For half a second, Heck imagined help had arrived. Had someone posted on the old site been alerted to intruders? Did Shacklewell Street connect with other buildings still in use? And then the truth dawned. No one was posted on this abandoned site, nor had they been for decades. The light he was seeing was the light of the second gunman, who had somehow got ahead of him. Heck recalled the extra bursts of shooting he’d heard. They’d been blowing the chains off the barred gates.
He turned and ran the other way – only to see a second light, this one proceeding along the mesh-covered bridge.
He was hemmed in from either end.
Scalp tingling, Heck pivoted around. Directly across the left-hand track-bed, he spied a recess in the wall with a steel door set in it. Vaulting down from the platform, he hurried over there. Yet even before reaching the door, he saw that this too was closed and fixed with a chain and padlock.
Heck glanced around. The two lights were now on the level, advancing one from either end of the platform. They’d almost certainly seen each other, but had not yet spotted him, which would explain their cautious approach. Even so, it would only be a matter of seconds. He pocketed his phone and swung back to the door. It was solid steel, its chains intact – but there was one other possibility. The door was mounted on a step, beneath which there was a vent: a rusted, circular pipe sticking out several inches from the brickwork, about twenty inches in diameter.
He ripped off his jacket, dropped to his k
nees and crawled in headfirst, only then realising how small the space was that he was attempting to pass through; its dimensions were coffin-like, its darkness absolute. He could only make ground by worming ahead on his elbows, his groping hands frequently encountering soft, furry bodies, which again scattered at his touch. And there was another problem: it began to slope downhill. Heck had expected this pipe to lead through into whatever space lay on the other side of the door, but apparently not. He passed over a circular rim, and the passage tightened further. Another ten yards, and he entered an even narrower section. He could only progress from here by slithering on his belly, and even then it fitted him like a glove, tearing at his shoulders, weighing on his back, the mere sensation of which set his gut churning.
A Lancashire lad by origin, Heck remembered tales his coalminer grandfather had told about being trapped underground during a cave-in. He’d suffered nightmares for days afterwards, about the pit: all those tons of dirt over the top of you; the blackness; the airlessness; the narrow gaps; the flat crawlspaces under the seams; the creaking and groaning deep in the rock faces. Being held fast in there, being suffocated, being squashed in the depths of the earth.
But now it wasn’t a dream.
Heck snaked on, passing another riveted joint beyond which the angle of descent tilted even more steeply. Here, he hesitated. Only the snugness of the pipe’s fit preventing him tumbling forward. He wondered what he’d do if he went down and it suddenly tipped upright. That was a hideous thought, and yet it wasn’t possible to go back – he could now hear tinny voices at the end of the pipe. He tried to glance over his shoulder, though even if the slender space had allowed this it was too dark to see anything. Not that he needed to. The bastards were no more than thirty feet away; they’d have found his jacket and thus located his escape route.
