Red Notice

52

There was a faint movement in the darkness beneath the train. Tom ran his fingers, as grey as the dust around them, across his forehead and down his cheek. He gave himself a moment to take stock. His head was pounding; he was covered with cuts and bruises; his nose and mouth were filled with grit; but he had no serious wounds or injuries. Not that it mattered much: he still had to crack on, no matter what condition he was in.

He slid out and hauled himself upright. Hugging the tunnel wall, he moved forward in a crouch to avoid the lozenges of light cast from the carriage windows. The contrast between the glow of the emergency lamps and the darkness of the tunnel allowed him to stand in the strips of shadow and see inside the train without being seen himself.

A line of passengers stood facing him, hands on heads and faces pressed against the glass. The ones that hadn’t been herded to the side were clustered on the seats, heads down. People were crying, begging, praying, comforting children; some just stared, accepting that their life would now come to an end.

Through the gaps between these visions of human despair and remorse, the muttered promises that if they ever got out of this they would change for the better, Tom spotted several of Laszlo’s sidekicks. He eased himself closer, disabled the flash function on his phone camera and held it up, zooming in on each face in turn.

He kept going, hoping against hope that he’d spot Delphine. He eventually caught sight of her being comforted by a group of other hostages.

Relieved and elated, he risked inching his way into the pool of light spilling from an empty window close by, and stood stock still, willing her to glance in his direction.

As he watched, Delphine’s look of desolation was suddenly replaced by a beaming smile. Tom put a finger to his lips. She gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod, then signalled to the right with her eyes. Laszlo and Sambor were issuing a string of orders to their men further up the carriage.

Laszlo froze, antennae on full alert. He cast a suspicious glare along the carriage, but Delphine had already repositioned herself, her nose against the window and her eyes staring out into the darkness.

Tom edged further along the train and photographed the brothers. The lighting wasn’t strong enough to obtain good imagery of anything inside, but that didn’t matter. The team would need up-to-date shots of the X-rays and the computer geeks could sort out the pixels later. The quicker he got Delphine out of the train, the quicker Gavin would have the pictures and the quicker Tom could add some int to what the Slime had already gathered.

Sambor and Laszlo began to walk towards the driver’s compartment. Tom tracked their progress by monitoring their shifting weight as it depressed the train’s shock absorbers between the carriages, and kept in step with them. But when they reached the front of the train, he couldn’t see through its small side windows or the sharply angled windscreen.

Using his iPhone display to light his way, he lowered himself to the concrete track bed, wriggled between the wheels and beneath the greasy tangle of wires and cables of the undercarriage.