Hell Pit Read online

  Hell Pit

  Title Page

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  HELL PIT

  W. R. ARMSTRONG

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2013 W R Armstrong

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to http://www.smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  PROLOGUE

  LONDON

  The end of another working day heralded the start of another chaotic rush hour. Standing room on the underground platform was at a premium. Commuters jockeyed for position, many of them cold and wet, having just escaped the unrelenting rain, almost one hundred feet above.

  A sudden rush of cold air and slight drop in temperature caught the attention of the assembled crowd. Fast on the heels of that came a steady rumble that quickly grew to a deafening roar. Heads turned expectantly towards the tunnel as twin halogen headlamps punched through the darkness. Individuals instinctively stepped away from the platform edge, eyes narrowed, bracing themselves against the customary rush of wind that signalled the locomotive’s arrival. The electrically powered vehicle thundered towards the platform before finally grinding to a stop. The automatic doors of its three carriages slid open invitingly and a quick exchange of passengers took place, any vacant seats being snapped up like gold dust.

  Two shaven headed youths boarded the tube, their necks and hands decorated by crude images of the Nazi Iron Cross and swastika. They searched the crowded compartment, intent on causing mischief whilst making repeated reference to the National Front and Combat 18. The Afro-Caribbean lady standing within earshot turned away, fearful of provocation and involvement. Nearby a bearded man observed the youths with contempt.

  The tube pulled away from the platform, gaining momentum, pushing and sucking the ventilated air as it journeyed into the dark underground network of tunnels. The compartment lights flickered uncertainly, failing briefly before sparking back to life. Travellers resumed their reading, continued to look bored or rested their eyes. A young boy asked his mother why the lights went out.

  “We went through a tunnel and the electricity failed,” Pat O’Brien guessed, hoping the explanation would pacify her young son. She caught the eye of the bearded man. “Kids,” she said simply. David Webster smiled, thinking about his own children, adults now with their own families, and recalled with affection how inquisitive they once were.

  The tube rounded a bend that would take it onto the next leg of its journey north, through West Ham and Bethnal Green. The lights again flickered prompting little Tommy O’Brien to clutch at his mother’s arm fearful the dark would return. When that didn’t happen he turned his attention to the skinheads who had targeted the Jamaican woman for abuse.

  Elsa Bailey had lived in England these past thirty years and was a nationalised British citizen. She gave back as good as she got. Her tormentors lost interest and wandered off down the compartment. Left alone she fought to regain her composure, but it was difficult. There were times in her life when racial taunts upset her to the point that she wondered if life was worth living. Whenever that happened nowadays she thought of her husband, Winston, who was desperately ill and needed her.

  Meanwhile, the tube sped through the underground, its cargo of passengers swaying in time to the rhythmic motion of the carriages. Up above them on the surface, rain continued to beat down with the same ferocity it had during the whole of the past week. Further south, at the centre of the Capital, certain roads were impassable, with the Thames having reportedly risen to dangerous levels. London was experiencing the heaviest rainfall since 1766 when records first began.

  On a bleak September night over half a century before sirens had blared and searchlights pierced the rain, which had fallen with similar intensity, transforming the area surrounding the local Roman Catholic Church into a quagmire.

  Nazi bombers had blitzed the area leaving buildings, ammunition factories and other prime targets damaged or destroyed, making them ineffective for weeks afterwards. It was another small victory for the German Luftwaffer, which at the time was riding high on a wave of success, having recently sent ten thousand British subjects to a premature grave in a two-week period in 1940. It was nothing short of a miracle that St Anthony’s hadn’t suffered a direct hit. Unbeknown to anyone, one of those bombers had left a dangerous memento of its journey lying in the ground, that had slept like a dormant volcano ever since, a relic of that occasion that forever threatened to erupt given the right conditions.

  Inside the tube the lights failed once more. Commuters found themselves staring into total darkness. The skins were heard laughing. A baby began to bawl. Then it happened, an almighty explosion that sent the tube train hurtling dangerously out of control. All at once huge chunks of concrete reigned down from above, battering the stricken vehicle mercilessly, while inside, people screamed in terror as it was derailed and crashed violently against the tunnel walls. Windows imploded. Individuals were hurled from their seats like rag dolls.

  The tube’s erratic progress was finally halted by the tons of rubble and masonry that had fallen from above. Inside the compartments the last of the screams slowly died away, as if stolen by the dark. The pandemonium gave way to a deathly silence. The wrecked body of the tube train consumed by earth and concrete, had become a metal crypt, effectively entombing those within.

  In the earth above something began to stir.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Forced to leave his evening meal untouched, London Transport official, Paul McGrath hurried into the bedroom where he quickly donned a sturdy pair of shoes and a poncho, in preparation for the unexpected visit he had to make to Northwalk tube station. Grabbing car keys from the hook above the fridge he raced out of his East London home and jumped into the Ford Mondeo parked in the driveway.

  Reversing out of the drive he wondered if his immediate neighbour Bill Robinson, a regular commuter on the tube was a casualty of the accident of which he’d just been informed.
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  It was raining like a bitch. McGrath cursed the dismal weather, cursed the fact that he’d ever got to rank of Regional Planning Manager with London Underground Limited. Why the hell he hadn’t stayed in the armed forces was a mystery to him. Even after ten years in Civvy Street he still missed the life, the excitement and most of all, the camaraderie. But he was also realistic: whether you liked it or not, past thirty you started to lose the edge so vital when you were an active member of the Special Air Services. And when you’d seen the action McGrath had seen, first in Northern Ireland and then, later in Iraq, there came a time when perhaps it was better to give up the reins to someone younger and fresher.

  It had been a tough decision. McGrath had spent all his adult life in the forces, signing up as a regular soldier at seventeen, craving the excitement and challenge army life offered. He heard about the SAS in 29 Commando, which also classed itself as Special Forces, and won his winged dagger badge just before his twenty-second birthday. In a sense McGrath regretted having made the decision to quit but there were other pressures on him to take the course he had, namely his wife, whose nerves had been slowly and irrevocably shredded by the uncertainty and danger his job had entailed. Once de-mobbed his military background had held him in good stead. He’d quickly gained employment with London Transport, the parent company of London Underground Limited, where he rose steadily through the ranks. Nearly a decade later and a divorcee for eight of those years, he was one of the bosses of London Underground’s Eastern Region. The responsibility that came with high positions, he could sometimes do without.

  Like right now for instance. Because right now he’d rather be doing anything other than what he had to do, which involved travelling over to Northwalk Tube Station to confront what appeared to be a major incident. But sorting out problems was what he was paid to do, what was expected of him, and he accepted it. He thrived under pressure. Pragmatic and tenacious by nature his military training and experience made it impossible for him to quit the job in hand.

  Today was his fortieth birthday, which he’d intended celebrating with his close friend Jock Stern, a fellow Iraq War veteran, along with a couple of other drinking pals. The prospect of painting the town red had gone straight out of the window five minutes earlier when he’d been informed of the tube crash.

  His Chief Engineer, Bill Wilkinson, hadn’t gone into detail over the phone. All McGrath knew was an explosion of some magnitude had occurred in the underground, which had caused a tube to derail and that fatalities had been incurred. It was a bad one, better get down there fast, Wilkinson had advised. With over eighty miles of tube tunnel and approximately seven hundred and seventy miles of track to choose from McGrath felt extremely unlucky that the disaster had happened on his patch. His initial thought was that it be the work of Islamic extremists. It had happened once, it could certainly happen again. Prior to the London suicide bombings of 2005 such an attack would have seemed virtually inconceivable, but times had changed dramatically when it came to acts of terrorism. Traditional terrorist methods adopted in the past by the eighteenth century Fenians and later, by the IRA, had been totally eclipsed by those of the latter day Islamic extremists.

  It was peak rush hour as McGrath negotiated the heavy London traffic, driving through Canning Town, heading northwards, bypassing West Ham before parking a couple of blocks from Northwalk Underground, the scene of the disaster. The entrance was cordoned off. There was a heavy police presence. One of the coppers insisted on giving McGrath a hard time even though the Regional Manager provided official identification.

  “Phone down and speak to Bill Wilkinson,” he snapped, annoyed by the officer’s obstructive manner. Minutes later he’d gained access and saw at first hand the destruction Wilkinson had earlier described in brief.

  “Christ,” he breathed surveying the debris, “what a bloody mess.” He was standing on the rail track next to Wilkinson, staring into the mouth of the tunnel containing what remained of the 5.30pm tube from West Arnos Square, which lay trapped beneath tons of earth and concrete. Activity was intense. Members of the underground maintenance crew, dressed in standard bright orange dungarees, glowed like beacons in the artificial light emitted by hastily erected arc lamps.

  “How many survivors?” McGrath asked curtly.

  “Fifteen so far,” the engineer replied, unable to tear his gaze from the scene of devastation beyond the tunnel entrance. Dust particles hung thickly in the air. In the dim yellow light members of the emergency services removed debris from the driver’s compartment. Urgent cries rang out as rescuers continued the search for survivors, aided by the use of heat seeking and cutting equipment.

  On the platform above, paramedics treated those who’d been waiting for the tube when the accident occurred and been injured by flying debris. McGrath saw a woman being administered to whose cheek had been lanced by a shard of metal. The scene reminded him of an incident he’d witnessed on his tour of duty in Northern Ireland’s notorious bandit country in South Armagh. A member of his troop had got it in the face with a two-inch nail from a nail bomb planted beneath a car that had detonated, as the soldier happened to pass by. The injury was sickening and the soldier, new to the regiment, had lost an eye. There had been some pretty bad shit in Ireland that McGrath did his best to forget, but things like this only brought the horror back.

  “They’ve been taken to hospital,” Wilkinson continued on the subject of the survivors. “Eleven bodies have also been recovered.” He gave a sad shake of his head. “I dare not hazard a guess how many are still trapped in there.”

  McGrath tried to mentally gauge the consequences of the explosion, but it was difficult with the limited information he had at his disposal.

  “So far we reckon over seventy metres of tunnel has been put completely out of action,” Wilkinson was saying. “The driver’s compartment and the first two carriages took the full force of the blast, but the third’s in a pretty bad state too. We’ll unhook the carriages as quickly as possible. We suspect an old Jerry bomb is the culprit. It must’ve been a big bastard. That being the case it couldn’t have been foreseen. It was just one of those things.”

  “Yeah, just one of those things,” McGrath repeated, “and God knows how many innocent people have lost their lives.” Although there was some consolation to be found in the fact the destruction wasn’t due to a terrorist bomb, it did nothing to lessen the effect of the tragedy. Brushing a hand over his cropped sandy hair McGrath said, “In your opinion Bill, how long will this section of line be closed?”

  Wilkinson rubbed his chin, thinking hard. He hated being put on the spot, especially when McGrath was asking the questions. An ex-squaddie himself, having been attached to the Royal Engineers, he was one of McGrath’s few confidants and privy to his bosses distinguished past. He therefore knew not to bullshit the man. “Hard to say,” he finally admitted. “From what we know so far, the blast brought down about thirty feet of roof. The good news is that this being a deep cut tunnel, no sewer pipes, water mains or underground cables are in close proximity, but before we can move the tube, all the earth and rubble will have to be shifted. At the same time we’ll have to make safe the damaged section of roof. Only then can we start thinking about rebuilding. Bechtel is sending a team down this morning to assess the situation.” Bechtel was one of two companies, the other being Amey, charged with the job of carrying out a system wide overhaul of the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, a process that was destined to continue until 2030. The consortium, known as Tube Lines, would be far from happy about what had occurred today, as the unforeseen rebuild would cause major delays to an already hectic schedule.

  “You haven’t answered my question,” McGrath pressed, “how long before we’re up and running again?”

  “A couple of months, maybe longer,” Wilkinson relented.

  McGrath gave a groan, wondering how he’d explain such a lengthy closure to his superiors at the Transport for London Executive, which was directly responsible to the
Mayor of London. He guessed he’d simply have to bite the bullet, give them the facts and get his head bitten off for his trouble. McGrath was glad he had Wilkinson as an ally, knowing the engineer could always be trusted to do his best. And like Wilkinson had said, it was a bad one: very bad. McGrath turned his attention to the platform above, where two members of the paramedic team were about to stretcher one of the injured to the underground exit, while a third held a saline bag above the patient’s prone form.

  “Look,” Wilkinson said suddenly, drawing McGrath’s attention to the tunnel entrance. A black woman was in the process of being led away from the accident scene, supported by two Red Cross attendants. “It appears we’ve got ourselves another uninjured survivor.”

  They made their way over to the trio to question the woman but were waved away by the Red Cross attendants, one of whom said, “I’m afraid the lady’s in shock and not in a fit state to answer questions.” The man paused as he drew level with McGrath, adding confidentially, “I’m afraid she’s lost it. The poor bugger thinks the explosion freed something from the earth, some kind of holy-spirit that has the power to grant eternal life.” He slowly shook his head before continuing on his way, leaving McGrath free to help the rescue team in their search for survivors until such time as back up arrived.

  Before McGrath finally left the underground he talked again to Wilkinson who was still very much in the thick of it, helping to shift an impossible amount of rubble from the side of one of the battered carriages. “Which hospital are the survivors being taken to?” he asked, balancing precariously on a pile of debris.

  “Northwalk Infirmary,” Wilkinson replied, his face blackened by grime. “Are you thinking of taking a trip over?”

  “It might not be a bad idea. Keep me informed.” McGrath climbed back down onto the twisted track and headed off, taking purposeful strides.