Paul Drevin had come out of the house. He must have heard them talking, and walked round the side of the building just as Drevin had fired. Alex had dived out of the way but Paul hadn’t been so lucky. He had taken the full impact of the bullets, and he was lying on his back, arms and legs spread wide, blood soaking into the sand.
“You…!” Drevin screamed the single word. Then he began to babble. Not in English but Russian. His face was white, twisted in pain and hatred. Tears were seeping out of the corners of his eyes. He pointed the gun at Alex once more. But this time Alex was ready for him.
Before Drevin could pull the trigger, Alex began to roll, spinning over and over, propelling himself towards the house. Bullets kicked up the sand, then slammed into the nearest wall. But Drevin had been caught by surprise. Still rolling, Alex disappeared into the crawl space underneath the house. It was cold and damp here. There might be spiders or scorpions nestling in the foundations. But he was in the dark, out of the range of the bullets. For a moment, he was safe.
Drevin hardly seemed to notice. He fired at the house until the gun clicked uselessly in his hands. It took him a while to realize that he had run out of bullets. Then, with a curse, he threw the gun down and staggered over to his son. Paul wasn’t moving. In the distance, he heard shouting. A buggy was approaching through the rainforest. Drevin turned and ran across the beach towards the waiting plane.
Lying on his stomach, Alex looked out through the gap between the bottom of the house and the sand. He saw Drevin reach the water’s edge and knew that he wasn’t coming back. Slowly, dreading what he was going to find, he crawled back out into the open and went over to Paul.
There was a lot of blood. Alex was certain that the boy was dead, and he was overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness and guilt. But then, to his surprise, Paul opened his eyes. Alex knelt down beside him. Now that he was looking closely he could see that, beneath the blood, the damage might not be as bad as he had feared. Paul had been shot in the shoulder and the arm but the rest of the bullets must have passed over his head.
“Alex…” he rasped.
“Don’t move,” Alex said. “I’m really sorry, Paul. This is all my fault. I should never have come here.”
“No. I was wrong…” Paul tried to speak but the effort was too much.
Alex heard the sound of the Cessna’s engine and turned round in time to see the plane moving away from the jetty. Drevin was piloting it. Alex could make out the crazed, distorted face behind the controls. At the same time, a buggy screeched to a halt in front of the house and Ed Shulsky and two men jumped out. Alex was relieved to see that Tamara was with them, still pale but looking stronger than when he had last seen her.
“Alex!” she called out, then stopped, seeing Paul.
Shulsky signalled, and the two men sprinted over to the wounded boy, pulling out medical packs as they ran. “What happened here?” he asked.
“Drevin,” Alex said. “He hit Paul instead of me.”
“How bad is it?” Shulsky addressed one of the two men.
“I think he’s going to be OK,” the man replied, and Alex felt a surge of relief. “He’s lost blood, and we’re going to have to helicopter him out as soon as possible. But he’ll live.”
Shulsky turned to Alex. “We’ve taken control of the island,” he told him. “Drevin’s men didn’t put up much of a fight. But we lost Drevin. Where is he?”
Alex pointed. The Cessna 195 had reached full speed and was rising smoothly out of the water. Bizarrely, impossibly, two canoes had risen up behind it, as if following it out of the sea and into the sky.
“What the—” Shulsky began.
It was the only thing Alex had been able to do in the time he’d had. Using the tow ropes from the waterskiing equipment, he’d tied the canoes to the seaplane’s floats. He had thought about securing the Cessna to the jetty, but Drevin would have spotted that. Part of him had hoped that the plane wouldn’t be able to take off, but he was disappointed. It was already high up, a bizarre sight with the two canoes dangling underneath it. Alex wondered if Drevin had even noticed. Well, whatever happened, it would make the plane easier to spot, and when it landed, with a bit of luck, the canoes might cause it to overturn.
But then Drevin made his last mistake.
Alex would never know what was in the Russian’s mind. Did he think his son was dead? Did he think Alex was to blame? It seemed he had decided to take revenge. The plane swung round and suddenly it was heading back towards them. With no warning, before there was even any sound, the sand leapt up all around them and Alex realized that Drevin was firing at them, using a machine gun mounted somewhere on the plane. The detonations came a moment later. Everyone dived for cover, the two male agents crouching over the injured boy, protecting him with their own bodies. Bullets smashed into the side of the house; wood splintered and one of the great glass windows frosted and cascaded down. The plane roared overhead and continued towards the rainforest. The canoes bumped and twisted just behind.
Drevin had missed them on the first pass but Alex knew they wouldn’t be so lucky on the second. He looked at Shulsky, wondering what the CIA agent was planning to do. They might be able to make it into the house. But what about Paul? Moving him too quickly would kill him.
The plane began to turn. The canoes dipped down. Drevin was directly over the forest. He hadn’t seen the canoes, so had no idea how low they were. There were two trees close to one another. As Alex watched – with a shiver of horror – the canoes collided with the trunks and became stuck between them, caught sideways on.
The plane came to an abrupt halt. It was as if it had anchored itself in mid-air. There was the sound of breaking wood. The canoes had smashed – but so had the floats. In fact, the entire undercarriage of the plane had been torn away, and Drevin was left sitting on thin air, surrounded by half a plane. One moment he had been flying forward. The next he simply rotated ninety degrees and swooped vertically down towards the ground. There was a scream from what was left of the engine; the Cessna’s propeller turned uselessly. Alex saw the plane disappear into the forest. There was a crash and then, seconds later, a ball of flame. It leapt up into the sky almost as if it was trying to escape from the devastation below. Two more explosions. Then silence.
For what seemed like an eternity, Alex stared towards the crash site. A fire still raged among the trees and he wondered if it would spread across the island. But even as he watched, the flames started to flicker and die down, to be replaced by a plume of smoke that rose up in the shape of a final exclamation mark. Drevin was dead. There could be no doubt about that.
Alex felt an immense weariness. It seemed to him that everything that had happened, from the moment he had met Nikolei Drevin at the Waterfront Hotel in London, had somehow been leading to this moment. He thought back to the luxury of Neverglade, the go-kart race, the football match that had ended in murder, the flight to America. Drevin had been a monster and he’d deserved to die. Washington was no longer in any danger. Gabriel 7 and the bomb it was carrying would be blown up long before it reached Ark Angel.
But Alex couldn’t feel any sense of victory. He looked back at Paul Drevin. The two agents were busy working on him, one of them wrapping pressure bandages around his wounds while the other fed an IV needle into his arm. Paul’s eyes were closed. Mercifully he had slipped into unconsciousness and so hadn’t seen what had just happened. Alex turned back and watched the smoke spread through the air, and suddenly he wanted to be far away from Flamingo Bay. He wanted to be with Jack. The two of them would take a plane home.
It was finally over.
He realized that Ed Shulsky and Tamara were staring at him.
“What is it?” he asked.
The two CIA agents exchanged a look. Then Shulsky spoke. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said. “We wanted to have a word with Mr Drevin.”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t think he was planning to hang around for a chat.”
“You may be right,??
? Shulsky agreed. “But we still needed to speak to him.” He paused. “You remember that red button I was telling you about?”
Alex nodded. “Yes.”
“Well, it seems I was wrong. There isn’t one. We can’t blow up Gabriel 7. There’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
“What?” Alex’s head spun. “But you just said that you’re in control of the island. There must be something you can do.”
Tamara shook her head. “After the launch, Drevin locked down all the computer systems,” she explained. “He was the only one with the codes. It’s not your fault, Alex. By the time we’d caught up with him it probably would’ve been too late. But right now Gabriel 7 is on its way and we can’t communicate with it. We can’t bring it back and we can’t divert it. It’s going to dock with Ark Angel in less than three hours from now. The bomb is on a timer. It’s all going to happen exactly as Drevin planned.”
“So what are you going to do?” Alex asked.
Tamara didn’t have the heart to say it. She glanced at Shulsky.
“Alex,” he said. “I’m afraid we need your help.”
ARK ANGEL
“No,” Alex said. “No way. Forget it. The answer is no!”
“Let’s go over this again,” Ed Shulsky suggested.
They were sitting in the control centre on the western stretch of Flamingo Bay. Alex had been driven there from Drevin’s house and it was clear that Shulsky’s men were in command. Very little damage had been done. The guardhouse and the gate had been blown up – that was the explosion Alex had heard – but it seemed that Drevin’s men had surrendered quickly. None of them had known what Drevin was really planning. They had been paid to help launch a rocket into space: Drevin had never told them what the rocket actually contained.
At least Paul Drevin was out of it. He had been flown to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown, on Barbados. Alex was relieved to hear that he was going to be all right. He had already been given blood and the doctors were waiting for his condition to stabilize before he was flown to America. His mother was apparently on her way to see him. Alex wondered if the two of them would ever meet again. Somehow he doubted it.
Now there were just four people in the room, surrounded by computers, video screens and the blinking lights of the electronic display board. A series of blueprints had been spread out on the large conference table. They showed the overall design of Ark Angel with the different modules – a dozen of them – extending in every direction, up and down. It was like an enormously complicated toy.
Alex was slumped in a chair, his face grim, still dressed in the borrowed combat clothes. Ed Shulsky and Tamara Knight were sitting opposite him. Tamara looked exhausted, grey with pain and fatigue. She’d accepted a shot of morphine but nothing else. She wasn’t leaving Alex until a decision had been made.
The fourth person in the room was Professor Sing Joo-Chan, the man in charge of the Gabriel 7 launch. The flight director seemed a completely different person. He had lost his calm and self-possession and looked as if he was on the verge of a heart attack. His face was pale and he was sweating profusely, dabbing at his forehead with a large white handkerchief. Like everyone else, he claimed to know nothing about the bomb, nothing about Drevin’s real plans. He had promised to cooperate, to do anything the CIA required, and for the time being Shulsky was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But Alex wasn’t so sure. The professor had been recruited by Drevin; he had been in charge of the operation from the very start. Alex was certain he knew more than he was letting on.
“This is the situation,” Shulsky said. “Gabriel 7 will dock with Ark Angel at half past two this afternoon. It’s carrying a bomb which will go off exactly two hours after that.” He glanced at Alex. “Drevin told you that himself.”
Alex nodded. “That’s right. Half past four. That’s what he said.”
“Now, as I understand it, there are three docking ports on Ark Angel.” Shulsky pointed to the diagram. “Two of them are positioned at the very centre … here. But that’s not where Gabriel 7 is heading, because if the bomb blew up there it would simply rip the whole space station apart.” He reached out and tapped a section on the other side, at the end of a long corridor. “Gabriel 7 will dock here,” he explained. “Right on the edge.”
“Yes – the very edge!” Sing agreed. Alex noticed that the professor’s eyes were wide and unfocused. He was taking care not to look at anyone directly. “That’s how it was decided. That’s what Mr Drevin insisted.”
“The bomb must be inside the observation module,” Shulsky said. “And I guess it’ll be in exactly the right position. Most of the force from the explosion will go outwards. It’ll have the effect of a push in the wrong direction, propelling the entire space station back to earth.” He took a deep breath and for a moment something like panic flashed in his eyes. “The hell of it is, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can’t blow up Gabriel 7. And according to Professor Sing here, we can’t access the computers to reprogram it.”
“You can’t!” The white handkerchief was out again. “Only Mr Drevin had the codes. Only Mr Drevin—”
“I’ve checked it, Alex,” Tamara said. “It’s true. The entire system has been shut down. It would take us days – possibly even weeks – to hack into it.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that leaves us with just one option,” Shulsky went on. “We have to send somebody up to Ark Angel. Believe me, Alex, it’s the only way. Someone has to find the bomb and neutralize it – by which I mean switch it off. And if that isn’t possible, then they have to move it. They have to carry it into the middle of the space station and leave it there. That way, the force of the explosion will have a completely different effect. It’ll destroy Ark Angel. What pieces are left will scatter and burn up in the outer atmosphere.”
“You will destroy Ark Angel!” Professor Sing whispered the words as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard.
“I don’t give a damn about Ark Angel, Professor!” Shulsky almost shouted the words. “My only concern is Washington.”
“Move the bomb or switch it off – what difference does it make?” Alex asked. “How is anyone going to get there?”
“That’s the whole point,” Shulsky said. “The Soyuz-Fregat is ready for launching. It was all set to carry Arthur into space.” He paused. “But there’s no reason why it shouldn’t carry you.”
“Me? You really want to send me into outer space?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not an orang-utan.”
“I know. I know. But you have to understand! What we’re talking about here, it’s not as complicated as you think. I mean, a rocket is a pretty simple piece of machinery. It’s just like a tank. It’s not as if you have to control it or anything – that’s all done from here.” Shulsky gestured around the room. “We still have access to the flight programs for the Soyuz-Fregat. The computers marked COMMAND tell the rocket what to do. The docking, the re-entry … everything. And those marked TELEMETRY allow us to monitor the health and well-being of the passenger. You.”
“Not me.”
“There is no one else,” Shulsky said, and Alex could hear the desperation in his voice. “That’s the whole point, Alex. We’re adults. We’re all too big!” He turned to Professor Sing. “Tell him!”
Sing nodded. “It’s true. We planned to put Arthur – the ape – into space. I made all the calculations personally. The launch, the approach, the docking – all of it. But the first differential is the weight. The weight of the passenger. If the weight changes, then all the calculations have to change and that will take days.”
“What makes you think I weigh the same?”
The professor spread his hands. “You weigh almost the same, and we can work within a margin. It’s possible. But it’s not just the weight. It’s the size.”
“The capsule has been modified and none of us would fit inside,” Shulsky explained. “There isn’t enough room. You’re the only one who can go, A
lex. Heaven knows, I wouldn’t ask you otherwise. But there is no other way. It has to be you.”
Alex’s head was swimming. He hadn’t slept for almost thirty hours; he wondered if this whole conversation wasn’t some sort of hallucination. “But how would I even find the bomb?” he asked. “And if I did find it, how would I know where to put it?”
“You put it here.” Again Shulsky pointed at one of the modules in the diagram. “This is the sleeping area. You’ll pass through it on your way to Gabriel 7. It’s the very heart of Ark Angel. This is where the bomb has to be when it blows up. I’ve gone over it with the professor and he agrees. If it happens here, Washington will be safe.”
“I’m just meant to carry it from one place to another?”
“It’ll weigh nothing at all,” Sing reminded him. “You see – it’s zero gravity!”
Alex felt weak. He wanted to argue but he knew that nobody was listening. They had all made up their minds.
Tamara reached out and took his hand. “Alex, I’d go if I could,” she said. “I’m just about small enough and I guess I weigh the same as you. But I don’t think I’d make it. Not with this bullet wound…”
“I thought most kids would give their right arm to go into outer space,” Shulsky added unhelpfully. “Haven’t you ever dreamt about becoming an astronaut?”
“No,” Alex said. “I always wanted to be a train driver.”
“Statistically, the Soyuz has an excellent reliability record,” Tamara said. Alex remembered seeing her reading about space travel on Drevin’s plane. “Hundreds of them have gone up, and there have been only a couple of hiccups.”
“How long will it take him to get there?” Shulsky asked. As far as he was concerned, Alex had already agreed to go.
“He’ll be launched along the plane of orbit,” Professor Sing replied. “I can’t explain it all to you now. But he’ll follow a trajectory that exactly matches the inclination of Ark Angel. Eight minutes to leave the earth’s atmosphere. And he will dock in less than two hours.”