by John Moralee
Without hesitating, the man fired a burst of bullets straight at Ryan. Ryan yelped as he jerked backwards, hiding behind the door. The bullets struck the door very close to where his head had been, ricocheting off the metal back into the study. He heard someone get hit and moan.
Serves them right, he thought.
He kept pulling the door shut, wishing it wasn’t so heavy. The stupid door literally weighed a ton. His muscles were pushed to their limit. His eyes were streaming. The door was closing inch by inch. He was going to make it! But then something terrifying rolled through the remaining gap.
A grenade.
The grenade stopped a few feet away.
There was nothing he could do before it exploded.
For a second, the tunnel was illuminated with a flash of blinding light so bright he could see the bones in his hands. Then his eyes saw nothing more. Just total blackness, accompanied by an overwhelming noise that deafened him.
Ryan had expected to be killed by the blast wave or shrapnel, but there was no blast wave. It was a stun grenade designed to disorientate its victims – which it did. Blinded, deafened, Ryan suddenly had no idea if he was still standing up, sitting down or hanging upside down. His brain was sending him crazy messages. He completely forgot where he was.
They would catch him now!
But his hands registered the feel of the cold steel of the door handle. The door. He had not let go of the door.
He had to shut it.
Now!
Though his head felt as though he’d gone ten rounds with a heavyweight champion, Ryan kept yanking the door closed. Pulling and pulling.
More bullets struck the metal, some zinging past his face.
He kept pulling until he felt the door stop moving.
It was closed. And he had just managed to close the door before the soldiers reached the other side!
Ryan couldn’t hear them banging on the steel, but he could feel reverberation through the metal. He knew they would be soon trying to work out a way of breaking in. They probably had special explosive charges to open safes.
His vision was coming back a little. He could just make out a shape standing beside him. It was the professor. He had partially recovered from the tear gas, though he was still coughing. He pulled Ryan away from the door and pointed down the tunnel, shoving him ahead of him. Mira had put down Jonah at the first bend and come back to help guide him in the right direction. The professor followed, carrying as much equipment as the both of them.
Ryan stumbled down the tunnel, not daring to look back. He hoped the professor was right behind him.
After another ten metres, Ryan slipped and fell. Pain shot through his right leg. Looking down, he noticed a lot of blood coming from his thigh. It looked like a bullet fragment had gone in during the shooting. He hadn’t felt it until now. Mira helped him up. They were almost at the first bend of the tunnel. Just a little further would protect them from the blast. Mira was shouting something to him, but he couldn’t hear.
“What?” he shouted.
She raised one hand, counting off her fingers.
Five – four – three – two - one.
Zero.
Then the house above them exploded.
Epilogue
One hour later, Gideon Hunter was watching a live picture of the smoking ruins of the house from inside the warehouse. The story they’d released to the media was that a gas line had exploded. The whole area had been evacuated except for his agents, who were searching the area disguised as police and emergency services. He’d lost twelve agents in the explosion, but their loss did not bother him. Most of their symbionts had survived the explosion, so they could be re-implanted in new hosts. No, their loss was acceptable. What bothered him was the utter failure of their mission.
In retrospect, he had really underestimated Ravencroft’s ruthlessness. The ordinary human girl had not known about the bomb. It had surprised him. He had expected some kind of security system, but he had hoped the speed of their attack would have rendered any defences useless.
Unfortunately, the boy – Ryan – had warned Ravencroft of his friend’s capture before they attacked.
They had been too late.
Not only had Ravencroft escaped through a secret tunnel, but the Holy Grail had been utterly destroyed in the explosion. Some of his men had been in the cellar when the bomb went off. He had watched their progress on a live video feed. He had seen the tank and the timer, but his agents had been unable to deactivate it in time.
They had arrived just too late.
The Great Collector couldn’t believe Ravencroft would destroy the Holy Grail, but he’d seen it happen. The loss of it appalled Gideon Hunter. He had wanted to keep it for himself. Owning it would have made him the most powerful man in the world. He could have ruled the Brotherhood instead of working for them. But now – what? He had lost everything. His men were looking for Ravencroft’s escape route, but he didn’t hold up much hope of finding it before he was long gone.
Rubbing his chin, The Great Collector called up the pictures of the mission again. He watched as his agents broke into the house through doors and windows, moving quickly to secure each room.
He watched two agents heading down the stairs through the curtains into the cellar, where the girl had told him they’d find Jonah’s tapeworm. He saw them locating the tank, but then their attention had been focussed on a digital timer attached to the wall, ticking down the seconds from ten, nine ... On his orders his men rushed to it, trying to dismantle the bomb. They had been focussed on that task even as it exploded, killing them, cutting off the video signal.
Gideon Hunter had the feeling he had missed something. He slowed down the final images and studied the tank in detail. He couldn’t see much through the murky water. He ran the images through several spectrum filters including infra-red. None found anything matching Jonah’s shape inside the murky water. The tank appeared empty when the house exploded.
“Well, well, you nearly fooled me again,” he said quietly.
The only other person who heard him was Saffron. She didn’t say anything, though. She was standing behind him, awaiting instructions like an android. Her eyes looked vacantly ahead, staring at nothing. Drugged.
Gideon had been tempted to shoot her when the bomb exploded, but he had resisted his anger. She was still a useful resource. She knew a lot of things about Lucas Ravencroft. Thanks to her, he had already learnt that Ravencroft had a granddaughter and her parents were the leaders of the Alliance.
He turned to Saffron, touching her hand, sending another dose of the hypnotising drug into her blood. Her face registered a little pain but then became a lifeless mask again. “Saffron, tell me what will your friends do after they escape?”
She answered in a monotone. “They’ll rescue me from you.”
“Excellent,” Gideon Hunter said with a wide grin. “I’ll be waiting ...”
Dear Reader
I hope you enjoyed Book One of The Secret Gateway novels.
The story will continue in Book Two: The Great Collector.
John Moralee © 2014
