by Andy Lucas
Barbara did not care. She knew the bullets would not pass through; that was not her plan. The impact, coming immediately after the distraction of the bladder failure, gave her the briefest of time windows, which she took full advantage of.
Shoulder barging the unfortunate technician heavily in the back, Barbara launched her towards the shielded men, who simultaneously opened fire, instinctively stitching the technician with fifty bullets, sending her lifeless corpse spinning backwards to crash against the far wall with her bloodied arms and legs flailing wildly.
By the time the shifted their focus back to Barbara, she was already through the train doors. She knew that any automatic systems would have been shut down so she headed directly for the manual override at the front of the car. One button started the doors closing while another engaged the magnets. A simple lever clearly controlled the train's speed so Barbara jammed it all the way to maximum, causing the little vehicle to erupt from its stationary position and fly off down the tunnel like a rocket.
It was only then that Barbara turned around; only then that she realised the empty train was not as empty as she had first thought.
Seated comfortably in a chair towards the rear of the carriage, a gigantic Chinese man was staring at her in mild amusement. He wore a white coat that bulged with impressive musculature beneath and did not bat an eyelid as she raised her gun and levelled it at his head.
''Impressive display,' Kwon admitted readily. 'Ling was an experienced soldier, as are most of his men. You must be very good to have overcome them all. Bravo,' he said in a tone dripping with sarcasm. 'Yet you have only delayed the inevitable.'
'I don't see it quite from your viewpoint,' countered Barbara coolly. 'The train is moving at top speed.' She noted the flashing blur through the windows. Her experience with maglev trains was limited but she knew they tended to have an upper speed close to two hundred miles per hour. 'I should be back at the mine entrance in a few minutes, I'm guessing.'
'You will never leave here alive,' Kwon promised. 'Better to give up now, while you still can. I deplore violence, truly. I am a man of science. I'm sure we can resolve this in a reasonable manner.'
'Exactly my thinking,' agreed Barbara. 'And now…I have a hostage to help with any…er…negotiations. Let's hope your men aren't as trigger happy with you as they were with your poor laboratory technician back there, eh?'
Chang-Lei Kwon had toyed with her long enough. Sitting up straighter in his chair, mindful of the fact that the barrel of her gun remained fixed on his heart, he snapped his fingers. Instantly, half a dozen guards, who'd been hiding down behind the bench seat right at the rear, rose in unison and aimed their own automatic weapons directly at Barbara.
'So you see,' Kwon sighed, standing up with a speed that belied his massive bulk, 'I am not your hostage. You will throw down your weapon and surrender now.'
'Or?'
Kwon's face took on a puzzled expression. Was she serious? 'They will fire.'
'They will get me, sure, but I'll be taking you with me,' Barbara promised calmly. 'Are you prepared to take that chance?'
Kwon regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, as if weighing up the risks, before slipping a hand into the pocket of his coat and pressing a tiny button on a security remote, tripping the override controls of the train; applying the emergency brakes.
From over two hundred miles per hour to a dead stop took barely four seconds and everyone was flung bodily towards the front, including Kwon. His strength and size did not help him, despite him trying to hang on to the seat. He flew straight at Barbara, who'd managed to drop to the floor just before his finger had pressed the switch, winging over her head to crash heavily against the windowed front, starring and splintering the allegedly shatterproof glass just before he was hit by six flying guards.
Barbara was the first to recover, staggering to her feet as the train finally stopped, still clutching her gun. Making a dizzying run towards the back of the train, she heard the bodies of the men thumping from the window down to the floor behind her.
Throwing herself behind the chair Kwon had previously occupied, she steadied herself and lifted the assault rifle to her shoulder.
She shouted a fair warning for the men to leave their weapons but, dutifully, the winded guards started scooping up their fallen weapons, ready to fire. They never got the chance. Two quick, accurate bursts and they all lay dead, surrounding Kwon, who rose groggily to his feet.
Eyes blazing, he cast a look at the death all around him, furious with himself for misjudging his actions. In his mind, he would have been able to hang on to his seat. The guards would have smashed into the woman, flattening her or killing her, and that was supposed to have been an end to it. Now, alone and facing the smoking barrel of her gun, Kwon needed time to rethink.
'Get this train moving and I won't kill you.'
He wondered about stalling her but the murderous gleam in her eyes warned him against making another mistake. Carefully pulling out the remote from his pocket, he pressed another button and the manual controls came back online. Placing the control down carefully on the floor, at the waved insistence of her weapon, he stepped away from it slowly.
'The train will move again now,' he said. 'There will be a heavy security team when we get to the other end. You won't get out alive without my help.'
Barbara saw Kwon for what he was. A dangerous opponent, despite his protestations about abhorring violence. Realising that she would not be able to keep an eye on him and prepare for the reception committee awaiting their arrival, she flipped the gun on to single shot mode and fired.
The bullet, aimed precisely, sliced past Kwon's left temple, gouging a furrow in the flesh a couple of millimetres deep. The shock of the impact, as expected, instantly plunged Kwon to the floor, unconscious. Having no need to kill him, and aware that she might need him alive in the near future, it was the safest way to control him.
Three minutes later, the train pulled into the station room at the mine head end of the line. The doors opened automatically as soon as it came to rest and Barbara hunkered down low behind one of the seats, awaiting the hail of bullets that was bound to come her way.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, amazingly, two very familiar people stepped cautiously inside, pistols held ahead of them in outstretched hands.
Upon seeing them, a flood of relief washed over her and she stood up quickly, making sure she pointed her own weapon at the floor.
'You two aren't the welcoming committee I was expecting,' she said.
'Barbara!' squealed Rachel, delighted to see the woman who had nearly ended her life. Rushing forwards, she flung her arms around Barbara and gave her a squeeze. 'What happened to you?' she asked, stepping back from her hug, noting the heavy signs of physical beating on the woman's face.
'No time for that now,' decided Hammond. 'We've already outstayed our welcome. As have you, Barbara,' he stated, eyeing the carnage of her handiwork littering the blood-slicked carriage floor. 'We need to go, right now.'
Wasting no more time with words, the three McEntire operatives stepped out of the train, leaving the unconscious Kwon amidst the corpses of his fallen men.
Leaving him alive would prove to be a costly mistake.
Epilogue
Pace had grown accustomed to the pain and the cold, having resigned himself to the limitations caused by his injuries. He was unable to see how extensive they were on his legs due to the heavy bandaging but he'd moved the bandage on his hand regularly to check how the deep gash was healing.
When he had finally come to and found Shilan missing, along with his phone and Webley, his initial burst of anger had quickly subsided. If she had wanted him dead, there was no need for her to treat his wounds, which she had clearly done very well. He had also awoken, still wrapped under a foil blanket which was still keeping the worst of the cold at bay, three days later.
Three days. Three long, miserable days where he had been unable to do anything but eat some of the b
iscuits and sip water. With his snowsuit gone, all he had to ward off the chill was his tee-shirt, which Shilan had torn at the shoulder, jeans and snow boots. The foil blanket was his lifeline, in the same way that his survival suit had been in his last adventure, seemingly an age ago. The snow looked the same but he would have given anything to trade where he now was for the danger he and Max had faced together in the Antarctic.
In too much pain to try and stand, he had spent the entire time flat on his back, waiting for something to happen. Shilan had made a break for it, that was clear. What he didn't know was whether she had evaded the hungry Yeti and managed to hide somewhere safe, where the satellite phone could get a signal out. If she had, then help might already be on the way. If she was dead, nobody would ever know where he was and he would eventually die, alone in the dark, from exposure and dehydration.
Several times during those three days, he had heard the distant sounds of the creatures prowling around the area, barking and snarling at each other. A couple of times, the sounds had drawn very close to him but they had never caught his scent or stopped to check out his rusting rooftop.
Just after midnight on the third day, Pace was roused from a fitful sleep by a scratching noise directly above his head. His eyes were so adapted to the darkness that he could easily see the underside of the corrugated iron flexing, as something began digging in one corner. Unarmed and still virtually immobilised from his leg wounds, it was all he could do to hold his breath and try to steady his nerves. He knew he could struggle into the side passage if a Yeti pulled up his roof. It was too long for even one of their arms to reach in and grab him.
Heart pounding beneath his ribcage, he clenched his fists and waited, preparing to roll himself over to the trap door.
Suddenly, the corner of the roof lifted up about a foot and then closed down fast, just after a female figure slipped down inside the hut with him. She landed softly on her feet, kneeling immediately and feeling around with her hands; her eyes blinded by the thick darkness beneath the roof.
As her hands wandered clumsily into his lap, she froze, feeling her way up his chest, registering its movement at the same moment he spoke to her.
'You took your time,' he moaned. 'I've only had the odd worm for company and they're lousy conversationalists, believe me.'
'You're alive!'
'You sound surprised.'
'I am,' she admitted, struggling to keep the joy out of her tone. 'You lost one hell of a lot of blood.'
'You did a great job patching me up,' he laughed. 'Remind me to recommend you.'
Shilan had completely forgotten that she was wearing the head torch when she'd headed off days earlier. It was only much later, way down the trail, she realised that she had both their light sources; she was carrying the Mauser too. There was no way she could go back and had just reasoned that he would probably be dead within six hours so wouldn't need a light source anyway.
Clicking on the head torch but warning him in advance to close his eyes to avoid hurting them, she grew serious as her bedside manner came to the fore. First, she checked his hand, which looked like it was healing well. Carefully unwrapping his leg bandages, the first thing that hit her was the foul scent of infection.
Rolling him over, ignoring his quips about her just wanting to ogle his backside, Shilan swallowed hard when she exposed his left leg. The right one was clean and healing but some of the stitches on his right calf had popped open; probably when he'd moved too fast in his sleep. The thigh was healing but the calf skin was red raw and oozing a mixture of blood and pus, which had already soaked through the inner layers of the bandage.
Pace wrinkled his nose up at the smell, which he was very familiar with. His bullet wound had developed a nasty infection from all the abrasion it received during the first Race Amazon and it had made him very ill.
'Something back there has got infected,' he told her. 'I'd know that stink anywhere. How bad is it?'
'Bad enough,' she replied honestly. Rummaging for the medical kit again, she gave him another strong injection of the broad-spectrum antibiotics. 'This will help but it won't be good enough. They'll need to culture the pus and get the right medicine inside you, pretty fast.'
Managing to keep his eyes fully open now, in the bright light from her torch, he rolled back over and laid there, looking across at her. She looked pale, drawn and tired. Dark circles highlighted her eyes, which appeared lifeless and dull.
'What happened out there?'
'Another time,' she said, brushing off the question. She had been through quite enough herself in the past seventy-two hours and did not want to think about it, let alone explain it to anyone.'
'Did you get a call out?'
Her face broke into a smile. This was a question she was happy to answer. 'Of course,' she stated. 'I rang your girlfriend, using the redial. We had a lovely chat all about you and she told me all your secrets,' she leaned in, planting a playful slap against his stubbly, grizzled cheek. 'That's why I'm back.'
Pace did not understand and cocked a querying eyebrow. 'Sorry?'
'Help is coming. Should be here at any minute,' she explained. 'Without a GPS fix, or map co-ordinates, the only way they can find you is if they trace your satellite phone, which I've got. Believe me, walking back up that trail was the scariest thing I think I've ever done in my life. I kept expecting those monsters to charge out of the forest and tear me limb from limb at any minute, especially the closer I got back to this place.'
Shilan physically shuddered and Pace placed a reassuring hand on her arm, receiving a warm smile for his trouble.
'You could have stayed away,' he soothed.
'But then they wouldn't have been able to find you. Even though I told them you were probably dead already, I had to give you that chance, James. I had to come back so they could find you, and rescue us both hopefully,' she added the last part almost as an afterthought.
Shilan had only taken a few of the foil packets with her when she had left him and was hungry. Her last packet had been used up the day before, at breakfast time. She had not wanted to be weighed down with water bottles but her plan to grab mouthfuls of snow to drink had been a flop. Once settled together, she tucked into a pouch of cold sausage and baked beans, wolfing the food down between gulps of water, while Pace simply lay on his back, wondering how long the cavalry would take to come charging up over the hill. She had clearly forgotten their decision not to eat the food packs in case the smell attracted the monsters.
He was not hungry and only eventually agreed to eat a few biscuits to stop Shilan's chastisement. Sitting up, the backs of his legs throbbing from being cleaned with antiseptic wipes, he munched absently on a digestive biscuit.
'How was Sarah?' he asked suddenly. Shilan had finished eating and was peeling the wrapper from a Mars bar when he spoke. She looked up at him, a soft smile etched on the edges of her mouth.
'She wanted to know everything about you. You have a very determined woman there, James. I would not like to get on the wrong side of her.'
Pace could imagine how the conversation had gone. 'Who is coming for us? Baker? A security team?' Shilan shook her head slowly.
'Sorry, I only managed to make a couple of calls on your phone before the battery died. It was just enough to agree a plan. Sarah just said it would take three or four days to sort out a rescue so I agreed to return here after three days. Even with a dead battery, the phone's security tracer will be active for a month. They are going to zero in on its location.'
Pace wondered why a rescue would take so long. Parry and Norton could have a new team in Nepal within twelve hours. True, Pace had flown away in the mountain airport's only helicopter but he was sure another could have been rustled up in a few hours, especially with McEntire's clout.
'At least we don't have to go tramping around up there,' he said. 'They might be hours away yet. Feel ready to tell me what happened to you yet?'
Shilan knew the question was coming and resigned herself to relivin
g the memories for him. With a full stomach; safe beneath the metal roof, she reluctantly agreed.
'When I left you, I just ran as fast as I could down the trail,' she opened. 'I made the first call to Sarah as I was running. I didn't look back; I could only focus on getting away.'
As he listened, she explained how she had managed to get all the way back down the trail to the helicopter, only to find it smashed up and tipped over on its side. One of the rotor blades had snapped off and huge parallel rents in the metal skin made it clear the damage had been inflicted by huge claws.
'Hey, I doubt I could work the pedals with my legs in this state anyway,' he tried to sound flippant but felt a wave of depression wash over him at the news. Now, outside help was definitely their only hope.
Shilan went on with her story. Of how, whilst rummaging through the destroyed camp, she had heard all the birds suddenly fall silent. Hurriedly, she had dug out a small tunnel in the snow beneath the helicopter's battered fuselage, worming her way beneath its protective, red-painted tonnage until she was tucked well beneath it, piling in handfuls of snow behind her; she had literally buried herself alive.
'I heard them come,' she spoke slowly. 'I thought that it might be a tiger or a bear this time, you know, sniffing around for food in the wreckage, but I could hear them communicating with each other. I don't know if there were three but I definitely heard two. They knew I was there, somewhere. Why they waited until I reached the helicopter is anyone's guess.'
'Maybe you run faster than you think,' Pace suggested. 'They would have caught you sooner if they could, I'm sure.'
'Possibly,' she conceded. 'Either way, I ended up staying under the snow for hours until they finally left.'
'Have you been under there for the past three days?' he wondered suddenly.