Endgame (Agent 21)

by Chris Ryan

  His mind turned to Raf and Gabs. He couldn’t get the image of them, battered and bleeding in Cruz’s last video, out of his head. Anger burned through him. He knew Cruz was pulling him into a trap, and had no idea what was waiting for him when they landed. Even so, he was impatient to get back down on the ground. It was time to finish this, once and for all.

  He glanced across at Moriarty. He had barely spoken since they’d broken through the cloud cover. His attention seemed fully focused on controlling the plane, and keeping track of their position on the portable GPS screen.

  Zak opened one eye. ‘Tell me what happened,’ he said quietly to Moriarty.

  The pilot glanced at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘To make you run away and live in Alaska.’

  At first, Zak thought Moriarty wasn’t going to answer. ‘You heard of Afghanistan?’ he said finally.

  ‘Of course,’ Zak said.

  ‘I was out there, in the early days of the war. I used to fly an Apache. It’s an attack helicopter. Scary piece of kit. The order came through that I should launch a Hellfire missile at a deserted school where dangerous militants were hiding. So I did.’ He breathed deeply. ‘Turns out the intelligence was wrong. It wasn’t a deserted school. It was an actual school. Thirty-five kids died, and two teachers.’ Moriarty’s jaw clenched. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ Zak said. ‘You said so yourself. The intelligence was wrong.’

  Moriarty didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Before I fired the missile, I saw them. Three kids, playing with a ball outside the school building. I should have questioned the order, but . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘I went a bit crazy after that. Couldn’t handle what I’d done, I guess. Couldn’t handle the fact that those kids were dead because of me. I started disobeying orders for the hell of it. They turfed me out of the army soon afterwards. Dishonourable discharge.’

  There was silence in the cockpit. Shielding his eyes, Zak looked at Moriarty. There was a tear on his weatherbeaten face. He wiped it roughly away, then turned to Zak. ‘People don’t know what it’s like, taking a life,’ he said. ‘They think they can handle it. But every night, when you put your head on the pillow, you hear them. The screams of the ones you killed. And you can never escape them, even when you run to the ends of the earth.’ He gave Zak a piercing look. ‘Remember that, son, if you’re ever tempted to put a bullet in someone.’

  Zak turned away. It was time to change the subject. ‘How long till we land?’

  ‘If we land,’ the pilot said. ‘It’ll be in about half an hour. It’s going to be very rough getting back down through the clouds.’

  ‘Have you landed on Little Diomede before?’ Zak asked. ‘Do you know the runway?’

  Moriarty raised an eyebrow. ‘Runway?’ he said. ‘There’s no runway, son.’

  Zak blinked. ‘What do you mean, there’s no runway?’

  ‘The Little Diomede islanders carve a kind of makeshift runway into the ice in the winter. That’s what we’re heading for.’ He flashed Zak a smile. ‘Here’s hoping we hit it, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Zak breathed. ‘Here’s hoping.’

  There was a pause. ‘Tell me something about Annabel,’ Moriarty said.

  Zak looked out of the window. ‘She’s like a sister to me,’ he said. ‘She’s been kidnapped, along with another good friend of mine, Raf. They’re the best agents I know.’ He turned to Moriarty. ‘You’ll see her soon,’ he said.

  The sky darkened as the blood-red sun dropped below the horizon. A few stars appeared in the inky sky. Zak shivered as he glanced towards the glowing screen of the GPS unit. He could see the crinkly coastline of western Alaska tracking across the screen.

  Time check: 6:30 p.m. Five and a half hours to go.

  Moriarty looked over his shoulder at Ricky and Malcolm. ‘Strapped in?’ he asked.

  They nodded wordlessly.

  ‘Then here goes nothing.’

  Moriarty adjusted the steering column. Zak immediately felt the aircraft losing height. The cloud cover glowed slightly beneath them. It seemed somehow stormier now that night had come. More threatening . . .

  The turbulence immediately got worse. Zak tried not to focus on the steering column, which was shaking in Moriarty’s fist. The aircraft bumped and rattled its way down. After thirty seconds it felt like it was bouncing across the top of the clouds, like a stone skimming across lake. Zak put that image from his head, because he knew that all stones eventually would sink . . .

  There was a collective hiss from the passengers as the clouds suddenly enveloped the aircraft. It felt as though someone – something – had grabbed the plane and started shaking it, like a baby shaking a rattle. Everyone in the cockpit juddered violently. If he hadn’t been strapped in, Zak was sure the sudden convulsion would have thrown him up against the windscreen. He grabbed the edge of his seat and gasped for breath. Glancing at the pilot, he saw his face lit up by the glow of the cockpit controls. His creased forehead was sweating, his piercing blue eyes a picture of concentration.

  Zak looked straight ahead again. There was nothing but blackness outside. No visibility. No nothing. Just the high-pitched whine of the plane’s engines, and sudden spots of frozen moisture on the windscreen.

  The intensity of the juddering increased. The sweat ran down Moriarty’s face. Zak felt like he’d left his stomach several hundred metres away.

  Then it happened.

  The momentary weightlessness they had experienced during takeoff was nothing compared to this. Had they not been strapped in, they would literally be floating. There was no sound from the engines. The plane was in freefall.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Zak screamed.

  Not one sound from the pilot. Zak looked at him, to check he was still conscious and in control of the aircraft. It was some small relief to see that his eyes were open and his face fixed into an expression of fierce concentration.

  ‘I said, what’s . . .’

  ‘Button it, sunshine!’ Moriarty shouted. He yanked the control stick back with both hands. The aircraft lurched. Zak was thrown so savagely back in his seat that he felt the wind being knocked from his lungs.

  He could see that Moriarty had some semblance of control over the aircraft. But it was tenuous. The control stick was still vibrating aggressively. The cockpit dials and controls were spinning. A yellow light was flashing, accompanied by a buzzing alert.

  He heard Malcolm’s voice from behind. It sounded thin and terrified. ‘If I’m going to die,’ he said, ‘I’m glad it’s with my friends.’

  Moriarty looked over his shoulder. His lip had curled and the sweat positively shone. ‘We’re not dead yet, my friend,’ he growled. ‘Not by a long shot.’

  He turned forward again. Zak sensed him redoubling his efforts. It was still black outside. The plane was still shaking like a leaf in a gale. But Zak thought that maybe – maybe – Moriarty was controlling it more than the elements were controlling them.

  ‘Land!’ It was Ricky, shouting from the back of the cockpit. ‘I saw it!’

  Zak looked sideways and squinted. Sure enough, for the briefest moment, he saw a glimpse of a white expanse somewhere below them. It was perhaps a hundred feet down, perhaps two hundred – hard to tell – and must have been reflecting an unseen moon.

  Moriarty was concentrating harder than ever. His face was screwed up and still glowing in the light of the aircraft’s controls. He was blinking rapidly – sweat was pouring into his eyes, but he couldn’t take his hands off the vibrating control stick to wipe it away. ‘We’ve got a crosswind,’ he shouted over the screaming engine.

  Zak girded himself. He knew what that meant. Normally, you’d want to land directly into the wind: it would help slow you down, and make it easier to keep on the right course. But a crosswind would do the opposite – blow you across the skies and make it twice as hard to keep the plane pointing in the right direction.

  He looked over his shoulder. ‘Hold tight!’ he sho
uted to his friends.

  There was a terrific shattering sound of hail against the windscreen. Then they burst through the bottom layer of cloud, and Zak immediately wished they hadn’t. He could see the ground, a hundred feet below, but the world looked like it was tilted at an angle. He realized the aircraft had twisted on its axis. Moriarty was struggling to straighten up. His eyes looked wild, and the sweat on his face was worse than ever.

  But they were in his hands.

  Seconds later, Zak caught sight of the runway. It was narrow, but dead straight – little more than a shallow impression in the ice. But Moriarty couldn’t keep the nose of the aircraft in line with it. The Cessna swung left and right. It pitched and rolled and yawed. The wind buffeted it, the hail battered it . . .

  They were fifty feet from the ground . . .

  ‘Brace!’ Moriarty shouted. ‘BRACE!’

  Zak leaned forward and held his head in his hands. He hoped that Ricky and Malcolm were following his lead. The vibrations of the aircraft thundered through every muscle in his body. He knew that any moment they were going to hit the ice. But at what angle, and what speed, it was impossible to predict . . .

  Impact!

  The jolt that pummelled Zak’s body was like an electric shock. It knocked the wind from his lungs for a second time, and made every muscle in his body scream. He knew the sound that battered his ears was the noise of tearing metal. He could feel the aircraft spinning, he would have been catapulted out of the cockpit if he hadn’t been well strapped in. He risked sitting up. Sure enough, the plane was rotating on the ice. The port-side wing was damaged, and there were sparks in the air.

  The aircraft yawed onto one side, and there was another sickening jolt as the starboard wing hit the ice. An awful cracking sound, and more sparks as the wing broke up.

  And flames.

  ‘GET OUT OF THE PLANE!’ Moriarty roared.

  They were still sliding across the ice pack, but the pilot had already kicked his door open. Zak did the same, unfastening his safety strap at the same time.

  ‘JUMP!’ Moriarty shouted.

  Zak looked anxiously back at Malcolm. ‘I’ve got him!’ Ricky yelled. ‘Go!’

  Zak nodded. Looking forward again, he grabbed the portable GPS unit and ripped it from the dashboard. Then, clasping it close to his chest, he took a deep breath and hurled himself from the Cessna.

  It seemed to take an age to fall from the aircraft. Time slowed down. The plane made a terrible whining noise as it slid uncontrollably away from him. Then he thudded hard against the ice, knocking the wind from his lungs yet again. He rolled over in time to see the damaged plane continue to slide across the makeshift runway, and two more figures hurl themselves out of it, into the night.

  The flames on the wings of the aircraft were burning brighter. Zak got to his feet and sprinted as fast as he could over the sliding ice towards Ricky and Malcolm. From the corner of his eye, he saw Moriarty lying motionless some distance away. He reached the others ten seconds later – Ricky was staggering to his feet, but Malcolm was still flat out on the ice. Zak grabbed him with both hands and pulled him up. He pointed in the opposite direction to the plane. ‘Run! She’s going to explode!’

  All three of them staggered and slid across the ice, Zak clutching the GPS unit and Ricky holding Malcolm up. Suddenly, Malcolm was screaming in pain, ‘My arm! My arm!’

  ‘Keep moving!’ Zak bellowed.

  They covered ten metres . . .

  Twenty . . .

  And then the explosion happened. There was a huge boom. A massive waft of scorching air cut through the Alaskan night, throwing all four of them several metres forward into a heap on the ice. Zak rolled onto his back and saw the huge fireball that the Cessna had become. Snow was melting all around it.

  There was a secondary explosion. Zak hugged the ground again. When it had subsided, he looked the other way.

  The orange glow of the burning plane lit up the surrounding area for perhaps a hundred metres in every direction. So now Zak could see the outline of the small island emerging from the pack ice. Nothing distinct. Just a small peak, and maybe a few buildings at its foot.

  He got to his feet again, wincing from several painful bruises along his abdomen. Ricky did the same, but Malcolm was squirming on the ice, clutching his right arm.

  ‘I think it’s broken,’ Ricky said. Sweat was pouring down his face.

  Zak nodded grimly, and looked around. ‘Yesterday Island,’ he said. ‘We’d better move. That wasn’t exactly a covert landing.’

  ‘The inhabitants of the island will definitely know we’re coming,’ Ricky observed.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zak. ‘And so will anyone else who’s watching.’ He squinted. ‘Where’s Moriarty? Is he OK?’

  They looked to where the pilot had hit the ice. He was twenty metres away, lying on the ground, not moving.

  Zak felt sick. He ran towards the motionless heap. ‘Moriarty,’ he hissed. ‘Moriarty . . . answer me!’

  Moriarty’s face was as white as the ice, but his eyes were open. ‘My knee,’ he breathed. ‘It’s always been dodgy. I think it’s bust.’

  Ricky had caught Zak up. He was half carrying Malcolm, whose eyes were rolling with pain. ‘We can’t leave them on the pack ice,’ he breathed.

  Zak shook his head. He kneeled down beside Moriarty. ‘We’re going to lift you up,’ he said. ‘One of us on each side. We’ll carry you. You think you can manage that?’

  Moriarty’s face was racked with pain, but he nodded.

  Zak and Ricky manoeuvred themselves so that they could each grab one of Moriarty’s arms. ‘Lift!’ Zak hissed, and together they pulled him up. Moriarty gasped with pain. His bad leg hung limply. He was heavy, and alarmingly cold.

  They staggered forward. Zak managed to glance at his watch. It was seven o’clock exactly.

  Five hours until midnight.

  24

  BETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

  They slipped and stumbled across the pack ice, leaving the burning remnants of the plane behind them. Moriarty was a dead weight around Ricky’s neck. Ricky’s own legs were weak with shock, but he had to keep going. They weren’t able to help Malcolm at all, but somehow he was managing to keep up, despite his injured arm . . .

  After a couple of minutes, Moriarty hissed at them to stop. Ricky estimated that they were about fifty metres from shore. ‘Listen,’ Moriarty breathed. He was trembling badly with the pain.

  They cocked their heads. Ricky heard shouting. Hardly surprising.

  ‘Leave me here,’ Moriarty said.

  ‘No way,’ Zak and Ricky told him together.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Moriarty whispered. ‘The islanders will be here soon – they can sort me out, patch up my knee, get me on my feet again. But you’ll never rescue Annabel with me in tow like this.’ He nodded to his eleven o’clock. ‘Go that way,’ he panted. ‘You’ll come to a helicopter landing zone. Keep skirting round there and you’ll find some deserted buildings where you can shelter. I’ll tell the islanders that I crash-landed alone.’ He nodded towards Malcolm. ‘You’ll have to take that one, though. He’ll be too difficult for me to explain away.’

  Zak nodded. Moriarty’s plan made sense. They carefully laid the pilot down on the ground, but there was no time for long goodbyes – they could hear the voices of the islanders getting much closer. They turned their back on Moriarty and hurried off into the hail. But they heard him hiss – ‘Hey, kids!’ – and stopped to look back at him. ‘I don’t know what you’re up to,’ Moriarty said, ‘but stay alive, huh?’

  ‘We’ll make a point of it,’ Ricky told him.

  ‘And save my sister,’ he said. ‘I don’t intend to lose her for a second time.’

  They hurried off again, heads bowed against the pelting hail. They heard Moriarty weakly calling to the islanders for help, but his voice soon faded.

  They struggled on in silence, Ricky and Zak supporting Malcolm whenever he looked like needing it. The
ice stung Ricky’s face, and his knees buckled several times. But after a couple of minutes a huge mound of rocks, fifteen metres wide and five high, emerged through the elements. There was a flat platform on top of the rocks, and on the platform was an old helicopter. It clearly hadn’t been used for many days, as it had icicles dripping from the rotor blades. Its body was a dirty mustard-yellow colour, with two horizontal black stripes. Ricky was put in mind of an enormous bumblebee. The thought occurred to him that he wouldn’t feel at all secure travelling in that old helicopter. He’d had enough crash-landings for one day . . .

  They skirted round the landing platform, just as Moriarty had told them to do. Hugging the shoreline, they could just make out small dwellings on the hillside. There were only a very few of them, but as they staggered on, the huts became less numerous. After a couple more minutes, they came upon what looked like a deserted outbuilding, positioned just above a slope covered with icy boulders. Its slanted roof was heavy with snow, and the walls were rickety, made from sheets of corrugated iron. The door was slamming open and shut in the wind.

  They scrambled up the boulders together. Outside the building, Ricky turned to Zak and Malcolm. ‘I’ll check it’s empty,’ he said.

  He approached the door and stepped quietly inside. It took a good thirty seconds to get used to the darkness. The building smelled very dank, and was empty apart from a few rusty old ice picks leaning up against the corner and, bizarrely, a couple of bales of hay at one end. It was cold, of course, but as it was protected from the wind, the chill was not so biting as outside.

  He called the others, and they hurried inside. Malcolm immediately stumbled over to a bale of hay, where he sat, shivering. Ricky motioned Zak to the other end of the building. ‘What now?’ he asked.

  Zak checked his watch. ‘We’ve got four hours,’ he said. ‘Cruz’s message said “between yesterday and tomorrow”. If I’m reading it correctly, that means the RV point is somewhere on the ice between this island and Big Diomede.’ He looked grim. ‘We need to get going. It could easily take us that long to get across.’