jacket.
‘Leave it,’ Bond said coldly. ‘Lie down, arms spread.’
Still, the man remained motionless, sweating with nerves, hand hovering over the butt of his gun. A Glock, Bond noted. The man’s phone began to hum. He glanced at his jacket pocket.
‘Get down now!’
If he drew, Bond would try to wound but he might end up killing the man.
The phone stopped ringing.
‘Now.’ Bond lowered his aim, focusing on the attacker’s right arm, near the elbow.
It appeared the blond man was going to comply. His shoulders drooped and in the shadowy light his eyes widened with fear and uncertainty.
At that moment, though, the bulldozer must have rolled over the ground nearby; bricks and earth rained down from the ceiling. Bond was struck by a large chunk of stone. He winced and stepped back, blinking dust out of his eyes. Had his assailant been more professional – or less panicked – he would have drawn his weapon and fired. But he didn’t; he turned and ran down the tunnel.
Bond slipped into his preferred stance, a fencer’s, left foot pointing forward and the right perpendicular and behind. Two-handed, he fired a single deafening shot that struck the man in the calf; screaming, he went down hard, about ten yards from the entrance to the tunnel.
Bond raced after him. As he did so, the shaking grew stronger, the rattle louder, and more bricks fell from the walls. Cascades of plaster and dust poured from the ceiling. A cricket ball of concrete landed directly on Bond’s shoulder wound and he grunted at the burst of pain.
But he kept moving steadily along the tunnel. The assailant was on the ground, dragging himself towards the fissure where sunlight eased in.
The bulldozer seemed directly overhead now. Move, dammit, Bond told himself. They were probably about to knock the whole bloody place down. As he got closer to the wounded man, the
Only ten yards to the wounded man. Get a tourniquet on him, get him out of the tunnel and under cover – and start asking questions.
But at a stunning crash, the soft illumination of the spring day at the end of the tunnel dimmed. It was replaced by two burning white eyes, glowing through the dust. They paused and then, as if they belonged to a lion spotting its prey, shifted slightly, turning directly towards Bond. With a fierce cough, the bulldozer ploughed relentlessly forward, pushing a surge of mud and stone before it.
Bond aimed his gun but there was no target – the blade of the machine was high, protecting the operator’s cab. The vehicle crawled steadily on, pushing before it a mass of earth, brick and other debris.
‘No!’ cried the wounded man, as the bulldozer pressed forward. The driver didn’t see him. Or if he did, he couldn’t have cared less about the man’s death.
With a scream, Bond’s assailant disappeared under the rocky blanket. A moment later the rattling treads rolled over the spot where he was buried.
Soon the headlights were gone, blocked by debris, and then all was total darkness. Bond clicked his torch on and sprinted back to the turntable room. At the entrance he tripped and fell hard as earth and brick piled up to his ankles, then calves.
A moment later his knees were held fast.
Behind him the bulldozer continued to ram forward, shoving the muddy detritus farther into the room. Bond was now gripped to the waist. Another thirty seconds and his face would be covered.
But the weight of the debris mountain proved too much for the bulldozer or perhaps it had hit the building’s foundation. The tide ceased to move forward. Before the operator could manoeuvre for better purchase, Bond dug himself free and scrabbled out of the room. His eyes stung, his lungs were in agony. Spitting dust and grit, he shone the torch back up the tunnel. It was completely plugged.
He hurried back through the three windowless rooms where he’d collected the ash and the bits of metal. He paused beside the door that led to the autopsy chamber; had they sealed the exit to force him into a trap? Were the Irishman and other security people waiting in there? He screwed the silencer on to his Walther.
Inhaling deep breaths, he paused for a moment then pushed the door open fast, dropping into a defensive shooting position, torch pointing forward from his left hand, on which rested his right, clutching the pistol.
The massive empty hall yawned. But the double doors he’d seen earlier, admitting a shaft of light, were sealed; the bulldozer had piled tons of dirt against them too.
Trapped…
He sprinted to the smaller rooms on the north side of the basement, the mental health ward. The largest of these – the office, he assumed – had a door but it was securely locked. Bond aimed the Walther and, standing at an oblique angle, fired four wheezing shots into the metal lock plate, then four into the hinges.
This had no effect. Lead, even half-jacketed lead, is no match for steel. He reloaded and slipped the spent magazine into his left pocket, where he always kept the empties.
He was regarding the barred windows when a loud voice made him jump.
‘
Swinging around, Bond looked for a target.
But the voice came from a loudspeaker on the wall.
‘
Warning?
‘
Bond shone the torch around the room.
The wires! They weren’t to provide electricity for construction – they were attached to explosives. Bond hadn’t seen them since the charges were taped to steel joists high in the ceiling. The entire building had been rigged for demolition.
Three minutes…
The torch revealed dozens of packets of explosive, enough to turn the stone walls around him to dust – and Bond into vapour. And all the exits had been sealed. His heart rate ratcheting, sweat dotting his forehead, Bond slipped the torch and pistol away and gripped one of the iron bars over a window. He tugged hard, but it held.
In the hazy light trickling through the glass, he looked about, then climbed a nearby girder. He ripped one of the explosive packets down and leapt back to the floor. The charges were an RDX composite, to judge from the smell. With his knife he cut off a large wad and jammed it against the knob and lock on the door. That should be enough to blow the lock without killing himself in the process.
Get on with it!
Bond stepped back about twenty feet, steadied his aim and fired. He hit the explosive dead on.
But, as he’d feared, nothing happened – except that the yellow-grey mass of deadly plastic fell undramatically to the floor with a plop. Composites explode only with a detonator, not with physical impact, even that of a bullet travelling at 2,000 feet per second. He’d hoped this substance might prove the exception.
The two-minute warning resounded through the room.
Bond looked up, to where the detonator he’d pulled from the charge now dangled obscenely. But the only way to set it off was with an electric current.
Electricity…
