Andy McDermott - The Midas Legacy

He retreated to give Nina space to climb out. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, helping him up.

‘I’ll be fine, so long as I don’t have to carry any sacks of coal.’ He surveyed their surroundings. ‘Okay, now where the hell are we?’

They had emerged in a tunnel, rectangular in cross-section rather than circular. Other passages branched off it. ‘This was the level they were digging out, wasn’t it? Maybe they haven’t finished it yet.’

Eddie’s gaze followed the path of the cables from the shaft to the ceiling, where they joined other thick skeins running overhead. ‘They all go that way,’ he said, pointing down one leg of the gloomy tunnel. ‘Those power lines we saw on the way up the mountain came in through the runway tunnel, so if we follow ’em, they should take us to the way out. Eventually.’

‘We’ve still got to get up there, though,’ Nina reminded him as they started down the passage. ‘I don’t think calling the elevator will be a good idea.’

‘Hopefully there’s more ladders— Oh balls.’ A sound from somewhere ahead: the echoing clatter of running feet, growing louder. ‘They’re probably not here to give us a guided tour.’ They hurried into a dimly lit side passage.

‘Where do you think this goes?’ Nina asked.

‘Somewhere that hasn’t got a shitload of soldiers running towards us, I hope.’ They rounded a corner, seeing a crossroads ahead. ‘Great, it’s a fucking maze.’

‘Look, more cables.’ Another set of heavy-duty power lines ran across the intersection. ‘Do we follow them?’

‘Yeah,’ he decided. ‘They probably join up with the ones behind us.’ They ran to the crossing and turned right.

The tunnel complex turned out to be extensive. Following the power cables, they went through chambers that had been completed but stood empty, awaiting new production lines. The chatter of the soldiers’ boots was still behind them, but dispersing as they spread out to search. The open manhole had been found.

Other noises became audible ahead. Underlying everything was the wail of an alarm, but through it they heard a constant chittering: the clash of metal tools against rock. ‘This must be where they’re digging,’ said Nina nervously, remembering that the slave workers were being overseen by numerous armed guards.

Eddie saw brighter lights where the tunnel opened out. ‘Shit, we might have to go through that to get to the way out.’

The cables ran into the new chamber. They had not recently passed any side routes that might safely skirt the excavations — and Nina’s glance back caught the distant flare of a flashlight. ‘They’re coming!’

‘Fuckeration,’ muttered Eddie. ‘Okay, we don’t have much choice…’

They slowed as they approached the end of the passage. A ragged cavern had been blasted out of the mountain’s heart, now being shaped by hand. Eddie crouched and led Nina behind a pile of rubble just inside to survey the scene. About two dozen prisoners were working in the irregular space, some hacking at the stone walls with picks while others cleared the debris and loaded it on to a conveyor belt heading down the tunnel into which the cables ran. They were overseen by three soldiers: two with Type 58 rifles, the third with a shotgun. The trio seemed unsure how to respond to the alarm. Even in the troops’ confused state, though, there was no way Nina and Eddie could reach the exit without being seen.

‘Okay, what do we do?’ Nina whispered.

Eddie’s gaze followed the conveyor, seeing a stack of red-painted wooden crates near the tunnel mouth. Explosives, he guessed; dynamite or something similar. A potential weapon, but he would be shot long before reaching them. He looked back at the piles of broken stone around the cavern’s perimeter. ‘Maybe we can sneak round these if we—’

A voice blared over a loudspeaker. Even without knowing the language, both recognised it as Bok’s. ‘What’s he saying?’ Nina wondered.

‘Probably warning about us,’ Eddie replied, but the sudden change in the guards’ expressions revealed that something else was going on. Confusion gave way to shock as Bok continued to bark commands — then the emotion spread to the workers, a wave of fear running through the chamber. A few broke from their places, pleading in horror.

That small show of resistance was enough to snap the soldiers out of their bewilderment. Faces turning as hard as the surrounding stone, they spread out, shouting at their prisoners and gesturing for them to gather together in the centre of the space. Most went meekly even in their obvious terror, but a few fled, scrambling behind the rubble.

‘Shit,’ Nina gasped. ‘They’re going to kill them!’ The alarm was probably a radiation warning, prompting an evacuation — and the slave workers were considered disposable, too much trouble to corral and bring to the surface.

A woman burst from the main group and sprinted around the edge of the cavern, towards the passage behind Eddie and Nina. Two soldiers hurried to intercept her, bellowing orders. She ignored them, crossing an open space between the mounds of rubble—

One running guard fired his shotgun. The frightened woman’s grimy clothing shredded in a spray of red as the pellets ripped into her chest. She tumbled limply to the floor, trailing blood. The prisoners screamed, more of them scattering.

The other soldiers turned, about to unleash automatic fire upon the helpless crowd—

There was a pickaxe on the pile of stones by Eddie. He snatched it up as he charged from cover at the man with the shotgun, swinging it — and impaling him through the back, its long spike bursting out of the soldier’s chest with a torn chunk of his heart transfixed upon the end. The Korean let out a gargling shriek, the Englishman grabbing his gun as he fell.

The nearest soldier spun in surprise—

Eddie lunged at him, pumping the shotgun to load a new shell and firing it into his stomach. The point-blank blast tore a hole right through the soldier’s body, a gruesome fountain of blood and intestines exploding out of his back.

The third soldier, forty feet away, whirled to face the new threat—

Eddie rapidly pumped the shotgun again before body-slamming the dead man at chest height and ramming the weapon straight through the gory hole in his torso. Bullets smacked into the corpse’s upper body and punched messily out just above the Englishman’s head.

Hand inside the dead soldier’s guts, he pulled the trigger again.

The shotgun boomed. Forty feet was still well within its lethal range, the tightly packed spray of red-hot pellets reducing the North Korean’s face and upper chest to bloody mince. He staggered backwards, firing a last few rounds before collapsing.

Nina scrambled over the debris. ‘Eddie! They’re coming, behind us!’ The tramp of approaching feet had grown faster at the sound of gunfire.

‘Get that gun!’ he shouted, pointing at the last soldier’s fallen rifle. She ran past her husband as he snatched up the second man’s weapon and hurried back to the rubble near the tunnel entrance. He dived on to the pile of stones, taking aim at the opening.

More soldiers rushed from the passage—

Eddie’s rifle blazed, bloodily cutting down the half-dozen North Koreans. He jumped up and ran to the fallen troops. One was still moving, clawing for his gun. A single shot to the back of his skull ended the threat. The Yorkshireman peered around the corner. No movement in the gloom. ‘Nina, we’re clear. Come on!’ He swapped his empty weapon for one of the fully loaded ones on the floor, then headed for the exit.

‘What about the workers?’ Nina said. She had picked up the Type 58, the prisoners regarding her fearfully. ‘The soldiers will kill them!’