Alpha Force: Untouchable Read online

  The tunnel became higher. They got to their feet and started to walk normally, easing out stiffened limbs.

  But not for long. Soon they came to a shallow lake and a sheer wall. A vertical crack led away, its floor flooded.

  Alex peered in. ‘How deep is that?’ He threw a stone. It splashed and ripples spread out in circles. It was only about ten centimetres deep.

  Paulo waded into the water. His body was silhouetted against the glow from his headlight as he bent down. ‘Another small one, I’m afraid,’ he said, splashing along the tunnel.

  Amber braced herself. Surely Tiff would have an opinion on that. But she seemed to have gone as quiet as a mouse.

  ‘Where’s Tiff?’ asked Alex.

  Paulo stopped splashing. The others looked around. There were only four of them in the cavern.

  Alex looked back into the gulley they’d just come down. ‘Tiff?’

  But Tiff had gone.

  4

  STALAGMITE CAVERN

  Amber put her hand to her head and groaned. ‘Oh no. This is just brilliant.’

  ‘She was in front of me when we came out of the narrow bit,’ said Li.

  Paulo splashed impatiently back into the cavern. ‘I bet if we go back the way we came we’ll find she’s having a sit down.’ But he felt guilty. Maybe he’d really upset her. Although there had been no other tunnels off the one they had just come along, there were numerous nooks and crannies. He peered into every one. Some were just small cracks when you got up close; some were big enough to crawl into.

  The others followed. ‘What if she’s hurt herself?’ said Alex. ‘We’re responsible for her. How could we have not noticed her dropping behind?’

  ‘I think we’d have heard the screams,’ muttered Li.

  They were irritated, but they had to consider other possibilities. Getting a casualty out would be extremely difficult. And if she’d done more than just sit down, or gone back further than the last cave, she could be lost. How long would it take to find her?

  Paulo emerged first into the stalactite cavern. ‘Tiff?’ he called.

  Amber came out next, then the other three.

  They stood and listened for movement. The only thing they could hear was the steady drip of water.

  Then a feeble voice: ‘Help.’

  It came from the tunnel they had abandoned.

  The five friends exchanged weary glances. So she had decided to take the shortest route to the top and leave the rest of them behind. But she hadn’t looked at the map: the tunnel wasn’t just an easy stroll up to the ground, and now she was in trouble.

  Paulo knelt down and shone his headlamp into the hole. He couldn’t see anything, just the tunnel getting narrower and narrower. ‘Tiff?’ he called.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’ he called.

  ‘No. I can’t get out.’

  ‘Try coming backwards,’ said Li.

  ‘I have,’ said Tiff. ‘I’m stuck.’

  Hex said in a low voice so that his voice wouldn’t carry, ‘Well, that serves you right, doesn’t it?’

  Amber nodded.

  Li looked at Paulo. ‘How narrow was it down there?’

  ‘Just your size,’ said Paulo.

  Li gave him a long-suffering look. She took off her rucksack and handed it to him, checked the rope slung diagonally across her body, then got down on her hands and knees.

  Without the rucksack she reached the narrow section in no time. She had to squirm along on her belly like a lizard. It was like climbing along the inside of a drainpipe. Her breathing echoed, emphasizing how tiny the space was. She’d never been claustrophobic before but this was really unpleasant. She felt very alone. She kept reminding herself that her friends were back at the other end, friends who knew what to do if she got into trouble. The tunnel began to slope up steeply. She scrabbled to find handholds to pull herself up.

  The tunnel suddenly turned downwards like an elbow. Li had visions of getting stuck round the corner. But Tiff had got through, so she could. In fact, thought Li as she squeezed around the gap, how did that little minx manage to get all this way? She must be tougher than she looks.

  Li could see a ghostly white glow below her. A lamp. ‘Tiff – are you there?’ she called.

  ‘Yes.’ Tiff’s voice sounded shrill. Was she frightened? Good, thought Li. She deserves to be. Next time she won’t go off on her own.

  Li’s headlamp illuminated a patch of brown mud as she inched her way down the steep tunnel. The floor was only a metre further down now. She vaulted lightly into the cave.

  Tiff was sitting on the floor, her helmet off, looking miserable, but not injured – it was her usual sulky expression. As Li looked around she saw a forest of big, jagged stalagmites, sticking up from the uneven floor like teeth in a shark’s mouth.

  For a moment she forgot that she was mad with Tiff. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You’ve found a pretty amazing place.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I want to go back now,’ said Tiff curtly. She got up.

  Li turned back to the tunnel to see how easy it was going to be to climb out. ‘Did you try to get out?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s impossible.’

  Li looked at her balefully. ‘Well, I very much hope it isn’t, or we’re both stuck.’

  Tiff jigged nervously from foot to foot. ‘Come on, man, this is horrible in here. There’s this noise.’

  ‘That’s not unusual in potholes,’ said Li. ‘It’s probably underground water.’ She inspected the tunnel. The first part was a slippery slope – there were scuff marks where Tiff had tried to climb back up. Li was an experienced climber and could see tiny handholds but for Tiff it would be impossible.

  A squeal interrupted Li’s thoughts. She turned round sharply. ‘What?’

  Tiff’s eyes were blazing. ‘Did you hear it?’

  And then Li made out a sort of chugging, booming noise. It wasn’t water. It was regular, with a beat. In the toothy gloom of the cave, it was rather eerie. It surged, as though giving more power, then settled to a steady chug again. Like an engine.

  ‘See?’ Tiff was angry. ‘You thought I was making it up. You people never listen.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly normal explanation,’ said Li. ‘Or are you still frightened of monsters under the bed?’

  Tiff looked at her with contempt. ‘You should learn some manners. Remember I’m the customer.’

  Li bit her tongue. ‘I sense you have hostility issues,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should have a group hug.’ Actually she would never do anything of the sort, but it was worth it for the look of revulsion on Tiff’s face.

  Li hopped up into the tunnel mouth. ‘You stay here and I’ll go up and throw you this rope.’

  ‘You won’t be able to climb out,’ said Tiff scornfully. ‘I kept slipping.’

  But Li was already scaling the steep slope, feeling for tiny ledges with her fingers and toes. Slowly she made her way up to the elbow, then turned and threw down the rope for Tiff.

  The sun was going down, splashing the sky with oranges, pinks and purples. Paulo and Hex were sitting on the terrace at the back of the hostel, watching an enormous display projected onto the white wall at the end of the building. On the display, three dots were moving around on a map like characters in a computer game. The dots were tracking devices – which the group used on missions. Hex and Paulo had found some projection equipment in the hostel and improvised a way to enlarge the palmtop display to the size of a cinema picture. With the help of some up-to-the-minute phone technology they had reinvented hide and seek – Alpha Force style.

  Somewhere in the hostel, Alex was hiding. The others were split into teams, communicating via phones and hands-free cordless Bluetooth earpieces. Paulo was guiding Li in the house and Hex was guiding Amber. The winner was the first team to find Alex and take him prisoner. And it was getting very heated.

  The boys spoke in low voices, their deckchairs just far enough apart that they couldn’t hear each oth
er. The projector was in between them, its whirring competing with the evening noises of crickets.

  ‘Left, Li,’ muttered Paulo, his eyes fixed on the screen. The hands-free headset was a small curl of silver plastic that hooked over his ear and rested on his cheekbone.

  ‘Upstairs, first room on the left,’ whispered Hex to Amber. On the screen he could see Amber was getting close to Alex, but Li was too. ‘Hurry,’ he urged. ‘Li’s in the next room.’

  Alex’s dot moved. He was getting away! Suddenly all the dots converged. From an open window on the landing came the sound of shrieks. The girls were giving chase.

  It was too late for subtlety now. Paulo stood up and shouted encouragement at the screen. ‘Go on, Li!’

  Inside, Li saw Alex sprint for the stairs. Right, she’d head him off. The stairs went round and round, forming a square well. She vaulted over the banisters and dived for the lower handrail, catching it and vaulting over like a trapeze artist. In moments she was standing on the bottom stair looking up at Alex, the headset still in place, her phone in a zip pouch at her belt.

  Alex’s expression went through several very entertaining phases. First there was triumph as he pounded down the stairs, his feet a blur like a tap dancer. Then there was disbelief as he saw Li in front of him; then horror as he saw he was going to run smack into her.

  Moments later he was tumbling over her back. She had ducked and rolled him over her. He curled himself into a ball to cushion his landing. Li put her foot on his chest, as though he was a lion she’d bagged.

  Paulo raced in through the front door as Amber slid down the banister. ‘Foul,’ she called. ‘Contestants aren’t allowed to fly.’

  ‘There are no rules about that,’ panted Li. She took her foot off Alex. He sat up, rubbing his elbow.

  Hex came in holding the palmtop, which he’d disconnected from the projector. ‘That was just the beta test to iron out bugs. It doesn’t count.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Paulo. ‘We were victorious.’

  Alex got to his feet. ‘Let’s see if Tiff wants to play.’

  ‘She won’t,’ said Hex. ‘She’s watching a week’s worth of EastEnders on video.’

  Alex got to his feet. ‘It won’t do any harm to ask.’

  He made his way down the hall to the TV room and knocked, but there was no answer. Perhaps Tiff couldn’t hear him: the sound was turned up very high. He opened the door and peeked in.

  He looked back at the others. ‘She’s not there. And the window’s open. She’s left the TV on and scarpered.’

  ‘Hex?’ called Amber. ‘Need some magic here.’

  Hex went into a small room off the main corridor. It was the hostel office. A filing cabinet was open and Amber sat at a desk looking at the addresses of all the kids who had been on the course the previous week, including their mobile numbers.

  ‘I just called Tiff’s mobile and she’s engaged. See if you can trace her.’ She pulled the Bluetooth headset out from behind her ear and put it on the desk.

  Hex got out his palmtop. ‘No problem.’ Amber pushed her phone across the desk. Hex read the number off the display and typed it in. ‘Just finding her network now . . . Keep phoning her in case she ends her call.’

  Hex could only trace her as long as she was using the phone. It was illegal, of course, and well beyond most hackers, but Hex was in a league of his own. There wasn’t a firewall he couldn’t slip past, a password he couldn’t crack. Now he was in the computer belonging to her phone company. Mobile phones were a good way to track somebody because they only worked if they were near a transmitter, or cell. Hex just had to find out which cell was taking her signals at the moment. It wasn’t as accurate as the tracers Alpha Force wore, but it would narrow her position down to within a hundred metres or so.

  Amber put her phone on the desk. ‘The signal’s gone. She’s switched it off or gone out of range.’

  Paulo and Alex came in with the projection equipment and laid it carefully on the floor.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Hex. ‘I’ve got her.’ He turned his palmtop round. ‘Find that grid reference.’

  Li plucked an Ordnance Survey map from the bookshelf. She spread it out and located the co-ordinates. ‘Hex, are you sure?’

  Hex glanced at her impatiently. ‘Transmitters don’t lie.’

  She looked up at the others. ‘It’s a disused railway tunnel.’

  Amber frowned. ‘What on earth’s she doing there?’

  Alex got down to practicalities. ‘Do we take the Range Rover or the quad bikes?’

  Paulo looked a bit sheepish.

  Li glared at him accusingly. ‘You’re not still tinkering with the Range Rover?!’

  Paulo looked pained. ‘There’s something a bit dodgy with the ignition system. You know I like to have things perfect.’

  ‘Quads it is,’ said Alex.

  5

  THE RAILWAY TUNNEL

  Three quad bikes spun gravel. Then the fat tyres bit, and they zoomed off the drive and bounced up into the moorland.

  Hex, in the lead, pushed the bike up to top speed, keeping a careful eye on the ground. Amber, on the seat behind him, was in charge of the palmtop, navigating as straight a route as possible to the tunnel. As well as being a powerful computer the tiny machine was a global positioning system or GPS, using military satellites to pinpoint their position anywhere in the world. Paulo and Li followed on another bike and Alex was on the third.

  But a ‘straight’ route didn’t mean straightforward. The riders constantly swerved around clumps of heather, rocks and gullies. At a top speed of fifty-six kph, if the quads hit an obstacle they would turn over.

  Amber nudged Hex in the ribs and he adjusted the bike’s course. Beyond the pool of light given out by his headlamps the night was pitch black. A railway tunnel, Amber thought. What was Tiff doing there? She must have gone to meet someone. What kind of trouble could she be getting into?

  A glow of light was growing in the distance. At first she thought it was reflected headlights from a road: surely they’d vanish again. But they didn’t. The area of light became bigger. She looked at the palmtop. ‘That’s it,’ she hissed in Hex’s ear.

  Hex slowed. The others braked. There was a cluster of arc lights, and figures moving around. Something was going on there.

  Paulo stopped. ‘Let’s leave the bikes and go in on foot.’

  They cut their engines. They expected silence but instead there was a noise. A rhythmic thumping.

  A vehicle pulled up under the arc lights. A couple of figures got out and then it drove off. A door opened and a red light appeared briefly. The sound changed, as if the treble had suddenly been turned up on a hi-fi. Music: fast, tinkly synths. The door closed again and it had gone.

  ‘It’s a rave,’ said Hex.

  Paulo groaned. ‘Don’t say we’ve got to haul her out. I’m too young to be a party pooper.’

  ‘Let’s look at this logically,’ said Amber. ‘She’s fourteen. What would her parents say if they knew she was going to a rave?’

  Alex took out a small torch and they began to walk towards the entrance.

  ‘You know those horrible prefects who are always spoiling your fun, telling you off for running in corridors?’ said Li. ‘I feel like that.’

  ‘We’ve got to get her out,’ said Alex. ‘She’s not even old enough to go into pubs and buy drinks. We’re supposed to be looking after her.’ He grimaced. ‘I sound so square.’

  At the entrance was a circle of people waiting to pay. Their faces were painted with glitter and they wore strings of fluorescent beads around their necks and backpacks with cartoon characters. One by one they put their hands to their mouths and swallowed, then passed around a bottle of water. Amber caught a glimpse of lips closing around a white pill.

  She leaned across to the others. ‘There are drugs here – we’ve got to get her out.’

  Hex looked at her. ‘Stop jigging like that.’

  Amber hadn’t realized she was m
oving in time to the music. She nudged him. ‘Go on, loosen up a bit.’ He glared at her.

  The group in front of them was now being searched by a pair of burly figures in black. Li looked down at her cut-off jeans and hiking boots. ‘I think we’re a bit underdressed. Do you think they’ll let us in?’

  Alex felt the urge to laugh. After all the dangerous things he’d done this was the first time he’d been searched for a weapon – on the way into a party. He was glad he’d left his knife at the hostel.

  The music was crashingly loud, like overhead thunder. A strobe light threw blue-white flashes around the cavernous room. The air smelled of sweat and warm bodies. The ravers carried glow sticks – fluorescent tubes – swinging them in patterns as they danced.

  Paulo stopped and stared. The last time he’d seen so many glow sticks was when they had been trapped by an earthquake in Belize – during a night of dust, rubble and death. Seeing a mass of writhing bodies drawing circles with them in a darkened railway tunnel was like an eerie flashback. He looked at Li and caught her eye.

  She mouthed at him. ‘Déjà vu.’

  He nodded.

  It was impossible to talk. Alex turned to the others and they used hand signals. They’d split up and search the room.

  Hex and Amber made for the crowd of gyrating bodies. Amber was definitely grooving, an enormous smile on her face. Any moment, thought Hex, she would explode like a dervish and be lost in the mass of bodies. He followed, and before he knew it he was taking steps in the same rhythm. Everywhere were these glow sticks, like radioactive bars of candy. He looked at the girls carefully, at the swinging ponytails, the glittery faces.

  Alex picked his way to a quieter area, where people sat cross-legged on the floor, drinking water, sucking lollipops. He saw a petite figure sitting with her back towards him and touched her on the shoulder. She turned round and offered him a bracelet made of Dolly Mixtures. It wasn’t Tiff. Alex shook his head and moved on.

  At the other end of the room he ran into Li. She looked back and pointed at Paulo, who was moving with a kind of speeded-up salsa step around a group of girls.