The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Sixty-Three

The steel shutter was solid and immovable. It looked and felt as if it would take an armour-piercing rocket to get through it. Unless you happened to be holding the key.

‘Here goes,’ Ben said. He pointed the remote and pressed the red button.

Nothing happened. One down, one to go. He pressed the green button, and something went click, an electric motor whined and the shutter began to roll up. So far, so easy. But they still had no idea what to expect inside. As the shutter cranked upwards like the portcullis of a fortress, they jumped to the sides with their guns ready.

There was no violent response. No explosion of enemy gunfire spraying out of the entrance to repel the intruders. Nothing at all. There wasn’t a living soul inside the hangar.

But it was far from empty.

‘Jesus,’ Silvie said as they stepped inside the cavernous space. ‘It’s like a damn auto museum.’

Ben looked across the gleaming red-painted concrete floor at Streicher’s assembled fleet: the Bell 429 chopper resting on its wheeled undercarriage in one corner. The Volvo articulated lorry and trailer parked along the opposite wall. The collection of expensive motorcycles sparkling under the lights, all chrome and lustrous paintwork. The three identical black Range Rovers, and the exotic sports car that looked like something from a science-fiction movie. Finally, the menacing dark hulk of the Lenco BearCat assault truck.

Ben walked over to it, feeling a tightening in his muscles. He touched the massive battering ram welded to its front. There were splinters of the monastery gate still embedded in the rivet heads. He plucked one out and gazed at it for a moment.

‘Just a big empty space,’ Silvie said, gazing around them. ‘Where’s the rest of it? It’s as if those guys came from nowhere.’

Ben pointed straight down at the floor between his feet. ‘They came from underneath. Streicher’s down there too.’

‘Under the ground?’

‘It’s just like Donath said.’

‘I know he did. It sounded weird to me at the time. Now we’re here and it seems even weirder.’

‘They’re here,’ Ben said. ‘I know it.’

‘Where? You see any kind of trapdoor or opening?’

Ben didn’t reply. He tapped the six-digit code into the keypad. The green button had worked for the shutter, so he guessed that red was for something else. He pressed red.

Nothing happened.

Maybe the red button didn’t do anything, he thought. A wire could be loose inside.

Silvie frowned at him and opened her mouth to speak. Probably to express more scepticism.

Then fifty tons of thick concrete slab seemed to lurch under their feet, to the sudden sucking whoosh of hydraulics and the rotation of unseen gears. A deep bass throb filled the air. The power of the mechanism made the walls tremble and their ribs vibrate. Invisible seams cracked wider and wider as a whole central section of the floor opened up in front of them, twenty metres long by five wide, hinging at one end to form an enormous ramp that sloped steadily downwards to connect flush with the hidden tunnel beneath. The operation took more than fifteen seconds, during which time all Ben and Silvie could do was stare. Finally, the mech-anism came to rest with a soft thud that resonated all through the building.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ she breathed when there was silence again.

‘One of the world’s best-kept little secrets,’ Ben said. ‘How the other half live while the rest of us perish among the ruins of the post-nuclear wasteland.’

‘Streicher built this?’

‘Or bought it. I gather he’s not short of a bob or two.’

‘It’s incredible.’

‘I get the feeling there’s a lot more to it,’ Ben said. ‘Only one way to find out.’ He looked at the golf buggies that were parked by the mouth of the gaping hole, and saw that all three had the keys in them. Transportation for their welcoming committee, he guessed. Each had a soft double seat and a polished fibreglass bodyshell and shiny chrome wheels with chunky tyres. Stylish.

Ben unslung his rifle and submachine gun and stowed them in the carrying space behind the seat of the nearest buggy, then clambered aboard, put his foot on the pedal and the electric motor kicked silently in. He powered round in a tight U-turn and paused at the top of the ramp, waiting for Silvie to get on. She peered uncertainly into the tunnel. Light shone from the depths. Nothing but silence from down below.

‘It looks like the entrance to hell,’ she said.

‘Then let’s get down there and join the party,’ Ben replied.

Udo Streicher had witnessed the whole thing unfold on the bank of monitors in his office. First the merciless slaughter of his men. Next, the Faban bitch and her unknown companion breaching hangar security as if it were nothing. Now he watched helplessly as the insolent bastards boarded one of his own golf buggies and disappeared down the mouth of the tunnel, heading straight into the heart of his hitherto undiscovered and totally inviolate sanctuary.

Now Streicher was gripped by terror at the question revolving in his mind: who was Michelle Faban? Clearly, that wasn’t her real name, just as Streicher was certain that Dexter Nicholls had been a fake identity created to dupe him. Were they police? Government spies? Then more would come. A whole host of them could be set to descend on him at any moment. They could be on their way right now.

He snatched the bottle of antitoxin and the remaining syringes from the desk. They were too precious to let out of his sight. He burst out of the office at a run. ‘Hannah!’ he yelled, even though she couldn’t possibly hear him in the vast network of tunnels. Where could she be? ‘Hannah!’

He stopped, his brain speeding from the combined effects of panic and cocaine. Hannah didn’t matter. Only one thing really mattered. He turned in the opposite direction and sprinted down a brightly lit corridor to the nearest buggy station. A whole fleet of them were stationed at various points around the nuclear bunker, plugged into the juice from the underground diesel generators to keep them topped up. He was breathless by the time he got to the charging bay. Unhooking the power cable of the first buggy in the line, he threw himself aboard and floored the pedal, urging the thing on as fast as it would go.

He rushed towards the laboratory.