Presently the whine stopped, and then the cable began to move in reverse, more slowly. When the cage appeared two more soldiers were ordered into it and the shaft swallowed them up.
Fifteen seconds. That was Shtyrkov’s figure. Not fourteen, not sixteen. Fifteen precisely. Get it wrong by a second and you miss by ten metres.
The officer’s game plan was clear. At least four soldiers would be waiting for them down below. That left eight up above or, if he sent two more down, an even split between the top and bottom of the shaft. Freya and Petrie would each be under the guard of at least two, and possibly three, armed men. The cage reappeared and two more soldiers were sent down to Hades; the officer was going for a fifty-fifty split.
This was the crunch moment, or rather the first of several. The essence of Shtyrkov’s plan was that they go down the shaft together. The big worry was that Freya and Petrie would be split, each being sent down with a single soldier. In that case, the contingency plan was to insist on going back up together, on the slender grounds that two were needed to tend the delicate equipment. If that too failed, the outlook was bleak.
The officer snapped his fingers and waved them towards the cage. Petrie tried to look impassive, and Freya was putting on a good act. The cage closed. Freya pressed the red button and they plunged out of sight.
In an instant Freya produced the screwdriver from her waistband and Petrie started the count. ‘Fifteen — fourteen — thirteen — twelve…’ while she frantically unscrewed the black cowling protecting the circuit box. It came away easily and she was faced with a mass of wires. Rockface was hurtling past and the buffeting wind was blowing her long blonde hair in her eyes.
To stop the cage they only had to press the emergency button. But the plan was to destroy it. To do that, they had to kill the circuit which told the winch far above to stop unwinding the cable. They had to pour a ton of steel cable down on to the cage. And they had to be out of it.
‘The green wire,’ Petrie shouted. ‘Nine — eight — seven…’
‘No, the yellow. Svetlana got it wrong. The yellow feeds up to the cable.’
‘Five — four — Do something! — two — one.’
Freya wrenched fiercely at a thick green wire. There was a vicious spark of current, she yelped, and then a nerve-shattering screech! as electromagnetic clamps tried to strangle the metal shafts and the cage juddered to a halt, its overhead light flickering.
Petrie found that his eyes were level with a roughly hewn floor. He scrabbled up and out of the cage, his nose catching painfully on a sharp rock.
Up top the big winch, unaware that the elevator had stopped, was still unwinding its steel cable, which was now raining down on the wire mesh above them. The noise was deafening. He turned and to his horror the cage lurched down. Freya, halfway out, fell back into it with a frightened cry, landing on her backside. For a ghastly moment he thought it was headed down the shaft but it stopped, groaning, inching down in little jerks as the overhead cable poured down.
And now, steel was beginning to tear. The screeching was painful on Petrie’s ears. He had a brief, claustrophobic fantasy: he was trapped inside a ship on its way to the sea floor.
And Freya was on her toes, arms extended, her face white with fear. She was now out of arm’s length.
If we both go down the shaft the project is finished.
And thick metal cable was still pouring down.
Two corpses rather than one. Leave her.
She was reading his mind, pleading with her eyes.
I can’t risk the project for one individual.
Freya’s hands were stretched up, but Petrie, hanging halfway into the elevator, could only touch her fingertips.
The wire mesh was buckling. The elevator was now juddering down more rapidly, inches at a time.
Any second now.
She jumped. Petrie grabbed her wrists but the lift lurched suddenly and she slipped from his grasp. She jumped again, and again he made contact with her hands; desperately, he dug his nails in, but Freya’s hands were slippery with sweat, and again he lost them and she fell back on the elevator floor with a despairing cry.
Oh, what the hell! He scrambled back down into the elevator. He cupped his hands. She clambered, there was a painful heel on his collar bone, and then their positions were reversed; Petrie was in the cage and Freya on her knees in the tunnel and turning to catch him.
The foot of the tunnel was now about nine feet above him. The gap between tunnel floor and sagging elevator roof was now about eighteen inches and shrinking. Petrie leaped up, aware that he had only this one chance. His fingers clutched at the rim of the tunnel floor. It was wet and slippery. Freya leaned down, grabbed his hair and pulled. Slowly, he bent his arms until his elbows reached the tunnel floor. Then he levered himself up by the elbows and rolled on to wet, freezing ground and pulled his feet clear just as the wire roof of the elevator gave way with a crash! and tons of thick metal cable clattered on to its floor and started to spill into the tunnel mouth.
They leaped away from the mortally wounded elevator. In the confined space of the tunnel the thunder of the falling cable was like hammering on a steel drum. They scrambled back just as the elevator gave way with a final scream and the cable which had been overflowing into the tunnel started to accelerate swiftly down the shaft after it.
The tunnel lights failed.
Petrie cursed, and waved his arms in the dark like antennae. The cable was now whipping the air and he had another brief fantasy, that of decapitation. The noise seemed to come from all directions and he broke into a sudden sweat with the realisation that he had lost his sense of orientation.
A voice in the dark, surprisingly faint. ‘Where are you?’
Seconds later there was a bang! from below, like an explosion, but by now Petrie had found the damp tunnel wall and was feeling his way along it — away, he hoped, from the elevator shaft. From somewhere in the distance he began to hear another sound, the thunder of a torrent. He edged towards it.
‘Over here!’ Freya shouted. Again her voice came over faintly, and Petrie thought his hearing had temporarily gone. There was a scraping sound, like metal on wood, as if she was struggling with a metal clasp on a box. Petrie stopped, trying to locate the direction in the pitch black.
And then there were four pinpricks of green light, making a rectangle before Freya’s body interposed itself on the line of sight. Petrie quickly crossed the twelve feet to the lights. He bumped into Freya and she gave a startled little scream. Four torches, each charged up: the beams were dazzling. And four yellow helmets. They selected helmets and clipped the torches into place.
‘I wonder how long we’ve got?’ Even at a couple of feet separation, Freya’s voice was faint, and he understood her more by lip-reading than by the sound of her words. The torchlight from her helmet was painful, and she was screwing her eyes up.
Petrie tried to calm down, collect his thoughts. His whole body was beginning to shake. ‘Depends,’ he said. He noted with surprise the calmness of his own voice, which contrasted with the turmoil in his mind and body. ‘If the officer thinks it was an accident, we have a good start. If not, he’ll know we must have an escape route in mind and he’ll start finding out about the cave system…’
‘Let’s hope he’s stupid. Hold it.’ She clicked her torch off and Petrie did the same, following her alarmed gaze to the tunnel mouth.
Little specks of dust were wafting up from below. They were visible because, far above, someone was shining a powerful light down the shaft.