Smedley was standing at the far end of the new eastbound Jubilee line platform when he spotted the two ‘safety officers’ he had been waiting for.
‘All right, lads?’ he greeted the two men warmly, shaking their hands with his sooty, bear-sized fist.
The albino-blond, Connor, winked nonchalantly, but Smedley could taste the fear on young Stevie boy’s breath. Not too surprising, that. The little pig-tailed eco-warrior had served time for swinging a punch at copper on a demo, but what he was in for now was way heavier than a training exercise in the bloody Arabian desert. This was high bloody treason, and if they weren’t careful they’d find themselves hung drawn and quartered, crawling through that bloody drainpipe of a shaft before they even did owt!
Smedley was particularly worried about Connor. On none of the occasions Smedley had met the pink-flushed paddy in Yemen and Eritrea had Connor ever looked fit. If anything he had put on weight over the last six months.
Sod it! It was too late to change the plan now. Smedley bent down and shouldered the giant canvas bag, motioning to the two others to follow him into the darkness of the tunnel.
Connor and Newton had a job matching Smedley’s pace despite their comparative freedom of movement. Up ahead they could see the erratic flash of lamplights from the work gang.
But before there was any danger of being picked up in a capricious sweep of light, Smedley turned right into the passageway. Newton had grown accustomed to the dark and was catching Smedley up, but Connor still lagged someway behind as the passage veered to the left and climbed sharply.
Now they were out of the main tunnel, Smedley had turned his headlamp on and he used its dim red glow to illuminate the grille while his sinewy fingers wrenched it from its place.
Smedley pushed the canvas bag into the rank-smelling aperture in front and waited for Connor to catch up. The Irishman’s heavy panting announced Connor’s arrival before Smedley caught the shine of his beetroot cheeks and the glint of his sweat-stung eyes.
‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Smedley hissed at Connor.
Connor nodded while he caught his breath, and Smedley noted the absence of the usual tinker’s swagger in Connor’s posture.
‘Shit, you’d better make sure you don’t die on me in there!’ he whispered irritably, genuinely upset that he hadn’t succeeded in making Omar reconsider sending the Irishman via the rat route. ‘We’re fighting against the bloody clock as it is.’
There’s no way Connor can be passed off as an Arab, Omar had repeated back in Oxford to every protestation. If he doesn’t go with you in the tunnel, there’s no way I can take him in.
Smedley gave the canvas bag a giant shove, then squeezed his head, shoulders and torso into the tiny aperture. The grubby passageway had grown familiar, if not friendly; he must have squirmed along it over a dozen times each way, hauling eleven other canvas bags identical to the one in front of his nose.
Once in he soon found his familiar rhythm. Push, breath, slide. Push, breath, slide. He slowed his work rate fractionally, hoping at any moment to feel the butt of Connor’s head against the sole of his boot, or the probing of Connor’s fingers around his ankles. But there was no way of turning back now till he had hit the dip at the end of the shaft. And by the time he got there it would be too late to go back and help Connor.
Push, breath, slide, Push, breath, slide. The further he squeezed along the more furiously the adrenalin made the blood pound through his veins.
Attack, attack, attack, attack! was the message every pulse drummed ever louder around his veins. He felt the cool air of the dip soothe his burning face and he thrust his head through purposefully, like a baby slurping forth from the womb.
Wriggling frantically he managed to wrench his right arm free and he checked his watch. Shit, they were fourteen minutes behind schedule! If Connor and Newton didn’t get a move on all hell would break loose.