Chapter Two: Botched Missions Ruin Possible Friendships
Bond followed Trevelyan through the facility, cautiously watching out for either scientists or soldiers. Trevelyan had managed to contact an MI6 double agent inside the facility, a man who went by the codename 'Dr. Doak'. He had a very necessary piece of equipment with him: a door decoder. Without the decoder, they could not enter the bottling room where they needed to plant explosives.
Trevelyan was very certain of the route they were taking. Through two security doors, which they'd opened from another room, past a locker room/shower setup, then into a small corridor with three doors. The one of the right was closest to them, the one on the left farthest away, and the third door was on the opposite wall as them. The corridor was suspiciously quiet.
"This is too easy," Bond said, walking over to Trevelyan, who was opening the door on the right.
"Right," he said, pulling a grenade from his pocket. "Better safe than sorry." He tossed the grenade into the room, then closed the door.
"Words to live by, but won't that set off the alarm?"
Bond's question was answered in seconds, when Trevelyan opened the door and revealled that four of the five people in the room had been killed by the blast, while the fifth was cowering in a corner. Trevelyan simply walked in and put a bullet in his head. "Sound proof," he said.
"No chance any of them was this Doak person you mentioned?"
"No. His position is the laboratory. He'd never compromise himself. Not at a time like this."
Bond nodded. Trevelyan seemed to know what he was doing. Of course, he was a more seasoned agent than Bond. Where Bond had only two years in the Service, Trevelyan was nearing ten years. Bond was also a good deal younger than Trevelyan. At forty, he still had fifteen years of Service time left. Trevelyan was only one year shy of mandatory retirement age: fifty-five.
Bond checked the other room, finding only one scientist. A bullet to his head was all the poor chap got for all his work. Trevelyan walked in behind him. "Good work, Bond. I see you earn your licence to kill earnestly."
"Being a Double-0 means being a killer."
"I'm sure M would be proud."
"Half-monk, half-hitman. That was her decision."
Trevelyan nodded, then walked out of the room. Bond followed, keeping half a pace behind him. They left the corridor and emerged in a hallway that provided three options: to the right, to the left, and ahead. Ahead was a door. To the right and to the left were two hallways. Trevelyan took away any choice by walking through the door ahead and silencing every soldier in the room.
Obviously you earned your licence as earnestly as I did, Bond thought.
Trevelyan walked over to a console to the left, pressed a button, then walked past Bond. "C'mon, this way."
"Yes, sir," Bond said, following him.
The new room had a staircase, which Trevelyan started climbing. Bond kept his half-a-pace behind, then stopped, just as Trevelyan had. Trevelyan held up two fingers, pointing forward. Bond knew this, it meant to go ahead slowly. Without acknowledgement, Bond did just that. He turned the corner and took aim at the back of the head of a soldier. Trevelyan did the same for the man next to him. On a silent count, both men fired their weapons at the soldiers after three seconds.
"Not bad, 007," Trevelyan said, holstering his Sig.
"I try."
The nearest lab room had a name stenciled across the glass: DOCTOR DAVID DOAK. The words were in Russian, but Bond had become proficent at reading Cyrillic. Trevelyan walked in, Bond followed.
"Time to leave, Dr. Doak," Trevelyan said, holding out his hand. "We'll take that door decoder."
"Two members of Her Majesty's Secret Service? This place must be worth a lot."
"Considerably more than it seems, doctor," Bond said, hoping to rush the man into giving them the decoder.
"Of course." He reached into his lab coat pocket, then handed Trevelyan a device about the size of a calculator. "Just punch in five-five-six-one-oh."
Trevelyan nodded, then left the room. Bond followed once more, and kept his weapon at the ready. It was practically useless, however, as the rest of the place was devoid of guards or even scientists. Not for the first time, Bond didn't like the feeling of the mission.
Trevelyan used the decoder on the door to the bottling room. He retrieved the device after opening the door, then they both slid in and shut the door.
"This is too easy," Bond repeated while scoping out the surrounding area. The bottling room was completely devoid of any type of life besides Bond and Trevelyan.
"Half of everything is luck, James," Trevelyan said, resetting the code for the door lock.
"And the other half?" Bond asked, opening a pouch on his vest and retrieving a timed mine. The devices were the size of an MP3 player, and could be set for any amount of time eight minutes and under.
Suddenly, the alarm went off. Bond spun around and saw that Trevelyan had removed the door decoder. Had resetting the code and removing the device been what did it? "Fate," Trevelyan said, answering Bond's earlier question. "Set the timers for six minutes, then make for the door!" he ordered, running down the stairs. Bond just nodded without speaking.
Something more had gone wrong than just taking the decoder off the door, but Bond didn't have time to pursue it. The mission could still be completed if they got the bombs on the gas tanks and made it out to the runway on the other side of the dam, which the back door of the facility was connected to.
Colonel Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov and several of his best men were standing at a window which looked into the room. Ourumov ordered his troops to fire. The glass had been meant to keep chemical leaks contained in the bottling room. With enough gunfire, however, the glass could be broken down, which is what Ourumov's troops did.
Bond peeked out from setting a timed charge. There were literally dozens of Russian troops pouring into the room from the broken window and the door through which he and Trevelyan had entered. Bond pulled an extra charge from his pocket, set it for ten seconds, then threw it at the incoming soldiers. He didn't get Ourumov, but he did get a great deal of his soldiers.
"Alec!" he shouted over the sound of a little gunfire, "we've got far too many friends over tonight!" When he didn't get an answer back, Bond looked around the gas tanks—Trevelyan was nowhere to be found. He looked out around the tanks and saw Ourumov had Trevelyan on his knees, hands behind his head. Ourumov's Makarov was pointing directly at his head.
"Come out," Ourumov said, "toss your weapon to the ground and surrender yourself."
"Just finish it, Bond! Blow this place to shit!" Trevelyan yelled. Ourumov pistol-whipped him, then regained his composure.
"You have ten seconds before I kill your friend and order my men to fire."
"You'd never blow the gas tanks, Colonel," Bond yelled back. He had retreated behind a tank again and reset the timer on one of the bombs for two minutes. When one went off, the others would as well. "And, in two minutes, we'll all be dead anyway!"
Bond heard a gunshot, then looked around the gas tank again. Trevelyan's lifeless body was lying there, smoke coming from Ourumov's barrel.
006 was dead.
Bond made a dash for the door in back. Ourumov's troops fired at him—apparently, Ourumov was crazy enough to kill them all when he knew it was inevitable anyway—but none of their bullets connected to anything but wall and floor. Bond ran up the stairs and made it to the top just as Ourumov's troops made it through the door. Bond looked over the side of the stairs and saw Ourumov's very angered face staring up at him.
It was very cold outside when Bond got to the runway. A plane was already sitting on the runway. Hopefully, the keys were already in the ignition. Bond made a very mad dash to the plane and was greeted by a bullet through the cockpit glass when he made it there. He spun around and saw Ourumov and his troops had made it outside. Bond emptied out the last of his AK-74 on them, then left the weapon. He jumped inside the plane and found that he was actually in luck this time—the keys were in the ignition. He ran though the mental list of take-off procedures and started the plane. He didn't have time to do everything necessary, so he started it up very quickly, then got himself moving.
As the plane lifted off—hopefully with no damaging holes in it—Bond checked his watch. Ten seconds until the charges went off. When he was safely away, he turned and looked out the window. The explosion was immense. A piece of the dam itself had been blown off.
And Bond had left the corpse of Alec Trevelyan there. Hopefully, the base collapsing on top of him would provide a propper burial.
He tapped a few buttons near the radio. Frequency 007—a direct line from him to MI6 HQ in London. "Bond here. Mission accomplished. 006 is out of play, however."
M's voice came over the radio. "We read you, 007. Good job. Trevelyan's funeral service will be carried out when you return."
"Understood, Ma'am."
"007?"
"Yes?"
"How?"
"Colonel Ourumov."
"Soviet-headed dog! I wasn't even aware he was stationed at Arkangelsk."
"Well he was. And he must have known we were coming."
"A traitor?"
"It must have been Doak. The double agent Trevelyan contacted."
"We'll try to point fingers later, 007. Just get back here."