Aftershock (24 page)

‘Keep moving,’ Raven yelled from above. ‘Remember you’re just an easier target if you freeze up.’

‘Easy for her to say,’ Penny muttered under her breath, hauling herself towards the top.

‘Come on, Franz,’ Nigel said, grabbing his friend’s hand and pulling him upwards.

‘I am being climbing as fast as I can!’ Franz shouted.

‘I know, but we have to get to the . . .’

Nigel gasped in surprise as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. He slowly tipped backwards away from the rock face and fell. Franz caught him with one hand, his knuckles turning white as they clamped on to Nigel’s collar. Franz clung desperately to the rock with his other hand as another bullet struck nearby sending stinging stone splinters into his face.

‘HELP!’ Franz yelled.

‘We have to help them,’ Otto shouted up to Wing, Raven and Shelby.

‘Follow my lead,’ Raven said, detaching one of the grappler units from her forearm and throwing it to Wing. He quickly strapped it on to his wrist and watched as Raven fired the bolt into the ground at the edge of the drop-off at the edge of the plateau. Wing did the same and then chased after her as she ran back away from the edge, the monofilament from the grapplers trailing out behind them as they went.

‘Lock your line,’ Raven said, hitting the control on her own grappler. ‘OK, follow me.’

Otto and Penny pulled themselves up and over the edge just in time to see Raven sprint towards them and launch herself over the edge of the drop-off with Wing just two steps behind her. They both flew outwards before dropping and swinging back in towards the rock face below as the grappler lines went tight. Raven hit the rocks just to the right of Nigel and Franz and Wing landed on the other side. Raven swung closer and wrapped her free arm around Nigel’s waist.

‘Franz, let go!’ Raven shouted as a bullet whined past her head. ‘I’ve got him.’

Franz slowly released his white-knuckled grip on Nigel’s collar as Raven took the wounded boy’s weight.

‘Wing, get Franz up there,’ Raven shouted as she pulled Nigel closer and hit the trigger on her grappler, reeling in the line and rocketing up the side of the mountain.

‘Come on!’ Wing shouted to Franz, wrapping an arm around his waist. Franz put one arm around Wing’s neck and gripped on to his collar. Wing hit the trigger and reeled them both in, sending them shooting upwards as a bullet struck the rocks precisely where they had been hanging just a moment before.

Otto helped Wing and Franz back over the edge as bullets continued to kick up plumes of dirt from the ground around them. Moments later Laura and Tom clambered on to the plateau too as Raven and Shelby dragged Nigel back away from the edge.

Suddenly Penny hissed in pain as another one of the sniper’s bullets found its mark. She staggered forward before falling to the ground, clutching her thigh.

‘We have to find cover!’ Raven shouted, hauling Nigel away from the edge as Otto and Tom ran over to Penny. They picked her up, an arm over each of their shoulders as more rounds buzzed through the air nearby.

‘Franz! What are you doing?’ Laura shouted as Franz unslung the rifle from his back and walked back towards the edge of the cliff.

‘I am having just about enough of you,’ Franz muttered under his breath as he raised the rifle and sighted. ‘This is for hurting my friend.’ He fired one short burst and then another.

‘Don’t waste your ammo,’ Raven yelled as she continued to drag the unconscious Nigel away from the cliff. ‘You’ll never hit them from here.’

Suddenly black smoke started to billow out of the engine cowling on the distant helicopter and it began to slowly spin down towards the valley below.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Shelby said. ‘Dibs on getting to tell Colonel Francisco about this if we ever make it back to H.I.V.E.’

‘How is Nigel being?’ Franz asked as he slung the rifle on his back and walked over to Raven who had unzipped Nigel’s environmental suit and was inspecting the wound in his shoulder.

‘It could be worse,’ Raven said as she pulled a field dressing from one of the pouches on her tactical harness. ‘That was an excellent shot, Mr Argentblum.’

‘That is not being important,’ Franz said, shaking his head. ‘What is being important is that Nigel and Penny are OK.’

‘Otto, use this,’ Raven said, throwing another dressing pack to him. Otto ripped open the pack and began to wrap the bandage inside tightly around the wound in Penny’s thigh. Otto could see through the tear in the leg of her suit that she had been lucky – the bullet had just grazed her.

‘Don’t worry,’ Otto said as Penny hissed in pain. ‘It’s just a flesh wound. Not much more than a scratch really.’

‘Oh, I am sorry that my first gunshot wound isn’t terribly impressive,’ Penny said with a pained smile. ‘I’ll try to do better for you next time.’

‘I think I’d rather avoid there being a next time actually,’ Tom said frowning.

Franz, Laura and Shelby watched as Raven finished dressing Nigel’s wound.

‘Is he going to be OK?’ Laura asked, sounding worried.

‘I think so but we should still try to get him medical attention as quickly as possible. It looks like a clean wound, the bullet went straight through, but I can’t be certain that there are no internal injuries. We need to get to the facility and activate the beacon as soon as possible.’

A moment later Nigel’s eyes slowly opened and he looked up at his friends.

‘What happened?’ he asked, sounding groggy.

‘You got shot by a sniper and fell off a mountain, Franz and Raven saved you from certain death and then Franz shot down a helicopter,’ Shelby said with a grin.

‘No really,’ Nigel said with a frown, ‘tell me, what happened?’

The Alphas trudged through the snow towards the pair of huge rusted metal doors set in the side of the mountain. They had been following the crumbling remains of a disused road for the past twenty minutes. It was the first sign of human habitation that any of them had seen since they had arrived in Siberia and Otto felt that there was something vaguely sinister about it. What was it exactly that the Russian army would have been so keen to keep hidden away out here?

‘So you don’t have any idea what this place is?’ Otto asked Raven as they walked past the collapsed remains of a military gatepost.

‘No,’ Raven replied. ‘Something the authorities wanted to keep hidden obviously but, beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.’

‘How do we know it’s not a nuclear weapons dump?’ Laura asked, eyeing the heavy doors with suspicion. ‘For all we know this place could be radioactively contaminated.’

‘Do you have a Geiger counter on you?’ Raven asked.

‘Err . . . no,’ Laura replied.

‘Well then, I shouldn’t worry about it,’ Raven said with a crooked smile.

In the centre of the doors was a large spoked wheel that was clearly supposed to be rotated to release the huge metal locking bars that bolted the door shut. In the middle of the wheel was an odd, star-shaped keyhole.

‘I’m guessing that nobody has a key, right?’ Shelby said with a smile. ‘Come on then, out of the way, let’s have a look at it.’

The others stepped aside and Shelby began to examine the lock. Penny sat down on a low concrete wall nearby and gently rubbed her wounded thigh as Franz helped Nigel sit down beside her. He was pale and they could all see from his expression that he was in considerable pain.

‘OK,’ Shelby said after a couple of minutes, ‘anyone bring any plastic explosives?’

‘Oh, great,’ Otto said with a sigh.

‘Just kidding,’ Shelby grinned. ‘I am going to need one of those though.’ Shelby pointed at one of the silver cylinders on Raven’s tactical harness.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just cut our way in?’ Laura asked, pointing to the katanas strapped to Raven’s back. ‘Those things can cut through anything, right?’

‘That would make it rather difficult to secure the door again from the inside,’ Raven replied, handing Shelby one of her flashbang grenades. ‘Though I’m struggling to see how this will help.’

‘Oh ye of little faith,’ Shelby said, pulling the pin from the grenade and handing it to Otto. ‘Don’t let go of that.’

‘Oh, thank you very much,’ Otto said, keeping a tight hold on the spring-loaded safety lever.

‘Right then,’ Shelby said, turning back to the lock, ‘let’s crack this puppy.’

She straightened the loop at the end of the safety pin and then made a series of tiny intricate bends at the other end.

‘Oh, that’s just beautiful,’ Tom said admiringly as he watched Shelby work. ‘I’ve seen the Maxwell twist before but I never realised that you could combine it with a reverse Mahler helix. That’s brilliant.’

‘You know, I’m really starting to like you,’ Shelby said with a grin as she slid the newly created pick into the lock. She closed her eyes and slowly twisted the pick.

‘You do know that you stick your tongue out when you’re doing that, don’t you?’ Otto said.

‘Seriously, Malpense?’ Shelby said, eyes still closed. ‘Now you start with the distracting banter?’

‘Sorry,’ Otto said, ‘it’s just that I get nervous when I’m holding live explosive devices.’

‘Shhh, just let Aunty Shelby work her . . . magic!’ There was a click and Shelby stepped back from the lock. ‘A round of applause might be nice, you know.’

‘Don’t,’ Laura said as Tom raised his hands to clap. ‘You’ll just encourage her.’

Wing stepped forward, gripped the spokes of the wheel and turned, the large metal locking bolts screeching in protest as they released in a shower of rust. He pushed hard and the massive doors slowly swung inwards with a pained creaking sound. Raven cracked another glowstick and walked slowly into the darkness beyond the doors.

‘Last one into the creepy, dark, possibly radioactive abandoned military facility is a loser,’ Shelby said as she followed Raven inside.

Colonel Francisco walked towards the burnt-out wreckage of the missing Shroud that was scattered across the valley floor.

‘We’ve found the pilot and co-pilot’s bodies but there’s no sign of Raven or the students who were on-board,’ one of the G.L.O.V.E. troops reported as Francisco approached.

‘You’re certain?’

‘Yes, sir, we’ve done a full scan of the wreckage. It seems that the Shroud was hit while it was on the ground. One of the ejector seats is missing too. It looks like Raven and the passengers have either been captured or they somehow managed to escape.’

‘Spread out and search for any signs of survivors,’ Francisco said to the rest of the troops. ‘We need to know what happened here.’

Francisco continued walking through the debris field. Lying not too far from the Shroud were the twisted remains of a helicopter rotor blade. Someone had clearly managed to take down at least one of the enemy helicopters. The question was how? The transport Shrouds had no weapons. Something about the whole scene just didn’t make sense.

‘Over here,’ one of the G.L.O.V.E. troops yelled.

Francisco hurried over to where the man was standing and found two dead bodies lying just inside the forest. Both were wearing white thermoptic camouflage suits.

‘Where did they get these from?’ Francisco said, kneeling down beside one of the dead men. The technology behind the suits’ holographic projection cloak was one of G.L.O.V.E.’s most closely guarded secrets. The fact that it had somehow fallen into the Disciples’ hands was deeply worrying. One of the men had been shot but the other man had been killed with a blade. The edges of the fatal wound were cauterised as if the blade had been heated or . . . Francisco suddenly realised what weapon might have caused a wound like that. He looked at the ground around the two bodies and saw several sets of tracks leading further into the forest.