by Chris Ryan
It wasn’t easy, from this angle and in the darkness, for Abby to get a clear view of the items they took out of the rucksacks. But she soon worked out that they were military. There were weapons and waterproof boxes of ammunition. There were several boxes marked ‘C-4’, which Abby knew to be a military-grade plastic explosive. There were small flight cases, the contents of which Abby couldn’t decipher. There was a large weapon, larger than anything the cadets had ever seen in real life, but which looked like something the Watchers had taught them about: a Stinger. These are shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile launchers, she remembered Angel telling them. They’re designed for men – or women – on the ground to take out aircraft. You cause a lot of destruction with one of these, and take out a lot of people …
The frogmen laid a huge tarpaulin in the hole, with either end spilling out over the edges. Then they started to stash the items on top of it. As soon as the first two rucksacks were empty, they started on the remaining two. In just a couple of minutes, all four rucksacks were empty.
The frogmen folded the tarpaulin over their cache, then started to cover it up again with the loose earth. This was a quick process, but when the hole was filled, there was still a mound of displaced soil. They kicked it flat then found some fallen branches to drag over the cache, removing their footprints and camouflaging the location, at least a little. When they were finished, they signalled to their companions. Each man retrieved his empty rucksack and slung it over his back. They were clearly preparing to leave when something happened.
One of the frogmen put a finger to his ear and cocked his head. Everything about his body language told Abby that he was listening to something in a comms earpiece. She couldn’t see his face, but she could tell, by the low, urgent sound of his voice when he spoke to his companions, that something had happened. Something serious.
They started to move more quickly. As suddenly as they had arrived, they wordlessly melted away into the darkness.
Even when they had gone, Abby barely dared to stir. She clutched the tree, considering what she had just witnessed. The frogmen had been digging in military equipment. She did not doubt what it was for: a cache, a secret store of weapons for ground troops to access if – when – an invasion took place. And the fact that they were doing it now meant the invasion had to be imminent. But that was not foremost in her mind. She had a bad feeling about whatever it was the frogmen had just learned over their comms system.
Something was wrong. She felt bile rise in the back of her throat. Something was very wrong.
She climbed back down the tree and fumbled to retrieve her IR camera from inside her coat.
Click.
Click.
When she had photographed the cache and the surrounding area, she stowed the camera again and sprinted back to the treeline. Hidden in the shadows, she looked back across the clifftop. She could see the five frogmen. They had reached the ditch and were crossing it, seemingly unaware that Sami was hiding only a few metres from them. There was no other sign of disturbance. No sign that her fellow cadets were in any kind of danger. She watched the frogmen disappear towards the ridge. Only when the clifftop was deserted again did she venture out from the copse.
Abby ran as hard and as fast as she could, painfully aware that more frogmen could appear at any minute and she risked compromising them all. Her instinct told her this was the right thing to do. She had to check on the others.
A minute later, she was in the ditch, crawling towards the clifftop. ‘It’s me,’ she hissed, to warn Sami of her approach. She was surprised to see him and Lili emerge from the darkness. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I had to leave my OP,’ Lili said. ‘It’s okay – I just thought I’d be safer here.’
‘Something’s happening,’ Abby said, and she quickly recounted to them what she’d just seen.
‘That’s it,’ Sami said. ‘I’m going to check on Max and Lukas.’
‘Wait,’ Lili whispered. She was looking down at the cove. ‘Look!’
Several frogmen were by the water’s edge already, their rebreathers back on. Others were walking across the beach from the bottom of the ridge. Out to sea, she could just make out the curved top of an underwater vessel.
‘Minisub,’ she whispered.
‘Oh my God,’ Lili said. ‘Look!’
Abby returned her attention to the frogmen on the beach. Two of them had something slung over their shoulders.
It took a few seconds for Abby to realise what Lili clearly already knew: it wasn’t something, it was someone.
Bile rose once more to the back of her throat. Along with Sami and Lili, she put her binoculars to her eyes and focused in on one of the captives.
She felt sick.
Even from this distance, through IR binoculars, with his head upside down and in profile, she recognised Max’s face. She would know it anywhere. It was battered and swollen. Abby couldn’t tell if he was awake or not, but he was definitely in a bad way. She panned to the right and saw Lukas in the same position, slung over the shoulder of another man. As Abby watched, the man dumped Lukas on the beach and ran to retrieve his rebreathing gear.
The three cadets lowered their binoculars. Sami was the first to stand. Abby and Lili exchanged a glance. ‘There’s three of us,’ Lili said, ‘and fifteen of them.’
‘I don’t care,’ Sami said, and his voice was fiercer than Abby had ever known it.
‘They’re armed,’ Lili said.
‘I still don’t care. Max and Lukas are our friends. We have to help them.’
‘What can we do?’ Abby said.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Sami said. ‘But what we can’t do is stay here and watch.’ He turned his back on them and ran along the ditch.
‘He’s right,’ Abby said, getting to her feet. ‘Come on.’ Without waiting for a reply, she followed Sami.
As a young child, Abby had suffered a recurring nightmare: she wanted to run, but her legs, for some reason, were heavy and useless. She felt like that now: as though, no matter how hard she tried, she simply couldn’t run fast enough. In truth, however, the cadets had seldom moved so fast. There was no time for stealth. They hurtled along the clifftop, the moon casting long shadows across the landscape, their hair blowing wildly in the wind. They reached the top of the ridge in a minute and started to make their way down to sea level. The ridge was steep and treacherous. Several times, Abby stumbled and nearly fell. But her leg muscles were strong and her balance and coordination were good – the Watchers had seen to that – so she stayed upright, moving fast. Her mind was whirring. What would they do when they reached the cove? How could they fight the frogmen? How could they rescue Max and Lukas? She didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. She only knew one thing: if they didn’t get there quickly, they wouldn’t be able to help their friends. That thought spurred her on.
But then they reached the bottom of the ridge and burst breathlessly onto the beach, their feet sinking in the sand.
They looked all around.
The beach was empty. There was no sign of Max or Lukas. The only people they could see were two frogmen, many metres out to sea, up to their shoulders in water. Within seconds, they too had disappeared.
They were too late.
The cadets didn’t stop running. They hurtled down the beach to the water’s edge. Abby wanted to plunge right in, but Lili gripped her from behind and pulled her back. Sami clutched his hair in desperation. Lili had tears streaming down her face. Abby could hardly breathe. She raised one fist in the air and, as she caught her breath, let out a scream of frustration. It hurt her throat and made Lili step back in shock.
The sound of the scream faded as quickly as it started, as though kidnapped by the wind. All that was left on the beach were three teenagers, wet, dishevelled and overcome by panic. They had lost their friends, and could see no way to rescue them.
11
Submerged
Max didn’t know if he was dreaming or drowning. Above
the water or under it. Alive or dead.
In truth, it was a mixture of them all.
He was only semi-conscious. Awake enough to be aware of the pain and the water flooding in through his nose and mouth, but too groggy to struggle or fight back. One moment he was above the water line, the next he was under, blind and unable to breathe. Whenever he had the opportunity to gasp for air, he felt life surge back into his lungs and muscles, but the longer he was submerged the more he felt consciousness draining from him.
Now, everything was dark. His lungs burned and his head spun. He was buffeted by the currents and choked by the firm grip of his abductor at the back of his neck. He’d been under for thirty seconds, maybe more, and the urge to draw breath was almost overpowering. He was a millisecond away from inhaling a lungful of salt water.
Then, suddenly, he was above the water line again. He gulped great mouthfuls of air, his chest heaving. His sore eyes were open and, for the briefest instant, he had complete clarity. He was on his back and at least thirty metres out to sea. The clifftop was starkly silhouetted by the moon, and he saw people running on the ridge that led down into the cove. He couldn’t identify them, but his oxygen-starved brain told him they were his friends.
‘Abby …’ he gasped.
But then he was under again, his lungs only half full of air because he had foolishly spoken.
His few seconds above water had revived him somewhat. He realised that his wrists and ankles were bound. Even if he could struggle away from his abductor, there would be no point. Bizarrely, his firm grip was keeping him alive. And he was still alive, he reminded himself – if only just. There had to be a reason. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for the frogmen to kill him.
Maybe it was just that a live body was easier to move than a dead one.
Light. Max winced. It cast straight, opaque beams through the cloudy water. He was aware of bubbles and of black-clad limbs nearby. Before he had time to think anything else, he was being grabbed by the shoulders and the ankles. His lungs had started to burn again and he ached to inhale more air. But he was being dragged further down. Panic gripped him again. He tried to struggle, but his abductors held him fast. There was nothing he could do. His head felt light again. Everything seemed to be moving more slowly. The pain and the panic were subsiding. Everything was spinning silently. His eyes were rolling.
He was on the edge of consciousness.
Then he felt a brutal jolt as his body slammed against something hard. Groggily, he looked around. Beams of light were moving here and there and he realised in his semi-conscious state that they came from handheld underwater torches. One of the frogmen was strapping him to the wall of a hard metallic structure. A mouthpiece of some description was shoved to his face. Oxygen pumped into his mouth and he breathed deeply and gratefully.
Consciousness returned. His breathing apparatus was still in his mouth and his vision was blurry. Lukas was to his left, also strapped in and breathing. The frogmen were fore and aft of them. They were clearly inside an underwater vehicle, roughly cylindrical in shape, although it was too murky and full of seawater for Max to see to the end. Sound was deadened, but he could hear the muffled whine of machinery.
The more oxygen he breathed into his system, the more clarity returned. He could hear Hector’s voice in his head. There’s a type of vessel called a minisub. We didn’t think that the Argentine military had any, but we’ve been wrong about stuff like that before … Surely that was where he and Lukas were, strapped into an Argentine minisub, which was now closing up to encase them in its steel. Lukas, whose face he could just see through the gloom, looked as terrified as Max felt.
Then, one by one, the lights went off.
They were in complete darkness.
Max felt his pulse racing. He forced himself to breathe more slowly and carefully. He had never been so frightened. His ears hurt. His eyes stung. He closed them in an attempt to calm himself. On the edge of his hearing was the sound of the minisub’s engines. They were moving. He tried not to think of the water above, below and all around him. He tried not to think of how tiny and insignificant this submarine was in the vast expanse of the South Atlantic Ocean.
And he tried not to think about what awaited him and Lukas.
Max could hear no movement in the darkness. He had no idea what time it was. All he knew was that he was getting colder. Unlike the frogmen, he and Lukas had no wetsuits to keep them warm. The chill started at his extremities then travelled to his core. He shivered: his body was doing everything it could to keep warm. But he also knew that it wouldn’t last for long. The cold water was sapping everything from him: warmth, energy, life.
The shivering grew faster. Then, alarmingly, it slowed. His body was shutting down, preserving energy. He began to feel disorientated again, and he knew hypothermia was close. It was an effort even to breathe through the oxygen mouthpiece.
An effort even to panic …
A sudden muffled clunk penetrated Max’s consciousness. He managed to feel a twinge of fear. A single beam of light shot through the gloom. Then, a couple of seconds later, several more. Figures swam in front of Max’s eyes. He felt himself being unclipped from the vessel. The muffled mechanical grind returned and he knew the minisub was opening up. Somebody pulled the oxygen mask from his face and he felt himself being lifted once more by the ankles and the shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lukas’s face, suddenly very close before it receded again into the gloom. And then he felt himself being manoeuvred out of the vessel.
He could tell he was underwater and in open sea: the currents were strong and swirling. He knew that if his abductors let go of him, he was dead. With his wrists and ankles bound, swimming was impossible and the current would immediately take him. As the burning sensation began to build up in his lungs once more, he felt one of them wrapping something around his waist and between his legs.
Then they let go.
Instinctively, Max started to writhe. He couldn’t help it. He was drifting, unsupported. He had to get to the surface. He had to get some air. He couldn’t even tell which way was up. He blew a few precious bubbles into the water and watched to see which way they travelled. But no matter how he twisted his body, he couldn’t seem to follow them.
He was sinking, fast …
Then, from nowhere, a jolt. Whatever his abductors had wrapped around his waist tightened. He felt himself being pulled upwards. There was a sudden splash and a roar as he broke the surface and his hearing returned. He inhaled, gasping noisily as he sucked oxygen back into his system. He couldn’t understand what was happening: he was suspended in mid-air, swinging like a pendulum, face-down over the water. The sea receded as he was lifted higher and higher. Then he looked to his left and realised what was happening.
He saw an old fishing trawler. The hull was a dirty grey, the bridge white. A crane stood on the starboard deck. Max was being winched out of the water by the crane, hooked by a carabiner fitted to a waist harness. The ship yawed and rocked. The movement made Max dizzy as he swung towards the vessel, now close to the railings, now far away, and finally directly above the main deck. The winch lowered him and he hit the deck with a painful thump.
Figures surrounded him. They wore dark green life jackets and military helmets. One man unclipped him from the winch and cut the cables that bound his ankles. Another pulled him roughly from the deck. They barked at him and dragged him towards the stern of the boat. Nothing in their voices or body language was friendly. Max was under no illusion that he was a prisoner.
Battered and drained of energy, Max was thrown to the floor by the stern railings, next to an orange lifeboat. Lukas was already there. His wrists were tied behind him to a post that carried a life ring. Max was dragged into position next to him and his wrists were similarly bound. The guys in green life jackets left them with a grunt. As they walked away, a wave crashed over the side of the boat, but Max barely felt it: he could not have been wetter, or colder. The sound of th
e trawler’s engines filled his ears, occasionally punctuated by a rolling boom as a wave hit the hull. He had to shout to be heard. His voice, raw and high-pitched, barely sounded like his own.
‘I thought we were going to die!’ he yelled.
‘There’s time yet.’
‘Why have they brought us here?’
Another wave crashed over them, and Max felt his stomach slip with the movement of the boat before Lukas could reply.
‘To find out who we are and what we know. To question us.’ Lukas curled his lip. ‘They can question us all they want,’ he said. ‘I’m not telling them anything.’
Max didn’t answer. There was no need for him to articulate what he was thinking: that questioning by these Argentine forces was likely to be brutal and painful. That there was only so long an individual could withstand interrogation under torture.
And when the interrogation was done, what then? Would they be allowed to go home? Hardly. They would surely be killed.
Max glanced out over the ocean. It looked like a vast, watery grave.
12
The Woman in the Window
Lili and Abby had to hold Sami back to stop him wading into the ocean. Sami struggled hard. He was a lot stronger than his wiry frame suggested.
‘Sami! Stop it! We’re wasting time! The more time we waste, the less chance we have to rescue them, keep them alive!’
Abby’s words had an immediate effect. Sami stopped struggling and the two girls let go. But when Sami turned to look at Lili, he had fire in his eyes. ‘You stopped me going to check on them. Now see what’s happened!’
Abby was watching Lili as he said this. Her expression changed: anger flooded over it. ‘How dare you blame me for this? Max and Lukas would have done exactly the same thing in our shoes.’