broke into a grin again. ‘That’s more like it.’ His eyes narrowed and he looked suddenly dangerous as he came forward to get stuck in.
Stratton stood against the door, poised to respond to Jason’s next attack. The idiot was serious about fighting to the death. Stratton didn’t know if he had flipped or what. The scientist’s issues clearly went a lot deeper than anyone knew.
As Jason moved to prepare for his attack, Stratton heard something other than feet moving through the water. ‘Quiet,’ he said, his voice lowered, his eyes looking up.
‘Not going to work,’ Jason said as he tensed.
‘Quiet! I heard something.’
Jason suddenly suspected that the other man might be telling the truth. He kept his distance but stayed alert as he listened.
A faint clanging sound came from beyond the door. Stratton turned to face it, ignoring Jason completely.
A heavy clunk was followed by the sound of an electric motor. A gear engaged and the door jolted. Bits of rust and debris fell from seams around the door.
Stratton stepped back.
The electric motor laboured heavily. The door jerked again and more debris fell from the hinges. The motor was beginning to sound as if it might fail when the entire door shuddered and then cracked open. The motor picked up and as the gap widened a bright light flooded the rock walls.
The two men instinctively moved out of the immediate view of anyone who might emerge from the opening. The water rushed in through the gap to fill a space on the other side and when the door was open wide enough to let a man through the motors went silent.
Stratton and Jason remained still, their senses straining to detect what if anything was on the other side of it.
A gloved hand reached around the door frame followed by its owner wearing a heavy-duty one-piece boiler suit and waders. He turned on a flashlight and aimed it up at the sensor as he backed out of the doorway. Stratton grabbed the hand holding the torch, almost giving the man a heart attack. As he cried out, Stratton covered his mouth. The frightened man shut up instantly.
Stratton released his grip and gestured for the man to stay quiet. He obeyed. Stratton stepped through the doorway into a brightly lit landing at the foot of a narrow concrete stairwell. His instinct suddenly warned him and he faced the steps to see a young Russian soldier partway up them aiming an AK-74 down at him. The soldier was as surprised to see the stranger as his engineer colleague had been but it did not divert him from his task. He pulled a radio from a pouch, put it to his mouth and talked quickly into it.
Jason stepped through the door and raised his empty hands in the air. ‘Well, at least I won’t freeze to death. And you’ve been saved from an embarrassing thrashing.’
15
Stratton and Jason stood in a large room that housed several noisy pieces of heavy equipment. Their hands had been chained around a thick metal bracing, part of a steel structure that supported a large pumping machine. Two sides of the rectangular space had been hewn out of solid rock, the other sides were constructed from cemented concrete blocks. The young soldier stood on the far side of the room by a wooden door, calmly watching, his gun in his hands. Puddles of water had collected around the feet of the two prisoners. They had been there for over an hour but at least the room was warm and they had stopped shivering.
The young soldier had made them wait at gunpoint at the foot of the emergency stairwell until half a dozen reinforcements had arrived. The response from the mine’s guards had been enthusiastic due to the novelty of such a visit. Every soldier not at a duty post had answered the call to action. They promptly led the bedraggled pair up and down several levels and through a labyrinth of corridors, their walls made of bare rock or brick, to the pump room, the nearest thing they had to a dedicated cell at the facility.
The mine, or laboratory, appeared to be a series of interconnecting halls dug out of the rock. A hundred miles of piping and conduits of all sizes wound along the ceilings and through the walls. Some halls housed pumps and generators while in others sat collections of weird-looking storage vats and drums of differing sizes and colours. The entire place had a feel of decay, as though it was in serious need of reconstruction, with chipping paint, broken fixtures and mildew everywhere. At intervals along the connecting tunnels between many of the halls stood airtight steel doors like those in a bank vault, so heavy that they could only be moved by hydraulic rams.
The wooden door to the pump room opened and Stratton and Jason looked up to see a grim-faced Russian officer in casual uniform walk in. He glanced at the soldier and then at the two Englishmen before stepping aside from the doorway to allow the man behind him into the room. Binning.
Stratton and Jason weren’t entirely surprised. During the time they had spent waiting they’d wondered if such a meeting might take place.
Binning wore a white technician’s coat and a smarmy grin as he put his hands on his hips and planted his feet astride. ‘Well, well, well. This is a surprise. I can’t tell you how stunned I was to hear the descriptions of the men they had found lurking in the tunnels. How the hell did you end up there?’
Neither man answered.
‘I just know you had something to do with the helicopter that crashed almost right on top of us. I can’t wait to hear how that all came about . . . Major,’ he said, addressing the officer. ‘This is John Stratton, British special forces. And this is Jason Mansfield, my boss, or should I say former boss, from MI16.’
The officer looked at the men with a hint of satisfaction in his eyes.
‘I suspect they came here to take back the tile,’ Binning mused. ‘Or kill me. Or both. What do you say, chaps? Does that about sum it up?’
Both prisoners remained stone-faced as they stared at the traitor.
‘Major, would you be good enough to unchain this one?’ Binning asked, indicating Jason.
A frown formed on the officer’s brow. ‘By what authority?’ he asked.
‘Can I remind you I have been given the equivalent rank of lieutenant colonel? Okay, it’s not yet official but that’s just a matter of procedure.’
The major still didn’t move.
Binning sighed. ‘Major, all I have to do is make a phone call and someone whose rank you
The officer gave a brief order to the soldier who handed him his weapon and walked over to Jason Mansfield. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the padlock connecting the chains that secured Jason to the bracing.
The chains dropped to the concrete floor and Jason rubbed his wrists where the metal had chafed them. He looked into Binning’s cold eyes as the man walked slowly towards him.
‘A few tense and interesting moments but we got there in the end,’ Binning said, his face cracking into a broader smile.
Mansfield’s face broke into a matching grin and the two men embraced, hugging each other strongly as they laughed heartily.
‘You look well,’ Binning said, moving back to take a look at Jason. ‘Bit cold and wet but in good shape, considering.’
‘You have no idea,’ Jason said. ‘I tell you, there’s the easy way of doing things and then there’s Stratton’s way. Dear God, it was utter madness at times. Between that damned platform and getting here I think I used up all my spare lives.’
‘Let’s get you a change of clothes and a hot meal.’
‘Tell me you had the decency to procure a fine malt,’ Jason said, taking a step with Binning towards the door.
‘Part of the deal, old boy.’
They both laughed out loud as they walked.
Halfway across the room Jason stopped to look back at Stratton. ‘Shocked, Stratton?’
