“Pillows?”
Ted Philby was standing in front of Alex. He was several inches taller than him and quite a lot heavier. He had fallen into a combat stance and Jack wondered if he was about to start a physical fight. Meanwhile, Alex stood his ground. Outside, the sirens were still blasting. The children had disappeared back to their rooms. “Pillows aren’t going to protect the kids from gunfire.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Mr Philby,” Alex said. “We’re leaving now. I need you to drive the coach. I think it’s the only way out of here. If you won’t do that, Jack will.”
“I can drive it,” Jack said, although she wondered if she would be able to manage such a massive vehicle as a school coach. She noted that Alex hadn’t handed the security man the keys.
“The coach is parked right next to the train,” Philby said. “It’s in plain sight … in open ground. How are you proposing to get anywhere near? Are you going to hide behind the pillows? Is that your big idea?”
Alex didn’t answer. The schoolchildren were reappearing, each one of them holding a pillow made of thick foam, which they had taken from their beds. Jack was pleased that they had all decided to rally round Alex. They were young and they were afraid but they believed in him.
Alex ignored the security man. “Let’s go,” he said.
He led the way to the main door. There was activity all over the coke works, with men running in different directions, shouting orders at one another as if they had forgotten the walkie-talkies they all carried. The lights had come on in the block which Eduardo and Giovanni Grimaldi occupied. Alex swept his eyes across the tangled pipework, the huge tower with its slanting conveyor belt, the steel chimneys, the locomotive and the coach. For the moment, it seemed that the guards were concentrating their efforts on Sector Five, the area where Philby and Jason Green had been kept prisoner. The guard must have returned to find them missing and that was why he had raised the alarm. So far, it hadn’t occurred to the twins or to anyone else that the schoolchildren might be trying to escape. That would change soon enough. They had maybe two minutes to make their move before they were discovered.
Alex looked back at the children, crowded together in the corridor, still in pairs. “I want you all to stay close together and look after each other,” he instructed them. “There may be gunfire but don’t be scared. Remember that these people need you alive. You’ve got a teacher with you. You’ve got Jack. And you’ve got the deputy head of security. So let’s go.”
He stepped outside and ran the short distance to a cylindrical gas tank which he had noticed earlier and which would provide cover for all of them before they set off on the next part of the journey. The worst of it was that they were fully exposed for the first twenty paces and Alex counted every one of them, worried that someone would hear the crunch of so many footsteps on gravel. In fact, the noise of the sirens drowned out any sound and it occurred to Alex that the Grimaldis had made another mistake. Their own security system was working against them. Even so, he hardly dared breathe until the last of the children – two girls in pigtails, both of them clutching their pillows – had arrived, with Jack bringing up the rear.
Meanwhile, Ted Philby took in his surroundings. The station platform with the locomotive train was directly in front of them. It was on the other side of the retort house, the concrete tower which rose fifty metres over their heads, blocking their way. The coach was parked right next to the locomotive, facing the same direction, as if the two technologies, one old and one new, were in competition with each other. If Alex really was determined to reach the coach – and Philby still thought it was suicide – he should go straight ahead. Instead, he veered over to the right, actually steering the children away from the relative safety of the platform.
Philby caught up with Alex and hissed, “You’re going the wrong way! The coach is over there!”
“We can’t go that way,” Alex said. “Look!”
He pointed. There were two more guards, both armed with machine guns, positioned high up on a steel bridge that ran across the compound. They alone had remained where they were when the alarm broke out. They had a commanding view of the ground below them – and that included the open space beside the coach. If Alex tried to take the children that way, they would be mown down before they could get anywhere near.
“OK.” Philby scowled. “That’s exactly what I told you. We can’t get anywhere near the coach. So let’s do this my way. Out through the fence…”
But Alex was already moving. He had seen more guards moving through the latticework of light and shadow, approaching the accommodation block they had just left, finally coming to check up on their most valuable prisoners. It was time to get out of here.
He ran forward, not heading for the platform but the base of the retort tower and the door that led into it. Alex was gambling everything on the next few moments. If the door was locked, he would have to use the chisel – or worse still, the gun – to break it open and that would not just waste precious seconds, it might alert the guards as to where they were. He reached it ahead of the others and grabbed the handle. With a sense of relief, he felt it turn. The door was stiff but it opened. He went inside.
He found himself in a vast brick chamber, with light shafting in through windows that rose all the way to the ceiling, at least eight storeys above his head. It was impossible to say how this building had once operated. Everything was black. The floor and the walls were covered with soot that hadn’t been touched for years. The very air stank of it. There were great lumps of machinery clinging to the brickwork, sitting on brackets. Pipes big enough for a man to crawl through ran past steel ovens suspended over what must have been a furnace. Alex guessed that this was where the whole process had taken place. The coal was brought in by steam trains. It was carried up the conveyor belt into the tower. It was heated and turned into coke with all the gases and other chemicals being separated before they were whisked away to other parts of the compound. He had arrived at what had once been the flaming heart of Smoke City. But the fires had gone out long ago and all that remained was blackened and dead.
There was only one thing he had been hoping to see and there it was in front of him: a spiral staircase leading all the way to the loading platform at the top. It was made of steel, with a low rail twisting round and round. It looked safe. It would need to be, to take the weight of fifty-six people.
Alex waited until all the children were assembled and Jack had closed the door behind them. The sirens were still wailing but they sounded more distant. The walls were thick, almost soundproof, and he could speak without fear of being overheard.
“Is anyone afraid of heights?” he asked.
Quite a few of the children looked doubtful but nobody put up their hand.
“We have to get to the coach without being seen,” Alex explained. “This is the best option. There’s a slide that goes all the way to the platform next to the railway. That’s what we’ll use. We’re going to sit on the pillows and slide down … just like a ride in a funfair. If you’re nervous, don’t look down. I’ll go first to make sure it’s all right.”
Jack was listening to all this in amazement. She had secretly wondered why Alex had brought them all here and had very nearly challenged him. Now she understood. The conveyor belt couldn’t be seen from outside: it was enclosed by two walls and a ceiling made out of sheets of corrugated iron. Alex could use it to smuggle the children out and the guards wouldn’t know what was happening. Once they had reached the platform, they would be concealed behind the steam engine and they could slip round to reach the coach. She looked up, craning her neck. The top of the conveyor belt was a very long way away, at least two hundred steps, but she was sure they could do it. Briefly, she met Alex’s eyes and nodded at him. She had never seen him like this before. Perhaps it was because he was getting older but he seemed more confident than ever.
Ted Philby wasn’t impressed. He had already reached the metal staircase and was staring up with a frown on his face. “I’ll go first,” he said, “if you really want to go through with this. But if you ask me, you’re going to get the whole lot of us killed.”
He began to climb. Alex went next, then half the children, then the drama teacher, the rest of the children and finally Jack, her white nurse’s uniform already very much the worse for wear. The steel steps shuddered slightly as they took the weight of so many people and soot showered down. But the staircase was securely bolted to the wall. It held. It was still a lot further than Jack had thought. She had counted one hundred and ninety steps when she made the mistake of looking down. Her stomach lurched. It would be all too easy to slip and tumble over the handrail and, falling from this height, she would be smashed to pieces on the floor below.
The sirens had stopped. There was a rattle of machine-gun fire from outside the tower. The children froze on the spiral staircase, the ones at the front high above the ones who were behind. A few of them began to whimper.
“It’s all right,” Alex called down. “Either it’s a false alarm or they’re shooting at each other. They don’t know we’re here. And we’re almost at the top.”
It was true. They set off again and a minute later, Alex turned the last corner and reached a metal platform with a square hatch in front of it. Ted Philby was already there, looking down the long, black slide that led to the platform. Once, machinery would have kept the conveyor belt moving slowly upwards, carrying the coal up to the top, where men would be waiting to shovel it away. Now it was silent and still. And steep. It disappeared into blackness.
“Great work, Alex,” Philby sneered. “Just take a look at that! You come out the other end too fast, you’re going to break both your legs.”
“I thought you said you’d go first,” Alex muttered.
“No way. This is your crazy idea. You try it out.”
Philby stood aside and Alex edged past. He sat down, then had a last thought. “I need something to sit on,” he said.
The security man swore under his breath, then stripped off his jacket and handed it to Alex. “Use this.”
“Thanks.” Alex folded it underneath him.
“Don’t thank me. You’re still going to get yourself killed.”
Alex stared into the darkness. “I’ll give you a signal if it’s clear. Then send the rest down.”
He pushed himself forward. At once he began to slide, picking up speed very quickly. The conveyor belt was made of leather, or some sort of thick canvas, and apart from a few scattered pieces of coal, the surface was completely smooth. The jacket protected him from friction burns. There had been some light at the top and he could make out a very faint square at the end, but the middle was completely dark and as he shot down, Alex got a sense that he was being swallowed up, the corrugated-iron walls rushing past on both sides and over his head. It was only when it was too late that he remembered what Ted Philby had said. If he didn’t slow down, he might do himself serious damage. There were no soft cushions waiting for him at the end, nothing but hard cement. Alex was half lying on his back, the stale breeze whipping across his face. He stretched out with his hands and dug his heels in. It made no difference. He knew that he was out of control. He couldn’t see. His face was once again covered in soot. It was working its way into his eyes.
And then he was spat out into the fresh air. For a horrible moment, he felt himself falling with nothing beneath him. Then the backs of his legs and his shoulders came into contact with some sort of ramp, which he recognized, seconds later, as the pyramid of broken coal he had seen before. He was sliding down it, the loose pieces slowing his progress. By the time he hit the platform beside the railway, he was barely moving at all. He got to his feet, dusting himself down. He had made it – and in one piece.
Half a dozen guards had arrived at the accommodation block where the children had been held. Alex could hear them quite distinctly. But he was hidden behind the coal pile at the far end of the platform. He climbed back up and waved his hands, hoping that Philby would see him at the top end of the conveyor belt. About thirty seconds later, the first of the Linton Hall children appeared, shooting out of the corrugated-iron tunnel and ending his journey on the coal slide. He was a plump ten-year-old, whose face and blond hair were now covered in black smuts. Alex went over to him to check that he was all right.
“That was fantastic!” the boy whispered. “Can I do it again?”
It took another ten minutes for all the children to arrive. Alex suspected that quite a few of them might have needed persuading before they had launched themselves into the darkness. Jack and the drama teacher came down one after another and finally Philby arrived, his white shirt filthy, his trousers torn. Alex handed him back his jacket. It was completely ruined.
“So what next?” the security man asked, putting it back on with a scowl. He didn’t seem impressed that they had got this far without being seen.
Jack had already begun taking a headcount. Unlike Philby, she loved seeing Alex in command. She couldn’t believe that they were together again. “They’re all here!” she announced.
“Right.” Once again, Alex addressed the entire group. He was grateful that the sirens had finally been silenced. The only sound in the compound now was the soft puffing of the train. He kept his voice low. “Nobody can see us here. We’re going underneath the locomotive train. Be careful you don’t touch anything or you may burn yourself. The coach is parked on the other side. Mr Philby’s going to drive us out of here.” He glanced at Philby who nodded, briefly. “Once we start the engine, the guards will hear us. There may be some shooting. I want everyone to lie down on the floor, under the seats. Whatever happens, don’t stand up.”
“And where exactly do you want me to drive?” Philby demanded. “You may not have noticed, but there’s no road out of here.”
“We’ll have to drive along the railway track. We’re quite a long way from the tunnel but we’ll be safe once we’re on the other side.”
“Why don’t we take the train?” It was right in front of them, still steaming. Ready to go.
“Do you know how to drive it?” Alex asked.
Philby thought for a moment, then shook his head.
“Then it’ll have to be the coach.”
The children were huddled together, waiting in the shadows. None of the searchlights could reach the top end of the platform and they were concealed behind the great bulk of the train which sat there, white steam writhing between its wheels and coupling rods. The tender was behind it, piled high with coal, and Alex could imagine himself standing in the cab, feeding the furnace and feeling the extraordinary power driving him through the night. He really wished he could take it instead of the coach.
Alex signalled and they began to move. There was only one way to keep out of the light and, more importantly, out of sight of the two guards on the bridge. They had to stoop low underneath the driver’s cabin, wriggle across the tracks and then over the short gap to the waiting coach. With so many of them making the journey, it took far longer than he would have liked and he had heard renewed shouting from the accommodation block. Frankie Stallone had been discovered. The children had gone! They had to be somewhere in the compound. The search had already begun.
Alex helped all the children as they emerged from under the train. The front door of the coach was open and he counted the numbers as they climbed up, disappearing from view. Fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two … after what seemed like an hour, they were all inside. The drama teacher followed them in and suddenly, Jack was next to him. Philby hadn’t yet appeared.
Alex took out the ignition keys and handed them to Jack. “Where’s Philby?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he’s gone missing, you’ll have to drive,” he said.
Jack glanced at the keys. “You’ve done brilliantly,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re getting out of here.”
“We’re not there yet,” Alex said.
She smiled at him and climbed up into the coach. Alex was left standing in the narrow corridor between the coach and the train.
He heard a sound and turned round, expecting to see Philby. Instead, a guard stood facing him, just ten paces away. Alex recognized the dead eyes, the mouldy skin. It was Skunk, the man who had been sent to film his death. He had come from behind the coal pile and there could be no doubt about what he was going to do. Skunk was carrying a machine gun. He had seen Alex. Slowly, smiling, he took aim.
Alex stood there, frozen, as the black muzzle of the automatic weapon rose up towards him. He knew that it was too late, that he had no hope of escaping. Even so, he reached behind him for the gun that was still tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Everything was happening in slow motion. He was rooted to the ground. His muscles seemed to be locked together.
And then Ted Philby appeared from nowhere, lunging out from behind the steam train, throwing himself at Skunk. Somehow he got his hands on the machine gun, the two men dancing together on the edge of the railway track, steam hissing around them as they fought for control. Philby had his back to Alex but he managed to twist round and shout over his shoulder. One word. “Move!”
A second later, there was a burst of machine-gun fire, deafening at such close quarters. Alex saw splatters of blood appear across Philby’s back, forming hideous red stains which spread through his shirt. Alex had disliked the security man. He had found him annoying and unhelpful. But in the end, Philby had sacrificed himself to save him and the thought of it broke the spell and propelled him towards the waiting coach. Jack had seen what had happened. At exactly that moment, she started the engine. The Mercedes-Benz Tourismo coughed into life. There was a hiss of hydraulics and the lights came on inside. The headlights cut through the darkness. Alex reached the open door just as Skunk fired a second time. Bullets flashed over his head and smashed the wing mirror, sending it spinning into the night.
“Go!” Alex shouted. “We’ve got to go!”
Behind the wheel, Jack rammed the gear into first and stamped down on the accelerator. The coach was like nothing she had ever driven before but at least the controls were more or less the same as an ordinary car: a steering wheel, a clutch, brakes, a gearstick. There was a terrible grinding sound and for a moment she thought she was going to stall. Then the coach jerked forward. Alex was at the door, crouching down as more bullets slammed into the side, shattering one of the windows.
“Where am I going?” Jack shouted.
“Just keep moving!” Alex shouted back.
Somewhere in the compound, a searchlight swung round to find them and suddenly the interior of the coach exploded in blinding white light. The children lay stretched out on the floor, some of them hiding their eyes, terrified. Sitting in the driver’s seat, her hands tight on the wheel, Jack stared through the front window, dazzled, hardly able to see anything. Then Alex was next to her, squinting through the glass.
“There!” He pointed and she saw what looked like two wagons.
“That’s the wrong way, Alex!”
“Trust me, Jack!”
He was steering her away from the railway, away from the only route out of the coke works. They were heading back into danger, towards the guards, towards the other machine guns.
“Go round the wagons!” Alex shouted. “Make a circle!”
“This is crazy!” Jack shouted the words in exasperation but she did exactly what he wanted. He had crossed the world to find her. He had managed to get them at least some of the way out of here. She didn’t doubt him for a second. Wrenching the wheel, she sent the coach in a twisting circle around the two wagons, the wheels spitting up gravel and dust. The movement caught the guards by surprise. For a moment, nobody fired at them. She noticed that Alex had taken out his gun. He was aiming out of the open door.
“OK! Now we need to get onto the railway!” he shouted.
“I’m heading there!”
Jack knew exactly what to do. Ahead of her, there was the turntable that had been used to rotate the train and beyond it, a crossing point, a ramp that had once allowed vehicles to drive over the rails. She steered towards it, feeling the huge weight of the coach behind her as it careered across the gravel. At the same time, Alex fired out of the door. He didn’t seem to be aiming at anything in particular, but as the coach leapt forward, Jack saw the impossible happen. A massive fireball exploded behind them, spreading out and becoming a wall of flame that rose up to the sky, separating them from the rest of the compound. She could even feel the heat on the back of her neck. Alex had somehow created a furnace to protect them.
Standing in the doorway, Alex smiled to himself, pleased with his work. The idea had come to him on his way to the outhouse where the two men were being held. He had seen sulphuric acid in containers. He also remembered the two wagons that he had noticed when he first arrived. They were nothing more than oversized fuel tanks on wheels and they were filled with a highly flammable liquid … benzene. Before he had released Ted Philby and the drama teacher, he had returned to the storage hut and used the chisel to break a hole in one of the flasks. Then, with great care – he would be badly burned if any of the liquid splashed onto his hands – he had carried the flask over to the wagons and poured the acid onto them. From that moment onwards, it had been eating its way through the metal, hopefully releasing the benzene onto the floor below.
And just now, as the coach swung past, he had fired all six bullets at the wagons. At least one of the bullets had hit and caused a spark. The result was more impressive than he could possibly have hoped. Several of the guards had been caught in the blaze. He had heard them screaming. The rest of them were on the other side of a barricade of fire. For the moment, the children were safe.
Alex was almost thrown off his feet as the front wheels of the coach hit the ramp that Jack had seen. He reached out and managed to grab hold of a silver railing as she swung round to the right. The coach tilted, threatening to crash onto its side. But a second later, she righted it so that now it was lined up on the track, two wheels on either side of the rails. The Blaina Tunnel was still a long way away, but if she continued in a straight line, eventually she would reach it.
She was driving over the wooden sleepers. Alex felt the vibrations punching through his legs and into his stomach as the wheels navigated the uneven surface. There was a fence ahead of them, a metal gate.
“Don’t stop!” Alex muttered.
“I wasn’t going to!” Jack replied.
It was too late anyway. The fence loomed up in the windscreen as the coach thundered into it, smashing it off its hinges and sending the pieces hurtling away into the night. There were more guards here, positioned on both sides. They no longer cared who they killed, lifting their weapons and strafing the coach with hundreds of bullets. The children screamed as the rest of the windows disintegrated, white glass fragments cascading down. Some of the bullets penetrated the coachwork, a jagged line of holes suddenly appearing in the metal panels. Light and dust poured in. It was incredible that the wheels hadn’t been hit. Or maybe the rubber was thick enough to absorb the bullets. The coach seemed to be going through its death throes as it clattered out of the compound.
A few seconds later they had plunged into the safety of darkness. The air stank of gunsmoke. The windscreen was cracked and all but one of the windows had gone. The luxury seats were covered in dust. The engine was howling and the entire vehicle was rattling as it accelerated along the sleepers. All they had to do was keep going straight and they would reach the tunnel. It occurred to Alex that they had no choice anyway. They were trapped, straddling the railway line. They couldn’t turn left or right.
But they were away. That was the main thing. Alex clambered back into the main body of the coach and quickly checked that none of the schoolchildren had been hurt. It was difficult to be sure, with so many bodies lying on the floor and smashed glass everywhere, but there didn’t seem to be any blood. The drama teacher had taken charge and signalled that everything was all right so Alex turned and made his way back to the front, using any handhold he could find. They had slowed down but the floor was still shaking violently under his feet as they bumped over each and every one of the sleepers.
He reached Jack. She was hunched over the wheel, staring into the darkness. But even now there was a smile on her face. “You’re doing brilliantly,” he said.
“I can’t believe we’ve made it,” Jack said.
“We haven’t yet.” Alex looked out through the cracked front window. There was no sign of the tunnel but it was too dark to see anything. He guessed it was still a couple of miles away. “Can’t we go any faster?” he asked.
“I don’t dare, Alex. I’m going to rip out the tyres.”
“OK.”
Alex looked back the way they had come. The coke works were ablaze, the crimson glow stretching across the horizon and shimmering in the night sky. There must have been gallons of the benzene and it had spread everywhere, pooling around the other buildings which had themselves caught fire. The conveyor belt that had provided their escape was burning, the flames streaking diagonally up to the top of the bunker. There were other chemicals stored in the compound and these too ignited. Even as Alex watched, one of the outhouses blew itself apart with a blinding flash of yellow and red. Clouds of black smoke, like living things, were rolling over the ground. If the guards hadn’t already fled, there was no way they would survive.
“Alex…” Jack began. Her voice was little more than a whisper.
She had seen it in the mirror. He had seen it too. He should have expected it, prepared for it. Perhaps it explained what Ted Philby had been trying to do before he was killed. He had known it could be used against them.
The Midnight Flyer burst out of the smoke and the fire, sweeping them aside like a curtain, steaming towards them, already picking up speed. Alex saw the headlights blazing, the wheels turning, the chimney blasting out yet more smoke. When he had seen it at the platform, it had reminded him of a sleeping beast, but now it was very much awake and it was coming after them in a fury. They had to move faster. Otherwise it would devour them.
Jack called to him a second time and Alex had never heard such despair in her voice. She was still steering the coach over the sleepers, fighting to keep it under control. Now, with one hand, she pointed to the dashboard. “We’re running out of petrol!” she shouted.
Alex stared. How was that possible? He saw the fuel gauge, the needle hovering over the red. The engine coughed and the whole coach shuddered.
And still The Midnight Flyer came, drawing closer and closer, cutting down the distance between them, leaving the burning hell of the coke works far behind.