He looked around now. There had to be another way out. These tunnels ran for kilometres underground. Surely there would be another escape elevator?
He crossed the hall and entered the nearest tunnel, reaching up to find that his headlight was still in place and still functioning. It pierced through the darkness that lay ahead. He saw lights running along the arc of the ceiling overhead, but had no idea how to turn them on. He set off, following the trunking that lined the wall to his right. Smaller tunnels fed away to his left at regular intervals. Again, some of them had been closed off. He passed a large electric trolley that appeared to have been abandoned and saw a red light somewhere up ahead. When he reached it, he realised that it was set high on the wall above another square door that, this time, stood open. Its delineating light strips were powered off.
Brodie stepped through it into a larger chamber, turning his head to direct light around its chiselled walls. It reflected back from a sign of red letters on a white background. EMERGENCY EXIT. And an arrow pointing off into darkness. He pressed ahead.
He had difficulty breathing now. The heat was suffocating, and he was perspiring down here when the world above was being plunged into an Arctic chill by an ice storm. It was very still in the tunnels. Almost peaceful. Why would he even want to escape back into the raging storm? He was so tired. All he wanted to do was sit down with his back to the wall and close his eyes. And maybe never wake up. And then he thought of Addie, and Cameron, and knew he had to keep going for them.
He walked on, past yet another sign, before the dark walls of a lead-lined shaft rose out of the floor to vanish into the roof space above. There was a single illuminated button set into the stainless steel to the right of the door, a ring of green light around it. His mouth was dry. He pressed it, and the door slid open, spilling bright yellow light into darkness.
He stepped into the light, and with a trembling finger pushed the ‘one’ button. If it did not respond, then these tunnels could well be his final resting place. His tomb. He might starve to death, or die from radiation poisoning before anyone found him.
To his relief, the door slid shut, and with the softest of judders, the elevator set off on its long, slow climb back to the surface.
The lift travelled at little more than walking pace, and took nearly ten minutes to reach the surface. Brodie stood leaning against the back wall with his eyes closed, trying not to think. After all, he wasn’t out yet. He found himself transported into what felt like an almost Zen state of mind. Nothing mattered. Nothing existed beyond this space. All anger and sadness, all emotion, left him. Like spirits escaping after death. Minutes might have been hours, days or years. Time was irrelevant.
Then the elevator came to a sudden halt and the doors slid open. The cold was invisible, like the radiation, and it rushed in as the contamination he imagined he had brought up with him escaped. He opened his eyes, and the anger returned. A burning, all-consuming fury. He stepped out into the ice-cold of a concrete pillbox and put his shoulder to the bar that released the catch on the door. Heavy as it was, the strength of the wind outside caught it and flung it open. Brodie staggered out in the chaos of the storm and was nearly blown from his feet. Hail had turned to snow. Big fat flakes of it that filled the air and stung his face.
He could just make out the trees beyond the pillbox fibrillating wildly as they yielded to the wind. Perhaps twenty metres off to his left, the ground sloped steeply away towards the turbulent waters of the loch. If he kept the loch to his left and followed the shoreline, he would surely get back to the place he had met Jackson. He ducked his head and leaned forward into the wind, to thrust against it, forcing his legs to carry him through the snow, back the way he had come down below.
It was ten or more minutes before the concrete of the first pillbox reflected back at him from his headlight. He pressed himself against the near wall of it, taking momentary refuge from the power of the wind, then swung around to pull at the steel door. It was firmly shut and wouldn’t budge. Whether or not Jackson, or what was left of him, was still in there was moot at this point. He was dead, and there was nothing Brodie could do to change that.
He wheeled away and staggered up through the trees, back towards the road, hoping against hope that Brannan’s SUV was still where he had left it. The glass of the passenger window caught and reflected the LED of his headlight as he scrambled up the embankment, and it was with huge relief that he felt his way around the vehicle, pulled the door open and almost collapsed into the driver’s seat. It took an enormous effort to close the door again as the wind tried to rip it from its hinges. And then he was locked away in a bubble of comparative silence. The storm still raged beyond the glass, but it was muted now as it vented its anger, rocking the SUV on its wheels and obliterating its windscreen with snow.
Brodie sat for several minutes, gasping, fighting for breath, and when finally he took control again of his lungs, he avoided the rear-view mirror. He had no desire to look death in the face. He slipped the vehicle into drive, set the wipers to fast, and as soon as he could see out, swung the wheel hard around to head back to the village.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Brodie left fresh tyre tracks in drifting snow as he drove up to the steps of the International Hotel and pulled up sharply. He jumped out and ran up to the front door.
‘Brannan!’ he yelled into the cold yellow light of the hallway. But as had so often been the case over these last two days, the owner of the International was nowhere to be found.
Brodie climbed the stairs as fast as his failing legs would carry him, and burst into his bedroom. The place was in disarray. His laptop gone, his half-dried clothes strewn about the floor. But whoever had searched the room and taken his computer had left his earbuds still charging on the dressing table. Careless. Someone in a panic. The green light that had been winking when Brodie left them was no longer in evidence. He lifted the buds and inserted one into each ear. The protective case for his glasses was lying on the floor. He breathed a sigh of relief to find the glasses still within, and he slipped them on, feeling the magnets lock into place.
He closed his eyes and prayed that it would all still work. He said, ‘iCom, record audio and video.’ And heard a voice in his ears. Now recording.
He sat down then, and stared hard into the lenses, and began his account of the evening’s events, replaying the nightmare memories in his mind as if he were watching them scroll across a screen. He tried to recall everything. McLeish’s gloves in the garage. The attack at the hydro plant, and falling into the tailrace. Then his meeting with Jackson, and the reactor operator’s story of leaking radiation and buried reports. It was clear, he concluded, that McLeish had survived the ordeal in the River Leven, and followed him out to Ballachulish A for his meeting with Jackson, killing the latter, and sending Brodie down in the elevator to meet his maker in the contaminated tunnels below.
When he finished, he knew it wasn’t enough. So much detail he had missed. But there was no time to refine it. That would have to wait. Right now his only focus was on finding McLeish, and stopping him before he killed someone else. ‘iCom, send.’ His voice sounded flat in the cold light of his deconstructed bedroom. He stood up. Snow blowing against the window clung to it, held by the force of the wind, obscuring the view out to the loch. He closed his eyes and felt himself swaying as he stood. So tired. All he really wanted to do was lie down on the bed and drift away. His sense of balance deserted him, and he opened his eyes quickly as he staggered and nearly fell, heart pounding. He had almost fallen asleep standing up.