He looked up. He could just make out the entrance he had climbed through – small, round, as distant as the moon. Breathing heavily, trying to fight off the sense of claustrophobia, he pulled out the torch and flicked it on. The beam leapt out of his hand, pointing the way ahead and throwing pure, white light on to his immediate surroundings. Alex was at the start of a long tunnel, the uneven walls and ceiling held back by wooden beams. The floor was already damp and a sheen of salt water hung in the air. It was cold in the mine. He had known it would be and before he moved he pulled on the jersey he had bought, then chalked a large X on the wall. That had been a good idea too. Whatever happened down here, he wanted to be sure he could find the way back.
At last he was ready. He took two steps forward, away from the vertical shaft and into the start of the tunnel, and immediately felt the weight of the solid rock, soil and remaining streaks of tin bearing down on him. It was horrible here. It really was like being buried alive, and it took all his strength to force himself on. After about fifty paces he came to a second tunnel, branching off to the left. He took out the photocopied map and examined it in the torchlight. According to Ian Rider, this was where he had to turn off. He swung the torch round and followed the tunnel, which slanted downwards, taking him deeper and deeper into the earth.
There was absolutely no sound in the mine apart from his own rasping breath, the crunch of his footsteps and the quickening thud of his heart. It was as if the blackness was wiping out sound as well as vision. Alex opened his mouth and called out, just to hear something. But his voice sounded small and only reminded him of the huge weight above his head. This tunnel was in bad repair. Some of the beams had snapped and fallen in and as he passed, a trickle of gravel hit his neck and shoulders, reminding him that the Dozmary mine had been kept locked for a reason. It was a hellish place. It could collapse at any time.
The path took him ever deeper. He could feel the pressure pounding in his ears and the darkness seemed even thicker and more oppressive. He came to a tangle of iron and wire, some sort of machine long ago buried and forgotten. He climbed over it too quickly, cutting his leg on a piece of jagged metal. He stood still for a few seconds, forcing himself to slow down. He knew he couldn’t panic. If you panic, you’ll get lost. Think what you’re doing. Be careful. One step at a time.
“OK. OK…” He whispered the words to reassure himself, then continued forward.
Now he emerged into a sort of wide, circular chamber, formed by the meeting of six different tunnels, all coming together in a star shape. The widest of these slanted in from the left with the remains of a railway track. He swung the torch and picked out a couple of wooden wagons which must have been used to carry equipment down or tin back up to the surface. Checking the maps, he was tempted to follow the railway, which seemed to offer a short cut across the route that Ian Rider had drawn. But he decided against it. His uncle had turned the corner and gone back on himself. There had to be a reason. Alex made another two chalk crosses, one for the tunnel he had left, another for the one he was entering. He went on.
This new tunnel quickly became lower and narrower until Alex couldn’t walk unless he crouched. The floor was very wet here, with pools of water reaching his ankles. He remembered how near he was to the sea and that brought another unpleasant thought. What time was high tide? And when the water rose, what would happen inside the mine? Alex suddenly had a vision of himself trapped in blackness with the water rising up his chest, his neck, over his face. He stopped and forced himself to think of something else. Down here, on his own, far beneath the surface of the earth, he couldn’t make an enemy of his imagination.
The tunnel curved, then joined a second railway line, this one bent and broken, covered here and there in rubble which must have fallen from above. But the metal tracks made it easier to move forward, picking up and reflecting the torch. Alex followed them all the way to a junction with the main railway. It had taken him thirty minutes and he was almost back where he had started but, shining the torch around him, he saw why Ian Rider had sent him the long way round. There had been a tunnel collapse. About thirty metres up the line, the main railway was blocked.
He crossed the tracks, still following the maps, and stopped. He looked at the paper, then again at the way ahead. It was impossible. And yet there was no mistake.
He had come to a small, round tunnel dipping steeply down. But after ten metres the tunnel simply stopped, with what looked like a sheet of metal barring the way. Alex picked up a stone and threw it. There was a splash. Now he understood. The tunnel was completely submerged in water as black as ink. The water had risen up to the ceiling of the tunnel so that, even assuming he could swim in temperatures that must be close to zero, he would be unable to breathe. After all his hard work, after all the time he had spent underground, there was no way forward.
Alex turned. He was about to leave, but even as he swung the torch round, the beam picked up something lying in a heap on the ground. He went over to it and leaned down. It was a diver’s dry suit and it looked brand-new. Alex walked back to the water’s edge and examined it with the torch. This time he saw something else. A rope had been tied to a rock. It slanted diagonally into the water and disappeared. Alex knew what it meant.
Ian Rider had swum through the submerged tunnel. He had worn a dry suit and he had managed to fix a rope to guide him through. Obviously he had planned to come back. That was why he had left the padlock open. It seemed that once again Alex had been helped by the dead man. The question was, did he have the nerve to go on?
He picked up the dry suit. It was too big for him, although it would probably keep out the worst of the chill. But the cold wasn’t the only problem. The tunnel might run for ten metres. It might run for a hundred. How could he be sure that Ian Rider hadn’t used scuba equipment to swim through? If Alex went down there, into the water, and ran out of breath halfway, he would drown. Pinned underneath the rock in the freezing blackness. He couldn’t imagine a worse way to die.
But he had come so far, and according to the map he was nearly there. Alex swore. This was not fun. At that moment he wished he had never heard of Alan Blunt, Sayle Enterprises or the Stormbreaker. But he couldn’t go back. If his uncle had done it, so could he. Gritting his teeth, he pulled on the dry suit. It was cold, clammy and uncomfortable. He zipped it up. He hadn’t taken off his ordinary clothes and perhaps that helped. The suit was loose in places, but he was sure it would keep the water out.
Moving quickly now, afraid that if he hesitated he would change his mind, Alex approached the water’s edge. He reached out and took the rope in one hand. It would be faster swimming with both hands, but he didn’t dare risk it. Getting lost in the underwater tunnel would be as bad as running out of air. The result would be exactly the same. He had to keep hold of the rope to allow it to guide him through. Alex took several deep breaths, hyperventilating and oxygenating his blood, knowing it would give him a few precious extra seconds. Then he plunged in.
The cold was ferocious, a hammer blow that nearly forced the air out of his lungs. The water pounded at his head, swirling round his nose and eyes. His fingers were instantly numb. His whole system felt the shock, but the dry suit was holding, sealing in at least some of his body warmth. Clinging to the rope, he kicked forward. He had committed himself. There could be no going back.
Pull, kick. Pull, kick. Alex had been underwater for less than a minute but already his lungs were feeling the strain. The roof of the tunnel was scraping his shoulders and he was afraid that it would tear through the dry suit and gouge his skin as well. But he didn’t dare slow down. The freezing cold was sucking the strength out of him. Pull and kick. Pull and kick. How long had he been under? Ninety seconds? A hundred? His eyes were tight shut, but if he opened them there would be no difference. He was in a black, swirling, freezing version of hell. And his breath was running out.
He pulled himself forward along the rope, burning the skin off the palms of his hands. He must have be
en swimming for almost two minutes. It felt closer to ten. He had to open his mouth and breathe, even if it was water that would rush into his throat… A silent scream exploded inside him. Pull, kick. Pull, kick. And then the rope tilted upwards and he felt his shoulders come clear, and his mouth was wrenched open in a great gasp as he breathed air and knew that he had made it, perhaps with only seconds to spare.
But made it to where?
Alex couldn’t see anything. He was floating in utter darkness, unable to see even where the water ended. He had left the torch at the other side, but he knew that even if he wanted to he didn’t have the strength to go back. He had followed the trail left by a dead man. It was only now that he realized it might lead only to the grave.
BEHIND THE DOOR
Alex swam slowly forward, completely blind, afraid that at any moment he would crack his skull against rock. Despite the dry suit, he was beginning to feel the chill of the water and knew that he had to find his way out soon. His hand brushed against something but his fingers were too numb to tell what it was. He reached out and pulled himself forward. His feet touched the bottom. And it was then that he realized. He could see. Somehow, from somewhere, light was seeping into the area beyond the submerged tunnel.
Slowly, his vision adjusted itself. Waving his hand in front of his face, he could just make out his fingers. He was holding on to a wooden beam, a collapsed roof support. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. The darkness had retreated, showing him a crossroads cut into the rock, the meeting place of three tunnels. The fourth, behind him, was the one that was flooded. As vague as the light was, it gave him strength. Using the beam as a makeshift jetty, he clambered on to the rock. At the same time, he became aware of a soft throbbing sound. He couldn’t be sure if it was near or far, but he remembered what he had heard under Block D, in front of the metal door, and he knew that he had arrived.
He stripped off the dry suit. Fortunately, it had kept the water out. The main part of his body was dry, but ice-cold water was still dripping out of his hair, down his neck, and his trainers and socks were sodden. When he moved forward his feet squelched and he had to take his trainers off and shake them out before he could go on. Ian Rider’s map was still folded in his pocket, but he no longer had any need of it. All he had to do was follow the light.
He went straight forward to another intersection, then turned right. The light was so bright now that he could actually make out the colour of the rock – dark brown and grey. The throbbing was also getting louder and Alex could feel a rush of warm air streaming down towards him. He moved forward cautiously, wondering what he was about to come to. He turned a corner and suddenly the rock on both sides gave way to new brick, with metal grilles set at intervals just above the level of the floor. The old mine shaft had been converted. It was being used as the outlet for some sort of air-conditioning system. The light that had guided Alex was coming out of the grilles.
He knelt beside the first of these and looked through into a large, white-tiled room, a laboratory with complicated glass and steel equipment laid out over work surfaces. The room was empty. Tentatively, Alex took hold of the grille, but it was firmly secured, bolted into the rock face. The second grille belonged to the same room. It was also screwed on tight. Alex continued up the tunnel to a third grille. This one looked into a storage room filled with the silver boxes that Alex had seen being delivered by the submarine the night before.
He took the grille in both hands and pulled. It came away from the rock easily, and looking closer he understood why. Ian Rider had been here ahead of him. He had cut through the bolts which had held it in place. Alex set the grille down silently. He felt sad. Ian Rider had found his way through the mine, drawn the map, swum through the submerged tunnel and opened the grille all on his own. Alex wouldn’t have got nearly as far as this without his help, and he wished now that he had known his uncle a little better and perhaps admired him a little more before he died.
Carefully, he began to squeeze through the rectangular hole and lower himself into the room. At the last minute – lying on his stomach with his feet dangling below – he reached for the grille and set it back in place. Provided nobody looked too closely, they wouldn’t see anything wrong. He dropped down to the ground and landed, catlike, on the balls of his feet. The throbbing was louder now, coming from somewhere outside. It would cover any noise he made. He went over to the nearest of the silver boxes and examined it. This time it clicked open in his hands, but when he looked inside it was empty. Whatever had been delivered was already in use.
He checked for cameras, then crossed to the door. It was unlocked. He opened it, one centimetre at a time, and peered out. The door led on to a wide corridor with an automatic sliding door at each end and a silver handrail running its full length.
“1900 hours. Red shift to assembly line. Blue shift to decontamination.”
The voice rang out over a loudspeaker system, neither male nor female; emotionless, inhuman. Alex glanced at his watch. It was already seven o’clock in the evening. It had taken him longer than he’d thought to get through the mine. He stole forward. It wasn’t exactly a passage that he had found. It was more an observation platform. He reached the rail and looked down.
Alex hadn’t had any idea what he would find behind the metal door, but what he was seeing now was far beyond anything he could have imagined. It was a huge chamber, the walls – half naked rock, half polished steel – lined with computer equipment, electronic meters, machines that blinked and flickered with a life of their own. It was staffed by forty or fifty people, some in white coats, others in overalls, all wearing armbands of different colours: red, yellow, blue and green. Arc lights beamed down from above. Armed guards stood at each doorway, watching the work with blank faces.
For this was where the Stormbreakers were being assembled. The computers were being slowly carried in a long, continuous line along a conveyor-belt, past the various scientists and technicians. The strange thing was that they already looked finished … and of course they had to be. Sayle had told him. They were actually being shipped out during the course of that afternoon and night. So what last-minute adjustment was being made here in this secret factory? And why was so much of the production line hidden away? What Alex had seen on his tour of Sayle Enterprises had only been the tip of the iceberg. The main body of the factory was here, underground.
He looked more closely. He remembered the Stormbreaker that he had used, and now he noticed something that he hadn’t seen then. A strip of plastic had been drawn back in the casing above each of the screens to reveal a small compartment, cylindrical and about five centimetres deep. The computers were passing underneath a bizarre machine – cantilevers, wires and hydraulic arms. Opaque silver test-tubes were being fed along a narrow cage, moving forward as if to greet the computers: one tube for each computer. There was a meeting point. With infinite precision, the tubes were lifted out, brought round and then dropped into the exposed compartments. After that, the Stormbreakers were accelerated forward. A second machine closed and heat-sealed the plastic strips. By the time the computers reached the end of the line, where they were packed into red and white Sayle Enterprises boxes, the compartments were completely invisible.
A movement caught his eye and Alex looked beyond the assembly line and through a huge window into the chamber next door. Two men in space suits were walking clumsily together, as if in slow motion. They stopped. An alarm began to sound and suddenly they disappeared in a cloud of white steam. Alex remembered what he had just heard. Were they being decontaminated? But if the Stormbreaker was based on the round processor there couldn’t possibly be any need for such an extreme – and anyway, this was like nothing Alex had ever seen before. If the men were being decontaminated, what were they being decontaminated from?
“Agent Gregorovich report to the Biocontainment Zone. This is a call for Agent Gregorovich.”
A lean, fair-haired figure dressed in black detached himself from the assembly
line and walked languidly towards a door that slid open to receive him. For the second time Alex found himself looking at the Russian contract killer, Yassen Gregorovich. What was going on? Alex thought back to the submarine and the vacuum-sealed boxes. Of course. Yassen had brought the test-tubes that were even now being inserted into the computers. The test-tubes were some sort of weapon that he was using to sabotage them. No. That wasn’t possible. Back in Port Tallon, the librarian had told him that Ian Rider had been asking for books about computer viruses…
Viruses.
Decontamination.
The Biocontainment Zone…
Understanding came – and with it, something cold and solid jabbing into the back of his neck. Alex hadn’t even heard the door open behind him, but he slowly stiffened as a voice spoke softly into his ear.
“Stand up. Keep your hands by your sides. If you make any sudden moves, I’ll shoot you in the head.”
He looked slowly round. A single guard stood behind him, a gun in his hand. It was the sort of thing Alex had seen a thousand times in films and on television, and he was shocked by how different the reality was. The gun was a Browning automatic pistol and one twitch of the guard’s finger would send a 9mm bullet shattering through his skull and into his brain. The very touch of it made him feel sick.
He stood up. The guard was in his twenties, pale-faced and puzzled. Alex had never seen him before – but more importantly, he had never seen Alex. He hadn’t expected to come across a boy. That might help.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”