What Jones and the rest of his unit didn’t want right now was another up close and personal interaction with the black-clothed bastards behind them. They didn’t have five minutes. He knew the 22nd would be on their heels within seconds.
The sound of laboured breathing made him glance sideways. Keeping pace but struggling under the weight of a 30lb kit bag and an extra few kilos of SA80 was Cox. The newbie glanced back, meeting Jones’ eyes. The cocky, self-assured personality of before had evaporated. Yeah. Staring down the barrel of a C8 will do that to a man.
The two men stumbled forward over the uneven ground, making painfully slow progress towards the Stones. It felt like running through treacle. Jones suddenly wished that some of his civilian mates could do this. Try running over a ploughed, muddy field carrying a shit-load of kit in the pitch black with a bunch of insane SF bastards baying for your blood sometime, and then fucking tell me that life in the modern army is piss easy, he thought viciously to himself.
“Sarge, where’re we headed?” Cox’s words came in between gasps. The going was, in horseracing terms, soft to shitty.
“There’re some old bunkers close to the Stones. We can hold a position there.
“You serious? There’s only one way in! We’d be cornered!
“We’d have a defensive position, you prick! And they’d be walking straight into a shitstorm of our making for a change! Now pick up the fucking pace!” Jones shoved Cox in the small of the back, sending him stumbling forward.
“I’m just sayin’…”
“Fuck me, are you seriously questioning my order when we’ve got the 22nd climbing up our arses? Move!” The shove this time was a damn sight harder and Cox measured his length into what looked like a soft pile of mud, but had a distinctively musky odour that suggested to Jones that it wasn’t.
“Cunt!”
“On your feet, soldier!” Jones ignored the insubordination, grabbed the webbing strap on Cox’s backpack and hauled him to his feet again. “Run!” Another shove and Cox jogged forward, muttering darkly and spitting out globules of ‘mud’.
Jones stumbled forward another dozen steps. It was rough going that sucked the energy out of your legs in seconds, making them feel like they were turning into lead. Every step became harder. Jesus, I’m getting too old for this shit! Without warning the ground gave way beneath his feet. He tumbled head-first into a void, closely followed by the yodelling Cox. ”Bollocks!”
He tumbled and spun, crashing painfully into unyielding walls and finally landing in a grunting heap on a hard, uneven and slimy floor. For a few seconds he lay motionless, trying to get his bearings and to quell the sense of panic that falling any great height without a packet of silk and a ripcord attached to your back generates in a member of Airborne.
Finally, Cox let out a string of expletives. “What the actual fuck…”
“Bunker, Cox. We’ve dropped into a bunker, that’s all. Stay calm.” Jones shoved the prone newbie off him and stood, switching his head-torch on.
The two men looked around the chamber. “Bunker, huh? So they used stone slabs to line their bunkers during the Cold War then, did they?” Cox pressed a hand into the small of his back and arched his body. “Shit, Sarge. I thought dropping on you I’d have a bit of a cushion. But you’re knobblier than a sackful of rocks!” He flexed again. “I think I’ve cracked a rib!”
“Jesus H Christ, will you please give your damn mouth a rest for two seconds!” Jones stared at the walls, puzzled. This was no Cold War concrete bunker. For starters, it was circular. And huge. And as Cox had so ably pointed out, it was also lined with stone.
Jones stood and dusted himself off. As his eyes adjusted to a different kind of darkness, he could see that the chamber they had so unceremoniously landed in was huge. And it stank. Dear God, it stank! A vile odour you could practically chew. It made the air feel thick and suffocating, like being smothered by a rancid blanket. The curved ceiling of the chamber was lost in an ocean of thick, black shadows that made it feel oppressive and much lower than it actually was. In the middle of the inky blackness was a slightly lighter patch — the break in the ground they’d tumbled through. The gap was framed by whiskers of silhouetted grass stems, and Jones could make out a few distant stars twinkling above. Gronking to itself, a raven flapped lazily across the night sky, its guttural calls echoing around the landscape.
Not a bunker, then. Something older. A tomb, perhaps? One of the barrows that littered the landscape? There were plenty of them, most of which had been excavated by archaeologists over the years. Was this one of the hundreds that had already been documented across the south of England, dating back to a darker, more savage and bloody era? Or was it a previously undiscovered one, secreted away for thousands of years?
Jones sniffed, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The smell in here was truly god-awful, like someone had left a whole box full of dead rats out in the sun. “Right then. We’re stuck in a shitty old tomb that smells worse than your mother’s fanny. If we were archaeologists, I guess we’d just about be pissing our pants with excitement right about now. But seeing as we’re serving soldiers in Her Mage’s army, it’s now our duty to get out of here in one piece and report this as a hazard. This fucker’s big enough to swallow a grunt crusher whole, and that roof couldn’t support our weight, let alone sixty-two tons of Challenger Two.” Jones looked up to the gap in the roof. “Bollocks. Even standing on my shoulders, you’re not gonna reach that.”
“Sarge, the entire US basketball team standing on each other’s shoulders couldn’t reach that!” Cox’s voice sounded strained. “Try radioing for help.”
Jones pulled his comms out of its holder and depressed the squawk button. Nothing.
Jones tried the radio three more times, battling to suppress a rising sense of panic. He didn’t like this dark, enclosed space, even if it was the size of a cathedral. He balled his hands into fists, trying to disguise the tremor that shook his normally steady fingers.
Jones pulled out his mobile phone. “No bars.” Shit. Shit, shit, shit! He jammed the phone back into his pocket. So they had no comms, no way up to the surface, and nobody knew where they were. And… seriously, what the hell was that smell? “Cox, have you shat yourself or something?” Jones switched to breathing through his mouth.
“Fuck off!” Cox’s voice was sounding more panicked by the second.
Jones sniffed again and almost threw up. The smell was getting stronger… and now he recognised it for what it was. It was the same stench that had hit him like a wall when he’d walked into that Taliban slaughterhouse in Helmund. It was the smell of decomposing flesh, body fluids and putrefaction. “Jesus!” He gagged and put a hand over his mouth. It was coming in waves now, and it was worse every time they moved. “Stand still, Cox.”