by Chris Ryan
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Meet the team:
About the Author
Also available in the Alpha Force series:
Alpha Force: Fault Line
1. Fast Rope
2. The Mission
3. Jungle Night
4. Destruction
5. Snake
6. Tomb
7. Robber
8. Landing Zone
9. Chainsaw Hell
10. Mr Unpopular
11. Belize City
12. Celebrities
13. Bump in the Night
14. Silence
15. Lone Rescuer
16. The Pit
17. Starting Again
18. Trapped
19. Looters
20. Evacuation
21. Dying Wish
22. The Ring
23. Underworld
24. Hex
25. Morning
Chris Ryan’s Top SAS Tips on Surviving Earthquakes
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Epub ISBN: 9781407050072
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
ALPHA FORCE: FAULT LINE
A RED FOX BOOK : 9780099480150
First published in Great Britain by Red Fox, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
This edition published 2005
5 7 9 10 8 6
Copyright © Chris Ryan, 2005
The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
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Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk
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www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire
Meet the team:
Alex – A quiet lad from Northumbria, Alex leads the team in survival skills. His dad is in the SAS and Alex is determined to follow in his footsteps, whatever it takes. He who dares . . .
Li – Expert in martial arts and free-climbing, Li can get to grips with most situations . . .
Paulo – The laid-back Argentinian is a mechanical genius, and with his medical skills he can patch up injuries as well as motors . . .
Hex – An ace hacker, Hex is first rate at code-breaking and can bypass most security systems . . .
Amber – Her top navigational skills mean the team are rarely lost. Rarely lost for words either, rich-girl Amber can show some serious attitude . . .
With plenty of hard work and training, together they are Alpha Force – an elite squad of young people dedicated to combating injustice throughout the world.
In Fault Line Alpha Force are in Belize and an earthquake is about to hit . . .
www.kidsatrandomhouse.co.uk/alphaforce
About the Author
Chris Ryan joined the SAS in 1984 and has been involved in numerous operations with the Regiment. During the first Gulf War he was the only member of an eight-man team to escape from Iraq, three colleagues being killed and four captured. It was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS. For this he was awarded the Military Medal. He wrote about his remarkable escape in the adult bestseller The One Who Got Away (1995), which was also adapted for screen.
He left the SAS in 1994 and is now the author of many bestselling thrillers for adults, as well as the Alpha Force series for younger readers. His work in security takes him around the world and he has also appeared in a number of television series, including Hunting Chris Ryan, in which his escape and evasion skills were demonstrated to the max, and Pushed to the Limit, in which Chris put ordinary British families through a series of challenges. On Sky TV he also appeared in Terror Alert, demonstrating his skills in a range of different scenarios.
Also available in the Alpha Force series:
SURVIVAL
RAT-CATCHER
DESERT PURSUIT
HOSTAGE
RED CENTRE
HUNTED
BLOOD MONEY
Coming soon:
BLACK GOLD
ALPHA FORCE: FAULT LINEChris RyanREDFOX
1 FAST ROPE
The helicopter skimmed over the grey-green forest. Its downdraught left a wake through the treetops like a ship’s through an ocean. Jungle birds took off in flashes of blue, red and white. Occasionally a river could be seen far below, a pale silver thread; otherwise there was nothing below the 10.5-tonne Puma helicopter but endless dark jungle-green.
Belize, central America.
The heli pulled around in a wide circle, slowed and hovered. Five ropes dropped from the open cabin and unfurled down to the tree canopy. Five figures wearing abseil harnesses climbed out onto the skids, grasped the ropes and sprang off. Alpha Force were in action again.
Hex had always thought abseiling was a quiet business. When he’d done it before there had been just the sound of the wind and his feet scraping on the rock wall. It was like being in a different world – great if you wanted to have a good think. Hex liked solitary activities, but now his ears were full of the high whine of the engine and the drumming of rotor blades, so loud it made his eyes vibrate. The wind rippled his camouflage clothes, lashed his neck with the free ends of the straps on his green bergen backpack. There was nothing for his feet to walk on – just thin air. He had one hand on the rope above, one hand on the free end below, following the line into the deep green trees.
He looked at his friends, sliding down from the Puma like spiders down a thread. Amber’s bright pink abseil harness looked like a Barbie accessory next to her disruption-patterned jungle camouflage – not the kind of thing you could tell her and still be alive afterwards. Hex grinned. OK, maybe you could have useful thoughts while your ears were being drilled.
Li’s slight frame was dwarfed by her bergen. She slipped down the rope with the grace of a trapeze artist, as though it was perfectly natural to be in mid air. She was grinning at Paulo, challenging him to see who would get down faster. Li was never happier than when racing someone. Paulo, the big Argentinian, normally the most laid-back of the group, was giving her a run for her money. His natural habitat was on horseback, cantering lazily across the plains on his family’s ranch but Li never failed to get him going.
Opposite him, Alex checked the winch man in the heli above, then looked down at the green tree canopy approaching below. He did his job quietly and expertly, planning what they needed to do when they hit bottom.
Hex’s eye slid back to Amber in her Barbie harness, her sleeves rolled up and her ebony arms working the ropes briskly, as though she would take no nonsense from them.
His feet touched the topmost leaves of the trees. Time to concentrate.
During the freefall, moments before they hit the trees, Amber smiled. What could you tell about someone from the colour of harness they chose? Alex had a green one – unobtrusive, blending in. Anglo-Chinese Li wore red – the Chinese colour of luck, and fiery too. Appropriate in two ways. The other two had chosen black. Paulo, macho Latin-American, good looking – of course he’d go for black. But what about Hex? The hacker from inner-city London. He was probably more at home in the Matrix than surrounded by trees and sky. Black for a loner from planet cyberspace.
She looked at Li and Paulo. They were already shoulder-deep in the tree canopy, proceeding slowly. They were still fifteen metres above the ground and had to follow the rope where it threaded between the branches – the trickiest part of the descent. Alex was waist-deep, going down in careful stages.
Amber felt large leaves touch her feet, brush her shins. She slowed.
Slipping into the canopy was like going under water. The baking sun disappeared; wet leaves left cool trails on her skin. Even the beat of the rotor blades became muffled. The foliage swished as she descended. Next to her was a solid tree trunk more than a metre wide.
She dodged away from a protruding branch and glanced up. There were the five lines quivering like guitar strings. High above in the heli, the winch man was watching to see when they reached the ground, his yellow-gloved hands steadying the drum that held the ropes. All was well.
She saw a flash of red through the foliage below her, four metres to her right; that must be Li. She must be nearly down, but the jungle was already so dense she couldn’t see any more than the harness. The camouflage clothes were doing their job. The whereabouts of the others was betrayed only by the quivering leaves and the sound of breaking branches. Even Hex, who had been barely a metre and a half away from her when standing on the skid, was hidden by a tree trunk.
‘Come on,’ called a voice. Li. ‘Are you guys staying up there all day?’ Her rope rose through the trees, a red snake rustling vertically up as the winch man reeled it back in, becoming a black thread against the sky. She must have touched down.
‘I seem to have got the most complicated tree in the jungle.’ A Geordie accent. That was Alex. ‘I thought this was meant to be a quick way of getting down.’
‘It is,’ called Li. ‘If you get lucky with your route.’
Amber felt a gentle tug on her harness. The heli drifted above like a tethered balloon.
Then she saw something that made her heart turn a somersault.
The helicopter tilted. The winch man was thrown forwards. For a moment his arms and legs were out of the door, then his harness caught him and he scrambled back in. Was the heli in trouble?
Paulo felt something jerk him upwards violently. It stopped again just as suddenly. He grabbed a branch and clung on, then looked up.
The heli was wobbling in the air. The winch man was holding onto the doorway, his arms and legs braced. The pilot seemed to be fighting to keep control.
Paulo went cold all over. Was it about to come down? If it did, they didn’t stand a chance. He yelled to the others, ‘The heli’s in trouble. Go go go!’
He let the rope slip him further down, not being so careful now. He had about ten metres to go and he had to get down fast.
He descended a few centimetres and was jerked up again, hard. His head cracked against a branch. The blow made his head buzz. Go down, said his brain. He tried again.
Yet again he was yanked up. What was going on? He had to get away. He tried again.
He was dragged back up the rough tree like a sack on a crane.
Dios, why couldn’t he get away? It was like a bad dream.
Above him, the heli rocked in the sky. It looked like an ornament about to topple off a shelf.
Now his abseil rope was stuck. He couldn’t move down at all. He was helplessly attached to the great big machine. He imagined rotor blades chopping towards him like a giant windmill, spilling fuel that would ignite the trees in an orange fireball.
He saw ropes snaking up into the belly of the craft. The others had reached the ground. He was the only one still attached to the heli now, and like some tentacled monster in its death throes it wouldn’t let him go.
The winch man was waving frantically, yellow gloves trying to get his attention. Paulo suddenly realized that the problem was him. His line must be tangled. The rope below him must have got wrapped around a branch. Whenever the heli drifted on an air current, it was yanked back by a big, solid tree. Paulo was on a tug-of-war rope between the two. And his earlier instinct had been right: if he didn’t act quickly, the heli would definitely come down.
Paulo looked down. Below was dense foliage. He couldn’t even see the rope, let alone where it was tangled. He’d have to tell the winch man to cut him free.
He worked like lightning. He had a spare lanyard on his harness; a short length of rope with a karabiner clip. He grabbed a branch, hooked it around and tested it. Yes, it would take his weight. He clipped his harness onto it, looked up at the winch man and drew his hand across his neck in a throat-slitting motion.
The winch man was ready for his signal. He cut the rope immediately and it came snaking down towards Paulo. Paulo grabbed for it and the heli lifted away, moving smoothly and safely once more. Then he tied the free end of the rope around the branch in a figure-of-eight knot. His heart was hammering so hard his hands shook and it took a few goes to loop the rope back into the karabiner. He’d nearly brought the helicopter down.
Now he had secured the rope, he could continue abseiling – once he’d untangled the end. He pulled it up and glimpsed a big purple knot. This was going to take some time. Perhaps it was just what he needed to help him calm down – something monotonous, like knitting in reverse. He sighed and got to work.
2 THE MISSION
When Paulo finally reached the bottom of the tree his four friends were sitting on their bergens drinking from their water bottles.
‘I thought you’d decided to stay up there,’ said Li.
Alex looked at his watch. ‘Twenty minutes. I reckon that must be the world record for the slowest fast-rope.’
Li screwed the top back on her water bottle. ‘I think next time I race you, I’ll have a snooze first and then catch you up.’
Paulo was drenched in sweat. He shrugged his bergen off his back and took off his harness. But he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t give as good as he got from Li. ‘The whole point,’ he said to her, ‘was to be the last down, not the first.’ He peeled off his abseiling gloves; they had moulded themselves to him like a second skin.
‘You should have seen Hex,’ grinned Amber. ‘One moment, I didn’t know where any of you were. The next, he was shinning down a tree like a rat down a drainpipe.’
‘Closely followed by you,’ Hex rejoined. Her pink harness was lying on the ground next to her bergen. Hex picked it up and put his hands through the leg holes, flapping his hands to mime someone running very fast on tiptoe.
Amber snatched the harness from him and swiped him with it before stuffing it into the top of her bergen.
Paulo drank some water, leaned back against a tree and breathed a long sigh of relief.
Then he froze.
A snake hung down from a tree. It had a dark brown body the colour of tree bark, but the underside was bright yellow. The yellow edged its mouth like a thick coat of lipstick. It hissed at him, the inside of its mouth glossy black, like patent leather. ‘That’s all I need,’ he said softly.
‘Wow,’ breathed Li. ‘A vine snake.’
Paulo remained stock-still, his neck twisted round, staring at the snake. ‘Yes, but is it—?’
‘It’s not poisonous,’ said Li.
Paulo believed her; her parents were naturalists and she knew her flora and fauna. But all the same, he stayed exactly where he was.
‘There,’ said Li. ‘It’s going already.’
The
snake slithered down the tree and disappeared into the undergrowth. Paulo relaxed.
Amber pulled the map out of her belt kit and unfolded it on the forest floor. ‘Well, guys – we’re on our own. Seven days until we see the heli again.’
‘We’ll try not to pull it out of the sky when we see it,’ said Li, and dragged Paulo towards the map.
They hunkered down to get their bearings. The map showed just dense jungle – no paths, no signs of civilization. Probably no human had set foot there for centuries. This place belonged to the birds, small mammals, snakes and insects. Now the five friends would be living by their wits and their skills.
It felt like the holidays had really started. The rest of the time they were all at various schools all over the globe – Alex in Northumberland; Li in whatever corner of the globe her parents were working in; Paulo in Argentina; Hex in London; and Amber in the US. But now they were together and they were Alpha Force again.
Ever since they’d been thrown together on a ship sailing around Indonesia, this was what holidays were about. The five teenagers had been marooned on a tropical island and disaster had followed disaster. They had to live off the land, fighting hostile wildlife. When a rescue boat arrived it turned out to be crewed by a vicious band of pirates – and their struggle to survive became all-out war. When they finally came through, none of them would ever be the same again.
But there was more to that summer than survival. When they’d fought off the pirates, they had saved the lives of a French family. It was a turning point for all of them. Together, they could help people. Their muddled teenage lives suddenly had purpose; Amber in particular felt able to face the world for the first time since her parents had died on an undercover mission. The five knew they had found their raison d’etre. Alpha Force was formed in memory of Amber’s mother and father – and to carry on their work helping disadvantaged people.
Every school holiday Alpha Force came together to face different challenges. They were helped by Amber’s uncle, her guardian John Middleton. He’d arranged the helicopter they’d come in on, persuading a friend in an oil company to let them hitch a ride on one of the craft used to ferry workers to the offshore rigs. John Middleton had been a key player in her parents’ missions – using his powerful friends to organize and fund missions and provide equipment. He was pleased when his niece had found an interest in life through her new friends. He was happy to pull a few strings if it kept her amused and would even rustle up demanding challenges for them, such as breaking into a secure military building. He would not have been so willing if he’d known that Alpha Force’s ‘challenges’ were often as deadly as the missions of Amber’s parents.
