Ken McClure - Dust to dust

By now he was blinking constantly to clear away the sweat that was running freely into his eyes, but at least the perspiration from his body was reducing friction and allowing him to move more easily through the metal trunking. He stopped after three metres to turn on the torch again but still couldn’t see anything rigged in front of the fan. He turned off the torch and rested his head on his arms. Despair was threatening and was only being kept in its place by thoughts of a training sergeant of long ago, shouting at him in the mountains of North Wales when sleet was falling and winter winds were howling. ‘When you think you’ve got nothing left to give, Mr Dunbar… you fucking well have, so get off your arse and let’s do that all over again, shall we?’

Steven stopped about two metres from the fan and clicked on the torch. There it was, the most beautiful sight in the world, the protruding top of a round, pressurised container, by the look of it. It had been inserted in front of the fan from the room below. The trigger mechanism appeared primitively simple, a wire from the container attached to one of the fan blades. When the fan started turning, a valve would be ripped out of the top of the container and the contents would spray out into the airflow.

Steven moved closer and examined everything thoroughly to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, but as far as he could see he wasn’t. He slipped the plastic guard off one of the scalpels he’d brought with him and cut through the wire leading to the fan.

‘And that’s all there is to it,’ he murmured, letting his head fall forward on to his outstretched arms. He lay there motionless for fully a minute, waiting for his breathing to subside until it became as shallow as a sleeper’s. The sweat continued to trickle down his face but it didn’t bother him any longer, he even took childish pleasure in charting the path of each drop as it sought the easiest contour of his face to follow. It was over; he’d done it; they were safe. In a few moments he would start the long wriggle backwards and return to the lab. Once down there, they could press the door release with impunity, enter the airlock space and batter their way through the jammed outer door.

Feeling physically exhausted but filled with enormous relief, Steven summoned up the energy to start the retreat. As he’d feared, wriggling backwards proved to be even more difficult than going forwards: a different undulating motion was called for, a more unnatural movement that had him gasping for breath by the time he’d backed up to the junction. He started to lose his temper when he encountered difficulty in trying to make the ninety-degree turn backwards: his legs seemed too long.

He had exhausted his entire vocabulary of swear words, used in every combination he could think of, when he finally succeeded in making it round the corner. He had to rest for a few moments to recover his equilibrium, the merest suggestion of a cool breeze caressing his cheek…

The breeze became a hurricane; the fan had been switched on. Steven yelled out but had to bow his head against the blast as the implications hit home like stab wounds. Monk had returned; he was down there. Christ, he’d been in sight of the finishing line and this had to happen… Monk was going to win: he would still be able to set up his accident and get away with it.

For the second time in a few hours, Steven found himself facing the prospect of death without any hope of a reprieve. As she grew up, Jenny would tell her friends that her daddy had died in an accident when she was young, but at least Tally wouldn’t have to tell people she was a widow. ‘I’m so sorry, love,’ he murmured. ‘You were right, I was wrong.’

Bizarrely, his old training sergeant popped up inside his head again. ‘It ain’t over till it’s over, Mr Dunbar.’

Steven had to admit that what the maxim lacked in literary merit it had more than made up for as a mindset in the past. He would not face death with calm acceptance and dignity, as he had been prepared to do in the ambulance, but as a warrior who had served his country well and was looking for any opportunity to go down fighting right to the bitter end.

He’d left the torch and the other various bits and pieces up by the fan when he’d thought his task was over, but he still had one of the scalpels. he’d tucked into his watch strap on the inside of his wrist. This would be his only weapon, should he get a chance to use it, a slim steel handle with a painfully thin three-centimetre blade that would shatter on the slightest impact but had an edge so sharp it would cut flesh to the bone before anything was felt.

Steven knew that he was in no physical condition to take on Monk. Apart from the lingering after-effects of the earlier gassing, his escapade in the trunking had used up just about all the stamina he had. Monk was a borderline psychopath with MI5 training behind him and probably armed, although he wouldn’t want to use bullets if an ‘accident’ was still the plan.

‘Come along, Dunbar, don’t take all day,’ came the shout from below as Steven moved closer to the hatch and felt his feet slide into the gap. The voice sounded upper class and amused. Steven felt his throat tighten with apprehension as he started to rotate, pushing himself up on to his elbows and letting his feet dangle above the improvised platform while he looked down for a footing.

‘Easy now, we don’t want you falling and hurting yourself.’

Steven took in that Macmillan and Lukas were sitting on adjacent lab stools, their hands secured behind them, although he couldn’t make out how. He couldn’t see Monk and that was an important factor so he held himself in the gap, using his arms to keep himself suspended while he waited for him to speak again. He needed to know where Monk was so that he could obscure the presence of the scalpel on his descent.

‘No use delaying the inevitable, Dunbar,’ came the languid voice from below.

The sound came from his left.

Using up what he feared might be perilously close to the last of his remaining strength, Steven moved round the lip of the gap so that the outer aspect of his left arm would be facing Monk as he lowered himself. His feet made contact with the platform of lab furniture and it shook slightly as he steadied himself. Monk was standing some four metres away, looking relaxed and holding a gun in his right hand. Steven, exhausted, naked to the waist, bathed in sweat and covered in grime from the trunking, felt close to capitulation, but that sergeant was still in his ear. It ain’t over…

He hung his head, appearing totally exhausted but in reality looking for the most secure part of the platform, the bit that would give him most purchase to spring from if he got the chance to play his last gambit.

Monk took a step closer. ‘They told me you were SAS, Dunbar. Maybe it was the Girl Guides…’

The step closer was what Steven had been hoping for. Monk had moved into range and it was now or never. In one last, adrenalin-fuelled surge, Steven whipped out the scalpel from the inside of his left wrist, dropped down to the secure part of the platform he’d identified and launched himself headlong at Monk.

Monk didn’t see it coming. He’d been so completely in charge of events that the remote possibility of the exhausted wreck of the man in front of him turning into fourteen stone of flying avenger had not even appeared on his horizons. He had no time to contemplate his mistake. Steven brought the scalpel blade across his throat and brought his life to a very messy end as they both crashed to the ground.

Steven had intended nothing else. There had been no question of trying to overpower Monk and turn him over to the machinery of justice. That was for schoolboys’ comics and story books. His one chance of survival had been to kill Monk with one blow and he’d done it, a success that now had him leaning over a lab sink being very sick. When he’d recovered enough, he freed Macmillan and Lukas. He’d no sooner done so than he had to return to the sink.