‘You lied to me,’ Rory screamed at him.
‘That’s right. I did.’ Ivan hit him again, making him taste blood on his lips. Then the hands were running over his body, and he felt sick. He twisted away in desperation, managed to break free. Clawed up a handful of loose dust and grit and, as Ivan came close to try to kiss him again, he dashed it in his eyes. Ivan bellowed in pain and anger as Rory scrambled to his feet and ran like crazy through the twisting passages. He was working on pure survival instinct now, his mind as blank as a deer’s running from a pack of wolves. Darting through an archway, he found himself staring up at a huge space carved out of the rock, with a gigantic lattice-work steel stairway that wound upwards through it to the next level.
Ivan was already gaining on him.
Rory grabbed the rusty handrail and started leaping up the steps. He could hear Ivan’s racing footsteps hammering behind him. The boy’s legs were like jelly, but he willed himself to keep going. He came to a landing where the stairway twisted ninety degrees, slipped on the metal floor and almost fell through the railings and out into the abyss. He managed to get back on his feet just as Ivan’s hand came lashing out at him, wriggled away and ran madly on until he was nearly at the top. But the tumble had cost him precious seconds. Ivan’s fingers closed on his belt and he cried out as he felt himself being pulled back. Ivan just absorbed the kicks. He pressed Rory down hard on the steps and started tearing at his clothes. His eyes were blazing and there was spit foaming in the corners of his mouth.
Rory was helpless to stop him.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Ben and Jeff moved quickly through the maze of corridors in the upper level, scanning left and right with their pistols. Ben checked the map again.
‘We should find the access point for the main lift shaft down here somewhere. I don’t think it’s far away.’
‘Something’s wrong with this place,’ Jeff muttered. ‘I can feel it. It’s weird.’
Ben had the same sensation. It was as though the air was crackling with energy, almost like static electricity, but somehow different. He’d never experienced anything like it before. He was convinced he could feel a thrumming vibration coming through the walls, growing steadily more intense with each passing minute.
‘Listen.’
The sound of someone yelling, echoing up the corridor. The voice was high-pitched, but it wasn’t a woman’s. It was a boy’s.
They ran towards the sound, and round the next bend they found themselves at the top of a tall iron stairway. A few steps down, a boy Ben instantly recognised as Rory O’Connor was lying on his back with a man on top of him. In the split second that he stood staring, Ben’s first thought was that the man was trying to throttle him – until he realised what he was seeing.
The man was too intent on trying to tear the boy’s clothes off to notice their presence. Ben stepped quickly over to him, grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked him up and dashed his head against the steel railing. The man’s hand flew to his belt and came out holding a pistol. Ben sent it spinning, headbutted him and threw him bodily down the stairway. The man went somersaulting down the metal steps, hit the landing. His fingers scrabbled for a hold on the rails as he slipped over the edge. His scream lasted about three seconds before he hit the stone floor down below, and then was silenced by a crunching impact that echoed through the cavern.
Ben and Jeff helped the pale, trembling boy to his feet and checked him over. ‘Rory? We’re getting you out of here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m a friend of your Aunt Sabrina,’ Ben said. ‘I think my dad’s here somewhere.’
‘Well then, let’s find him.’
In the time it had taken to save Rory from the attack, the thrumming in the air had intensified. It was getting more noticeable and uncomfortable every second. The kid looked scared. ‘What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ben said. ‘But I don’t like it.’ He held on to Rory’s arm as they moved quickly back along the corridors. By his reckoning, any time now they were going to reach the passage leading to the circular gallery where the access point was for the main lift shaft. If Adam O’Connor was down there working on the machine, they still had a chance of finding him. But Ben couldn’t ignore the nasty feeling that they were running very short of time.
Jeff was rubbing his temple. ‘Are you getting a headache? I don’t know what’s wrong with me, mate, but I’m feeling really weird.’
Ben was feeling it too. A strange kind of inner turmoil that was both mental and physical. It seemed to be coming from somewhere deep inside him, as though the cells of his body were being agitated, the way water molecules were vibrated by a microwave oven. The headache was steadily getting worse, rising at about the same rate as the strange sound that was now thrumming loudly through the facility, rising to a howl.
But that wasn’t all he could hear as they drew nearer to the location of the main shaft. He strained to listen.
‘I can hear someone calling your name,’ he said to Rory.
Chapter Sixty-Five
As she and the tall man scoured the upper level for the missing boy, Irina knew something was badly wrong. She couldn’t understand the strange sensations she was feeling, like ants crawling under her flesh and the worst headache she’d ever known building swiftly to an alarming crescendo inside her skull. She was sure it was something to do with the sound that was throbbing through the walls around them.
For several minutes now she’d been trying to raise Pelham on the radio and getting nothing but strange interference. The lights were acting strangely too, dimming and flickering as if all the electrical systems in the facility had gone haywire. Her instincts were telling her that this whole operation was quickly going into meltdown, and it was going to be time to evacuate.
They emerged into the wide open space that was the aircraft hangar, scanning left and right for any little hiding place the boy could have curled himself up into. Irina eyed the derelict Me 262, then clambered up onto one of the jet fighter’s rusty wings and brusquely tore open the cockpit canopy. Empty. She swore loudly.
‘He has to be around here somewhere,’ the tall man said.
Irina jumped down from the plane wing, dusted the red powder off her hands, and strode onwards across the hangar.
Suddenly she stopped. Pointed. ‘Look.’
A glistening blood trail traced a weaving line across the hangar floor. It led from the lift shaft gallery entrance. Her nostrils flared. She glanced at the tall man, and they began to follow the trail.
It led them away from the hangar and down the passages. Irina stopped to examine a bloody palm-print on the wall. Made by a man’s hand, the blood still sticky and warm.
That was when they heard a ragged, hoarse voice calling out a single name over and over again. ‘Rory! Rory!’
They found him just moments later, staggering along as if drunk, dragging his leg behind him and using the walls for support. It was the child’s father. O’Connor.
The tall guy took out his pistol and aimed it down the corridor. O’Connor just stood there, swaying on his feet as though he was either resigned to a bullet in the head or he was just too crazed to understand what was happening.
Irina pushed the pistol aside. ‘Let me.’ Drawing the knife from her sheath, she began walking towards O’Connor.
The migraine in her temples was thumping violently, but she blinked the pain away. She had a job to finish. Pelham had told her that when this was all over, the child and his father had to be eliminated. And Irina Dragojević always honoured her contracts.
Her lips twisted into a thin smile as she approached him. He lowered his gaze down to the knife in her hand. She made no attempt to hide it. Better like this, when they knew it was coming.
‘I know you,’ he said. His voice was cracked with emotion and fatigue, barely audible over the growing sound that was shaking the ground under their feet.
She raised the knife. The flickering lampli
ght shimmered down the blade. She took another step closer to him.
‘You’re the bitch who hurt my child,’ he said more loudly.
‘That’s right. And now this is for you,’ she told him.
‘And this is for you.’ His bloody hand went to his pocket, and before she could react he’d drawn a gun. He pointed it at her and his face contorted as he squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing.
Despite the pain exploding viciously through her skull, Irina began to laugh. Behind her, the tall man raised his gun and fired a single shot that blew O’Connor off his feet.
Adam felt the bullet tear through his shoulder and spin his body round. He hit the floor on his belly, gasping. The woman was howling with laughter as he scrabbled for his fallen pistol. His fingers closed numbly over its grip.
His vision faltered. The lever. The lever by his thumb. He pressed it, and it clicked upwards. He could sense her walking up to him, standing over him. The knife was coming. He was going to feel the cold steel any second now, carving into his flesh.
No. He mustn’t give up.
For Rory.
He rolled over on his back and with all the strength he could muster he punched the gun out with both hands. Felt the smooth face of the trigger under his finger and squeezed it once, twice, three times, as fast as he could. The searing blast of the gun exploded in his ears.
The woman called Irina was standing right over him when he shot her. The first bullet took her under the chin and blew away half her face. The second blasted into her chest, and the third went through her hand.
The woman’s tall companion let out a cry of rage as she went down. Adam fired at him, but even as the pistol went off in his hand, he knew the pain and dizziness had made him miss. Before he could get off another shot, the tall man had come running towards him and lashed out with his foot and kicked the gun out of his fingers. Adam tried to scramble away, but his strength was quickly failing him.
The tall man squatted down on his haunches in the blood and picked up the woman’s knife. ‘Now you’re going to die bad,’ he said.
Adam gasped as he saw the blade plunge towards him. Then, in the next instant, he heard the shot and he was spluttering the tall man’s blood out of his mouth.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Ben lowered the smoking pistol as the tall man crumpled to the floor with a bullet in his skull. Rory went running up the corridor, screaming for his father. Adam O’Connor’s eyes opened wide in his bloodied face, and he let out a cry as his son flew into his arms. Rory hugged him, then saw the blood-soaked trouser leg and the pool of it on the floor under him, the ragged bullet wound in his shoulder. ‘Oh, God, you’re hurt!’
‘I’m fine,’ Adam sobbed. ‘Now I’m just fine.’ He held the boy tight in his arms, rocking him, tears cutting white lines through the blood on his face.
‘I don’t want to interrupt a happy family reunion,’ Ben said as he and Jeff ran up to them. ‘But we need to get out of here fast.’ He had to raise his voice to be heard over the terrible noise. He and Jeff picked up the wounded man and supported him as they made their way through the passages. The noise kept building and building, driving them mad with its intensity.
‘Need to find the main lift shaft,’ Jeff shouted. ‘Maybe it’ll lead down to the exit we found.’
Ben shook his head. ‘That only leads straight down to the vault,’ he yelled back. ‘We need to use the service lift we came up on.’
‘Jesus. This whole place feels like it’s going to blow apart.’
‘The machine,’ Adam muttered. ‘It’s out of control.’ His head lolled sideways and his body went limp in Ben and Jeff’s arms.
‘Dad!’ Rory screamed.
‘He’s just fainted, don’t worry,’ Ben reassured him. Adam’s body was a dead weight as they carried him back the way they’d come. By the time they reached the service lift, the floor was trembling like an earthquake under their feet.
Just as Ben and Jeff were hauling the unconscious scientist on board the crude wooden platform, a massive shock seemed to ripple through the whole facility. It felt like an explosion, but with no blast – like a devastating pulse of pure energy capable of destroying everything around it. As the walls shook and the air seemed to thrum, the thick steel cables holding up the lift platform began to vibrate and buzz like plucked guitar strings. The platform began to judder.
Ben’s eyes met Jeff’s for a fraction of a second. They were both thinking the same thing. Get off this thing now!
They leapt off the platform, dragging Adam’s slumped body with them as Rory watched in horror. At the same instant, the vibrating cables began to fray dramatically, and then parted with a lashing crack. The platform tumbled down the shaft, taking bits of masonry with it. Jeff lost his balance and almost went down with them, but Ben grabbed his webbing belt and hauled him away from the crumbling edge.
‘There’s no other way out of here,’ Jeff yelled, pointing down the empty shaft. ‘We’re trapped.’
Ben’s mind raced, fighting the rising tide of dizziness that was beginning to overcome him. He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see Rory standing there gesticulating back down the corridor. ‘I know a way,’ the boy shouted.
‘What way?’
‘Trust me. I found it.’
There was no choice but to follow the kid. Ben and Jeff manhandled the unconscious scientist as his son led them at a run back towards the stairway where they’d found him.
The moment they started down the metal steps, Ben knew they weren’t going to get out in time. The stairway was rocking and swaying dangerously as they clattered down it. Struts and rails were cracking and breaking off, falling down around them. A guillotine blade of sheet metal crashed down, narrowly missing them and tearing away a section of framework. The whole construction lurched sideways and began to topple slowly over.
Seconds after the four of them had reached the bottom, the stairway fell apart. Debris rained down, burying Ivan’s body where it lay on the cavern floor. They ran. Adam was beginning to come round as Ben and Jeff hauled him along.
‘This way!’ Rory was yelling. ‘Here! This is it!’
Ben looked where the boy was frantically pointing. ‘Where does it lead?’
‘Some kind of air vent. Like a big pipe. It goes all the way through to the outside.’
Ben looked hard into Rory’s eyes, blinking to focus his vision. ‘You’re sure? You’ve been in?’
‘Some of the way in.’
Ben took a deep breath. It seemed insane, but it was their only option. The facility was rumbling like the world’s biggest volcano about to erupt. ‘Can you crawl?’ he asked Adam.
‘Just leave me here,’ Adam slurred. ‘Get my son out.’
Ben ripped his tactical webbing belt out of his trouser loops. ‘You’re going up that vent if I have to drag you. Hold this and don’t let go.’
Then it was the frantic scramble up the tunnel. Rory led the way, followed by Jeff. Ben half-dragged Adam behind him on the end of the belt, praying it wouldn’t snap. After half a minute of crawling, he could taste the cool air from outside and there was a definite glow of moonlight up ahead. But would they ever reach the end? The metal walls were heating up fast, burning their hands and knees. The nausea was crippling.
At that moment, the world seemed to come apart. The explosion was like nothing Ben had experienced before. A horrible sensation of weightlessness as they seemed to be falling, falling, followed by a barrage of enormous impacts. The steel pipe was as fragile and vulnerable as a twig tossed around in a hurricane. Ben heard Rory’s scream of terror as it rolled over and over, battering them around inside. The pipe groaned as unimaginable outside pressures tried to stamp it flat. An ear-splitting shriek of rending steel, a cascade of dust and stones showering over them.
And then, nothing. As suddenly as the insane forces of destruction had reached their climax, it was over. There was silence, just the sound of grit an
d pebbles slithering down the inside of the pipe, and the soft groans of the others.
Ben raised his face out of his arms and blinked. The awful sensation was gone, the headache and nausea quickly clearing. Raising himself on his hands and knees, he realised he could stand. The pipe had ruptured above them, creating a jagged opening through which he could see moonlight and twinkling stars. He slowly, painfully got to his feet. A couple of metres away, Jeff was doing the same, looking stunned, his hair white with dust.
Rory stirred, let out a whimper and went scrambling over to his father. Adam O’Connor groaned in pain and joy as he sat up and hugged him.
The moon shone down on a transformed landscape. Kammler’s mountain was gone. It had collapsed in on itself, the facility swallowed up, vaporised. All that was left was a giant crater of rubble and debris and twisted metal, like the scene of an air disaster without the plane.
Ben knew he’d never be able to describe what they’d just witnessed. The power of Kammler’s machine was too incredible to contemplate. Now it was buried forever in its rocky grave – the Nazi weapon that might have saved the Earth or destroyed it was going to remain a secret for the rest of time.
Nobody spoke for a long while, just breathing the air, listening to the silence and savouring what it felt like to be alive. Ben stepped over to where father and son were holding each other tight. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘You saved us, Rory.’
Adam O’Connor gripped Ben’s hand in his bloodstained fist. ‘You saved us.’
Ben just smiled.
‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’
‘Nobody much,’ Ben replied. He looked towards the sweeping forest, and pointed across the tree line to where they’d left the Porsche Cayenne, a few hours and a lifetime ago. ‘There’s a car down there. Let’s get you to hospital, and then home.’
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 167