RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) by Phillip Richards Page A

was timed
with the attack on the surface. They had little hope.’
    My brow furrowed. ‘How did you time it together with
us on the surface? So you knew when our H-Hour was?’
    She looked back at me blankly.
    ‘I just don’t understand . . .’ I said, shaking my
head. ‘Are you working with the FEA and the Guard, or are you some kind of
splinter group?’
    ‘I work for the FEA now,’ Yulia replied, ‘but most
of the FEA do not know that I do. The Guard watch them too closely.’
    My mouth opened to speak, then Weatherall tapped my
shoulder, cutting me short. He leaned close to pass the message. ‘Last man in.’
    I looked back at Yulia, the next question still
hanging on the tip of my tongue, and sighed. It could wait.
    Clearing the question from my mind, I leant through
the bulkhead, using my rifle torch to see into the darkness beyond. A long,
narrow metal staircase descended for twenty metres, before opening up into a room.
With a flick of my hand, I beckoned Myers to join me, and the two of us slowly
crept down the staircase, half expecting to bump into a Guardsman left behind
by Bhasin.
    Would he leave people behind to cover
his withdrawal? I wondered. I imagined that he probably saw a
speedy escape as his best defence, but then if he had an entire platoon with
him, then it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice to leave behind a rear guard of
some form. Even a couple of Guardsmen left behind could force us to move with
caution, slowing us down so much there would be absolutely no hope of us ever
catching him.
    At the foot of the staircase we found ourselves in a
long, rectangular room with a high ceiling. Huge pieces of machinery loomed
over us, connected by large pipes that crossed the ceiling, running out from the
walls. My headset magnified the sound of running water, and I realised that it
was flowing through the pipes above my head.
    ‘These pipes collect water from all over the warren,’
Yulia explained as she followed us into the room. She traced one of the pipes
with an outstretched arm. ‘It runs down here, and then into tunnels beneath our
feet.’
    ‘So how do we get into those tunnels?’
    She walked around the back of one of the larger
pieces of machinery in the centre of the room, then pointed at the floor. ‘In
here.’
    Myers and I followed her, to find a large, open
drain . . . large enough to fit several men through at once.
    Myers leant out over the drain and shone his torch
into the gloom. ‘There’s a shit-load of water down there, Andy . . .’ he
warned.
    ‘I said that there would be water,’ Yulia reminded
him sternly.
    I joined Myers, and peered down at the murky water below. It
appeared to flow gently along a wide tunnel no more than a metre beneath us.
    ‘How fast does it flow?’ I asked. On the surface it
might look calm, but I knew that even the stillest body of water could hide a
powerful current beneath it.
    ‘Not very fast,’ Yulia answered. She nodded at the
hardware around us. ‘It is normally pumped out by these machines during bad
weather, but the machines are not working. Gravity is doing all of the work
now.’
    ‘Is it deep?’
    ‘Waist-deep.’
    Myers snorted. ‘Brilliant.’
    ‘What’s going on, Moralee?’ the sergeant major
demanded as he arrived at the edge of the drain. He followed our gaze and swore
at the sight of the flowing water. ‘I presume we’re going down there?’
    ‘Looks that way, sir.’
    Without waiting for the sergeant major’s reply, Yulia
sat on the edge of the drain and lowered herself into the sewer below. She gave
a small gasp, presumably as the cold water soaked into her clothes. Sure enough,
the water went up to her waist.
    She turned her head up to us. ‘We must keep moving
if we wish to catch up with Bhasin.’
    The sergeant major merely grunted in response, then sent
a comms check up to B Company instead. They promptly confirmed that they could
hear us loud and clear. The optical cables running through the tunnels