Silent Assassin(66)

“There may not be an opening. But maybe I have enough explosives to make one.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The incendiary bombs. The ones used for the self-destruct sequence. They don’t explode if they’re separate, but if I put a bunch of them together do you think I can make a blast big enough to get through?”

“Cobra, that’s ingenious!”

“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s get to work. I’m going to need the locations of each of the incendiary bombs that didn’t go off.”

“All right, they’re placed all along the main hallway,” said Shepard. “Each in a panel overhead. You should be able to pry them open with your knife.”

“I see them,” he said. He realized that it was a bit too high for him to reach, so he grabbed a chair from one of the nearby labs. He stood up on the chair and slid his knife under the plate, gently levering it loose. A thin metal plate dropped to the ground. “Got it.”

“Okay, now, you’re going to have to be careful with this part. The device is a disc, some two inches thick, not too different from a landmine. It’s supposed to drop when the self-destruct sequence is activated. It’s attached to a string that’s about half the height of that tunnel. It’s set to go off the moment that string is pulled. You’re going to push aside the bars holding it up, and then gently lower the device until you can cut that string. Understand?”

“Loud and clear,” said Morgan, looking at the grey-green disc above his head. He could feel himself sweating. He pushed the bars aside with his knife, gently and carefully. As soon as he had gotten them clear of the bottom, the disc slipped down and fell. He caught it with inches to spare, the string almost pulled taut. He held the thing for a moment, in pure terror of what had almost happened. Then he cut the string with his knife and climbed down.

“Where’s the next one?” he asked.

Shepard talked him through finding and removing seven more devices from the hallway, which he collected in two neat piles on the floor.

“All right,” said Shepard, “that should be enough. Now, bring them to the ventilation shaft. You’ll find that through a door marked ‘maintenance’ on the main corridor, on the exact opposite side of the door to the stairs.”

Morgan carried four of the incendiary devices with him. “Found it,” he said. He left the bombs on the floor and went back for the rest. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside, he found a large metal tube, big enough for a man to fit in, with a bolted door. He opened it. Incendiary devices had clearly gone off in there. The air smelled sharply like burning match heads. He looked up and saw that there was a ladder built into the wall. There were scorch marks all along the tunnel, and the metal had warped and melted on two points along the way up.

“The shaft turns horizontal at the air filters,” said Shepard. “That’s where you’ll want to place those charges. Then, cover the shaft with debris as tightly as possible. You want as much energy as possible directed into that wall.”

Morgan cut off pieces of his shirt with his knife and wrapped them around his hands to climb the ladder. When he reached the top, he found the shelf Shepard was referring to. It was just a few square feet before it fed into a filter. It was impressively free of dust.

“The first-floor corridor will be to your right, through the wall,” Shepard said.

Morgan had to bring up the discs two by two, carefully stacking them together tightly into the sconce. He foraged the lab for something to plug up the hole, and settled on paper. He took several thick reams that he found in an office supply room and carried them up, setting the bombs as tightly against the wall as he could.

“With any luck, that’ll be enough to bust right through that concrete,” said Shepard.

Morgan tied the strings to the explosives together, and then tied that string to a spool of wire he’d found in the maintenance closet. He unspooled the wire all the way down the shaft and then as far as it would go. Bracing for impact, he pulled.

He heard the blast—a series of blasts, in fact, as not all the devices went off at once—then he felt the rush of hot air coming from the shaft. He rushed back into it, finding that there was confetti flying thick down toward the bottom. He climbed up as fast as he could until he reached the top. There was still paper blocking the way, so he pushed it down the shaft. Then he looked at the place where the explosives had been.

There was a hole in the concrete, just big enough for him to squeeze through, and beyond it was a darkened tunnel.