Endgame (Agent 21)

by Chris Ryan

  Zak ignored the sarcastic remark and got straight to the point. ‘We need to get to Little Diomede Island,’ he said. ‘There are no commercial flights out of Anchorage. Someone told us you’ll put a plane in the air when others won’t.’

  ‘Whoa, sunshine. Back up. You missed the bit that explains what three kids young enough to be my children are doing in the middle of the Alaskan snows, a day’s march from anything resembling civilization.’ Moriarty blew out a lungful of cigar smoke, then coughed noisily.

  ‘Looking for you,’ Zak replied.

  ‘I haven’t finished. You also missed the bit that explains why three kids are so keen to fly to the ends of the earth when no sane person is willing to put a plane in the sky.’

  Zak gave him a level look. ‘Can’t help you with that one,’ he said. ‘You’re just going to have to believe that we’re not quite what we seem.’ He glanced involuntarily at the picture of Gabs, then locked gaze back with the pilot. He didn’t want to play that card until the right moment.

  Moriarty gave a short, barking laugh. ‘Right,’ he said.

  He wandered over to the CD player and was about to press ‘play’ when Zak spoke up again. ‘Cessna 172 Turbo Skyhawk,’ he said, pointing at the aircraft. ‘Range, approximately a thousand nautical miles. That’s, what, about eighteen hundred kilometres.’

  The pilot stopped and looked at him curiously.

  ‘Last time I was in a Cessna, we flew from Johannesburg to Dakar.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Moriarty cut in. ‘Unless you had a . . .’

  ‘. . . long-range tank, and a couple of refuelling stops.’

  The pilot was looking at him curiously now. ‘Doesn’t sound like your average package holiday.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ Zak said. He looked around the hangar. ‘What I’m wondering is, what’s a skilled pilot like you doing miles from anywhere. It’s almost as if you don’t want anybody to find you.’

  Moriarty took the cigar from his mouth, dropped it on the floor and stubbed it out with his foot. ‘You think a lot, son,’ he growled.

  ‘Yep,’ Zak said. ‘And right now I’m thinking you’re a former special forces pilot with a very good reason to stay under the radar.’ He pointed to the corner of the hangar where the mattress and blankets were piled. Lying on the ground was a beige-coloured beret. Zak could just make out a badge on the front: the winged dagger insignia of the SAS. It was obviously precious to him. It really meant something. Why else would he have it lying by his bed?

  ‘You’re more observant than you look,’ the pilot said with a dangerous edge to his voice.

  Zak removed his pack from his back and started removing wads of money which he threw onto the floor at the pilot’s feet. ‘We’ll pay you everything we have to make the journey,’ he said. ‘But that’s not the real reason you’ll do it.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Moriarty replied. He was trying to look dismissive, but Zak knew he had his attention.

  ‘We’re heading to the Bering Straits to rescue two people who the British government really want back. We can’t do it with the government’s knowledge, because they think I’m a traitor. But believe me: if we pull this off, anybody who helped us will be welcomed back with open arms. Any past crimes forgotten about. A clean slate.’

  Zak could see the effect his words were having on Moriarty. At first all his attention was on the money at his feet. But gradually he had stopped looking at that and fixed his gaze on Zak. At the words ‘clean slate’ he had spun on his heel and started walking towards the Cessna.

  ‘You’re a fast talker, son,’ he called. ‘I’ll give you that.’ Standing by the plane, he put one hand on the wing. It was a strangely affectionate gesture. ‘Only a fool would put this old bird up in the sky in flying conditions like this,’ he said with his back to them.

  ‘A fool,’ Zak countered, ‘or an expert.’

  Silence.

  ‘You know who we are,’ Zak said quietly. ‘When you were in the SAS, you must have heard rumours. A government agency, working at the highest level of secrecy. As well trained as the SAS, but much more covert.’

  Moriarty hunched his shoulders and turned. His gaze was sharp and piercing. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I heard rumours. None of them mentioned using kids.’

  He seemed to be wavering. It was time for Zak to play his trump card. ‘You want to know who taught me so much about planes?’ he asked. He turned, and pointed to the photograph sitting on Moriarty’s speaker. ‘She did.’

  Moriarty gave him a sharp look. ‘Impossible, son,’ he said, with a strange edge to his voice. ‘That’s my baby sister Annabel. She died a long time ago.’

  Zak felt a strange twist in his stomach. He’d never known Gabs’s real name. To find it out now, here, in this way, was kind of disorientating. He shook his head. ‘No she didn’t,’ he said, as kindly as he could. ‘She works for the Agency, like me. I don’t know much about her past. I’ve never even known her real name until now – I’ve always just called her Gabs. But I faked my own death when I joined. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she did the same thing too.’

  There were tears on the man’s grizzled face. He turned his back on Zak. ‘Shut up, son. It’s not funny. You’d better leave. Go on! Leave! ’

  Zak gave him a level look and prepared to deliver his killer blow. ‘She used to call you “sweetie”, right?’

  Silence.

  Moriarty turned. His face was a mixture of horror and hope.

  ‘Your little sister’s in danger, Moriarty. She told us to find you. She’s obviously been keeping an eye on you for all these years. She knows where you are. And now she needs your help. If we don’t get to Little Diomede Island before midnight, Gabs – I mean, Annabel – dies.’

  Zak sensed that everyone in the room was holding their breath. Moriarty turned his back on them again. He walked towards the plane and stood by it for a moment, his shoulders hunched.

  Silence.

  ‘If we’re going to go,’ Moriarty called in a shaky, cracked voice, ‘we need to go now. The wind’s in the right direction for a takeoff. If it changes, we’re stuck. Plus, the colder it gets, the greater the chance of ice on the wings. And if I’m reading the weather right, conditions are only going to get worse . . .’

  22

  TAKEOFF

  Moriarty made Ricky very nervous. The moment he had finished sparring with Zak, he had turned his music back on. Scratchy old dance tunes filled the hangar as he went about finishing whatever maintenance he’d been doing to his plane. When Ricky asked if he could help, Moriarty had replied by saying, ‘Yeah – sit down, shut up and keep out of my way.’

  So Ricky, Zak and Malcolm hung back near the entrance to the hangar while Moriarty worked. ‘You sure you trust him to get us there safely?’ Ricky asked.

  ‘Special forces pilots are the best in the world,’ Zak said. ‘If anyone can get us there in these conditions, he can.’

  Ricky didn’t like to point out that this wasn’t quite what he’d asked. ‘Is he really Gabs’s brother?’ he said.

  ‘I should have known the moment I saw him,’ Zak replied. ‘They look kind of similar.’ He grinned. ‘Apart from the beard, of course.’

  Half an hour passed. Moriarty closed up all the open panels on the plane’s body, then headed back to the other end of the hangar and sat down at his VHF radio set.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Zak said, his voice slightly aggressive.

  ‘This isn’t Africa, son. I can’t just stick a plane in the air and hope the Americans won’t notice. We need permission to follow your flight path to Little Diomede, or they’ll shoot us out of the air quicker than you can say 9/11.’ He almost smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t mention any of your names.’

  ‘From what I’ve learned about this Cruz guy,’ Ricky said as Moriarty made his call over the crackly radio connection, ‘he’ll know we’re coming as soon as he learns there’s a plane en route to Little Diomede.’

  Zak sniffed. ‘He knows we’re
coming anyway,’ he said grimly.

  Moriarty finished his call. ‘Done,’ he announced. ‘Now help me get these doors open.’

  Malcolm didn’t move, but Ricky and Zak hurried up to the far end of the hangar. The doors here, just beyond the Cessna, were several metres high, each one half the width of the hangar. The heavy bolts were locked by a chain and padlock. Moriarty unlocked them. He took the right door while Zak and Ricky took the left. Together they started pushing them open. A fierce blast of wind rushed through the crack between the doors. Hard pellets stung Ricky’s face. While they’d been inside, the snow had turned to hail. It blasted in through the open doorway, clattering against the metal of the Cessna with a hard, percussive sound. It took all their strength to force the doors open against the power of the wind. They secured them against some stout wooden poles fixed in the ground for that purpose. Only then did Ricky properly look out beyond the hangar.

  He could barely keep his eyes open on account of the wind and the hail. He could, however, make out a runway of sorts. It was probably no more than ten metres in width, but it was dead straight and stretched into the distance further than Ricky could see. The hail was settling lightly on the runway, but the snow was nowhere near as deep as it was on either side.

  Moriarty ran up to them, his head bowed against the wind. ‘I shovel salt onto it every other day!’ he shouted in explanation. ‘It keeps the snow from building up. But it’s still pretty icy. We need to keep our weight as low as possible. Only bring what you absolutely need.’ He looked towards the other end of the hangar where Malcolm was still sitting. ‘That one over there seems like a dead weight. You should leave him here. There’s enough food for him to—’

  ‘He comes with us!’ Zak shouted.

  Moriarty looked like he was going to argue, but Zak immediately strode off towards Malcolm. Ricky followed. Together, they gathered their packs. Even at this end of the hangar, the wind was blowing chunks of ice towards them. As they hauled their rucksacks onto their backs, Ricky heard the sound of the aircraft’s engines being started. He felt a lurch of anxiety in his gut.

  – This is madness. How can any aircraft take off in these conditions?

  ‘Surely the wind’s too strong?’ he shouted at Zak. ‘We should wait till it’s died down a bit.’

  Zak shook his head. ‘The strength of the wind is less important than its direction. Moriarty’s right. At the moment it’s blowing directly parallel to the runway. If we wait, we run the risk of it changing direction. It’d be much more dangerous to take off with a crosswind. It would blow us sideways across the icy runway. We’d crash before we even left the ground.’ He grabbed Malcolm by the arm and encouraged him towards the aircraft. Malcolm looked terrified, but he seemed to trust Zak implicitly. ‘Let’s board,’ Zak shouted.

  Ricky’s limbs were heavy with a kind of icy dread. He battled against the wind that was blowing into the hangar as they moved towards the aircraft. Half of him wanted to bail out – to tell Zak that this was crazy, that they were going to get themselves killed. His mind spun with the fear. But just as he was about to throw down his pack and refuse, he remembered something that Felix had once told him: The time’s going to come, Coco, when you’ll have to be brave. Being brave isn’t the same as being fearless. It’s not an absence of fear – that would be stupid. It’s the ability to master your fear. To keep it in a box and not let it get the better of you.

  Suddenly, it was almost as if Felix was right beside him. That feeling was like a knife in his stomach, carving out the fear. He remembered why he was here in the first place – to catch up with the guy who’d killed his friend and mentor. He set his jaw and upped his pace towards the Cessna.

  It was cramped in the cockpit. Moriarty was already sitting in a leather seat by the control column. A bewildering array of dials and controls were lit up in front of him. There was a small rechargeable GPS unit, with a flashing blue light that indicated their location. The windscreen was being beaten and battered by the hail. It was deafening. Zak took his place next to the pilot. Ricky sat behind Moriarty, with Malcolm next to him behind Zak. They had their packs at their feet. Zak slammed his side door shut. The howling wind grew momentarily quieter, and Moriarty edged the aircraft forward, out of the hangar.

  Ricky could tell the difference in the feeling of the wheels on the ground as soon as they moved from the hangar onto the icy runway. With less friction, everything felt much smoother. Once they were clear of the hangar doors, the pilot braked gently. Ricky wasn’t sure, but he thought he felt the wheels gliding slightly before they came to a halt. Ricky’s stomach glided with them.

  Moriarty opened his side door. The screaming of the wind became louder again. He jumped out of the aircraft, closed the hangar doors and then re-embarked. Once the aircraft door was shut again, he turned to his passengers. His eyes were strangely bright, almost as if, in a wild kind of way, he was looking forward to this. It crossed Ricky’s mind that Moriarty was just as crazy as the job they’d given him.

  ‘Not too late to back out,’ he said. ‘We can while away the winter in the hangar. I could do with the company.’ He grinned for the first time, and Ricky saw that he had several missing teeth. He struggled to put a lid on his panic.

  ‘We don’t have all winter,’ Zak said. ‘We’ve got less than twelve hours. If we’re too late, your sister dies.’

  Moriarty inclined his head. ‘Then strap yourselves in, my friends,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

  They did as they were told. Ricky could sense that Malcolm was trembling, and he reminded himself that just because Malcolm hadn’t spoken much, he still knew what was going on. ‘It’s going to be all right, mate,’ he said. Malcolm just stared straight ahead.

  The pilot accelerated. Immediately, Ricky felt the headwind buffeting the aircraft. He looked out of the window to his right. The wing tips were shaking alarmingly. He decided he didn’t want to look at them. Instead, he stared directly out of the front windscreen. Bad idea. From this vantage point, he could see how badly the light aircraft was sliding on the runway as they sped forward. The hail formed a kind of vortex as it slammed against the cockpit – Ricky honestly expected the glass to break at any second. There was a terrible whining noise from the engine as they precariously gathered speed. The drifting snow on either side of the runway zoomed past in a blur. Ricky found himself praying that Moriarty knew where the end of the runway was – with such poor visibility, it would come at them out of nowhere . . .

  ‘We’re not getting enough speed!’ Zak shouted suddenly. Ricky understood what he meant – the engines were shrieking badly, but Moriarty refused to pull back his steering column. The pilot said nothing, and Ricky stared at the back of his hunched shoulders, consumed with panic.

  ‘Stop!’ Ricky heard himself shouting suddenly. ‘We’re not going to make it! Stop!’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ the pilot shouted, his voice very tense. ‘We’re too far gone. Either we take off, or we crash.’

  ‘Then take o—’

  Ricky inhaled suddenly. The aircraft had slipped and they were veering sharply to the left. The view through the windscreen was suddenly not one of the runway. It was of the drifting snow to its side. They were about to crash into it . . .

  ‘NO!’

  But as Ricky shouted, he suddenly felt a sensation of weightlessness. They were off the ground. He sucked in another lungful of air. The plane was badly wobbling. It banked sharply to the right. With a flash of insight, he realized Moriarty was trying to get them in line with the headwind again. But it was a struggle. Everything inside the plane seemed to be vibrating – including the pilot’s hands on the control column. Through the windows, they could see nothing but pelting hail.

  ‘We need to get above the weather as quickly as possible,’ Moriarty shouted. ‘Sit tight!’

  Ricky didn’t think he could sit tighter. He was clutching his seat so hard, his knuckles had gone white. The engines suddenly shifted pitch again. The feeling
of weightlessness returned as the aircraft quickly gained height. The plane was shuddering even worse now. Ricky heard himself shouting, though he doubted anyone else could hear over the immense noise of the engines and the weather.

  Hail became cloud. Visibility: zero. Just a whiteout, all around. There was no way of telling if they were a hundred feet or a thousand feet above the ground. Horrific thoughts cruised through Ricky’s head. What if they hit something? What if they collided with another aircraft that Moriarty simply couldn’t see?

  – Don’t be stupid. Who else would be flying through this?

  Ricky’s lungs started to hurt, and he realized he’d been holding his breath ever since they’d entered the clouds. How long had that been? A minute? More? But suddenly, they burst through the cloud line. Ricky realized it hadn’t just been him holding his breath. Everyone in the plane explosively exhaled as the whiteout suddenly became a sharp, piercing blue. Ricky screwed his eyes shut. The sun, which they hadn’t seen for so long, was throwing hot hammers into their eyes. He was vaguely aware of Moriarty pulling a pair of dark glasses from his top pocket so that he could fly safely. Ricky, Zak and Malcolm, however, had to settle for holding their hands over their eyes to shade themselves from the glare.

  For a moment, nobody spoke.

  Then Ricky cleared his throat. ‘I, er . . . I’d say that went pretty well?’ His voice sounded high-pitched and stressed.

  Moriarty looked back at him over his shoulder. ‘That was the easy bit, son,’ he said. ‘Landing in this weather? Now that’s going to be a challenge, even for me.’

  23

  IMPACT

  Zak’s eyes ached. As afternoon became evening, the sun grew lower and redder. But they were heading in a north-westerly direction. With the sun setting in the west, the glare was almost straight ahead of them. He allowed himself to close his eyes and rest as the Cessna flew smoothly across the clouds.