Snakehead

by Anthony Horowitz

  There are three stages to a parachute descent. The raw fear of the jump itself. The sense of calm once the chute has opened. And the first panic as the ground rushes up. Alex reached the third stage all too soon, and that was when he realized that he had drifted off course after all. Maybe he had been overconfident. Maybe some sea breeze had caught him unawares. But suddenly he found himself with nothing but water below him. He was drifting away from the triangular processing platform. Urgently, Alex tugged the two cords at his shoulders, trying to change direction. He was plunging toward the sea. He couldn’t let that happen. The splash might give the others away. Worse than that, he might drown.

  Alex jerked and writhed helplessly but at the last minute another breeze caught him and carried him over the lip of the drilling platform and onto one of the decks. He had been doubly lucky. The deck was wide enough to allow him to land safely, dropping to one knee and folding in his parachute in a single movement. And the area he had chosen was like a metallic courtyard, enclosed on all sides. With a bit of luck, he would be completely out of sight. What about the noise of landing? No worries there. He had landed on a bumpy, uneven surface, close to some sort of electrical generator. The noise of the machinery would have covered the crash of his feet as they made contact with the metal surface.

  Five seconds later, a figure dropped out of the sky and landed just a few yards away. It was Ben Daniels. Unlike Alex, he must have chosen the deck with pin-point accuracy. He gathered in his chute and gave Alex the thumbs-up. Alex twisted around. As far as he could see, all the other SAS men had landed on the processing platform. He looked up. The helicopter had already gone, but presumably it would be nearby in case it was needed.

  Alex realized that his own inexperience had spoiled Scooter’s plan. The whole idea had been to stick together. It was vital that Alex should be protected at all times. In fact, he and Ben were cut off on the drilling platform. The SAS men would have to make their way across the bridge to find him. And if Yu’s control room was on the other side, they would have to take Alex all the way back again.

  Not good.

  He looked around him. He realized now that he was standing on a row of pipes. The whole deck was covered with them, cut into lengths of about ten feet. A huge metal trough rose up out of the ground, slanting toward the metal tower that housed the wellhead. Presumably, the pipes would be dragged up and somehow assembled in a straight line before they were lowered all the way to the seabed and beyond. On the other side, a metal wall rose up, like the side of a fortress. There were windows on the third or fourth floor, but they were so covered in dirt and grease that surely nobody would be able to see through them. One of the cranes stretched out over the water, its arm silhouetted against the stars and the night sky.

  Ben Daniels had taken off his parachute. He scuttled over to Alex, keeping low. He must have already come to the same conclusion—but he had decided what to do. “We won’t wait for them,” he whispered. “We’ll start looking over here. We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Alex didn’t have a watch. He looked at Ben’s. It was 11:10. He wondered how so much time could have passed so quickly.

  The two of them set off together, making their way across the pipes, trying to find the way into the wellhead. Dragon Nine was bigger than Alex had expected, but at the same time every inch was crammed with pipes and cables, cog wheels, chains, dials, and valves. The oil rig was also a living thing, throbbing and humming as different machines carried power or coolant to the various outlets. It was a hard, unpleasant environment. Every surface had a permanent coating of mud, oil, grease, and puddles of salt water. Alex could feel his sneakers sticking to the floor as he walked.

  But Yu didn’t seem to have posted any guards. Scooter had been right about that. With Alex supposedly dead, why should he have been expecting any trouble, miles from anywhere, in the middle of the Timor Sea? Together, they eased their way around corners and between ventilation towers, immediately lost in the great tangle that had been designed to pump oil from the seabed, thousands of feet below. Ben was carrying a miniature flashlight, which he kept cupped in his left hand, allowing only a trickle of light to escape. His right hand held an automatic pistol, a Walther PPK with a Brausch silencer attached.

  Scooter and the other SAS men had dropped out of sight. Alex could imagine them moving toward him on the other side of the water. In the far distance he thought he heard a sound: a soft thud, the clatter of metal against metal, a stifled cry cut off very quickly. Maybe there were guards after all. If so, one of them might be wishing that he had been a little more alert.

  Ben was opening doors, peering in through windows. There was still no sign of life on the drilling platform. They climbed a flight of steps that brought them to a metal walkway on the very edge, high over the sea. Alex looked down, and that was when he saw it. The oil rig was actually balancing on four huge legs, like an oversized metal table. One of the legs had a ladder that ran all the way down to the surface, actually disappearing beneath it. Next to the ladder and tucked away almost underneath the platform was an executive yacht, the sort of thing that would have looked more at home in a private marina—perhaps in the south of France. The boat was about sixty feet in length, sleek and white, with several sundecks and a bow that was clearly designed for speed. Alex tapped Ben on the shoulder and pointed. Ben nodded.

  It had to belong to Major Yu. It was surely there to provide him with a fast escape, meaning that he must be on the processing platform, just as Scooter had suspected. If Alex had known the make of the yacht, there would have been no doubt in his mind at all. It was a Sealine F42/5 flybridge motorboat with a unique extending cockpit system. It had been designed and manufactured in Britain.

  Ben signaled the way forward. More than ever, Alex wished that Scooter and the others were with them. They were following a narrow gantry that led to a door set in a circular building, jutting out over the corner of the rig with curving windows that provided views in three directions.

  The control room. It had to be.

  They crept toward it. Alex didn’t know what Ben had in mind. Maybe he was going to wait for the rest of the squadron to catch up. That would have been the sensible thing to do.

  But in the end, he was never given a choice. Without warning, a spotlight swept through the air, searing its way across the drilling platform. A second later, a machine gun began firing, bullets ricocheting crazily off the railings, slamming into the walls and sparking as they flew off the metal walkways. A siren began to wail, and at the same time Alex heard answering fire from the other side of the bridge. The silence of the night had been shattered. There was an explosion, a ball of flame erupting into the night like a brilliant flower. More shooting. Ben twisted and fired twice. Alex didn’t even see his target, but there was a cry and a man fell out of the sky, slammed into a gantry, and bounced off it into the sea.

  “This way!” Ben shouted. He had already started forward, and Alex went after him, knowing that Yu would be expecting them now but that there could be no going back. Yu’s men would be taking positions all over the oil rig. They had the advantage. There were a dozen ladders they could climb and platforms high above from where they could pick off the invaders one by one. He and Ben would be safer inside. The door was ahead of them, leading into the circular room. Ben reached it and crouched down. “Stay back!” he commanded.

  Alex saw him count to three.

  He slammed the door open and went in firing. Despite what he had been told and even though he wasn’t carrying a weapon himself, Alex followed. And that was how he saw what happened in the next few seconds, even though it would be a lot longer before he took it all in.

  There had been two men in the control room, surrounded by computer screens, a radio transmitter, and the equipment that Alex had seen on the Liberian Star. One of them was Major Winston Yu. He was holding the pistol that he had just used to gun down Ben Daniels. Ben was lying on the floor in a spreading pool of his own blood. The Walther PPK had
dropped out of his hand and lay pointing toward Alex. There was another man lying facedown a short distance away, and Alex realized that Ben must have shot him as he came in. Major Yu himself was unhurt. He was staring at Alex in astonishment and disbelief.

  Somehow he managed to recover. “Well, this is a surprise,” he said.

  Alex didn’t move. He was less than three yards away from Yu. He had nowhere to go. Yu could shoot him down at any time.

  “Come in and close the door,” Yu said.

  Alex did as he was told. Outside, the battle was still going on—but it was happening on the other platform. Too far away. The heavy door clicked shut.

  “I knew you hadn’t drowned in the river,” Yu said. “Something told me. And when we couldn’t find your body…” He shook his head. “I have to say, Alex, you’re very hard to kill.”

  Alex didn’t reply. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ben’s pistol lying on the floor, and part of him wondered if he could dive down and grab it. But he would never be able to bring it around and fire it in time. He was too easy a target.

  “You’re finished, Major Yu,” Alex said. “And you’ve failed. ASIS knows what you’re trying to do. Reef Island has been evacuated. There’s no point in setting off a tsunami. Everyone will know it was you.”

  Yu considered Alex’s words carefully. Part of what he had said had been a lie—the Reef Island conference was still taking place—but there was no way Yu could know that. Alex was here. He had brought the SAS with him. The facts spoke for themselves.

  Eventually, Yu sighed. “You’re probably right,” he said. “But I think we’ll go ahead anyway. After all, it’s been months of planning, and I’d like to make my mark on the world.”

  “But you’ll kill thousands of people—for no reason.”

  “What reason can you give me to spare them?” Yu shook his head. “World chaos does have its uses, Alex. This was never just about Reef Island. The reconstruction of the Australian coast will cost billions of dollars, and I have commercial interests all over Southeast Asia. The Chada Trading Agency has shares in many building companies that will be first in line for the new contracts. Unwin Toys will offer gifts to the many hundreds of new orphans—paid for, of course, by the Australian government. There are all sorts of other interests too. A snakehead thrives on misfortune and unhappiness. For us it just means new business.”

  He glanced at one of the television screens. Alex saw a white line running straight from the top to the bottom. There was a blinking red square attached to it, moving slowly downward.

  “Royal Blue,” Yu said. “In six or seven minutes it will reach the seabed and enter the shaft that I told you about. The shaft continues a further half mile down. At midnight exactly the bomb will detonate, and my work will be done. By then, I will be a long way away and you will be no more than a fading memory.”

  He raised the gun. The single black eye searched for him.

  “Good-bye, Alex.”

  And that was when Alex heard a groan. It came from the floor. The man who had been shot by Ben Daniels was struggling to drag himself into a sitting position. Major Yu was delighted. “How very fortunate!” he exclaimed, lowering the weapon. “Before you die, I can introduce you to one of my most trusted and effective colleagues. Although on second thought, I believe you’ve already met.”

  The man looked up.

  It was Ash.

  He had been shot twice in the chest and the life was seeping out of him. Alex could see it in the dark eyes, which were filled with pain and remorse and something that was less definable but that might have been shame.

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” Ash gasped. He had to stop himself to catch his breath. “I didn’t want you to know.”

  “I’m not sure that Alex is surprised,” Yu remarked.

  Alex shook his head. “I guessed.”

  “May I ask how?”

  This time there was no point in ignoring the question. Yu had been about to shoot him anyway. The longer Alex could keep him talking, the more chance there was that the SAS might finally arrive. Alex could hear the alarm, but there was less shooting and it seemed to be farther away. Had the SAS been overpowered, or were they already in command and on their way? He glanced at the television screen. The little red square was continuing its journey down.

  “Everything went wrong from the start,” he said, talking directly to Major Yu. “Ethan Brooke had already lost two agents. Somehow the snakehead knew everything he planned. They knew about me too. Why else was I chosen for that fight in Bangkok? It didn’t make any sense. But then, when I was in the arena, Mr. Sukit said something to me. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t take part, and he said it first in French, then in English. Why? If he really believed I was an Afghan boy, he’d have known I wouldn’t speak either.

  “I wondered about that. But it got worse. Ash gave me an emergency telephone number. I called it and it led me straight to you.”

  Ash opened his mouth to speak, but Alex cut in.

  “I know,” he said. He looked briefly at the dying man. “You made it look good with the fake blood, as if you’d been taken prisoner like me. But then I lost two of the gadgets Smithers had given me, and that was when I knew it had to be you.

  “I told you about the watch and the belt. Somehow the battery disappeared out of the watch. I suppose you must have done that when I was asleep that night in Jakarta. As for the belt, Major Yu took that when I was in his house. But I’d never told you about the coins. Smithers had also given me coins with an explosive charge and those stayed in my pocket. If I’d told you, I guess those would have gone too.”

  He stopped.

  “When did you start working for Scorpia, Ash?” he asked.

  Ash glanced at Major Yu.

  “Tell him—but be quick,” Yu snapped. “I don’t think we have very much time.”

  “It was after Mdina.” Ash’s voice was weak. His face was gray, and he could no longer move from the chest down. One hand was on his chest. The other lay palm upward on the floor. “You can’t understand, Alex. I was so badly hurt. Yassen…” He coughed, and blood speckled his lip. “I had given everything to the service. My life. My health. I wasn’t even thirty, and I was crippled. I was never going to sleep properly, never eat properly. From that day on it was just pills and pain.

  “And what was my reward? Blunt humiliated me. I was demoted, taken out of the field. He told me…” Ash swallowed hard. With every word he was finding it hard to go on. “He told me what I already knew,” he rasped. “I was second rate. Never as good…as your dad.”

  He had almost come to the end of his strength. His shoulders slumped, and for a moment Alex thought he had gone. The blood was all around him now. There was a steady flow of it from his mouth.

  Major Yu was enjoying himself. “Why don’t you tell him the rest of it, Ash?” he crowed.

  “No!” Ash straightened his head. “Please…”

  “I already know,” Alex said. He turned to Ash one last time. He could hardly bear to look at him. “You killed my parents, didn’t you? The bomb in the airplane. You put it there.”

  Ash couldn’t answer. His hand tightened on his chest. He had only seconds left.

  “We had to test him,” Major Yu explained. “When he came over to us, we had to make sure he was telling us the truth. After all, we had just been tricked by one British intelligence agent—John Rider. So we set him a very simple task, one that would prove to us with no doubt that he was ready to switch sides.”

  “I didn’t want to…” It wasn’t Ash’s voice. It was just a whisper.

  “He didn’t want to, but he did. For the money. He put the bomb on the plane and he detonated it with his own hand. Rather more successful than his mission in Mdina. And the start of a long association with us.”

  “Alex…”

  Ash tried to look up. But his head fell forward. He was dead.

  Major Yu prodded him with his foot. “Well, as they say, Ash to ashes and dust to d
ust,” he remarked. “I’m glad you heard that from him, Alex. You can take it with you to the grave.”

  He raised the gun once again and pointed it at Alex.

  There was an explosion, loud and near. But it wasn’t the gun. The entire room shook, and dust and metal filings came showering down from the roof. Alex heard a shearing of metal as the crane overhead broke in half and came crashing down. The shock sent Major Yu reeling back. His arm banged against one of the work surfaces and the gun went off, the bullet smashing uselessly into a wall. Major Yu was shouting in agony, and Alex realized that the impact of the blow had shattered the brittle bone in Yu’s arm. The gun now lay useless on the ground.

  Deafened, half dazed, Alex threw himself onto the gun, snatched it in both hands, desperate to protect himself from further attack. But he was already too late. Yu had already decided to leave. The room was full of smoke. The SAS were here. Alex Rider would have to wait until another day.

  There was a trapdoor set in the floor, with the ladder leading down underneath. Somehow, using his one good arm, he pulled it open and climbed down, dropping into the boat below. But the fall had been too far for his bones. The impact broke both his ankles. Howling with agony, barely able to stand, he groped his way over to the controls. He used a knife to cut through the mooring rope. A second later, he was speeding away.

  Meanwhile, Alex had staggered over to the controls. On the TV, the little square representing Royal Blue was about two inches above the seabed but edging closer all the time. There was the scanner, wired into the computer. Alex slammed his palm onto the glass panel and let out a sigh of relief as a line of text appeared on the computer screen.

  AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED

  There was a pause, then a second line scrolled across.

  Override master commands? Y/N

  Alex tapped on the Y key just as the door crashed open and about half a dozen SAS men somehow managed to burst in, covering every angle with their weapons. Scooter was at the front of them with Texas and X-Ray right behind him. It looked as if Sparks, the young soldier who had once played a guitar on an Australian beach, hadn’t made it.