Tunnels 04, Closer

returned the box to the rucksack, pushing it all the way down to the bottom and making sure his dirty clothes were on top of it.
    As he rolled onto his back and laid his head on his rucksack, he held his hands in front of him. "Please, God, I haven't asked you for much before, but I'm asking now. Please let someone notice my signal," he prayed in a tense whisper. Please! "

    * * * * *

    After they had passed through a village with a small combined shop and post office, Drake began to slow as he searched for somewhere to leave the car. He found a track leading into a wooded area, and came to a stop under the trees where the Aston Martin would be hidden from the road.
    "We'll go on foot from here," he said to Eddie, and then, in the silence of night, they sorted out the equipment they were going to take with them. Eddie opted for a pair of semi-automatic pistols, one silenced, as though he was expecting trouble. Drake had no idea why he considered this necessary, but didn't question him about it.
    Instead he put on his headset, making sure the band was positioned correctly over his right eye before activating the power unit in his belt. The scene through the lens flickered with orange snow, clearing within a second so that he had a view of the surroundings that wasn't far off daylight.
    As Drake hoisted his Bergen onto his shoulders and they set off through the damp grass, he was thinking about what they might find when they arrived in the subterranean harbor below the airfield. The last time he'd been there was to see Will and Dr. Burrows off as they'd left in the launch. It was a journey of many hundreds of kilometers down to the deep-level fallout shelter. And that was where Chester had been calling from when he left his message. Although the message was more than a fortnight old, it wasn't out of the question that the boy might still be hiding out somewhere close by in the airfield, or even waiting for him in the harbor itself.
    As he and Eddie continued to parallel-track the small country lane, they stole along the side of a field of barley. Through his headset, this appeared to Drake as though it was the rippling surface of a lake as the wind fanned it. But he hardly noticed this as he wondered who might have accompanied Chester in the launch. It was a two-person journey up the river -- one to man the outboard engine, and the other to refuel it and act as pilot. Chester hadn't given any indication in the message, although he'd sounded pretty desperate.
    A faint drizzle began to fall as Drake and Eddie crossed a narrow road and mounted the opposite verge.
    "Norfolk," Drake chuckled. "Rain, always rain -- it's always raining in this county." Although Eddie didn't make any sort of response, Drake sensed disapproval from the man that he'd spoken out loud.
    Within a short distance, they came to a gap in the perimeter fence of the airfield and squeezed through it, noting a Portakabin in the distance that was lit from within. Then they cut behind a group of 1960s houses arranged in a small close. Drake assumed these properties had originally been used by the enlisted men and their families. But now they were very much unoccupied, and in the process of being refurbished, judging from all the building materials lying around.
    As he and Eddie headed toward one of the larger buildings, Drake found that he was continually checking to make sure the other man was still there. Although the former Limiter claimed it was years since he'd been active in the field, he moved in total and absolute silence. It was as though Drake's sense of hearing was defective -- he could see Eddie treading on an area of dry bracken or pushing his way through patches of undergrowth as he followed, but the man didn't make the slightest sound. It had been just the same with his daughter, Elliott.
    They penetrated a clump of brambles, and there Drake removed a few pieces of rotten timber over the hatch, revealing a concrete-lined shaft around two meters square. Lowering themselves into this, they used the rusting treads set into the side of the shaft to reach the bottom. Then they were wading through a room filled with lockers and flooded with filthy brown water, deep enough to come in over their boots.
    After Drake opened a door at the end of the room, they quickly passed down a corridor in which empty oil drums and some lengths of mildewed timber were floating. Then they were at the wall of breeze blocks that Will had broken through.
    Eddie drew out