And then it was over, as suddenly as it had begun. All the Kochis—including Rafiq and Faisal—were alive. So was Alex. Only one of Drake’s men was moving. Alex turned away as Rafiq finished him with a single shot.
Faisal was on his side?
It couldn’t be true. But as Alex got to his feet, Rafiq was embracing him, the two men laughing. The other Kochis had gathered around in a group hug. And Alex had seen it for himself. Faisal had just saved his life. He had taken out half a dozen of Drake’s men. What was going on?
“English boy!” Faisal exclaimed, seeing him. He was beaming, which was odd, because the last time they had met, Alex had kicked him hard where it hurt.
“Can someone explain what’s happening?” Alex asked.
“Ask no questions, my friend.” It was Rafiq who had spoken. And suddenly he was speaking perfect English. “We have a long journey to the border, and there is a helicopter that waits. Ask your questions when you are home.”
Questions. Yes. The more Alex thought about it, the more he had to ask.
7
SPECIAL DELIVERY
THE TORNADO GR4 LOOKED deadly even before it left the ground. Officially described as a day-or-night, all-weather attack aircraft, it certainly looked the part with its sleek fuselage and V-shaped variable-sweep wings. The plane was waiting for clearance, sitting in the baking sun at the end of the runway at RAF Akrotiri at the southernmost tip of Cyprus. The Tornado GR4 is not a new aircraft. It was actually developed during the cold war with Russia. But it remains a favorite of the Royal Air Force: fast, quiet, and easy to fly. It was perhaps significant that normally, it might have been armed with all manner of missiles: up to five Pathway 1V smart weapons, for example, or Stormshadow cruise missiles. But this aircraft carried just two weapons. They were Brimstone ground attack missiles. They had been specially primed. There was no chance that they could miss.
“Go!”
The single word came from the control tower. The pilot, anonymous in the dark blue Meta-Aramid flight suit and helmet that would provide thermal, chemical, and radiation resistance, raised a thumb in acknowledgment. Seconds later, the two Rolls-Royce 199 Mk 103 turbofan engines flared and the plane began to roll forward, picking up speed. Each engine provided a thrust of 16,000 pounds. By the time it reached its cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, the Tornado would be traveling at around 1,000 miles per hour.
The sun glinted off the wings. In seconds it was gone, clearing the airport and arcing over the Mediterranean Sea.
It was on its way to Afghanistan.
In London, Alex was sitting opposite Alan Blunt, the chief executive of MI6 Special Operations. Mrs. Jones was with him. Less than twenty-four hours before, he had been facing certain execution in the Herat Mountains. He had broken out of prison and ridden a horse over a ledge with a drop of three hundred yards to the ground. He had been involved in a gunfight at a cemetery. Finally, he had crossed the border into Iran, where a helicopter had been on standby to fly him on the first leg of his journey home. In all that time, nobody had explained to him what had really happened—but Alex had begun to work it out for himself. He knew that, once again, he had been used. He wasn’t surprised.
And now, here he was on the sixteenth floor of the building on Liverpool Street with the traffic rumbling past outside. Blunt had welcomed him with tea and chocolate cookies, brought in on a trolley. There was something about the normality of it all that really shocked Alex. He was still waiting for the answers. It was as if he had been invited onto a stage to take part in a play—but no one had remembered to send him his lines.
“I don’t want you to blame yourself, Alex,” Blunt was saying. “We’re very grateful to you. The mission may not have gone quite as we hoped, but you really couldn’t have achieved any more.”
Alex examined the spymaster who had sent him on three missions. Each time he had been lucky not to get killed. Blunt really did look like a bank manager. He was the sort of man you would forget instantly . . . assuming you had noticed he was there in the first place. He was about fifty years old—maybe older—with gray hair, glasses, thin lips. His eyes gave nothing away. Nor was there anything in his office that said anything about him. There were no photographs on the desk, no personal items. Even the pictures on the walls had been deliberately chosen. A view of a field. A vase of flowers. A ship at sea. They were the sort of art you buy to fill a space, not because it is something you want to see.
“We’re very glad you weren’t hurt,” Blunt continued. “And I understand Brookland is opening again tomorrow. You haven’t missed any school, which is excellent. I’m sure you’ll be quite pleased to be back.”
“What about Darcus Drake?” Alex asked.
“You brought us very useful intelligence, Alex. This calutron of his doesn’t seem to be working after all. He’s not quite as much of a threat as we thought.”
“He’s still gathering an army,” Alex said. “He still wants to attack the West.”
“There are plenty of people who want to attack the West. We were afraid of a nuclear attack, but thanks to you, we know that’s not going to happen.”
“Forget about Darcus Drake,” Mrs. Jones said. She was sitting with her legs crossed and her hands folded on her knees. There was no expression on her face. Alex guessed that she wanted him out of the room. He had gotten that feeling the moment he walked in. “We’ll deal with him in due course. He’s got nothing to do with you.”
“He nearly killed me,” Alex reminded her. “He wanted to execute me by firing squad. He was going to film it and put it on the internet. Jack would have seen it. So would all my friends.”
“We’re just relieved that you escaped.”
“No!” On the two last occasions when he had been in this room, Alex had done what they wanted. He hadn’t argued with Blunt or Mrs. Jones. This time was different. He knew something was wrong. There was something he hadn’t been told. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he went on. “The whole thing . . . from start to finish. It doesn’t add up.”
Blunt twitched his lips in the sort of smile that could have been drawn with a pencil and a single line. “I don’t know what you mean, Alex.”
“Then let me tell you.” Alex took a breath. “First of all, you send me all the way to Afghanistan to take photographs of a machine that isn’t even working. I don’t believe you didn’t know that. You’ve got spies. You’ve got satellites. You knew everything about Darcus Drake. You must have known he didn’t have the ability to make nuclear weapons.”
“That’s what we sent you to find out,” Blunt said.
“I don’t believe you,” Alex said. He was surprised how easily the accusation slipped out. “I think you sent me there for another reason. I’ve gone over what happened. You paid a bunch of Afghan tribesmen to take me up into the mountains, and I crawled through the pipes like you said. But while I was doing that, one of them—a man called Faisal—rode into Falcon’s Edge and told Drake I was on the way. That’s how I was captured.”
“Faisal was bribed,” Blunt said. “You can’t really trust these people. They’ll work for the highest bidder.”
“That’s what I thought. But here’s the funny thing. When I was in my cell, someone came down and unlocked the door. I never found out who it was—but now that I think about it, Faisal was right outside. I saw him in the corridor and I assumed he was going to raise the alarm. I was wrong, wasn’t I? It was Faisal who’d unlocked the door. He must have been about to open it and let me out when a group of soldiers came along and he was forced to hide. As soon as they were gone, he came back for me, but by that time I was already on my way, and before he could explain that he was on my side, I knocked him out. That was my mistake, but how was I to know?”
“Are you saying that he changed his mind?” Mrs. Jones asked.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Jones. But he certainly helped me when I got to the Sh
uja cemetery. He shot a whole load of Drake’s men. And Rafiq and the others were happy to see him. They didn’t think he was a traitor. They were all delighted by what he’d done. And while I’m at it, here’s another question. Why were they waiting for me in the cemetery? I’d missed the rendezvous, but they were all there, buried in the graves. They knew I’d be coming eventually and they were there to help me.”
“Did they tell you anything?” Blunt asked.
“They wouldn’t talk about what had happened,” Alex said. “They were very friendly. They got me back over the border, and when I left, we all shook hands like we were the best of friends. Even Faisal embraced me and called me his brother. But they knew something and I think you know it too. So why don’t you tell me?”
Alan Blunt coughed. Alex noticed that he and Mrs. Jones were carefully avoiding each other’s eyes.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you, Alex,” he said eventually. “The Kochi people are a law unto themselves, and I don’t know what was going on in their minds—although I’d say you’re reading too much into it. It sounds like they got paid twice. We paid them to take you to Falcon’s Edge and Drake paid them to hand you over. You’re just lucky that they decided not to leave you behind.”
There was a file on the desk in front of him. He drew it toward himself.
“I can understand that you’re disappointed,” he went on. “The Stormbreaker business went extremely well, and you followed that by taking out Dr. Grief at the Point Blanc Academy. But if you’re going to be a spy, Alex, if you’re going to work for us, you’ve got to learn that you can’t be successful every time.”
“I don’t want to be a spy and I don’t want to work for you,” Alex said.
Blunt ignored this. “The calutron isn’t working. There was no need to penetrate Falcon’s Edge in the first place. It’s no longer our business.” He had a rubber stamp. He pressed it against a red ink pad, then brought it down onto the cover of the file. Alex saw he had printed two words:
MISSION FAIL
“You did extremely well, Alex,” he concluded. “The failure is entirely ours, not yours. I’m sure we’ll see you again very soon. If we need you, we know where to find you.”
“Yes,” Alex said gloomily. “You do.”
* * *
• • •
The Tornado was closing in on its target, maintaining a high subsonic cruise speed. Its route had taken it through the airspace of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran before it had curved up into Afghanistan, but nobody had protested. There are times when governments and intelligence agencies, even the ones that are supposedly hostile to one another, will work together for the common good. This was one of them. It was decided that the mission was so important, the Tornado had been given “invisible” status. As far as the world was concerned, it had never taken off. Its flight path hadn’t been recorded. If anyone ever asked, the mission had never taken place.
Inside the cockpit, the pilot prepared to fire the two missiles. There wasn’t even any need to take aim. The Brimstone had originally been developed as part of a system known as “fire and forget.” The two weapons had been programmed in Cyprus, before the plane took off. Even if the pilot didn’t know the target, they did. The Herat Mountains were coming up ahead of her now. There was white snow glistening on some of the peaks. The great plain stretched out below. The Tornado cast a shadow as it swept forward—but so quickly that it was literally gone in the blink of an eye. The pilot flicked off the safety switch, then made final checks on the computer screen. There was no need for further authorization.
The pilot fired.
The two Brimstone missiles disengaged and at once their independent solid propellant rocket motors fired up, taking them in a matter of seconds to supersonic speed. The millimetric wave radar seekers built into the missiles fed back images of the target and precise information, such as the exact time to detonation, while digital autopilot ensured that they stayed rigidly on course. The missiles weighed just 110 pounds. They were 5.5 feet long. They cost $140,000 each.
The pilot did not wait to see the explosion. Long before the Brimstones hit, she had expertly brought the aircraft around 180 degrees and was on her way home.
* * *
• • •
Neither Alan Blunt nor Mrs. Jones spoke until Alex was gone. It was only after the door had closed that Blunt turned to his second in command. “That went very well,” he said.
“He knows that we used him,” Mrs. Jones remarked.
“He’s unusually bright for a fourteen-year-old,” Blunt agreed. “That’s what makes him so valuable. But I don’t think he’ll guess the whole truth.”
“You mean, that you turned him into an assassin?”
“That we entrusted him with what you might call our special delivery. Alex was an excellent postman. It was so unlikely that we’d use a child that Drake didn’t ask too many questions . . . not the right ones, anyway.”
“You mean, he bought that business about the pipes.”
“Well, it was true. No adult would be able to get through.” Blunt picked up the file that he had stamped when Alex was sitting in front of him. He tore it up and dropped it in the trash can. Later, it would be shredded. The true file, the actual record of Alex’s mission, was on its way to Number 10, Downing Street. “Darcus Drake had to die,” he went on. “With or without nuclear weapons, he was a major threat to world security. If he had succeeded in uniting all the different terrorist groups in Afghanistan and elsewhere, there’s no way of knowing how dangerous he might have become or how much damage he might have done. He had to be taken out.”
“And Alex did that for us.”
“Exactly. He delivered the package and he got out of there in one piece. He really is remarkable.” Blunt paused. “Did you know that John Crawley has asked permission to use him?”
“Really?”
“Yes. Something to do with Chinese triads wanting to sabotage the Wimbledon tennis championship. He thinks Alex would make a good ball boy.”
“And what did you say?”
Blunt smiled. “I don’t see why not . . .”
* * *
• • •
Darcus Drake was also thinking about Alex Rider. He was smiling, of course. This was the smile that never left his face.
He was sitting at the table in his living quarters, the same room where he and Alex had talked. He still didn’t understand quite what had happened. He had sent twelve men out onto the plain following Alex’s astonishing escape. None of them had come back. How was that possible? The boy was unarmed. There must have been people waiting for Alex, but even so, Drake was surprised that all his people had been killed.
Well, it didn’t matter. Alex had learned that the calutron was useless—but Drake had never pretended otherwise. It made no difference to his plans. Later this afternoon, the leaders of seven terrorist organizations were coming to Falcon’s Edge. Only he, Darcus Drake, could have persuaded them to come together. They were the Awakening and they were going to discuss their first operation, an act of violence so shocking that the whole world would sit up and take notice. He had already worked it out. There were just the details to be decided and they would go ahead.
All in all, it wasn’t such a bad thing that Alex had come here. Drake had been alerted to the lack of security in the ventilation system, and he had already taken measures to ensure that nobody else would ever break in that way. And there was something else he was grateful for. As he sat at the table, he examined the camera that Alex had brought with him, raising it to his eye and taking a couple of shots. The Leica really was a fabulous piece of equipment. It reminded Drake of his early days in Dublin, when he had worked for the Irish Times. Well, it would come in very useful. He would take wonderful photographs of the death and the suffering that he himself would cause. He would even send them to the newspapers. How marvelous it was that MI6
had allowed the camera to fall into his hands.
He didn’t know, of course. MI6 needed to deal with him. The RAF needed a precise target. Falcon’s Edge was almost impenetrable, and Drake himself was difficult to locate. But Alan Blunt had guessed he would keep a beautiful and expensive camera if it was delivered to him, and so he had built a miniaturized homing beacon into the Leica, a beacon that was even now transmitting a signal to the two Brimstone missiles, which swept down almost joyously, picking out the actual window of the room, closing in at the speed of sound, and then vaporizing their target in two giant balls of flame.
THE MAN WITH ELEVEN FINGERS
1
BREAKFAST IN CHELSEA
JACK STARBRIGHT WAS MAKING breakfast, carefully cutting the toast into fingers before arranging them around the edge of the plate, leaving room for Alex’s egg, which was still bubbling away in a pan. She glanced at her watch. There was no sign of Alex, although it was already eight and they had to be out of the house by eight thirty.
She walked over to the door and called up the stairs. “Alex!”
“I’ll be one minute, Jack!” The familiar voice came from the bedroom on the second floor.
Jack smiled and went back into the kitchen. As she lifted the egg out of the boiling water, she asked herself—for the thousandth time—how she had managed to get into this situation. And what would anybody think, looking at her? She was fast approaching her thirties. This Christmas, she would be twenty-nine. When she had first come to London, she had been a law student, helping out in a house in Chelsea to support herself. Now, seven years later, she was still living there, sharing the place with a fourteen-year-old boy. It was an unusual arrangement, to say the least.
When Jack first met him, Alex had been seven, a little boy with messy fair hair, brown eyes, and plenty of attitude. He had come into the room with his hands in his pockets, his shirt out of his trousers, and one shoelace trailing, and she’d had no idea that he was going to completely change her life.
Alex Rider--Secret Weapon Page 6