by Chris Ryan
'So we've got fifty minutes to live,' Angelo stated dramatically.
His words had an immediate effect on Ben. He was suddenly filled with rage, with an absolute determination to get out of here. He stood up and started to pull at the rope with the full weight of his body. It did nothing, and he cursed.
'Cosa fai?' Angelo asked, clearly alerted by the sound of Ben moving. 'What are you doing?'
'Get up,' Ben said. 'Walk towards me. If we can get close enough, maybe we can undo each other.' Deep down he knew they weren't close enough. But they were desperate and anything was worth a try.
There was a scuffling sound as Angelo hurried to his feet. 'Where are you?' he asked.
'Here,' Ben announced as he stepped blindly in Angelo's direction. It only took a few paces, however, before he felt the pull of the rope and was unable to walk any further.
'It's no good,' Angelo announced. 'We're too far apart.'
Ben had to concede that it was true. 'There must be some way out,' he raged. 'There must be something we can do.' Backing up in the direction of the control bench, he groped in the dark as well as his bound hands could manage, hoping to find something sharp against which to slice the rope. But there was nothing.
Elsewhere in the room he could sense Angelo beginning to panic.
'It's no good,' the Italian wailed. 'We're going to die.' A brief moment of silence, and then: 'Do you think it will hurt, Ben? When the factory explodes, I mean. Do you think we will feel it?'
Ben felt the muscles in his face set into an expression of determination. 'We're not going to die,' he said from behind gritted teeth. 'We're going to get out of here somehow.' He tugged sharply at the rope yet again, but still nothing happened.
Angelo's voice became angry. 'What do you mean, we're going to get out of here? It's useless, Ben. Can't you see that? We've been lucky so far today, but this is it. There's nothing we can do! We might as well just sit here and wait for it to happen.'
And it was at just that moment that Ben's eyes were blinded.
He screwed his eyes closed and bowed his head as the pain of the sudden bright light subsided. Then, gingerly, he looked back towards where the light had come from. The door was open and standing there, illuminated from behind by the bright beams of a vehicle's headlamps, was a figure. For several seconds it did not move — it just stood there, a dark silhouette — and Ben felt a curious mixture of relief and fear. Then it stepped to one side, disappearing from Ben's vision.
'Help us!' Ben called. 'We're tied up. You have to…'
He stopped as the main lights flickered on.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to get used to the brightness, and a few more to make out the features of the man standing there.
He had tanned skin and dark hair that was dishevelled from being out in the wind and the rain. His clothes were soaked and he had an urgent, uncertain look in his brown eyes. He was looking not at Ben, but at Angelo, and he was breathing heavily.
'Danny,' the two of them whispered in unison.
Danny stood there, as though lost for words.
'Danny,' Ben urged. He felt like he was on the edge of a precipice — any minute now he could fall to his death. 'You've got to untie us. This place could blow any minute.'
Danny barely blinked.
'You've got to help us, Danny.' As he spoke, Ben struggled to free himself from the ropes, but of course it was useless.
Danny took three uncertain steps towards Angelo. When he finally spoke, his voice was strangled.
'You said you can speak to your father?' he asked.
Angelo nodded mutely.
'And what will you tell him?'
The Italian boy blinked and Ben held his breath. It was all up to Angelo now; all up to his dishevelled friend who only a second ago had been wailing with panic. Ben willed him to say the right thing — whatever that was.
'I will tell him,' Angelo replied, 'what has happened to me. I will tell him that I nearly died. And I will tell him that it is his fault and that if he does not stop doing the things that he is doing, he is no longer my father and I am no longer his son.'
Angelo stared at Danny, a wide-eyed, open stare that made it clear he meant what he said. Danny returned that gaze with a look that expressed a world of doubt and indecision.
And then he stepped forward.
'Turn round,' he told Angelo.
The Italian boy did as he was told. Ben watched as Danny started to untie the knot that bound him. Within seconds Angelo was uncoiling himself and Danny was working on Ben's ropes. 'We've got to stop this happening,' Ben said before he was even free. 'Danny, do you know where the bomb is? He said he had a detonator, but if we can get the explosives away from the refinery…'
He was untied now, so he spun round to uncoil himself.
Danny was ashen-faced and Ben noticed that his hands were shaking. 'I'm sorry,' Danny started to say. 'You tried to stop me, but I wouldn't listen…'
Ben took a deep breath, stepped over to Danny and held him by the shoulders. 'Forget about it,' he told the man sincerely. 'It's water under the bridge and we've got other things to concentrate on. The explosives, Danny. Do you know where they are?'
Danny shook his head. 'All I know,' he replied, 'is that there's more than one of them.'
'More than one? How many?'
'I don't know.' As he spoke, the tower above them creaked ominously once more.
'We need to get out of here, Ben,' Angelo said urgently. He was already halfway to the door.
Ben felt as if untying the rope had freed his mind as well as his body. All the possible scenarios seemed to be flashing through his head. 'We don't know how much time we've got,' he announced quickly. 'This place is massive — without knowing where the devices are, we'll never find them in time.' He looked at the others. 'Get to the truck!' he yelled. 'The mercenary said he had a remote detonator. The only way we can stop the refinery from blowing is by catching up with him and getting hold of the detonator.'
They were all moving towards the door now, but Angelo looked at Ben as if he was mad. 'But we don't know where he is!' he shouted.
'Yes we do,' Ben yelled as they ran outside into the rain.
Angelo looked at him in confusion. 'Where?'
'The Keys. He told Danny to head for the Keys, remember? The Florida Keys — it's a series of long, thin islands to the south of here.'
'Ben's right,' Danny barked. 'He'll definitely be heading south. We need to hurry.'
Instinctively, Ben ran round to the driver's side of the car; as he did so, he heard Danny shouting.
'No, Ben,' he yelled. 'I need to drive.'
'Why?'
'Think about it. If we catch up with him, we'll need to get him to stop. He'll only do that if he thinks it's just me in the truck.'
Ben narrowed his eyes slightly. He still didn't quite trust Danny, but he had to agree that he was right: the mercenary wasn't simply going to pull over just because Ben and Angelo were asking him nicely. He looked at the back of the pick-up. It was swimming with water and the rear guard was rattling ominously in the wind. It didn't look like the most luxurious way to travel. In fact, it would be positively dangerous — exposed to the elements they would be at risk from the flying debris and whatever else the storm hurled at them.
'We could travel in the front and just keep our heads down,' Angelo suggested.
Ben thought about it. 'No,' he decided finally. 'I don't think so. If the pick-up comes to a stop, we need to be properly out of sight. The back of the truck's the only real option.'
Angelo didn't argue. Together they climbed up into the rear of the pick-up. Their clothes were wet already, so it didn't matter that they found themselves sitting in cold water; but it still promised to be a bruising, uncomfortable ride.
'I'll go as fast as I can,' Danny shouted at them. 'If we're going to catch up with him I need to put my foot down. You'll have to hold on tightly.'
Ben looked around. There really didn't seem to be m
uch they could hold onto.
'Do you know what he's driving?' Angelo asked.
Danny shook his head. 'The roads are clear, though. We'll just have to hope we can stop him.'
Suddenly a memory popped into Ben's head. He looked at Angelo. 'Just before he left us, do you remember him saying something about having to get hold of a vehicle?'
Angelo winced. 'I was a bit distracted…'
'He did,' Ben shouted. 'Danny, look for a big truck, like the ones we've seen here. That's what he'll be driving — I'm sure of it.'
Danny nodded and without another word disappeared into the front of the truck. The engine spluttered slightly, then started turning over. They moved off.
Ben could tell that Danny was having the same trouble he himself had encountered in keeping the vehicle straight in the wind. Their bodies banged painfully against the hard metal sides of the pick-up as the vehicle rocked from side to side and Ben found himself slipping and sliding on the wet surface. He clutched onto the edge of the truck. If they approached the mercenary, they'd have to duck down, but for now this would be OK. He saw that Angelo was doing the same thing, and the wind screamed in their ears as they clung grimly to the side of the truck.
Ben tried not to look at the dead body as they approached it again, but somehow he found his eyes glued to that grisly sight. As they passed, he wondered who the dead man was. Did he have a family? Children? Had he come to work that morning thinking that today would be just another day? He noticed that Angelo could not take his eyes off the dead man either. Surely his Italian friend's feelings were even more complicated than Ben's. This was his father's refinery; his father's workforce. The man lying dead on the ground had even less reason to be killed than Angelo. It was an uncomfortable thought.
Five people in Ben's immediate vicinity had died that day: the two pilots, the bodyguard, the hijacker and this guy. The body count was mounting and it was not lost on Ben that he and the other two people in the truck were the only ones who could stop it from getting any worse. He fixed that thought in his mind as the corpse disappeared into the distance.
The fence at the boundary of the oil refinery, which had held up to the winds when they arrived, was now flattened, and the remains of the barrier that Ben had smashed through had long since blown away in the wind. It was an alarming sight, of course, but somehow Ben felt a bit better crossing over the boundary of the refinery. If it blew up any time soon, they'd be dead in seconds, but at least they were getting away. He took a deep breath and looked out into the distance.
It all happened in a few seconds. The sky almost appeared to part — in truth it was just a momentary clearing of the cloud cover. The moon, bright and full, appeared. It lit them up brightly and Ben was half aware of its reflection on the water that had collected in the back of the truck. He blinked, then stared as the whole sky seemed suddenly to be illuminated. After the darkness and the rain it was an extraordinary sight. Like the sun coming up.
But it was not the moon itself that commanded Ben's attention.
It was something else.
It was impossible to tell how close it was or even, in the first instant, what it was. It towered in the distance: a great black funnel with a bulbous, mushroom-like top. How high up into the sky it reached, Ben could never have said, but it seemed to reach halfway up to heaven. It sent a chill through his blood, and yet he was transfixed by it: transfixed by the way it seemed to shimmy, snake-like, from side to side; transfixed by the absolute enormity and absolute terror of it; transfixed by the way it seemed to be moving at once infinitely slowly and impossibly quickly, a colossus of pent-up power, heading straight for them, ready to strike.
The very sight made his breath catch in his throat and he felt, for one horrible moment, as though he would be sick with fear.
'What is it?' he heard Angelo scream.
Ben couldn't take his eyes away from that awesome sight. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the moon retreated behind some fast-scudding clouds and Ben's vision was obscured once more. He turned to look at Angelo and uttered a single word.
'Tornado.'
And then, because he realized he had barely whispered it and that Angelo could never have heard what he said, he repeated himself.
'Tornado!'
The two friends looked at each other in horror. The words they had heard on the radio were ringing in Ben's ears: Hurricane Jasmine has spawned a severe tornado, category F3, currently approaching the south-eastern Florida area. It is fast-moving and extremely destructive. He had no idea what category F3 meant, but if what he had just seen was anything to go by, it meant something bad. The twister looked as if it could eat up the oil refinery and spew it out in seconds. Just imagine, he thought to himself, what it could do if the place were on fire…
He shook his head as though waking from a dream. Up until then he had forgotten all about the tornado. Not any more, though. The thing he had just seen was huge.
Terrifyingly huge.
He closed his eyes and pictured the geography of Florida. The Keys were to the south-east — exactly the direction in which the tornado was heading. The hurricane might be moving north, but now they had something different to contend with. Something bigger. Something more destructive.
Ben could hardly believe it was possible, but from what he had just seen, his day was about to get even worse.
Chapter Eighteen
The storm had thrown problems in his way, there had been no doubt about that. But it had made certain things easier too.
The fact that the refinery had been deserted, for instance, had been a definite advantage. No creeping around, no having to stay hidden, fewer bullets in fewer skulls. It wasn't that he minded killing people, but it definitely attracted attention and that would only have made things harder. And according to his original plan, depending on whether or not Danny had turned up with the boy, he would have had to wait until he had skulked out of the boundary of the refinery before carjacking a vehicle. It would have meant the police would have been on the lookout for him, of course, but that wouldn't have mattered. By the time the refinery had gone bang, they would have had bigger fish to fry than the problem of a stolen car.
The storms, however, had meant that he could take his pick of the vehicles inside the actual refinery. OK, they weren't likely to be zippy little sports cars but that didn't matter. As long as they got him away from the area, he was happy.
He had left the kids in the control room about five minutes ago and frankly he had been glad to see the back of them. Mouthy little fools. Arrogant. Stupid. Thinking they could stop him from doing his job with their silly little arguments and their pathetic pleas. The world would be a better place without them, he thought to himself as he scanned the surrounding area for something to drive.
It wasn't long before his eyes fell upon a suitable vehicle. It was an articulated lorry without its load — just the cab and nothing behind it. He nodded briefly to himself and then hurried through the rain to the driver's door. It felt good to climb inside out of the elements, even though his clothes were still sopping wet and he was chilled to the bone. He ignored all that, though. He carefully placed his bag on the passenger seat, then leaned to one side and ripped off the plastic plating that covered the area under the steering wheel. It only took him a minute or so to locate the two wires he needed to hotwire the truck, and seconds later the engine was turning over.
He nodded with satisfaction, then drove towards the exit.
It was difficult to keep the truck steady on account of the wind, so he drove with care. There was no hurry, after all. Nobody would be taking a sightseeing tour of the refinery just now, so there was no risk that the kids would be rescued. All he had to do was get to a safe distance — out of the way of the refinery and the course of the storms — and then detonate. Deliver the videotape to the newspapers in a day or so and the money would be his.
He left the refinery with a pleasing sense of confidence. Everything was going like clockwork.
There was nothing quite so satisfying as a good day's work.
Danny wasn't wasting any time — Ben thought the pickup was travelling much more quickly than when he himself was driving it. Maybe it just seemed that way: he and Angelo were being thrown around in the back with every sideways movement of the vehicle; and there were plenty of those. His body had taken some serious punishment today; now, though, he felt that it was being bruised beyond recognition.
Still, he wasn't about to complain. They had plenty of reasons to move quickly after all. It was essential that they caught up with the mercenary. The only thing that stood between them and the refinery going up in smoke was a tiny remote detonator. As they drove, nightmare flashes shrieked through Ben's mind of the man silently flicking the small switch that would cause untold disaster; when that happened, he found himself urging Danny to speed faster through the storm.
They had to stop him.
They had to.
But they had more than one reason for urging Danny on. The tornado — that massive, ugly giant that had flashed into their vision for only a few seconds — was following them. They couldn't see it; they couldn't even hear it above the rest of the storm. But it was there, like a stranger in the night creeping after them with a murderous intent. The very thought of it made Ben shudder and grip onto the edge of the pick-up truck that little bit more tightly.
He looked over at Angelo. His Italian friend was also hugging the edge of the truck, his long, dark hair blowing wildly in the screaming wind. Despite the terrifying scenario, however, Ben thought he could see a change in him. For the last few hours, he had seemed like all the fight had left him. He had seemed broken. But now there was a new determination about him. He had his head leaning over the edge of the pick-up truck and he was looking forward, not back.
They drove for a good twenty minutes without seeing another moving vehicle. As they wavered down the road, Ben suddenly panicked. What if they were heading in the wrong direction? What if the mercenary wasn't driving south at all? He tried to put that thought from his mind. He had to be. He wasn't stupid enough to follow the direction of the hurricane, was he? Not that it could be worse anywhere else than it was here. Along the sides of the road were signs of the devastation the storm had caused. Cars were upturned and roofs were flapping in the wind. There were no lights on anywhere, nor any sign of people. Ben wondered how long it would take to clear up this destruction. Months, probably. Years.
