Tunnels 06 - Terminal

make tracks.’
    Jiggs was shouting so much his voice sounded hoarse. ‘Bloody hurry it up out there!’
    ‘We’ve got to go!’ Drake said urgently, already climbing back onto the tank.
    The machine gun opened up again, drowning out Elliott as she said, ‘I’ve got to protect this.’ Simply throwing her rifle aside, she tucked the sceptre inside her jacket and clamped her arm over it. Drake had seen what she’d just done and was finding it difficult to believe that she would discard her weapon like that. But now wasn’t the time for explanations.
    ‘They’re wall-to-wall! I can’t keep them off!’ Jiggs shouted, opening up at the Armagi again.
    ‘Jesus, get a move on, you two!’ Drake shouted, beckoning frantically at them from the turret.
    Elliott reached him and Drake grabbed her by the hand. ‘No! No room! Ditch the Bergen!’ he shouted. She threw it aside, and he pulled her into the hatch.
    Already up on the tank, Will had shrugged off his Bergen to pass it to Drake. ‘Bloody leave that too!’ Drake shouted.
    The gun was firing continuously now.
    ‘No way!’ Will insisted. ‘Got all my stuff in there!’
    Drake looked furious but snatched the Bergen from the boy’s grip and was thrusting it down inside the tank when Jiggs cried, ‘Breach! They’re through!’
    There was a crash as the glass panels directly above the tank and above the two doors on either side burst inwards.
    Even though he lost a second or two as he shielded himself from the shower of glass, Will might still have made it if the turret hadn’t swivelled around at that point. Taking a step back in surprise, he slipped and fell on his knees.
    ‘Drake!’ Will shouted, reaching out in desperation towards his friend, who was doing the same from the hatch.
    Not just glass was falling around Will, but heavier objects.
    Armagi.
    Something nearly tore Will’s arm off as it gripped it with its claws and yanked.
    The last thing Drake saw before he slammed the hatch down was the boy being heaved from the rear of the tank by two Armagi as others landed inside the museum.
    ‘No, no, no, no,’ Elliott was wailing and struggling with Drake inside the tank as it moved off. ‘We can’t leave him! We have to go back!’
    ‘I’m sorry. He’s gone,’ Drake told her, trying to shake some sense into her. ‘There are too many of them.’
    ‘Drake, I need you on the L94,’ Jiggs said, now he was driving instead of operating the tank’s chain gun. As he steered through the gates and along the road at the front of the museum, there were dull thuds as Armagi slammed against the hull.
    Jiggs was swearing under his breath. It wasn’t because there was any remote possibility that the Armagi could penetratethe Chobham armour of the tank, which was twice as strong as steel, but because he was having immense difficulty seeing where he was going. The sheer number of Armagi in the way was making it impossible. And as he drove on, guessing where the road was, the Challenger was colliding with abandoned vehicles in the road. ‘If I can bloody see anything at all, I’m going to take a left into Southampton Row,’ he announced breathlessly. ‘Then head north. We’ll have to figure out how to l—’
    Elliott suddenly stopped crying. ‘No! Go right!’ she ordered.
    ‘Go right? But you don’t know …’ Drake had begun as she pulled the sceptre from her jacket. For a moment both Drake and Jiggs were silent, amazed by the blue light that filled the tank.
    ‘I think we need to shake these blessed Armagi off our tail,’ Drake said, ‘then find somewhere quiet where we can catch up.’
    ‘How about the tea rooms at Fortnum’s?’ Jiggs quipped grimly.

    As he was yanked from the tank, Will landed flat on his back. He hit the ground hard and was completely winded. All he could do was lie there, trying to get his lungs working again.
    And when he did finally get his breath back and sucked down some air, the tank’s powerful diesel revved and a cloud of hot exhaust fumes swirled all around him.
    It was the worst sound in the world because he knew full well what it meant. Drake and Elliott couldn’t do anything for him now.
    They were leaving.
    Without him.
    As the tank trundled off, he was trying his best to focus on his immediate surroundings. He hadn’t been wearing Drake’s lens so it wasn’t a matter of his eyes adjusting to the moonlight, but his senses were still badly scrambled. Shapes shifted around him, many shapes.
    And in