Sarah Grant and Jamie Saintclair would not leave the bunker alive.
The threatening silence was always with them. They moved quickly, as if, by their swiftness, they could somehow leave it behind along with whoever had followed them into the complex. But in the vast labyrinth of the tunnels the silence always prevailed. Jamie led the way, with the Raphael tucked under his left arm and the torch in his right hand. As they ran through the echoing man-made underworld he was conscious of the trail they left behind them, but what option did they have? Any attempt to disguise their footprints would leave just as big a signpost and would waste time. Their only hope was speed and the chance that somewhere in the maze was another exit.
They approached a massive steel door which looked as if it was sitting slightly ajar. It was only when they got closer that Jamie saw it was hanging from its hinges. He raced through, into the heart of Walter Brohm’s secret world.
Behind the door lay a room the size of a football pitch that contained the biggest junkyard Jamie had ever seen. If it reminded him of anything, it was the wreckage of the Twin Towers on the morning of 12 September 2001. At every point of their vision, twisting, rusted metal created huge modernist sculptures: pyramids of engines, pumps and centrifuges, corkscrewed tubes and broken-toothed cogwheels, mounds of nameless machinery in every shape and size; ovens, gas tanks and even an entire tractor hanging like festive decorations. When they shone the torches over the roof and walls they could see the great white scars where the mass of steel and iron had been hurled by the force of an explosion powerful enough to crack the feet-thick reinforced concrete and expose the steel cables within. For a moment, they stood in silent awe taking in the immensity of it. The power required to create such a cataclysm. The incredible squandering of energy, effort and talent.
Sarah made to set off again, but Jamie pulled her back.
This place is like a minefield.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘We’ve no idea what traps may have been set. There are wires everywhere. Just walking through this lot would be dangerous enough. One foot in the wrong place and you’ll start an avalanche. If we run . . .’
‘But . . .’
‘I know,’ he insisted. ‘If we slow down, they’ll catch us. We have to find a way to delay them.’
He studied their footprints again, Sarah’s so much smaller than his own. ‘Get behind me.’ He took three steps forward. ‘Now, as light-footed as you can, walk in my footsteps.’ She did as she was told and they scrutinized the result as if their lives depended on it. Two lines of tracks had merged into one.
‘Not bad, but they aren’t going to buy that I upped and disappeared into thin air, are they?’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But see how your tracks stop by the base of that big heap of debris with what looks like a boiler at the top? Well, the first thing they’re going to suspect is that I’ve sent you up there to cover me while I escape.’
‘You wouldn’t do that,’ she pointed out.
‘No, but the cold-blooded bastard who is leading these people would. It won’t delay them for long, but it might give us a chance. What we really need is to find some way to hurt them. Maybe take out one or two of them altogether.’
She darted a glance towards the doorway. ‘Well, you’d better be quick.’
He handed her the Raphael. ‘This is one of the darker arts I learned while I was in the OTC at Cambridge.’ He pulled something circular from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it up for her to see. ‘Fishing nylon. Fifty yards of thirty-pound breaking strain, but so thin you can’t see it. You can use it to fish, but it also comes in handy for stitching wounds, putting up a makeshift shelter and for certain rather devious manoeuvres involving a hand grenade.’ She declined to point out that they didn’t have a hand grenade, but he probably wouldn’t have heard her. As he talked he searched the closest heap of metal until he found what he was looking for. First, he tied the spider-web-thin strand of nylon from the leg of what had once been a workbench to a twisted piece of machinery about the size of a football.
‘Give me your rope.’
Working quickly, he knotted one end of the rope through a gap in the metal part and when he was done he placed it gently so that a single twitch of the nylon would make it fall.
‘Now comes the difficult bit.’
Sarah gasped as she saw what he planned.
‘You can’t. It will bring the whole lot down. Leave it, we don’t have time.’
He ignored her and gingerly began climbing. After the first few feet he turned to look down at her. ‘Make your way to the centre room on the far side, but stick to the edges of the aisles and try to keep your feet of the floor. I’ll join you if I can.’