John Gardner (2 page)

Definitely not officer material, Bond murmured. The man was just rushing back without even making a tactical appraisal of what might, or might not, be happening inside the guard post He exploded through the door, the little Stechkin automatic waving, almost out of control, in his hand.

This time, Bond fired only once. The second soldier spun to the left, hit the wall and collapsed, leaving a trail of smeared blood behind him. In the silence that followed, two of the chess pieces rolled at his feet.

Checkmate,’ Bond muttered, taking stock of the situation, looking specifically for the control to the gate out on the top of the dam.

The big metal button like an unpolished silver mushroom was set into the wall high to the left of the door, just where they said it would be. He glanced at his watch, seeing there was not much time left.

If all had gone smoothly, Alec Trevelyan would be in place waiting for him. The plan had been to set the charge and get out while the bulk of the Plant’s staff were on their one hour’s mid-morning break.

He unzipped the parka and began to unwind the cumbersome thick elasticised rope from around his body, curling it across his left arm, making certain that the entire length was free and there was no danger of it getting tangled. In the next few minutes his life would depend on the strength and pliability of this piece of equipment which he coiled so that the strengthened noose was in his left hand and the big spring clip in his right. Reaching up, Bond banged the big button which controlled the outer gate, hitting it squarely with the spring clip.

He heard the whine of the metal from the far end of the cage, looked out and saw that the way onto the wide top of the dam was clear.

Taking a deep breath he began to sprint forward.

He had not anticipated the stiff breeze blowing off the lake, but the top of the dam was wide enough, and there was no question of doing a balancing act as the wind whipped around him. There were strong metal guardrails running along either side, so Bond had no worries about falling off and hurtling through the eight hundred feet of space onto the rocks below - even though this was basically what he was about to do.

He reached the centre of the high curved structure, glanced down and felt his stomach turn over. In the short period they had been given to prepare for Operation Cowslip, he had done this only twice, and then dropping less than half the distance he was about to attempt.

You only got one chance with this method, and there were no things like reserve parachutes or wrist clamped altimeters.

Initially he had suggested absailing down the face of the dam, but quickly realised that this tried and true method would leave him exposed to detection for longer than anyone wanted - including himself.

He banged the spring clip onto one of the metal ii guardrail uprights, and gave it a quick pull, quietly hoping the iron to which he was tethering himself was bedded firmly into the top of the dam as the experts claimed.

Hardly stopping to think about anything else, Bond slid his right foot into the noose at the other end of the bungee cord and pulled the long piton gun - assembled lovingly by Q’s people - from its special holster in the thigh of his wet suit. Ducking under the rail, he glanced back to be certain the cord was free of any obstruction, and could not get tangled. Then, expelling his breath in a loud whaaa sound, James Bond launched himself from the top of the dam.

This was nothing like free fall parachuting because you did not have the comfortable knowledge that, when the moment came, there was a “chute on your back. Bond’s stomach was still up on top of the dam as he plunged downwards. The drop seemed endless. He could feel his body moving faster and even felt the resistance of the air through which he moved. His ears sang and his facial muscles ceased to be of any value, his cheeks forced back and his mouth stretched in what he knew was a kind of hideous grin.

As he plummeted with the dam’s wall only a foot or so from his body, he pushed the piton gun forward, his hands firmly holding its twin grips which eventually would be his way to safety. The use of this piece of equipment had to be timed to the second. If not, the bungee cord would reach its maximum length and he would be sprung back, lifted by the cord then falling again and, in all probability, smashed into the hard wall of the dam.

Struggling against the pressure, Bond forced himself to look down at the rocky ground hurtling up to meet him.

He relied solely on instinct to judge the moment to fire the piton. There was no accurate way of calculating the optimum second, and he knew that his sense of selfpreservation could now easily override accuracy.

Then, right or wrong, the moment was upon him. He clung to the handles of the piton gun as he pressed the trigger and felt the projectile charge thump, the tingling of the small explosion running up his arms. The barbed arrow that was the piton shot down, trailing a snake of around a hundred feet of ultra strong climbing rope behind it, moving with a speed that was a fraction faster than Bond’s downward momentum.

The piton smashed into the camouflaged concrete at the foot of the dam at just the moment that the bungee cord had paid out its normal length, but with around two hundred feet of elastation to go. Bond felt the pull and, for a second, thought his arms were going to be torn from their sockets. The muscles of both arms and the right leg screamed pain through him, and he wondered if this had been the kind of thing men first felt on the rack in those days of intense physical torture. He reached forward hand over hand, beginning to haul himself downwards to the bottom of the dam, his face contorted with agony as he fought against the pressure from the bungee cord which was now taut, pulling, trying to drag him back up the dam wall.

Finally Bond reached the bottom, strung between the rope and the thick bungee cord. Looking down, he could see the strain on the piton which was moving slightly in the concrete in which it was embedded.

If the piton was ripped out by tension on the bungee, he was well aware of what could happen: he would be catapulted upwards, against the side of the wall. His body would be scraped as though someone held him against a huge Black & Decker sander. In the end the bungee would leap into the air, eight hundred feet above, and what was left of him would be thrown down onto the top of the dam.

Even now, he felt himself being torn apart by the bungee’s tension and the anchored rope around his left arm.

He reached up to free his foot from the loop and the bungee shot back up the dam wall, flying upwards like a long fast-moving snake.

He stood for a moment, orientating himself, then moved in a crouch over the rocks, zigzagging between them to reach the air conditioning pump which stood like a grey painted drum about twenty yards away. The grille, next to the pump, had been opened and he could see the marks where Alec Trevelyan had used a metal-cutting instrument on the big padlock. As he pulled the grille back, Bond found himself looking into a dark square hole with the top elongated D-shape of a series of rungs set in the side of the wall below.

Swinging himself into the darkness, he began to descend, not rushing but moving slowly, his feet feeling out the rungs, his mind focused on finding the bottom of this black well, for he had no idea how far this maintenance shaft went down.

It turned out to be a long haul, for the wide duct seemed to go down forever. Though his eyes were gradually getting used to the blackness, Bond - for the first time in his life - started to experience a kind of vertigo, his senses stretched to the limit. His muscles still ached and his mind felt detached from what he was actually doing. Everything had happened so quickly that a part of him was still high ~ above the ground, plunging towards the rocks and cement; his hands on the rungs felt bruised and there was a musty damp smell in his nostrils. It was an odor that became stronger the further he moved downward.

After what seemed to be ten or fifteen minutes and hundreds of metal rungs, his feet touched solid ground.

A floor? Or was it a ledge from which he could easily fall into some bottomless pit? By now he had ceased to trust his senses, and his mind became obsessed with heights.

Very slowly he adjusted to the blackness of his surroundings. He appeared to be in some small chamber which he presumed was the access point to the maintenance shaft. To his right, Bond could just make out the shape of a door. His feet scraped loudly on the stone floor as he crossed to the door, gently pulling it open and moving through into what felt like a larger chamber.

Two steps in he stopped, frozen like a statue. He could smell the scent of blood and death. More, he was conscious of the cold metal of a pistol gently resting in his neck, just under his ear.

“Don’t even breathe,’ a voice said in Russian. Then, “Where are the others?”

“I’m alone.” His voice a fraction more relaxed.

“Aren’t we all?” There was a faint chuckle and the lights came on, almost blinding him with their brightness. He turned to see his old friend, Alec Trevelyan, grinning at him, still looking like the eternal schoolboy. Many had said of Trevelyan that he had a picture in the attic, like Dorian Grey.

“Glad you could drop in, James.”

“It was a slightly longer journey than I’d expected, but most of it was downhill.” Trevelyan motioned towards a second door, open and revealing a curved metal stairwell.

“You ready, James?”

“Let’s do it.” Bond moved first, through the door and down the spiral stairwell. “You come up this way?” he asked of 006.

“Yes. There’s a door at the bottom to your right and another facing you. That’s the one with the electronic locks. Behind it you’ll find Aladdin’s cave. After a fashion anyway.

Already Bond was unzipping one of the pouches on his belt. By the time they reached the electronic door he had the little oblong box in his hand. The box was magnetic and he clamped it onto the side of the door, throwing a small switch as he did so. Immediately a series of lights began to pulse and a small digital read-out started to move very fast “It’s really quite simple,’ Q had said. “It works very like an auto-dialer, except it sorts through every known permutation of numbers and letters at a speed of around five hundred a second. When it detects part of a matching pattern it starts to configure the entire electronic code. Even on a cleverly invented system it shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to hit the right numbers or letters. As soon as it’s done that, the lock will be activated.”

“A very handy little gadget to take on a picnic,’ Bond had replied.

Q had given him the ghost of a smile. “I had it tested on the vaults below the Bank of England,’ he said. “The people there didn’t like it one bit.” By the time Bond’s memory took in the conversation, the box gave a final little beep and the door clicked open.

They were on a high, suspended walkway, looking down on what seemed to be a huge manufacturing plant. On the far side a row of some six massive stainless steel vats stood in line, linked together by slim metal tubing. This line of vats ended in a mass of tubes and pumps which went into a much larger container like some kind of pressure cooker. More tubes and pumps disappeared through the wall area to their right. By this time, Bond was completely disoriented. He had no idea of his position in relation to the ground above.

To the left, at the end of these gigantic containers was another electronic door, while directly underneath them Bond could make out a wide conveyor belt, running the length of the floor and rolling through a fringed rubber flap.

“What’s through there?” Bond indicated the electronic door.

“The rest of the laboratories, I should think.” Trevelyan gave another chuckle. “I just went missing into the connecting passages when I got here. The map M gave us was pretty accurate, so I hid up where you found me. I played at being a kind of phantom of the labs so to speak. The music of the night down here isn’t really my thing though.” Bond indicated the big red signs, decorated with skulls and crossed bones which hung everywhere. In Russian they said: “DANGER.

HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE.”

“And those?” he asked.

“They’re scouring out all the equipment. I gathered, from what I heard on that quite disgusting underground train ride, that this is all new stuff. Has to be absolutely clean before they start processing the new horror.”

“Smoking in here could seriously damage your health then?’ “Definitely, and the second-hand smoke would kill very quickly indeed.’ “Let’s get the place rigged up. Bond headed towards the steps that led down onto the deadly factory’s floor and clamped the electronic device onto the door at the end.

Then he began emptying his pouches and pockets of the neatly packaged timers and charges which he had carried in with him.

Together they set about placing the explosives behind the vats and on the connecting tubing.

“I’ll do the last one,’ he called to Trevelyan. “If I set it for three minutes or so that should give us plenty of time to get out. The rest’ll go up by spontaneous combustion.

The device on the door gave its final little beep, signifying that it had unlocked the electronic password, and as it did so a piercing, shrieking warning klaxon went off.

Bond swore. “Get behind this stuff, Alec. No time to…” He was cut off by the sound of a voice, magnified by an electric loud hailer “This is Colonel Ourumov, the disembodied voice grated. “You are surrounded and there is no way you can escape. Just drop any weapons and come out with your hands on your heads. Now!”

“No way,’ Bond muttered, continuing down the line of steel vats that towered above him. Aloud he called, “Alec, put that bit of high-tech gadgetry into reverse. Just hit the switch on the left side.” He had almost reached the final high pressure cooker device. “Alec?” He ducked down and peered around the corner of the drum.

His old friend 006, Alec Trevelyan, knelt on the floor. Behind him, with the muzzle of a pistol against Trevelyan’s cheek, stood a tall, sinister Soviet officer wearing the shoulder boards of a colonel.

He was backed by half-a-dozen heavily armed troops, one of whom loosed off a round in Bond’s direction.