by Andrew Lane
Rhino and Gecko followed the airport cargo vehicle and its train of cages. It headed across a stretch of tarmac towards a hangar. The hangar’s doors were wide open and its interior was brightly lit. There were men inside, working on a set of crates that had already been delivered by another airport cargo vehicle, which was just pulling away. At the back of the hangar Gecko noticed a parked black van. Two men in dark windcheaters were taking crates from nearby wire cages and putting them into the back of the van. They didn’t look like normal airport personnel: they weren’t wearing brightly coloured overalls, or carrying ear defenders, like the other people Gecko had seen around.
Rhino waved at the nearest overalled man. ‘Excuse me!’ he called. ‘Do you speak English?’
‘Yes, a little,’ the man said in a thickly accented voice. He was burly and hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. He was carrying a clipboard holding several sheets of paper.
‘I’m looking for my cargo.’
‘Cannot take cargo now,’ the man said, shaking his head. ‘It needs to be processed. Customs, you know? Paperwork needs to be checked.’
‘I just want to make sure that it’s made it from London all right. We had a change of planes at Frankfurt. I guess there’s a chance it got left behind.’ Rhino took a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and held it in front of the airport worker’s face. ‘Here’s the reference number.’
The man glanced at it, and frowned. He checked the number against one on the clipboard he was carrying. ‘That cargo is not yours,’ he said, glancing suspiciously at the two of them.
‘I’ve got the paperwork,’ Rhino said, frowning. ‘That proves it’s mine.’
‘The cargo is not yours,’ the cargo worker insisted.
‘Then whose is it?’
He pointed across to the back of the hangar, where the two men in dark windcheaters were loading the last of their crates into their van. ‘Is theirs,’ the cargo worker said. ‘They have customs exemption form. They have reference number. They take crates now.’
Rhino reached out and grabbed the man by the front of his overalls. ‘You gave them my cargo? How much did they pay you?’
‘They had paperwork!’ the man protested. He shrugged, avoiding Rhino’s fierce gaze. ‘And they paid me five hundred American dollars.’
Rhino released him, pushing him away. The man staggered back a few paces. Rhino turned towards where the two men with the van were just sliding the last crate in place. ‘Excuse me – can I have a word?’
The men looked at each other, slammed the back door down and ran for the front of the van.
‘Hey!’ Rhino shouted. He broke into a run.
The van’s engine started. Tyres smoking as they spun against the tarmac, the van accelerated. There was no direct route to the exit – the van would have to manoeuvre around several obstructions, and that meant they might just have a chance of stopping it.
Gecko glanced around, wondering what to do. He felt suddenly helpless.
The van slowed down to get past one of the airport cargo vehicles, almost giving Rhino time to catch up with it before it accelerated away from him again.
Gecko saw that there was an empty lone wire cage over near the hangar doors. It must have become detached from its cargo vehicle. Between him and it was a pyramidal pile of differently sized crates that had been stacked up higgledy-piggledy, like a gigantic Tetris game gone wrong. The pile was four crates high. Without quite knowing what he was going to do, Gecko sprinted towards the pile. As he was running, he was calculating angles and speeds in his mind. There was no time to go around the pile – the van would be out of the hangar by the time he got to the doors. He had to go over.
Gecko vaulted on to the first crate and scrambled up on top of the second one. He could feel rough wood and splinters beneath his hands. Regardless, he pulled himself up on top of the third crate. He could hear the van on the other side of the crates now, its engine revving hard as it tried to build up speed and drive out of the warehouse. He thudded his shoulder against the topmost crate and pushed hard.
For a moment he thought the crate was going to stay exactly where it was, but then he felt it move. He pushed harder. With a grating of wood on wood, the crate slid forward.
Somewhere behind him, Gecko could hear the cargo workers shouting. Ignoring them, he put his entire weight into pushing the crate.
It got to the edge of the crate on which it was resting, teetered for a moment and then fell. Gecko’s momentum almost carried him with it. He flailed his arms, trying to shift his centre of gravity backwards.
The crate toppled almost in slow motion. It hit the corner of a lower crate and spun. With it out of the way, Gecko was now on top of the pile. He saw the van heading towards the hangar doors with Rhino in pursuit, and saw the crate fall directly in its path.
The driver spun his steering wheel at the last moment, and the van skidded into a turn. The crate hit the ground and smashed, spilling its contents all over the place. They looked like parts for some industrial machine.
Rhino got to the van just as it was turning, but he was on the passenger side, not the driver’s side. He wrenched the door open and grabbed the passenger. The man lashed out with his hand, catching Rhino on the forehead, but Rhino’s left hand was pulling the man out while his right hand was reaching across to slam down on the seat-belt release. The release gave way and the man seemed to fly out of the van.
The driver must have put his foot on the accelerator because the van suddenly sprang forward, leaving Rhino behind but letting the unlocked rear door fly up. The vehicle skidded around the fallen crate, straightened up and headed directly for the hangar doors.
Gecko glanced around, sizing up his options. Without really thinking, he leaped from the pile of crates to the cab of a stationary airport cargo vehicle. His foot caught on the orange roof light, and he almost fell, but he leaped from the top of the cab to the bonnet and from the bonnet to the ground.
He was almost at the hangar’s exit now. The van was heading towards him from his left. He grabbed at the lone empty wire cage he had seen a few seconds ago. It was on wheels, and he pushed it as hard as he could.
The wire cage rolled into the path of the van. Gecko leaped back out of the way as the van smashed into it. The driver threw his hands up to protect his face as the cage flipped into the air and hit the windscreen. The van braked hard, the wire cage rolled past it and out of the way, and the driver pressed his foot on the accelerator again to send the vehicle springing forward. Gecko swore in Brazilian, thinking that he had failed in his attempt to stop it from driving out of the hangar, but he had delayed it just long enough for Rhino to get to the back of the van. The door was still hanging open, and Rhino jumped inside. As the van zoomed past Gecko, the Brazilian boy saw Rhino pulling himself hand over hand into the back. Rhino was trying to avoid the cargo crates as they slid around and threatened to crush him.
Gecko watched in amazement as Rhino clambered over the last crate and got to the back of the driver’s seat. It was difficult to tell at that distance, but Gecko thought he saw Rhino lock his right arm round the driver’s neck. The van slewed left, slowed down and came to a stop with its rear doors and passenger door flapping.
Gecko glanced back into the hangar. The cargo workers were watching in dumbfounded amazement. Fortunately, none of them were phoning for help.
He looked back towards the van just in time to see Rhino fly out of the open passenger door. There must have been some kind of fight going on in the cab, because the driver jumped out of the other side and sprinted across the tarmac towards darkness and safety. He had blood on his face.
Gecko ran towards where Rhino was lying on the ground. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Strong punch,’ Rhino said as Gecko got to him. ‘I think he had a knuckleduster or something.’ He put a hand up to his forehead and touched it gingerly. When he took it away, there was blood on his fingers. ‘Ouch.’
‘Stay there,’ Gecko said. ‘I’ll
get medical help.’
‘Don’t do that,’ Rhino said. He climbed to his feet. ‘I’m just bruised and battered, not seriously injured. I’ve got worse injuries than this on a Friday night in Hereford town centre.’ He glanced back into the warehouse. ‘What happened to the other guy?’
Gecko shrugged. ‘I did not see.’
‘OK.’ Rhino handed over the paper he had taken from his pocket earlier on and showed it to the cargo handler. ‘This is the cargo manifest for our stuff. You check the crates in the back. I want to know if anything is missing. I’ll go and check on the passenger, and sort things out with the cargo guys.’
As Rhino limped off, Gecko climbed into the back of the van. It looked like a cross between a minibus and a cargo shifter.
He stared at the crates. Each one had a stencilled reference number on it, and – wonder of wonders – the crates had all been stacked with their reference numbers the right way up. He set about cross-referencing the numbers on the crates with the numbers on the manifest.
He was just finishing when Rhino returned.
‘What’s the story?’ Rhino asked.
‘There are two crates missing, I think,’ Gecko replied.
‘It’s OK – I know where they are. The two thieves left them behind when they realized we’d rumbled them. They’re sitting back there in the hangar.’
Gecko glanced into the brightly lit interior of the hangar. ‘What about the second man?’
‘No sign of him. I think he decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and legged it as fast as he could.’
‘And the cargo handlers?’
‘I’ve explained the way things are to them. They’ll forget about everything they’ve seen if we don’t report to their superiors that they took a bribe to turn a blind eye while someone tried to steal our stuff.’
‘Which does raise the question,’ Gecko said, ‘why were they stealing our stuff?’
Rhino shrugged. ‘Two options – either they didn’t know what it was and just decided to take a pile of crates away and see what they’d got, or they deliberately stole our stuff because it was ours.’
‘They had a fake manifest with our reference number,’ Gecko pointed out, ‘and they had already faked a customs exemption form. They knew that our crates were going to be there, and they deliberately chose to take them.’
Rhino nodded. ‘That’s right. And it does raise the question – why us?’
Gecko looked around. ‘We are not going to report this to the police, are we?’
‘That would cause more trouble than it would solve. We’d get tied up in witness statements and all kinds of paperwork that would just slow us down. Best thing is to just accept it and move on.’ He patted the side of the van. ‘But look on the bright side – we don’t have to hire a van tomorrow. We’ve already got one!’
Gecko stared at the van, then at Rhino. ‘But it is not ours!’
‘Do you really think the current owners are going to come back for it?’
‘But – what if they stole it, and the police arrest us for stealing?’
‘Those two took the trouble to fake our manifest and a customs exemption form. That shows forethought and planning. They wouldn’t have done anything as stupid as to drive around in a stolen van. No, this will have been purchased on the quiet, from some small second-hand dealership. It’ll be legitimate. And we won’t need it for more than a few days.’ He glanced at it appreciatively. ‘Mitsubishi Delica, diesel engine, four-wheel drive. Engine beneath the front passenger seat. Rails so that you can fit anything up to six extra seats in the back, so they’re surprisingly versatile as well as being powerful. I’ve seen these things used to pull Land Rovers out of mud. They’re nippy, they’re strong and they’re surprisingly comfortable. I might just keep this thing, if I can work out a way to get it back to England.’ He smiled. ‘And the thieves have packed all but two crates already for us. That was considerate.’
Gecko still had an uncomfortable feeling in his chest. ‘I would still like to know what they were doing, stealing our equipment.’
‘If I had to make a guess,’ Rhino answered thoughtfully, ‘I’d say that they somehow heard about ARLENE and decided that they wanted to get hold of some semi-secret US government equipment. They could probably sell it on the black market for millions of dollars. The Chinese or the North Koreans would sell their own honourable ancestors to get hold of it.’
‘There is another possibility,’ Gecko pointed out.
‘What’s that?’
‘They might have been targeting us, rather than the equipment. They might have found out about the expedition and they are trying to stop us.’
‘Why would anyone want to stop an expedition to find a possible ape-man creature that probably doesn’t exist anyway?’
‘I do not know.’ Gecko shrugged, then caught up with Rhino’s last statement. ‘What, you do not think we’re going to find this Almast thing?’
‘I have to say, it’s possibly the most unlikely thing I’ve heard apart from the Loch Ness Monster. I mean, what are the odds of there being a missing link, a real Neanderthal, living quietly here in the foothills? Surely someone would have spotted these Almasti creatures before now.’
‘Not if they are avoiding humans. So, if you do not believe in the Almasti, what are you doing here?’
‘I’m earning money, and keeping my head down,’ Rhino replied brutally. ‘What’s your excuse? Are you going along with it because you have a desperate desire to find new species and expand the frontiers of biology?’
Gecko opened his mouth to answer, then realized that he didn’t know what to say. Did he really believe in the Almasti, or was he just going along on the expedition to get away from the men who wanted him to be their pet thief?
Rhino had been watching Gecko’s face. ‘OK, you’re here because you’re running away from something, not because you believe in Calum Challenger’s cause. Natalie we already know about – she’s only here because her mother ordered her to come along. So what about Tara? I get the impression that unknown animals aren’t exactly her cup of tea. I suspect she prefers circuit boards and computer code to mythical ape-men.’
‘She is . . . trying to avoid getting involved with a company that . . . that wants to use her skills,’ Gecko explained haltingly. He wasn’t sure how much Tara would want Rhino to know about Nemor, or how much she had already told him when they were in America.
‘OK, so she’s been pushed on to the expedition by circumstances, not pulled on by a love of extinct animals and dubious DNA benefits.’ Rhino sighed. ‘So the only person who really believes in the purpose of this expedition is the one who’s not here. Great.’ He thumped the side of the van. ‘Normally I love a challenge, but this is going too far. Come on, let’s get back to the others and drive them into town. We still have an expedition to plan and execute, even if nobody actually believes in it.’
Gecko climbed into the passenger seat, shocked by Rhino’s attitude. Maybe he’d been guilty himself of not thinking too much about what the four of them were doing, or how quickly they had been pulled together by Calum’s enthusiasm, but the thought that none of them actually wanted to be there was surprisingly hurtful.
How, he wondered, could they possibly pull this expedition off successfully if none of them believed in it?
CHAPTER
eleven
‘Watch out!’ Natalie shouted.
The taxi driver didn’t seem to hear her. He just headed straight for the cars ahead. He even seemed to accelerate.
Her mother put her hand reassuringly on Natalie’s knee. ‘Don’t worry, darling – he knows what he’s doing.’
‘I don’t care whether he knows what he’s doing or not,’ Natalie snapped, hearing the edge of panic in her voice. ‘What he’s doing is going to get us killed!’
As the car hurtled towards the line of traffic, a gap appeared at the last minute. The driver spun the steering wheel and the car slewed right, slotting neatly
into the gap. Matching speeds with precision, he joined the flow. There wasn’t even a blare of horns to mark his sudden arrival. It seemed as if the other drivers regarded it is something normal.
‘There are only a couple of rules of driving in Georgia, as far as I can tell,’ Gillian Livingstone said calmly. ‘The first is that if there’s a gap, your car can fit into it. The second is that there’s always a gap, even if you have to make it yourself. Oh, and the third is that nobody has priority at junctions, which means in practice that everyone has priority, and uses it.’
Natalie shivered. ‘I hate this place.’
‘You hate everywhere that isn’t Los Angeles. And when you’re in Los Angeles you hate it there as well.’
Natalie didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she looked out of the car’s window at the sights of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia.
The city was, she had to admit, striking. It was a riot of bright colours. The buildings were not just painted in different colours, but designed in different styles as well. Some were tall and thin, some short and wide; some had complicated rooflines and some were flat; some had lots of small windows and some had a handful of big ones. There was no pattern, no uniformity, apart from the fact that all the buildings had balconies beneath their windows, usually with vases, a cat and some washing. People seemed to have just built what they liked where they liked, but rather than being a mess the results were surprisingly attractive.
And there were no gaps, Natalie noticed. In New York it seemed as if every big building was separated from its neighbours by sidewalks, alleyways or stretches of grass, but here the buildings all ran together into a continuous frontage. Looking closer, Natalie could see where there might have been gaps, at one time, but someone had come along and built thin buildings in the gaps, or linked the two sides with a stretch of differently coloured wall with a gateway in it.
It was chaotic, but at the same time it was charming.
‘This city is a mess,’ she said dismissively. After all, she didn’t want to give her mother the idea that she had anything but contempt for the places to which she was taken.
