In the Eye of the Storm (Storm and Silence 2)

I gave him my demurest smile. ‘Don’t I always?’

Not deeming that worthy of a reply, he turned and headed towards the cave, surrounded by dozens of men bristling with weapons. Passing the prototype gun, he saw that one of the men in charge of it had been shot and lay dead on the ground.

‘A volunteer!’ he called. ‘We need a volunteer to help carry and fire this!’

My hand shot up in the air.

‘Not you! I order someone else to volunteer!’ His glare raked the assembled men. More than a hundred hands shot up into the air immediately, and I lowered mine, pouting.

‘You there!’ He gestured at the lucky winner, and the man hurried towards his assigned post.

Motioning forward with his head, Mr Ambrose led us into the cave. Several of the men pulled out lanterns and lit them without having to be ordered. Orange light flickered on bare, craggy stone walls.

‘Use only the rifles and other guns while we’re in here,’ Mr Ambrose ordered in a low voice. ‘Not the explosives. We don’t know how secure this place is, and we don’t want it to come down on us.’

Muttered ‘Yes, Sir’s and ‘Yes, Effendi’s came from all directions. We walked through the dark until we came to a bend in the tunnel. Behind the bend, I could just make out the tunnel splitting off into two directions.

‘What now?’ one of the men whispered.

‘Give me that.’ Shoving one of the men aside, Mr Ambrose took hold of his prototype. Without setting it on the ground, he started to turn the handle. Ear-splitting thunder echoed from the cave walls, and the prototype gun spat a lance of fire into the darkness. Other than that, nothing happened. Quickly, Mr Ambrose swung the gun around to face the other tunnel, and turned the handle again. Once more, thunder split the air. But this time, it was accompanied by a shrill scream from somewhere down the dark passage.

Mr Ambrose lowered the gun, pointing in the direction from which the scream had come. ‘We go that way.’

And he started forward.

The tunnel was long and winding. Every time we reached a bend, Mr Ambrose gave a silent sign for us to stop. Then, the men with the prototype gun marched forward, held it around the corner and started firing. Almost every time we turned the corner, we came across blood-spattered corpses. After the latest such bloodbath, I turned to Mr Ambrose and whispered: ‘You say this is a prototype? Still in development?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much money do you mean to ask of the government for one of these things when it is finished?’

He gave me a cool look. ‘You don’t honestly think I’ll be selling a weapon like that to anyone, do you, let alone a government! It’s far too powerful a thing for politicians to play with!’

‘Why, Sir, you almost sound like a man with a conscience!”

‘Au contraire, Mr Linton. I sound like a man who prefers to have the biggest gun himself, instead of giving it away.’

Well, that was certainly one way of looking at it.

Shrugging, he marched over the corpses on the floor, not bothering to step around them. ‘Maybe in twenty years or so, once I have a better model for myself, I’ll find a front man and sell these somewhere where the government is not quite as inane as in Great Britain.’[29]

Finally, we reached the last bend in the tunnel.

How did I know it was the last?

I couldn’t see around it, of course. But we all could hear the bandits’ hushed, angry voices, and see the light of torches and lamps flickering on the walls. They were not far ahead, and they had nowhere else to flee to.

‘Has someone got a mirror?’ Mr Ambrose asked, his voice almost inaudible.

Nobody spoke up.

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nbsp; ‘A mirror? Anyone?’ His gaze drifted to me.

‘Don’t look at me! Do you think that just because I’m female, I’m carrying mirrors and fans and lace handkerchiefs around with me wherever I go?’ I snapped.

‘It certainly would come in handy.’ He let his eyes wander over the rest of us. ‘Anyone?’