Truly Deadly: The Complete Series: (YA Spy Thriller Books 1-5)

by Rob Aspinall

  Gingerbeard held out a hand to take back the flask. I tossed it up in the air for him to catch, spat water in his face and kicked him hard in the balls. As he bent over, I kneed him flush in the chin, his jaw bone clacking and blood spilling out of his mouth.

  One down.

  Ding. Ding.

  Following that, all hell didn’t need much of an excuse to break loose. The circle of special ops reacted. Philippe took three down in one mega-complicated, split-second move that involved a couple of judo throws and an arm twisting out of its socket.

  A guy and a girl were on me like tramps on chips. The guy swung a meaty fist, but I leaned to the side and he missed. The girl didn’t. She cracked a punch in my ribs and went for a chokehold. I steered her away and blocked a martial-arts kick by the guy, sweeping his leg away at the ankle, then, with the same move, spin-kicking the girl with my right boot as she came back at me.

  Philippe had taken another couple down by the time I’d regained my balance. We regrouped, back-to-back, surrounded by the remaining pack, the soldiers we’d taken down groaning and staggering to their feet.

  “So, any ideas?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “I’ve got one,” he said, “but you’re not gonna like it.”

  There was a harrowing scream from the front of the plane that distracted everyone for a second. Heads turned in time to see one of the infecteds breaking out of their straps and biting the medic on the lips.

  The soldier tasked with the job of helping tried to pull the thing off, only to have his ankle bitten by the other infected.

  Buzzcut ordered two of the group to “Assist those men!”

  Gingerbeard and the woman limped over to help.

  “The rest of you,” Buzzcut said, “restrain the prisoners. We’ll deal with them later.”

  “Whatever happens,” Philippe said to me, “don’t get cuffed.”

  As the bright-orange wrist ties came out, someone grabbed my arms from behind and pulled my wrists together.

  “Get her legs!” someone else shouted.

  It was all a blur of rushing bodies, most of them piling on top of Philippe.

  I kicked out, but chewing-gum guy had me by the calves. I was taken down hard onto the floor. I wriggled like a fish in a bucket. Philippe knocked the bodies off him, only for them to jump back on. One infected was up out of his stretcher, another almost clear of his straps. The guys who’d gotten bit were already foaming and grappling with Gingerbeard and his female sidekick.

  Chewing Gum and his two helpers flipped me over and pushed my face into the cold, smooth cargo-bay floor. They nearly had me. I saw Buzzcut smack a cartridge into his sidearm and pull the trigger. He shot one of the infecteds in the chest, but it kept on coming his way. Buzzcut shoved the gun in the hands of an underling and pushed him in the way of the advancing infected. The soldier fired a round, but only skimmed the neck. The bullet pinged off the wall in our direction. Suddenly, the force pushing my wrists together behind my back was gone. I freed up a leg and kicked backwards, leaving a footprint on Chewing Gum’s face. I sat up and saw a soldier with a bullet in the head. The guy with the wrist ties was already up and backing as far away from the front of the plane as he could.

  Meanwhile, Buzzcut was strapping on a parachute and goggles. He slammed a fist against a chunky red button on the far wall.

  Philippe was still fighting off the attempts to strap his wrists together. As the cargo-bay door began to open, natural light shafting into the plane, a couple of special ops stood up off him.

  “Sir!” one of them shouted. “What are you doing?”

  I didn’t know how many thousands of feet up the plane was, but it was surfing a carpet of cotton cloud and still climbing, the sky a dazzling azure blue.

  The cargo-bay door yawned open wide. Buzzcut glanced back over his shoulder, threw a salute and bailed out.

  Philippe kicked off the last of his attackers and shouted at me. In all the noise from the wind and the engines, I couldn’t hear a word.

  It was chaos on a stick. Half the plane infected already. The other half pulling on parachutes as fast as their panicking hands would let them. One was jumped on by an infected. He fought back, but another infected joined in and he was dragged screaming towards the front of the plane. One of the pilots stepped through a hatch to see what was happening and was instantly taken down.

  Philippe seized hold of me by the arms and pointed to the parachutes.

  Oh no. This was his fucking idea?

  No, no, no, no.

  If there was one thing I absolutely didn’t do …

  38

  Out Of The Blue

  I shook my head so hard it almost came off. I’d rather get bit and go cannibal crazy than jump out of a perfectly good plane. Philippe pulled me over regardless and shoved a chute pack in my hands.

  One of the special-ops guys bailed out of the plane. Another slipped a pack on, but was grabbed and bitten by an infected. Philippe put the chute on over me and clipped me in tight. He pointed to a yellow tag and shouted something I didn’t hear.

  “I get it!” I yelled back. “I think I get it.”

  He put a chute of his own over one shoulder and froze. I spun around.

  The rest of the plane were either in a corner bleeding, on the floor turning, or on their feet, already turned, staring at us through mad, bloodshot eyes.

  Worse still, the hatch that led to the cockpit was swinging open. I caught a glimpse of the co-pilot, still struggling at the controls, but the writing was spray-painted on the wall in fresh blood. The plane listed one way and then the other, before climbing sharply.

  The infected posse charged. We ran, Philippe still with the chute in his hands. It was a fear of being bitten versus a fear of jumping. Before I could step out into twenty thousand feet of fresh air, an infected jumped on my back, trying to bite me, his hot breath on my neck and the sound of his snapping teeth in my ear. That just about settled it. I staggered out over the lip of the ramp and into the sky. We spun, the world tumbling around and around. The flesh-eater lost his grip on me and fell away. The speed and height of the fall took my breath away. As I came out of my spin, I saw Philippe tumbling, a pair of infecteds snapping at his heels.

  I made a star shape like they do on TV. Big mistake. It slowed me down and I was clipped by a free-falling body. I ended up plummeting backwards, blinded by the glare of the sun.

  I never even saw Gingerzombie coming. He hit me hard, grabbed a hold of the straps on my chute and tried to bite my face off. I turned my head away, trying to keep my eyes, nose and mouth away from the infected saliva stringing off his chin. He was maniac-strong and pushed closer in to me.

  I grabbed the yellow tag sticking out of his chute and pulled. He shot off into the sun. I managed to flip over onto my front and saw Philippe below me, scrapping with the two remaining infecteds, still with his parachute pack in hand.

  I had another flashback to a military skydiving school. If you made like an arrow, the instructor said, you could go a hell of a lot faster. I tucked my arms in by my sides and aimed at one of the parazombies. Whoosh! I was on him within a couple of seconds. I lifted my knees up into my chest and thundered into him feet-first. He spun off and away. It would have hurt like hell if I hadn’t been jacked on adrenaline. One infected left. One hand free. It was all Philippe needed. With the ground getting terrifyingly close – trees, mountains, a huge, deep blue lake – he managed to get his knees on either shoulder of the snarling infected and, with a hand around the forehead, snap its neck. He kicked its limp body away and clipped on his chute. He signalled for me to pull first. Oh, how I pulled. I grabbed the beautiful yellow tag and yanked the hell out of that bad boy.

  It was like someone had slammed on the brakes. Suddenly, I was floating down at a leisurely pace.

  How pleasant, I thought. I didn’t have a clue how to land, but compared to skydiving with psycho-cannibal crew, a broken leg was like a lottery win.

  A dark-green chute ope
ned out below me. Philippe had made it too.

  Now all I had to do was follow Philippe’s lead and I’d make it down.

  Phew!

  Without warning, I was flipped upside down. An infected straggler had got caught in my chute, almost like she’d been aiming at it. Now she was tangled up in it beneath me, dragging me down headfirst at breakneck speed.

  There can’t have been many more hundreds of feet left in this sky. I was well under the carpet of clouds and way beyond the mountain peaks. I could even make out the tiny boats on the giant Alaskan lake I was plunging towards.

  The lines of the chute had got twisted, too, meaning I couldn’t detach and deploy the reserve.

  This was it. Philippe was just a blur as I whistled past.

  I looked down and saw the infected trying her best to climb up the twisted wires to get at me. I looked back up and saw Philippe, a tiny ant in the sky, detach from his chute. He gained and gained, but surely it wouldn’t be enough.

  I decided the only chance I had was to wriggle out of the chute pack, but the clip was stuck. The weight was too much.

  Philippe dive-bombed out of the blue and grabbed hold of me. He wrestled with the pack, trying to release the main chute.

  I looked down again. Those boats on the lakes had gotten an awful lot bigger. Philippe left me and arrowed down to the infected tangled in my chute. He pulled a knife from the crazy woman’s ankle, then star-fished his way back up to me.

  He cut the strap around my left shoulder.

  The boats had become cruise ships.

  He cut the strap around my right shoulder.

  A few hundred feet left.

  He cut the strap around my waist.

  I was free! I was free!

  But there were only seconds until splat time.

  I wrapped my legs around Philippe’s waist and gripped the chute-pack straps, vice-tight on either shoulder. He pulled the white reserve chute from his pack and tossed it outwards. It caught on the wind, but was it too little, too late?

  I looked down. Zombie lady had already boomed into the lake. With only seconds for the reserve chute to create some drag, we came down fast over one of the cruise ships, dozens of holidaymakers watching the skies in shock.

  We hit hard, but something broke our fall: a thick textile canopy on the deck of the ship.

  At last, a motherfucking break.

  We tore right through it and landed smack bang on a ping-pong table. It crumpled flat under the weight. An old couple stood frozen with ball and bats at the ready, mouths wide open, catching flies.

  Somehow we were alive.

  I slowly, achingly, rolled onto my back next to Philippe.

  We lay there, totally pooped, as more passengers formed an orderly crowd around us.

  I turned my head to the left, where Philippe lay catching his breath.

  “I think I may have peed myself,” I said.

  “Me too,” he replied.

  39

  Back In Manchester

  I sat inside the city-centre coffee shop watching the rain bounce down outside, dressed as Katerina. White dress. Black boots. Grey mackintosh. And a bit of bling.

  I was back on the healthy eating, so I stuck to OJ and carrot cake. Well, anything with carrot had to be healthy, right?

  The target wasn’t there yet, but I’d tracked them unseen all the way from their home on the bus, using a few of my new spy skills. Tradecraft, as Philippe called it.

  I knew their movements well and I gave it five minutes before they turned up here, ordering a cinnamon swirl and a mochachoccawhatever.

  My phone pinged. You have 1 new email.

  I opened it up. It said: Something you might find interesting. From your friends in low places.

  It was Giles. He and his hacker mates were busy cracking their way into the flash-drive files I’d sent him.

  Beneath the message was a picture of a yacht called Naughty Boy, and a file attached at the bottom. I’d open it later when I was back on my laptop.

  Thanx, I replied. Spk soon. Lx

  I took a bite out of my cake. It was sweet and nutty and made a nice change to cabbage surprise.

  The TV on the wall showed a muted version of BBC News 24. Scenes of devastation in San Francisco. Talk of rebuilding the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Then the on-going Yo’ Mama stand-off between the US and China over the assassination of Chien Hung Su, his body washed up on a remote Taiwan beach.

  I felt sorry for him, even if he had been sticking it in places he shouldn’t. I mean, the poor guy had a wife and kids. I wondered if we could have done more. Whether I was partly to blame.

  WORLD ON THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR? another headline yelled. Russia blamed for failed terror plot on German parliament.

  And on a lighter note, here was a nice little viral ditty about a pair of skydivers landing on a cruise ship.

  Luckily it was shaky phone cam. You couldn’t see our faces. Just two bodies dropping out of the sky.

  Meanwhile, the Spider’s Web explosion in Alaska had been passed off as an accident at a remote energy project. It was amazing how much of the news JPAC created. Giles was right about that too.

  Right on cue, the target appeared in the doorway. A girl in a skin-tight red dress and wedge heels, peeling off a tight leather jacket and shaking out a pink umbrella. Checking her hair in the reflection of the counter.

  I was sitting near the back of the coffee shop, out of her eyeline. I watched her get her cinnamon swirl and drink, and then grab a booth by the window.

  I’d forgotten how totally fuck yeah she was. But it was more than just the stunning looks that had me hooked. It was the way she walked, the way she talked. The way a strand of hair always seemed to dangle off her face. And the way she tucked it back behind her ear. Even if the backstabbing bitch had slagged me off all over the internet.

  I wiped the crumbs from my mouth and took the plunge.

  I slid inside the booth across from her.

  “Hey, stranger,” I said.

  Becki jumped in her seat. A little bum-hop as she dropped her swirl, the natural tan draining from her cheeks.

  “Shit, are you a ghost?” she asked.

  “Um, no.”

  “But you’re dead. The letter. Your Auntie.”

  I padded myself up and down. “Nope, definitely alive.”

  “You’re here to kill me, aren’t you? Look, I didn’t write those things on your Facebook,” she said. “My account was hacked. I think it must have been one of Dave Lee’s mates.”

  “It’s okay,” I smiled. “I know you wouldn’t—”

  Yeah, right, Lorna Liar. Hang your head in shame.

  “So what the hell happened?” Becki asked. “Where have you been? And what about your new hair colour? You look super-lush. And the dress. Where did you get it?”

  “Listen,” I said, glancing around the coffee shop, “I can’t tell you much, but I didn’t kill my auntie—”

  “I knew it was bullshit,” Becki said, reaching out and touching me on the arm, making my skin tingle.

  “I’m really sorry about your auntie,” she said. “If there’s anything I can do …”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay … Thing is, I’m kind of a spy now.”

  Becki got all excited. “Fuck you! Really?”

  “Well,” I said, “not a spy exactly. More of an assassin slash saboteur. Truth is, I haven’t thought of a name for it yet. But that’s all I can say and you can’t tell anyone. It’s for your own protection.”

  Becki took another bite of her swirl and talked through the mushed-up pastry. “Little Lorna Walker. International badass. So are you back for long?”

  “That kind of depends,” I said.

  I didn’t know how to say the next bit. “Listen, Becks, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “Uh-hum?” she said, sipping on her drink and picking up a foam moustache.

  “You’ve got a bit of something …”

  �
�Where?”

  I took a napkin off the table and reached over. I dabbed away the foam and we looked into each other’s eyes, invisible electric zapping between us. Or was I imagining it? It wasn’t like with Alexei, where I knew for sure it was a two-way thing.

  I sat back down.

  “Thanks,” Becki said with a sugar-sweet smile and a tuck of the hair.

  “Thing is,” I said, starting over, “you remember that night at yours, before everything went, you know … And we, you know …”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And you said it was just … And I said, yeah, it was, um …”

  “Uh-huh?” Becki stared at me intently with those big, shiny greens, waiting for me to get to the point.

  “Well,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I might be wrong, but I think we have something. What I mean is, I really, kinda, sorta like you.”

  “Aw, so sweet,” she said, touching my hand. “I really, kinda, sorta like you too.”

  “You do?”

  “Course,” Becki said.

  “Wow. Great. So do you want to, you know, maybe—”

  I looked up as I said it, but my painstakingly planned, horrendously delivered speech bounced right off her.

  “Gregg!” she yelped, smiling and waving across the coffee shop.

  She shoved up and in slid Gregg. Tall, dark, tanned and muscle-bound in a white vest. A stubbly jaw chiselled from stone and enough aftershave to gas a small horse.

  “Hey, babe,” he said.

  “Hey, babe,” she said back.

  Hey, babe? Since when does she say “Hey, babe”?

  She planted a smacker on him, leaving a faint red film around his lips. He grinned at me with Hollywood teeth and condescending eyes.

  “Who’ve we got here?” he asked.

  Part of me hated him. Part of me found him vaguely attractive. Which made me hate him even more. But not as much as I hated myself.

  “Gregg, this is my mate Lorna. Lorna, this is my new man, Gregg.”

  I was her mate. Gregg was her man. Case fucking closed.