Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

I make my way to the bandits’ checkpoint and ask them to tell their boss he should put reinforcements there. Just in case. Deep down inside, I’m relying on the fact that, if someone notices my intrusion too soon and I have to run, I’ll be able to lead them straight here to the bandits’ checkpoint. Hopefully, when they understand where they’re going, they’ll decide not to chase me any further.

Having gone about five hundred metres from the checkpoint, I find the familiar hatch to the cable duct. I look around, then lift it and jump inside. It’s not far from here to the factory, so I turn the torch to minimum brightness and slowly move along the tunnel.

Wait, what’s this? Crouching down, I take a look at what’s caught my eye. Ordinary lumps of clay. The sort that would come out of the treads on a boot. Now, that’s interesting. It’s dry outside, hasn’t rained recently. There’s certainly no water in the cable duct. And, obviously, no wet clay either. How did this get here then? I touch a lump of clay. Still soft, which means it hasn’t had time to dry. Which means the guy whose boot it fell off was down here quite recently.

Suddenly I feel uncomfortable.

That means there’s somebody here. I don’t expect anything good from anyone in this town. The people left behind here aren’t overflowing with the milk of human kindness.

After a few more steps I see new lumps of clay. This really isn’t good. But there’s nothing to be done about it. I keep going. I feel a damp draft from somewhere, and bring up my assault rifle. I’m in tunnel with concrete all around, so any bullet I fire off target, provided it doesn’t get stuck in the cables, will bounce off the walls and keep flying forward. The main thing is to shoot first. A shower of bullets is bound to catch somebody. Then I’ll have the chance to run away. Or maybe not. My opponent’s bullets will fly exactly the same way.

I take another twenty steps, and a black spot of some kind appears to the left in my torch beam. Getting closer, I find a fresh breach in the wall of the tunnel. That’s where the draft is coming from. No wonder it’s damp – instead of concrete panels, there’s ordinary earth under foot. Who the fuck, I’d like to know, put this here?

Walking about twenty metres forward, I enter an ordinary tunnel. It’s much older than the cable duct I was walking through. On one side there are metal pins in the wall which hold up pipes and cables of some sort. The walls of this tunnel are lined with bricks that have fallen out in some places and crumbled in others. I sniff the air. From somewhere there’s a definite smell of burning. What could that be? As it happens, whatever it is it’s not a question that bothers me much right now. Returning to the tunnel, I take from my backpack one of the ever-useful forks and tie it with thread in such a way that anyone coming through this new hole in the wall will send the metal crashing to the concrete floor. I hope that I’ll hear it.

About a hundred and fifty metres further on, the tunnel starts to rise. That’s as it should be, somewhere round here should be the factory. After another fifty metres, I turn the torch off completely and move forward ever so slowly on tippy-toes.

In front of me glimmers a weak light. Interesting, do they have electricity in the factory? From what I remember of the basement from when we were laying the cables here, there weren’t any windows. So, now we slow to an absolute crawl.

Once I reach the door, I crouch down next to it. There are a few horizontal slats in it, through which I can look into the interior of the basement. The door to the cable duct is in a narrow end wall, so I can see almost all of the basement. It’s not very big, something more like a narrow cell than a proper room. A weak lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. There’s not much light, but enough to see that the basement’s empty. The door to the cable duct needs a key to open from the other side, but from here you can open it just by pressing on the right lever. From what I can remember, there should also be a separate switch somewhere. When you open the door, somewhere on the security monitor a light comes on. True, due to some peculiar administrative logic, the switch that activates the light is actually inside the tunnel. In other words, if I understand correctly, the factory guards were more concerned to stop people leaving unnoticed than to stop people getting in. With the help of my torch, I look for the switch. There it is – a little box with a lever coming out of it. The free end of the lever presses against the door.

Now it’s easy. A switch like this uses contact closure. The lever holds up a spring that moves when the door opens, bringing the plates into contact. Out of my pocket I pull a piece of wire that I’ve brought for just such an occasion, and short circuit the wires coming out of the switch. Now I can go backwards and forwards as I wish, and the light on the monitor will never come on.

The badly oiled door scrapes unpleasantly. There’s nothing I can do about that. Stepping into the basement, I crouch down and take a look round. I need to get to the ground floor. From there, there’s a staircase going up. Upstairs, there’s an interesting room with windows looking over the whole territory of the factory. I haven’t taken even two steps when I hear a thunder of boots from behind the door. It’s slammed open and hits the wall with a crash.

“Stand where you are and drop your weapons!”

Instead, I pull the trigger. My pistol’s long been in my hand. As I was coming out of the cable duct, I was already holding it ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. The shot knocks the guy to one side. Staggering, he leans his shoulder on the door frame, and then I fire twice more. His gun clatters to the floor, and he slumps over on his back.

Well, that is unfortunate. Everything’s gone tits up from the very beginning. I mean, that guard can’t have been here on his own, can he? No, of course not. The whole building fills with shouts and stomping. That’s my spying mission over. Time to get the fuck out of here. I squeeze through the narrow doorway and hear behind me a commanding shout. I crouch down and let loose a short burst of fire in the direction of the shouting. My pistol’s already back under my arm, and my hands are holding my assault rifle. It fires much faster, after all, and with far more power. Behind me I hear cries of displeasure, and I shoot like a bullet along the tunnel, as fast as I can before one of them gets to the door and starts firing after me.

I reach a turn. Once round the corner, I press against the wall and glance back. A second passes, then another, and then a torch beam splashes across the tunnel walls. A burst of fire from me, and the bullets whistle off in the direction of whoever’s holding the torch. At least they’ll know the risks of coming in here. While they’re working out what to do, I’ll be getting away. They’ll think more than twice before they dive into this unfamiliar tunnel, and I’ll have time to run fuck knows where. I sprint down the tunnel almost to the point where the breach gapes in the wall.

Pyow! Something whistles unpleasantly over my head. It’s dark down here! I haven’t turned on my torch, and there’s no light coming from the enemy. Are they just firing at random? Even if they are, I still need to run two hundred metres if I go straight ahead. The chances of being able to do that without getting hit are very, very small. That first bullet went over my head, but there’ll be a second and a third and as many more as they want to fire. There’s nothing for it, I turn into the breach. I crouch on the floor. My heart’s beating like it wants to jump right out of my chest. What am I going to do? Now that my initial panic has subsided a little, I remember that the shouts I heard were all in English. Which means these troops are foreign. Very, very possibly part of the corporation’s security service, most of whom are English speakers. From what I remember, they had all sorts of useful arms and equipment. Well, their usefulness for me personally right now is debatable. They gave us a special talk one time, about how it wasn’t worth even thinking about taking anything off the premises in secret. They’d see us, they’d hear us, and they’d catch us, whether it was broad daylight or the darkest night. In other words, whoever’s firing at my back right now might well have some sort of gadget that allows them to see me despite the pitch-black darkness. Further evidence that they have something of the sort is provided by the current lack of shooting. The shooter doesn’t see his target, so there’s no reason to open fire. If that’s the case, then I’m not going to be able to hide here either. They’ll still see me.