by Chris Ryan
They walked out through the back door and into the big yard. The rain had stopped now and the bustle had died down. The birds had been fed, the tools tidied away. Music wafted over from the dining room. A ceilidh was starting up: plenty of noise to cover whatever the men planned to do with him, Hex thought.
Tiff came out of the dining room, hand in hand with a tall blond-haired lad. ‘Let’s go somewhere quiet,’ she said. ‘There are too many people in there.’
‘How about down here?’ said the boy. Bagpipes started playing a reel and he whirled Tiff around in a circle and pulled her into the dark corridor.
Tiff hefted up her long skirt and tried to keep up, her arm outstretched. ‘No, that goes out to the farmyard,’ she laughed. ‘It’s the smelly bit.’
The boy turned to her, eyes glinting wickedly. ‘But it’s quiet.’
She could see some men in the yard. They weren’t dressed in the normal farm stuff she had seen before. They were standing in front of an open door.
The boy saw them and turned to Tiff. ‘Too crowded. Let’s find somewhere else.’
Something made Tiff look back and saw that one of the figures was Hex. A large man threw him into the storeroom, hard, as though he was trying to hurt him. The other man raised a gun, pointed it into the storeroom and fired. Tiff gave a cry and jumped.
The boy put an arm across her shoulders and tried to pull her towards the main hall. ‘It’s people hunting. An adventuring tigress like you isn’t scared of gunshots, is she?’
Tiff wrestled free and looked back. The two men stood at the door to the storeroom. The one with the gun was still firing. Fear rose in her throat: there was something about the way he did it, clinically, coldly. Six shots, one after the other.
26
THE TRAP
The air was filled with the scream of jet engines. Li looked up the crevice. Five fighter planes cut through the air like black arrows and roared away into the distance. As the sound faded they heard something else: a vehicle engine being cut.
Li, Paulo and Alex were in position in the tunnel where the ventilation pipe went into the factory.
Paulo only needed a second to identify the vehicle. ‘A Range Rover,’ he said quietly.
Li, poised further up in the crack in the rock, could just about see out. ‘It’s them.’
The two gamekeepers slammed the vehicle doors. A big man with a hood pulled up over his head got out more slowly, taking his time. Ivanovich. The evening sun glinted off the piercings in his nose, his bottom lip, his cheek. Li couldn’t forget a face like that.
One of the gamekeepers felt in his pocket and walked towards Li. She could see the lacings on his boots. He was barely three metres away. Silent as a cat, she stepped down in case he could see her – although he shouldn’t be able to. The three friends had smeared mud all over themselves and were well camouflaged.
The gamekeeper took a small device out of his pocket and pointed it at the ground. It let out a high-pitched beep. Deep in the metal structure they felt rather than heard something moving. The trapdoor must have an electronic lock. They hadn’t heard it before because they hadn’t been that close.
Good job we didn’t try going in there, thought Paulo. We’d never have got past something like that.
They heard the trapdoor open. Footsteps rang on the metal rungs, resonated on the walls of the container and shuddered down the plastic pipe. They heard him step off at the bottom. Light sliced through the crevice as he flashed his torch around. His footsteps came towards them.
The three friends tried to shrink into the shadows. What if he saw the trail of blue climber’s rope that snaked along the crack beside the pipe?
There was a noise like an engine turning over. Then it started running. The generator was on.
Alex grasped Paulo’s and Li’s hands and gave them a squeeze. The countdown had started.
Alex took his survival kit out of his pocket and took the lid off. He removed a small pack of matches, wrapped in cling film. Just as they’d rehearsed, Li put out her hand and took the rest of the kit.
The walls resonated as the other two figures climbed down the ladder. Got them, thought Alex. They were ready to do their bit. Would the police be in time?
The air was starting to roar again. The fighter jets were coming back. To Paulo, something about the noise was a little bit different. They swooped away and circled back.
Definitely different. Under the cry of the jets was a beating, a rhythm. A helicopter. The police were here. They’d used the jets as cover.
Alex struck a match and it flared, then went out. Li held the tin so he could try again. He struck another. It flared, then died.
Paulo looked up. The planes were criss-crossing the sky, banking and turning. Hopefully the men couldn’t hear it in the factory, especially with the noise of the generator, but the cover wouldn’t last for ever.
Alex discarded a third match. He sighed with frustration and moved a dead squirrel out of the way with his foot so he could get closer to the rope.
‘Are they wet?’ whispered Li.
‘They’re waterproof,’ hissed Alex. ‘They’ll light no matter what. You’ve seen them.’
Paulo looked up again. Li suddenly felt faint. A cough welled up in her throat and she pressed her mouth together in a tight line. If she coughed it would give their position away.
Alex was on his fourth match. The same thing happened. What was going on? He looked at the dead match in his hand, puzzled. Overhead the jets screamed. The noise seemed to throb in his head and he let it fall forwards against the drainpipe.
Paulo didn’t feel too good either. His foot touched a dead vole and he felt sick. He tilted his head back to take a breath of fresh air from the crevice.
Fresh air . . . He suddenly realized. There must be a backdraught, washing the fumes from the generator back down into the cave. That was why the matches wouldn’t light. The cave was filling with carbon monoxide and putting them out. That’s why there were all these dead creatures. It was like being locked in a small garage with the car engine running. If they didn’t get out, they would asphyxiate too.
Alex suddenly found himself snapping awake, as though he had been about to fall asleep. Paulo was shaking him and pointing up the passageway.
Alex was confused but his training took over. If Paulo thought something was dangerous enough to abort a mission, he didn’t argue. He crawled.
Li was slumped against the wall, her head moving slowly from side to side. Paulo threaded his arm under her shoulders. She lay across him as though she was drowning. With the other arm, he pulled himself along after Alex.
Hex stared at the man as the sixth bullet emptied into the blue drum near his feet. The bald man didn’t say a word, just concentrated on shooting. A professional.
Finished, he slammed the door. Hex heard the lock click.
The room became dark, except for a small window above the door. Too small to escape through, it was more like a large glass letterbox than a window.
The drums started to leak. The fumes caught his throat; it squeezed tight and he coughed violently. Through watering eyes he tried to read the label: PMK. He didn’t know what that was, but it had a big orange label with a cross on it, and underneath the word ‘HARMFUL’. He coughed again. Other labels came into focus. METHYLAMINE. That accounted for the smell – amines, if chemistry lessons were to be believed, smelled sharp and fishy. Next to methylamine was a row of orange labels. HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. HARMFUL. CORROSIVE. A box at the back labelled KETAMINE.
He tried to climb up on the drums but they slithered down in a slippery avalanche. Hex stepped out of the way and looked around the walls. Was there an air brick, a ventilation hole of some sort? No, nothing. He coughed again and kicked a drum out of the way. Why were there so many? If you needed that much chemical, wouldn’t a big one be easier?
Give his brain a problem, he would try to solve it. There were a lot of small drums because you could hide them in a deer carcass. Just
like he’d seen the previous night when he and Li were watching the gamekeepers. That way you could take raw materials up to the factory on the moor without being seen.
For a moment Hex felt quite proud of himself for the deduction. Then a spasm seized his throat. It was more than coughing; it was retching.
There must be a way out – but the walls were smooth and solid. Only one way in and out. One tiny window and no way to break it. The perfect place to keep a stack of illicit chemicals and the perfect place to keep an inconvenient guest out of sight. No difficult bullet holes for a coroner to query. They could just leave him in here with this noxious stuff until he was done, then remove him to some desolate spot and no one would know what had happened. He could disappear as efficiently as they undoubtedly would.
His eyes were streaming. The foul-smelling liquid was forming pools on the bare concrete floor; soaking into the cardboard ketamine box. Tears were streaming down his face. His nose and throat were raw. He kept retching in dry heaves.
Hex had really thought he was going to die when the man got out the gun. When the bullets went into the blue drums of chemicals, he had actually felt relieved. Now that seemed rather naïve. Perhaps it might have been better if they had just shot him.
27
LAST CHANCE
Alex crawled fast. Above, the sound of the helicopter and the fighter planes dwindled away. Were they leaving? Or was it just that he couldn’t hear them any more? Was that also their hopes of flushing these guys out?
They crawled past the end of the exhaust pipe. Behind him, Li had revived. Paulo brought up the rear, pushing them on.
When they reached the end of the tunnel, Paulo stopped and they all gulped in fresh air. For a minute they all lay there, gasping.
Alex looked back the way they had come. ‘We’ve got to get back. The police are waiting.’
Paulo pulled him back. ‘Hombre, we can’t. We’ll die. And you’ll never get the rope lit because there’s no oxygen for it to burn.’
Li looked rather sick. She pushed some rocks out of the way and sat with her back against the tunnel wall. Paulo checked her pulse. ‘I’m still alive,’ she muttered, but she sounded faint. Perhaps because she was the smallest she had been worst affected.
Paulo moved away and winced as he bent his finger back on one of the pieces of rock she had moved. As he sucked the wound he had an idea. ‘Pick up some of these,’ he said, and grabbed a couple of small rocks.
Alex watched him crawl at top speed back down the tunnel, one-handed. He scooped up some rocks and followed.
Paulo had stopped at the end of the pipe. The smell of diesel fumes made Alex feel sick. Paulo was stuffing the pieces of rock into the end of the pipe. Alex passed him his. They fitted in nicely.
After a few seconds Alex could have sworn the tang of diesel fumes was less strong. Paulo sat back on his haunches and grinned. ‘In about sixty seconds they will smell fumes in there and the generator will stop. At that point the rats will come swarming out of their lair.’
They hurried back to Li. She was still taking deep breaths but was looking more alert.
Paulo ran his torch over her. ‘How do you feel?’
‘A bit sick,’ Li said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
She got to her feet and staggered a little. Alex put out his arm and she took it. He realized he could still hear the planes.
Paulo took Li’s other arm. ‘Come on, let’s go and see the show.’
The tunnel led upwards to a dusky sky. With every step they took towards the light the air became cooler and fresher. The sound of the planes and the helicopter became louder. The last part sloped up steeply.
Cautiously, the three members of Alpha Force emerged.
Up on the hill, the trapdoor was open, its light shining into the sky. A helicopter skimmed ten metres off the ground, a triangle of light trailing from it like a skirt. Figures were running around on the moor. The skirt of light touched them, then lost them, then found them again. A shot was fired. Another helicopter circled in the sky, its spotlight brushing over a number of bulky figures, crouched over sniper rifles around the moor. Armed police.
If the police hadn’t believed them before, they certainly did now.
The gamekeepers were heading down the hill towards them. A pistol cracked. The submachine guns answered. Further off in the darkness Li saw a hooded shape, piercings twinkling, moving away in the darkness.
‘Ivanovich,’ she hissed. A wave of giddiness passed over her and she lay back against the opening of the cave.
Paulo saw the drug dealer. A bulky figure was moving about ten metres away in the heather – a police marksman. But he was facing the wrong way. He hadn’t seen Ivanovich.
They couldn’t shout for his attention. They’d never be heard in all the confusion.
Paulo squirmed forwards on his belly and tapped the rifleman on the shoulder. A head snapped round. Eyes looked at him from behind a balaclava. Paulo pointed at Ivanovich, half running, half crawling down the steep hill. The sniper fired, and the night lit up with starbursts of muzzle flash as other hidden gunmen followed his lead, the sound swallowed by the beat of the helicopter.
The heli passed overhead, its spotlight swinging and illuminating Paulo. He was on an open patch of ground. Alerting the sniper had stopped Ivanovich getting away, but it had put him right in the line of fire.
He needed to get back under cover. He began to crawl, elbows digging into the earth.
The spotlight swung away. Alex saw that the gamekeepers were facing a line of armed police, bulked out by body armour. They raised their hands in surrender. Paulo was crawling towards him, his eyes glinting with determination.
The heli found Ivanovich and its spotlight picked him out, his gun raised, defiant. He fired.
Paulo felt something hit him, hard like a punch. His ears rang and something warm spread over his arm.
Alex saw Paulo falter, an arm outstretched. He grabbed it and pulled his friend the rest of the way to cover. The spotlight slid over them as Alex dragged Paulo into the cave mouth. He had something wet and dark all over him and his face was rigid with pain, his arm dark and wet.
Down below them, Ivanovich lifted his pistol but the trigger produced only a click. He was out of bullets. Two policemen grabbed him from behind and shook the gun out of his hand.
The fighter planes were coming back. They zigzagged across the sky as if in a salute and took off into the wide blue yonder.
Li and Alex yelled at the top of their lungs: ‘Man down!’
28
PRISONER
Crash! Hex looked up with bleary eyes. The window had just been broken.
He jumped to his feet. The rubber soles of his shoes made sticky noises in the chemical lake on the floor. The leaking drums slid away as he tried to climb on them, but he wasn’t going to give up. He dragged the ketamine box over, climbed on it and gulped in the fresh air like a drowning man.
The cold made his inflamed nose and eyes stream even more, but it was bliss.
‘Hex!’
He blinked away tears and saw a small blonde figure in the yard looking up at him, a flash of glitter in her hair.
It was the last person he had expected. Tiff.
‘Hex, are you all right?’
Hex nodded.
‘Did they shoot you?’
Hex shook his head. He was too busy breathing to talk.
‘I saw them.’ Her voice was high and upset. ‘I saw them throw you in here and shoot you.’
Hex tried to tell her to be quiet, but his voice wouldn’t work. What if the men were still around? Or the laird? They couldn’t fail to hear her yelling in the middle of the yard. She was putting herself in danger.
On the second attempt he managed a loud croak. ‘Tiff, shhh.’
She didn’t hear him. ‘I thought they’d killed you—’
Hex managed a shout. ‘Tiff, shut up!’
She looked up, offended. The light caught on the glitter in her hair. It was a
hair slide.
‘Sorry,’ said Hex. He’d better grovel: she was his only chance. ‘Tiff, I’m really pleased to see you. Can you help me get out? Give me that hair clip.’
A look of suspicion flitted over her face. Had he blown it?
‘Tiff, please. I need to pick the lock.’
Still looking at him suspiciously, her hands went up to her hair.
Then Hex noticed two figures behind her in the semi-darkness. ‘Run, Tiff!’ he yelled. ‘Run!’
She started to look annoyed. The bouncer grabbed her from behind and lifted her off the ground. She kicked and screamed, but her kicks and blows hit empty air. He clamped a hand over her mouth and cut off her screams.
Hex watched, horrified. The bald man came out. In the yard the indicators of a Range Rover came alive and he opened the back door. Hex recognized it. It was the Range Rover they’d rented.
The big man bundled Tiff into the vehicle. His hand slipped down from her mouth and she let out a full-throated yell – ‘Hex! Help! Help me!’
The bald man came to the storeroom door, a revolver in his hand. Hex leaped down from the window, plunging into the acrid sea of fumes. He doubled over, unable to control the coughing, helpless as the door was unlocked.
Hex saw the man reel back when the smell hit him. Go! he thought. He lunged forwards while the guy was off balance, knocked him over and the gun spun away. He tried to hold him down as he reached for it, but the man squirmed and bucked.
A scream brought everyone to a standstill.
‘Hex!’ Tiff.
The big man had Tiff pinned down on the back seat of the Range Rover, her right arm twisted up behind her back.
‘Are you going to come quietly,’ he said, ‘or does your girlfriend have to die?’
Tiff let out a sob.
Hex had no choice. He couldn’t save Tiff and himself. She shouldn’t even be mixed up in this. He relaxed his hold.