‘I have no idea. I didn’t even know that room existed.’
‘Well, the lift obviously goes to it,’ Gervaux replied sharply, irked by the Security Officer’s lack of cooperation. ‘How long will it take to get a lift engineer on-site?’
‘The company that installed the lift are based in Lucerne. Normally it would take them three hours to get here. But, with the snow and the road blocks, I’d say you’re looking at closer to five.’
‘In five hours they could have tunnelled their way out the other side,’ Gervaux said morosely.
Regretting the decision to leave the comfort of his office, the head of security decided to return. He made up an excuse that he had to get back to alert the office staff that there was going to be a possible breach of protocol by allowing the policemen officers to go underground when an experiment was running, and left them to it.
‘Moron,’ Gervaux muttered as the lift doors closed behind the Officer.
‘There is an alternative,’ Lavelle proffered.
The inspector shot him a weary glance.
‘We could always ask one of the technical experts here. We’re surrounded by boffins and eggheads. Surely, if they are capable of building a machine to discover the origins of the universe, cracking a lift code should be a piece of cake to them.’
‘Brilliant, Lavelle! Get onto it straight away.’ Gervaux’s rare praise for his sergeant went some way towards making up for his previous faux pas.
Tom and Ajay crawled along the track to reach Frederick. While Tom supported his weight, Ajay cut the ties. They then both dragged the scientist’s debilitated body onto the rail. Frederick seemed to be in a critical condition. At first, Tom feared for his life. However, as the bindings were cut and they hauled him up, he let out a low, guttural moan. It took him a few seconds to come round. He was initially unaware of his surroundings; but, when he saw Ajay, his eyes lit up. He reached up feebly and touched his face to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
‘Ajay, where have you been?’ he croaked.
‘Here. I didn’t know where else to go. Deiter threatened to kill me, but I knew as long as I stayed on the complex Shiva would protect me.’
Frederick rested his hand on his son’s shoulder and looked earnestly into his eyes. ‘I’m afraid Shiva has failed you… and so have I.’
‘How have you survived for the past two days? What have you been eating and drinking?’ Tom asked.
‘Mary, from the canteen, smuggled some food out for me,’ replied Ajay. ‘I met her after work, behind the kitchens, when everybody had gone home. I think she took pity on me when she caught me rummaging through the bins.’
‘Well, thank God for Mary, and thank God you were around to save us,’ said Tom. He meant it sincerely, despite being an atheist.
‘I saw Deiter and those guards pushing Serena along the corridor,’ continued Ajay. ‘So I followed them here. Then I discovered you and my father tied up, so I waited in the shadows for an opportunity to rescue you.’
‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ replied Tom. ‘Let’s get Frederick back to the gantry and then save Serena.’
They were all gathered safely on the platform. It had taken Tom and Ajay fifteen minutes to free their colleagues. Frederick had recovered enough to stand on his own two feet, albeit with the support of Ajay to lean on. Serena seemed to have fared better and, apart from some deep welts where the ties had dug in, she was back to her normal, indefatigable self.
‘Do you think Deiter will be aware we’ve escaped?’ she asked.
‘I think there’s a pretty good chance of it.’ Tom pointed up to the last carriage, the one Deiter had selected to carry him to his death. ‘Watch!’ Tom walked to the far side of the gantry. The pan-tilt zoom surveillance camera followed his every move. He turned around and walked back — again, the camera tracked his path. Tom gave it a friendly wave before addressing the group. ‘Which means we’d better get the hell out of here before Deiter’s henchmen get back.’
They made their way down the metal ladder as quickly as they could. However, it was obvious, even before they reached the last rung, that Frederick was slowing them down, despite Ajay’s assistance. Altruistically, he was the first to voice what they already knew.
‘You’d have more of a chance without me,’ he said. ‘You three go ahead. Perhaps I can lead them off in a different direction and give you a few minutes head start.’
‘I’m not leaving without you,’ Ajay stated adamantly.
‘Please, Ajay,’ Frederick implored. ‘Your mother needs you. How will she be able to carry the groceries in, if neither of us are around to help her?’ He smiled weakly.
Ajay’s eyes welled up and his bottom lip began to quiver. ‘We can both get out of here and help her together.’ His response didn’t carry much conviction.
The sound of gunfire caught everybody by surprise, echoing off the walls of the vast tunnel behind them. They turned in unison to see the two goons tearing towards them in a golf buggy, the muzzle flashes clearly visible from the automatic weapon. Although they were some distance away, the bullets were winging off the metal fixings all around them. It was obvious the shooters were going for quantity over quality, hopeful of hitting their targets through shear firepower rather than any accurately-placed shots.
‘Go!’ shouted Frederick over the sounds of the machine gun fire. ‘You need to escape. Millions of lives are depending on you.’
Tom and Serena turned and sprinted away from their pursuers, bullets ricocheting around them. Fifty metres further on, Tom spotted another two figures approaching them from the opposite direction, effectively cutting off their escape route. He pulled Serena off to his left and into a small service shaft that ran adjacent to the main tunnel. He knew that the reprieve from the barrage would only be temporary, but the narrowness of this passage meant that their assailants would have to abandon their vehicle and follow them on foot, psychologically levelling the playing field, if only slightly. In reality, they would still have four, fully-armed mercenaries chasing them, intent on their annihilation.
Ajay’s eyes darted from his father to the approaching vehicle, to the fleeing fugitives and then back to his father, trying to make up his mind what to do.
‘Please Ajay, save yourself,’ Frederick pleaded.
Suddenly, he seemed to have made a decision. His body stiffened and he grabbed his father firmly underneath one arm, pulling him in the direction of the other two. The golf buggy was less than two hundred metres from them and closing fast. They needed to cover the distance to the service tunnel before the gunmen found their range. The problem now was that they had to cross open ground, the killing zone as the militia imaginatively label it. Spurts from the automatic weapons were immediately followed by the sound of bullets whizzing around them, like lightning followed by a crack of thunder when a storm’s directly overhead.
They had less than ten metres to go when Ajay stumbled forward. However, instead of instinctively stretching out his arms to break his fall, he hit the ground, chin first and lay still. Frederick’s momentum meant that he had to backtrack to where his son lay. He knelt down beside Ajay, suddenly unaware of everything else going on around him. Grabbing him by the shoulder, he rolled him onto his back. There was a deep gash on his chin, which was bleeding profusely; rivulets of blood ran down his neck and onto his shirt, mixing with the spreading crimson patch, emanating from a small black hole in his chest.
CHAPTER 32
Lavelle had been right. It had taken no time at all for one of the technicians to work out that the elevator was, indeed, capable of descent from the ground floor. He had taken off the control panel and by-passed the key activation using a simple wire connection.