Sure Fire (14 page)

“It's OK,” she murmured back. But they both knew that it wasn't.

They had given Chance a thin mattress that lay on the hard concrete floor. The room was small and plain and square, with a bucket in the corner. No windows and only one door.

He had been in similar situations over the years. Each time he wondered if he would ever leave the room they had shut him in. Chance knew that a large part of the trick of surviving was staying optimistic – never giving up. The more alert and upbeat you were, the better your chances of making the most of any opportunity to escape.

And now there was one thing that kept him going above all.

Alone in a cell in the middle of Krejikistan, Chance was taking courage from the fact that his children were safely in London, thousands of miles away.

The plane was slowing as it taxied the last hundred metres along the runway to the waiting convoy of vehicles. Out of the window, Jade could see a set of steps on wheels standing ready at one side of the runway just in front of the black limousine.

Under cover of leaning to see out of the window, and while Stabb, Magda and everyone else was waiting for the plane to stop, Jade tried to untie Rich's hands. But the knots were too tight and her numb fingers were making no headway.

“Leave me,” Rich whispered.

“No way.”

“Just escape while you can. At least with one of us free there's some hope.” He tried to sound upbeat,
but Jade could barely force a smile.

“I can't just leave you!” she insisted. Her fair hair fell forward hiding her pained expression.

“You can. You must. Please, it's the only hope for both of us. Once this plane stops, we haven't a hope.”

Jade's mouth dropped open. “You want me to get out
before
it stops?!”

“You'll be OK. I've—”

“I know,” she interrupted, “you've read about it in a book or somewhere. Great. Thanks. You're crazy, you know that, right?”

“I'm not the one who has to jump out of a moving plane,” Rich pointed out.

The plane was slowing. It was now or never. Jade took a deep breath. Then she leaped to her feet and ran.

The plane was still moving. Stabb saw her and tugged at his seatbelt. Further down the aisle, Magda was also trying to get up. But Jade was already at the door at the front of the cabin.

There was a long lever, horizontal across the door with a large painted red arrow showing which way it turned in an emergency.

Well, if this wasn't an emergency then nothing
was, Jade thought as she wrenched the lever round.

Rich watched in horror as Stabb brought out his gun. Jade was still at the door. Stabb was taking aim, about to shoot her down.

With his hands and legs tied together, Rich stood up, almost overbalancing. He managed to turn his sideways momentum into a jump – launching himself off his tied-together feet across the aisle.

He crashed into Stabb, sending the man sprawling over the seats. The gun skidded out of his grasp.

With a hydraulic hiss the door swung open. The hiss became an explosion of sound – the wind whipped past the jet which was still travelling at twenty miles an hour. There was a rush of compressed air as the inflatable slide billowed out from beneath the door. Without waiting for it to finish, without wondering whether her weight would be enough to drag the slide down to the ground, Jade jumped.

She hit the chute and bounced, then slid towards the runway that was hurtling past. Her foot dug into the plastic, caught, was free again – and now she tumbled.

Luckily, she was rolling with the fall. She reached out for the runway as it skimmed past, and tumbled out across it, on to the grass the other side. Her ankles were numb from where the ropes had been tied so tight. Her foot was protesting where it had snagged. Her legs felt like jelly. But she was on her feet and running as fast as she could for the nearest building – a long, low storage hangar.

As soon as the plane had stopped, Stabb shoved Rich out of the door. Without the full use of hands or legs, Rich rolled and tumbled down the inflated slide and bumped painfully on to the runway at the bottom.

Magda was close behind him, then Stabb. Immediately, Stabb was yelling at the soldiers grouped round the waiting vehicles. He waved them towards a nearby hangar and Rich guessed that was where Jade had been heading for. There was no sign of her now. He just hoped she had managed to get away.

A soldier yanked Rich to his feet and pushed him towards the black limo. With his ankles tied, Rich immediately fell over again, but he managed to get his hands out to stop himself getting hurt in the fall.

Magda leaned over him, brandishing a knife. It
was a vicious-looking weapon with a blade that was serrated on one side. Rich tried to shuffle away from her as the knife came closer to his face. The woman smiled and reached down to cut through the cords binding his ankles.

“Did you think I was going to cut you?” she said, amused. “Well, maybe I will. Later.” She sliced through the cords round his wrists, then stood up and walked to the limousine. “Bring him,” she called to the soldiers standing over Rich.

He was bundled into the limo. Magda was sitting in the middle of the wide bench seat. On the other side of her was a man. Rich recognised him at once from the pictures he and Jade had seen on the KOS website at the internet café – Viktor Vishinsky.

It was an optical illusion. Jade hadn't intended it to work that way, but she realised as soon as the soldiers raced into the hangar what had happened. She had almost – so nearly – run into the hangar. But at the last moment it occurred to her that if she did, there might be no way out. She could be trapped.

That would indeed have been the case, judging by the amusement and confidence of the soldiers who
soon arrived and ran into the hangar after her, or so they thought. Jade had run
past
the doors, down the side of the hangar. But anyone watching from a distance, expecting her to go inside, would have assumed that was what she'd done as she disappeared from sight, level with the dark opening of the doorway.

Her problem now was what to do next – there was nowhere else to go. There were plenty of other buildings on the airbase, but they were all a long way away. She'd be spotted well before she got to any of them. And it wouldn't take long for the soldiers to finish searching the hangar and conclude either that she'd escaped somehow or that she had never gone inside.

“Think, think…” Jade urged herself. She tried to decide what Rich would do. He'd probably tell her to do something stupid, or make some comment that sounded really useful but was no help at all. Like: “Hide in the last place they'd ever think to look.” Right – big help. But where was the last place they'd ever think to look?

Jade was peering round the side of the hangar, desperately searching for some hiding place. And
then she saw it – not fifty metres away. With luck she could get there without being spotted. And yes, it had to be the last place anyone would think to look for her.

The plane she'd just escaped from.

It was still on the runway, the inflated chute hanging from its side. There was a large cargo bay door open at the back now, forming a ramp sloping down to the runway. If she could get to that before the soldiers came out of the hangar…

The limousine and some of the other vehicles in the convoy were already pulling away. The plane had turned slightly since it arrived to allow for easier unloading. But now the bags and crates had been removed, and it was between Jade and the vehicles, shielding her from sight. If she was lucky.

Not that she had much choice, she decided. She took a deep breath, quickly checked that the way was clear and there was no one coming out of the hangar. Then she ran.

She was out of breath, gasping, as she charged up the ramp into the cargo bay. She looked round, checking there was no one else there. But the place seemed deserted. It was cramped and she had to duck
her head as she made her way into the gloomy space, negotiating the cargo nets that held down freight when the plane was loaded and airborne.

Luckily, there was plenty of room behind the various crates and boxes still in the hold for her to hide. Jade knelt down in the shadows, behind a huge packing crate. Peering out, she had a good view out of the back of the plane and across the airfield. She could see the hangar beside which she had been hiding. There was no sign of activity – no one running after her, shouting, pointing…

Jade breathed a huge sigh of relief. And a hand clamped over her mouth, pulling her backwards into the darkness of the cargo hold.

Watching the soldiers out of the window of the limousine, Rich hoped against hope that Jade was all right. Stabb was standing at the back with a group of uniformed troops, shouting at them.

“Your sister is causing Mr Stabb some trouble,” Vishinsky said to Rich. He seemed amused rather than angry. He leaned forward and spoke to the driver in, Rich assumed, Russian.

The limo pulled away slowly, turning in a wide
circle. It slowed as it reached Stabb, and Vishinsky wound down his window.

“Don't waste your time. Leave it to them,” he said. “They know what they are doing, and – where can she go?”

Stabb nodded and said something else to the soldiers. But Vishinsky's window was rising and the car was moving faster now, so Rich could not hear what he was saying. But he saw Stabb run over to a jeep and climb in beside the driver. Two jeeps were now following the limousine on to a service road and towards the main gate out of the airbase.

“Do you know what this is?” Vishinsky asked as they headed for the main gate out of the base. He reached across Magda and handed Rich a large, plain brown envelope.

Rich opened it cautiously and found it contained three large photographs. They were black and white, grainy and indistinct. He wasn't even sure at first which way up they should be.

“Yes, they are not very good, I'm afraid,” Vishinsky said. “Blow-ups from a security camera. I am assured they have been enhanced as much as is possible. More than is possible if my experts are to be believed.”

He reached over again and tapped at something in the middle of the top picture. “This – what is it?”

Rich had just about managed to work out that he was looking at a close-up shot of a hand. The hand was holding something – the thing that Vishinsky had pointed to. The other photos were almost identical – the hand moving only slightly between the frames.

“No,” Rich said. “No, sorry, I don't know.” He shook his head. “It's pretty small, judging by the size of the hand. And there's a picture on the thing, a pattern or outline or something. Not very clear.” He put the photos back in the envelope and returned it to Vishinsky.

Rich turned to look out of the window. The countryside looked bare and barren with a little grass poking through the dry ground. In the distance there were hills, which looked just as dry and dusty brown. He had been careful not to show it, but the picture had reminded Rich of something. He just couldn't remember what. Maybe nothing at all, he decided. The shape on whatever it was that the hand was holding was hardly unusual. But he couldn't help thinking he'd seen it somewhere recently – a simple outline of a heart.

* * *

Jade stopped struggling as soon as she saw who it was. Dex Halford took his hand from Jade's mouth and put his finger to his own lips to warn her to be quiet. Together, they ducked down behind the crate.

“How did you get here?” Jade whispered.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Halford said quietly. “It wasn't hard to guess where they were taking you when Stabb mentioned a nearby airfield. There's not a lot of choice. It's quicker across the back fields than by road, and your brother had at least left me a working tractor, even if my Range Rover will need towing out of the pool when I finally get home.”

“You stowed away?” Jade realised. “In here?”

Halford nodded. “Told the crew they were to prepare for take-off, which I expected they'd find out soon enough anyway. The moment they weren't looking I sneaked in while the back was open. What about you?”

Jade shrugged. “Managed to get free and jumped. Then I legged it.”

“That why it was a bumpy landing?” Halford smiled. “I'm bruised all over.”

“They've still got Rich,” Jade said. “I couldn't get him out too.”

“That's all right,” Halford said, suddenly serious. “Let's go and get him back.”

“And how do we do that?”

Halford peered round the crate and then got unsteadily to his feet, pushing himself up with his walking stick. “We start by stealing a jeep,” he said.

Although some of the military vehicles had followed Vishinsky's car from the airbase, there were still a couple of jeeps, a large lorry and the tank on the runway close to the plane. Most of the soldiers had gone to help with the search for Jade – still centred on the hangar fifty metres away. It looked like it might be possible to get to a jeep, but Jade wasn't sure what they'd do then – could they even get off the base?

Halford couldn't run – the best he could manage was a fast hobble, leaning heavily on his stick as they left the plane. Things went wrong almost at once.

A soldier came round the side of the plane, heading back towards the convoy of vehicles. He almost walked into Jade and Halford as they emerged down the cargo ramp.

The speed of Halford's reaction took Jade by surprise. She hardly had time to see his arm shoot out
before the soldier was lying unconscious on the ground and his rifle was somehow in Halford's hand.

But one of the soldiers by the nearest jeep had either seen or heard. He was shouting to the others, pointing. Then suddenly he was diving for cover as Halford put a bullet into the ground close to his feet.

“Pity,” he said. “But maybe that was looking too easy.”

The soldiers were firing back now, and Halford and Jade were forced to duck into cover of their own – behind the tank. Jade hoped there was no one inside it. The hatch on the top was standing open, which was a good sign. She didn't want to think what might happen if the gun swung round to fire at them or if the huge armoured vehicle started to move. She pressed herself against the cold metal as Halford leaned round to fire. He pulled back before another volley of shots pinged off the armour plating close by.

“Can't keep them pinned down for long,” Halford warned. “I might be able to cover you so you can get to one of the jeeps.”

“Then what?” Jade had to shout to be heard above the rattle of gunfire.

“Drive it over here and pick me up.” He made it sound easy.

“Yeah, right,” Jade muttered, bracing herself to run through a hail of bullets. “Let's hope they left the keys for us.” Maybe this wasn't the best time to confess she had little idea how to drive.