‘Sorry,’ said Lukas. ‘No can do.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ said Macmillan.
Steven looked at his watch. ‘We came round about twenty minutes ago. Monk would expect us to have walked into the trap and be fighting each other to the death by now. He’ll probably be back here some time within the next hour to… tidy up loose ends.’
‘Christ,’ said Lukas. Macmillan said nothing.
‘As I see it, there’s no possibility of disabling the ventilation system for the reasons Lukas gave earlier — too many safety mechanisms — so that just leaves one option. We’ve got to remove the spores from the system. Monk and his pals couldn’t have had that much time to set this up so it’s my guess it will be something fairly simple inserted in the trunking above us. I’ve got to get up there to see if I can find it. What d’you think, Lukas? Is there room?’
Lukas looked unsure, glancing first at Steven and then at the grating above them. ‘Could be a tight fit. You certainly won’t be turning round much once you’re in there.’
‘Let’s do it,’ said Steven with an air of finality that spurred them into action, collecting lab furniture to make a platform below the grating. ‘I’ll need a screwdriver, a torch, maybe some wet cloths, wire cutters if possible but scissors or a knife at a pinch.’
‘We’ve got a torch,’ said Lukas, breaking off from platform building to open a series of drawers, one after the other, making them bang on their stops and remind everyone of the urgency of their situation. ‘And a screwdriver… no wirecutters, I’m afraid… shit, where are the scissors?… plenty of scalpels… no cloths; we use disposable towels, but I can rip up a lab coat…’
Steven acknowledged the growing inventory with grunts as he undid the screws holding the grating on the ceiling.
‘What happens if the grating’s wired to the ventilation system?’ asked Macmillan, holding the platform steady while looking up at Steven.
‘We’re fucked,’ replied Steven without stopping.
Macmillan looked away. ‘Can’t complain about a nice clear answer, I suppose,’ he murmured.
Steven removed the grating and lowered it to Lukas, who had returned to the platform with the bits and pieces he’d collected. In exchange, he took the things Lukas handed up to him and put them inside the open hatch. There was no point in putting anything in his pockets because there wouldn’t be room to move his arms behind him once he was inside the trunking. He did, however, slip a couple of the scalpels between his wrist and his watch strap. He’d have to nudge everything else along in front of him. Finally, he took off his sweater and shirt and dropped them to the ground. With a last look below, he gripped the edges of the hatch, bent his knees and muttered, ‘Up we go.’
THIRTY-NINE
There was a moment, after heaving himself up through the opening, that Steven thought it was not going to be possible. There had been just enough room for him to launch himself headfirst into the trunking, but he was left with his arms pinned behind him and no means of propelling himself forwards or backwards. He felt trapped like a cork in a bottle.
He had to fight off panic. Panic only ever made things worse. Uncoordinated wriggling was getting him nowhere. He focused only on his right arm, harnessing every bit of movement he could manage into bringing it underneath him and then wriggling it up past the side of his face until he could push it out freely in front of him. This instantly gave him confidence and more room to repeat the procedure with his left arm. With both arms in front of him, he found he could get some purchase. He was on the move.
He switched on the torch and looked at what lay ahead: a stretch of trunking running straight for about six metres but then meeting a T-junction, which would call for his first decision. He turned off the torch to save the batteries while he covered the six metres, something he did painfully slowly, his throat becoming dry and sweat running down his face in the hellish heat of the confined space.
He discovered there was no decision to make at the junction at all. The spur to the right led only to a blank plate about a metre away with bolts protruding through it, suggesting it might be some kind of inspection hatch. Steven’s spirits soared momentarily when he thought that this might actually be a way out for all of them if the hatch led to a different room in the building, but further examination brought him back to reality. He could only see long threaded shafts of the bolts: the heads were on the outside of the plate. There was no way of turning them from the inside.
He turned his attention to what lay to the left and saw the large, motionless fan. It filled the trunking about eight metres back from the junction. The torch he was using wasn’t powerful. It picked out the blades of the fan well enough and he could see its supporting framework, but he couldn’t see what he wanted to see, the mechanism to inject fungal spores into the airflow. Did it exist? Steven felt his confidence wobble.
If the mechanism did exist, it would have to be located on this side of the fan for him to do anything about it. Should it turn out to be on the far side, he would have no way of reaching it. He’d be left looking at it through the mocking blades of the fan. He started wriggling forwards again.
By now he was blinking constantly to clear away the sweat that was running freely into his eyes, but at least the perspiration from his body was reducing friction and allowing him to move more easily through the metal trunking. He stopped after three metres to turn on the torch again but still couldn’t see anything rigged in front of the fan. He turned off the torch and rested his head on his arms. Despair was threatening and was only being kept in its place by thoughts of a training sergeant of long ago, shouting at him in the mountains of North Wales when sleet was falling and winter winds were howling. ‘When you think you’ve got nothing left to give, Mr Dunbar… you fucking well have, so get off your arse and let’s do that all over again, shall we?’
Steven stopped about two metres from the fan and clicked on the torch. There it was, the most beautiful sight in the world, the protruding top of a round, pressurised container, by the look of it. It had been inserted in front of the fan from the room below. The trigger mechanism appeared primitively simple, a wire from the container attached to one of the fan blades. When the fan started turning, a valve would be ripped out of the top of the container and the contents would spray out into the airflow.
Steven moved closer and examined everything thoroughly to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, but as far as he could see he wasn’t. He slipped the plastic guard off one of the scalpels he’d brought with him and cut through the wire leading to the fan.
‘And that’s all there is to it,’ he murmured, letting his head fall forward on to his outstretched arms. He lay there motionless for fully a minute, waiting for his breathing to subside until it became as shallow as a sleeper’s. The sweat continued to trickle down his face but it didn’t bother him any longer, he even took childish pleasure in charting the path of each drop as it sought the easiest contour of his face to follow. It was over; he’d done it; they were safe. In a few moments he would start the long wriggle backwards and return to the lab. Once down there, they could press the door release with impunity, enter the airlock space and batter their way through the jammed outer door.
Feeling physically exhausted but filled with enormous relief, Steven summoned up the energy to start the retreat. As he’d feared, wriggling backwards proved to be even more difficult than going forwards: a different undulating motion was called for, a more unnatural movement that had him gasping for breath by the time he’d backed up to the junction. He started to lose his temper when he encountered difficulty in trying to make the ninety-degree turn backwards: his legs seemed too long.
He had exhausted his entire vocabulary of swear words, used in every combination he could think of, when he finally succeeded in making it round the corner. He had to rest for a few moments to recover his equilibrium, the merest suggestion of a cool breeze caressing his cheek…
The breeze became a hurricane; the fan had been switched on. Steven yelled out but had to bow his head against the blast as the implications hit home like stab wounds. Monk had returned; he was down there. Christ, he’d been in sight of the finishing line and this had to happen… Monk was going to win: he would still be able to set up his accident and get away with it.
For the second time in a few hours, Steven found himself facing the prospect of death without any hope of a
