Tom Aston - The Machine

Then a shock, a sting. All the way around, from his nape and right round across his windpipe. He jerked, bolt-upright. Grabbed at his neck, then relaxed. It was a dream. But there it was again. Splitting, cutting, stinging. Right into his neck. He grabbed, but there was nothing there. It was behind him, whatever it was, was behind him, pulling and tightening. Blood streamed down his chest. All over his hands, he could feel it. His head was going to explode. Tightening — a wire, a ligature, something. Coming from behind him. His eyes were bulging in the blackness. He screamed, but it was silent. Like shouting in a dream, when no one can hear. Like opening your eyes in a dream, but you can’t see a thing. His eyes are wide open, bulging. His tongue is right out of his mouth. Scream. But no one hears. It’s black, completely dark. And it’s getting darker.

The sun rose blood-red over the trees at the crater rim. To the West the mountains of Tibet stood out burnt orange above the dark foothills.

The idea of a stroll above ground in the spoil heaps of toxic waste had not exactly appealed to Virginia, but Stone knew the reality would be different, and dragged her up there. He’d seen these mountains before, and tasted the air. He took her up there at first light. No time to waste in any case, looking at Semyonov. Carslake was still asleep.

Above ground, everything seemed better. Virginia’s mane of hair flowed again in the cool breeze. There were goose bumps on her arms in the chill, and a warm smile glowing in her eyes. Maybe she wasn’t all artifice. She done it all for a reason, even if that reason was guilt. It must have killed Semyonov at sixteen, when she disappeared out of his life. As it must kill Virginia to see him now.

After the night in Lin Biao’s Chamber of Secrets, Stone felt a small wave of ecstasy flood through him. Impossibly clear mountain air, and the vision of the virgin forest against the deep blue sky of the Tibetan daybreak. Stone inhaled lustily and walked to the steel tower which held the winding gear at the head of the shaft. He thought again of Semyonov, his lungs scrabbling for oxygen in the damp pit below them.

‘You should get Semyonov brought out here,’ he shouted to Virginia. 'It would do him good.' The fresh air was all the sweeter for knowing he was about to go nearly a kilometre underground, down a hole not much wider than his shoulders.

The winding gear was pretty simple. Up. Down. And a speed regulator. Some Chinese guys were on hand, and they showed Virginia how to use the gear, but Semyonov insisted they had to it themselves. He didn’t want the Chinese trying anything the minute he’d brought the Machine out of the mine. After the briefing, the engineers were packed off in a truck, and driven out beyond the fence. Stone and Virginia were on their own.

Where the hell was Carslake?

Stone opened the door to the steel cage. He had on a white overall and a hardhat with a flashlight. The cage was a cylinder about 170 centimetres tall. Made to fit the Machine. It was pointed at either end with cones, and painted with the ShinComm logo. Twenty-two inches seems a lot, but inside it was less, and when your knees are bent and your neck is crooked to fit inside, it feels pretty small. The ride down would feel like a long fifteen minutes in the pitch dark.

‘Steven says he’ll supervise by the phone link,’ called Virginia.

‘Sure,’ Stone smiled at her. To encourage her. She was looking more nervous than he was. And for once, he was nervous. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ he shouted back. ‘And get that lazy bastard Carslake out of bed when I’m down there.

‘He’s not going to like it,’ she said.

‘No. He’s going to love it!’

Stone slammed the steel cage door shut on himself and rattled to check it was secure. There was a hum on of electric motors above him in the winding tower, and Stone slipped smoothly down into the Death Hole.

‘ He’s going to love it!’ Stone repeated to himself.

Bravado. Ridiculous bravado. Stone started slipping away into the Death Hole, wondering if Virginia had guessed what was bothering him, or even if she had noticed.

Stone closed his eyes to shut out the blackness, and the rattling of the cage against the tube of hard rock. Ten minutes to the bottom. Maybe fifteen. Up to now, there’d been only one Death Hole in Stone’s life. He would be thinking of it all the way down as he dropped into the hole. He would be thinking of the real Death Hole.

Kalai Kumza, March 2002, Balkh Province, Afghanistan. When the Al-Qaeda Arabs and Chechens were still around in Afghanistan. Before the Americans started bombing in earnest. Before they took control. Four hundred Taliban and Al-Qaeda gave themselves up to the Uzbek forces of General Dostum of the Northern Alliance. Dostum later said it was a trick to capture the fort of Kalai Kumza from the inside. The Taliban prisoners smuggled guns and grenades under their ragged clothes, and once inside the fort, they revolted. Against the two hundred Uzbeks and twelve NATO Special Forces. The Americans wore military fleeces and fatigues — Stone and the others in his squad were in plain clothes. Running shoes and HK machine guns.

The Uzbeks said it was the white faces which did it. It was the Red Cross workers whose insignia and white faces inflamed the Taliban — or so the story went. Not Special Forces, who were looking as rough as the Taliban by now. Stone knew it would have kicked off anyway. Why else smuggle grenades in?

A CIA interrogator was dead already. Twenty Uzbeks dead. Dozens of Taliban and Al-Qaeda were down. It was a suicide job. They knew they were going to die. The Uzbek tanks were waiting outside. The Americans would start with the gunships within minutes. No civilians here to worry about — they were all Taliban and therefore bad guys. Dostum and the Allies would wipe out the lot.

Stone forced the Red Cross guys to climb out over the walls, practically at gunpoint. Twenty metres high, but scalable. Then word came there were US and Brit interrogators stuck in cellars of the fort. Trapped with the bodies of twenty more Uzbeks and Taliban after a grenade blast. Stone and Hooper went down to bring them out. Another stupid thing Hooper had agreed to. That guy needed to choose his friends better. Thirty-four steps below ground.

Stone’s cage rattled downwards. Strangely muffled, like there was no echo at all. Like he was sealed in the middle of the earth, where sound and light don’t exist anymore, where his own existence had become entirely theoretical. Theoretically possible to be in that cage. But a very foolish place to find yourself.

Like the place he’d found himself when Hooper had risked his neck to go with him. Thirty-four steps below Kalai Kumza. Stone killed seven Taliban who’d been occupying steps twenty-nine to thirty-four at the bottom, the last two with face shots as they turned back up the steps. The first took it in the upper lip and the second directly in the right eye. Their heads exploded like coconuts filled with raw meat, all shell and blood and weird white stuff. A CIA guy in the chamber below, an ex-Marine, had been holding them off with an empty pistol. A fine effort. He’d used every round in every weapon he could find. When they got to him, he wanted to run right out up the steps. Stone knew better. The C130’s were already outside, pouring fire from their.50 calibre Gatling guns into the Taliban in the compound. The B52’s would be overhead soon. It would be an extinction-level event if they went up those steps. Thirty-four steps down, below many metres of mud baked two centuries ago. They might have a chance. Just might. But it was a very foolish place to find yourself.