by Chris Ryan
He was still clutching the detonator.
'I can't hold on much longer, Ben,' he shouted urgently. 'Take it! Take the detonator! We can't let it fall into the water with me.'
As he spoke, Angelo's grip faltered. Half of his face disappeared behind the barrier, leaving only his eyes in view. They were urgent and terrified as he waved the detonator in the air.
Ben knew he was right. He knew he should grab the detonator first. But somehow he simply couldn't. He fixed Angelo with a steely, determined stare, then used his good arm to clutch onto his friend's wrist — the one that was holding the barrier.
'Let go,' he hissed. 'I can't pull you back if you're still holding on.'
Angelo hesitated.
'Let go!' Ben insisted. It was a leap of faith, he knew that. But it was one that had to be made.
Angelo's fingers relaxed; all of a sudden, Ben was supporting all his friend's weight.
Then he pulled.
Battered and exhausted, Ben felt like he had no strength in him, but he didn't give up. One-handed, he tugged at Angelo's arm with every last bit of power he possessed, slowly dragging his friend — and the detonator — over the barrier towards him. On the fringes of his vision was the tornado, watching over them, waiting to strike; and all around them were the sounds and sights of the storm and the raging seas.
Ben ignored it all. He ignored the pain in his broken arm; he ignored the spray that was all around them. He just pulled for all he was worth.
It took nearly a minute to haul Angelo in. The Italian boy fell heavily onto the ground, but he did not let go of the detonator. He lay on his back, panting; but there was still no time to rest. The very moment Angelo was on the road, Ben's attention was elsewhere.
The tornado was coming. They had to get away.
'Get in the truck,' Ben bellowed. 'You'll have to drive — I can't with this broken arm.' He winced as he spoke, trying to ignore the wooziness that was creeping over his body.
Angelo struggled to his feet and together they hurried to the pick-up. 'I can't,' he replied as they ran. 'I've never driven. I don't know how.'
They were at the truck now. Ben looked nervously once more at the tornado. 'When that thing gets here,' he shouted, 'it's going to rip up everything in its path.' He turned to Angelo. 'All right,' he shouted. 'I'll drive. But you'll have to help me.'
Angelo looked unsure of himself, but he nodded and they both jumped into the pick-up.
It was saturated inside, dripping like the inside of a shower cubicle. Ben sat behind the wheel, his broken arm hanging limply by his side, then awkwardly used his other hand to turn the ignition. The engine coughed and spluttered, but it did not turn over.
Ben cursed, then tried again.
Nothing.
He looked at Angelo. 'I can't keep doing this,' he said. 'I'll flood the engine.'
'Er, Ben,' Angelo said tensely. 'We haven't really got time to wait for this thing to dry out. Either we get it going, or we run.'
The two of them looked at the road ahead. It stretched off into the darkness: neither of them needed to say out loud that if they tried to do it on foot, they'd never make it.
Ben took a deep breath and turned the key one more time. The engine choked alarmingly but then, suddenly, it sprang into life. They exchanged a relieved glance.
'Knock it into drive,' Ben instructed.
Angelo did as he was told and Ben gingerly moved forward. His arm was shrieking in pain and his whole body was sweating, but he tried to ignore it as he accelerated, and soon they were thundering along the slippery road once again.
Ben did his best not to look in the rear-view mirror, knowing that if he caught another glimpse of the tornado it would do nothing for his concentration. He just kept his eye on the road ahead. Now and then the windscreen would be splattered with sea water and his vision obscured. But he just kept going, keeping the truck straight with his good arm, all the while doing what he could to ignore the pain in his other one.
He could never have kept it up for long. They had been driving for little more than ten minutes when he started to feel faint. His foot slipped from the accelerator; the pick-up started to slow down.
'Don't stop,' Angelo shouted, rousing Ben from his moment of faintness. 'I think I can see land. Keep going.'
Ben's foot felt for the accelerator again; he increased his speed and did everything he could to keep his concentration up. Angelo could clearly tell he was having difficulties, because he kept talking, loudly and in tones of encouragement. Ben had no idea what he was saying, however. He wasn't even listening. He was just concentrating on getting off the Overseas Highway and onto Key Largo.
When he finally saw the first of the Florida Keys, he felt like a condemned man who had been given a last-minute reprieve. A huge billboard flapped in the wind. 'WELCOME TO, KEY LARGO' it read in big, bright letters; but the island didn't look very welcoming. Nowhere looked welcoming in the middle of the night in this kind of weather. Ben was vaguely aware of the wind-devastated buildings up ahead, but he paid them no attention. They were a familiar sight now, after all. The pick-up truck screamed onto dry land and Ben travelled away from the coast for a good couple of minutes before finally allowing his foot to slip from the accelerator. The truck slowed down gradually as Ben coasted along the main road that was still mercifully deserted. And finally it shuddered and stalled to halt.
Ben glanced to one side. Angelo was there, ashen-faced and soaking wet. But in his hand he still held the detonator. Safely. Soundly. Clutching it for all he was worth.
It was the last thing Ben saw before he slumped, exhausted and in agony, over the steering wheel of the vehicle, and then passed out.
Back out at sea, the tornado whirled and twisted. It sucked up huge amounts of sea water and then spat them out again, all the while making its relentless way in the direction of the Overseas Highway.
It reached that huge structure barely minutes after Ben and Angelo had evacuated it. It only took a few seconds to rip up the huge girders of concrete, steel and tar from which the road had been constructed; and only a few seconds to throw it out again, leaving a scene of utter devastation in its wake.
And had anybody been there, they might have noticed a curious thing. It was a truck that seemed to erupt from the murky, stormy waters of the sea, as though it were defying the laws of science and nature and taking flight. It was nature herself, however, who sucked it up into the sky, spun it round like a stone in a sling and then hurled it even further out to sea, where it broke up into a hundred pieces as it slammed against the water.
But nobody was there, and a good thing too. Because no human could have survived standing in the course of that immense, powerful freak of nature.
The twister continued its way out to sea, howling and roaring as it spun into the empty void of the night.
Epilogue
One week later. Miami International Airport.
Angelo had bought Ben a small cup of thick, black Italian coffee, but he didn't really feel like drinking it.
Instead he sat at the edge of the airport café, watching the hubbub all around him.
There was still a sense of repressed panic. Nothing like the aftermath of Hurricane Jasmine, of course. But a sense of panic nevertheless. Florida would take months to recuperate from the effects of the storms, if not years, and they were still in the middle of the hurricane season. Nobody really expected another battering of that magnitude, but still — Ben had the impression that there were some nervous flyers in the airport that day. And he was one of them.
He winced slightly and looked down at his arm. It was encased in plaster from the wrist up to the shoulder. It ached dully, but that wasn't the worst thing: the itchiness of the skin was driving him to distraction. There was no way he could scratch it, though, so he tried to divert his attention by sipping on the coffee. It was incredibly bitter and he pulled a sour face. He liked his Italian friend a lot — after everything they had been through together, they were alm
ost brothers — but the guy had a rotten taste in drinks.
Just then, Angelo reappeared. He was clutching a newspaper as he battled his way through the crowds and he nodded at Ben as he approached and sat down. He pointed at the coffee.
'Not drinking that?'
'Er, no,' Ben replied. 'Delicious and everything, but I just don't fancy it.'
Angelo shrugged, laid the newspaper on the table and downed the coffee in one. Ben glanced at the front page of the paper. The picture it bore was predictable enough. Every newspaper had shown a similar image each day for the past week: the Overseas Highway, battered and destroyed, and the huge gap in the road that had been ripped out by the storms. No one knew how long it would take to repair the road, and everybody was astonished that nobody was reported killed as a result of the disaster — though Ben and Angelo knew better, of course.
The death toll elsewhere, however, had been a different matter. At the latest count 300 people had lost their lives in the storms. An awful statistic, and already people were looking for someone to blame — as if anyone could be blamed for such a freak of nature. Ben couldn't help wondering, though, what the reaction would be if things had gone just a little differently and the South Miami Oil Refinery had turned into a fireball. Even now the thought made him shudder.
It had been an exhausting week. Ben had woken in an ambulance with Angelo by his side. They'd given him morphine for the pain, then plastered his arm in a makeshift hospital that had been set up in a large community centre. They'd stayed there till morning, by which time the storm had abated. Ben and Angelo were then immediately airlifted from Key Largo to the mainland in a military Chinook.
It had seemed odd that they were airlifted before anyone else, but when they saw the three grim-faced FBI officers waiting for them as their helicopter touched down in Miami, it all started making a bit more sense. The FBI men had told him curtly he needed a responsible adult present; Ben had immediately thought of Alec. The old man was walked into the room in which Ben was being held only hours later. He looked tired and stooped; Ben learned that his house had been torn away, but at least he hadn't been hurt. The expression of relief on his face when he saw Ben safe and sound was noticeable.
'I thought you were going to try and stay out of trouble, matey,' he had said as he took Ben's hand, shaken it warmly, then ignored his natural diffidence and given him a hug.
'Yeah,' Ben had replied. 'Well I did try.'
The interrogation took two days. They wanted to know everything: the hijacking, Danny, the mercenary. Ben had wearily told them the whole story, and when he had finished they had made him start all over again. They separated him from Angelo, called him 'kid' and eyed him with mistrust. Even Alec looked as if he thought Ben was embellishing the truth, though loyal to the last he said nothing.
But then reports started to come in: reports that substantiated his story, especially from members of the crew and passengers on their doomed flight, all of whom seemed also to have made it. As that happened, the looks of mistrust started to be replaced with stares of astonishment and respect. Ben supposed it should make him feel good, but it didn't. He just felt awkward, and he wanted to go home.
Angelo too was given the all-clear, as well as several wide-eyed stares of disbelief when the FBI guys realized what he'd been through — and what he had achieved.
Eventually, they had given permission for Ben to leave the country. In less than an hour now, he would be boarding a flight to London where his parents would be meeting him. He couldn't wait.
'Hey,' Angelo said. 'I want to show you something.' He put down the coffee cup and opened the paper.
'You know what?' Ben said. 'I think I've read quite enough about the storms.' But Angelo shook his head, a mysterious smile on his face, and pointed to something else. The article he showed Ben was hidden away on the financial pages towards the back, after all the many pictures and reports of the storm damage. Ben read it curiously.
The Bandini Oil Corporation has recently announced a review of its operations in the Indian Ocean. Fabio Bandini, CEO of the corporation, said the review was due to internal restructuring and a realignment of the country's ethical policies. The share price dropped twenty points on the news.
Ben raised an eyebrow. 'Fabio Bandini?' he asked.
Angelo nodded. 'My dad.'
'You persuaded him?'
Angelo closed the newspaper. 'I made a promise to Danny, didn't I?'
At the name of Danny, they both fell silent. His death hadn't been reported — he was just one of the many who had lost their lives in the storms — and Ben wasn't quite sure how he felt about it. The guy had tried to kill them, after all. But it wasn't quite as simple as that. Danny had been brave at the end — a courageous man who had done the wrong things for the right reasons. And in the end he had seen the light and made good his mistakes. Ben's view of the world had got a little bit more complicated in the last week, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that.
Angelo broke the silence. 'Come on,' he said, looking up at the nearby information board. 'They're calling your flight.'
Ben nodded silently, then stood up as Angelo took his hand luggage for him.
'You'll come to Italy sometime to see me?' Angelo asked. He grinned slightly. 'The weather's normally pretty good.'
Ben smiled. 'No storms?' he asked.
'Well, now and then. But the sun always comes out again afterwards.'
'Sounds good to me,' said Ben. 'I could do with a bit of sunshine.'
Angelo nodded enthusiastically. 'Anch'io,' he replied. 'Me too.' And with that they started walking, unobserved by the other passengers — none of whom knew what they had been through — into the airport crowds and towards the aeroplane that would fly Ben across the Atlantic, and back home.
Author's note
The Florida Keys were originally connected to the US mainland by the Overseas Railroad. This was partially destroyed by a hurricane in 1935 and was replaced by the Overseas Highway.
The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June to November. The duration and strength of hurricanes has increased by 50 per cent over the past three decades. Scientists do not know for sure whether this is a result of global warming, but they do know that heat is a key factor in the formation of hurricanes. It seems likely, therefore, that as the temperature of the oceans and the atmosphere continues to rise, hurricanes are going to get worse.
About the Author
REAL–LIFE SAS HERO CHRIS RYAN
Chris Ryan joined the SAS in 1984 and was involved in numerous operations with the Regiment. During the first Gulf War he was the only member of an eight-man team to escape from Iraq, three colleagues being killed and four captured. It was the longest escape and evasion in the history of the SAS and for this he was awarded the Military Medal. He wrote about his remarkable escape in The One That Got Away (1995), which was also adapted for screen.
He left the SAS in 1994 and is now the author of many bestselling titles for both adults and children, including the Alpha Force series and four previous Code Red adventures. His adult thriller, The Watchman, is being adapted into a movie.
His work in security takes him round the world and Chris has also demonstrated his skills in different scenarios by appearing in a number of television series, including Hunting Chris Ryan, Pushed to the Limit and Terror Alert.
Chris is also involved with the RSPB in their campaign to protect endangered species, including the hen harrier, and Chris has appeared in a BBC TV documentary about this.
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