Dan padded away from the cells and edged along the far wall of the corridor, keeping his profile in the shadows.
A whirring mechanical noise emanated beyond an outer wall, while next to him candles had been placed in cavities dug into the wall, casting a dull light, and Dan realised that any power to the building would be from a diesel-powered generator. As he progressed along the passageway, he leaned across and blew out some of the candles, reducing visibility to a minimum.
He sniffed.
Someone, somewhere in the building, was cooking, and the fragrant aroma of spices and meat cut through the stagnant air.
The passageway widened, and the first of two doors were revealed. Dan wanted to explore, to get his bearings and work out where their captors were, but first he had to find a weapon.
He slipped past the doors after checking the way was clear and made his way through the rabbit-warren of corridors towards the arms cache he’d seen.
The sound of muted conversation and the occasional laugh reached his ears, and he realised that with the guard on duty in the cells, the rest of the men were relaxing. With food in their bellies and marijuana in their lungs, they’d be unaware of his movements.
He didn’t trust Salim though; the leader of the motley bunch of militants had already shown his sociopathic tendencies and would likely ignore any temptation to take recreational drugs in front of his men – especially with the likelihood of his paymasters arriving the following day.
He recalled that the passageway intersected with another at what he supposed was the mid-point of the fort; when he and Anna had been taken to the cells, they’d headed straight across the path of the other stone-hewn corridor, and he hadn’t had a chance to see what lay down either of the other passageways before his captors had pushed him onwards.
Now, he slowed his pace further as he approached the junction, the voices of the men filtering from the passageway to his left. He checked the way in front of his position to ensure it was clear, then to the right. Once satisfied no-one would find him on the loose, he edged around the corner to try to see where the noise was coming from.
A glow emanated from the end; firelight flickered over the walls, reflected from an open doorway to another room. Swirls of marijuana-fuelled smoke escaped into the passageway, twisting as they filtered towards the exposed beams that had once held a ceiling aloft, and Dan realised that the men were in the old kitchen area of the fort.
Laughter and cat-calling filled the space, together with the sounds of plates being scraped across a hard surface and the occasional loud belch.
He froze when Salim’s voice cut through the rest, his tone argumentative, the guttural tones of his native dialect echoing off the walls.
A silence followed his words, the only sound coming from a log that crackled loudly in the fire, and then one of the men guffawed, the rest joined in, and the moment passed.
Dan exhaled, letting some of the pressure that had built up in his chest to pass. Satisfied the men were going to be occupied for a while yet, Dan hurried across the intersection and back the way he’d been brought earlier that evening.
He soon drew level with the door to the room Salim had occupied, the table inside illuminated by a single candle. Dan’s mouth twitched as he ran his eyes over the contents of the table, and a refinement to his original plan began to form in his mind.
Taking a spare candle from the table, he lit it, then quickly exited the room, turned left, and finally rounded the corner to where he’d seen the guns and ammunition.
He left the candle on the floor just inside the door to avoid it falling over near any of the munitions crates and began to rummage through the contents of the wooden boxes.
Pushing the packing material aside, he soon pulled out two Russian-made pistols and an assault rifle, then turned to the other side of the room and pocketed as much ammunition as he could carry.
Finally, he crouched down next to a single box he’d spotted near the door, picked out one of the objects that lay inside, and tossed it in his hand, testing its weight, his heartbeat racing.
An idea struck him, and he grabbed a second grenade.
He snuffed out the candle, pulled the door until it was almost closed, and removed the pin from the first grenade. Sweat poured from his brow as he kept his thumb on the safety lever and wrapped the crude tripwire around it.
The trap set, he hurried back to Salim’s room, keeping his footsteps light on the stone floor.
Entering the space, he put the candle back where he’d found it, then reached out and picked up Salim’s decommissioned grenade.
He held it up next to the one he’d taken from the munitions room, turning them in the light from the candle that still flickered on Salim’s table.
They were identical.