Edward Grant - Rebellion

Desoto soon followed. He cradled his right arm with his left hand, and winced every time it moved.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Logan said.

“Bastards kept hitting me until something broke.”

“I had worse in training,” Bairamov said. “You’ll get a week in the hospital.” He rubbed his bruised face. “Maybe I’ll join you.”

Muffled voices echoed around the tunnel above them.

“Who’s…?” Desoto began. Logan put his free hand over Desoto’s mouth for a second, then grabbed Desoto’s shoulder, and Bairamov’s arm. The two prisoners could see no better than the girl in the darkness of the unlit cavern. He pulled them away from the wall, and toward the tunnel he’d entered from. He moved a few metres away, until he could barely see the ledge. Then hid them behind the pillars.

As the echoing footsteps grew louder, He turned off the goggles’ IR illuminators. He didn’t need them right now, as the tunnel began to glow with the beam of a flashlight that swung as the man carrying it strode along the tunnel.

Three men stepped out onto the ledge, holding rifles at their hips. They leaned over the edge, then pointed their rifles down, and opened fire. The girl’s scream was barely audible over the gunfire as they fired dozens of rounds down toward where Desoto and Bairamov had been just a moment before.

The gunfire stopped.

The beam of light from the flashlight swung down from the ledge, and across the wall below. It stopped at the first set of dangling ropes. Then swung to the next.

Then it swung out across the water.

“Where are you?” one of men yelled. “Come out. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Logan almost chuckled at the lie.

Instead, he grabbed a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it their way. It clattered as it landed on the ledge, and rolled until it hit the wall behind the men. They yelled, and the beam of light swung back around, pointing toward the tunnel, then along the walls, searching for the grenade.

Then the grenade exploded. The flashlight flew across the ledge, clattering against the wall as it fell to the ground, with its beam shining out across the water.

Two of the men toppled from the ledge, and splashed down into the cavern. The footsteps of the third echoed from the rock as he raced away, back along the tunnel. Logan raised his pistol and fired half a dozen rounds at the rapidly receding man, but he disappeared in the darkness as the rounds ricocheted from the walls behind him.

One of the men in the water was still moving, his arms slowly paddling as though he was trying to stand. His breath came in gasps, and he mouthed words, but nothing intelligible came out. A dark patch was spreading across the water beside him, deep red in the glow of the flashlight.

Bairamov grabbed the man from behind, and wrapped his muscular arm around the man’s neck. The man still struggled, slapping his hands against Bairamov’s arms, and trying to get hold of them.

“Not so much fun from this side, is it?” Bairamov said, and smiled. “Much more fun torturing helpless men.”

A sharp crack echoed around the cave as Bairamov snapped the man’s neck, then grabbed the man’s goggles before tossing him back into the water. The body floated away across the cave, with arms and legs outstretched.

Logan reached under the water, and felt around with his free hand until his fingers found the cold metal of a rifle. He grabbed it, and slung it over his shoulder. Then found the other, and handed it to Bairamov.

He pulled spare magazines from the dead man’s belt pouches, and pushed them into his own.

Logan tossed his pistol to Desoto, then turned his rifle over in his hands. H&K G90 gaussrifle, from the Prussians, not the Islamic State weapons the insurgents had been using before. He’d practised with a G90 during his foreign weapons training just a few months ago. And it would certainly be more useful than the pistol.

He unclipped the dead man’s body armour and belt, and helped Desoto put it on over his bare chest. Then slid the man’s goggles over Desoto’s head. Bairamov took the armour and belt from the other.

“Thanks, man,” Desoto said. “What do we do now?”

Logan nodded behind him.

Back toward the flooded tunnels.

“Follow me.”

Logan led the way through the tunnels. He could barely feel his legs any more, after the freezing water had sucked the heat away from his flesh for the best part of half an hour. Now it felt like ice right down to his bones. And his balls weren’t doing much better, either.

Hopefully they’d still work, if he ever needed them again.

The only sounds in the tunnels were the echoes of the water swishing around them as they strode through the darkness, the muffled yelling of the insurgents somewhere behind them, and the faint scratching and squeaking of the rats that had made a home in the mine.

The ridged pistol grip of the rifle was digging into his palm as he gripped it hard, ready to fire at anything that moved ahead of them in the glow of the goggles’ illuminators. The tunnels stank of stagnant water, mould, and rotting bodies.

He pulled the girl behind him by her hand. Her wet clothes clung to her skin, and she shivered and whined.

Desoto brought up the rear behind Bairamov, staring into the shadows behind them with his injured arm hanging loose, and pistol at the ready. Wearing the goggles, they could all see in the dark. The girl couldn’t. She wasn’t likely to try running away this time.

Bairamov swung his rifle toward her.

“So, McCoy. What’s your girlfriend doing here?”

“The insurgents tried to kill her too, sir.”

“Maybe they were trying to convince us she’s on our side.”

“I don’t think so, sir. They threw her down a mine shaft.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Same reason they killed everyone in Saint Jean, I imagine, sir. Same reason they killed the miners here.”

“All of them?”

“Dunno if it’s all of them, sir. But there are a heck of a lot of bodies in the river down in the valley, and in one of the caverns down here.”

Bairamov tapped the girl’s shoulder with the muzzle of his rifle. “Nice gang you hang with, girl.”

Her teeth chattered as she spoke.

“It wasn’t meant to be like that. We’re not Montagnards. We didn’t ask for them to do this.”

“It’s never meant to be like that. Everyone thinks life will be just wonderful if they can just get rid of the asshole in charge. One thing I’ve learned is that you’re always better off with the asshole you know, than the asshole you don’t.”

“Where’s all this water from, sir?” Logan said.

“The mine’s been closed for quite a while. I guess water must collect down here if they don’t pump it out. I doubt they want anyone here who’d interfere with what they’re planning.”

“And what is that?”

“I have no idea.”

Maybe those wheels Logan saw when he crawled into the mine were supposed to be used to pump out the water from these lower levels. They might well use men to turn them, to save having to bring in more machines. And those men were now floating, dead, in the water around them. The water could have been rising for weeks.

“What happened to you, anyway?” Logan said.

“When we stopped the truck outside the mine, they invited us in like old friends. I was just glad I got here alive, and would have trusted anyone with a friendly face after those assholes back at the village. Dumb idea.

“They shot the Compagnie men and driver on the spot, and surrounded us with RPGs. Nothing we could do but surrender. They’ve had us dangling in the water down here ever since. Except when they took one of us out to beat him.”