The Shadow Project

Chapter Sixty-Six

Ben lowered the smoking pistol as the tall man crumpled to the floor with a bullet in his skull. Rory went running up the corridor, screaming for his father. Adam O’Connor’s eyes opened wide in his bloodied face, and he let out a cry as his son flew into his arms. Rory hugged him, then saw the blood-soaked trouser leg and the pool of it on the floor under him, the ragged bullet wound in his shoulder. ‘Oh, God, you’re hurt!’

‘I’m fine,’ Adam sobbed. ‘Now I’m just fine.’ He held the boy tight in his arms, rocking him, tears cutting white lines through the blood on his face.

‘I don’t want to interrupt a happy family reunion,’ Ben said as he and Jeff ran up to them. ‘But we need to get out of here fast.’ He had to raise his voice to be heard over the terrible noise. He and Jeff picked up the wounded man and supported him as they made their way through the passages. The noise kept building and building, driving them mad with its intensity.

‘Need to find the main lift shaft,’ Jeff shouted. ‘Maybe it’ll lead down to the exit we found.’

Ben shook his head. ‘That only leads straight down to the vault,’ he yelled back. ‘We need to use the service lift we came up on.’

‘Jesus. This whole place feels like it’s going to blow apart.’

‘The machine,’ Adam muttered. ‘It’s out of control.’ His head lolled sideways and his body went limp in Ben and Jeff’s arms.

‘Dad!’ Rory screamed.

‘He’s just fainted, don’t worry,’ Ben reassured him. Adam’s body was a dead weight as they carried him back the way they’d come. By the time they reached the service lift, the floor was trembling like an earthquake under their feet.

Just as Ben and Jeff were hauling the unconscious scientist on board the crude wooden platform, a massive shock seemed to ripple through the whole facility. It felt like an explosion, but with no blast – like a devastating pulse of pure energy capable of destroying everything around it. As the walls shook and the air seemed to thrum, the thick steel cables holding up the lift platform began to vibrate and buzz like plucked guitar strings. The platform began to judder.

Ben’s eyes met Jeff’s for a fraction of a second. They were both thinking the same thing. Get off this thing now!

They leapt off the platform, dragging Adam’s slumped body with them as Rory watched in horror. At the same instant, the vibrating cables began to fray dramatically, and then parted with a lashing crack. The platform tumbled down the shaft, taking bits of masonry with it. Jeff lost his balance and almost went down with them, but Ben grabbed his webbing belt and hauled him away from the crumbling edge.

‘There’s no other way out of here,’ Jeff yelled, pointing down the empty shaft. ‘We’re trapped.’

Ben’s mind raced, fighting the rising tide of dizziness that was beginning to overcome him. He felt a tug on his sleeve and turned to see Rory standing there gesticulating back down the corridor. ‘I know a way,’ the boy shouted.

‘What way?’

‘Trust me. I found it.’

There was no choice but to follow the kid. Ben and Jeff manhandled the unconscious scientist as his son led them at a run back towards the stairway where they’d found him.

The moment they started down the metal steps, Ben knew they weren’t going to get out in time. The stairway was rocking and swaying dangerously as they clattered down it. Struts and rails were cracking and breaking off, falling down around them. A guillotine blade of sheet metal crashed down, narrowly missing them and tearing away a section of framework. The whole construction lurched sideways and began to topple slowly over.

Seconds after the four of them had reached the bottom, the stairway fell apart. Debris rained down, burying Ivan’s body where it lay on the cavern floor. They ran. Adam was beginning to come round as Ben and Jeff hauled him along.

‘This way!’ Rory was yelling. ‘Here! This is it!’

Ben looked where the boy was frantically pointing. ‘Where does it lead?’

‘Some kind of air vent. Like a big pipe. It goes all the way through to the outside.’

Ben looked hard into Rory’s eyes, blinking to focus his vision. ‘You’re sure? You’ve been in?’

‘Some of the way in.’

Ben took a deep breath. It seemed insane, but it was their only option. The facility was rumbling like the world’s biggest volcano about to erupt. ‘Can you crawl?’ he asked Adam.

‘Just leave me here,’ Adam slurred. ‘Get my son out.’

Ben ripped his tactical webbing belt out of his trouser loops. ‘You’re going up that vent if I have to drag you. Hold this and don’t let go.’

Then it was the frantic scramble up the tunnel. Rory led the way, followed by Jeff. Ben half-dragged Adam behind him on the end of the belt, praying it wouldn’t snap. After half a minute of crawling, he could taste the cool air from outside and there was a definite glow of moonlight up ahead. But would they ever reach the end? The metal walls were heating up fast, burning their hands and knees. The nausea was crippling.

At that moment, the world seemed to come apart. The explosion was like nothing Ben had experienced before. A horrible sensation of weightlessness as they seemed to be falling, falling, followed by a barrage of enormous impacts. The steel pipe was as fragile and vulnerable as a twig tossed around in a hurricane. Ben heard Rory’s scream of terror as it rolled over and over, battering them around inside. The pipe groaned as unimaginable outside pressures tried to stamp it flat. An ear-splitting shriek of rending steel, a cascade of dust and stones showering over them.

And then, nothing. As suddenly as the insane forces of destruction had reached their climax, it was over. There was silence, just the sound of grit and pebbles slithering down the inside of the pipe, and the soft groans of the others.

Ben raised his face out of his arms and blinked. The awful sensation was gone, the headache and nausea quickly clearing. Raising himself on his hands and knees, he realised he could stand. The pipe had ruptured above them, creating a jagged opening through which he could see moonlight and twinkling stars. He slowly, painfully got to his feet. A couple of metres away, Jeff was doing the same, looking stunned, his hair white with dust.

Rory stirred, let out a whimper and went scrambling over to his father. Adam O’Connor groaned in pain and joy as he sat up and hugged him.

The moon shone down on a transformed landscape. Kammler’s mountain was gone. It had collapsed in on itself, the facility swallowed up, vaporised. All that was left was a giant crater of rubble and debris and twisted metal, like the scene of an air disaster without the plane.

Ben knew he’d never be able to describe what they’d just witnessed. The power of Kammler’s machine was too incredible to contemplate. Now it was buried forever in its rocky grave – the Nazi weapon that might have saved the Earth or destroyed it was going to remain a secret for the rest of time.

Nobody spoke for a long while, just breathing the air, listening to the silence and savouring what it felt like to be alive. Ben stepped over to where father and son were holding each other tight. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘You saved us, Rory.’

Adam O’Connor gripped Ben’s hand in his bloodstained fist. ‘You saved us.’

Ben just smiled.

‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’

‘Nobody much,’ Ben replied. He looked towards the sweeping forest, and pointed across the tree line to where they’d left the Porsche Cayenne, a few hours and a lifetime ago. ‘There’s a car down there. Let’s get you to hospital, and then home.’