![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : The Devil’s Crowll, Part 6
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Characters : Stephen/Ryan, Cutter, Connor, Abby, Claudia, Lester & others
Rating : 18 (Here for language rather than smut)
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Lyle and some of the others), no money made, don’t sue
Spoilers : None.
Summary : Then you’ll grit your teeth and hold your breath ….……..
Tags : fic, slash, Stephen, Ryan, Cutter, Lester
The words to The Parys Mountain Mine are owned by Adrian Duncan. Hope you don’t mind me borrowing them! From the CD Karst Fever, by the wonderfully named Dangerous Dick and the Duckbusters. Find it, buy it, enjoy it!
The Devil’s Crowll. 4am.
If you don’t mind having to slither and grope
Down a cranky ladder and a mud-stained rope
You might just make it to Gobsmack Stope
In the
Then you’ll grit your teeth and hold your breath
As you pass the Incredible Wall of Death
Where the levels beckon right and left
In the
Lester usually had no problem with levels beckoning on more than one side, but when they did it underwater, in conditions which made pea-soup look transparent, he started to lose his enthusiasm for the great unknown.
And at the moment, he was all too aware of several uncomfortable facts:
1. Only a very thin nylon diving line stood between him and a lingering death, hopelessly lost in an underwater maze.
2. He was in zero visibility conditions, and this was unlikely to improve.
3. He was possibly finning unsuspectingly towards something big enough and nasty enough to rip him into small, bloody pieces.
4. He was shit-scared. And that wasn’t likely to improve either.
The water was cold and his hands were even colder, but he’d left his gloves behind deliberately. It was hard enough to feel the line through chilled fingers at the best of times and with gloves on, it could quickly become impossible. The water which had looked so deceptively clear and almost seductively inviting at first sight had turned immediately into a dark reddish brown sludge. And he was betting that some of the colour still came from a man’s blood, mixed into the mud and ochre at the bottom of the sump.
The only thing this sump had going for it at the moment was that he hadn’t encountered anything tight, or anything with teeth for that matter, but he had passed several sections where the walls suddenly, and seemingly randomly, disappeared, indicating the existence of other passages, generally known in mines as levels. There was almost no way of keeping track of these in your head, without the benefit of sight, hence his total reliance on the modern day equivalent of Ariadne’s Thread. He just desperately hoped he didn’t meet the Triassic version of the Minotaur.
He tried to keep his breathing slow and regular. All divers needed to conserve their air. It was an all too limited resource in this environment. He was carrying two 45 cubic foot diving cylinders, capable of delivering about 3 hours of air between them. But he couldn’t afford to ignore the thirds rule. The most basic rule of all in cave diving. You used no more than one third of your air on the way in, saving one third for the way back and keeping one third in reserve for your safety margin, in case of problems. It was probably the only universal rule in this potentially suicidal game.
And if I die down here, my fucking life policies won’t pay out.
The Hotel. 7.15am.
“Run this one past me again, Connor,” said Cutter, with unusual patience, not having any idea how much those words meant to his student.
Without mentioning haematite, thought Abby, uncharitably, before the amused gleam in Captain Stringer’s eyes suddenly made her feel protective. Connor was her friend and she was damned if an ex-public schoolboy type with a big gun was going to get away with taking the piss.
Stringer’s amusement didn’t diminish when he felt the glare directed at him by the skinny, boyish blonde, but it wasn’t too hard to keep a straight face. Pippin’s floppy hair, ridiculous hat and puppy dog enthusiasm did a good job of concealing an almost painfully sharp intellect and even Stringer had to admit that the kid was starting to make sense.
And he was starting to like Merry, so he didn’t want to end up on her shit-list, if he could avoid it.
As Pippin was pointing out enthusiastically, they knew the anomalies came complete with a strong magnetic field. That had been in the reports. Joel Stringer never went into an assignment without reading the background data. None of them did, if they had a choice.
Iron ore was magnetic. Connor had explained that in detail as well, going into the differences between haematite, magnetite and following up with what sounded like a dissertation on how lodestones were formed.
He’d even spent twenty minutes explaining the geology of the
And for once, he had an attentive audience.
The Devil’s Crowll. 4.15am.
Lester slid his left hand along the line, finning as gently as he could. There was no way to avoid stirring up the mud, but he still clung to a vain hope of eventually managing to see something in this godforsaken sump. Part of his problem was that he was carrying slightly too much weight and so had a tendency to sink downwards into the muck.
He considered ditching one of the lead weights attached to his belt but rejected the idea. It was a hell of a long time since he’d worn this sort of kit and he wasn’t sufficiently confident of his abilities to start playing around like that in these conditions. He’d just have to put up with the cloud of mud and silt he was stirring up. But if he did make it to dry land or an air-bell of some sort, he would definitely shed some lead. There was a fine dividing line between not bobbing around on the roof of the passage and not dragging yourself through the mud on the bottom, and he hadn’t quite got it right.
The line continued round a corner. Lester felt his knuckles scrape rock. With his right hand he was able to reach out and feel the wall on the other side of the underwater passage. At the moment, the level was no more than one and a half meters wide, and was maybe the same high, but the silt at the bottom no doubt disguised the original depth. He was losing track of distance in this strange subterranean world. The line was tagged at 30m intervals, but he had a nasty feeling he’d miscounted already. A typical novice’s mistake, which his irritatingly competent brother would no doubt have derided.
The only noise he could hear was the sound of air being drawn though the regulator gripped fiercely between his teeth and the secondary hiss of the bubbles escaping, to bob unseen along the passage roof. His jaw was already aching slightly but he had no intention of loosening his grip on the mouth-piece.
Part of his brain, the very small part that wasn’t gibbering with fear, told him that Lyle had made a very good job of laying the line. Not too tight. Not too loose. Along one particularly lengthy stretch he’d even anchored it in place with a small bag of pebbles, carried for exactly that purpose, to stop it drifting down into a narrower section of passage on the left, enabling Lester to continue finning slowly and carefully along the middle of the passage.
It was hard to estimate time, and even harder to see his watch in the murk, but he thought he’d been in the sump now for maybe twenty minutes. A long dive by his standards but on the plus side, he was still in one piece. What did worry him though was his safety margin. He was certain he was breathing more heavily than Lyle would be, and so he’d be using up his air faster. And he’d not found the other diver yet. But nor had he come to the end of the line. Not in any sense. Not yet, at least.
A moment later, he felt the nylon cord between his fingers jerk slightly and his heart rate jumped abruptly. And if ever he’d known what it meant to have your heart in your mouth, he knew it now. It was suddenly almost impossible to swallow around the hard lump of fear constricting his throat.
He could see fuck all, but even so, he peered ahead in the muddy water trying to make out even the faintest glimmer of light that would have betokened a diver coming back the other way. Nothing.
Lester’s heart hammered painfully in his chest, and he knew for certain he was dragging air into his lungs way faster than he should have been. Was it Lyle returning, or the movement of the line being snagged on the feet flippers? of whatever it was that had trashed the camp and almost certainly killed at least one of the original divers? He tried to recall the prints they’d seen in the mud, but the only images his brain insisted on sending him were of teeth. Fucking great big teeth. Coming towards him down the passage.
With his right hand he fumbled for the hilt of the diving knife strapped to his left forearm. The knife slid free of the hilt and felt hard and comforting in his grip. He stopped finning and allowed himself to sink slightly, waiting for what could just turn out to be a nasty death but still clinging to the hope that he might yet see a light in the Stygian darkness.
The line continued to twitch and pull in his hand and he could now feel a movement in the water on his hands and on the parts of his face not covered by the neoprene hood and diving mask. The temptation to try to turn round and get the hell out of there was almost over-whelming but the still-rational part of his brain knew that with a knife in hand he had some hope of fighting back, but if he turned tail now, he’d have no defense at all. That was all that kept him there. The knowledge that some hope was better than no hope.
So Lester held his ground and wondered whether being ripped apart would be a quick death or a slow one. And how much it would hurt.
The Hotel. 7.45am.
Ryan shook his head. “I’m not sending any more men into the Crowll yet. Lyle knew the risks. We wait.”
“For what?” Jim Mitchell’s voice was quiet, the look in his brown eyes was intense, falling just short of open challenge but not by much.
The soldier sighed. “For one of them to get back out and tell us what the hell is going on. Connor thinks that whatever it is will probably be mainly aquatic. Unlikely to be able to climb ladders. If he’s right, and in my experience, he usually is, then the chances of all of them falling victim to the fucking thing are not that high. If Lyle and Lester aren’t back within their air margins, Finn and Blade will give them probably an hour on top, then they’ll head back out. So you do the maths, Jim. Tell me when we can expect one of them back out.”
“They went underground at about 10. They had a lot of kit and Lester isn’t caving fit, so Jon wouldn’t have pushed the pace. Call it 5 hours to reach the sump, maybe a bit less, so the earliest they could have been diving would have been 3 ish. They’re carrying enough air for about 3 hours each, but if they find dry passage it could take longer. The earliest we could expect someone out could be between 10 and 11.”
“So we wait until 10.30 and talk again,” said Ryan.
“And in the meantime?”
For a brief moment, Ryan’s mask of professional detachment slipped and concern flickered in the cool grey eyes. “Get some gear ready, Jim. And decide which of the lads you want to take with you.” Fuck it. Lyle was his friend. If Arwen argued, he’d field Mary for back-up.
Jim Mitchell grinned and went off to sort the kit.
The Devil’s Crowll. 4.55am.
The hand that grasped Lester’s was cold but it was human, and that was all that mattered right now.
Dim yellow light from Lyle’s diving lights cast a faint halo in the water.
The soldier had approached round an almost right-angled bend in the passage so Lester hadn’t seen the light until the second after that gut-churning first contact when searching fingers had slid along the line and up and over his own hand, tentative at first, then searching, almost demanding. But more importantly, alive.
Shock receded like the fierce roll of an ocean wave, leaving Lester light-headed with relief. He had just enough common sense left to sheath the knife before reaching for Lyle’s hand in an attempt to convince himself that it really was the soldier and not just something bearing a passing resemblance to a human being that would then try to eat him.
Lyle’s hand gripped Lester’s reassuringly, then he made a circle of his first finger and thumb and held his hand up close to the other man’s face, making the universal underwater signal for OK.
The silt in the passage suddenly churned up even more and Lester was conscious of the fact that Lyle was now twisting round, changing position so they were both facing the same way along the level. Towards the corner. Back into the cave.
Oh, shit.
He felt Lyle’s hand on his shoulder. A firm grip. One that said Trust me.
Lester exhaled a long slow breath and groped blindly for the other man’s arm, squeezing in acknowledgment, then Lyle was moving again, finning slowly and carefully back the way he’d come. Deeper into the Devil’s Crowll. Lester counted slowly to thirty and then followed him.
He was calmer now. If the soldier was going back it must mean he’d found someone alive. Lyle would be too close to the limits of his first third of air for any other scenario to be likely.
All Lester had to do now was follow. And hope.
The Hotel. 9am.
Connor looked up from his laptop, his face alight with interest, “Hey, cool! We can go down one of the mines and take a look from the inside!”
“You know how to give a girl a good time,” muttered Abby.
Claudia grimaced, “No thanks. I heard Lyle’s description. It sounds like something out of one of my worst nightmares.”
“No, look,” he turned the screen round and gestured enthusiastically, “there’s one that’s open to the public, it’s not far away, either.”
“
Connor’s hand froze in the act of propelling a bacon roll towards his mouth. “There’s a connection between where they’re diving and the tourist place?”
Mary shrugged, “Almost certainly. They just haven’t found the way through yet, that’s all. It took five years of digging to reopen the way back down to the flooded levels of the Crowll. It’s now just a question of finding the right way. They’ll do it eventually, I’m sure.” The animation suddenly faded from her face as memory bore back down on her like a lead weight.
“Professor!” Connor’s yell took the whole room by surprise.
The look on the lad’s face told Stringer all he needed to know. Without waiting for an explanation he took off in the direction of the door, “Ryan, we’ve got more trouble!”
The Devil’s Crowll. 5.05am.
The passage walls had vanished on both sides. If anything, Lester felt even more nervous when that happened. At least in zero visibility the walls were some sort of anchor to a tenuous reality. Without their comforting presence agoraphobia was an even bigger problem for a cave diver than claustrophobia.
He could feel movement on the line ahead so it was a reasonable bet that Lyle was still underwater. He’d counted three tags, so they’d gone maybe another 90 metres or so. How much further?
Lester slowed for a moment as he reached another of the soldier’s line anchors. His hand slid up to the knot that held the small net of stones in place, then he transferred his hold on the line past it and hesitated just long enough to adjust the gag in his mouth with his free hand, working his jaw to try and relieve the painful cramp which came from gripping the mouthpiece too tightly between his teeth. He also swallowed hard to relieve the pressure building up in his ears. Both of them gave a satisfying pop and immediately felt more comfortable.
The momentary lack of movement allowed him to drift down in the water and one hand trailed in the soft mud, stirring up even more particles of silt, reducing visibility even further, if that was possible. Christ, he’d be glad when he was out of this god awful murk.
Something round and hard shifted position under his hand. More out of habit than anything, he explored its surface. It didn’t feel like a rock. Too smooth, too regular. It felt like plastic. He started to use it to push himself off the bottom and the object shifted under his hand. It now felt soft and sort of lumpy and one finger slid into something that yielded unpleasantly to his touch.
Oh dear God, no!
Panic clutched at him with invisible fingers, digging into his brain, darkness threatening to engulf his senses as thickly as the mud rising round him. Sickness rose in his throat. He fought desperately for control. He couldn’t throw up, not underwater, no way! But his body had other views.
Vomit rose inexorably and wouldn’t be denied. With his right hand, he dragged the gag out of his mouth and spewed into the water. Heave. Stuff the gag back in. Breathe. Rip the mouthpiece out again. Heave. If he got the sequence wrong, he’d drag water into his lungs instead of air and would drown. It was as simple as that.
Fuck!
There was nothing simple about throwing up underwater. His brother had done it once, diving too soon after a heavy drinking session the night before. Bloody stupid, but they’d laughed about it afterwards. Somewhat shamefacedly in Ralph’s case, but they’d still laughed. Lester wasn’t laughing now, that was for sure.
The spasms subsided slightly and he realized he was breathing air again. He wanted to cough, to spit, to finish heaving, but not here, not underwater. For a moment he thought he’d let go of the line and his brain twisted in terror, then he realized the thin nylon cord was still twined round the fingers of his left hand and he really was hanging onto it for grim death. Which was exactly what he’d be facing if he’d let go.
Adrenaline surging through his system, he kicked off the bottom as best he could, the long fins digging deeply into the mud. He resisted the temptation to drag himself along with the line. It wasn’t designed for that. It was for guidance only, not for pulling on. Legs straight, kicking up, down, up, down, he propelled himself on, away from the horror nestled in the mud. Along the line. Towards what he hoped was airspace. And something that might pass for safety in this insane, and distinctly unfriendly, subterranean world.
Hands grabbed him under the armpits and his head broke through the surface of the water. Light blinded him. He spat the mouthpiece out, coughing and retching so hard he thought he’d bring up his own lungs. Strong arms hauled him out of the water and he heard Lyle saying his name, but he couldn’t make out any more than that.
He was breathing air, that was all that mattered.
“What the fuck happened?” Lyle’s voice was rough with concern. He’d begun to think the other man would never stop coughing.
“Threw up,” Lester muttered, spitting again and trying to sit up. The amount of kit round his waist immediately turning into a hindrance away from the buoyancy of the water.
“Yeah, the vomit in your gag’s a bit of a giveaway. Why?”
“Felt something in the mud ……..a helmet.”
Lyles eyes widened and he breathed, “Oh shit.”
No more words were needed. The look on Lester’s face told the story eloquently enough. It hadn’t just been a helmet he’d found. It had still been attached to its former owner’s head.
Jesus H. Christ, that’d be enough to make anyone hurl. Lyle held the other man’s shoulders hard, trying to convey sympathy without words, while Lester fought for control. And finally won.
“How many, and where?” Mary Mitchell was doing a good job of keeping her voice calm but the teenager behind the desk already looked on the verge of panic, even though Ryan and Stringer were doing their best to look non-threatening.
“Fred and Sheelagh have taken a group of nine kids down to the Deep Levels, they went in early, about nine o’clock ……….. it’s a birthday treat ……….. Mary, what’s going on?”
“We’re not sure, Megan, but we might have a bit of a problem and these guys are here to check it out. It’s OK to let them down, this lady’s from the Government.”
Claudia stepped forward with her best Trust me I’m from the Home Office smile and flashed her ID. The girl seemed reassured, even though she didn’t actually read it.
“Claudia Brown, Home Office.” The two soldiers tried, and conspicuously failed, to stifle grins. Damn, why do I always say it the same way? thought Claudia. “How many more people are underground? Have you got a tour in there at the moment?”
“Don’t run tours like that, ma’am,” the girl said, shyly, glancing at Mary for help.
“It’s a self-guided tour,” Mary explained. “The caves are lit all the time and the visitors just follow the marked paths. The way down to the Deep Levels is gated and locked so they can’t go off the main route. How many have gone down this morning, Megan?” Not too many surely, it was early yet, and there were no coaches in the car-park, although there had been at least half a dozen cars.
The girl glanced at a pad of paper by the till and answered confidently, “Twenty three.” She saw the other woman’s look of surprise and added, “A mini-bus dropped one group off, but the driver didn’t stay. He’s coming back for them at 11 o’clock.”
“Could you get someone to close the outer gates, please?” asked Claudia, retying to keep the urgency out of her voice. “It would be a good idea to shut the caves to the public for the rest of the day. We’ll send people underground to bring your visitors out. If they want refunds, just let the Home Office have the bill.” At least I’ll be cheaper than the helicopter, but Lester still won’t approve. “Mary, how do you want to organize this?”
Ten minutes later, Mary Mitchell had sent four of the show cave staff underground, each accompanied by one of the soldiers. Their job was to act as sheepdogs, round up the visitors and get them all back to the surface.
Claudia wasn’t convinced by the escaped prisoner line, but it was better than nothing, and certainly better than the you’re about to be eaten by a big bad monster from the past line. That really wasn’t convincing, even if it might be true.
And, as ever, when dealing with the inhabitants of the
The Devil’s Crowll. 5.15am
Lyle’s hunch had proved right. One of the divers had survived. Dave Shaw. A short, thick set man in his early thirties, who seemed unreasonably calm in the circumstances. But there was no mistaking the fact that he was also in the early stages of hypothermia and had a slightly unfocussed look in his eyes that spoke of shock.
Shaw’s diving bottles were empty. In the chaos of the underwater attack, one of his air hoses had been severed and the other had been damaged. He’d made it back into the big chamber, known to miners as a churn. The chamber he and his companion, Chris Dennett, had discovered only half an hour before.
The bottles had bled out and now lay discarded in the mud. Dennett had no doubt bled out as well. Lyle just hoped it had been a quick death.
Lester noted the slight shudder that passed over the other man’s normally impassive face. Even hardened to unpleasant ways of dying as the Special Forces soldiers were, there was something peculiarly horrible about the thought of being attacked in the murk of the sump.
Shaw hadn’t seen the attack on his companion. He’d dived out last, over the moon with the success of the trip, reliving the moment when they realized they’d left the Crowll behind and had surfaced in a different system entirely.
The churn was huge, a hundred metres long, by at least 50 wide. A massive domed chamber whose sides sloped down to a relatively flat floor, strewn in placed with large boulders. A mud bank led down to the underground lake where the divers had first surfaced. They’d explored for half an hour. Enough to be sure of the dimensions of the churn and to decide that whilst there must be a way out of here, the evidence of past mining activity testified to that, they’d probably need to dig amongst the rocks and boulders around the edge of the chamber to uncover it.
But they’d got through, that was the main thing! Five years of hard work had finally paid off. They were into new passage. Every caver’s dream.
A dream that was shortly to turn into a nightmare.
Minutes into his return dive, Shaw had felt a commotion in the water. The line had suddenly gone slack. He’d followed it a little way further but he’d known something was badly wrong. Further turbulence had freaked him out, he’d turned and started to fin back up the line as fast as he could, back to what he hoped was the safety of the churn.
He’d nearly made it, then something had cannoned into him from behind, almost jerking the line out of his fingers. He’d felt a tug, and one fin was ripped off his boot, then something had powered past him in the widest part of the sump and suddenly his air supply had gone. Scared half to death, he’d barely had the presence of mind to grope blindly for his spare valve, turning on the second bottle before sucking greedily at the air.
Somehow he’d managed to carry on, tugging at the line, too scared to follow normal rules, desperate to get back to dry land, to get out of the water. To get away from whatever the fuck was sharing the sump with him. He’d surfaced minutes later, scrambling out of the water, dragging himself up the mud bank, trying to shed the cumbersome bottles as he went.
“Did you see it?” Lyle asked, working on the know your enemy principle, beloved of soldiers everywhere.
Shaw nodded, his face pinched and pale. “Came up after me. Head like a crocodile, but wider, flatter, teeth like bread knives, fat body, short legs. It was an ugly fucker, Jon. Christ, it was ugly. It even had tusks coming out through its sodding nose!”
Shaw had dispatched the creature back into the sump by the simple but effective method of chucking large rocks at it, aiming always for its head. It hadn’t liked that, the caver reported, with the ghost of a grin.
“And if I get out of here alive, I’m moving to
“
“No caves, and hopefully no fucking crocodiles either.”
“Sounds like a mastodonsaurus,” Lyle commented, looking thoughtful.
That really did cause Lester’s eyebrows to shoot up in surprise.
The soldier held up a hand defensively, “Hey, I was a kid too!”
“Grow up round here, you learn that sort of thing fast,” muttered Shaw. “Chris is dead, isn’t he?”
With the memory of the head in the sump burnt in his mind like a brand, Lester nodded.
In the hope of avoiding further questioning, he pulled at the clasp of his belt and started removing kit. “Take this lot, Lyle. I’m in no fit state to dive again immediately. Get Shaw out of here before he gets too cold to go back in the water.”
Lyle looked at him like he was mad.
It was Lester’s turn to hold up a hand, “Don’t give me the I’m not leaving you routine, Lieutenant Lyle. Take the kit and get the hell out of here. If you reckon there’s enough air, then come back through if you want, but I’ll be good for at least a day. I packed a survival blanket in the small ammo box and there are at least half a dozen energy bars in there. I won’t starve and I won’t freeze.”
I’ll be scared out of my fucking wits, but I’m not telling you that. I’ve a good chance of getting through a day, maybe more but Shaw hasn’t, so get that look out of your eyes, you stubborn bugger and get on with it, before my nerve goes and I start demanding a teddy bear!
Lyle kept his expression strictly neutral, guessing what must be going through Lester’s mind, but knowing that there was no point in arguing. They didn’t have enough working kit to make a safe attempt at getting three of them back through the sump at the same time. To try that, people would have to buddy-breathe off the same bottles, passing a mouthpiece from hand to hand, staying so close as to be almost linked. It was feasible, but fucking difficult and it would leave both of them impossibly vulnerable to attack. And even a simple mishap could be fatal, even if they didn’t encounter the predator.
The Witch King was right, diving again immediately wasn’t an option for him. In half an hour to an hour, probably yes, as by then the adrenaline surge would have started to work through his system, but now, the man was cold, shivery and in borderline shock himself.
Lyle swore softly but vehemently then mentally calculated and re-calculated their air margins, even scribbling figures in the mud to keep track of his thinking. Eventually he nodded. “OK, we can do it and still get us all out without waiting for back up.”
Lester looked skeptical but waited for the soldier to elaborate.
“Once Dave and I get back to base, I’ll need to equalize the air, then bring all four bottles back and equalize again. That’ll leave two for each of us on the return, with just enough air to get us back. We’ll have to breathe all four right down, but it’ll work.” Just.
“You’ve got the kit to equalize?”
“Used to be a boy scout. Course I have. There’s a high pressure hose and a spanner in one of the packs,” Lyle grinned.
It was a crazy plan but if his calculations were right, there’d be enough air. OK, their safety margins would be almost zero, but it was better than the alternative, which appeared to be leaving Lester to sit around for a day and contemplate the prospect of being eaten.
“And you’ll dive back carrying all four bottles?” Lester fought hard to keep his voice level.
It was feasible, but fucking dangerous. It would be safer just to leave him and fetch back up. But one glance at the mess of large footprints over to one side of the mud bank made him hope and pray that Lyle really did intend to go through with this lunacy.
“Done worse,” the grin didn’t waiver, “and the good news is you get to keep the rifle. There’s no way I can drag that much gear back through and carry it as well.” And if the mastodonsaurus comes back, it’ll be better than a few rocks.
While Dave Shaw started to kit up, Lester found himself on the receiving end of a succinct lesson in how to use an M4 assault rifle. More incongruous surroundings would have been hard to imagine. But he made a very attentive pupil.
Ten minutes later, two divers were ready to go back into the water. Lyle would dive first, but Shaw would follow immediately behind.
The soldier looked back over his shoulder, gag in hand and opened his mouth to speak. Lester shook his head. “Don’t say it, Lyle. The I’ll be back line sounds better in films.”
Laughter danced in the hazel eyes, hidden behind the diving mask. “I was going to remind you to take the safety catch off, sir.” With that, Lyle gripped the mouthpiece in his teeth and slid into the sump.
A minute later, Dave Shaw slipped below the surface.
Sir James Lester was alone in the darkness of an unknown chamber deep beneath the surface. Surrounded by blood-red mud in the heart of an ancient iron-mine. Clutching an assault rifle. It wasn’t a teddy bear, but it was the next best thing.
And the memory of a pair of confident hazel eyes made a very good comfort-blanket.
The child’s shriek echoed round a small chamber. And then there was silence.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 06:54 pm (UTC)And there will be more S/R smut soon in mine, I promise :) It's always lovely to discover someone else has been reading! Thanks for commenting!!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 07:33 pm (UTC)thank you i like my userpic too lol
and thanks for the recs i shall head on to read up
no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 10:03 pm (UTC)I lurked for ages before getting myself set up, then I tried really hard to psych myself up to try writing a quick bit of slash to see if I could .....and the rest is history *grins*