by Chris Ryan
‘I’m by the door,’ he said into the comms. ‘Give me the all-clear when nobody’s looking towards it and I can enter without being seen.’
There was a moment of silence. Then three more coughs.
‘Here goes nothing,’ Max muttered to himself. He opened the door and slipped into the dining room.
14
Block Green
The first thing Max noticed was the fear. You couldn’t see it. You couldn’t hear it. But you could certainly sense it. The air was thick with terror, like a cloud of invisible gas.
Before even scanning the room, Max put his back to the wall next to the door and slid down to the floor. There were several other kids sitting cross-legged near the door. A couple of them noticed him. He made a shushing gesture at them. They lowered their heads. They looked as if they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves. He looked around to check that none of the adults in the room had noticed his entrance. He was sure they hadn’t.
Hector’s intel had been good. There were indeed about two hundred and fifty children in the dining hall. They were sitting in groups – not classes, because the kids in each group were all of different ages, and the groups were of different sizes. Many of the younger kids were crying. Some of the older kids were doing what they could to comfort them. Arms round shoulders. Quiet words of encouragement. But the older kids were plainly terrified too, and the younger ones could tell.
Along the left-hand wall was a door with a toilet sign over it. Max knew that led to the area they hadn’t been able to access. Three tearful young kids – two boys and a girl – were standing in a line outside it. They were the only children standing up. Everyone else was cross-legged or on their knees. A few of the younger ones were lying down.
Max looked around for the terrorists. They weren’t hard to spot. There were fifteen in total. They wore blue overalls, like car mechanics, and black balaclavas. The only visible parts of their faces were their eyes and mouth. Some of them carried submachine guns. Max recognised the guns as MP5s, the same weapons they’d used on the range back at Valley House. Others had pistols, which he couldn’t identify.
Eight of the gunmen had their weapons taped to their hands with thick black duct tape. He didn’t understand why. These gunmen were standing, spaced out, along the two long walls of the hall. Actually, Max thought, perhaps they weren’t all gunmen. Four of the figures looked, from their shape, female. But it was hard to be sure with their heads covered.
Max looked for the other recruits. At the far end of the dining hall there was a raised stage, about a metre and a half high. It had thick red curtains on either side and a painted backdrop for a school play. Lukas, Sami, Abby and Jack were on the stage. They were kneeling with their hands behind their heads. Lukas looked angry, Sami strangely passive, Abby defiant and Jack very scared. None of them was able to speak over the comms; a terrorist was walking up and down the stage in front of them, keeping an eye on them. He carried an MP5.
Automatically, Max started assigning labels to each of the terrorists. He called the figure standing on the stage, keeping watch over Lukas, Abby and Sami, T1. He continued clockwise around the room until he reached T15. In truth, there was little to distinguish them. The figures he thought were female were T5, T8, T9 and T10. T7 looked male but was slightly smaller than the others.
Max turned his attention to the rest of his surroundings. Each of the long walls had a window that ran almost the entire length of the hall. Neither of these windows let in any light. As Hector had informed Max and the others, the windows were covered with fitted blinds that blocked out all daylight. The room was illuminated by strip lighting along the ceiling. Max assumed that the blinds were there so the hall could be darkened for school plays. Today they served the purpose of ensuring that nobody could look in, or out, of the dining hall. Max noticed, however, that the figures with the weapons taped to their hands stood in front of the blinds. Again, he wondered why.
The toilet door opened. Another gunman appeared: T16. He let a couple of kids back out into the hall before roughly pushing the two boys in the queue into the toilet block and following them in.
There was so much here that scared Max: the sinister balaclavas, the evil-looking firearms, his companions’ desperate situation. But there was something else that chilled him more.
Eight of the terrorists – T1, T3, T6, T7, T11, T12, T14 and T16 – were wearing black padded vests. They were obviously stuffed with explosives: Max saw an orange-coloured plastic substance emerging from some of the pouches, and the vests themselves were a tangle of wires.
He knew what they were: suicide vests.
His eyes moved from the vests to the dining hall at large. He saw more wires. They were tied from wall to wall. Where they criss-crossed the hall they were above everybody’s heads. Where they snaked around the perimeter they were loose on the floor. At intervals along the two side walls the wires fed into rough packages on the ground. Each of these packages was about the size of a football. They comprised more of the orange plastic explosive, wrapped up in duct tape. Each package had a narrow cylinder of metal inserted into the explosive and connected to the wires. Max knew that these were detonators. The packages were improvised explosive devices. Bombs. The entire dining room was rigged to blow up. He counted six devices in all. If they went off, it would be a bloodbath.
He blinked at the devices, then looked back at the suicide vests. A horrifying thought occurred to him. What if the terrorists only intended for this to siege to finish one way? What if they had no intention of leaving anybody in the school alive, and every intention of taking the hostages with them when they went? What if they wanted a rescue team to rush in, so they could explode the devices, kill more people and gain more attention for their cause? That could explain why it had been so easy to enter the school grounds.
He had to warn Hector.
The nearest gunman, T6, was about fifteen metres away. Max reckoned that, if he bowed his head, he could speak quietly without being noticed. ‘It’s Max,’ he murmured. ‘I’m in –’
Before he could say more, he was interrupted. The gunman on the stage – T1 – spoke out loudly. He had a strong accent – Chechen, Max supposed – but his English was good. Max could hear him clearly. ‘Maybe some more of you would like to try to escape, like these idiots,’ he announced.
A breathless hush descended on the hall. There was still the sound of crying from the younger ones, but it was clear everyone was listening.
‘I will show you what happens when you try to do that,’ the gunman said.
– What’s going on? Hector’s voice was urgent over the comms, but Max couldn’t reply. T6 had walked towards him and was well within earshot.
T1 looked along the line of recruits on their knees, pointing at each of them with his MP5, as if choosing one. They all looked straight ahead, not wanting to catch his eye. The barrel of the MP5 finally rested on Jack.
‘You,’ the gunman said. ‘Stand up.’
Jack stood. His knees were visibly trembling. He looked as if he might collapse with fear.
The gunman turned to face the dining hall. ‘Choose one,’ he instructed.
‘What do you mean?’ Jack replied.
‘Are you stupid? Choose one of these children. Then I will kill them, as a punishment for your attempt to escape.’
Jack looked at him in horror. Then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
‘You are refusing to do as I say?’
‘They haven’t done anything wrong. I’m the one who tried to escape. Not any of them.’
It was absolutely silent in the room now. There was not even any crying.
Max could see the gunman’s lips curl into a sneer. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘A hero! Very well.’ He put the barrel of the MP5 to the side of Jack’s head. ‘I shall punish you instead.’
Max wanted to shout out, but he was paralysed with shock and fear. The other recruits looked on in terror. Jack closed his eyes.
It all hap
pened very quickly. The gunman spun round his MP5 and held it in both hands. He whacked the butt of the weapon against the side of Jack’s head. There was a sickening crack. Jack went down immediately, toppling from the stage onto the floor, landing hard. There was a collective moan from the hostages in the room. Lukas, Sami and Abby craned their necks over the edge of the stage, looking horrified. Max could see nothing above the heads of the other hostages. Half of him wanted to get to his feet so he could see Jack. Half of him wanted to vomit. He did neither, but stayed crouched on the ground, head bowed, limbs weak.
‘He was lucky,’ the gunman on the stage announced. ‘If anyone else tries to escape, I will use the other end of the weapon.’
More panic in the room. Max looked up. The other recruits were still on their knees, their hands behind their backs. They were all staring at Max. Max put his hand over his mouth. ‘Stop staring at me,’ he hissed into the comms. The other recruits immediately looked down.
He couldn’t say any more. T6 had turned his way again and was walking towards him. Instead, Max slid across the floor to one of the other students, a ginger-haired boy about his own age. Taking advantage of the increased noise in the room, he struck up conversation. ‘These wires going overhead and all around the room, do you know what I think they are?’
The boy gave him a strange look. ‘Who are you? I don’t recognise you,’ he said.
‘I’m new today,’ Max said. He gave a little grimace. ‘Great day to start a new school, huh?’
‘What are they?’ the boy asked.
‘Look, they lead to those packages all around the room. I think they’re bombs. I think the whole place is rigged to blow up.’
– How many devices, Max?
‘I’ve counted them,’ Max said to the boy. ‘There’s six. That must be enough to take the roof off this place.’
Max thought the ginger-haired boy couldn’t have turned any paler. He was wrong. The boy looked down at the floor, as if he couldn’t bear to look at Max or at the wires. Max didn’t like worrying the kid, but he had to get the intel to the Watchers somehow.
‘Why do eight out of the sixteen terrorists have their guns taped to their hands anyway?’ Max continued. The more information he could relay to Hector, he figured, the better. ‘I wish they’d all take their balaclavas off so we could see their faces …’
‘Quiet!’ T1 shouted. For a short while, it had the desired effect. He couldn’t stop the little kids crying, however, and after a few seconds the low-level hum of voices started up again. The ginger-haired boy put his hand up. T6 approached. Max held his breath. What was the kid doing? Did he suspect Max? Was he going to tell the terrorists that Max had been quizzing him? His heart thundered in sudden panic as the gunman stood over them.
‘I need the toilet,’ the boy said quietly. The gunman pulled him unsympathetically to his feet and pushed him in the direction of Block Blue, where he queued with a couple of others.
In the middle of the dining hall was a group of about ten students. One of them stood up. She looked Chinese, as did everyone in her group. Max remembered Hector saying that there were some Chinese exchange students at the school. This girl had long dark hair, very straight, and her features were hard and cold. She crossed over to a group of younger children and said something waspishly to them. The terrified kids fell silent. Then the Chinese girl picked her way through the hostages towards the stage. There were steps on the right-hand side. Head high, the girl mounted them. All eyes were on her as she approached T1. She spoke to him. There was no way Max could tell what she was saying. For a moment, he wondered if she was brave or stupid. But as T1 nodded and a smug smile spread across the girl’s face, it became clear to Max what she was doing.
T6 had moved away. None of the other terrorists was in the vicinity, so he was able to speak, but he had to be subtle. He put his head in his hands, as if in desperation. He didn’t have to act too hard.
‘One of them hit Jack in the head with the butt of his gun.’ He heard the edge of panic in his voice. ‘I don’t know what state he’s in. He’s definitely unconscious. He … he might even be dead – he fell heavily off the stage. A Chinese girl is on the stage now. She’s talking to the main guy. I think she’s trying to collaborate with the terrorists. You know, offer to help them in return for saving her own skin. I mean, it’s stupid, because obviously they won’t let her go. She’s going to end up dead like the rest of us.’ The panic in his voice had increased.
Silence.
‘Hector?’
The Chinese girl was stepping down from the stage. She started to walk around the dining hall with an air of authority. Wherever she went, children fell silent and looked at the ground. But one child, crouching very close to where Jack had fallen, cried out, ‘His nose is bleeding! Look! He’s not breathing! I think he’s dead!’
T1 shouted at the kid to be quiet. Max barely heard. The room was spinning. Again he wanted to vomit. Could Jack really be dead? Was that the fate that awaited them all? He was weak with fear.
‘Hector! What do we do?’
No reply.
‘Woody? Angel? Can anyone hear me?’
A wave of desperation overcame him. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing any of them could do.
‘This is hopeless,’ he whispered into the comms. He felt a moment of sudden anger. ‘What were any of you even thinking?’ he hissed at the silent Watcher. ‘Sending a bunch of kids into a situation like this to save the day? We’re going to die just like all the others. The whole place is booby-trapped. There are sixteen armed terrorists. Eight of them are wearing suicide vests. It’s obvious what they’re doing, isn’t it? They’re just waiting for an assault. And we’re not superheroes or something. We’re just a bunch of kids.’ He drew a deep, shaky breath. ‘Special Forces Cadets?’ he spat dismissively. ‘We’re just a bunch of kids who are going to die, and it’s all your fault.’
There was silence over the comms.
‘Hector? Are you even there?’ He looked up. The other recruits on the stage were a picture of terror. Even Lukas’s eyes were wild. None of them could take their eyes off Jack. Max had the impression they were all feeling the same way as him.
– Have you quite finished?
Hector’s voice was very calm. Max didn’t reply. He couldn’t, because T6 was approaching again.
– Good. Then my advice is to shut up and listen. I’ve got something to tell you all.
15
The Past
For the next few minutes, Hector spoke in a quiet, calm voice over the comms system. Max wasn’t fooled, however. He could tell that beneath his gruffness there was a quiver of emotion. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was something else.
– I’m not going to pretend that this is going the way we hoped. This situation is even graver than we thought and our options are limited. They depend on you and your ability to trust each other and yourselves. I’ve met a lot of military personnel. The best operatives have this in common: absolute trust in their own ability and absolute trust in their team. You haven’t had time to build that trust, so I’m going to tell you now why I know you’re up to this task.
When you all arrived at Valley House, we told you the rules. You weren’t to talk about your backgrounds or family history to anyone. There were good reasons for that. Now there are good reasons for you to learn about each other.
Let’s start with Lukas. Maybe some of you noticed his tattoos. Certainly you can all tell he has an American accent. You might even have heard of the place he comes from. Compton, Los Angeles.
Max looked across the room at Lukas. His face was hard and emotionless. Max had the impression that, whatever Hector was about to say, Lukas didn’t want it to be heard.
– Compton is gang territory. Walk round the corner into a street governed by a different gang, you’re dead. End of story. There’s more gun crime in those streets than almost anywhere else in the world. If any of you were wondering why Lukas was so good with a weapon, now
you know. In his world, handguns are as common as toothbrushes: everybody has one. Those tattoos on his arms are gang tattoos. He’s had them since he was nine. His mum and dad had them too. That’s why they were killed.
Lukas’s eyes tightened. His jaw clenched.
– Their killer was a rival gang member. A scumbag with more than ten killings to his name. Everybody knew it was him, including the Los Angeles Police Department. But the killer was well hidden in the heart of his gang community, and the police weren’t going to risk their own skins for yet another gangland shooting. If the killer was going to be brought to justice, someone else would have to do it.
That’s what Lukas did. In the dead of night, he entered the rival gang’s territory. He broke into the apartment where his parents’ killer lived. Then he forced him, at gunpoint, to leave. A lesser guy would have taken the killer back to his own gang’s territory and let his people deal with them. Lukas took him downtown to the LAPD. The killer is now serving life.
Lukas’s expression hadn’t changed. Abby, next to him on the stage, glanced at him in amazement. Max tried not to show any emotion because T6 was watching him. It was hard. He was having to change how he thought about Lukas in almost every respect.
– Trouble was, Lukas knew his own gang wouldn’t take kindly to him having contact with the police. So he couldn’t go back home. But by that point he was on the radar of the British security services. We spread our net wide. Lukas was orphaned. Smart. Skilled. Just the type we were looking for. I knew from the moment he arrived at Valley House that he’d make it through selection. The rest of you, you want to understand why Lukas was so keen to succeed? Now you know. The alternative was going back to Compton. And that was no alternative at all. Lukas, I know you can’t talk at the moment and I don’t know what you’re thinking. But I do know this: you’re a match for these terrorists.
