Boyd moved his left hand up and looped the hoodie around Ponytail’s wrist, then stood, taking the guard’s right arm with him. Boyd quickly powered a front kick into Ponytail’s groin that surprised the larger man and bent him forward. Boyd then swung Ponytail by his captured right arm, through the open doorway into his room, clattering him against the door frame on the way.
He heard movement behind him and turned to see the bed rolling away; Bug Eyes was back on his feet and ready for round two. The groggy guard lunged fast, his baton crackling, catching Boyd flat-footed and unable to avoid the impact. For the second time in his stay at the Barn, electricity was fired into Boyd’s body. But this time, with just a single baton in the attack, he didn’t hit the floor. As the weapon hissed and jolted against him, Boyd gritted his teeth and grabbed hold of it with his right hand. He looked directly into the guard’s bulging, vengeful eyes. Boyd slowly cracked a smile and Bug Eyes just had time to furrow his brow in confusion before he abruptly lost contact with Boyd, and the baton clattered to the floor.
Boyd fell back against the wall and looked to his right.
Martin had charged in from the side and hit the guard, tackling him to the ground. He raised himself up onto Bug Eyes’ chest and delivered a sharp right hook to the jaw. Martin then stood, leaving the man in an unconscious heap on the floor.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, reaching out a hand, which Boyd accepted.
Boyd opened his mouth to respond but before he could utter a word, the double doors at the end of the corridor hissed open. Boyd and Martin didn’t have time to run or hide, so they turned and readied themselves for whatever was on the other side.
Only One Way Out
Harry knew that there was no clever way to fool the enemy this time, so he simply pressed the button to open the doors and got ready to take on whoever was waiting for him. As the doors hissed back into their recesses, he crouched low and reasserted his grip on the baton. Once the gap in the doors grew, he saw Boyd and the man he knew as Martin Spengler, Boyd’s guardian provided by the Trinity Guild, both coiled and ready to attack.
Harry moved forward quickly. ‘Run, Boyd!’ he blurted out as he charged at Spengler.
‘Wait!’ Boyd stepped into Harry’s path, his hands held up.
Harry came to an abrupt halt, his face coloured with confusion.
‘He’s on our side.’
‘No, Boyd. You don’t know who he is. He’s…’
‘I do, Harry.’ Boyd nodded, reached up and pushed Harry’s baton hand down. ‘I don’t have time to explain, so you’re going to have to trust me. He’s with us.’
Harry tilted his head and looked into the eyes of the young man standing in front of him. He had known him for the past year as a moody, spoilt teenager, far too wrapped up in himself to care about others, who had a warped kind of pride in having no meaningful ties to anyone. Now, for the first time, behind the cold steel in his gaze, Harry saw a kid who was putting himself in harm’s way to protect someone he cared about.
‘Okay, I trust you,’ Harry confirmed. ‘Now we need to find Skye, because this party’s about to get a few more guests.’
Martin stepped around Boyd. ‘We can’t stay here; we need to go, now.’
‘No,’ Boyd insisted. ‘We’re not leaving here without Skye. They must have her in one of the other rooms.’ He only managed a step before Martin grabbed his arm.
‘Boyd, listen to me. I’ve set the lab to blow. We’ve barely got time to get out before this place becomes a fireball.’
‘No, I can’t just leave her here, I have to find her!’ Boyd pulled at him.
Harry grabbed Boyd and turned him around. ‘Listen to me! I’ll go, you two get out of here.’
‘No, that won’t work.’ Martin shook his head. ‘Hornet’s on her way, she’s bringing reinforcements. There’s only one way Boyd is getting out of here.’ Martin took a deep breath. ‘Now it’s my turn to do something for you. It’s my turn to be the bait.’
Hornet Takes Charge
Hornet hadn’t heard a word back from the guards in the Belly, so she had told everyone to hold at the lift and wait for her arrival. Why do I have to work with such incompetents? she brooded silently as the lift descended, packed with four of her best men, plus the two guards from the front desk. She could not let Boyd escape – she had not spent 10 years babysitting him, play-acting as that dreadful woman, to let him simply walk out of the door.
The lift opened onto the escalators, she stepped out and immediately saw two guards stretched out across the floor. The bearded guard from the front desk moved to check on one of his injured colleagues.
‘Leave the fool where he is,’ Hornet hissed with disgust. ‘Secure the boy, that’s all that matters. Now move!’
They all moved quickly and quietly down the escalators and approached the double doors. Whoever had been through here had left them wide open. Hornet peered around towards the room Boyd had been occupying and saw that the door was closed. The light on the keypad was red, meaning the door was locked. Hornet split the team, waving three guards off to the right-hand side of the lounge and taking the other three with her towards Boyd’s room.
The near silence was shattered with a sudden hammering on the inside of Boyd’s door. Hornet held her hand up at shoulder height and clenched her fist, a military sign for her team to stop immediately; and they did. The banging ceased and every set of eyes remained fixed on the door. Hornet raised two fingers and then pointed twice to the other side of the door. Two of the guards stealthily moved into place as Hornet and the one remaining guard moved to the wall on the near side of the door and waited. Then came a buzzing sound and a small bang, like a firecracker going off. Not a single person on this side of the door jumped, they remained perfectly still and focused.
Hornet knew exactly what had just happened: whoever was in there had just used one of the electrical charges from a baton to fry the door lock, and they were about to step out, right into her path.
The door opened and a face emerged into the hallway.
‘Don’t move!’ a guard shouted.
‘It’s okay, it’s me – it’s Spengler!’ Martin slowly came out of the door, a baton in his raised hands. His shirt was torn, his face and the back of his head were bloody.
‘Where is Boyd?’ Hornet spat the question at him, like it was a sour taste in her mouth. How could he have let a boy take him down?
‘He’s gone to the other side, to look for the girl.’
‘Go! Get the others and find him,’ Hornet barked and the guards ran off. ‘He’s got help,’ Hornet said.
‘I heard. Section X, I am guessing. I told Boyd about the storage room down below the labs, I thought if they went down there it would distract him, buy us some time until you arrived.’
Hornet looked at him suspiciously. ‘Very good thinking, Martin.’
He felt the back of his head and grimaced. He brought his hand away and it was covered in blood.
‘Let me take a look at that for you,’ Hornet said, moving around behind him.
‘No,’ Martin twisted to move away from her. ‘Thank you, but I’ll live.’
Hornet smiled and half turned, before snapping back and driving the heel of her palm into the space below Martin’s right ear. He collapsed onto the floor; the blow had made his senses fuzzy.
‘That’s for me to decide.’
Hornet pulled her radio out. ‘All teams: Boyd and Section X operative are in the wind. I need security response on the roads surrounding the Barn and air support in play as soon as possible. Find them!’
Hornet felt a gentle rumble under her feet, like a small earthquake. She instinctively turned her head to the left, towards the laboratory. Then came another rumble that nearly knocked her off her feet. She reached out to the wall to steady herself.
Finally, the security doors to the lab flew across the corridor like bullets from a gun, slamming into the walls, chased by chunks of debris and huge orange flames that instantly turned
the silver walls black. That was when Hornet was launched off her feet and slammed back through the doorway into Boyd’s room.
Up in Smoke, Away in Flames
Harry had carefully positioned himself so he could see Hornet and the guards step off the escalator and enter the Belly. Without moving his head, he held his breath and peered through his half-open eye as they descended.
As soon as the last guard was clear of the doorway and inside the Belly, he reached out and tapped Boyd, who was lying a few feet away. Both were face-down outside the lift, at the top of the escalator, posing as the guards Harry had injured not five minutes earlier.
Once Martin had told them his plan, they had moved quickly. They dressed in the guard’s black sweaters and combat trousers, then dumped the two men in Boyd’s room before running up the escalator and getting into place. Boyd had only just managed to get to the floor when the lift doors had opened. He was drenched in sweat; his heart had been pounding so hard in his ears, he could barely hear Hornet as she instructed the bearded guard not to check on him and get down to the Belly.
‘Let’s go.’ Harry lifted himself up into a crouch and kept his eyes on the doors at the bottom of the escalator.
He and Boyd moved back into the lift and pressed the button to take it back up. Boyd bent over, hands on his knees.
‘Don’t worry, Martin will find Skye,’ Harry said, putting a hand on Boyd’s back.
‘And if he can’t? If Hornet doesn’t believe him, or they can’t get out in time? We should have stayed. We could have fought them off and got everyone out.’
‘No, there were too many of them. Martin was right, this is the right thing to do.’
‘Then how come it doesn’t feel like it?’ Boyd stood up, getting agitated.
Before Harry could reply, a ‘ping!’ echoed around the lift as it arrived at the ground floor.
‘Are you ready?’ Martin looked over to Boyd.
He raised his stolen baton and nodded to Harry.
The doors slid open and the room was empty. Harry took a cautious step out from the lift, his eyes pinched in confusion.
‘You were expecting someone?’ Boyd asked.
‘I left a guard here. Doesn’t matter, she must’ve had the sense to get out.’
They ran across the floor of the security room and Harry bent down to collect the small radio-controlled car.
‘What’s that?’ Boyd asked.
‘One of Fitz’s new toys, and he wants it back.’ Harry threw the car in the air and Boyd caught it.
Boyd looked at the gadget, then cracked an affectionate smile before putting the car in his pocket.
Harry looked out through the window and raised a thumb; the coast was clear. ‘Follow me, stay close.’
Harry opened the door, turned right and followed the corridor around until there, in front of them, at the far end of the building, was the black biometric pod.
‘What are we waiting for?’ Boyd said, impatiently and went to move.
‘Steady on. Stop for a second.’ Harry pointed to the pod. ‘That’s a biometric pod. It won’t let you out until it scans the veins in your hand and determines you’re friendly. Which we are clearly not.’
‘Wonderful. So how did you get in? Let me guess – Fitz?’
Harry smiled and nodded. ‘Oh, you should have seen it, it was beautiful. But how we get out? Well, that’s a little more rudimentary.’ He took the glasses from his pocket and pushed the two arms in until they were touching. Then there was a huge rumble, the floor began to shake, and Harry dropped the glasses onto the floor.
Boyd put his hand on the wall to steady himself. ‘Was that us? Did we do that?’
‘No. I’m guessing that’s Martin’s little surprise.’ Harry picked up the glasses, then grabbed a stunned Boyd by the sleeve. ‘We need to go. Now!’
‘Harry, we can’t leave them!’ Boyd pleaded as they started to run.
Then came another rumble, followed by a burst of hot air hitting them in the back as the Belly erupted beneath them and the flames forced their way up to ground level. Harry grabbed Boyd by the shoulders and shouted over the ever-growing noise.
‘Listen to me – if we stay, there will be no one left to stop them. We have to move, now!’
As they ran towards the pod, Harry tapped the arms of the glasses frame together once, then two times, then three; then he held them together. This was a colossal risk, but he knew he had no choice.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Boyd asked him.
‘Just making a phone call.’
At the end of the corridor, inside the office at the entrance to the Barn, the phone Harry had left with the bearded security guard flashed on and vibrated as the call connected. It auto-answered after two rings, then it triggered the C4 explosive inside the phone. The explosion ripped through the front of the building, tearing the metal structure into pieces as if it were a stick of dynamite in a baked-bean can.
Right next to the office, the glass in the pod shattered, the rest of it was fired almost in one piece, down the corridor towards Harry and Boyd. Boyd launched himself into Harry, pushing him sideways against the wall, then taking both of them crashing down to the floor as the pod shot by them like a speeding train.
‘Holy crap!’ Boyd shouted as he crouched against the wall.
Both men allowed a few seconds to pass before lifting their heads. Harry looked at the bent frames in his hand.
‘Fitz certainly knows how to open doors.’ He stood up and held out his hand for Boyd.
They reached what was left of the entrance to the building and clambered over shards of scorched metal. As soon as they were out into the fresh air, Harry led Boyd to the black car. He pulled the keys off the front tyre and opened the door.
‘Get in.’
He checked the time; the whole operation had only taken a shade over 40 minutes and yet it felt like hours ago he had parked up and walked into the Barn. Now he looked at the facility, a torn shell, coughing smoke out into the evening air.
‘This is Four, I hope you can hear me. Exfiltration complete. I’ve got Six with me – en route to rendezvous. Over.’
‘Receiving Four.’ Azima’s voice came through Harry’s earpiece. ‘It looks like there’s a helicopter inbound and you have one hostile vehicle moving in to engage.’
‘Roger, over.’ Harry skidded the huge wheels of the car across the gravel and put his foot to the floor.
‘Who are you talking to?’ Boyd asked, only hearing Harry’s side of the conversation.
‘Don’t worry about that. Just listen. Under your seat there’s a thing that looks like a long tube, with a handle and a trigger – find it.’
Boyd let go of the seat and took his other hand off the door handle. Harry threw the car down the driveway like they were on the dodgems and Boyd bounced around, hitting the door with his shoulder.
‘I had only just managed to get your wonderful driving skills out of my mind, and here we are again. You know that no one is behind us, right?’
‘And I’d like to keep it that way.’
Harry pulled the car out onto the narrow country road as Boyd scratched around under the seat with his hand. His fingers brushed against something. He lunged and grabbed it, dragging it free and immediately saw that Harry was right. The strange object looked like a cardboard kitchen roll tube, but it had a curved handle on one end, with a button above the handle and a trigger on the underside; a bit like a toy shotgun.
‘Hold down that button on the top until the light goes green, and whatever you do, don’t pull the trigger yet,’ Harry said.
‘Yeah, I figured the trigger part out for myself. What is this thing?’
Before Harry could answer, a car appeared in his rear-view mirror and accelerated towards them at speed. ‘Oh hell. You’re about to find out. Hang on.’
Boyd looked up and saw a queue of traffic just coming into view around the corner. The tiny, narrow lane was jammed with 1000s of cars leaving the SpeedFest event
and they were on a collision course, heading right for it. ‘Harry,’ he said, nervously. ‘You see that, right? Tell me you can see that?’
Harry’s eyes flicked from the road to his mirrors. He dropped a gear and the engine burst with a throaty roar as the car jolted forwards.
‘Harry!’ Boyd shouted and pointed towards the stack of stationary cars blocking their path.
Harry ignored him, pushed his head back into the head rest and stretched his arms out as if he were bracing himself.
‘I really hope you’ve got a plan!’ Boyd shouted as he scrambled back into his seat, turned his face away and prepared for impact.
Then, at the last second, he felt the car lurch to the right as Harry wrenched the steering wheel all the way around. The big wheels bit into the grass bank at the side of the road and the car took off, over a ditch. It ripped through a hedge and bounced unevenly as it landed in a field. Both Harry and Boyd lifted up, high out of their seats before coming down hard.
‘I didn’t doubt you for a minute,’ Boyd said, shaking his head and smiling.
Harry fired a quick look at Boyd and cracked a small smile. ‘Is the light green?’ Harry pointed to the contraption in Boyd’s hand.
‘Yep.’
Boyd looked in his wing mirror and saw that the hostile vehicle had found a way into the field and was quickly gaining on them. When he looked forward again, he saw that Harry was taking them towards two huge stacks of hay bales.
‘Get the sunroof open,’ Harry said, his voice juddering from the bumps in the terrain. ‘Then wait until I say the word. We’re going to let them catch up a bit.’
Boyd turned his head and furrowed his brow. ‘Let them catch up? What is wrong with you?’
Harry smiled at him, looking relaxed for the first time in the whole operation. ‘Have a little faith, Boyd.’ He checked his mirror. ‘Any second now.’
Operation Hurricane: The Evan Boyd Adventures #1 Page 28
