‘This thing actually flew through space,’ he murmured. ‘Left the Earth and came back again.’
Jabril contemplated the shadows of the open airlock.
‘Pandora’s box. We should have left this craft in the desert. It would have been buried forever.’
Lucy climbed the ladder to the locomotive walkway. She entered the cab.
She rolled the dead engineer with her foot. No signs of infection.
She checked the pockets of the engineer’s boiler suit. Cigarettes. Prayer beads. A key.
She dragged the body out onto the walkway. She lifted the desiccated corpse over the guard rails and threw it onto the track.
She returned to the cab. The engineer’s console. Red brake handle. Big throttle. Key slot.
She inserted the key and turned the ignition.
Nothing. No instrumentation lights, no engine noise. She looked around the cab for breakers, any kind of power switch.
A brief flutter of panic and despair, crushed before it began.
RSM Miller, her platoon sergeant, laid it out for her, the day she applied for the Fourteen Intelligence Company.
‘The difference between regular army and special forces is simply the ability to maintain composure. To think straight in situations of extreme peril. Special recon training is a constant live-fire exercise. Endless boot camp endurance tasks while bullets whizz past your head. I’ve been out to that dummy village they built on Salisbury Plain. So many cartridge cases lying around, they crunch underfoot like gravel. The instructors will teach you to think through a haze of adrenalin and exhaustion. They’ll teach you to survive.’
Lucy swigged from her canteen. She rubbed her eyes.
The locomotive wouldn’t fire up. Maybe the ignition battery was dead. Must be some way to check available current.
She began a methodical survey of the cab.
Jabril left Voss in the cavern.
‘I want to find my old room, collect some of my things.’
He wandered down a low passageway. His blue cyalume lit chiselled walls, timber props and roof beams.
A faded door sign.
Dynamite Store.
Jabril pushed open the rough wooden door. A small cell. A windowless cave.
A canvas cot, a table, a trunk. A wash table and mirror.
His old room.
Jabril sat on the bunk. He lay the cyalume on the blanket. The chemical stick lit the room cold blue.
He dragged the trunk towards the cot. Leather. Louis Vuitton. A relic of his previous life.
He unbuckled straps and popped latches.
Books and neatly folded clothes. He searched among his possessions. He found a gold cigarette case and a Ronson lighter.
He lay on the cot and smoked a Turkish cigarette. He cried a little, then sat up and wiped tears.
He flicked away the cigarette.
He took a folded shirt from the trunk. Crisp white. He unrolled a black silk tie. Socks. Silk underwear. Polished brogues.
He unzipped a suit carrier, and laid a white linen suit on the cot. He smoothed creases. He brushed away lint.
Voss explored the cavern. He found a 24 KvA trailer generator parked in a wall niche. Power for the cavern floodlights.
He filled the tank from a jerry can, turned the ignition and set the generator running. Cough and splutter. A puff of diesel smoke. Output needles twitched.
A ring of light towers flickered and glowed steady. The cavern was lit brilliant white. Spektr floodlit beneath its polythene dome.
A voice echoed round the cavern.
‘How’s it going?’
Gaunt. Quiet, mocking.
Voss crouched. He fumbled at a chest pocket. He put on his glasses. He scanned the cavern. No movement. No sign of Gaunt.
‘Reckon you can get that locomotive working?’
Voss pressed himself against the rough sandstone of the cavern wall.
‘So, after all this blood and anguish, Lucy wants to send you home empty handed? How do you feel about it? You’ve seen your friends die. All for nothing.’
Voss gripped the shotgun. Multiple tunnel mouths. Gaunt’s voice reverberated round the cavern.
‘That bomb. That warhead. Do you have any idea how much it is worth? Forget the gold. Boxes of watches and rings, pawned for a fraction of their value. You didn’t want a few dollars in your hand. You weren’t looking for another paycheque. You flew out here with bigger dreams in your head. Lucy promised you a fortune. You were going to lie on a beach for the rest of your life, umbrella drink in your hand. Help me get the warhead back to Baghdad. I swear, you will never work another day in your life.’
‘Come on out,’ said Voss. ‘Let’s talk it over.’
‘Think about it. What’s waiting for you back home? Do you even have a home? Half your life in jail. Zonderwater. Krugersdorp. You’re old. This is your last roll of the dice.’
‘Gaan fok jouself.’
‘I killed your friend. So what? I won’t apologise for pursuing my self-interest. Neither should you. I want to be rich. I want to matter. I want to prove the world wrong. I’m sure you know what that is like. To always be bottom of the pile, the back of the queue. Well, this is it. Your one and only chance to change your life.’
Voss circled the cavern. He checked the entrance of each passageway, shotgun at his shoulder. No sign of Gaunt.
‘The virus cylinder. It’s small enough to slip in your pocket. Small enough to carry home. And it will buy anything you ever wanted.’
‘What would you want in return?’
‘Fifty-fifty split.’
‘I’d be waiting for a double-cross.’
‘That’s why I would play straight.’
Voss thought it over. He rubbed tired eyes.
‘So what do you say?’ prompted Gaunt. ‘Tell me you are interested. That’s all I need to hear. Tell me we have something to talk over.’
‘Yeah,’ Voss heard himself say. ‘Yeah, I’m interested.’
Lucy walked to the mine tunnel entrance. Amanda crouched behind the plank barricade, rifle at her shoulder. Weak dawn light.
‘We had our first customer,’ said Amanda.
Lucy squinted into the gloom. A body on the track.
‘When did he show up?’ asked Lucy.
‘He came round the corner ten minutes ago.’
Voss joined them.
‘They’ll eat through our ammo, pretty quick if they attack en masse,’ he said. ‘How many did Jabril say were out there?’
‘His battalion was under-strength. He reckons about two hundred men.’
‘I’ve got a few boxes of .308,’ said Amanda. ‘A good stack of mags for the rifles, a few for the Glocks. But sooner or later we would shoot dry and get overrun.’
‘What about the locomotive?’ asked Voss. ‘What’s the deal? Can it roll or what?’
‘Yeah,’ said Lucy. ‘Given time, I reckon she’ll move.’
‘We need to set a deadline. If you can’t get it running in the next couple of hours, we walk out of here.’
‘All right.’
‘That guy has a pistol,’ said Amanda.
She refocused her night scope. The reticules of her optics zeroed on the dead guy two hundred yards distant. An officer sprawled across the track, right quadrant of his head blown open. Amanda focused on the leather holster strapped to his hip. An automatic pistol.
‘He’s got mag pouches clipped to his belt.’
‘Want to go get them?’ asked Lucy. ‘We could seriously use the ammo.’
‘Let’s do it quick.’
The night scope flashed a battery warning. Amanda unclipped it from her rifle and threw it in the quad trailer.
She handed the rifle to Voss.