S.T.I.N.K.B.O.M.B.

by Rob Stevens

  Realisation relaxed Barney’s frown. ‘Hanging around a gallery?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Archie grinned and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘The Atomic Gallery in Hamburg, to be exact.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Easy.’ Archie shrugged modestly. ‘I just Googled the words gallery exhibition Batman and Neil Armstrong and this came up.’

  Archie pointed about halfway down the screen of search results and Barney leaned forward to read the text.

  ATOMIC SALON GALLERY

  Glashuttenstrasse 19 HAMBURG

  … showing an exhibition of portraits of

  20th century icons including

  Marilyn Monroe, Batman, Muhammad Ali,

  James Bond and Neil Armstrong …

  ‘That’s awesome.’ Barney grinned. ‘You’d better let Gemma know you’ve done her job for her.’

  ‘I know,’ said Archie, grabbing his mobile. ‘We haven’t got much time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Barney, a baffled frown creasing his face again.

  Archie pulled up Dr Doom’s blog and tapped the eight-digit sequence beneath his riddle.

  ‘Twelve, oh-seven, sixteen hundred,’ read Barney. ‘What is that, a telephone number or something?’

  Archie shook his head. ‘It’s a date and time,’ he explained, waiting for his call to be answered. ‘Twelve, oh-seven means the kidnap will take place on the twelfth of July and sixteen hundred is the designated time for the snatch.’

  ‘Four o’clock today?’ Barney glanced at his watch. ‘But that means we only have …’

  He looked at Archie, his jaw slack with despair.

  ‘That’s right.’ Archie nodded grimly. ‘We’ve got less than two hours.’

  ‘So you’re saying it’s going to happen at sixteen hundred hours?’

  ‘Four o’clock, yes.’

  ‘And that’s this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t give us much time, does it?’ Highwater’s statement almost sounded like an accusation.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,’ Archie said, managing to stay calm. It had been a long phone call during which Highwater and Gemma had forced him to explain each stage of his thought process. ‘I was thinking we should contact the German authorities and inform them that a crime is about to be committed. They could get a team of agents down to the gallery and catch Doctor Doom in the act.’

  The next voice Archie heard was Holden Grey’s. ‘Yo, Yankee. A.S.I. Grey witcha.’

  ‘Er … hello, Mr Grey.’

  ‘Hear me now,’ Grey continued. ‘FIY, our Spooks ain’t tight enough with the Polizei Posse for us to drop a beat and expect them to boogie. Do you feel me?’

  ‘Let me make a phone call,’ Highwater said, coming back on the line. ‘I’ll call you back in five.’

  While Archie waited for Highwater to ring back he instructed Barney to find out the scheduled departure and arrival times of every commercial flight from the UK to Hamburg that afternoon. When his ringtone sounded again he stepped out of his room on to the landing to answer it.

  ‘Yankee, this is I.C.’

  ‘What’s the score?’ asked Archie.

  ‘I’ve reported your theory to my immediate superior.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wants to give Cipher Branch some time to corroborate your findings before he calls in a foreign agency.’

  ‘Time?!’ Archie yelped. ‘We haven’t got any time. There’s an hour and fifty-one minutes before Doctor Doom kidnaps another innocent person and we need to do something – now.’

  The reality was that the Hamburg Polizei would not respond to STINKBOMB’s new intelligence. Hugh Figo had been so determined Highwater’s fledgling agency should fail that he’d assigned it a pitifully low security clearance level, rendering it virtually powerless. Any information coming from the agency would be ignored unless its priority was boosted by verification from Figo himself.

  Archie waited to hear Highwater’s Plan B but all that came from her was a series of noises intended to convey annoyance.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, feeling his frustration boiling over. ‘At exactly five minutes to four call Hamburg Police and report a crime at the Atomic Salon Gallery.’

  ‘But the kidnap won’t have happened by then.’

  ‘The police won’t know that. It doesn’t have to be a kidnap, it could be an assault or a robbery or anything – we just want the cavalry to arrive as the abduction is taking place.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Highwater with a note of surprise.

  ‘I’m going to try and get to the gallery,’ Archie continued. ‘Barney’s checking timetables online now. If there’s a flight from Bournemouth in the next twenty minutes we might make it.’

  Muffled by some amplified rustling, Archie heard Highwater speaking to someone else with her hand over her mouthpiece.

  ‘X-ray can’t get there in time,’ she announced. ‘She’s checked the flights and nothing leaves any London airport until three thirty this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh well,’ said Archie, ‘we’ll send you both a postcard.’

  ‘Listen, Yankee,’ said Highwater with cold authority. ‘I am not happy with you and Zulu going into the field alone. But it must be done. Remember, you are not to engage the enemy under any circumstances. Your role is surveillance only, do I make myself clear?’

  ‘As a bell. I’ve got to go,’ said Archie and he ended the call.

  He went back into his bedroom where Barney was frantically working the keyboard.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, pulling on his A&F hoody. ‘We’ll have to take a plane asap.’

  Barney thrust himself back in his chair and threw his hands up. ‘There aren’t any Bournemouth flights,’ he sighed. ‘The quickest route for us would be flying via Amsterdam and we’d still miss the snatch by about three hours.’

  Archie leaned across his friend and opened his desk drawer, grabbing a pile of euro notes. ‘These’ll come in handy,’ he muttered. ‘Now, where did I put my rucksack?’

  ‘Archie!’ said Barney loudly. ‘Did you hear me? There aren’t any flights we can catch that will get us there in time.’

  Archie looked at his friend and allowed a smile to tweak the corners of his mouth.

  ‘I didn’t say we’re going to catch a flight,’ he said. ‘I said we’ll have to take a plane.’

  Three minutes later Archie and Barney rendezvoused at the front door of the house. Barney had been to the kitchen and filled the rucksack with provisions for their mission while Archie had spent the short period on the iMac computer in his father’s study.

  ‘Ready?’ asked Archie.

  Barney beamed and shrugged. ‘Whatever you’ve got planned, I’m ready.’

  ‘Nan!’ Archie called as he opened the door. ‘I’m just going out with Barney – I’ll see you later.’

  ‘All right, love,’ came the distant reply. ‘You two be careful now.’

  Archie slammed the font door behind him and led Barney along the wide gravel path that swept through the grounds of his home. Two hundred yards from the house the path split in two. A short distance straight ahead stood the front gates of the Hunt estate leading on to the main road, but Archie took the path that branched off at ninety degrees, towards a large copse of fir trees. The gravel guided the boys through a narrow gap in the trees, which concealed a flat lawn that was about half the size of a football pitch. A large silver structure with a curved roof stood at the far corner of the grass square. The wall of firs hemmed the quadrangle on all four sides, hiding the building and its setting from public gaze.

  Archie led Barney across the grass and they paused at the door of the silver building.

  ‘Your dad’s hangar?’ puzzled Barney. ‘What are we doing here?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Archie, typing a six-digit code into the security keypad. With a soft mechanical purr the door slid to one side, revealing the sleek, shark-like silh
ouette of the twin-engine jet plane inside.

  ‘There she is,’ smiled Archie, flicking a row of four wall-mounted switches at once. ‘The Dragonfly.’

  Within a few seconds the four overhead strip lights flashed and buzzed into life, reflecting like go-faster stripes on the aircraft’s elegant brushed-aluminium curves.

  Archie placed a hand on the plane’s nose as if it was a racehorse then he ducked down to inspect its tyres. Standing upright he briskly circled the machine, allowing his hand to trail along the swept-back leading edges of its wings and gently spinning the blades of its two turbines.

  ‘Er, what are you doing?’ asked Barney, a note of impatience filtering into his voice.

  ‘Pre-flight checks,’ said Archie, stepping into the foothold in the fuselage just below the pilot’s seat and pulling himself up.

  ‘Pre-flight?’ echoed Barney. ‘Don’t tell me this thing can fly itself to Hamburg?’

  Twisting a bright red latch on top of the glass dome that encompassed the entire cockpit, Archie smiled. ‘Of course it can’t fly itself,’ he laughed, sliding the canopy open. ‘I’m going to fly it. Jump in.’

  Archie stepped into the cockpit and sat in the soft leather seat. He fastened his three-pointed lap straps and began preparing the plane for take-off, sweeping his hands over the instrument panels, pushing buttons and flicking switches.

  ‘Are you coming or what?’ he asked Barney, who was still standing at the doorway, his mouth slightly open. ‘I’m going to be ready to take off in about two minutes and I’d really like you to come with me.’

  Still in a daze, Barney skirted the Dragonfly’s rounded nose and hoisted himself up on the right-hand side of the cockpit.

  ‘So you can actually fly this thing?’ he asked, sliding into the seat next to Archie.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Archie replied, taking a USB stick from his pocket and pushing it into a port on the plane’s navigation computer. ‘My dad started showing me the ropes a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Funny you never mentioned it.’

  The USB stick contained the flight plan to a small airfield called Finkenwerder, situated just ten miles south-west of Hamburg’s main airport. Richard Hunt had visited the airfield regularly because many of the Dragonfly’s components were assembled there.

  Archie’s phone started ringing again.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yankee, this is X-ray. I’ve done some digging around in the Atomic Salon gallery’s electronic records. They have a large party of kids from South London booked in this afternoon. They’re on a joint field trip. The two schools are called Saint Peter’s and Saint Joseph’s. I thought it might provide you with a neat cover story if you need it.’

  ‘Thanks. Listen, I have to go. My plane’s about to leave.’

  ‘OK. Good luck.’

  Archie hung up and slipped the phone into the pocket of his hoody.

  ‘Seriously … how come you never told me you were learning to fly?’ asked Barney, gazing round the cockpit in wonderment like a kid at Disneyland.

  ‘I wasn’t allowed to.’ Archie flicked two switches, opening the fuel valves and initiating the engine start sequence. ‘My dad could have lost his licence if the CAA had found out he was letting me take the controls.’

  A high-pitched whine echoed round the hangar as the two turbines accelerated to 10,000 rpm and the bittersweet aroma of aviation fuel filled the air. Archie pulled on his shoulder straps and slotted them into their circular buckle then, placing his headset over his ears, he adjusted the boom mic so that it was about an inch from his lips.

  Flicking on the intercom, Archie spoke into his microphone. ‘How do you read?’

  ‘Wow, an intercom – cool.’ Barney adjusted his mic. ‘Reading you loud and clear, over.’

  ‘So, are you ready for our first mission, Agent Zulu?’

  Pale-faced, Barney smiled bravely and gave a thumbs up. ‘Game on! Over.’

  Archie released the Dragonfly’s park brake and the plane rolled forward, gliding out of the hangar and bouncing gently on the grass as it taxied into the centre of the square field. Holding the plane steady on the toe-brakes Archie ran through his pre-take-off drills from memory.

  ‘Er … Archie? What did you mean when you said you can “pretty much” fly this thing, over?’ Barney asked with a sudden forcefulness that suggested he’d been bottling the question up for some time.

  Archie smiled. ‘Like I said, when we went flying my dad let me do practically all the handling. I can do a wicked loop, a flick roll – all sorts. There’s only a handful of manoeuvres I’ve never quite managed on my own.’ He gripped the control column in his left hand and began to ease the thrust levers forward with his right.

  ‘What sort of manoeuvres, over?’ demanded Barney urgently.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Archie said evasively. ‘Recovering from a spiral dive is really tricky.’ He slid a lever backwards, directing the engines’ thrust vertically downward through the four controllable nozzles. Meanwhile he continued to ease the thrust levers forward, tentatively increasing the power output from the engines.

  ‘Anything else, over?’ Barney badgered.

  The whine from the engines was now more like a scream and the whole aircraft was vibrating with the immense force building beneath its wings. Archie felt both exhilarated and terrified, like a rodeo rider sitting astride a wild bull that was about to be let loose.

  ‘Well?’ Barney persisted.

  ‘OK, OK … there’s also … well, I’ve never actually done the take-off myself,’ Archie admitted.

  ‘You what?’ shrieked Barney. ‘Over!’

  A wave of anxiety hit Archie, washing away his determination. Barney was right. What was he thinking? He couldn’t fly the Dragonfly all the way to Germany on his own! Even hovering the plane was outside his capabilities, never mind the delicate business of climbing away from the tight landing pad without crashing into the wall of fir trees. As if waking from a thrilling dream, Archie realised that his plan had been impossibly fanciful. He would have to go back to the house and inform Highwater they’d been unable to get to Hamburg in time.

  But just as he had decided to close the thrust levers, the Dragonfly leaped into the air.

  ‘WHOA!’ cried Archie as the plane rose and lurched forward.

  Instinctively he pulled the stick back, and the plane shot backwards. Fifty feet off the ground, the Dragonfly was reversing at a terrific rate straight towards the hangar.

  ‘Watch out, over!’ screamed Barney.

  Reacting quickly, Archie pushed the stick forward.

  The plane continued powering backwards.

  ‘I don’t suppose this thing has bumpers, over?’ Barney yelped, looking over his shoulder at the approaching hangar.

  Holding his breath, Archie waited.

  The Dragonfly’s nose bobbed downward, and with its tail no more than six inches from the hangar roof the plane came to a motionless hover. A moment later it started to edge forward, slowly at first but picking up speed rapidly. Soon it was careering towards the trees ahead.

  The memory of his previous outing in the Dragonfly flashed through Archie’s mind – his father taking over to rescue the plane from certain disaster. His hands froze on the controls. I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t fly this thing on my own.

  ‘WE’RE GOING TO DIE! … OVER.’

  Barney’s terrified wail interrupted his thoughts.

  Taking off some power, Archie desperately kicked in some rudder and snapped the control column to the right. The plane pirouetted and lurched sideways, its right wing dropping as it swooped.

  ‘We’re going down,’ Barney gabbled, staring at the lawn racing up towards him. ‘Archie! If you don’t do something sharpish it’ll all be over, over.’

  Centralising the control stick to lift the wing, Archie pushed the thrust levers forward until they hit the stops. The engines responded with a tremendous roar and slowly but surely the Dragonfly’s descent slowed. Only y
ards above the ground it hovered briefly then started to climb, as if bouncing on an invisible trampoline.

  ‘We’re going to hit the trees!’ Barney yelped. ‘We’re not going to make it over, over.’

  ‘We’ll be OK,’ said Archie, not daring to move the controls. He’d realised that hovering the Dragonfly was like keeping a ball bearing balanced in the middle of a smooth plate. Now that he had the jet under some sort of control he didn’t want to upset its balance if he could possibly avoid it.

  Both boys watched in silence as the aircraft listed towards the treetops.

  Barney squeezed his eyes shut, while Archie remained transfixed by the ragged green wall that stood between them and clear blue sky.

  ‘Hold tight!’ Archie instructed.

  There was a harsh scraping and snapping sound as the Dragonfly’s undercarriage crashed through the foliage – then it was clear.

  Neither boy spoke for a moment.

  ‘Did we make it?’ asked Barney, his eyes still screwed tightly shut. ‘Is it all over, over?’

  ‘Course we made it!’ Archie laughed with sheer relief. ‘We’re off to a flying start.’

  Barney opened one eye and tentatively peered round then, satisfied there was no immediate danger, he opened the other. ‘Is it normal to crash into the trees on take-off ? Over.’

  Archie shrugged. ‘I was just hedging my jets.’

  ‘It’s funny – I’m normally a nervous flyer,’ Barney said. ‘So I’m surprised I stayed so cool. I guess at times like that the agent in you just takes over, over.’

  ‘Cool? Oh sure.’ Archie fought to hide his smile. ‘Which film was it again, when James Bond screamed like a girl, “We’re going to die”?’

  ‘I was just providing you with a real-time worst-case scenario.’ Barney sulked. ‘Over and out.’

  ‘Well, we can relax now,’ Archie replied, his pulse slowly returning to normal. ‘From now on it’s going to be plane sailing.’ He eased the nozzle lever forward, gradually returning the Dragonfly to normal flight mode. The aircraft accelerated to three hundred knots as it speared through the sky.

  Archie dialled a frequency into the plane’s VHF radio and clicked the transmit switch.

  ‘London Control, this is Hoverbird zero one,’ he said, trying to sound authoritative. ‘We’re climbing to altitude six thousand feet, currently overhead Christchurch harbour and requesting airways clearance.’