by Andy Lucas
Pouring with sweat, breathing rapidly, she checked the luminous dial on her wristwatch to find that an hour had passed as she finally finished tending to the smaller wound on his hand.
Sitting back on her haunches, looking at his inert form and pale, clammy facial skin, she did not rate his chances much. Without proper medical care he would be unlikely to survive, especially without his snowsuit which the Yeti were still angrily tearing to shreds back by the trap door.
Making a decision, Shilan pocketed Pace's satellite phone into her own snowsuit outer pocket and then spent five minutes trying to make him as comfortable as she could. Pillowing his head with the backpack, she covered him in a foil emergency blanket, also retrieved from the medical kit, and piled up a mound of soil beneath his feet to elevate his legs. She gave him a shot of strong antibiotics and knew that it was the best she could do.
To save him, and herself, she was going to have to leave him and she would have to move fast while she knew that the monsters were still preoccupied.
Her final act was to remove the Webley from its holster on Pace's hip and immediately pocket the heavy pistol too.
'I have to go,' she explained quietly. 'When you wake up. If you wake up,' she stated sadly, 'I need you to understand that this is my only choice. If I get out alive, I'll send help back for you. Goodbye, James.'
Stooping to plant a kiss on the side of his cold cheek, for no real reason she understood, Shilan set her plan into motion.
Kicking steps into the crumbling wood of the walls, she hoisted the roof open and surveyed the scene. It was dark but a clear, starry sky and full moon shone off the snow, lighting the clearing as brightly as day. In the distance, from inside the hall, she could just make out the faint growls and snarls of the Yeti. It was now or never, she knew.
Crawling through the space, rolling out beneath open skies, Shilan paused on her belly only long enough to secure the corrugated iron roof back down and spread a thin layer of snow over the disturbed edges. Not looking back, or over to the main hall, she stood up and set off for the head of the descending trail like a starving greyhound released from the traps.
Running for her life, unsure whether a Yeti would leap out at her from the dark forest edges at any moment, her supreme level of fitness came into its own. Despite being weakened by her treatment from Prior, and the events of the past twenty four hours, she fell into a steady rhythm, eating up the distance so rapidly that she reached the trail and was pounding down its reptilian curves within a minute.
Fighting the desperate urge to look behind her, to see if she was being hunted, Shilan remained focused on the glinting coil of the trail, snaking down the valley. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the satellite phone and hit the only button she could as she ran. Redial.
The satellite connected, it rang twice, and then a concerned female voice came on the line.
'James! Are you alright? Where are you?' Sarah had been frantic about him; her calls seemingly ignored. 'What is going…?'
'Look,' panted Shilan, pounding over the compacted snow and ice like a woman possessed. 'I don't know who you are but stop fucking talking and just listen,' she commanded.
'Who the hell are you?' asked Sarah, stung by Shilan's rebuke.
'That's not important now. Listen carefully if you ever want to see James alive again.'
That was enough for Sarah. Closing her mouth, she listened hard for the next minutes, feeling her stomach lurch sickeningly with every revealed detail.
The call ended abruptly and Sarah knew exactly what she had to do.
27
Barbara Balvenie came to, instinctively consigning the overload of physical pain to a dark space in the back of her mind. It was a skill she had perfected over many years and one that had allowed her to function perfectly effectively when everyone else assumed she was incapacitated.
Ling was perversely pleased to see her stir and even happier when the swollen eyes fluttered weakly open, drinking in the surroundings of the security room.
'Ah, I see that you're back with us,' he muttered, in Chinese.
'Where am I?' If Ling was surprised that she replied fluently in his own tongue, he did not show it.
'You are in the mining facility,' Ling explained. 'You clearly have an interest about what goes on here which is why you were spying on us.' Barbara focused on her captor and gathered her thoughts, saying nothing. 'I suppose it will not do any good to ask your name or who you are working for?'
'It would be a waste of your time,' agreed Barbara. 'I am a solo explorer. I was doing some climbing in Nepal and got turned around in a blizzard. Lost most of my kit and my bearings, I'm afraid. I ended up stumbling on your facility by accident, just as it was getting dark. I decided to camp for the night and come down to seek help in the morning.'
'A reasonable story,' Ling agreed. 'A shame it is a lie.'
'I was given no chance to announce my presence,' Barbara persisted flatly, her head moving imperceptibly around as she gauged her chances of escape. 'Some time in the middle of the night, a team of soldiers attacked me. I thought it was wild animals at first,' she smiled weakly so I fired my gun a few times and lashed out as best I could. Then they got me down with a Taser, I believe?'
Ling nodded his agreement. 'Wonderful devices,' he beamed. 'Immediate incapacitation of even the strongest opponent without the need to shoot a dozen holes in them to be sure they stay down.' His face grew serious. 'Your so called defence against wild animals cost the lives of several of my men,' he grumbled. 'You have intruded into the sovereign territory of the People's Republic of China, armed and clearly on some kind of espionage mission. You have murdered innocent people and will have to pay the price, I'm afraid.'
'I suggest you get on with it then,' Barbara replied evenly, fixing her eyes on his. He saw no trace of fear in her face, which unsettled him a little. 'If you wanted me dead, you'd have never let me wake up,' she reasoned correctly. 'You are letting me live in the hope I might have important information that you can use.'
'That is a possibility,' admitted Ling coyly.
'That's never going to happen,' Barbara snapped emphatically. 'I will never tell you anything other than my story. Accept it and release me, or kill me. Those are your options.'
For such a battered, clearly injured woman, his victim found enough steel for her words to ring true.
'Please do not play games with me,' Ling snapped. 'If you think telling me to kill you means that I won't do it, that would be a mistake. I am not new to this,' he sneered.
Enough time had passed for Barbara to make a judgement on her situation. It was not particularly great but she had already spotted a couple of weaknesses.
Firstly, trussed up like a Christmas turkey to a chair placed in the centre of the small room, her captor wore the slouched body language of someone whose guard was slipping, if not completely down. She saw no others in the room but correctly assumed there would be several armed guards within shouting range.
'My name is Ling. Are you sure you will not share yours?'
'Quite sure.'
'If you are simply a lost explorer, why will you not give me your name?'
'I don't recall it,' she muttered. 'Maybe one of your men hit me a little too hard over the head. Must be a bit of amnesia.'
She wasn't trying to antagonise him too much, just annoy him enough to add to her chances of him making a silly mistake.
Ling was used to prisoners begging for their lives at this point, offering him anything they could to stave off the executioner.
'I will give you a few moments to reconsider. When I return, I expect you to co-operate. If you don't, I will kill you. You have about five minutes left to live. Use the time wisely,' he suggested, before turning and leaving the room through a door that slid open as he stepped up to it and similarly closed after he passed through.
Barbara knew she was being watched by cameras, clearly visible set into the ceiling at various points. Ling would leave her to stew for a
while before coming back, hoping she would cave in to his demands.
Testing her wrist bonds cautiously, she found them to be expertly tied, leaving barely enough slack for her blood to circulate but not biting in to her skin too far. Twisting her hands around did nothing but cause the rope to burn into her but her legs were different. Loosely tied to the front chair legs, it was this weakness that she would need to exploit quickly.
Her wriggling was so subtle that Ling missed it, despite watching on his smartphone screen outside the door. Every time Barbara shifted her ankles hard, she simultaneously tossed her head, drawing any observing eye to her face.
When Ling returned, exactly five minutes later, she had worked the bonds loose enough to pull her legs free but knew she had to bide her time before revealing this little morsel.
'Time is up. Will you please tell me your name and who sent you?' He held a thin wire garrotte in his hands now. His boss had been very specific not to upset the workers with too much noise or blood and he was determined not to let him down, especially as he knew he was going to be reporting that the prisoner went to her grave without revealing any of her secrets.
Barbara regarded him coldly, as though pitying him. This served to further anger Ling, who decided that postponing her murder any longer would be a waste.
Stepping around to the back of her chair, he threw the garrotte expertly around her throat, believing her to be completely helpless. A sense of overwhelming power rose up into his chest as he started to draw the ends together, preparing to throttle the life out of her.
The Janitor was faster than any human Ling had ever known; moving so fast that it blurred his vision. Before he could comprehend what was happening, Barbara planted her feet firmly on the floor and threw herself backwards, smashing the back of the chair into Ling's stomach, overbalancing him. As he stepped back to try and regain himself, Barbara expertly flipped herself forwards, plucking her feet nimbly from their bonds and running over to the door, still tied tightly to the chair by ropes around her midriff, with her hands still secured behind her back.
The door had no handle. She had seen it open of its own accord when Ling had left the room a few minutes before. Figuring that no security protocols had been put in place, with her imminent death on the cards, she was instantly rewarded by the hiss of the door mechanism and the sight of it sliding wide open.
Outside, the two guards were slow to react and that was their undoing. Rushing through the doorway, Barbara leaped straight up into the air, chair too, and lashed out accurately with both feet against the neck of the guard to her left. She heard a satisfying snapping sound and was already turning to face the second guard before the first fell to the floor, dead.
The guard's weapon was almost raised into a firing position when she lashed out again; one foot slicing towards the man's automatic rifle, knocking it aside, before Barbara dropped to the floor so hard that the metal frame bent a little. Sweeping one foot out horizontally in a vicious arc, the guard shrieked as he felt both of his ankles breaking.
Flipping back onto her feet, Barbara managed to snatch hold of the guard's falling weapon before it hit the corridor floor and managed to fire a shot into his chest whilst holding it hands that were still tied behind her back. Bolting back inside the security room, the entire drama had played out in less than ten seconds.
As the door hissed closed behind her, she noted Ling had recovered himself and was reaching a hand down to the automatic pistol he wore on his hip. His face was aghast with shock, still unable to believe this nightmarish turn of events.
As Barbara rushed him, time slowed down for her, as it always did whenever she was engaged in close combat. Everyone else seemed to move at a snail's pace, which is why she'd always managed to defeat every opponent. Ling was no different.
Reaching him, she had already managed to work herself free from the midriff coils; the damaged chair suddenly falling from her lean body, leaving her standing but still with her arms bound behind her back.
Ling did not see her coming; all he saw was a flurry of indistinct movement. His pistol was only beginning to clear its holster when one well-timed kick, bare-footed, slammed into his sternum. The crunch of bone registered in his ears before the pain struck and he was flung backwards against a security console, where several dials dug into his back before his momentum caused him to bounce back off it, directly into a second kick. This time, there would be no pain to feel. Barbara's timing was exceptional as the heel of her bare foot smashed into his throat, fatally crushing his windpipe.
It was a similar move that had nearly killed Rachel Crown when Barbara discovered she had been leaking information to ARC. Unlike Rachel, she had no intention of performing an emergency tracheotomy and simply left Ling to drop to the floor, wheezing, choking and foaming bloody bubbles from his lips as he fought, in vain, for air.
Spotting the garrotte lying on the floor nearby, Barbara let the guard's automatic rifle drop from her bound hands, clattering on the floor, so she could retrieve it. Working by touch, she stretched it out between the bent legs of the metal chair and rubbed the thin wire vigorously against her ropes until the wire sliced through the fibres and she was able to snap her hands apart.
Scooping up the automatic rifle again, she spun around to face the door just as it began to hiss open. Not waiting for it to open fully, Barbara sank into a neat firing crouch and fired three short bursts through the door itself, each burst being immediately punctuated by the sound of agonised screaming.
As it opened, the gun smoke wafted clear from her eyes to reveal five lifeless guards instead of two. Blood splattered scarlet art all over the pristine corridor walls and was already puddling beneath the corpses while, from somewhere along the corridor, panicky shrieks and shouts began to ring out.
Being unconscious when she was brought inside the facility, Barbara had no idea where she was, or how to get out quickly. Relying on her skills and aggression, she would have to try and fight her way out. To this end, she paused to strip a couple of spare ammunition clips from the bodies of the dead guards. To one side, the corridor ended in a dead end so at least she knew salvation did not lie in that direction.
Setting off at a trot, holding the automatic rifle tightly against her shoulder, sweeping the stubby black barrel from side to side as she moved, Barbara's only thought was on finding the exit. She never allowed herself to believe in failure.
As she drew level with the first side passage, a white-coated female worker ran out in front of her, the horrified look on her face as she saw Barbara's gun causing her to stop in her tracks and drop to her knees to beg for her life.
'Get up, if you want to live' ordered Barbara, sticking to Chinese. The woman looked bewildered but allowed herself to be pulled to her feet although her knees looked suspiciously like jelly. 'I want to get out of here and you're going to help me. Understand?' The woman nodded vigorously, sensing the possibility of staying alive if she did as she was told. A lower grade laboratory assistant, she was the same person who had accidentally run into Kwon hours earlier. She was not having a great day and had no plans to die for the company.
'I will help. No tricks,' she whimpered. 'I will show you the train.'
'Train?'
'Yes. It is the only way in or out of this facility. 'I will show you where it is,' she promised earnestly.
'Good. Lead the way. No long routes. Get me to the train alive and I promise I will not kill you. If I think you're stalling, or trying to fool me, I will blow your head off.'
As good as her word, the technician led Barbara back to the station, ignoring the shouts of alarm raised by colleagues she passed on the way. They only met three more security guards on the way. Two died trying to stop them whilst the third decided that discretion was, indeed, the better part of valour and withdrew when the shooting exchange did not go in his favour.
Barbara's luck ran out as they stepped inside the station area, which surprised her. She had expected the security to get their act tog
ether much faster; it was very sloppy.
A small detail of guards had set up a firing position behind a portable shield over by the tunnel entrance. Made from bullet proof glass, the clear screen was large enough to protect five men and was propped upright using its own titanium bracing legs. At several places in the shield, small openings allowed just enough space for the barrel of a gun to protrude.
Pushing the frightened lab technician ahead of her, Barbara did not pause for a second. A small maglev train sat on the rails, its door standing open invitingly.
'Halt or we will fire,' shouted one of the guards. 'Throw down your weapon.'
'If you shoot, you're going to be short on laboratory personnel,' Barbara quipped lightly. 'This does not need to happen. I won't fire unless I have to. I just want to get out of here.' She meant what she said but was wise enough to read the hungry look on the five faces behind the shield. Feeling invulnerable; angry at the demise of some of their own people, they wanted her dead.
'We will kill you both if we have to.' The guard shouted clearly. 'She is only a junior member of staff and her family will be well compensated for her sacrifice.'
The woman standing in front of her began to squirm in terror. A few minutes ago, she had left her lab to take a quick comfort break. Before making it to the toilet, however, she had heard gun shots. Running to have a quick look, bumping into the killer, it now seemed likely that she was about to be shot by her own security team.
'Don't kill me! Please, don't shoot! I have done nothing wrong!' Frozen with the horror of facing her own death, her full bladder chose its moment to empty onto the floor, splashing urine warmly down her legs and momentarily distracting the gaze of the guards, who glared at her in disgust.
Barbara seized her chance and shoved the technician forwards with the barrel of her gun. She stumbled but recovered herself at the same time as Barbara whipped the automatic rifle over the technician's shoulder and emptied an entire clip of ammunition straight into the shield. The bullets slammed into it heavily, hammering the surface but did not penetrate it.
