Seven Degress (The Seventh Wave Trilogy Book 2)

by Lewis Hastings

  “Police. Don’t move.” Not that he could without unravelling more crushed blood vessels and the floodgates to a river of internal bleeding.

  Daniel and Smith were alongside him now. The senior man was grabbing lungful’s of the eerily still air.

  “I need to retire Jack.” He looked at Smith, who hadn’t missed a breath.

  “You alright, pal?”

  “Fine boss. You?”

  “Superb. What about him, Jack?”

  “He’ll live.”

  Cade and Smith lowered Saban to the ground, gently putting him into the recovery position, searching him as they moved.

  “Cuff him governor?” Smith was of the once-bitten school of policing.

  “No, I think he’ll be just fine Ken. Get us some help if it’s not on the way.”

  Cade looked at the young man. He barely looked old enough to shave, let alone stand at the midway point between two countries, hundreds of feet beneath the ocean and shoot at police officers.

  “Can you hear me?”

  He nodded, carefully.

  “I hear you. Please do not kill me.” He tried to breathe but torn intercostal cartilages screamed in protest as his buckled right ribcage creaked, his lungs hissing and crackling.

  “I was told if I didn’t help they would kill my family, and my uncle. He said that when the time came, I should tell the British his name. That he has been loyal to you. That you would help me.”

  “You shot at me and my colleagues. I think you are far from help my young friend. We’ll deal with that another day. There is medical help on the way. Now, what is your name?”

  Saban’s eyelids were scarlet and filling with tears. He felt as if he had limited time and began to pray and ask for his mother, Christina.

  As Cade watched him slip in and out of consciousness, he recalled the last conversation he had had with Valentin.

  “OK. What is your uncle’s name?”

  “Niculcea. Valentin Niculcea.”

  Cade looked up at Daniel and raised his eyebrows.

  “Then you are with friends. Relax, try not to move. But before you do any of that, I need to know where they are heading and what the plans are. And I need to know that right now.”

  Saban could hear his voice rasping. He was afraid the clicking in his speech was caused by internal bleeding. But as much as he feared death, he also knew he had to help the man kneeling at his side.

  “They are heading to France. Constantin is the leader. I sent you a text…”

  “Where in France?”

  “Just France. Then home to Romania to live as heroes. Jackdaw said they can keep the diamonds.”

  “Diamonds?” It was new information for Cade and Daniel.

  “Yes. We took them from the jewellery company. Everyone had three or four. And the boxes. And some cash.” He took a shallow breath, terrified of drawing in too much air.

  “They all had some. The group will split up once it gets to the other side. And in a few months we will all be famous, like your Robin Hood. Stealing from the rich, to give to the poor.”

  He was drifting in and out of consciousness, his eyes closing and his head dropping, snapping his neck backwards in response.

  Flashing beacons from the English side of the tunnel gave Cade some hope. A paramedic crew was arriving but had remained a few hundred metres away for their own safety.

  Smith called up his own control room, and the police vehicle that had accompanied the medical staff. “It’s clear. Get them here ASAP – we’ve got a serious casualty, accidentally run over by one of our own cars.”

  Cade was doing his own back-slapping now, firmly tapping Smith on the back as he moved off, via the prone revolver and towards the service tunnel exit.

  “I’ll leave you with it Ken. Job well done. You coming, JD?”

  “I suspect I have little choice. Does that thing have any rounds left?”

  Cade carefully handled the firearm. On any other day, he would have taken time to admire the thing – a Russian Nagant 1895 revolver.

  He could see that it contained rounds, but struggled to work out how the thing actually worked. It was rudimentary but had effectively drilled a hole through his windscreen so he was cautiously handling it.

  He pulled at a rod at the front of the weapon and could see that eventually he would work out how to load it, but with limited time and even more limited ammunition he knew it was futile. What he wouldn’t give for a Glock and seventeen fresh rounds.

  The revolver was a much-loved, hand-me-down from the former Soviet military. Saban had been handed it, wrapped in an old T-shirt, and told that it was fully loaded. All he had to do was pull the heavy double-action trigger and hope it did its job.

  In its day it was one of the few revolvers that could be suppressed and with practically no gas escaping and a chamber that retained cartridge cases it was considered an ideal assassin’s handgun.

  It had been handed to him because it had no serial number and its only known history was in the late 1940s in a best-forgotten, pre-communist Romania. As such, it made it an ideal weapon to leave behind.

  They left the scene and made their way down a smaller tunnel, turning right and into another, even smaller one. About two metres in height and a metre across, it seemed claustrophobic in comparison.

  It was lit, but only for about thirty metres. They walked quietly, Cade in front, handgun up and in the ready position.

  The pathway was damp in places, and in others wet. A sideways glance at the walls made them both realise that they were now in a chalk tunnel. The rock was white, but not pure as one would imagine, it was tainted with green algae and there was a fusty smell, as if they had stepped into a Napoleonic escape tunnel from the early eighteen hundreds. They existed along the south coast of Britain, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

  What they were inside was an earlier tunnel – a trial run that had been aborted and the further they progressed the less they could see, and the more confined it seemed to become. Cade sensed that they were walking in a westerly direction, but slightly uphill. He slowed his pace slightly, aware that he was starting to leave Daniel behind.

  “You OK?”

  “Yep.”

  “And the truth?”

  “I hate confined spaces, Jack. Goes back to childhood, I think my mother tried to dispose of me in a forest one night. But let’s press on.”

  “Go back. I can deal with this. Round up the troops and head to France. We can hopefully cut the bastards off at the pass.”

  “And leave my junior man to fight with them on the way? If you think that, then why are you walking down this tunnel? Surely you would…”

  Cade held up a hand. Then placed his index finger to his lips. He didn’t need to do another thing.

  They stood, trying to silence their breathing, and waited a moment. Without phone coverage and no radio, which might have had the same issues, they were technically up the proverbial creek without the legendary paddle, or in their particular case, hundreds of feet below the channel, in a side tunnel, unarmed and without so much as a torch.

  Cade was focused on the task, but starting to question his motives.

  Was this in danger of becoming personal? He knew it was a past tense question.

  There was a definite noise, somewhere in the distance, but this was a massive operation; a network of tunnels, of engineering, and trains, pumps, fans and hydraulic rams and rods and doors. Noise was a pre-requisite.

  What both men heard was human. And it was getting further away.

  “Come on let’s go.” Cade was off again, checking his footsteps, trying to be as quiet as possible but also avoiding the now hazardous path.

  Ahead he could make out an opening to the left and another to the right. The place was a warren, and neither had a map. Ten paces into each there was a door.

  Cade flipped a metaphorical coin and said in a whisper, “Heads.”

  He went left.

  As he got to the door he rea
lised, even in the half-light, that it was locked. It looked as if it hadn’t been opened in twenty years.

  Daniel approached the door, a simple green-painted metal panel with a correspondingly modest handle. A white painted code had been templated onto it some years before. As he gently turned the handle, the door flew towards him, its edge striking him to the side of his right eye and scraping the skin away before sending him crashing backwards off the chalk wall.

  He was stunned by the speed of the event. For a second he was unsteady and bent double. He tried to grab hold of the person in front of him, but he was struggling to process the incident.

  Cade ran to the door expecting to see the back of Daniel’s attacker, but what he saw was the face and body of a large male. He had no idea, even as a professional witness how tall the man was, his best description might be ‘towering’.

  Other than ‘very tall and broad’ he knew he needed somehow to counter the threat of the man that was now punching Daniel and at the same time struggling to fit in the narrowing passageway.

  Two blows had landed. The first to the left side of the head the second a short, sharp jab to the side of his abdomen, forcing air out of his body and later described over a medicinal single malt as similar to being kicked by a distrustful mule that had just found out its partner was having an affair with a far more attractive horse.

  Daniel was trying to get back on his feet. Like all police staff, he knew the worst place to be was on the ground. Get up. Get back on your feet and if you can’t work at arm’s length then get in close and start causing some pain. It was all very well in training and it had been a while.

  Cade was looking for weapons of opportunity. The tunnel was clear. An axe would be nice, or even a lump of rock. After all he was surrounded by the bloody stuff. Nothing.

  The problem he was facing was how to get past Daniel. He grabbed hold of him and started to drag him back towards the main passage, hoping that the noise might attract some new arrivals from the police. It mattered not which country they came from – at that precise moment he didn’t have a clue whether he was in England or France and more importantly, didn’t care, there was language aplenty and none of it Anglo Saxon.

  The male continued to strike Daniel, who let out a series of painful exclamations. He had time to hold an internal conversation or two.

  ‘This bastard is rather strong. Now might be a good time for Cade to shoot him, perhaps?’

  Whether Daniel had telepathically transmitted that thought would never be known, but it brought Cade to his senses. Here he was scrabbling around for a weapon when all the time he was clinging onto one, there, in his hand. He had even tried to hit the male with it. If it wasn’t so ridiculous it would be funny.

  He raised the gun up into the aim, wrapped his hands around it, targeted the central mass on the unknown male and pulled the trigger. The male kept punching Daniel as if nothing had happened. And it hadn’t. Cade was still pulling the bloody thing, the trigger weight felt close to four ton. Were these Russian troops born with a grip that could arm-wrestle a yeti? It wasn’t what he said but with time and a different environment might have been.

  He pulled the trigger again. The second attempt was successful, if success can be measured in hitting one of your own. The round pierced the top layer of Daniel’s jacket and rammed home to the right of the target’s windpipe, scattering itself throughout his upper chest, dragging bone and chaos with it as it frantically sought an exit point.

  The unknown offender dropped immediately. There was no theatrical delay, clutching at the wound or staggering back and forth. He just slumped to the side and onto Daniel. He was bleeding heavily from the entry wound, a darkened access point to the inner workings of a previously powerful, healthy young male. His raised heart rate and adrenaline had actually helped to end his fight. A pity he would never see his family again.

  Daniel was furious. Furious that he had been shot – although Cade was sure he would later see the funny side of it, but more so because he was now trapped, underground and claustrophobically-clawing at the hundred kilos of solid corpse that pinned him unceremoniously to the ground in his favourite Aqua Scutum suit.

  Cade dragged the male away, checked his pulse and knew his actions would lead to an alpine region of paperwork, and an inquiry that would last months. And then more paperwork.

  Fortune favours the brave and in his case, despite appearing unprofessional, he was pleased to see that Napoleon had not thought to install cameras and that there was only one other witness. And moreover, the nameless offender broke the golden rule by trying to throttle his friend and boss. You play with fire…

  Praying that back up would follow them and locate the body, they moved forwards.

  “You OK?”

  “You shot me. This is my favourite suit.”

  “It didn’t match the shirt to be fair. Seriously John, there’s a hint of blood there, are you OK to carry on?”

  “Is the Pope?” It wasn’t religious in any way.

  Cade laughed. “That’s the way, mate. Come on, let’s go and cause some havoc.”

  “I’m sweating like a bullet in a china shop, Jack.” The mixed metaphor should have concerned Cade, it was a sign that all was not well with his boss.

  Chapter 31

  Almost eight hundred kilometres south of the tunnel, Valentin Niculcea was hurriedly driving his aging Citroen along the grass runway near the small French village of St Helene.

  Alongside him, in the passenger seat, were two large boxes. They both contained chemical glow sticks. The first box green, the second, red.

  Each stick was nearly a foot long. He broke them in turn, as he did so the two compartments within released chemical compounds, diphenyl oxalate and a dye to create the colour and in the second compartment Hydrogen Peroxide.

  Merely breaking the glass led to the colourful reaction, and the outside temperature, being cold, allowed the chemical process to last longer and thus met his needs.

  He drove as fast as he could, the green sticks were dropped to his left, paced as far apart as he could accurately drop them until he reached the end of the strip. He turned and repeated the process, illuminating the left side in bright red.

  It was hardly London Heathrow, but it gave the inbound pilot a chance.

  Maria Anghel gently banked the aircraft, reduced her speed and scanned the ground. Villages to the left and right of the runway announced their presence, a glowing window here, a street light there. A car, now and then, moving from A to B. In the distance Bordeaux with its modern, effective runway system was teasing her constantly. She wished she could land there, taxi to a remote part of the airfield and lock the plane down, taxi again, this time to a hotel and sink into a deep bath and wash away the stress of the day.

  And stress was at the forefront of her mind. What was she thinking?

  She was planning to land a twin-engine aircraft onto a grass runway at night. A grass runway that she had never landed at before. In the dark.

  Her fear was not her ability, but the stress on the undercarriage and the propeller clearance on the Piper. If the surface was not level, she could easily strike the blades and at the speed she would be landing, it would be at best, disastrous.

  She turned to Stefanescu.

  “I cannot afford to land my plane here. We need to get clearance to land at Bordeaux. This is not safe.”

  Stefanescu had been catching up on some sleep. He woke with a start, allowed his heart rate to settle, and then spoke.

  “Maria. You came highly recommended. You agreed to take on this task. I paid you more than adequately. I think you should concentrate on getting us safely down, then we can negotiate.”

  He had the upper hand. In his mind.

  “No. That is not how it is going to happen. If I call up the tower at Bordeaux, they will ask questions – and then there will be some explaining to do. But at least we will live. It is down to you.”

  Hewett was now very much awake too. Never a natura
l passenger – in any vehicle – he preferred to be in control. He went to speak but was cut off by his associate.

  “Then what do you require, Miss Anghel? How much, seeing as though this is no longer about your skill.”

  “Your psychology will not work. I am still in control here.”

  “How much?” His voice had changed, more demanding now and not a little concerned about the consequences of colliding with the ground at over a hundred miles an hour.

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “Done. Now land this plane whilst I still find your audacity amusing.”

  She had to smile quietly to herself. Playing men off against each other was nothing if not rewarding. So far both Stefanescu and the much more endearing Mr Blake had paid her to rid England of the annoyingly handsome Hewett. Oh well, you have to speculate…

  She banked the aircraft, scanned the horizon one last time and trusted what her instruments told her and began to reduce altitude.

  She pulled back on the throttle and eased back on the control wheel. Her speed reduced. She wanted it to be around 80 knots. Hewett wanted it to be a lot lower, and ideally, now.

  “This is not good. We need to get this thing down!”

  He leaned forward and removed the screwdriver from his pocket. One swift strike would render Stefanescu immobile, along with his existing injury he wouldn’t be able to fight back. He was sure he could throw him out of the aircraft, either during the flight or once they had landed. The latter seemed more palatable. A rapid financial negotiation with the female would enable them to get airborne immediately and fly to Bordeaux where he could hopefully convince the authorities that he had been kidnapped – and somehow build a case for the defence.

  “Calm down, Johnathan. Maria is more than capable, you will only make her nervous and that will not be good for any of us. Once we land, you can kiss the ground or jam that screwdriver into my neck or whatever else you have planned – for now just strap yourself in and act like a man. And John.”

  He looked forlornly at his associate. “Yes?”

  “I really wouldn’t do the whole airborne flight or fight scene. You are hardly Bruce Willis. And besides, we are allies. I am hurt. How little you think of me, such shallow words back in England.”