The plane had begun to move down the runway. Slowly at first, but rapidly picking up speed. Alex hit the tarmac and followed.
His foot was pressed down, the accelerator against the floor. The Jeep was doing about seventy – not fast enough. For just a few seconds Alex was parallel with the cargo plane, only a couple of metres from it. But already it was pulling ahead. At any moment it would be in the air.
And straight ahead of him, the way was blocked. Two more Jeeps had arrived on the runway. More guards with machine-guns balanced themselves, half-crouching, on the seats. Alex realized the only reason they weren’t firing was that they were afraid of hitting the plane. But the plane had already left the ground. Ahead of him, and just to his left, Alex saw the front wheel separate itself from the runway. He glanced in his mirror. The car that had chased him from the house was right on his tail. He had nowhere left to go.
One car behind him. Two Jeeps ahead of him. The plane now in the air, the back wheels lifting off. Everything happening at once.
Alex let go of the steering-wheel, grabbed the harpoon gun and fired. The harpoon flashed through the air. The yo-yo attached to Alex’s belt spun, trailing out thirty metres of specially designed advanced nylon. The pointed head of the harpoon buried itself in the underbelly of the plane. Alex felt himself almost being torn in half as he was yanked out of the Jeep on the end of the cord. In seconds he was forty, fifty metres above the runway, dangling underneath the plane. His Jeep swerved, out of control. The other two Jeeps tried to avoid it – and failed. Both of them hit it in a three-way head-on collision. There was an explosion – a ball of flame and a fist of grey smoke that followed Alex up as if trying to snatch him back. A moment later there was another explosion. The second car had tried to avoid the two Jeeps but it had been travelling too fast. It ploughed into the burning wrecks, flipped over and continued, screeching on its back along the runway before it too burst into flames.
Alex saw little of this. He was suspended from the plane by a single thin white cord, twisting round and round as he was carried ever further into the air. The wind was rushing past him, battering into his face and deafening him. He couldn’t even hear the propellers, just above his head. The belt was cutting into his waist. He could hardly breathe. Desperately he scrabbled for the yo-yo and found the control he wanted. A single button … he pressed it. The tiny, powerful motor inside the yo-yo began to turn. The yo-yo rotated on his belt, pulling in the cord. Very slowly, a centimetre at a time, Alex was drawn up towards the plane.
He had aimed the harpoon carefully. There was a door at the back of the plane and when he turned off the engine mechanism in the yo-yo, he was close enough to reach out for its handle. He wondered who was flying the plane and where he was going. The pilot must have seen the destruction down on the runway but he couldn’t have heard the harpoon. He couldn’t know he’d picked up an extra passenger.
Opening the door was harder than he’d expected. He was still dangling under the plane and every time he got close to the handle the wind drove him back. He could still hardly see. The wind was tearing into his eyes. Twice his fingers found the metal handle, only to be pulled away before he could turn it. The third time, he managed to get a better grip but it still took all his strength to yank the handle down.
The door swung open and he clambered into the hold. He took one last look back. The runway was already three hundred metres below. There were two fires raging, but at this distance they seemed no more than match-heads. Alex unplugged the yo-yo, freeing himself. Then he reached into the waistband of his combats and took out the gun.
The plane was empty apart from a couple of bundles that Alex vaguely recognized. There was a single pilot at the controls, and something on his instrumentation must have told him the door was open, because he suddenly twisted round. Alex found himself face to face with Mr Grin.
“Warg?” the butler muttered.
Alex raised the gun. He doubted if he would have the courage to use it. But he wasn’t going to let Mr Grin know that.
“All right, Mr Grin,” he shouted above the noise of the propellers and the howl of the wind. “You may not be able to talk but you’d better listen. I want you to fly this plane to London. We’re going to the Science Museum in South Kensington. It can’t take us more than half an hour to get there. And if you think about trying to trick me, I’ll put a bullet in you. Do you understand?”
Mr Grin said nothing.
Alex fired the gun. The bullet slammed into the floor just beside Mr Grin’s foot. Mr Grin stared at Alex, then nodded slowly.
He reached out and pulled the joy-stick. The plane dipped and began to head east.
TWELVE O’CLOCK
London appeared.
Suddenly the clouds rolled back and the midday sun brought the whole city, shining, into view. There was Battersea Power Station, standing proud with its four great chimneys still intact, even though much of its roof had long ago been eaten away. Behind it, Battersea Park appeared as a square of dense green bushes and trees that were making a last stand, fighting back the urban spread. In the far distance, the Millennium Wheel perched like a fabulous silver coin, balancing effortlessly on its rim. And all around it, London crouched; gas towers and apartment blocks, endless rows of shops and houses, roads, railways and bridges stretching away on both sides, separated only by the bright silver crack in the landscape that was the River Thames.
Alex saw all this with a clenched stomach, looking out through the open door of the aircraft. He’d had fifty minutes to think about what he had to do. Fifty minutes while the plane droned over Cornwall and Devon, then Somerset and the Salisbury Plains before reaching the North Downs and flying on towards Windsor and London.
When he had got into the plane, Alex had intended to use its radio to call the police or anyone else who might be listening. But seeing Mr Grin at the controls had changed all that. He remembered how fast the man had been both outside his bedroom and throwing the knife when Alex was handcuffed to the chair. He knew he was safe enough in the cargo area, with Mr Grin strapped into the pilot’s seat at the front of the plane. But he didn’t dare get any closer. Even with the gun it would be too dangerous.
He had thought of forcing Mr Grin to land the plane at Heathrow. The radio had started squawking the moment they’d entered London airspace and had only stopped when Mr Grin turned it off. But that would never have worked. By the time they’d reached the airport, touched down and coasted to a halt, it would have been far too late.
And then, sitting hunched up in the cargo area, Alex had recognized the two bundles lying on the floor next to him. They had told him exactly what he had to do.
“Eeerg!” Mr Grin said. He twisted round in his seat and for the last time Alex saw the hideous smile that the circus knife had torn through his cheeks.
“Thanks for the ride,” Alex said, and jumped out of the open door.
The bundles were parachutes. Alex had checked them out and strapped one on to his back when they were still over Reading. He was glad that he’d spent a day on parachute training with the SAS, although this flight had been even worse than the one he’d endured over the Welsh valleys. This time there was no static line. There was no one to reassure him that his parachute was properly packed. If he could have thought of any other way to reach the Science Museum in the seven minutes he had left, he would have taken it. There was no other way. He knew that. So he had jumped.
Once he was over the threshold, it wasn’t so bad. There was a moment of dizzying confusion as the wind hit him once again. He closed his eyes and forced himself to count to three. Pull too early and the parachute might snag on the plane’s tail. Even so, his hand was clenched and he had barely muttered the word “three” before he was pulling with all his strength. The parachute blossomed open above him and he was jerked back upwards, the harness cutting into his armpits and sides.
They had been flying at four thousand feet. When Alex opened his eyes, he was surprised by his sense of calm.
He was dangling in the air underneath a comforting canopy of white silk. He felt as if he wasn’t moving at all. Now that he had left the plane, the city seemed even more distant and unreal. It was just him, the sky and London. He was almost enjoying himself.
And then he heard the plane coming back.
It was already a couple of kilometres away, but even as he watched he saw it bank steeply to the right, making a sharp turn. The engines rose and then it levelled out – it was heading straight towards him. Mr Grin wasn’t going to let him get away so easily. As the plane drew closer and closer he could almost see the man’s never-ending smile behind the window of the cockpit. Mr Grin intended to steer the plane right into him, to cut him to shreds in mid-air.
But Alex had been expecting it.
He reached down and took out the Nintendo DS. This time there was no game cartridge in it: but while he had been on the plane he had taken out Bomber Boy and slid it across the floor. That was where it was now. Just behind Mr Grin’s seat.
He pressed the START button three times.
Inside the plane, the cartridge exploded, releasing a cloud of acrid yellow smoke. The smoke billowed out through the hold, curling against the windows, trailing out of the open door. Mr Grin vanished, completely surrounded by smoke. The plane wobbled, then plunged down.
Alex watched the plane dive. He could imagine Mr Grin blinded, fighting for control. The plane began to twist, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The engines whined. Now it was heading straight for the ground, howling through the sky. Yellow smoke trailed in its wake. At the last minute, Mr Grin managed to bring the nose up again. But it was much too late. The plane smashed into what looked like a deserted piece of dockland near the river and disappeared in a ball of flame.
Alex looked at his watch. Three minutes to twelve. He was still a thousand feet in the air and unless he landed on the very doorstep of the Science Museum, he wasn’t going to make it. Grabbing hold of the cords, using them to steer himself, he tried to work out the fastest way down.
Inside the East Hall of the Science Museum, Herod Sayle was coming to the end of his speech. The entire chamber had been transformed for the great moment when the Stormbreakers would be brought on-line.
The room was caught between old and new, between stone colonnades and stainless steel floors, between the very latest in high-tech and old curiosities from the Industrial Revolution.
A podium had been set up in the centre for Sayle, the Prime Minister, the Press Secretary and the Minister of State for Education. In front of it were twelve rows of chairs – for journalists, teachers, invited friends. Alan Blunt was in the front row, as emotionless as ever. Mrs Jones, dressed in black with a large brooch on her lapel, was next to him. On either side of the hall, television towers had been constructed, with cameras focusing in as Sayle spoke. The speech was being broadcast live to schools throughout the country and it would also be shown on the evening news. The hall was packed with another two or three hundred people standing on first and second-floor galleries, looking down on the podium from all sides. As Sayle spoke, tape recorders turned and cameras flashed. Never before had a private individual made so generous a gift to the nation. This was an event. History in the making.
“…it is the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister alone, who is responsible for what is about to happen,” Sayle was saying. “And I hope that tonight, when he reflects on what has happened today throughout this country, he will remember our days together at school, and everything he did at that time. I think tonight the country will know him for the man he is. One thing is sure. This is a day you will never forget.”
He bowed. There was a scatter of applause. The Prime Minister glanced at his Press Secretary, puzzled. The Press Secretary shrugged with barely concealed rudeness. The Prime Minister took his place in front of the microphone.
“I’m not quite sure how to respond to that,” he joked, and all the journalists laughed. The Government had such a large majority that they knew it was in their best interests to laugh at the Prime Minister’s jokes. “I’m glad Mr Sayle has such happy memories of our school-days together and I’m glad that the two of us, together, today, can make such a vital difference to our schools.”
Herod Sayle pointed at a table slightly to one side of the podium. On the table was a Stormbreaker computer and next to it, a mouse. “This is the master control,” he said. “Click on the mouse and all the computers will come on-line.”
“Right.” The Prime Minister lifted his finger and adjusted his position so that the cameras could get his best profile. Somewhere outside the museum, a clock began to strike.
Alex heard the clock from about three hundred feet, with the roof of the Science Museum rushing towards him.
He had seen the building just after the plane had crashed. It hadn’t been easy finding it, with the city spread out like a three-dimensional map right underneath him. On the other hand, he had lived his whole life in west London and had visited the museum often enough. First he had seen the Victorian jelly mould that was the Albert Hall. Directly south of that was a tall white tower surmounted by a green dome: Imperial College. As Alex dropped, he seemed to be moving faster. The whole city had become a fantastic jigsaw puzzle and he knew he only had seconds to piece it together. A wide, extravagant building with church-like towers and windows. That had to be the Natural History Museum. The Natural History Museum was on Cromwell Road. How did you get from there to the Science Museum? Of course, turn left at the lights up Exhibition Road.
And there it was. Alex pulled at the parachute, guiding himself towards it. How small it looked compared to the other landmarks, a rectangular building with a flat grey roof, jutting in from the main road. Part of the roof consisted of a series of arches, the sort of thing you might see on a railway station or perhaps on an enormous conservatory. They were a dull orange in colour, curving one after the other. It looked as if they were made of glass. Alex could land on the flat part. Then all he would have to do was look through the curved windows. He still had the gun he had taken from the guard. He could use it to warn the Prime Minister. If he had to, he could use it to shoot Herod Sayle.
Somehow he managed to manoeuvre himself over the museum. But it was only as he fell the last two hundred feet, as he heard the clock strike twelve, that he realized two things. He was falling much too fast. And he had missed the flat roof.
In fact the Science Museum has two roofs. The original is Georgian and made of wired glass. But sometime in the recent past it must have leaked, because the curators have constructed a second roof of plastic sheeting over the top. This was the orange roof that Alex had seen.
He crashed into it feet-first. The roof shattered. He continued straight through, into an inner chamber, just missing a network of steel girders and maintenance ladders. He barely had time to register what looked like a brown carpet, stretched out over the curving surface below. Then he hit it and tore through that too. It was no more than a thin cover, designed to keep the light and dust off the glass underneath. With a yell, Alex smashed through the glass. At last his parachute caught on a beam. He jerked to a halt, swinging in mid-air inside the East Hall.
This was what he saw.
Far below him, all around him, three hundred people had stopped and were staring up at him in shock. There were more people sitting on chairs directly underneath him and some of them had been hit. There was blood and broken glass. A bridge made of green glass slats stretched across the hall. There was a futuristic information desk and in front of it, at the very centre of everything, was a makeshift stage. He saw the Stormbreaker first. Then, with a sense of disbelief, he recognized the Prime Minister standing, slack-jawed, next to Herod Sayle.
Alex hung in the air, dangling at the end of the parachute. As the last pieces of glass fell and disintegrated on the terracotta floor, movement and sound returned to the East Hall in an ever-widening wave.
The security men were the first to react. Anonymous and invisible when they nee
ded to be, they were suddenly everywhere, appearing from behind colonnades, from underneath the television towers, running across the green bridge, guns in hands that had been empty a second before. Alex had also drawn his gun, pulling it out from the waistband of his combats. Maybe he could explain why he was here before Sayle or the Prime Minister activated the Stormbreakers. But he doubted it. Shoot first and ask questions later was a line from a bad film. But even bad films are sometimes right.
He emptied the gun.
The bullets echoed around the room, surprisingly loud. Now people were screaming, the journalists punching and pushing as they fought for cover. The first bullet went nowhere. The second hit the Prime Minister in the hand, his finger less than a centimetre away from the mouse. The third hit the mouse, blowing it into fragments. The fourth hit an electrical connection, smashing the plug and short-circuiting it. Sayle had dived forward, determined to click on the mouse himself. The fifth and sixth bullets hit him.
As soon as Alex had fired the last bullet, he dropped the gun, letting it clatter to the floor below, and held up the palms of his hands. He felt ridiculous, hanging there from the roof, his arms outstretched. But there were already a dozen guns pointing at him and he had to show them he was no longer armed, that they didn’t need to shoot. Even so, he braced himself, waiting for the security men to open fire. He could almost imagine the hail of bullets tearing into him. As far as they were concerned, he was some sort of crazy terrorist who had just parachuted into the Science Museum and taken six shots at the Prime Minister. It was their job to kill him. It was what they’d been trained for.