Deadfall: Agent 21 (25 page)

Zak continued to accelerate. He was no more than fifty metres from the tower now, and was heading directly at the entrance.

One of the boys fired a shot. It pinged off the chassis of the Range Rover. Zak kept his trajectory straight.

Thirty metres.

Twenty.

He could see the boys’ faces clearly now, could pick out the alarm in their expressions. They lowered their weapons and got ready to run. But at the last moment, one of them got brave. He raised his gun again and fired out a single shot. The front windscreen of the Range Rover splintered into a spider web of cracks so that Zak could barely see out of it. He was only just aware of two forms sprinting out of the way as, with another solid yank, he twisted the steering wheel down and to the right, slamming his foot on the brake pedal and pulling up the handbrake as he did so. The Range Rover spun ninety degrees clockwise, its tyres screeching against the tarmac. Zak’s nostrils filled with the acrid smell of burning rubber. Then, with a sudden, brutal
crunch, the side of the Range Rover slammed against the entrance to the tower.

Zak’s whole body jolted painfully. He looked to his left. The crunched-up driver’s door was right against the open entrance to the tower.

He didn’t allow himself time to recover. The bullets would start flying at any moment. It was impossible to open the door – he was too close to the tower. Instead, he slammed his elbow sharply into the passenger window. It shattered and Zak clambered quickly out of it, and into the tower.

More bullets: thunderous bursts of rounds now, and shouting from the East Side Boys. Zak grabbed hold of the door to the tower. It was made of heavy iron, covered with painted rivets. There was a solid iron bar on the inside which he could lower across the door to lock himself in. He slammed the door shut, plunging himself into darkness, then lowered the bar.

Gunshot.

A round pierced the iron door. A narrow beam of bright sunlight shot in from outside. It lit up a staircase leading to the top of the tower. Zak sprinted towards it as a second round pierced the door, forcing a second laser-like shard of light to illuminate his way. He thundered up the stairs and emerged, blinking and sweating into the control tower.

It was littered with blood and dead bodies. They were already starting to smell in the heat.

Malcolm was there. He was crouched on the ground, hugging his knees and rocking to and fro, utterly terrified. There was no time for small talk. Zak strode towards him and pulled him to his feet.

He checked his watch.

11.57hrs.

Three minutes to go.

‘We’ve got work to do,’ he said.

The tyres of the car Raf and Gabs had commandeered screeched as they hurtled down a broad road in the opposite direction to almost every other car. They could see more plumes of smoke on the horizon now – sure signs that the city was being plunged into chaos.

‘
How far?
’ Gabs shouted at the sweating owner of the car she was holding at gunpoint.

‘Two minutes,’ he jabbered. ‘Perhaps three.’

Raf and Gabs both glanced at their watches. They said nothing as they continued to burn towards the hotel.

For a moment, Malcolm didn’t speak. He looked like he
couldn’t
speak. Like he was in a daze. Zak
raised one hand, ready to slap him across the face and bring him back to his senses. But suddenly Malcolm caught Zak’s wrist. His eyes flashed. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said.

‘Get the cellphones up and running again,’ Zak instructed. ‘
Quickly!
’

Malcolm nodded. He turned to his computer terminal, and the tower was filled with the clackety-clack of his fingers on the keyboard. Lines of code appeared on the screen. Zak found himself holding his breath.

He checked the time. 11.58hrs. Malcolm stopped typing and turned to look at him.

‘Is it done?’

Malcolm nodded.

Zak waved one arm vaguely at the roof of the tower to indicate the satellite dishes and aerials above them. ‘Can you reverse engineer these things?’ he asked.

Malcolm blinked.

‘We haven’t got time to waste, Malcolm!’ Zak hissed. ‘I need you to send a text message to every mobile phone in the vicinity. Is that possible?’

Malcolm pressed his glasses further up his nose. He nodded. Then he jumped as a burst of gunfire rattled into the door downstairs, before stepping towards his computer terminal.

‘Wait,’ Zak said, grabbing him by the arm. ‘Do you have mobile numbers for Cruz and Sudiq? Can you block their phones – stop the message getting through to them, and them only?’

Malcolm nodded again.

‘
Then let’s do it!
’ Zak shouted. ‘
NOW!
’

Molly Middleton had covered herself with her beach towel to protect her legs from the midday sun. She was lying on her sun bed with her mum’s pink mobile, trying to beat the high score on
Angry Birds
that her mum had managed that morning. She’d thought it might take her mind off the strange boys with the scarred faces she’d seen earlier, but somehow it didn’t. Normally she was brilliant at this game, but today she couldn’t get her eye in.

Which was hardly surprising. Something was wrong.

The guests in the hotel had heard shouting from outside the hotel’s boundaries. The noise of traffic on the road outside was much louder than usual. And the grown-ups – most of them, at least – were huddled in little groups, talking in low, urgent voices. It was obvious that they didn’t want the kids to hear what they were saying. Many of the little ones were still splashing around in the pool.

But Molly was a bit smarter than most kids. And
a bit better at eavesdropping. She’d caught snatches of their conversation.
Unrest in the city . . . gunshot . . . a coup . . . no mobile phone service . . . not safe on the streets . . . better to stay in the hotel . . .

She lowered the phone and looked around. No sign of the scar-faced boys. She told herself to calm down. To forget about them. It was nothing. She was inventing problems that didn’t exist.

All of a sudden the phone vibrated. But it wasn’t just
her
phone. All around the swimming pool, within a window of about five seconds, thirty or forty other phones vibrated and jingled. Single tones to indicate that a text message had just arrived.

The buzz of conversation among the little groups of anxious grown-ups died away. The hotel guests looked perplexed. Then, as one, they reached for their phones.

Molly felt like she was in a dream as she looked at the screen of her mum’s pink mobile. Sure enough, there was a message.

A bomb will explode at the Palace Hotel at 12.00hrs. Evacuate immediately. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY
.

There was, for a few seconds, a strange silence.

Then the air was filled with screams.

Molly jumped up from her sun bed, her eyes desperately searching for her mum and dad. She saw
them running towards her, Mum’s sarong flapping, Dad barefoot and still in his trunks. He grabbed her hand, and together the little family of three sprinted towards the hotel’s exit along with crowds of other holidaymakers and hotel staff.

Molly’s ears were full of the sound of screaming. Of panic. She stumbled with her mum and dad out of the swimming pool area and into the atrium with its tiled floors and fake palm trees. The wide glass doors of the hotel were twenty metres ahead of her.

They stopped suddenly and a cold sickness twisted round in Molly’s stomach.

The exit was blocked. Four of the scar-faced boys stood there, with wicked leers on their faces. They stood several paces back from the hotel entrance but they were holding guns, which they aimed directly at the hotel doors.

Molly screamed, just as her dad stepped directly in front of her and her mum to protect them.

And then she screamed again at the thunderous sound of gunfire from outside.

The glass doors shattered. Molly felt her knees go beneath her. But as she sank to the ground in terror, she peered round her dad. The bullets had not been fired by the scar-faced boys guarding the hotel. They looked as surprised as anybody. They turned and looked outwards. Then there was another burst
of fire. Bullets sparked around the feet of the young gunmen, and they shouted out in alarm. Another burst of fire.

More shouts.

Then, as one, they dispersed.

There was a shocked silence inside the atrium. A couple of seconds later it was replaced by a murmur from all the guests who were trying to escape.

And then, two figures burst into the hotel: a man and woman, both with blond hair, the woman with an evil-looking rifle strapped round her neck.

‘
GET OUT OF HERE!
’ the woman shouted. ‘
THERE’S A BOMB! YOU’VE ONLY GOT SECONDS!
’

And when nobody seemed to move, the man added his voice to hers.

‘
GET OUT OF HERE!
’ he bellowed. ‘
NOW!
’

Gabs stood at the glass-fronted entrance to the hotel while crowds of people swarmed out. Men and women in their bathing costumes, hotel staff in dapper uniforms. They crowded round the door and squeezed themselves through. Along with Raf, she was grabbing them as they emerged, then urging them to get as far away from the hotel as they could.

She checked her watch. Thirty seconds till midday.

Twenty-five seconds.

Screaming. A woman’s voice. More terrified and panicked than any of the other voices she could hear. ‘Molly!
MOLLY!
’

A man: ‘Oh my God, I thought she was
with
us . . .’

Gabs looked to her left. A woman in a sarong and a man in his swimming trunks had their faces up against the glass. They were looking into the hotel atrium where a young girl wrapped in a swimming towel was standing stock-still. She looked terrified. Unable to move. Like a rabbit caught in headlights.

Her parents continued to scream at her but the girl didn’t move. Everyone else was too busy trying to squeeze out of the hotel to notice a single, scared child.

Twenty seconds.

Gabs marched up to the parents, still firmly gripping her assault rifle.

‘Stand back,’ she said.

‘But our daughter! She’s—’

‘
STAND BACK!
’

Maybe it was the fierceness in her eyes, or maybe it was just the weapon she was clutching. Whatever. The girl’s parents stepped back. Gabs stood five metres from the glass frontage of the hotel and aimed her weapon directly at the lower part of the
window. Then she fired a burst of rounds. The screaming from all the escapees became louder, but it was suddenly drowned out by the crashing noise of shattering glass as the whole frontage of the hotel cracked and then collapsed in a rainfall of shards.

Gabs barely waited for the shards to finish falling. The glass crunched under her feet as she ran through the destroyed window into the atrium.

Ten seconds.

‘Come with me, Molly,’ she whispered urgently. When the terrified girl still didn’t move, she simply lifted her over one shoulder. Then she turned and sped back towards the open window.

The crowd had left the atrium now. They were all sprinting away from the hotel. All except Molly’s mum and dad, who stood agape, watching what Gabs was doing and ignoring Raf’s shouts at them to get away.

‘
Run
,’ Gabs bellowed as she burst out of the atrium with Molly over her shoulder. ‘
RUN!
’

They ran.

And not a moment too soon.

Raf, Gabs, Molly and her parents were barely fifteen metres from the hotel when the explosions began. There was clearly more than one bomb – Gabs counted five explosions in quick succession, each of them a deafening crack that seemed to split
the air – and the force of the first blast threw all of them several metres forward and knocked them to the ground. They hit the tarmac with a heavy thump. Gabs couldn’t be sure if Molly had screamed, because the remaining blasts were exploding behind her. But she knew that at any moment, the shrapnel would start falling, and that could kill them just as surely as the bomb blast itself. Aware that Raf was already hauling Molly’s mum and dad to their feet, Gabs lifted Molly and started running again.

Within seconds, she heard debris falling behind her. Something caught her right shoulder, and she shouted out in pain. But she kept running, clutching the young girl firmly, and clearing the blast site in about ten seconds.

Only then did she stop and look back.

The Palace Hotel was an inferno. Huge plumes of thick, black, choking smoke billowed up into the sky. Somewhere at its heart, violent orange flames licked up into the air. The front was nothing but debris, and as she looked Gabs heard a great crash as some other part of the building collapsed. All around her, the sound of sobbing came from the escaped guests as they watched the devastation that would have killed them if they’d left the hotel only seconds later.

She laid Molly out on the ground. The young girl’s face was black with grime, and there was a small cut on her left cheek that oozed deep scarlet blood. But she was alive and whole, and she even managed a small smile as Gabs wiped away a strand of hair clinging to her forehead.

Gabs stood up. A woman next to her was wearing nothing but a bright pink bikini. Her skin was filthy from the blast. Tear tracks ran down her dirty face and her eyes were red.

‘How did you know to evacuate the hotel?’ Gabs demanded urgently.

The woman was clutching a mobile phone. With a trembling hand she held it up. ‘A . . . a text message,’ she stuttered. ‘Someone warned us.’

Gabs looked to her right. Raf was there, a deep frown on his craggy, sooty face.

‘Zak?’ he said inquiringly.

Gabs nodded uneasily. Their protégé had done it again. No doubt about it.

He’d foiled Cruz Martinez’s atrocity. But Cruz was unstable and murderous. It meant Zak was in even greater danger than ever.

‘We need to find him,’ she breathed. ‘Now.’

‘
Get down!
’

Malcolm, still standing by his computer terminal, turned to Zak and blinked. He clearly hadn’t noticed that one of the East Side Boys had run twenty metres from the tower and was now raising his rifle to aim at the curved window that surrounded the circular control room.