Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 Page 22

  24

  REVENGE

  THERE HAD BEEN several minutes of confusion on Hampstead Heath. Lights. Shouting. Ellie had seen the tranquillized form of her would-be assassin being carried away by armed police. Nobody seemed to pay her any attention. Suddenly they were all gone. All except Raf and Gabs.

  Gabs helped Ellie up from the ground. ‘Well done, sweetie. That took some courage. Our friend Calaca was caught red-handed. He won’t be seeing anything with that one eye of his except the inside of a prison cell for a very long time to come.’

  Ellie removed her woollen hat and the helmet it had been concealing. It was made from the same sturdy material as the body armour she was wearing underneath her clothes. She shook her hair out, not quite able to believe what she’d just done.

  ‘Why were you pretending to be my boyfriend?’ she asked Gabs. ‘Why not Raf?’

  ‘He’s a little stocky for a fourteen-year-old boy, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘He’s also,’ said Raf, holding up a Browning semi-automatic, ‘a better shot for backup.’

  Gabs grinned at Ellie. ‘Harsh,’ she said, ‘but true.’

  ‘You should get home,’ Raf said. ‘Your folks will be wondering where you are.’

  ‘Will they find out about this?’ Ellie asked. ‘I mean, surely I’ll be questioned and …’

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetie,’ said Gabs as they walked away from the lake and towards the road. ‘We have ways of sorting it. Nobody’s going to know a thing. You can just get on with your life. Pretend it never happened.’

  ‘Will I …’ She chewed for a moment on her thumbnail. ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘I really hope not.’ Ellie felt herself blushing. ‘Don’t get me wrong, sweetie. It’s just that we only tend to crop up when things are going badly.’ Gabs smiled at her. ‘With a bit of luck, everything will go right for you from now on. We’ll just get you home safely first.’

  She held out her hand, but Ellie didn’t take it. Not yet. She had one more question to ask, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

  ‘That picture Calaca showed me. The first day I saw him in Burger King. It was of Zak. I just … I can’t help thinking … I was just wondering …’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘This is something to do with him. So does that mean he’s still alive? Have you seen him? Do you know him?’

  Ellie kept her eyes closed and felt herself wincing. She wanted Gabs to say yes. To tell her that her cousin was alive and well. But deep down she knew it was impossible. And the longer Gabs remained silent, the more she realized that she was clutching at straws.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was a stupid question.’ And she opened her eyes.

  Ellie drew a sharp in breath. She spun round. ‘Gabs?’ she breathed. ‘Raf? Where are you?’ She peered into the darkness, and listened hard for the sound of footsteps.

  But there were none. She spun round on the road by the heath, but her mysterious acquaintances had disappeared.

  ‘Ellie Lewis?’ There was a police car waiting, and a policewoman opened a door. ‘We’re to take you home,’ she said. Ellie groaned. What would her parents say if they saw a police officer walking up to their front door again?

  Having spent so much time in the water, Zak now felt as though he was living in the air. The Hercules to Ascension Island; a UN flight to Brize Norton; a chopper back to St Peter’s Crag. He’d heard busy people say that their feet barely touched the ground. For Zak, it was true.

  He slept wherever there was somewhere to rest his head. But his sleep, like so often, was filled with horrors. He saw water everywhere, and sinking ships. He saw corpses and jagged, bloodied knives. He saw Cruz: the look of madness on his face as he toppled into the sea. But these were not the greatest of the horrors that haunted him. Far worse were the faces.

  There were three of them. The first was a girl with short red hair. Her skin was deathly white, her lips blue. In his dreams, Zak would look at Bea’s shoulder to see the gun wound. The blood had started to clot, leaving a dark, wobbly jelly. Her body didn’t move.

  The second face was Ellie’s. It was twisted into an expression of terror and she was screaming. The scream of someone who knew she was about to die.

  And the third face? It was just as familiar. The sight of Calaca’s one eye made dread seep into Zak’s sleeping bones.

  He woke with a start. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t even know when he was. Then he vaguely remembered stumbling from the chopper that had set him down on the windswept heath in front of St Peter’s House. Michael had been there, and Gabs and Raf; but Zak had been too exhausted even to speak to them. He’d gone straight to his room and slept, and dreamed.

  Now, though, for the first time since he’d left Angola, he felt refreshed. Refreshed and full of questions. He pulled on a pair of jeans and a hooded top and touched his fingers to the doorknob of his room. The door recognized his fingerprint and opened. Zak hurried downstairs. Less than a minute later he was rapping on the door of Michael’s impressive oak-panelled office. He didn’t wait for an answer before striding in.

  Nobody looked surprised to see him. Michael was sitting behind his large, old-fashioned desk; Raf and Gabs were side by side next to the fire. Only Gabs looked wary, as though she was unsure how Zak was going to react.

  A silence in the room.

  ‘Well?’ Zak asked. He had one eyebrow raised.

  ‘A necessary deception,’ Michael said mildly.

  ‘Necessary for who?’

  ‘Just necessary.’

  ‘Are there any more lies you want to tell me about? I mean, now would be a good time, wouldn’t it? To get things out in the open?’

  Michael said nothing. He just stared.

  Zak lowered his head. He had questions to ask, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for the answers.

  ‘Bea?’

  ‘Recovering nicely. I’m sure she’ll be delighted that you asked.’

  Zak closed his eyes. He couldn’t allow himself to feel relieved just yet. ‘And Ellie?’ he whispered.

  A pause.

  ‘A little shaken up, I believe. Señor Ramirez is, as you know, a ruthless opponent. Happily Raphael and Gabriella were on hand to give her a little … guidance.’

  Zak looked up sharply. Both Raf and Gabs had mysterious smiles on their faces. He turned to Michael, whose green eyes twinkled. ‘You knew,’ he breathed. ‘You knew Calaca was targeting Ellie. That’s what this has all been about?’

  ‘I’ve been keeping my eye on Messrs Martinez and Ramirez, if that’s what you mean. The day I realized Ellie was in danger, I decided it was time to act. I mean, I wouldn’t be much of a guardian angel,’ Michael replied, ‘if I didn’t keep one eye on the things I know are important to you. I think you’ll find, Zak, that Calaca won’t be bothering your cousin any longer.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  Michael smiled. ‘Not dead, no. But imprisoned in the UK and awaiting trial. We’ll see to it that his sentence is … appropriate to his crimes. Tell me, Zak, are you familiar with the Greek myth of the hydra?’

  Zak gave him a confused look. What did the hydra have to do with anything? ‘Yeah, it was a snake or something. Loads of heads. Cut one off and another grew, right?’

  ‘Quite right, Zak. Calaca was like one of the heads of the hydra. It was necessary to chop it off, but if Ellie was ever going to be truly safe, the hydra itself had to be dealt with.’

  ‘You mean Cruz?’

  ‘Very good, Zak. But Cruz Martinez was hard to get to. If we were to neutralize him, we needed to get him to come to us. That was why I needed you on the MV Mercantile.’

  ‘I was bait,’ Zak challenged.

  ‘Really, Zak, you do have a knack for choosing the most unpalatable words to describe these things.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you just tell me all this in the first place?’

  ‘Because I knew you would be captured and possibly tortured. If you told your captors
your true identity, that would be one thing. But if you had told them you were really on board to draw Cruz out from hiding, he would never have ventured out of Mexico. So you see, it really was necessary, if we were to prevent another hydra’s head threatening Ellie’s life. I had to make a call, Zak. I had to decide whether, if you were in full possession of the facts, you would have embarked upon such a dangerous mission in order to save the life of your cousin. I decided, on balance, that you would.’

  ‘So you did all that just for Ellie?’ he demanded.

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘Honestly.’

  ‘No. I did it because I knew Ellie’s death would hit you hard. Maybe even make you think twice about what you are doing here. For my superiors, that would be … unacceptable.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  Michael inclined his head. ‘Cruz has been on our hit list ever since you saw him last,’ he said.

  Zak was quiet for a moment. There was, after all, not much he could say to that. When he spoke, he could hear a dark tone to his voice. ‘He won’t be threatening anyone ever again. He’s dead. I saw him fall overboard. I think he committed suicide.’

  ‘I’d like to say I’m sorry about that,’ Michael observed, and suddenly the twinkle left his eyes and his face hardened. ‘But it would be a lie. The world is better off without murderers in it.’

  Zak remembered one of the last things Cruz had said to him. Whatever I am – you made me. ‘He wasn’t always a murderer,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Nobody was always a murderer, Zak. Every man chooses his own path.’

  He thought of the madness in the eyes of his former friend. ‘But some people have help,’ he murmured. ‘What about Black Wolf?’

  Michael shrugged. ‘With Cruz no longer around to mastermind it, I expect it will fade away. The Mercantile did sink, along with the diamonds. That would have hit the organization hard.’ Michael sounded satisfied about that.

  Zak looked towards Raf and Gabs. ‘Does Ellie know?’ he asked. ‘About me? That I’m still alive?’

  ‘She had her suspicions, sweetie,’ Gabs said. ‘She’s a bright girl. Brave too.’ She glanced meaningfully towards Michael. ‘She’d make a good agent.’ Michael didn’t look like he’d even heard her. ‘But it’s better that she thinks you’re dead. Safer. You understand, don’t you?’

  Zak nodded. He walked across the room and looked out through the tall windows to the sea beyond. It was overcast and choppy, but compared to what he was used to, it was practically still.

  ‘Bea told me she was Agent 20.’

  Raf and Gabs glanced towards Michael again. He stayed silent.

  ‘Will I see her again?’

  Again, nothing.

  ‘I have something you might like to see, Zak,’ said Michael finally. He held up what looked like a photograph. Zak stepped forward to take it. It was an aerial photograph of a town by the sea. He could make out a series of jetties on the beach, and a long road leading up from the water in the main town.

  ‘It’s Lobambo,’ he said.

  ‘One of our spy satellites took this image yesterday. And this one.’ He handed Zak a second photograph, more close-up than the first. It took a while to work out what it showed, but after a few seconds something clicked in Zak’s brain.

  ‘The school,’ he said. Already he could see that the walls had been half built. ‘Marcus and the others, they’ve made a start!’

  ‘I was rather disappointed, Zak, when I heard that you’d been interfering in local affairs. I thought we discussed that before you left. And I hear that your friend Malek was somewhat displeased too.’

  Zak felt a twinge of embarrassment at the memory of his friend’s anger.

  But Michael smiled. If he truly was disappointed, he didn’t show it. ‘Ntole and his men have left the village,’ he said. ‘It appears your little game rather embarrassed them. The building work is making good progress. I understand, for what it’s worth, that Malek has been trying to track you down to apologize. He won’t succeed, of course, but …’

  ‘Thank you, Michael,’ Zak said quietly. ‘It’s worth a lot.’ He turned to Raf and Gabs. ‘And thanks for looking after Ellie,’ he said. ‘If anything had happened to her because of me, I’d …’

  He didn’t finish his sentence. The truth was, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  Gabs stepped towards him and put a reassuring arm on his shoulder. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Don’t mention it. We’re all family now, after all. And you did more than any of us to keep her safe. No more Cruz, no more danger.’

  Zak smiled. ‘Oh yeah?’ he asked.

  ‘Well’ – Gabs grinned – ‘maybe for a while. But you know, I can’t help thinking life would get a bit boring if we didn’t have a bit of mortal peril, just to keep us on our toes. Don’t you think?’

  Her grin grew even broader and she suddenly started to laugh. It was infectious. Zak couldn’t help but join in.

  The spy satellite that had taken the imagery of Lobambo was capable of circling the Earth seven times a day. From high up in the atmosphere, it could covertly take pictures of minute detail. It could track cars. Ships. It could even, if the conditions were right, identify individuals.

  If, at that moment, it had directed its attention to a small patch of sea two nautical miles from Ascension Island in the Atlantic, at a bearing of thirteen degrees, it might have picked up several bodies. They were fat and bloated with death. The wild sea had knocked several limbs out of place, which were now pointing out at crooked, irregular angles. Flesh had already started to rot from the faces. It meant that Eduardo, if the spy satellite had focused in on him, would have been quite unrecognizable. The same went for Karlovic, and for el capitán, who looked more frightening in death than he ever had in life. Maybe these bodies would eventually be washed up on some distant shore. Maybe they would eaten by creatures of the deep. Maybe they were destined just to travel the oceans until they rotted down into nothingness.

  But the spy satellite was not trained on these gruesome corpses. It was somewhere else entirely. There was no shortage of surveillance targets, after all. And so it did not see the shingle beach on the north-east coast of Ascension Island. It did not see a figure emerge from the water, stagger onto dry land and collapse when the young man’s knees could no longer carry him. It did not see his dark skin or dark hair, or his lean body, as he lay unconscious on the beach.

  And of course it did not see his dreams. Dreams that were filled with just two things: the face of Agent 21, and Cruz’s own thoughts of revenge.

  IS STILL ON DUTY.

  Look out for him in the thrilling book three, coming soon …

  HAVE YOU TRIED CHRIS RYAN’S ACTION-PACKED FICTION?

  You wake up in a dark room.

  You are gagged and forced into a waiting truck.

  What would you do?

  Some authors just write about it. Chris Ryan has been there, done it – and here is the gripping real-life tale …

  Read on for an extract from The One That Got Away

  Now available for younger readers for the first time, adapted from the huge, best-selling personal account.

  It was a tough decision. My last friend had disappeared … I checked my compass and started walking north. Alone.

  During the Gulf War in 1991, Chris Ryan became separated from the other members of the SAS patrol, Bravo Two Zero.

  Alone, he beat off an Iraqi attack and set out for Syria. Over the next seven days he walked almost 200 miles, his life constantly in danger.

  Of the eight SAS members involved in this famous mission, only one escaped capture. This is his story …

  OUR TARGET WAS a disused mental hospital.

  Five terrorists were inside, holding nine hostages captive. After a three-day siege, matters were moving swiftly to a head.

  As commander of the SAS eight-man sniper team of ‘B’ Squadron, I was in charge of seven other men. We were positioned with our rifles at observation points in outhouses, trees
and on the ground. Two men were watching each face of the hospital and sending back running commentaries over their throat-mike radios to the command centre. This had been set up in a separate building 200 metres from the front door. Each face of the hospital had been given a special code so that everyone knew which bit they were talking about.

  From the command centre a police negotiator was talking to the chief terrorist. The terrorist was demanding safe conduct to Heathrow airport for himself and his colleagues; otherwise he would shoot one of the hostages. Meanwhile, the military officer commanding the SP (Special Projects, or counter-terrorist) team was working out how to attack the building if the negotiations failed.

  Suddenly a shot cracked out from within the hospital. A hostage had been executed. The terrorists called for a stretcher party to take the body away. The front door opened briefly, and a limp figure was bundled out. A four-man team ran over to collect it. Then the chief terrorist threatened to kill another hostage in half an hour if his demands were not met.

  The moment had come for the police to hand over to the military. The police chief signed a written order passing command to the OC (Officer Commanding) of ‘B’ Squadron, the senior SAS officer present. The OC then gave the three eight-man assault teams their orders. The moment he had finished, the men moved to their entry points.

  Now it was just a question of waiting for my snipers to get as many terrorists in their sights as possible. Listening to our commentaries on the radio, the OC suddenly called out the order we’d all been waiting for:

  ‘I have control. STAND BY … STAND BY … GO!’

  For the past two days the grounds of the old hospital had been eerily silent. Now the whole place erupted into action. Two vehicles screamed up to the building and a swarm of black-clad assaulters jumped out. Explosive charges blew in the windows. Within seconds, a Chinook helicopter was poised above the roof and more black figures were fast-roping out of it, abseiling down to the windows or entering through the skylights. Stun grenades blasted off; smoke poured out. The radio carried a babble of shots, shouts, explosions and orders.