Deadfall: Agent 21

by Ryan, Chris

  He pointed towards the far side of the toy store. There was a small replica of a castle, surrounded by wands and cloaks for sale. Zak shook his head. ‘It’s all right, mate. I’m—’

  ‘This way, sir. You must come!’ Junior lightly touched Zak’s right arm and led him towards the miniature castle.

  Zak’s senses moved into high alert. Suddenly he wasn’t in control. He yanked his elbow away from Junior, but he was now aware of a second red jacket to his left-hand side.

  Another young man. He had the same scars as Junior on his face.

  Zak felt a chill in his guts and his eyes flicked around the toy store, looking for an exit, while his hands felt for the phone in his pockets. He needed to make the distress call.

  Too late.

  At exactly the same time, the boys grabbed an arm each. Their grip was strong enough to hurt as they dragged Zak towards Hogwarts, where he could just make out the sight of more red jackets lurking behind the castle entrance.

  He gathered all his strength and suddenly released it in a frenzy of struggling. But the boys were powerful. They continued to drag him towards the far side of the store.

  Through the entrance into the toy castle.

  It was cramped in here. Maybe four metres by four. But three more boys in red jackets were waiting for him.

  That made it five against one. Bad odds.

  The walls were lined with shelves full of toys. Two of the boys were holding Harry Potter wands, the thin ends in their fists, the thick ends ready to strike.

  Crack! One of the wands slammed against his head. Then a second. Zak felt his knees wobble.

  One of the guys punched him in the pit of the stomach. Air whooshed from his lungs and he bent double. A knee came up and cracked against the underside of his chin.

  He was on the the floor, looking up. Five boys in red jackets were kicking him brutally, as hard as they could, in the stomach and the face. Blood spurted from his nose, hot and wet. He tried to cry out in pain, but without air in his lungs he couldn’t.

  Suddenly, one of the boys dropped to the floor. He was kneeling by Zak’s side, and now his face was inches from Zak’s. He too had scars on his cheeks. And he was holding something in his fist. It looked like a yellow golf ball, but was covered in black packaging. Zak saw the words Golden Snitch printed on the box.

  The boy sneered and Zak saw yellow teeth like tombstones. He was bizarrely aware of the piped music still playing in the background.

  The boy spoke. He had a whispering, rasping voice. ‘Welcome to Fun World,’ he said. Then with a grunt that suggested he was using all his strength, he whacked the snitch down on Zak’s forehead.

  A moment of blinding pain. A searing white light.

  Then everything went dark.

  2

  THE WORM AND THE STONE

  ‘You need to keep calm, Gabs,’ Raf said. ‘He’s probably fine, and even if he isn’t, we’ll never find him if we’re panicking. You know that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me to keep calm,’ Gabs spat. ‘Just don’t, OK?’

  And even Raf would have to admit that his voice had an edge of panic as he looked this way and that across the toy shop, desperately trying to spot their young protégé.

  It was 11.45 a.m. Thirty-two minutes since Zak had entered Fun World. He should have exited the store by now.

  Raf and Gabs had made the call to enter Fun World at 11.43hrs precisely. Now they were standing side by side on the escalator. Gabs had her phone in her right hand and was examining it carefully. A flashing green dot on the screen indicated how close they were to Zak’s own handset.

  They were getting closer.

  ‘I had a bad feeling about all this from the beginning,’ Gabs said. ‘We should have aborted as soon as he got a message from that weirdo Malcolm. Nobody should know we’re here. Nobody.’

  Heads were turning in their direction. Gabs didn’t care. A strange kind of numbness fell over her every time Zak was in trouble – which seemed to happen more and more recently. It was part of the job, of course, but that didn’t mean Gabs had to like it. Sometimes it sent all her good sense and training out of the window. But she didn’t care. Zak was like her kid brother, and she’d do anything to get him back.

  And she knew that, beneath his wordless, grim exterior, Raf felt the same. Not to mention the fact that Zak had saved their lives several times now. They were soldiers, the three of them. OK, so they didn’t wear camouflage gear or have a shouty sergeant major to deal with. They were a very special kind of soldier, and the wars they fought weren’t reported on the six o’clock news. But what was true for every other soldier in the world was true for them: on the field of battle, you always look after your buddies.

  Third floor. The green dot was flashing faster.

  Faster.

  They were walking to the far side of the store. Towards an area done up as a mock castle, full of Harry Potter toys.

  Now they were inside the castle, and the green dot had stopped flashing.

  Gabs looked around.

  Then down.

  She gasped. Then she bent down. On the floor was a smartphone, almost identical to Gabs’s own. Just one difference: the screen was smashed. It looked like someone had dug a heel into it.

  ‘It’s his,’ she breathed.

  But Raf was already looking around. ‘We need to access the CCTV,’ he said. Then he swore. It was impossible. They’d already established that. All the camera images from the store were encrypted and beamed out to an unknown server. That was the whole reason they were here . . .

  ‘What other exits are there?’ Gabs said, pushing past Raf out onto the shop floor again. There were only five or six customers up here. With a sick feeling in her stomach, she realized Zak could have easily been abducted with nobody noticing.

  Raf pointed to the right. There was a fire exit about fifteen metres away. They strode towards it and Gabs pressed down on the opening lever.

  The door opened. But Gabs felt something as she touched the lever. Wetness. She looked at her fingertips.

  ‘Blood,’ she breathed.

  They stepped through the fire exit and found themselves at the top of a metal staircase fitted to the back of the building. They looked down to the ground. They could see steel bins and a couple of parked cars. But no people. And certainly no Zak.

  ‘Sir, madam, may I help you?’

  A young African lad with tight dreadlocks and a red blazer had approached. Now he stood in the doorframe of the fire exit. His name tag said ‘Junior’ and he had a scar on each cheek.

  ‘Did you see anybody leaving this way?’ Raf demanded.

  Junior smiled blandly. ‘I must please ask you to step back inside the store. The fire exit is for emergencies only.’

  ‘This is an emergency,’ Gabs snapped.

  ‘Madam, I will be forced to call security.’

  Gabs felt Raf’s hand on her wrist. ‘It’s OK, pal,’ she said. ‘Keep your hair on. We’re coming back in.’ The two of them re-entered the store.

  ‘You seen a kid about your age looking like he was in trouble?’ Gabs asked. She was struggling to keep her voice calm.

  Junior gave an apologetic look. ‘We see many young people in Fun World, madam. They come from all over Johannesburg.’ He made a point of pulling the fire exit closed. Clearly feeling the wetness on the handle, he looked at his fingertips just as Gabs had done. His eyes showed no emotion. ‘Paint,’ he said under his breath.

  ‘You might recognize this one,’ Gabs insisted. ‘Blond hair, baseball cap.’

  Junior shook his head. ‘I have seen nobody like that,’ he said. ‘I am sorry.’ He inclined his head pleasantly, flashed them a smile, then walked away.

  ‘Wait!’ Gabs called. Junior stopped and looked back. ‘Those scars . . .’ she said.

  Junior smiled. ‘A tribal tradition,’ he explained.

  Gabs narrowed her eyes. Something about the scar worried her. She’d seen it before, but couldn’t place it.

>   Junior walked away.

  ‘I don’t trust that guy,’ Gabs said under her breath. ‘I want to question him. Properly.’

  But Raf’s hand was still on her wrist. ‘Look,’ he said sharply.

  She looked up. Junior had walked all the way to the opposite side of the store. He was staring at them, his arms folded and a menacing glint in his eye. On either side were two other store assistants. They both had red jackets. And they both had scarred faces.

  ‘There’ll be others,’ Raf said very calmly. ‘We’re unarmed and we’ve no backup. We need to get out of here. Even if we take them on ourselves, we’ll waste time. And I’ve got a feeling time is something Zak doesn’t have much of. Agreed?’

  Gabs’s jaw was clenched. But she nodded, and the two of them headed towards the escalator and descended back down to the ground floor in big strides.

  ‘We still need to access the security-camera footage,’ Gabs said as they stepped out onto the pavement. ‘We have to know what happened.’

  ‘It’s impossible. Michael put his best people on it, remember?’

  ‘Nothing’s impossible. We just need to find the right guy.’

  Raf pinched his forehead in exhaustion. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. Somebody knows how to view the footage of these cameras. We just have to go find him.’

  A silence.

  ‘Sounds to me like you already have someone in mind,’ Raf said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Gabs replied, striding north towards the underground car park where they’d left their vehicle. ‘As a matter of fact I have.’

  Pain.

  Firstly in Zak’s head. It throbbed where the toy had smashed against his skull. His whole head ached and he felt sick.

  Secondly around his wrists. They were tightly tied together behind his back and they throbbed as much as his head. The blood flow was clearly restricted.

  He was face down on a hard, concrete floor. The concrete had pulled all the warmth from him, and he was shivering. With a groan, he rolled onto his back, then squinted. Directly above him, in line with his body, was a strip light. It hurt his eyes.

  What time was it? He didn’t know. He still had his watch on, but couldn’t see it. He didn’t even know what day it was.

  Zak forced himself into a sitting position and looked around. He was in a narrow aisle between two lines of metal shelving. They were about three metres high, and were filled with toys. This looked like a warehouse of some sort. He pushed himself up to his feet, his hands still tied behind his back, and took a deep breath as a wave of nausea and dizziness hit him.

  The aisle was about forty metres long. He staggered to one end where he found an iron fire door with a metal bar across it. The metal around the base of the door had gone rusty. If moisture had got in through the bottom of the door to rust it like this, it probably meant it led outside. The sound of heavy traffic on the other side confirmed this.

  Zak turned his back towards the door, then used his tied hands to push down on the bar. It didn’t move. The door was locked.

  He put his hand in his pocket. Nobody had stolen his cash – proof, if proof were needed, that this was not an ordinary abduction.

  He prowled along the wall, counting the remaining aisles in this warehouse. Sixteen. All of them full of the same kinds of toys he’d seen at Fun World. Dolls. Colouring books. Even a stash of Harry Potter merchandise. Zak could do with a bit of wizardry now.

  He felt panic rising in his chest, so he stopped to breathe deeply. He could see that his phone had been removed from his jeans pocket, so there was no hope of making a distress call. By twisting his head to look over his shoulder, he could see that his wrists had been bound with a plastic cable tie. Easy to apply. Impossible to remove without cutting through the plastic. And Zak had no knife.

  He took a deep breath to steady his sickness, then ran to the end of the aisle he was in, keeping his feet light so they didn’t echo round the warehouse. He had no way of knowing, after all, if he was alone in here. At the end of the aisle, he turned right and followed the wall again. There was another door here. Identical to the first.

  He was about to try the bar again when he heard voices on the other side. He froze.

  They were speaking French. ‘Tu es sûr qu’il est au sécurisé?’

  Zak’s fluent French kicked in; languages had been a big part of his training. Are you sure he’s safe?

  ‘Of course. The other door’s locked. And if he tries to get past us, we’ll deal with him. Anyway, he probably won’t wake up. You hit him pretty hard.’

  ‘Thought I’d killed him for a minute.’

  ‘Good job you didn’t. He told us to keep him alive, remember.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What do you mean, who? Señor Martinez, of course.’

  Zak’s blood turned to ice.

  ‘That guy gives me the creeps,’ said the first voice.

  ‘Me too. I heard from one of the others that he’s got big plans somewhere else in Africa. When he has big plans, it usually ends up being painful for someone. My guess is he wants to kill the prisoner himself. So, seriously, let’s just leave him on the floor of the warehouse where he can’t come to any harm. Martinez will be here in twenty minutes anyway. He was on his way to the airport, but he diverted when he found out we’d captured this kid. Don’t know why he hates him so much, but he really does. If we’re lucky, maybe he’ll let us watch what he does to him . . .’

  A short, ugly laugh.

  Zak stepped away from the door.

  His bones ached with fear.

  He checked his watch. 12.20hrs.

  He’d known Cruz, his archenemy, wasn’t dead. And now he was on his way. By 12.40 he’d be here. Zak was trapped, unable to get out of this toy warehouse and unable to raise the alarm.

  The panic grew stronger. Stronger than his fading dizziness and nausea.

  He had twenty minutes.

  Think, he told himself.

  Think!

  He was back on St Peter’s Crag, walking with Raf along a rocky headland. Raf had stopped suddenly and bent down. When he stood up straight again, he was carrying a worm between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Breakfast?’ he offered, without even the hint of a smile on his serious face.

  ‘Don’t be gross,’ Zak had said.

  ‘I’m not. Seriously, Zak. Sometimes you have to make use of whatever you can find. There will be times when you’ll think you’re done for. Chances are you’re not, if you can improvise with what’s around you.’ He bent down again to pick up a jagged piece of flint. He held it up with the worm. ‘Most people would see a worm and a stone,’ he said. ‘You need to see a meal and a weapon. Humans have always improvised with what comes to hand, Zak. Most of them have forgotten how. You don’t have that luxury.’

  12.22HRS

  Improvise.

  Zak had to do it quickly. Two minutes had already passed. He had eighteen minutes before Cruz got here.

  First things first: he needed to get these plasticuffs off. He couldn’t do anything with his hands tied. But he was surrounded by toys. Surely nothing in here would contain a sharp blade. He headed back down one of the aisles, his eyes darting left and right, looking for something that might help him.

  Cuddly toys.

  Cheap, brightly coloured laptops.

  Chemistry sets.

  Painting kits.

  A pile of children’s night lights.

  Jigsaw puzzles.

  He stopped, turned round and stepped back to the night lights.

  Improvise.

  There were two types of night light – one covered with a crescent-moon shade, the other with a pale blue star. Zak awkwardly backed up towards the shelf and grabbed a crescent moon. He held it blindly behind his back and, after thirty seconds of fiddling, managed to unclip the shade.

  Leaving a bare bulb connected to a piece of flex, with an electric plug at one end.

  Zak felt a moment of excitement. He�
��d found his worm.

  Now he needed a plug socket. He ran to the end of the aisle and looked along the length of the wall. He spotted a socket about three metres beyond the locked door and ran towards it, then crouched on the ground by its side.

  The bulb of the night light was small – about the length of Zak’s thumb and twice the thickness. Manoeuvring it carefully behind his back, he wrapped the hem of his T-shirt around the glass. Now that it was protected by the fabric, he cupped the bulb in his right hand and gently squeezed.

  There was a muffled crack as the glass broke. Gingerly, so that he didn’t damage the filament, Zak unfurled his fingers and let the shattered glass fall to the floor. He laid the broken bulb on the floor, then plugged the night light into the socket. It lit up. There was a glow behind him, and he could feel the warmth of the filament.

  Carefully, he shuffled back towards the broken bulb. He shifted his wrist so the plastic cable tie was as close to the burning filament as he could make it. Not too close, though. An electric shock might knock him out again. He estimated that he was a couple of centimetres from the filament when he stopped and waited for the heat to do its work.

  Flesh scorches quicker than plastic melts. So Zak knew the pain was coming. After only five seconds, his skin started burning. He gritted his teeth but didn’t move his wrists away from the heat source.

  Ten seconds passed.

  Fifteen.

  He pulled his wrists apart with all his strength. There was a little give in the warm plastic. But he reckoned it needed another ten seconds. His burning skin was agony. He thought perhaps he could smell it.

  Twenty seconds.

  Twenty-five.

  He couldn’t take it any more. With a gasp of pain he yanked himself away from the filament. But he couldn’t give the plastic time to cool down again. Once more he strained against the cable tie, and this time he felt it stretch a little more.

  And a little more. Like a piece of chewing gum being pulled from both sides.

  A gap of five centimetres opened up between his wrists. He wriggled his hands out of the cuffs and immediately sucked at the burned flesh on his right wrist.