Lexy offered no argument. The water had risen to his knees in a matter of seconds, and the speed at which it was rising seemed to be on the increase too. By the time they had both got up the ladder and out of the crawlspace, it was seeping out of the hatch behind them. The floor outside 473.

was already wet from water flowing up out of the drain that had been their escape route.

'Good job we never stayed doon there,' said Murph.

'Tryin' no' tae think aboot it.'

They made their way quickly up through the turbine access levels, employing only a cursory minimum of checking out each stairway and corridor, as the rising threat at their backs was more pressing than any potential danger up ahead. On the second-lowest deck, they passed through the first of two open balconies - the other directly above - from where they could see up into the main hall, as well as along the sides of the other turbines. The two in the centre, Three and Four, looked like ginger cans somebody had toe-ended, and their corresponding balconies were a crippled mess of concrete and steel. Above them, the railings guarding the gantry on the cavern's ground-floor level were mangled, and there were fragments of metal embedded in the facing rock. Water was spraying out of cracks and holes in both turbines, but it had to be coming from elsewhere too, as the entire excavation was filling up below the balconies. Silence was no longer going to be a consideration, as it took a firm voice to be heard above the sound of the deluge.

'This place is fucked, man,' Wee Murph observed.

This time Lexy did allow himself the indulgence of going 'Lmmmm-mmmm.'

It was marginally quieter when they reached the main- floor level, only because they were on the other side of the turbines from the excavated area; the sound of rushing and pouring was still echoing off every wall. They waited just below the top of the stairway, now scoping very carefully for bad guys. There was another stairway ahead and to the left, leading to the Control Room, according to a sign. It was 474.

housed in a building shaped like two Lego blocks sitting on top of three, running the length of the machine hall. At its centre was a bay window affair, flanked on the left-hand side by another observation gantry. Lexy was sure he could see a figure up there, but when he looked again there was nothing.

To the right of the stairway, there was a slope, the concrete leading down out of sight behind a railing to something dug further back into the cavern than the end of the turbine pit; or turbine pool, as it could now more accurately be described. Hard left, past the jutting tops of the turbines and a perilously exposed area of open cavern, was the entrance tunnel.

'Bollocks,' Lexy said. 'Cannae see anybody.'

'Zat no' a good thing?'

'Don't think so. I can still see two cars an' two motorboats. I don't think they're away yet.'

'Shhh,' warned Murph.

'Whit?'

'Listen. You no' hear it?'

Lexy listened, though he didn't know what for. All he could hear was water.

'Cannae hear anythin'.'

'There it's again now. Shhh.'

This time he did hear it: a thumping, low and dense, with a metallic edge to it.

'It's comin' fae doon the slope,' Murph said. 'Somebody's there. Stuck, mibbe.'

'Whit if it's the folk that work here? We havenae seen any o' them.'

"They could be locked up, aye. Let's check it oot.'

'It could be the baddies, but.'

'Well if they're stuck, they'll be easier tae shoot,' Murph reasoned.

475.

'Awright for you to say. You've no' shot wan yet. Nothin' easy aboot it.'

'You know whit I mean. Come on.'

They scrambled, crouching, across the gap to the top of the slope, then ran down it full tilt, the fact that they were charging towards a dead end hitting Lexy only once he was in full flight. On the left at the bottom there was a heavy steel door with a handle like a cog. The thumping resumed again as they reached it, and there was no question it was coming from inside.

'Who's there?' Murph asked. There was no reply, only more thumping.

'Who's there?' he repeated, to the same response, accompanied by a muffled human voice.

'Just open it, Murph,' Lexy said, levelling his machine gun. 'I'll be ready.'

Murph looked at Lexy then nodded. 'Okay. After three,' he said, gripping the handle. 'Wan ... oh fuck.'

Murph pulled the door open and immediately dived inside. Lexy looked round, spotting a man at the top of the slope, machine gun in hands. He dived into the gap behind Murph, who slammed the door closed a micro-second before bullets began thumping into the steel, leaving a streak of rounded indents, like boils.

Lexy found himself lying face-down on the floor next to two guys on their backs, ankles and hands tied, mouths gagged. Around the room there had to be about thirty more of them, but these two had shuffled their way to the door and kicked it to try and attract attention; something the overpowering smell of pish should have managed on its own.

Murph was facing the door, his machine gun trained on it, finger on the trigger. 'Come in here an' we'll blow you 476.

away, ya bastart,' he shouted, his voice maybe a little too squeaky to strike much terror into the gunman's heart.

Whether it did or not, the gunman didn't bother coming in, but instead merely locked the door and walked away.

Lexy peeled the tape from the nearest hostage's mouth and began doing the same for his other bonds.

'Polis are gettin' awfy young these days,' the man said.

'We're no' polis.'

'I know. We heard the explosion, thought they must have done their business and been off. That's why we were bangin' the door.'

'We thought the same. Nae luck. I take it there's nae way oota here?'

'Bloody storage chamber. Reinforced steel door, another remnant of our facility's glorious Cold War history.'

'Is that a no, then?' Murph asked, untying another hostage.

'No,' said the newly ungagged bloke. 'There's a drainage channel here. We couldnae get doon it because we were all trussed up.'

'Magic,' said Murph wearily. 'Another drain. Where is it?'

Two more of the hostages began shuffling on the floor in the centre of the room, clearing a space and revealing the grate.

'Right,' said Lexy. 'Let's get everybody untied. I'll watch the door. Murph, you lead the way. An' I'll bet you're glad we saved the power on thae torches noo.'

Murph stood over the drain, facing down and frowning. 'No' really,' he said. 'Look.'

Lexy took a step nearer, his view having been obscured by two of the hostages. Water was starting to bubble out of the grate and flow across the floor of the chamber.

477.

'Aw, shite.'Ray had been scrambling down inside the aqueduct when the charges were detonated. The blast shook the tube and threw him from the inset stairs to the centre, where he began rolling, sliding and tumbling towards a rippling pool at the bottom, which he sincerely hoped was a good few feet deep. Striplights whizzed past his head at all angles as he fell, creating an effect reminiscent of a flume he'd ridden on the Costa del Sol. The steep, rapid and unflinchingly straight descent, however, was more like the kamikaze chute, standard fixture of all such water parks, designed to subject the rider to five seconds of naked terror before ramming his trunks up his arse and garroting his testicles.

The memory served to remind him of the suggested survival technique, which was to lie straight back and cross one foot over the other. Ray did this, and soon began aquaplaning over the damp tunnel floor, the wetsuit saving him from being flayed alive in the process. He splashed deep into the water at the bottom, shooting maybe ten feet under, probably mere inches from the twin turbine intakes at the base of the shaft. If they had been on, he'd have been liquidised; but then again, if they'd been on, he wouldn't have been able to access the aqueduct in the first place.

He surfaced with a gasp and looked upwards for a door. He remembered from the cut-away diagram on the tourist leaflet that there was access to the aqueducts from the machine hall and from the turbine sub-levels, as well as up top at the dam. There was a door visible about ten feet up the pipe from where he was treading water. Unfortunately, also visible was a foaming white mass rushing down the tunnel to meet him.

478.

The water's initial impact plunged him back under and threatened to keep him there until he found less resistance and even something of an up-current closer to the wall. He surfaced again and spat out a mouthful, shaking his hair from his eyes with a flick of the head. The rising level was lifting him closer to the door, but he knew he had to get there before the water did, or else it would automatically seal.

Ray pushed his way around the wall until he was at the stairs, where it took a few flailing attempts to climb beyond the water level, especially with hundreds of gallons more pouring down around him. After a couple of heart-stopping slips which threatened to plonk him back whence he came, he reached the door and bundled through it on all fours. He found himself on his knees in an airlock chamber, facing a second door, which he lunged for and barged open before remembering that he should perhaps have closed the other one first. Water flooded into the chamber from behind and washed him out into a narrow corridor, where it proceeded to rapidly cover the floor and climb the walls.

The force of the flow pushed him along the passage on his front until he came to a staircase, on to which he gratefully clambered, spitting what felt like a lungful of water as he did so. There was no time to reel, to feel dazed or even fear, and still less to weigh up his options in light of who might be lying in wait. The water was rising and so must he. Taking a deep breath, he got to his feet and began climbing the stairs, reaching another curving corridor at the top. He knew it wouldn't help to look back, but felt he had to anyway. The water was coming up the stairs almost as fast as he had, and was only a few steps behind. Nonetheless, behind it was, and that was all that mattered. Or at least that was all that mattered until he turned back 479.

around and saw more water coming to meet him, this time pouring down the next flight of stairs.

'Aw for fuck's sake.'

Ray gripped the banister rails one by one as he made the next ascent, the rubber around his feet providing a welcome degree of purchase on this concrete waterfall. The sound of rushing and crashing got louder as he reached the top, where he found himself at one end of a balconied walkway, affording a view along one side of the whole flooded excavation. The water level was already higher than the balcony floor, flowing in ankle-deep under the bottom rung of the safety railings and pouring down inside the turbine housing to meet the stuff he'd been climbing to escape.

The next two turbines along were wrecked, their maintenance and access areas mangled and collapsed, and the force of the blast had impacted where he was standing too. Further along the corridor, the railings were buckled and the floor was tilted upwards almost the width of the passage where something had smashed into it from below, the peak of this tilt being the only part not submerged.

Ray waded his way carefully up to this point, which was where he was able to see that there was no corresponding downslope on the other side, because there was in fact no floor on the other side. The steel inside the concrete had been severed, and the remainder of the balcony floor was folded back against the next stairway, blocking the route up. Behind him, there was a bubbling sound as the water from below came up over the top of the staircase.

Is this it? he couldn't help but ask himself. No sudden blast as he hurled charges from the dam, no bullet or knife, but drowning here unseen in the bowels of this man-made cave? He thought of Kate, that first night they made love.

480.

Adam and the Ants. No bullet or knife. He thought of Martin, all the hopes he had, the songs he wanted to play him, the books he wanted him to read.

What would he be when he grew up?

Ray breathed in through his nose. All around him was the smell of wet stone: incongruously warm, inexplicably comforting.

'Make it that there's a river runnin' through the caves, an' we're wadin' through it until it gets too deep an' then we have to duck under an' haud oor breaths an' swim through the dark an' come up in a big pool except still in a cave, right?'

Ray looked over the mangled and now almost submerged balcony railings into the rising, foaming black pool, and knew that he still had a chance. He remembered the sunken city level in Duke Nukem, trying to ignore the fact that he'd snuffed it the first couple of times attempting to find his way out of the submerged skyscraper. It was only a matter of yards, and this was the one area in which Real Life(tm) gave better odds than FPS games; the latter only letting you hold your breath for about ten seconds before you started to drown.

Ray dived over the railings and began swimming around the turbine, striking out for the next platform along, which would have been sheltered from the blast. He knew the water would be above the level of the balcony by the time he got there, but was not tempted to wait for it to lift him all the way to the machine hall's gantry. The only easier target than a player on a ladder was some lamer bobbing below you in a big open pool of water.

As he approached the turbine housing, he took a breath and dived under the surface. The lights had all shorted out below the waterline, but the giant rig on the cavern ceiling allowed him to make out where the balcony was. Once 481.

under, he propelled himself in a breaststroke, looking for light spilling down the next stairwell, above which the fluorescent strips should still be functioning. He swam in above the sunken railings and followed the corridor ceiling, a glow visible at the end.

His chest tightened as he rose up the staircase, a moment of despair setting in when he reached the top and found himself still submerged, but on this level there was a second flight zigzagged against the first. He turned around and kicked both feet off the wall for renewed momentum, already breathing out in a stream of bubbles before surfacing with a great gasp five steps below the dry corridor floor.Simon stood in front of the closed-circuit monitor relaying the view from the security post at the main entrance. He'd been staring at it for a few minutes now, unable to take his eyes off the view, though it mocked him with its silent tranquillity. It showed the locked steel gates, the approach road and the landscaped flower beds, but what he saw was humiliation, failure and defeat. What it did not show was an engulfing torrent of water sweeping into Loch Fada, on its way to wipe out Cromlarig at the end of the glen. The dam was not breached, though every other fucking thing seemed to have been.

He thought of Shub and his drills, then looked to the Glock pistol in his hand.

No. Not until he'd got some payback, anyway.

Simon turned to the window and gazed into the machine hall, where water would soon fully swallow the crippled turbines, filling up the hollow mountain but unable to wash away his failure. He felt it ironic, nonetheless, to be surveying such enormous devastation and regarding it 482.

with anything less than pride. It was, it had to be acknowledged, one hell of a mess; the thought making him appreciate that though the water couldn't wash away his mistakes, perhaps it could yet cover them up. Failure was a matter of degrees.

Terrorism, like politics, was about perception. The outside world didn't have a clue what was intended to happen here. All they would know was what they would find: the mighty Dubh Ardrain power station destroyed, and thirty-odd staff drowned in the very waters they once harnessed. Mopoza could take the huff if he liked, and would probably withhold payment, but if he had any sense, he'd make out this had been the sum of the plan all along. It was still one hell of a strike against the General's enemies, in the heartland of the man who had been in charge of the forces that overthrew him.

But jobbie-polishing aside, it was still merely a fraction of what it should have been. For that Simon wanted answers, and he wanted them written in blood. He picked up his radio.

'Any of you fuckers still alive, report to the Control Room right away.'

He watched them from the window a few minutes later, a paltry rump making their disparate ways across the machine hall before grouping at the foot of the stairs: Jones, Lydon, Simonon and finally Strummer.

'Is this it?' he asked rhetorically, stepping out into the corridor as they approached.

'Yeah,' said Jones. 'Deacon and Headon got it in the blast. I don't know about May, though. I thought he was with you.'

'He was,' Simon said, holding open the Control Room door.

'Where is he now?'

483.

'Right here.'

'Oh fuck,'

The four of them gathered around May's body as Simon closed the door.

'What happened to him?' Strummer asked.

'What does it look like? I shot him.'

'What for?'

'He disappointed me.'

'He disa . . . You fucking-'

'Oh, shut up,' Simon commanded. 'What you ought to know, Joe, is that Mr May was taking a very unhealthy interest in my personal background, and who's to say he wasn't taking a similar interest in all of yours?'

Strummer's eyes narrowed. 'I think he was just as interested as all of us in knowing who the fuck this Ash person is and how he got here.'

'Aren't we all,' Simon agreed. 'So I'd suggest we get hold of him, and then we can all get everything out in the open. The cop too. We need to find out how much the authorities know, and how the fuck they know it. I want them taken alive.'

'This whole place is going to be underwater soon.'