Tunnels 05 - Spiral

whispered.
    “Got you loud and clear,” Will confirmed.
    “Good, kid, but now turn it off to conserve the juice. And that’s you done.” Drake turned to Chester and began the process with him. Will repacked his Bergen but held back for his friend, who was clearly embarrassed because his mother seemed reluctant to let go of him.
    Will’s heart went out to her as she clung to her son, speaking softly to him. Against all odds the Rawls family had been reunited, and it felt wrong that Chester and his father were about to be separated from Mrs. Rawls again.
    Will threw a glance at his own mother as she stood not looking at anyone, in some sort of ethereal detachment. Will and Mrs. Burrows hardly constituted a family any longer. They were more like fellow combatants.
    Then Chester was coming toward him. “Poor old Mum. She really doesn’t want us to go,” his friend confided in a low voice. The boys entered the chamber together, finding that Parry was already in position beside the sliding exit panel.
    “Sweeney’s coming with us, isn’t he?” Will said to Parry, realizing that he hadn’t spotted him by the guardrooms.
    “He’s watching the crates outside,” Parry replied. “And before you ask, Wilkie’s not part of the detail, either. He’s . . .” Parry simply trailed off as he looked at the dial of his luminous watch.
    Before long, everyone was packed in the chamber. Shoulder to shoulder in the enclosed space and laden down with their weapons and heavy Bergens, they were getting hotter and hotter in their Arctic Issue uniforms.
    Parry’s radio suddenly crackled into life. “Five clicks on a north by northwest flight line,” it announced. “Acknowledge. Over.”
    Flight line,
Will thought, wishing he could catch Chester’s eye, but it was impossible in the darkness. Nobody had been told how they’d be making the journey to London. Drake had said it was on a need-to-know basis.
    “Acknowledged,” Parry replied into the radio. “The LZ will be painted. Over and out.” As he hooked his radio back on his webbing belt, he must have sensed that both boys were bursting to know what his exchange had been about. “These days we don’t use visible light to mark landing zones, but infrared beacons,” he explained. “The pilot can see it a mile off through his dropdown.”
    “Right,” Will replied, as if he understood exactly what Parry had said, which he didn’t. But at least he now knew they’d be flying down south.
    “It’s time,” Parry said to everyone. “I know you’re all weighed down with kit, but you must keep up with the Colonel as he leads the way to the LZ. Our window is very tight, and we can’t afford to be late.”
    Parry slid the hatch open and the boys shuffled aside to allow the Colonel to slip past and outside. Then they all followed into the whirling flurries of snow.
    “Jeez, it’s freezing!” Chester exclaimed as the cold air filled his lungs.
    They moved quickly, one following the other, through the gate in the chain-link fence and then downhill, their boots thudding on the frosted ground as they jogged along.
    Ahead of Will were Chester and the Colonel. Directly behind him came Parry, then he could make out the vague forms of the rest of the party: Mr. Rawls, Eddie and Elliott, Stephanie, Mrs. Burrows and, last of all, Drake.
    A gale was sweeping up the mountainside and whistling through the overhead electrical lines as they passed beneath them. There was barely any moonlight due to the thick cloud cover, so Will found it impossible to make out anything much ahead. He could see Mr. Rawls was struggling to keep up, and began to wonder how far they still had to go. Were they heading toward the valley floor itself? But some twenty minutes later the ground leveled out, and the Colonel began to slow. Will saw that Sweeney was crouched beside a number of crates that contained the mobile detectors he’d helped to pack.
    “Stay put,” Parry ordered. Then he and Drake moved off. Standing some forty feet apart, they held up devices that resembled flashlights, although they gave off no discernible light.
    Everyone was looking up when there was a sound as if the sky had fallen in. It was so tumultuous and unexpected, it was impossible not to duck.

    The helicopter had been flying so low that there’d been no warning whatsoever as it appeared directly over them. As the immense downthrust from its powerful rotors whisked the snow blizzard aside like confetti, the massive