Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 (3 page)

Even as she warmed up, though, she continued to shake. Who had the three men in the churchyard that night been? Why did one of them have a gun? And why – why on
earth
– had they seen fit to dig up her dead cousin’s grave?

2

DEAD MEN CAN’T HURT YOU

Monday, 10.03 hrs GMT

GRAVES, ZAK DARKE THOUGHT
to himself, were scary enough places at the best of times. When they were sixty metres below sea level they were even worse. And as watery graves went, this was one of the biggest.

‘HMS
Vanguard
,’ his dive buddy Raf had told him the day before as they’d sat eating steak pie for dinner. ‘It sank a hundred years ago at Scapa Flow.’

‘Scapa Flow?’ Zak had asked. The name sounded familiar.

Raf was a serious man with a square face and thick blond hair. They’d first met when he had expertly kidnapped Zak from 63 Acacia Drive. Or perhaps ‘kidnapped’ wasn’t the right word. The orphaned Zak had gone with him willingly, after all. The decision to be plucked from his ordinary life to work for a government agency so secret he didn’t even know its name
was Zak’s alone, even if he had been talked into it by a grey-haired man who sometimes called himself Michael, sometimes Mr Bartholomew – neither of which, Zak knew, was his real name. That night he had stopped being Zak Darke and become Agent 21. Serious and silent, Raf had escorted him here, to the bleak, windswept island of St Peter’s Crag – a place that had frightened Zak not because it was so solitary, but because it was impossible to leave.

At first, Zak had felt nothing but anger towards his abductors: they had not been honest with him; they had spirited him away under false pretences. Gradually, though, he had come to realize that their only concern was for his welfare in the dangerous situations Agent 21 would find himself; and that St Peter’s Crag itself, far from being an inescapable prison, was for Zak the safest place on earth.

Gradually, the anger he had felt towards his kidnapper had turned into respect. And the respect had turned into a kind of friendship. Zak’s life had changed completely in the last eighteen months. For the better? It was difficult to say, but it was certainly a lot more dangerous. He knew that Raf would always look out for him and that was something comforting to hold on to.

‘A hundred and twenty square miles of water off Orkney,’ Raf explained. ‘Natural harbour. The British
used it as their naval base during both world wars. HMS
Vanguard
sank at anchor there in 1917.’

‘How come?’

‘Engine explosion. Eight hundred men on board.’

‘That sounds awful.’

‘More than awful,’ Raf replied. ‘If you go on board any modern ship you’ll see all sorts of fire precaution measures. The last thing you want is a fire at sea. There’s nowhere to hide. The men on board HMS
Vanguard
would have died a nasty death. Hope you’re not squeamish because we’ll probably bump into some of them tomorrow. What’s left of them, anyway.’

‘Raf!’ Zak’s second dinner companion had interrupted. ‘Don’t fill his head with things like that. Really, sweetie, you mustn’t listen to him …’

Gabs had white-blond, shoulder-length hair and icy blue eyes. Along with Raf, she was Zak’s almost constant companion here on the bleak, solitary island of St Peter’s Crag that he now called home. They were his teachers and his friends. His big brother and sister. His Guardian Angels.

Zak – whose muscles burned and who was ravenous after his day’s training – swallowed a mouthful of food. ‘Dead men can’t hurt you,’ he replied quietly. And he thought to himself,
It’s the living ones you have to worry about
. But he didn’t say that out loud. Instead he looked up at Gabs and grinned at
her. ‘I could take some photos down there if you like.’

Gabs had rolled her eyes dramatically. ‘Men!’ she said. ‘Slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails – I don’t know why you can’t be more like us girls.’

‘HMS
Vanguard
is a designated war grave,’ Raf had continued as though he hadn’t heard any of this. ‘Only members of the British armed forces are allowed to dive there.’

‘Members of the British armed forces, and us – right?’

‘He’s getting the hang of this, isn’t he?’ Gabs said to nobody in particular.

‘
Vanguard
’s a good place to practise diving in enclosed spaces,’ Raf continued. ‘Plenty of … unexpected stuff.’

‘What do you mean?’

Raf had given him one of his rare smiles. ‘If I told you,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t be unexpected, would it? When you’re on ops, you’re not likely to be snorkelling in the Caribbean. You need to be confident with difficult sub-aqua environments.’ When Raf said difficult, Zak knew he
meant
difficult. His Guardian Angels were meticulously training him in the skills he needed, with little or no respect for his young age. Neither Raf nor Gabs had ever said it, but Zak knew it was true: if he was old enough to die, he was old enough to learn how to avoid death.
Sub-aqua skills would be yet another string to his bow.

That had been yesterday. Now it was just past 10 a.m. Zak and Raf were dressed in black drysuits with neoprene hoods – essential in this cold weather to stop their body temperature dropping too quickly. Over the drysuits they wore inflatable vests. Their fins and dive masks were military grade and they each carried a matt black canister of compressed air on their backs. Both of them had a diver’s knife attached to their legs and a powerful torch that lit up the murky underwater world with an eerie glow.

The depth gauge on Zak’s Panerai diver’s watch told him they were ten metres from the surface. They’d been descending slowly – about a metre every ten seconds – and Zak could feel the pressure building up in his ears. He pinched his nose and blew gently to equalize it, then shone his torch up towards the surface. He could just make out the hull of the vessel from which they’d dived – a rigid inflatable boat with a forty-horsepower outboard motor that had been launched half an hour ago from the sixty-foot
Galileo
, a luxurious yacht that wouldn’t have looked out of place moored in Monte Carlo. Only smaller boats were allowed in the vicinity of HMS
Vanguard
. It was good to know that Gabs was waiting for them in that RIB.

A tap on his shoulder. Raf was pointing downwards.
Zak nodded at him and they continued to descend.

The water grew colder and darker. He shivered. There was no noise down here. Other than the sound of Zak inhaling compressed air through his breathing apparatus, there was just a thick, icy silence. Zak followed Raf, who was kicking confidently downwards, his torch casting a cone of light towards the sea bed. A school of tiny fish with rainbow scales shot across the beam. There were thousands of them, moving bullet-fast. They changed direction all at the same time. Seconds later they were gone.

More pressure in his ears. Zak equalized again. He continued to descend. The depth gauge read thirty-five metres.

Forty metres.

Forty-five metres.

Something came into view.

It was just a shape at first. A gloomy, ghostly silhouette. Through his dive mask, Zak made out an enormous sharp V with rounded edges. It took a couple of moments for him to realize he was looking at the very tip of a battleship. He followed Raf towards the bow of the ship and as they drew close, he gradually understood how big HMS
Vanguard
was. There was no way he could see the bottom of the hull or the other end of the vessel. It was sitting on the sea
bed at a thirty-degree angle like an enormous sleeping monster. Its hull and decks were corroded now, with holes here and there, but Zak could see it must have been an impressive sight when it was above water. They swam along its length – ten metres, twenty metres, thirty metres – and the main body of the ship hulked above them, so vast that Zak’s powerful torch could only light up the smallest sections of it at any one time.

Raf headed left and they found themselves floating half a metre above the deck. In front of them was a doorway. The door itself had corroded away from its hinges and was lying on the deck. Zak shone his torch into the opening.

He started when he saw a pair of eyes staring back at him. What was it? What was looking at them? The eyes were ten metres away and coming closer …

The fish that emerged from the doorway five seconds later was like nothing Zak had ever seen, even though he’d been studying books on marine life to prepare for this dive. It was at least a couple of metres long and its eyes were the size of grapefruits, and just as bulbous. It swished lazily through the doorway and its tail fin brushed against Zak’s arm as it passed him before disappearing into the murky depths. Raf looked over his shoulder and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Zak returned it and together they kicked
through the doorway and into the body of the ship, lighting the way with their powerful torches.

They found themselves in a narrow corridor, very cramped. Because of the angle of the vessel, the corridor was tilting downwards. Some kind of seaweed was growing like lichen over the walls. They passed through clouds of plankton that misted their vision for a few seconds at a time, then the corridor turned to the right. They hit a flight of steps going down. Raf and Zak followed this stairwell into the hull of the ship.

They passed through another doorway and finally found themselves in what looked like the engine room. There was debris everywhere – chunks of metal, bits of old machinery – and Zak could tell that the explosion that had sunk HMS
Vanguard
had occurred here. He kicked deeper into the room and the light of his torch fell on something else. At first he thought it was another sea creature, resting on the floor of the ship. It was only when he kicked himself closer that he realized he was looking at the deathly grimace of a skull. Grimly fascinated, he swam nearer.

And his body almost went into shock when he saw the skull move.

Zak immediately kicked away and he felt a bit foolish doing so. He told himself that it was just the underwater currents he and Raf were creating that had
caused the skull to move.
Dead men can’t hurt you
. Now, though, his attention was elsewhere. He shone his torch up and down, left and right. And everywhere he looked, everywhere he turned, there were skeletons.

There was no way he could count them. The bodies of the dead sailors were still partially covered in the ragged remains of their clothes, but they had been stripped of flesh. Was that because fish had nibbled away at them, or had they rotted away of their own accord? Zak didn’t know. His torch lit up the bones of a man lying on his back. His jaw and teeth were fixed in a horrific smile and Zak started as a small silvery fish darted out from behind his ribcage. Bizarrely, he remembered the fish tank his mum and dad had before they died. The little goldfish there had hidden behind ceramic rocks, not human remains.

A tap on his shoulder. Raf was there. He pointed deeper into the cabin. Zak gave him a thumbs-up and together they kicked off.

Suddenly the calmness of that underwater grave disappeared. There was a frenzy of movement. Something had appeared from the murky darkness. Fast, terrifying – several of them, their bodies three metres long, snake-like and muscular. In the split second it took the creatures to approach, Zak was able to identify them. The small eyes, the long dorsal fin, the patterned skin – these were giant moray eels. One
of them opened its mouth as it approached. The light from Zak’s torch reflected off its sharp teeth; he felt himself shrink away from that horrific sight, and maybe it was this that saved him.

Raf wasn’t so lucky.

Zak couldn’t tell if the moray eel bit his dive buddy because it was scared or if it thought he was food. It didn’t matter either way. It was a vicious attack. The eel bit hard, holding the flesh in its jaws for at least ten seconds and writhing viciously as it did so. Raf’s reaction was instantaneous. The mouthpiece of his breathing apparatus shot from his face. Bubbles spurted upwards, and a second stream of bubbles rose from Raf’s mouth. There was no sound, but Zak could tell he was shouting in pain.

The eel was still there, still biting. Zak raised his arm and tried to strike at it with his torch, but the water slowed his movements and the blow barely had any effect. When the eel finally swam away, it was on its own terms.

There was blood pumping from the wound, making a dark cloud in the water around Raf’s arm. But worse, Raf wasn’t moving. His eyes were closed and he was making no attempt to put the breathing apparatus back into his mouth. He was floating helplessly and had dropped his torch, which was now sinking to the bottom of the cabin.

He must have ingested a lungful of water, and he was clearly unconscious. Not breathing. And sixty metres below sea level.

Zak stared through his dive mask in horror. His Guardian Angel was in real trouble. If Zak didn’t do something right now, Raf had only minutes to live.

3

GALILEO

ZAK MOVED QUICKLY
. He needed to get Raf to the surface. Fast.

He pulled his knife from the scabbard round his right leg and swam up to his mate. Raf’s air tank was useless now, so Zak cut it away to reduce his body mass. The tank drifted silently down to the floor of the engine room, along with Raf’s torch. It landed on the remains of one of HMS
Vanguard
’s long-dead crew. By now Zak had already moved behind Raf. He put his arms round his waist and pulled him towards the stairwell, still holding the torch in his right hand.

They moved so slowly. Raf was heavy, the water felt like treacle and Zak had to swim backwards up the stairwell. He was only halfway up when he felt his air canister bang against the corner of a metal step. It sent a shock right through him and he dropped his torch.

Zak’s only source of light drifted downwards.

Panic. There wasn’t time to get it back. Not if Raf
was going to have a chance. He would just have to brave the darkness.