‘It won’t be long before we hear it,’ she said. ‘Can you hear anything?’
‘Not yet.’
They both involuntarily gripped the sides of the noisy, clattering cart as they sat silently in anticipation and watched the speedometer rise from thirty to forty miles per hour. At one point, Christmas glanced over at Bond and studied his face in the dim light. He was certainly handsome, she thought.
She was beginning to appreciate the unfortunate circumstances that had brought them together.
Elektra and M stood together in the pipeline control room, anxiously watching the map on the wall. M’s bodyguard, Gabor and two of Elektra’s men hovered a discreet distance away.
‘Bond is in the pipeline,’ a technician announced. ‘And Mister Robinson is on the way back.’
They watched as the two blips on the map moved along the course. The one with the bomb was travelling faster, it wouldn’t be long before it caught up with the second rig.
M thought that she had been prematurely harsh with Double-0 Seven. Although he had disobeyed orders and left Elektra alone, he had discovered information that saved their lives. And here he was again risking his life to stop a horrible catastrophe. He certainly had courage . . . unless, of course, he was just trying to save face for suspecting Elektra King of killing her father. What nonsense!
She watched the young woman to see how she responded under pressure. Elektra was standing in front of the map, gnawing on a thumbnail. She had become very quiet since Bond left.
While they were waiting, the police officer in charge of the investigation made a preliminary report to Elektra. Renard’s strike had caused a great deal of damage.
‘From what we can fathom,’ he said, ‘four or five men armed with automatic weapons attacked the site. It was meticulously planned, for the gang carried it off in less than an hour. During that time they killed two security guards and three technicians. Plastic explosives took out the electricity and crippled the site vehicles. They also got hold of an observation rig.'
‘They wired it so that it couldn’t be shut off from the control centre,’ a technician said.
‘Mmmm,’ the officer continued. ‘They apparently placed the bomb in the rig and sent it towards its destination. Upon leaving, they set the control room on fire.’
‘Thank you, detective,’ Elektra said. ‘I’d appreciate it if your men leave us alone now. We’re in a bit of a crisis. I’ll be in touch soon, all right?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ the officer said. Elektra King apparently had a lot of authority, even over the local police. He quickly gathered his men and left the control room. Now M was completely alone with her bodyguard, Elektra, Gabor and his men, and a few technicians.
Without a hint of underlying defensiveness, M approached Elektra and offered an apology by way of explaining, ‘If there’s even the slightest chance, Bond will succeed.’ She paused, then added, ‘He’s the best we have.’
Elektra replied, noncommittally, ‘I hope you’re right.’
M continued to watch the blips on the map. A thought occurred to her that she hadn’t considered. How did Renard and his men know how to use the observation rig? Did they have help from someone in King Industries?
She looked around the control room and wondered if anyone standing nearby might be the insider who had switched King’s lapel pin. Elektra’s bodyguard? One of the technicians?
M suddenly began to feel uneasy. She hoped Robinson would hurry back.
Meanwhile, MI6’s best and Christmas Jones waited expec- tantly for the other rig to catch up with them. The speedometer on their rig read 50 mph. Finally, a whooshing noise interrupted the tense silence. Lights reflected on a bend. They looked behind them and saw the bomb-laden rig tearing through the pipe.
‘Faster!’ Bond cried. ‘Get our speed up!’
Christmas pressed forward, as if leaning against the dash would make the rig go faster.
‘There’s not a damned thing I can do about it!’ she called.
Bond got in the back of the rig and extended his legs out toward the approaching one. Its rumbling echoed louder in the tunnel as the lights came closer . . . closer . . .
Their vehicle jolted as the other rig made contact. Bond cushioned the blow with his feet as best he could, then held his legs straight against the front of the rig in an attempt to slow it down. He waited a moment until the other rig was travelling at a steady speed behind them, then he carefully climbed over onto it.
‘Give me your hand!’ he shouted. He helped Christmas across, but just as she shifted her weight onto the second rig, her foot slid off the surface and she almost fell in between the two can. Bond caught her shoulders just in time and hauled her up.
‘Whew, thanks,’ she said. Once they were safely in, both rigs were travelling together at the same speed. The ride, however, was extremely bumpy.
Christmas went straight for the bomb, which was sitting in the rig bed, daunting and deadly. She removed her backpack, took out some tools and examined the bomb. She attached a hand-held computer the size of a transistor radio to some terminals on the device’s LED panel and made some quick calculations
‘It’s a tactical fission device. Low yield,’ she said.
‘How do we stop it?’
‘ We, Doctor Arkov? Move over. Hold me steady.’
‘You’ve defused hundreds of these, right?’
‘Yeah. But they’re usually standing still.’
Bond smiled ironically and said, ‘Life is filled with small challenges.’
She shot him a look, then set to work. Bond put his hands on her waist to help steady her. She didn’t protest. The timer on the bomb read ‘1:45 Minutes’ and the seconds were ticking down.
‘Less than two minutes?’ Bond asked, surprised. ‘The thing will go off before it arrives at the oil terminal. Did they make a mistake setting the timer?’
Christmas used a screwdriver to remove a plate.
. . . 1:30 . . .
‘I don’t know . . .’ she said, concentrating, ‘. . . but I sure don’t want it blowing up in our faces, do you?’
She clipped wires inside the warhead.
. . . 1:20 . . .
‘Look,’ Bond said, pointing to the sphere that contained the core. ‘Those screws. The heads are stripped.’
‘Somebody’s tampered with the bomb,’ she agreed. ‘The core’s been removed and put back in. That’s weird.’
She reached into her pack for the core extraction tool, but the rig shot down a dip in the pipeline track. Christmas almost - flew off, but Bond saved her by yanking the tool in her hand and pulling her back in. They exchanged sighs of relief then she set back to work.
‘They need seatbelts in these things,’ she said.
As the ng sped through the tunnel, Christmas manipulated the extraction tool to carefully lift the plutonium core from the sphere. It took longer than Bond had hoped.
. . . 0:55 . . .
‘Look at this!’ she said, surprised. The thing looked mangled. ‘Half the plutonium core is missing.’
Bond opened a plastic bag for her. She dropped the core inside.
‘So it won’t go nuclear?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But there’s still enough explosive in the casing to kill both of us if the trigger charge goes off.’ He closed the bag and put it in the backpack.
. . . 0:44 . . .
‘Don’t worry, I can defuse it in time,’ she said. Bond’s mind raced as he peered around the ghostly tunnel. Christmas continued to work.
. . . 0:40 . . .
It was very mysterious . . . the timer had been set to go off before reaching the oil terminal. . . half of the plutonium was missing so that the bomb would only do minimal damage to the pipeline . . .
‘Let it blow.’ he said suddenly.
About to snip a wire, she looked up, astonished. ‘But I can stop it.’