Snakehead

by Anthony Horowitz

  “Is this the right way?” he shouted.

  “Sure!” Sparks shouted back without looking behind him.

  “I think we’ve come too far!”

  “Forget it, X-Ray. This is the right way…”

  There was a barrier ahead of them, similar to the one at Swanbourne except that it was old and rusted. There was a sign next to it.

  MILITARY ZONE

  ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE.

  TRESPASSERS WILL BE PLACED UNDER ARREST AND MAY BE IMPRISONED.

  Scooter slowed down and, without opening the door, Sparks leapt out of the jeep.

  “Where are we?” Alex asked.

  “You’ll see,” Scooter replied. “We come to a load of places around here. You’ll like it.”

  “We’ve come too far,” X-Ray insisted. “We should have turned off a mile back.”

  Sparks had opened the barrier—it obviously hadn’t been locked—and the jeep rolled forward. As it passed him, he leapt back into the passenger seat, and at once Scooter stepped on the accelerator and they shot forward, bumping over roots and potholes.

  It had become very dark. The last of the daylight had slipped away without Alex noticing, and suddenly the trees seemed very close, threatening to block the way ahead. The surface was getting worse and worse. Alex had to cling onto the side as he was thrown around, the coolers lifting themselves into the air and hanging there before crashing down again. Leaves and branches flickered briefly, a thousand black shadows caught in the headlights, before they whipped into the windshield and disappeared behind. The track didn’t seem to be going anywhere and Alex was having to fight back a sense of unease, wishing he hadn’t come, when suddenly they burst through a clump of foliage and came to a shuddering halt with soft sand underneath the wheels. They had arrived.

  Scooter turned off the engine, and at once the gentler sounds of the evening surrounded them. Alex could hear the whisper of the breeze and the rhythmic breaking of the waves. They had come to a beautiful place: a private beach that curved around in the shape of a crescent with perfect white sand next to a black-and-silver sea. There was a full moon and a fantastic cluster of stars that seemed to go on forever, stretching to the very ends of the Southern Hemisphere.

  “Everybody out!” Scooter shouted. He kicked the door open and tumbled out onto the beach. “X-Ray…get me a Coke. Texas, it’s your turn to cook.”

  “I always cook!” Texas complained.

  “Why do you think we invite you?”

  X-Ray turned to Alex. “You thirsty?”

  Alex nodded, and X-ray threw him a can of Coke.

  Meanwhile, Texas had begun to unload the jeep. Alex saw that the SAS men had brought sausages, burgers, steaks, and chops…enough meat to feed a small army. But apart from a greasy, blackened steel grill, there was no sign of the promised barbecue. Scooter must have read his mind. “We’re going to build a bonfire, Alex,” he said. “You can help collect wood.”

  Sparks had taken the guitar out of the back. He rested it on his knee and strummed a few chords. The music sounded tiny, lost in the emptiness of the night.

  “Okay. Here’s the plan,” Scooter said. It seemed that he was the natural leader even if all four men were the same age and rank. “Alex and I will fetch firewood. Texas can start setting things up. Sparks—you keep playing.” He took out a flashlight and threw it to Alex. “If you get lost, just listen for the music,” he said. “It’ll guide you back to the beach.”

  “Right.” Alex wasn’t sure he would be able to hear the guitar once he was in the woods, but Scooter seemed to know what he was doing.

  “Let’s go,” Scooter said.

  He also had a flashlight and flicked it on. The beam was powerful. Even with the moonlight, it leapt ahead, cutting a path through the shadows. Alex did the same. The two of them moved away from the jeep, heading back up the track that had brought them here. The evening was warmer than Alex had expected. The breeze couldn’t penetrate the trees. Everything was very still.

  “You all right?” Scooter asked.

  Alex nodded.

  “We’ll build a fire, get things cooking…then we can have a swim.”

  “Right.”

  They were still walking. It seemed to Alex that they had left the beach a long way behind them. He could still hear the music—but it was so distant that the notes seemed to have broken up and he couldn’t make out any tune.

  “See if you can find any dead wood. It burns better.”

  Alex trained his flashlight on the forest floor. There were broken branches everywhere, and he wondered why they had come so far to collect them. But there was no point arguing. He reached down and gathered a few pieces, then a few more. It didn’t take him long to build up a pile…any more and it would be too heavy to carry. Clutching the wood to his chest, he straightened up and looked around for Scooter.

  That was when he realized that he was on his own.

  “Scooter?” He called out the name. There was no reply. Nor was there any sign of the SAS man’s flashlight. Alex wasn’t worried. It was likely that Scooter had already collected his first bundle and was making his way back to the beach. Alex listened for the sound of the guitar. But it had stopped.

  Now he felt the first prickle of doubt. He had been so busy collecting the branches, he had lost his sense of direction. He was in the middle of the woods, surrounded on all sides. Which way was the beach?

  Ahead of him, he saw a blink of white. A flashlight. Scooter was there after all. Alex called out his name a second time, but there was no reply. It didn’t matter. He had definitely seen the light and, as if to reassure him, it flashed again. He headed toward it anxiously.

  It was only when he had taken twenty or thirty paces that he realized that he was nowhere near the beach, that he had in fact been drawn even farther into the woods. It was almost as if it had been done on purpose. He was the moth, and they had shown him the candle. But just then the light vanished. Even the moon was invisible. Annoyed with himself, Alex dropped the wood. He could always pick more up later. All he wanted to do right now was to find his way back.

  Ten more steps and abruptly the trees fell away. But he wasn’t at the beach. Alex’s flashlight showed him a wide, barren clearing with little hillocks of sand and grass. The wood circled all around him. There was no sign at all of Scooter or the second, flickering flashlight that had brought him here.

  Now what? Was Scooter playing a prank on him?

  Alex decided to go back the way he had come. He might be able to pick up his own footprints. The pile of wood that he had dropped couldn’t be too far away. He was about to turn when something—some animal instinct—made him hesitate. About two seconds later, the whole world stopped.

  He knew it was going to happen before it actually did. Alex had been in danger so many times that he had developed a sense, a sort of telepathy, that forewarned him. Animals have it—the awareness that makes their hackles rise and sends them running before there is any obvious reason. Alex was already throwing himself to the ground even before the missile fell out of the sky, smashing the trees into matchsticks, scooping up a ton of earth and throwing it into the sky, shattering the silence of the night and turning darkness into brilliant, blinding day.

  The explosion was enormous. Alex had never felt anything like it. The very air had been turned into a giant fist, a boxing glove that pounded into him—hot and violent—and for a moment he thought he must have broken a dozen bones. He couldn’t hear. He couldn’t see. The inside of his head was boiling. Perhaps he was unconscious for a few seconds, but the next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground with his face pressed into a clump of wild grass and sand in his hair and eyes. His shirt was torn and there was a throbbing in his ears, but otherwise he seemed to be unhurt. How close had the missile fallen? Where had it come from? Even as Alex asked himself these two questions, a third, more unpleasant one entered his mind. Were there going to be any more?

  There was no time to work out what was goi
ng on. Alex spat out sand and dragged himself to his knees. At the same time, something burst out in the sky: a white flame that hung there, suspended high above the trees. Alex had tensed himself, expecting another blast, but he quickly recognized it for what it was: a battle flare light, a lump of burning phosphorus, designed to illuminate the area for miles around. He was still kneeling. Almost too late, he realized that he had turned himself into a target, a black cutout against the brilliant, artificial glare. He threw himself forward onto his stomach one second before a cascade of machine-gun bullets came fanning out of nowhere, pulverizing branches and ripping up the leaves. There was a second explosion, smaller than the first, this one starting at ground level and sending a column of flame shooting up. Alex covered his head with his hands. Earth and sand splattered all around him.

  He was in a war zone. It was beyond anything he had ever experienced. But common sense told him that no war had broken out in Western Australia. This was a training exercise and somehow—insanely—he had stumbled into the heart of it.

  He heard the blast of a whistle and two more explosions followed. The ground underneath him trembled, and suddenly he found that he could no longer breathe. The air around him had been sucked away by the force of the blasts. More machine-gun fire. The entire area was being strafed. Alex glanced up, but even with the battle flares he knew there was no chance he would see anyone. Whoever was firing could be half a mile away. And if he stood up and tried to make himself seen, he would be cut in half before anyone realized their mistake.

  And what about Scooter? What about X-Ray and the others? Had they brought him here on purpose? Alex couldn’t believe that. What motive could they have to want him dead? Briefly, he remembered what X-Ray had said in the jeep. “We’ve come too far. We should have turned off a mile back.” And when they’d picked him up at the base, Scooter had said there was a big training exercise on that night. That was why they’d been free for a picnic on the beach. Some picnic! As impossible as it seemed, the four SAS men must have driven to the very edge of the war zone. Alex had managed to wander away from the beach when he was collecting wood and had chosen the worst-possible direction. This was the result—a mixture of bad luck and stupidity. But the two of them were going to get him blown apart.

  A rhythmic pounding had begun, perhaps a mile away, a mortar bombarding a target that had to be somewhere close by. As each shell detonated, Alex felt a stabbing pain behind the eyes. The power of the weapons was immense. If this was just a training exercise, he wondered what it must be like to get caught up in a real war.

  It was time to go. With the mortars still firing, Alex scrabbled to his feet and began to move, not sure which way he should go, knowing only that he couldn’t remain here. There was the scream of something falling through and a great whumph as it struck the ground somewhere over to Alex’s left. That told him all he needed to know. He headed off to the right.

  A crackle of machine-gun fire. Alex thought he heard someone shout, but when he looked around, there was no one there. That was the most unnerving thing, to be in the middle of a battle with not a single one of the combatants actually visible. A tree had caught fire. The entire trunk was wrapped in flames, and there were black-and-crimson shadows leaping all over the ground ahead. Just beyond, Alex caught sight of a wire fence. It wasn’t much to aim for, but at least it was man-made. Maybe it defined the perimeter of the war zone and he would be safer on the other side. Alex broke into a run. He could taste blood in his mouth and realized he must have bitten his tongue when the first bomb went off. He felt bruised all over. Vaguely, he wondered if he might be hurt more than he actually knew.

  He reached the fence—it was made of barbed wire and carried another sign: DANGER, KEEP OUT. Alex almost smiled. What danger could there possibly be on the other side that was worse than this? As if to answer the question, there were three more explosions no more than a hundred yards behind him. Something hot struck Alex on the back of the neck. Without hesitating, he rolled under the fence, then got up and continued running across the ground on the other side.

  He was in a field. There was still no sign of the ocean. He was surrounded by trees on all four sides. He slowed down and tried to take his bearings. His neck hurt. He had been burned by the little fragment of whatever it was that had hit him. He wondered if Scooter and the others were looking for him. He would certainly have a few things to say to them…if he ever got out of here alive.

  He continued forward. His foot came down on something small and metallic. He heard—and felt—it click underneath his sole. He stopped. And at the same time, a voice came out of the darkness just behind him.

  “Don’t move. Don’t even move a step…”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure roll underneath the fence. At first he thought it must be Scooter—but he hadn’t recognized the voice, and a few seconds later he saw that it was an older man with black, curly hair and the beginnings of a rough beard, dressed in full military gear and carrying an assault rifle. The bombs and the shelling seemed to have faded into the distance. They must have been redirected at a target farther away.

  The man loomed up next to him, looking at him with unbelieving eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “How did you get here?”

  “What am I standing on?” Alex demanded. Part of him knew the answer. He hadn’t dared look down.

  “The field is mined,” the man replied briefly. He knelt down. Alex felt the man’s hand press gently against his sneaker. Then the man straightened up. His eyes were dark brown and bleak. “You’re standing on a mine,” he said.

  Alex was almost tempted to laugh. A sense of disbelief shivered through him and he swayed a little, as if he were about to faint.

  “Stay exactly as you are!” the man shouted. “Stand up straight. Don’t move from side to side. If you release the pressure, you’re going to kill both of us.”

  “Who are you?” Alex exclaimed. “What’s going on here? Why is there a mine?”

  “Didn’t you see the sign?”

  “It just said danger—keep out.”

  “What more did you need?” The man shook his head. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near here. How did you get here? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  “I was brought here.” Alex could feel a cold numbness creeping through his leg. It got worse, the more he thought about what lay beneath his foot. “Can you help me?” he asked.

  “Stay still.” The man knelt down a second time. He had produced a flashlight. He shone it on the ground. It seemed to take an age, but then he spoke again. “It’s a butterfly,” he said, and there was no emotion in his voice at all. “They call it that because of its shape. It’s a Soviet PFM-1, pressure-sensitive blast mine. You’re standing on enough high explosive to take your leg off.”

  “What’s it doing here?” Alex cried. He had to fight the instinct to lift his foot off the deadly thing. His entire body was screaming at him to run away.

  “They train us!” the man rasped. “They use these things in Iraq and Indonesia. We have to know how to deal with them. How else are they going to do it?”

  “But in the middle of a field…?”

  “You shouldn’t be here! Who brought you here?” The man straightened up. He was standing very close to Alex, the brown eyes boring into him. “I can’t neutralize it,” he muttered. “Even if I had the training, I couldn’t risk it in the dark.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I’m going to have to get help.”

  “Do you have a radio?”

  “If I had a radio, I’d have already used it.” The man laid a hand briefly on Alex’s shoulder. “There’s something else you need to know,” he said. He was speaking softly. His mouth was next to Alex’s ear. “These things have a delay mechanism…a separate fuse that you’ll have activated when you stepped on it.”

  “You mean—it’s going to blow up anyway?”

  “In fifteen minutes.”

  “Ho
w long will it take you to find someone?”

  “I’ll move as quickly as I can. If you hear a click—you’ll feel it under your foot—throw yourself flat onto the ground. It’s your only hope. Good luck…”

  “Wait…,” Alex began.

  But the man had already gone. Alex hadn’t even asked him his name.

  Alex stood there. He had lost any sense of feeling in his leg, but his shoulder was burning and he was beginning to shiver violently as the shock set in. He forced himself to bring his body back under control, afraid that the slightest movement could bring a hideous end to this ordeal. He could imagine the sudden flash, the pain, his leg separated from his body. And the worst of it was that there was nothing he could do. His foot was glued to the device that was ticking away, even now, beneath him. He looked around. Although he hadn’t noticed it before, the mine had been placed on the top of a ridge, the ground sloping away steeply to a ditch at the bottom. Alex tried to work out the distances. If he threw himself sideways, could he reach the ditch before the mine exploded? And if the force of the blast was above him, would he escape the worst of it?

  The bombing had stopped. Suddenly everything was very still. Once again Alex experienced the sense of being completely alone, standing like a scarecrow in the middle of an empty field. He wanted to call out but was afraid to, in case he accidentally shifted his body weight. How long had it been since the man had left? Five minutes? Ten? And how accurate was the timer anyway? The mine could go off at any time.

  So did he wait? Or did he take his life into his own hands? Alex made his decision.

  He took a deep breath, tensing his body, trying to think of the muscles in his legs as coiled springs that could launch him to safety. His right foot was resting on the mine. The left foot was on flat ground. That was the one that would have to do most of the work. Do it! Alex had to force himself, knowing that he might be making the worst mistake of his life, that seconds from now he could be crippled, in agony.