'It's beginning to look like it.'

'Fuck me. Well if they're still alive, they've still got our radios, so remember: careless talk saves lives. Find them. Mercury out.'

They listened to the exchange standing perfectly still, barely breathing, the volume down as low as was still audible so as not to carry beyond their position. Ray felt his hairs prickle as he heard Simon's voice for the first time in all those years. The accent was softened and his pronunciation more crisp, like he was speaking to foreigners, but it was unmistakably him. The other voices confirmed that he was speaking to foreigners; though like the assassin on the bridge, this was indicated by a neutrality of accent rather than any stumbling English.

'Schoolboys,' Angelique whispered portentously.

'I was just thinkin' the same thing. That truck was parked 455.

outside Burnbrae Academy while they went in and got me. Schoolboys are inquisitive.'

'Resourceful too, by the sound of it. It must have been them who sabotaged that gun. And if they've sabotaged one . . .'

'That sounds like a dangerous assumption,' Ray warned.

'You're right. Just thinkin' out loud. Hoping out loud. Let's stick to what we know for sure. Personnel: there's Darcourt, callin' himself Mercury. Jones is the dead one, but there's another Jones as well. There's also Strummer, May and Matlock. That's five at least.'

Twelve. Minus the stiff.'

Twelve?'

'The codenames: Mercury, May, Strummer, Matlock, two Joneses: Queen, the Sex Pistols and The Clash. Rock bands, all of them four-piece.'

'Yeah, that's where the code names came from, but it doesnae mean-'

'You wouldnae have two Joneses if you didnae need all twelve names. There's eleven still out there, Angelique. Those five plus Taylor and Deacon, Simonon and Headon, Lydon and Cook.'

'What about Vicious?'

'Simon thought Sid Vicious was a tit.'

'But he's cool with Freddie Mercury?'

'You'd be surprised.'

'Okay. Eleven of them out there, and they're now actively lookin' for intruders. At least we know the odds. Come on.'

Angelique quickened the pace as they resumed their ascent, then drew to another halt when they reached the surge chamber. She played the torchlight around, picking out platforms either side as the tunnel widened into a 456.

hexagon, its walls extending out of sight into the rock above. There was a tall lip where the tailrace met the chamber, meaning that a certain volume was required to accumulate before it would spill over and begin draining down into the loch. On the other side, there was water filling the hexagon two or three feet below the lip, and, according to the leaflet, this was because the tunnel plunged sharply before the chamber, creating a steep upslope to slow the rushing waters exiting the turbines. The shaft overhead took further sting out of it, then it spilled steadily out of the chamber and down into the tailrace.

They climbed the ladder on to the platform on the left, where Angelique found a switch and illuminated the chamber via inset lighting panels. Two doors were now visible on opposite sides of the pool. The one on the right said 'Machine Hall'; its counterpart Transformer Chambers'.

'That's what we want,' Angelique said, indicating to the left. 'The cable shaft goes from the transformers to the pylons up top.'

Above the entrance to the tailrace, Ray could also now see a wheel-operated valve on one wall. Next to it, a notice warned: 'Maintenance procedures only. Automatic override during generation. Manual override in Control Room.'

He gazed down at the lip, where there was a rubber- lined indentation running the width of the tunnel.

'What are you looking at?' Angelique asked, having already gone through the door then stuck her head back out to see what was keeping him.

'A valve. For sealing off the tunnel, I think.'

'Why would anybody want to do that?'

'Maintenance, according to this. And how about if there 457.

might be guys with guns coming down here looking for the late Mick Jones?'

'Good shout. Close it. It's one fewer angle they can attack us from.'

'Whereas in the cable shaft, there'll only be two: above and below.'

'Just hurry up.'

The wheel moved at a finger-blisteringly grudging pace, which Ray at first put down to the initial stiffness that accompanied the turning of any such circular device, from valves to jar-lids, but there was no sudden easing, and the whole procedure passed at the same rate until the door was sealed. Fortunately, the only grinding came from Ray's bones, so at least it didn't make any noise. He gave his aching shoulders a shake, then walked quickly through the door into a dark and narrow passage, lit only by the rooms it connected.

After the darkness of the tunnel and the low, striplight flicker of the surge chamber, the transformer room made Ray feel like a pit-pony, stumbling dazed into the brightness. There were three massive machines housed in the chamber, bare rock on the walls and corrugated aluminium insulating the ceiling, reflecting back lighting already so bright it was easy to believe the entire station's output was required to power it.

The transformers sat to his right, against one of the rock walls, fed by grey steel pipes and tubes like they were gigantic iron lungs and the patients inside had paid for the gear with their Kensitas coupons. Great red coils, twice his height, jutted upwards from each like defensive spines on metallic dinosaurs, and all around Ray the air hummed with an electric buzz that seemed to vibrate his very bones.

He couldn't see Angelique, and was about to call out 458.

when he remembered how suicidally stupid that could be. Looking up, he observed nine thick, black cables, three from each transformer, threaded through steel guidance loops as they were drawn into a gap in the ceiling. There were three cables on each wall of the overhead shaft, and a ladder on the fourth, but no Angelique. There had to be a stairway somewhere to access the bottom end of the vent, and that was where she'd be.

A door came into view as Ray walked past the first of the transformers, opening outwards as he approached. Thank fuck, he thought, having endured a momentary insecurity unnervingly reminiscent of turning around in a department store and discovering his mum was nowhere to be seen. The memory made him think of Lost in the Supermarket, not a very comforting recollection either, given its immortal rendering by The Bacchae.

'Machine Hall Access' was denoted in heavy black type, legible now that Ray had rounded the transformer and the opening door was at a less obtuse angle. Beyond it was a closed second door, at ninety degrees to the first, bearing the legend 'Cable Shaft Access', the significance of which hit his brain about half a second before a bullet hit his chest.

Ray fell backwards, grunting with pain, his memory reminding him he was wearing kevlar and his nerve- endings loudly disputing the benefits. Two men had come through the passage, the first reflexively responding by drawing a pistol and firing a single shot. By the time Ray opened his eyes, the man had crossed the floor and was standing above him, legs astride, pointing the pistol at his head, a shotgun slung across his back. His eyes were narrowed, finger on the handgun trigger. Nobody had fucked with his weapon, that was painfully sure.

459.

'Say your prayers, asshole,' he taunted, before his eyes suddenly widened in incomprehension. 'Ash?' he asked, incredulous, the query giving the still reeling Ray time to recognise him as one of the goons who'd abducted and later mock-executed him. Boyle, he'd called himself then; but which rock-star handle was he going under now?

'Howdy,' Ray responded, breathless. The second man moved into view alongside, pointing a machine gun. Ray didn't recognise him.

'What the fuck are you doing here?'

'I missed you guys,' he replied. He kept his eyes firmly on Boyle because he knew if he looked elsewhere, he'd be bound to look up, and then they'd both be screwed. Both? Everybody.

'Who is this prick?' the second gunman asked. 'Is he a cop or what? May said there was something funny about him, something Mercury was holding back.'

Boyle nodded, bemused. 'I think we need to get the two of them together and ask a few questions, don't you, Mr Matlock? Get him on his feet.'

The second gunman hauled Ray upright, grabbing the speargun from him and throwing it to the ground. Boyle looked at it witheringly.

'Who were you hoping to kill with that? The Little Mermaid? Come on.'

Boyle turned to lead the way, Matlock at Ray's back, giving him a shove in the shoulder blades like he didn't know which way was forward. Ray heard a thump, as though somebody had dropped a large cabbage, and felt something spray his wetsuit at the shoulder. He and Boyle turned around simultaneously to see Matlock teeter unsteadily on his feet, eyes expressing confusion. There was a spear jutting through the front of his neck, pointing 460.

downwards at an acute angle, blood pouring off the end of it like it was a burst pipe. His right hand reached up in exploratory fashion, as though a fly had landed on his throat, before he collapsed like a suddenly discarded puppet.

Boyle looked upwards for the source just as the source dropped behind him in a flash of black. He spun around to point the pistol, but there was already a foot travelling to meet his wrist. Ray heard a crack of breaking bone as the weapon spun away from Boyle's hand and skidded on the solid concrete. He then had to dive clear as Boyle's head jerked backwards and his body was thrown clean off his feet by the force of the next kick. The gunman's heels flailed at the floor as he tried to regain balance, but he only succeeded in sustaining his momentum a few feet more, slamming the back of his head against one of the transformers with a dampened clang. Boyle slumped down into a sitting position, more by accident of the angle at which he'd landed than any control he was able to exercise. His head rolled to one side, eyes open, blood pouring from his nose into his slack-jawed open mouth, enough to drown him if he wasn't already dead.

[LGG] 2 [TL] -1.

Boyle wasn't the only one gaping. Ray was agog, looking back and forth between the two gunmen and their sole assailant.

Angelique breathed out a long sigh and gave him an almost apologetic look in acknowledgement of what she had wreaked.

'Don't fuck with the Glesga polis,' she said quietly with a shrug.

'I think now would be a good time for me to apologise for anything remotely disrespectful I might have uttered 461.

over the past twenty-four hours,' Ray told her. 'And can I just say thank you, too.'

'Don't mention it. Grab that pistol, and don't forget your speargun in case we meet the Little Mermaid. Then let's get these bastards out of sight. If somebody finds them, I don't want it to be right underneath this shaft.'

'Anything you say.'

They dragged the bodies into the passage connecting the transformer room to the surge chamber. Ray helped himself to one of the walkie-talkies and lobbed the other into the water.

'Ditch the weapons too,' Angelique said. 'Apart from the pistol he fired. We know that works.'

'You're telling me.'

'The rest we can't trust.'

They tossed the other three guns into the hexagonal pool, then Angelique led the way up to the vent shaft access.

'I'll go first,' she said, as they reached the ladder. 'You climb as fast as you can and do not, under any circumstances, look down. If someone does spot us in this shaft, we're dead anyway, so it's no' gaunny matter whether you see it comin'. What's the time?'

Ray looked at his watch. Ten to two.'

'Right. Try and think about what you'd normally prefer to be doin' this time of a Saturday afternoon.'

Ray did. And it involved avoiding ladders when someone was trying to shoot him.

The sound from the transformers covered that of their climb; the vibration having devoured the gunshot, a few metallic footfalls were mere garnish. Ray's fear of falling off was salved partially by the protective rings encircling the ladder, while the fear of what might be imminently pursuing them below was with every step being superseded 462.

by that of what unavoidably awaited at the top. Seeing how many bundles of explosives you could lob before the enemy clocked you and detonated the rest sounded like a shite idea for a teamplay mod, but he was already logging on to the server and it was too late to hit ESC.'At long fucking last,' Simon muttered to himself, walking across the machine hall to where May had just emerged from Aqueduct One, nearly forty-five minutes after the rest of the drilling detail. Over the past half-hour Simon had been regularly tempted to take a trip topside to see what was keeping him, but was restrained by the experienced knowledge that the bastard took even more time when he knew you were looking over his shoulder.

The look-outs had been pulled down, no evidence having emerged of any evacuation at Cromlarig or any attempted incursion by the authorities. All they had to worry about now was what had happened to Jones and the two barn doors he'd been ordered to hit.

Taylor and Matlock had been first on the case, joined later by the rest of the newly relieved drilling crew. There was no word so far, though with so many tunnels and so much electricity running through the place, it was possible they had already found their answers but been unable to relay anything back. If it turned out the teenage saboteurs were somehow still alive (as opposed to Jones merely having freaked out and taken their corpses off to a quiet corner to do something that didn't bear thinking about), then in truth it wasn't the biggest worry he might have had to deal with at this stage.

Simon met May with a warm smile. It never helped to give the moody bastard the impression you were anything less than delighted with his efforts.

463.

'Ready for curtain-up?' he asked.

May gave a satisfied nod. "The fat lady's doing her vocal warm-up exercises. She threw us a few artistic tantrums, but she promises she'll be onstage at three.'

'Well, she's got an excellent manager. What about the pattern?'

'I started off with the alternative, concentrated configuration at the central buttress, but when Deacon got us the second drill, I estimated we had time to revert to the original. I was right.'

'Whatever I'm paying you, remind me to double it next time.'

'Yeah, right.'

'You managed not to cut any corners?'

'Just one. We didn't cement the charges.'

'Will that affect the blast?'

'No, it was just a security measure, so that they couldn't be tampered with. As we were running late, the stuff wouldn't have dried in time anyway.'

'Oh dear. So we're wide open if someone manages to suss our plan, break into the mountain and breach all our defences in the next half-hour.'

May returned Simon's grin. 'Wide open, yeah. How's things this end? I hear there's some problem with Jones.'

'That's what I get for sending a man to do a boy's job.'

'What?'

'It's nothing to worry about. He found our saboteurs: couple of kids. He was supposed to kill them and then head up top, but he's disappeared. So have they.'

'Doesn't sound like nothing to worry about to me.'

'If they're alive, their chief concern will be staying that way. They're not gonna give us any trouble.'

464.

'We don't know what - or who - they've seen, though. We can't leave witnesses behind.'

'We won't.'

'But-'

'We won't, okay? Once we've blown the dam, there's no need for a quick getaway. The chaos round here is gonna last long enough for us to find them and Jones, dead or alive. You stick to worrying about the main event. Is everything functional? No more nasty surprises?'

'My equipment never left my sight. I only kept the charges in the truck. It's all checked and ready. We need a landline, though.'

'There's one in the control room. What's the deal?'