by John McNally
He retreated the required distance then under-armed the lighter back at Kelly who snatched it from the air with a growl. Then Kelly turned to the Apparatus and reached forward to ignite the fuel. WHOOOF! A cloud of vapour went up in a mini fireball that knocked him on to his backside.
“Control the flame by pulling over the damper,” Stubbs advised from afar. “If the bottle fractures, remember to run awa—”
“I can kill people with my bare hands! That’s all you need to remember!” yelled Kelly.
He was beginning to miss the pike.
* * *
“For future reference, that is not how you talk to a kid. You don’t bark ‘Listen up, little lady’,” said Finn.
As they retrieved their bits of equipment from the flower bed, Finn and Delta bickered.
“You do in Philadelphia,” Delta replied, retrieving the M27 from a clump of freesias. “Bail-out training kicked in: ‘How to address a civilian in an emergency’ – you fall out of the sky on a mission, they’ll likely be in shock so you have to make yourself absolutely clear.”
“She was about seven years old!” Finn pointed out, dusting off his backpack and realising the dust was bright orange from the wings of the tiger moth. He left it on, tribute to a fallen comrade. “Have you actually met any ‘civilians’?”
“Never been shot down.”
Finn looked up at the vast house. They had a grappling hook and some titanium line in one of the packs, but it was never going to scale that, he thought.
“Ever broken into a house?”
“Long time ago. Misspent childhood,” said Delta.
“Well then, if we don’t get in, I’m blaming you.”
They had to jog for five minutes or so until they reached the back door, but when they did – and crawled along to try and find a gap underneath – they found a stiff insulating seal that created a barrier impassable to cold draughts and nano-warriors alike.
“What we need is a friendly, seven-year-old girl,” said Finn. “With a key. If only—”
Delta grabbed him.
“When we get out of this, I promise to whup your ass on Black Ops, Halo, Gears of Wa—”
“Keyhole!” shouted Finn, spotting its shape beneath the silver door handle. “What about the keyhole?” Then he caught the trail of something in his headlamp.
Silk.
Keeping steady, he traced the line of silk down from the door handle. Sure enough, descending fast at the other end of it was a spider about the size of a dog.
Delta froze.
“It’s OK,” said Finn, “it’s a money spider. It’s good luck.”
“Oh yeah. Bite me.”
Just before the spider reached the ground, Finn ran forward and grabbed it. It struggled hard, trying to draw itself back up the silk, but Finn fought to keep hold of it, while at the same time avoiding being nipped by its fangs.
“Get the hook!”
Delta took out the grappling hook and line. They secured it as best they could round the struggling critter, looping the line round its thorax and leaving eight wiry, kicking legs free.
“Let’s see if it’ll take the weight.”
Without pause, the spider shot back up the silk like a bottle rocket, dragging the titanium line after it.
“Yes!” said Finn.
The spider slowed as it reached the door handle, the weight of the dangling line telling. Then it seemed to rest and take stock. Motionless.
“Go inside… Go inside…” muttered Delta.
Finn simply raised the M27.
DRRRRT!
The money spider fled straight through the keyhole.
Finn felt the line slip away through his fingers and realised he’d now have to pull it to engage the grappling hook and in all likelihood crush their saviour. Delta happily grabbed the line and hauled on it before he could stop her – CRUNCH.
She tested the weight. It held. She clipped a safety tether to the line.
“You want to go first?”
Finn took hold and started to haul himself up. It was like climbing the school gym ropes, but the energy/mass ratio worked hugely in his favour. He made rapid progress and was soon standing on the aluminium edge of the keyhole. He dropped the safety line back down to Delta, then felt the line go taut at his feet as she made her way up.
When Delta was safely up, they pulled in the line, and then, being careful not to fall into the depths of the lock mechanism, they made their way through the interior of the lock to the other side, passing the remains of the money spider on the way.
“Home sweet home…” said Finn. “Told you they were lucky.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Nice place,” said Delta.
For the first time in – how long? – Finn felt safe. Warm. Perched inside the keyhole they could take in most of the ground floor. These people had pots of money. The wobbly ancient outside walls were still in place, but much of the rest of the downstairs had been knocked through to create a huge kitchen and living space, freshly painted, with lots of groovy furniture and fittings (unlike at Grandma’s, where there was lots of dog hair, Post-it notes and a serving hatch to the lounge).
Exactly like Grandma’s though, there was a desk tucked in a corner with a computer and a wireless hub.
Bingo.
They abseiled down – Finn under careful instruction, Delta retrieving the line – and in the subdued glow of dishwasher LEDs and cooker read-outs made rapid progress across the kitchen floor, the sounds of the lethal night garden replaced by the hum of the fridge.
Apart from the occasional aimless silverfish1, the place was mercifully bug free.
They reached the desk and Finn led them behind the printer to a nest of cables that ran from overloaded sockets up to a hole in the desk above. The dust was thigh deep amid the twisted cables, great drifts of it, and there were fallen birthday cards, lost paperclips and huge coins that spoke of untold riches. There was also a landline phone socket. With nothing in it.
“I knew it,” said Finn. “No Grandma. Or the phone’s upstairs somewhere.”
“Never mind. The data line is connected to the hub and the power is still on. Let’s go.”
The cables that hung from the desk were like jungle vines, and again an easy climb. They soon pulled themselves up on to the desk where a desktop computer lay finally at their mercy.
Finn started to wish he could see how Al was going to freak out when they got back in touch.
Delta surveyed the massive blank screen. “Let’s power up.” The switch was embedded in the top left-hand corner of the keyboard. Just a narrow rectangle, a nano-metre long, with an inbuilt LED that would come on once the button had been depressed with a satisfying click.
If they could make it click.
They stamped, they levered, they jumped, they tried loading it with all the weight they could find and jumping on it. Fed up, Delta got out a pad and pencil and began some complex mathematics.
“What are you doing?” asked Finn.
“Blasting it,” Delta said.
“Blasting it?”
“But we have to get the charge just right. If it takes 7 kilopascals of macro-pressure to depress this switch…” she muttered and scribbled, taking a pack of C-4 explosive2 out of her pack to check the data.
“…and the detonation velocity is 8,092 metres per second…”
Finn wanted to check too, but she was using equations which made his brain hurt.
Eventually she decided on a golf-ball-sized lump with a cigarette-sized detonator poking out of the top.
“That oughta do it.”
They took cover behind a stapler and she offered him the detonator remote. “You want to press it?”
“Of course I want to press it, I’m twelve.”
“Three, two, one…”
Finn pressed.
BANG!
Should have checked the maths, thought Finn.
Shattered fragments of brittle plastic skittered across the desk. The switch
cover had been blown to smithereens. But it was followed by one of the sweetest sounds Finn had ever heard.
Beeeeeeeep.
* * *
DAY THREE 00:24 (BST). Siberia
In Siberia, Li Jun responded to an alert line on one of her screens.
013828234827 GU26 7BX #hwbdcuHHm777/Lanyard House, Coppice Lane
“We have another coming online. Not in the immediate search area.”
She had diagnostic software running on every local web server, the mobile phone system and the emergency services network, trawling for any sign of unusual activity.
Kaparis was just enjoying breakfast, a foam his chefs had prepared of Monte Cristo caviar, coddled quails’ eggs and Chambord champagne cocktail.
“Put it on the watch list.”
“Yes, sir.”
There had been alerts throughout the night as people had finished packing and gone online to send a hurried email or two.
Li Jun would have to report these communications to Kaparis, which he loathed. Comforting banalities like “take care”, “we’ll pull through”, “I love you” made his skin, what little skin he could still feel, crawl.
She prayed this one would come to nothing.
* * *
“It’s working!” Finn said gleefully, as he skidded across the touch pad in his socks, sending a pointer across a screen the size of a football pitch. He skidded it over to a search-engine icon.
“Now, jump! Double click!” said Delta. Finn hopped up and down. A window snapped open and offered them the Google home page.
“Yes! Yes!” Finn jumped off the touch pad and danced a brief jig.
“What are we going to do, Skype?”
They looked miles up at the webcam in the top of the screen.
“Forget it, it’s not even loaded on the machine.”
“Then email? Facebook?”
“Facebook! Someone’s bound to be checking our Facebook, and if not we can send an alert to all our followers.”
“But who’s going to be online this time of night?” asked Delta.
Finn looked at the kitchen clock; she was obviously more tired than he was and had forgotten the time difference.
“America.”
They reached the Facebook page and laboriously signed into Delta’s account. It took much longer than they thought as they found they had to jump together on each key to get a character to register. Once they got into their stride though, they managed to type out her address and password.
Finally, Finn jumped back to the touch pad and double hopped.
Up came Delta’s page. She had exactly two friends. She offered no personal profile, but her photo was from her military ID and bore her real name.
“Delphine Salazar?” said Finn and raised an eyebrow at her.
“That was my birth name. I had issues with my birth mother. A colonel christened me Delta.”
“You have two friends: do you have issues with Facebook too?”
“Why should I tell anybody my business?” said Delta defensively.
“Well, it might help right now…”
“I’m friends with Carla and the USAF.”
“So are 1.1 million others! They’re not going to notice your messag—”
But right then, unbelievably, someone starting posting – live.
“Look, someone is online now…”
A live chat picture popped up of Carla, a girl with kooky black hair and big brown eyes about Finn’s age.
“Nooblet…” said Delta, stunned to see her.
“‘Nooblet’?” said Finn.
They watched her message spool out live.
Hey Delts are you coming next weekend? Otherwise I have to go to Wilmington for extra rehearsals with the orchestra and I haven’t practiced for like months because of SATs. I tried to call you BUT YOU’RE ALWAYS ON VOICEMAIL!!!! I HATE VOICEMAIL!!!! YOU KNOW!! OK, I’m over it. Call or message soon as I NEED an excuse here. Btw have you heard of this really old group called White Stripe?
“What shall we say?
“Say it’s The White Stripes otherwise she’s just going to embarrass herself… NO! I was joking! Tell her to call the Pentagon right now!” Finn almost shrieked.
Together, over the next thirty minutes, Finn and Delta scrambled over the keys and typed out their message.
C!!! REAL EMERGENCY! CALL DR AL ALLENBY UK NOW +44 09776 778 87363 OR 911 PENTAGON OR UK +44 999 WE ARE AT GU26 7BX COME AND GET, SAY “SCARLATTI LOCATED, CREW ALIVE” NOW!
They wondered if they should add ‘do not nuke’ too, but decided what they had written would be alarming enough (they were particularly pleased with the postcode which they’d found on an unpaid utility bill).
All they had to do was hit Send and it would go straight to Carla. If she was still online.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
They held on to each other and got ready to jump hard on the big Return key when they heard a clatter.
“What was that?”
They turned. They could hear no footsteps.
Finn looked over to where they’d dumped the M27 and most of their gear by the stapler. It wouldn’t take a second to run over and pick it up if they needed to attract attention.
“Maybe it was just something falling over?” said Finn, but then Delta saw it over his shoulder. “Uh-oh…”
Finn spun round. A beautiful black and white cat, the size of a dozen elephants, long-haired and of infinite distinction, had silently hopped up on to the stool and was regarding the screen. Around its neck was a red collar emblazoned with its name: Zizou.
Despite such beauty, its black eyes were drawn instantly to the two tiny creatures on the keyboard.
“Easy, kitty… Easy now…” said Delta.
Trip. Trap. Play, thought the cat, exposing its dentistry.
“Hit it!” cried Delta. They scrambled for the Return key.
A soft paw swatted them experimentally, to see if they stung.
For Finn it was like being hit by a wall. They were sent flying off the keyboard.
Landing at its edge, they tried to roll under it as the cat snapped out its claws.
Showtime!
“Get in here!” yelled Delta, crawling under the keyboard, and dragging Finn after her. There was just enough clearance for them to scramble around on their bellies, but SWIPE came the cat’s paw again, catching Finn’s trailing foot, a tusk-like claw driving clean through the ankle of his jeans.
For a moment he was dragged back out, but Delta grabbed his arm and pulled.
Riiiiiipp!
The bottom of his jeans was torn free and Finn was sent spinning back under the keyboard by a clip from the cat’s follow-up paw.
“Get right under!” Delta said, bellying across the desk as CRASH! the whole keyboard above them shook, shifting and almost exposing Finn again.
C!!! REAL EMERGENCY! CALL DR AL ALLENBY UK NOW +44 09776 778 87363 OR 911 PENTAGON OR UK +44 999 WE ARE AT GU26 7BX COME AND GET, SAY “SCARLATTI LOCATED CREW ALIVE” NOWnjwefnl;”wfedwwsxxsxssssssf dfdc sjh54 1232sssxcxxzz2333ljkfewiufeiy889894ijaSASwwsb
Hsssssss! The frustrated cat pressed its face to the desk, its great whiskers poking at them as it tried to seek them out, paw trying to get the keyboard to move, but it was now wedged between the wall and the angled PC stand.
WHACK WHACK SCRATCH
“We need that 27,” said Delta. It was at least a twenty-nano-metre dash across the desktop to the machine gun.
The pawing stopped as the cat took stock.
Finn and Delta crawled its way a little so they could see what it was doing. It seemed to be licking a paw.
“It’s losing interest,” said Finn.
Sure enough, a few moments later, they heard the soft PALLUMP of it jumping down. They crawled to the edge of the keyboard. Finn snuck out and moved t
entatively towards the backpacks.
With a hiss, the great cat leapt up from its crouched position on the stool – not so dumb after all.
Finn sprinted for the gun. The first paw hit him five nano-metres short.
“HEY!” called Delta, base-sliding out from under the keyboard. “PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE!”
The cat twitched – caught momentarily between the two. It was all Finn needed.
As the cat dived for Delta, Finn lunged forward and grabbed the M27, firing at its flank.
DRRRT! It was the last of the ammo, but it was enough.
YEOOOWWFSSJKSKSK!!!
The cat reeled like it’d been hit by a whip, skittered off the computer table and shot across the kitchen floor, hair expanding in every direction at once, hitting the cat flap in a puffball of panic.
As Finn recovered on the desktop, he turned and noticed the screen.
The cat must have hit Return when harassing them and posted.
Below the post was a comment.
MESSAGE INTERCEPTED HOOK HALL.
PLEASE CONFIRM.
Finn began to laugh. He scrambled up, grabbed Delta and almost in delirium they managed to mount the keyboard and hit a capital Y.
After a brief pause, the message came back:
We are on our way.
* * *
King Li Jun added, as a sign-off.
“Is there a webcam?” asked Kaparis.
Li Jun rattled away at the keyboard and brought a live image of the kitchen up onscreen.
“Adjusting exposure.”
She remotely zoomed the webcam out as far as she could, then scanned down to a grainy detail at the very bottom of the screen: two tiny people celebrating like fools.
“You’re sure the message is contained?”
“The whole communication is isolated, protected and undetectable,” reported Li Jun.
“Very good,” said Kaparis.
Li Jun blushed fiercely.
TWENTY-NINE
DAY THREE 00:51 (BST). Sea Area FitzRoy
