Red Notice

65

The instant the two gunmen had started running, Tom pulled the children out from under the train, dashed about twenty paces in the opposite direction, then dived back beneath the nearest carriage. Rose and Daniel followed him under. For a moment they clung to each other, like survivors of a shipwreck.

Tom waited for their laboured breathing to subside. He strained to hear any hint of their pursuers’ return. After two minutes, he motioned to the kids to get into crawling mode and continue up the track on their hands and knees.

As they moved closer to the engine, he turned and signalled for them to keep silent. He pointed into the darkness and mimed gunfire: the PKM (belt-fed Kalashnikov machine-gun) position was out there somewhere and he didn’t want to go any further forward. The kids had seen enough dead bodies for one day.

He knew the two guys manning the gun position would be wearing their NVGs to defeat the pitch-darkness of the tunnel ahead of them. He knew they’d be scanning in all directions. And he knew what it would be like behind those masks. All they’d be able to hear was their own breathing, and the gentle whine as the small lithium battery kept the NVGs active.

He guided Rose and Daniel out from under the train and through the mangled green metal door. There were shouts from the other end of the tunnel — no more than weak echoes when they reached them, but Tom still paused momentarily to comfort the kids and keep them as quiet as he could. Soon all other noises were drowned by the sound of something like rainfall, damping down everything but the sickly sweet smell of charred flesh. Tom soon discovered the reason why.

The first thing he saw through the gaping hole that Laszlo’s explosives had blown in the fire screen was an incinerated appliance. The back blast from the detonation must have ignited the wagons. The last of the flames had clearly died long since, but only now were the sprinklers beginning to shut down.

The second thing he saw was a steel ladder, bolted to the wall immediately to his right, leading up to an open hatch, through which he could see wavering torchlight. He ducked back out again. They had to keep moving.

‘Cover your mouths. The smoke will soon be gone, the further along this tunnel we go.’ He hoisted Daniel onto his shoulders and grabbed Rose’s hand. ‘Come on, kids. Time to go and find you some sunlight.’