Boyd’s eyes darted around the car; he couldn’t see anyone suspicious at all.
‘In the next car. Do you know who that is?’ Ophelia asked, pointing past Boyd.
As he turned and looked over his shoulder, the capsule suddenly jolted to a halt. Passengers stumbled; some fell against the glass surround of the capsule as a chorus of panic began to rise. Boyd looked to the car behind and through a cluster of faces he saw Aurora, staring intently at him with those fierce green eyes.
‘She certainly seems keen on you,’ Ophelia said.
Hornet lifted the radio to her mouth as she steadied herself.
‘I said to stop the cars, not to slam the brakes on for god’s sake.’ She released the button and the radio let out a squelch.
‘Sorry,’ came the reply over the airwaves. ‘Do you want support now?’
Hornet rolled her eyes before pressing the button and speaking into the radio again. ‘You mean they haven’t left yet?’
‘Not yet, no.’
‘Then yes, get them in the air for God’s sake! He’s seen me, he knows we’re on to him and if I know Boyd, he’s about to do something very stupid.’
‘Allow me to enlighten you: her name is Hornet,’ Ophelia said. ‘She’s a highly skilled assassin, working for an exceptionally nasty man who runs a covert operation we’ve been keeping a very close eye on.’
Boyd shook his head, as if someone had just hit him with something heavy. ‘Hornet?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, Hornet. I know, as code names go, it’s a tad dramatic, isn’t it? She’s been off the grid for quite a few years.’
‘Yeah, well, she’s been my Aunt Aurora for the last ten of them.’
‘Yes, we were aware of that, obviously.’ Ophelia gestured towards Harry.
Boyd looked towards Harry. ‘And how do you figure into this, Romeo?’
‘X-One sent me to keep an eye on you.’
‘X-One? Who is X-One?’ Skye couldn’t keep quiet any longer.
‘That would be me,’ Ophelia jumped in. ‘Head of Section X. Big cheese, top dog. I am “X-One”.’
‘So, mate.’ Fitz looked at Harry, chuckling. ‘Does that make you, Number Two?’
‘No,’ Ophelia shut him down. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Fitz. There is no Number Two.’
‘I’d see a doctor about that, if I were you.’ Fitz laughed, then realised that his audience was not amused.
‘We have what looks like a group of trained mercenaries and a stone-cold psychopath in the next car over,’ Harry said. ‘Let’s try to stay on track if we can. What we need to do is get you three somewhere safe.’
‘There’s not a lot they can do to us up here, surely?’ Fitz offered.
The London Eye had stopped just at the point where their capsule was at the very top, with Hornet’s car alongside theirs.
‘Well, they’ve managed to bring us to a halt. I suggest we don’t wait to find out their next move,’ Harry said in reply, looking towards Ophelia. ‘If we can somehow force their hand.’
Boyd had been quiet. He was looking at the other capsule and watching all the goings-on with careful consideration. Hornet, or whatever she was supposed to be called, seemed to be organising her troops. Any unfortunate members of the public who happened to be in the capsule along with her were all now cowering on the floor on the opposite side of the car.
‘He’s right,’ Boyd said and nodded towards Harry. ‘Looks to me like Hornet has at least four other people in that car with her and I don’t think they’re going to stay put and wait for Christmas.’
He headed for the door to the capsule and ran his hand along the rubber seal. When he turned back, Skye was looking at him with confusion, but Fitz knew his friend had gone over the situation in his head and reached a conclusion, and he knew it probably wasn’t going to be anything sensible. Harry was still saying something when Fitz interrupted.
‘Shut up.’ Fitz held up a hand and Harry stopped, more than a little surprised. ‘I think Boyd is about to do something crazy.’
Ophelia and Harry turned to see Boyd, his hands raised, pushing on the door to the capsule.
‘How do you reckon we get these open?’
Before anyone had a chance to respond, there was a hiss and the door slid aside. Boyd stepped back as a howling wind whipped into the car, taking his breath away and the air was suddenly filled with shouts and screams. He looked at the door, then out at the other capsules.
‘It wasn’t me,’ he said. He was right, every capsule door was open. He turned to Skye and Fitz, his face set like stone, deadly serious. ‘Look, we all know they’re coming for me. So, I have a plan.’
‘Boyd, don’t be stupid!’ Skye shouted.
Boyd looked at Ophelia and pointed towards Skye. ‘Tell her,’ he said. ‘Tell her I’m right!’ he shouted over the noise.
Ophelia breathed deeply. ‘I’m afraid so – all of this – it leads back to him.’
Despite figuring out as much, the news still hit Boyd like a truck. He swallowed deeply, before nodding.
‘So, what’s your big plan, hero boy?’ Skye said nervously.
‘For you guys to get somewhere safe, I need to get out of here and lead them away.’
‘Hang on a tick,’ Fitz jumped in. ‘We are 135 metres off the ground. You know how high that is?’
‘No,’ Boyd shook his head.
‘Well, it’s 135 metres, which is really flamin’ high!’
‘Then I’d better not fall off.’
Boyd looked out the door. Fitz was right; they were ridiculously high up, and Boyd had no chance of making it to a surrounding building. The London Eye was just a bigger version of the ferris wheel at Bloomfield funfair, and there was no way down unless he somehow used the structure itself.
Boyd got down on his haunches and looked out of the door at the structure beneath him. Much like the wheel on his bike; the Eye had spokes in the middle that led to a narrow rim. Coming out of this rim was a support framework, and outside of this, in cradles, were the capsules that the passengers travelled in. From where he was now, it was at least a three-metre jump to get down to the support framework. He knew he could make it.
He looked over to Hornet’s capsule and saw two men at the door, nervously starting to climb down the cradle onto the framework. They were coming for him, so he had to do this now.
Boyd grabbed Ophelia’s umbrella and slapped it against his palm. ‘This is pretty strong, right?’
‘It should be, it’s made from tungsten steel,’ she said.
Boyd then desperately searched the car with his eyes for something, anything that he could make use of. An elderly woman was sat on the bench with her shopping bag at her feet, completely calm among all the madness erupting around her.
Boyd put on his best smile. ‘Afternoon, madam.’ He pointed at the bag sitting open on the floor. ‘May I borrow those?’
‘Makes no difference to me, sonny. We’re not going anywhere, are we?’ the woman shrugged.
‘Much obliged.’
Boyd took what he needed from the shopping bag and grabbed Harry and Fitz. ‘You two, listen. I’ve got a plan.’ He outlined it quickly before turning to head for the exit.
Skye and Ophelia were watching the two men from the next capsule who were now crawling along the support framework of the London Eye, slithering like snakes towards their car.
‘They’re coming,’ Skye said with utter disbelief. ‘This is seriously messed up. I can’t believe they are actually doing this!’
‘Boyd, hang on,’ Ophelia said. ‘Before you run off, you need to know something.’
‘I’ve got a few questions myself but they’re going to have to wait.’
‘That’s fine, but this can’t wait,’ she said gravely.
Boyd straightened up and faced her.
‘Hurricane isn’t where your father works; it isn’t a company at all. It was a top-secret project from many years ago. It was something that went very badly wrong.’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘Because if you don’t make it, if these people get hold of you, they are going to lie to you and I need to know that you won’t let them get into your head. Like I said, we need you, Boyd. Which is why I have to tell you something that I wish you never had to hear.’
Boyd nodded gravely.
‘You’re a smart lad, I’m sure you’ve figured this out already, but Martin Boyd is not your father, any more than that odious woman over there is your aunt.’
Boyd’s breath caught in his throat. Ophelia was right; of course he’d come to the realisation that Martin wasn’t his real father. But now, hearing it said out loud, it felt like someone had dropped a huge weight on his chest. He just stared straight ahead. Whoever Martin was, whatever his involvement in all of this, Boyd needed to face him; he needed answers. Everything that divided the two of them were the same things that made them so similar, it’s why they’d always struggled to get along; he was a chip off the old block. Boyd swallowed hard.
The small, stern woman in front of him melted a little at the sight of the broken boy in front of her. Ophelia tilted her head and put both hands around his face.
‘Now, you listen to me, my boy. We will deal with this, all of it. We will make sense of it for you, I promise you that. But right now, all I can tell you is this; I’m so very sorry, love. I really am.’ She gently tapped his face, a signal to shake it off and find his focus; they had work to do.
Boyd pulled away and nodded. He turned, the umbrella in his hand, and made for the door.
Skye stepped in front of him and blocked his path. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, hero boy? It’s not your problem, remember?’ she said, her eyes full of tears, doing everything she could to stop him stepping outside.
‘It’s time I stopped dragging everyone else into my problems and dealt with this myself.’ Boyd gently moved her aside. ‘If they want me, they’ve got to catch me first.’
The Eye of the Storm
Boyd stood at the door, the wind beating his face. He hooked the handle of the umbrella through his belt loop at the back of his jeans and jumped.
He landed hard on the frame and coughed out a burst of air as his chest hit the metal. He frantically wrapped his arms around the structure. The wind was ferocious at this height, battering him like a boxing opponent, unleashing punch after punch as he clung on for dear life. He looked down, wide-eyed, as his legs kicked at thin air and all of a sudden, he felt nauseous and dizzy. His arms were numb and he was losing his grip. He willed himself to hold on, closed his eyes tight and focused on steadying himself. Beneath him was a criss-cross of smaller bars and if by some miracle they managed to stop him falling, hitting them was going to hurt a lot.
He swung one of his legs over the bar in front of him, pulled himself up and straddled the structure. He looked back to the car he had just jumped from; it seemed so far away from down here. The two men in black were already coming around either side of the capsule he had just leapt from, and they looked pretty unhappy that he was going to make them chase him. Boyd could see no sign of Fitz or Harry.
‘Come on lads, get a move on,’ he said to himself. Boyd sat there on the bar, stranded high above London as his two pursuers carefully crawled around the capsule, using the cradle Boyd’s car sat in to steady themselves. One of the men, a bald, bullet-headed man who didn’t seem to have a neck, looked directly at Boyd.
‘This would all be much easier if you just came to me.’ He spoke in English with a thick Russian accent.
‘Yeah, but that would take all the fun out of it, don’t you think?’ Boyd played it cool as he sat and swung his legs like a kid on a swing.
Inside the car, Fitz and Harry, with the help of the elderly lady – who introduced herself as Enid – had been carrying out Boyd’s instructions. They had taken the two bags of Enid’s baking flour, a novelty Union Jack bowler hat borrowed from one of the other passengers and Skye’s water bottle. They cleared a space on the bench and set to work.
‘Not too much water,’ Enid had told them with a glint in her eye. ‘Otherwise they won’t hurt.’
Ophelia moved backed from the door. She had a phone at her ear as she waved Skye over. ‘My dear,’ Ophelia wrapped her hand around Skye’s forearm. ‘You need to call your people and tell them to get out. They must leave now.’
‘Why? They won’t be able to break into our place.’
‘We can’t take the risk. Tell your team to leave and scrub all your files. It would be handy if you have anyone who can speak to the science of all of this. Someone we can borrow…’
Skye took out her phone and held down a key. Someone answered the phone at the other end. ‘It’s me. We’ve been compromised. Wipe everything, take the back-ups and get out. Oh… and put Azima on the phone, now.’
Boyd was doing his best to keep his two chief pursuers as angry and distracted as possible. ‘Isn’t it great to feel the wind in your hair?’ Boyd said to the angry, bald Russian. ‘Oops! Sorry. Did you know that they can take the hair from your butt now and sew it into your head? You should give it some serious thought.’
The Russian gritted his teeth and glared back. ‘When I catch you, little boy, I am going to rip your arms off and beat you with them. How does that sound?’
‘Painful, to be honest.’
Boyd looked up at the opening to the car and there was Harry holding a Union Jack bowler hat, his arm cocked and ready like a cricketer ready to launch the ball at the stumps.
‘Heads up,’ Boyd said and nodded towards the door to the capsule.
Harry and Fitz had rolled the wet flour into several small, hard balls and they began to let fly: Harry at the bald Russian and Fitz at the taller man on his side of the car.
The shock of being pelted with an unknown projectile immediately knocked the gangly goon off-balance. Fitz’s first missile hit him in the chest and he instinctively brought a hand up to the point of impact. Before he had a chance to get both hands back on the frame, a second flour bomb whizzed by his ear and then a third slapped him hard on the cheekbone, right under this eye. That was enough to disorientate the man completely; both hands came away as his brain demanded him to take evasive action.
Boyd held his breath as the tall man lost his grip and came away from the wheel. He tumbled through the air for less than a second before crashing into the support frame with a crack, and somehow he latched his long fingers around the steel, just managing to cling on.
The Russian had taken a more sensible option and had simply tucked himself down, huddling for cover. Harry’s direct hits had him pinned down, but he wasn’t going anywhere. That was fine, Boyd didn’t need him to. He just needed both men distracted, and now he could make his move.
Boyd quickly swung himself around, dropped his legs down and kicked at thin air.
‘Boyd!’ Skye called out to him. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
He turned and saw that the bullet-headed Russian had started to move. The taller man, who had fallen through to the support frame, was now below Boyd, walking along the narrow rim of the wheel. In a few more careful steps, he would he within touching distance of Boyd’s legs. Harry and Fitz were still throwing the projectiles but both pursuers were expecting them and now they knew they were no more than weaponised dough balls, they weren’t having much of an impact.
‘Don’t watch this part!’ Boyd shouted to Skye with a smile as he let go of the bar and dropped through the support frame, landing on the rim.
He quickly spun around to face the tall man, who bent and twisted his long arms and legs as he moved along the rim, like a spider crawling across its web to feast on a fly. The man’s skin was covered in pockmarks; his thin lips were wet with spit. Boyd let him get close, waited until the man could see the ice blue of his eyes, then dropped out of sight. The Spider’s hand swiped through thin air where Boyd’s head had been less than a second before. Spider looked down, expecting to see Boyd tumbling through the white met
al frame towards the ground, but instead he saw him hanging from the rim by his fingertips and moving swiftly around the wheel, hand-over-hand like a kid on a climbing frame.
‘What are you waiting for? Go after him!’ the Russian shouted at his friend. ‘Get down there!’
Just then, the Russian’s radio buzzed. Hornet’s voice was just audible over the howling wind. ‘Bull, change of plan. Listen up.’
Spider did as he was told and continued his walk along the rim as before. He couldn’t work out why the boy was hanging from it by his hands – this was going to make it so easy to catch him.
Boyd knew exactly what he was doing. When he looked out at the London Eye from the capsule, he saw that the frame was attached to the rim every few metres. So he figured that he could wrap the curved handle of the umbrella around the rim of the wheel and slide for a few metres before hitting the next frame. Then all he had to do was move the umbrella over the frame connection and slide down again. It seemed simple enough in his head but now he was actually about to slide down from the top of the London Eye using an umbrella, he had to admit it wasn’t the best idea he’d had all week.
He grabbed the umbrella from his belt loop and put the handle over the rim of the wheel. He couldn’t quite make out the shouts of protest from Skye and Fitz; his friends were so far above him that the wind was whipping their words away. What he could hear was Spider, clunking through the steel frame above him, his big boots getting ever closer to stamping on his left hand. He tried not to think about how far up he was, how he was being chased by a group of assassins who wanted him dead, or how he was about to entrust his life to an umbrella. He just wrapped both hands around it, closed his eyes and pushed off.
Boyd came to a stop against the next section of frame with a gentle bump. He opened his eyes. ‘Well, that was a piece of cake,’ he said to himself.
He had been right at the top of the wheel so it hadn’t been a steep slide, but sliding along the next section was going to be a different story. Boyd grabbed the rim and moved the umbrella along. Wasting no time overthinking it, he took his left hand off the rim, grabbed the umbrella and slid down the rim once more. This time, when the brolly stopped, Boyd’s legs carried on and crashed into the spokes. He let out a cry and felt a burning pain through his shoulders, but somehow, he didn’t let go. Looking down at his legs, he noticed all the people on the ground, many of them with their phones out, filming the thrilling scenes playing out high above of them. Boyd quickly repeated the action and, this time, saw the faces of the tourists in the car nearest him as he flew by them. He was starting to enjoy himself.
Operation Hurricane: The Evan Boyd Adventures #1 Page 20
