Free Ice Claw by David Gilman

disturbing the air—a sound that would be heard to anyone half listening. And Max’s guess was that whoever was creeping down those stairs would be listening for any sound at all.
    There was no time to go farther. A double-tiered trolley stood in the corridor. Neatly folded on top were a rubber under blanket and a cotton sheet. Opposite, a door with a slide bolt and with a transom window above was the only other exit to be seen. A small sign read: MORGUE .
    “Hang on a sec,” Max whispered.
    He eased the bolt. Inside the room was a wall of stainless-steel refrigerators, each with a door big enough to slide a body in, and there was another trolley, like the one outside. It was obviously used for bringing bodies from the wards or, as Max hoped, from down that other corridor, where he reckoned the underground parking garage was located and where ambulances might arrive to deliver their fatalities.
    Max knelt next to Sayid and whispered in his ear, “We’ll go in there. It’s pretty gloomy and there’s a trolley we can hide in like this one. You go underneath; I’ll go on top with a sheet over me. Chances are whoever it is won’t want to go poking around a mortuary. I should be able to hold my breath long enough to fool them.”
    Sayid shook his head. “Not a chance.”
    “This is no time to be squeamish, mate. Someone’s coming down those stairs and I bet it’s not nursey to tuck you up for the night.”
    “No. Can’t go in there, Max. Can’t,” Sayid whispered back.
    “They won’t hurt you. They’re dead,” Max assured him. “They’re in the fridge, like last week’s leftovers.”
    Sayid’s eyes scrunched tight and he shook his head adamantly. There was no time to argue. Someone had pushed a swing door on the floor above them. Whoever was up there, they were checking the corridors.
    “All right! Blimey, Sayid, you make life difficult at times.”
    “Me!” Sayid whispered indignantly.
    A door clanged shut above their heads. They looked up, trying to imagine the intruder walking back towards the stairs. Max grabbed Sayid’s arm.
    “Wheelchair stays here, you climb underneath thistrolley. I’ll go in there,” Max said, with a nod towards the mortuary door.
    Sayid eased himself onto the bottom tier of the trolley as Max threw the sheet across the top so that it draped over the whole thing.
    He poked his head under the corner of the sheet. “Stay dead quiet until I come and get you.”
    “This is no time for making jokes, Max!”
    “I’m not. He’s going to come through those doors, so whatever you do—don’t move!” Max told him.
    Sayid lay rigid, clutching the clothes bundle to his chest as Max dropped the sheet corner back.
    Inside the mortuary Max eased the door closed so the lock didn’t catch, its edge resting against the frame; then he climbed under the trolley as he had shown Sayid. This sheet was shorter than the last. It wouldn’t cover the length of his body or the whole trolley. Max pulled off his boots and socks and rolled his cargo pants to his knees. Tucking a boot under each armpit, he lay down on the top of the trolley, pulled the sheet over his head and straightened himself out, as if at attention, determined not to move. The cold air on his bare feet made him want to rub them together. They would be drained of warmth and blood any minute now. Placing his heels together, he let each foot drop away naturally from the other. No sooner had he settled his breathing than he heard the swing doors whisper open.
    Max prayed Sayid didn’t lose his nerve.

The man who moved almost silently down the last couple of floors had spent more than half his lifetime in the French Foreign Legion. His young life of violent crime had been officially forgotten with no questions asked when the Legion accepted him that day in Marseilles twenty years ago. They gave him a new identity and, more importantly for him and others like him, a new family—the Legion. When he left that legendary fighting