Skyfire

by Michael Adams

  Crrrrunccch!

  —smashed the telegraph pole into the store’s shutter.

  The blow buckled the metal, leaving an almighty dent. A few more hits like that and Jackal and his gang would be through. Who knew what they would do to her family?

  ‘Mahmoud,’ she said. ‘We have to draw them away!’

  Her brother nodded.

  ‘Jackal, you son of a shoe. Over here!’ Yasmin yelled.

  The detective whirled around. ‘There!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Quick—get them!’

  Jackal lurched for his motorbike as his gang dropped their battering ram and made for their own rides.

  Mahmoud twisted the throttle. His bike roared.

  ‘Sister,’ he shouted, ‘you need to hang on tight now!’

  The Signmaker let out a furious cry that echoed through the golden-lit secret headquarters. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen!

  The Egyptian detective had been promised $100,000 to make sure Yasmin stayed safe no matter what else happened today. Half of the money had already been transferred into his account. But the cop would only get the rest when he delivered the DARE Award winner to Cairo’s airport safely.

  Except the satellite image had just shown the detective and his men trying to smash their way into the Adib family’s store. Now they were chasing Yasmin and her brother on motorbikes. A quick hack into the Adib security-camera system provided an audio recording of the kidnapping attempt. The detective had gotten greedy. Clearly he hoped to make a lot more money by holding Yasmin for ransom.

  The Signmaker vowed that the detective wouldn’t see another cent. Instead he would pay for his betrayal.

  It would be a simple matter to expose the man’s corruption with a single email to his more honest police colleagues. But they wouldn’t catch him before he caught Yasmin. And that wouldn’t be nearly punishment enough for jeopardising the Signmaker’s carefully laid plans.

  The Signmaker checked satellite positions but the nearest hackable space laser was orbiting over Iran, nowhere near enough to blow Jackal and his men off their bikes. Throwing one of the police helicopters in the skies over Cairo at them was a possibility, but there was no guarantee of hitting any of the speeding targets.

  The Signmaker took a deep breath, setting aside feelings of fury and frustration. Obstacles were opportunities. Challenges produced strength. Strength was power. There had to be a way to stop the detective and his cops.

  While their motorbikes were too primitive to be hacked, any AutoDrive cars around them could be controlled remotely. Cairo didn’t have that many driverless vehicles yet, but there had to be a few in the area that could be used.

  Face set with a smile, fingers flying across a keyboard, screens flashing new feeds and information, the Signmaker was determined to regain control—at any cost.

  Mahmoud gunned the bike between cars, blasting the horn to scatter people from their path. He steered around a camel with a screaming tourist stuck in its saddle, and shot the motorbike into an alley.

  Clinging to her brother, Yasmin looked over her shoulder to see the cops trying to follow, angling between vehicles to the fury of drivers. One cop had already been cut off, his machine screeching, caught hopelessly between the fender of a BMW and the bumper bar of a tour bus. But Jackal was through the dense traffic, silver sunglasses glinting, mad grimace on his face, with the remaining three of his gang close behind him.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Yasmin urged, holding on tighter as Mahmoud accelerated.

  Walls flashed by. Eyes peered from dark doorways. Houses exhaled cooking aromas. Mahmoud zipped around a donkey cart, the driver smiling toothlessly at Yasmin. Their bike roared by a cafe’s empty outside tables and they just avoided smacking into a burning mini-van as they sped around a blind corner. But when Yasmin looked back, she saw Jackal and his convoy of thugs mimicking Mahmoud’s every move.

  Yasmin didn’t know what they’d do if Jackal and his men turned on their sirens. To anyone on the streets, it would look like she and her brother were bad guys fleeing from the cops! But the lack of sirens made Yasmin wonder if Jackal didn’t want to draw too much attention. Otherwise he’d be calling those helicopters hovering over Giza to join in the chase.

  At least he can’t risk shooting me, she thought. I’m no good to him dead. I hope.

  Glancing back, Yasmin was glad to see one of Jackal’s men stuck in the middle of a small herd of goats that had stampeded from a laneway.

  ‘Lean with me!’ shouted Mahmoud. Yasmin did and he angled them low around another corner. When he righted the machine, they were zooming along a garbage-strewn street beneath ugly concrete apartment buildings.

  Mahmoud didn’t slow or stop as they approached a major boulevard, even though its two southbound lanes were bumper-to-bumper with cars. Instead, he sped up.

  ‘Hang on!’ he called over his shoulder.

  Yasmin clung to him for her life as Mahmoud pulled the bike up onto its back wheel and jumped it onto a car bonnet. Even as it crunched beneath their weight, her brother popped another wheelie and launched them onto the hood of the next car. Its driver screaming, he hopped the bike down onto the green nature strip.

  Amid horns and shouts, he revved wildly, scattering pigeons and onlookers. A second later they shot across the northbound lanes, just missing a motorcycle taxi, before disappearing into the shadows of a side street.

  Barely able to breathe, let alone believe she was still alive, Yasmin cast a glance backwards. Jackal was still in the traffic, angrily shouting at drivers to move, his men not going anywhere on their bikes.

  Yasmin allowed herself a quick grin, hoping they’d lose Jackal and his thugs once and for all as they sped towards the Nile.

  But what she saw next shocked her. The detective and his men had left their bikes and were running up and over cars. Just before she and Mahmoud rounded a corner, Yasmin glimpsed her pursuers holding up their guns and badges, ordering a group of men stopped at the traffic lights to give up their motorbikes.

  Yasmin gasped as the horrible truth dawned on her—Jackal wasn’t going to give up easily … or maybe ever.

  Bang-bang-bang!

  Andy’s heart thumped in his chest. This couldn’t be happening. Beard Dude and Bald Guy—they were in his bedroom doorway, guns raised, shooting at him!

  Bang-bang-bang!

  Andy jolted awake, panting, pulse racing. With a start he realised the banging was just someone knocking on his bedroom door. The real noise had become part of his unreal nightmare.

  ‘It’s Daniels,’ a voice said. ‘Wake up.’

  Officer Jake Daniels worked with Andy’s dad. The young policeman swung open the bedroom door and turned on the light.

  Sitting up in bed, sandy hair all over the place, Andy blinked in the glare.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Dylan murmured from the floor, reaching for his glasses. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly seven,’ said Daniels. ‘Andy, your dad’s been trying to call you. You need to get on the phone to him. He said it’s urgent.’

  Andy nodded. If his dad had been at LAPD headquarters all night and was calling urgently, he hoped it could only mean that Beard Dude and Bald Guy had been caught and were behind bars.

  ‘I’ll call him,’ Andy said. ‘OK if I go to the toilet first?’

  Daniels nodded. ‘Sure, but make it quick.’

  As Andy went down the hall, Dylan sat up, stretched and yawned. Blinking and bleary-eyed, he unrolled his phone and scrolled to the Games Thinker website.

  The timer had reset while they’d slept.

  ‘Wonder what happened to the First Sign,’ Dylan muttered sleepily. ‘Events for you as blah, blah, blah.’

  ‘Guess you guys won’t know?’ Daniels interrupted Dylan’s musings.

  ‘Know what now?’ Dylan asked, looking up at the frowning policeman.

  ‘About Egypt,’ the policeman said glumly. ‘Someone blew up a big pyramid and a huge boat sank in the Suez Canal.’
>
  ‘What?’ Dylan said.

  Daniels nodded. His patrol radio crackled and he stepped into the hall to answer it.

  Dylan’s eyes flew to his phone. He had missed several calls overnight. There were also texts from JJ and Isabel. He scrolled to JJ’s, fearing it would be terrible news about Yasmin. But it wasn’t. Even with Egypt in chaos, JJ was still worried about decoding the First Sign? But Dylan’s blood ran cold as what he read sank in.

  Barely able to believe what he had just seen, Dylan scrolled to Isabel’s message.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Andy asked when he returned to the bedroom and saw Dylan’s shocked expression.

  ‘Quick,’ the Aussie barked. ‘Turn on the news!’

  ‘Holo on,’ said Andy. The bedroom’s HoloSpace came to life. ‘News.’

  Horrified and fascinated, the boys watched as jet fighters circled the pyramids and soldiers with guns surrounded the Sphinx. A news ticker brought them up to speed in short, sharp sentences:

  ‘Man, this is bad,’ Andy said. ‘I hope Yasmin’s all right.’

  ‘Me, too, but it gets worse,’ Dylan said with an audible gulp. ‘While we were asleep, the other guys figured out that if you put all the symbols and numbers of the First Sign together, it’s a …’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A prediction. “The First Sign” predicted what was going to happen in Egypt!’

  Andy’s jaw fell open.

  ‘The timer counted it down exactly!’ Dylan added.

  Andy shook his head. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  ‘Check your messages,’ Dylan urged. ‘See for yourself.’

  Grabbing his phone, Andy sat on the edge of his bed. After reading for a few moments, he looked up with wide eyes. ‘This is crazy.’

  ‘We’ve got to call the others,’ Dylan said. ‘And we’ve got to find out where Yasmin is in all of … that chaos.’

  ‘Andy!’ said Daniels, reappearing in the doorway. ‘You gotta call your dad. That was him on the radio. He sounds …’

  ‘Sounds?’

  ‘Angry.’

  ‘Huh? Sure, OK, Daniels.’

  Andy was starting to get a bad feeling about the day. His normally sunny face clouded over as a heavy dread settled in his stomach.

  The traffic became thicker as Mahmoud and Yasmin got closer to the Nile. It was as if everyone in Giza had decided it’d be safer to cross into central Cairo. Not that doing so really made any sense. The attack had been from a jet, just like the dozens of jets screaming in circles over the city now, and that meant nowhere was safe.

  Mahmoud put down the kickstand, stood up on his bike seat and looked east over the car roofs. The traffic on Abbas Bridge was a solid wall.

  ‘Up that way,’ he said, pointing further up the Nile. ‘We have to be able to get across one of the other bridges.’

  Yasmin looked around desperately at the cars crowding them in all directions. The noise was deafening, the fumes choking, but at least she couldn’t see Jackal’s mirrored sunglasses anywhere.

  ‘No sign of him,’ she said hopefully. ‘I hope his fleas turn into cobras and bite him all over.’

  Mahmoud laughed. It was another one of their grandmother’s colourful insults.

  When a car beside them crawled forward enough to create a gap, Mahmoud seized the opportunity to turn the motorbike onto a side street. They drove past Cairo University, where Yasmin hoped to study when she finished school in a few years, and Giza Zoo, whose monkey house was the first thing she ever remembered in her life.

  ‘This isn’t much better,’ Mahmoud said, angling the bike up a pedestrian ramp, honking the horn and edging between people who seemed to be carrying everything they owned. ‘Impossible! Everyone should stay inside.’

  ‘What?’ Yasmin asked with a grin. ‘Like us?’

  To their right, the Nile River glittered between the palm trees along its bank, and up ahead Cairo Tower rose above the greenery of Gezira Island. A few military and police boats thudded this way and that across the waters, blaring orders for felucca sailing boats and cargo barges to pull into shore for their own safety.

  Mahmoud threaded the motorbike through cars until they were almost on the Cairo University Bridge. But the eastbound lanes heading into the city were packed solid with honking cars and trucks. No-one was moving. Only the westbound lanes were flowing with vehicles whose drivers were foolish enough to be heading towards Giza.

  ‘At least that dirty cop doesn’t know where we’re going,’ Mahmoud said.

  Yasmin’s heart skipped a beat.

  In the weeks since the DARE Awards, it had been widely reported that she would be travelling on Felix Scott’s SpaceSkimmer this week.

  ‘But, brother,’ she said. ‘Jackal might know we’re going to the airport because of the media.’

  When Mahmoud turned to reply, his eyes went wide with surprise.

  ‘Oh, no!’ he gasped.

  Yasmin didn’t have to look around to know what he’d seen. She held on as Mahmoud made the only move he could. With a twist of the motorbike throttle, he speared the machine up onto the bridge’s crash barrier. A second later, like a tightrope act, they were roaring along the thin wall of concrete that separated traffic lanes. There was just enough space for the width of the tyres, so any false move would be their last.

  Yasmin quickly glanced back.

  Jackal and his thugs were weaving through the traffic, and coming straight for them.

  ‘Dad, it’s me,’ Andy said, Dylan at his shoulder.

  On the phone’s screen, Frank Freeman frowned. ‘About time,’ he said.

  ‘Dad, you know what’s happening in Egypt, right?’

  His father nodded. ‘I know, it’s terrible, and I’m sure you’re worried about your friend Yasmin, but—’

  ‘No, Dad, we—’

  ‘No! You need to listen to me now, OK?’

  Andy was shocked by his dad’s abrupt tone. He had rarely seen his father so angry.

  ‘This concerns you, too, Dylan,’ Frank said. ‘So listen up.’

  The boys were all ears.

  ‘At the crack of dawn this morning, the guys in your video came into the station. They’d found out about the story on your website and—’

  ‘And they gave themselves up!’ Andy said. ‘That’s great. I knew—’

  ‘Quiet!’ Frank said. ‘Son, listen to me. I’m trying to protect you. Both of you.’

  Andy gulped. Protect them? From what? If Beard Dude and Bald Guy were in custody then they were safe. Unless their gangster bosses had called in hit men. They could probably do that as easily as sending out for pizza. Assassins might be coming to kill him and Dylan right now!

  ‘Take Scoop offline,’ Frank demanded. ‘Immediately!’

  ‘What? Dad, are we safe?’

  ‘Just do what I say!’

  ‘But if—’ Andy said.

  His dad shook his head. ‘No ifs, no buts. Just do it.’

  ‘Dad, I can’t—’

  ‘Andy!’ Frank’s eyes burned through the phone. ‘I am your father. I love you. Trust me. You need to do this right now. For all of us.’

  Dylan put his hand on Andy’s shoulder. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘I think you’d better do what he says.’

  Andy nodded. ‘All right.’

  Frank’s expression eased a little. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘How long will it take?’

  Andy shrugged. ‘A few minutes.’

  He couldn’t believe this. Thanks to Felix’s tweet, the Scoop story was already a runaway success. But taking it offline now meant millions of people would get a ‘Website Not Found’ message when they tried to see what all the fuss was about. What a waste—not to mention embarrassing.

  ‘OK,’ his father said. ‘As soon as that’s done, you guys come to the station with Daniels.’

  With that gruff order, Andy’s dad disconnected the call.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Dylan asked, face screwed up with worry.

  ‘I have no idea. But t
he old man’s as serious as a heart attack.’

  Sitting at his computer, Andy started typing the passwords and commands he needed to deactivate Scoop.

  ‘This sucks,’ he muttered. ‘If the First Sign really did predict what happened in Egypt, then Scoop’s the place for the story. It’d be the exclusive of the century!’

  Dylan nodded. ‘Mate, yeah, but—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Think about who we thought sent the symbols to us?’

  Tapping away, Andy nodded grimly. ‘Yeah, you’re right. If our first thought was Felix, then everyone else’s will be too. But there’s no way he’s got anything to do with this! I mean, why would he?’

  ‘I know,’ said Dylan, ‘but people even thinking there’s a link could ruin him and Infinity Corporation, as well as the DARE Awards.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Andy sighed, hitting the return key. ‘OK, Scoop’s offline.’

  He looked at the Egyptian footage on the HoloSpace. The news now showed the smoking ruin of the Futura in the Suez Canal. The feeling everyone was in for a very bad day swept over him again.

  Yasmin clung to Mahmoud as he raced the motorbike along the top of the bridge’s concrete divider. Traffic was banked up on their right but cars and trucks whizzed by in the lanes to their left. While Yasmin had faith in her brother’s riding skills, she knew that one slip here would be deadly. But slowing down wasn’t an option. The crooked cops had copied Mahmoud’s daredevil move. They were following along the narrow crash barrier, Jackal bringing up the rear.

  Mahmoud blasted his horn.

  Up ahead, their path was blocked. Drivers stuck in traffic had gotten out of their cars and were sitting on the divider while they played cards.

  Mahmoud slowed down. ‘Move!’

  The men glanced up from their game and shrugged. Behind them, Jackal and his men were gaining.

  ‘Time to play chicken!’ Mahmoud yelled back to Yasmin. ‘Hang on!’

  ‘No!’ she heard herself cry. ‘Don’t!’