The Spoilers / Juggernaut (18 page)

There you are,’ said Bryan. ‘You don’t have to go stumbling around. That’s an arterial highway pointing straight at the settlement. You can pop down a hole here and pop up another there just like a rabbit.’

Tozier stared at him for a moment. ‘You make it sound so easy,’ he said with heavy irony. ‘What’s the slope in these things, Nick?’

‘Not much. Just enough to keep the water moving.’

‘How deep is the water?’

‘I don’t think that’s very much, either. Maybe a foot.’ Warren felt a sense of desperation. ‘Look, Andy; I don’t know much about this. All I know is what I’ve read.’

Tozier ignored that. ‘What’s the footing like? Is it flat?’

Warren closed his eyes, trying to visualize the illustrations he had seen. At last he said, ‘Flat, I think.’

Tozier looked at the photographs. ‘We go down the pass on foot just after dark. We drop down a shaft into the
qanat.
If the footing is reasonable we ought to make two miles an hour—there’s two hours to the settlement. We come up as close as possible and we can search until just before
daybreak. Then we pop back down our hole and come back underground and unseen. We take our chances coming up the pass in daylight—there’s a reasonable amount of cover. It’s becoming practicable.’

Follet snorted. ‘Practicable! I think it’s crazy. Burrowing underground, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Supposing the
qanat
route is practicable,’ said Warren. ‘I doubt it, but let’s suppose we can do it. How are we going to search the settlement without being nabbed?’

‘You never know your luck unless you try,’ said Tozier. ‘In any case, can you suggest anything else?’

‘No,’ said Warren. ‘I can’t, damn it!’

Tozier supervised the preparations. He hauled more rope out of the Land-Rovers than Warren had thought they carried—light nylon rope with a high breaking strain. From a toolbox he took crampons. ‘Dropping down a shaft will be easy,’ he said. ‘We can do that on the end of a rope. Getting up another might be difficult. We’ll need these.’

He produced high-powered electric torches and knives to go in their belts, but Warren was surprised when he began to take apart one of the photographic tripods. ‘What are you doing?’

Tozier paused. ‘Supposing you find this laboratory—what do you intend to do?’

‘Destroy it,’ said Warren tightly.

‘How?’

‘I thought of burning it, or something like that.’

‘That might not work underground,’ said Tozier, and continued to strip the tripod. He took off the tubular aluminium legs and from them shook several brown cylinders. ‘This will do it, though. You don’t need much gelignite to make a thorough mess of a relatively small installation.’

Warren gaped as he watched Tozier wrap the gelignite into a neat bundle with strips of insulating tape. Tozier grinned. ‘You left the fighting preparations to me—remember?’

‘I remember,’ said Warren.

Then Tozier did something even more surprising. Using a screwdriver he removed the clock from the dashboard. ‘This is already gimmicked,’ he said. ‘See that spike on the back? That’s a detonator. All we do is to ram that into one of those sticks of gelignite and we can set the clock to explode it at any time up to twelve hours in advance.’ He laughed. ‘The art of preparation is the art of war.’

‘Got any more surprises?’ asked Warren drily.

Tozier looked at him seriously and jerked his thumb in the direction of the settlement. ‘Those boys are gangsters and they’ll use gangster’s weapons—knives and pistols. In these parts maybe rifles, too. But I’m a soldier and I like soldier’s tools.’ He patted the side of the Land-Rover. ‘These aren’t the same vehicles that left the factory. The Rover company wouldn’t recognize some of the parts I put in, but then, neither would a customs officer.’

‘So?’

‘So what does a gun look like?’

Warren shook his head in a baffled way. ‘It has a barrel, a trigger, a stock.’

‘Yes,’ said Tozier. He went to the back of the Land-Rover and began to take out one of the struts which held up the canopy. He hauled it out and the canopy sagged slightly but not much. ‘There’s your barrel,’ he said, thrusting it into Warren’s hands. ‘Now we want the breech mechanism.’

He began to strip the vehicle of odd bits of metal—the cigarette lighter from the dash-board was resolved into its component parts, an ashtray which was apparently a metal pressing turned out to be a finely machined slide, springs were picked out of the toolbox and within ten minutes Tozier had assembled the gun.

‘Now for the stock,’ he said, and unstrapped the spade from the side of the Land-Rover. With a twist of his wrist it came neatly in half and the handle part was slotted into the gun to form a shoulder rest. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘An automatic machine-pistol. There’s so much metal in a truck that no one recognizes small components for what they are—and the big bits you disguise as something else.’ He held out the gun. ‘We couldn’t just walk into the country with a thing like this in our hands, could we?’

‘No,’ said Warren, fascinated. ‘How many of those have you got?’

‘Two of these little chaps and a rather decent air-cooled machine-gun which fits on one of the tripods. Ammunition is the difficulty—it’s hard to disguise that as anything else, so we haven’t got much.’ He jerked his thumb. ‘Every one of those sealed cans of unexposed film carries its share.’

‘Very ingenious.’

‘And then there’s the mortar,’ said Tozier casually. ‘You never know when a bit of light artillery will come in useful.’

‘No!’ said Warren abruptly. ‘Now, that’s impossible.’

‘Be my guest,’ said Tozier, waving at the Land-Rover. ‘If you find it you can have my bonus—or as much of it as Johnny Follet leaves me with.’

He went away, leaving Warren to look at the Land-Rover with renewed interest. A mortar was a big piece of equipment, and search as he would he could not find anything remotely resembling one, nor could he find any mortar bombs—sizeable objects in themselves. He rather thought Tozier was pulling his leg.

They made the final preparations and drove up to the top of the pass and parked the Land-Rovers off the road behind some boulders. At sunset they began to descend the pass. Going down into the valley was not too difficult; it was not yet so dark that they could not see a few yards in front of
them, but dark enough to make it improbable that they should be seen from a distance. From the top of the pass to the first ventilation shaft of the
qanat
was just over a mile, and when they got there it would have been quite dark but for the light of the newly risen moon.

Tozier looked up at the sky. ‘I’d forgotten that,’ he said. ‘It could make it dicey at the other end. We’re damned lucky to have this underground passage—if it works.’ He began to uncoil a rope.

‘Hold on,’ said Warren. ‘Not this shaft.’ He had just remembered something. ‘This will be the head well—the water’s likely to be deep at the bottom. Try the next shaft.’

They walked about fifty yards along the line of the
qanat
until they came to the next shaft, and Tozier unslung the rope. ‘How deep are these things, Nick?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’

Tozier picked up a pebble and dropped it down the hole, timing its fall by the ticking of his watch. ‘Less than a hundred feet. That’s not too bad. We might have to come up this one in a hurry.’ He gave one end of the rope to Bryan.

‘Here, Ben; belay that around something—and make sure it’s something that won’t shift.’

Bryan scouted around and found a rock deeply embedded in the earth around which he looped the rope, tying it off securely. Tozier hauled on it to test it, then fed the other end into the shaft. He handed his machine-pistol to Warren. ‘I’ll go first. I’ll flash a light three times if it’s okay to come down.’ He sat on the edge of the shaft, his legs dangling, then turned over on to his belly and began to lower himself. ‘See you at the bottom,’ he whispered, the sound of his voice coming eerily from the black hole.

He went down hand over hand using his knees to brace against the wall of the shaft which was about three feet in diameter. One by one he came to the bits of cloth he had tied to the rope at ten-foot intervals and by which he could
judge his distance and, at just past the ninety-foot mark, his boots struck something solid and he felt the swirl of water over his ankles.

He looked up and saw the paler blackness of the sky. It flickered a little and he guessed someone was looking down the shaft. He groped for his torch, flashed it three times upwards, then he shone it around and down the
qanat.
It stretched away, three feet wide and six feet high, into the distance, far beyond the range of his light. The bare earthen walls were damp and the water flowed about nine inches deep.

He felt the rope quiver as someone else started down the shaft and a scattering of earth fell on his head. He stepped out of the way downstream and presently Warren joined him, gasping for breath. Tozier took the gun and said, ‘This is it, Nick.’ He played the light on the earthen roof. ‘God help us if that caves in.’

‘I don’t think it will,’ said Warren. ‘If there’s a danger of that they put in big pottery hoops to retain it. Don’t forget that people are working down here pretty regularly to keep the waterway unrestricted. They don’t want to get killed, either.’ He forebore to tell Tozier that the men who worked in the
qanats
had an aptly descriptive name for them—they called them ‘the murderers’.

‘How old do you think this is?’ asked Tozier.

‘I don’t know. Could be ten years—could be a thousand, or even more. Does it matter?’

‘I don’t suppose so.’

Bryan joined them and was soon followed by Follet. Tozier said, ‘The shaft we want to go up is the thirty-fifth from here…’

‘The thirty-fourth,’ said Warren quietly.

‘Oh, yes; I forgot we skipped the first one. We’ll all keep a count just in case. If there’s an argument the majority vote wins. And we go quietly because I don’t know how sounds
carry up the shafts. I go first with a gun, Nick next, then Ben and lastly Johnny with the other gun as rearguard. Let’s go.’

It was ridiculously easy and they made far better time than Warren had expected—at least three miles an hour. As Bryan had said, it was a main highway pointing at the farm. The footing was firm and not even muddy or slippery so that it was even easier than walking in the middle of an English stream. The water was not so deep as to impede them unduly and Tozier’s powerful torch gave plenty of light.

Only once did they run into a minor difficulty. The water deepened suddenly to two feet and then to three. Tozier halted them and went ahead to kick down a dam of soft earth where there had been a small roof fall. The pent-up water was released and gurgled away rapidly until it fell to the normal nine inches or so.

But still, it was a hard slog and Warren was relieved when Tozier held up his hand for them to stop. He turned and said softly, ‘This shaft is thirty-three—are we agreed on that?’ They were. He said, ‘Now we go canny. Remember that the settlement is just above us. Gently does it.’

They carried on into the darkness with Tozier meticulously checking his paces. Suddenly he stopped so that Warren almost collided with him. ‘Do you hear anything?’ he asked in a low voice.

Warren listened and heard nothing but the gentle chuckle of the water. ‘No,’ he said, and even as he said it he heard a throb which rapidly died away. They kept quiet, but heard nothing more.

At last Tozier said, ‘Come on—it’s only another twenty yards.’ He pushed on and stopped under the shaft. Abruptly he turned and whispered, ‘There’s a light up there. Have a look and tell me what you think it is.’

Warren squeezed past him and looked up the shaft. Far above he saw the pale circle of the sky but there was
another and brighter light shining on the wall of the shaft not so far up, which seemed to be emanating from the side of the shaft itself. He estimated that it was about fifty feet up.

He drew back and said quietly, ‘We were looking for something underground, weren’t we? I think this is it. The place would have to be ventilated somehow so they’re using the
qanat
shaft. And this shaft is the nearest to the farm.’

Tozier’s voice was filled with incredulity. ‘You think we’ve stumbled across it first crack out of the box?’

Follet said out of the darkness. ‘Everybody’s lucky some time. Why not us?’

There was a sound. The distant but distinct noise of someone coughing. ‘Someone’s awake,’ breathed Tozier. ‘We can’t do anything yet.’ He peered up the shaft. ‘If they ever sleep they’ll put the light out. I’ll keep watch—the rest of you go back, say, a hundred yards. And keep quiet.’

Thus began one of the most uncomfortable periods of Warren’s life. It was nearly three hours before Tozier flashed for them and he knew what his feet would look like when he took off his boots; they would be as white as a fish’s belly and as wrinkled as a washerwoman’s hands. He made a mental note to issue surgical spirits when—and if—they got back, otherwise everyone could become crippled with blisters.

So he was very glad when Tozier gave the signal and he was able to move up and to stretch his cramped limbs. ‘Everything all right?’

‘The light has been off for nearly an hour. I thought I heard someone snoring a while back, so let’s hope he’s still asleep. I think I’ll nip up and have a look. You’ll have to give me a boost up to the shaft.’

‘Take it easy.’

‘I will,’ said Tozier with grim humour. ‘I was studying the light before it went out. I reckon that’s the main entrance to their cubby-hole. Well, here goes—I’ll drop a rope for you.’

Warren, Bryan and Follet braced themselves, forming a human stepladder up which Tozier could climb. He hoisted himself up, felt the sides of the shaft with his hands, and then brought up one leg so that the crampons on his boot bit into the clay. He pushed, straightening his leg, and dug in with the other boot. It was not too difficult—he had made worse climbs, but never in such darkness. Slowly he went up, his back braced against the wall and his feet climbing the opposite wall in the chimney technique he had once learned at mountain school.