Juggernaut

Lucy stooped. A scrap of foil in the sand. She turned it over in gloved fingers. A blister strip of pills. Dexedrine. UCB Pharma: an American brand.

‘Gaunt must be running ahead of us.’

They reached the tunnel entrance. A high arch in a rock face, blocked with a jumble of planks, beams and sacking.

‘The mine,’ said Jabril. ‘This tunnel leads to a central cavern.’

‘And Spektr?’

‘Yes.’

Lucy stepped over planks. She shone her flashlight into the dark.

‘It’s down there,’ said Jabril. ‘The locomotive. It’s parked in the tunnel, about a hundred yards in.’

Lucy turned to Amanda and Voss.

‘You two stay here. Cover our backs.’

A wide, high tunnel. Double rails. A rubble conveyor corroded to scrap.

Lucy inspected the fissured, limestone walls. Steel crossbars and chock-jacks reinforced slabs of rock that threatened to slough from the roof.

She raked her fingers across the wall. She held a limestone shard between her fingers and crumbled it to powder.

‘This shit could collapse any moment. I’m frightened to cough.’

Jabril led her deeper into the tunnel. Boots crunched on ballast. He held a blue cyalume above his head.

‘Cold as a tomb,’ muttered Lucy, buttoning her coat. ‘Hey. Jabril. Let me ask you something. That story you told us in your prison cell. All bullshit, yeah?’

‘Every word.’

‘So how did you lose your arm?’

He ignored the question.

‘Here she is.’

A massive locomotive. Lucy shone her barrel light over the rust-streaked prow.

‘Jesus. Big as a fucking battleship. Looks like it has been to hell and back.’

‘It weighs about two hundred and fifty tons.’

‘What are these passenger cars?’

‘Relics,’ said Jabril. ‘Saddam ordered a replica of the Orient Express. He wanted to travel the country in style. Too afraid to use it, of course. Too frightened of assassination. A couple of carriages must have been dumped in this tunnel years ago. Been here way longer than the engine. Left to rot.’

‘The train. Will it run?’

‘Why not? It’s been sitting in this tunnel gathering dust. It hasn’t been exposed to the weather. It looks undamaged. The batteries might need a charge. Otherwise it is ready to go.’

Lucy clasped grab-rails and hauled herself up the side of the great locomotive to the walkway. She held out a hand and helped Jabril climb the ladder.

She tried the cab door. Locked. She chambered her Glock.

‘Stand back,’ she told Jabril.

She shielded her eyes. She blew out the lock. The gunshot echoed round the tunnel walls.

She drew back the slide door and entered the cab.

A cursory glance at the circuit breaker panel and engineer’s console.

A dead man on the plate floor. Lucy crouched beside him.

‘Syrian rail crew,’ said Jabril.

Desiccated. Mummified. The man wore a boiler suit. The folds of the suit deflated round skeletal limbs.

A neat bullet hole in his temple. Muzzle burn. An old Makarov pistol in his hand.

Lucy ejected the magazine and checked the corroded weapon. The slide was jammed rigid.

‘Locked himself inside and blew his brains out,’ murmured Lucy. ‘Can’t blame the guy. Guess he wanted to stay dead.’

Amanda and Voss stood at the tunnel mouth. Voss hauled planks aside to allow the quad bike to drive into the tunnel.

Amanda raised her rifle. She scanned the high ravine behind them with her nightscope.

‘Contact?’ asked Voss.

‘Nothing yet.’

They pulled planks and beams back in place, barricading themselves inside the mine entrance.

Amanda unfolded the bipod of her rifle and rested it on jumbled planks.

Voss took the SAW from the quad trailer. He clipped a fresh belt into the receiver and laid it on an oil drum.

‘Those fucks from the citadel will be heading our way sooner or later,’ said Amanda. ‘They move slow, but they are on their way. That locomotive better work. If we have to retrace our steps, it will be the fight of our lives.’

Containment Four

Gaunt entered the second containment. Overhead strobes flashed a red contamination warning.

Mirrored steel counters. Toppled swivel chairs. Milling machines. A centrifuge. An electron microscope.

Gaunt pictured men at work. Test tubes and Petri dishes. Technicians in white hazmat suits, arms thrust inside the thick handling gloves of hermetic containment boxes. The intellectual myopia of virologists struggling to solve the practical problems of encapsulation and dispersal, wilfully blind to the monstrous doomsday weapon they were helping to create.

He crouched and checked smashed computer shells. Hard drives ripped out. Ring binders stripped of notes.

Somebody wanted to obliterate all trace of research. They systematically stripped the lab before the contamination alert locked it tight.

Splintered glassware, culture dishes and fermentation vials, crunched underfoot.

He opened a freezer door. Ice smoke. Body parts preserved in storage jars.

He took a jar from a shelf. A section of spine.

Another jar on the shelf. A severed head floating in formaldehyde. A young man, eyes half open, lips parted, quizzical expression.

Eyelids flickered. Jaw twitch.