Sharp Shot (15 page)

Darrow wasn't talking, but from the air tickets in his jacket pocket,
Ardman knew they had till at least four o'clock that afternoon before the
bomb was due to go off. The main airport wasn't far from the US base and
Darrow would want to be well away before the explosion. The tickets,
Ardman was amused to see, were booked in the name of Hilary Ardman.

It didn't give them much time. The bomb might be set to explode soon
after Darrow's flight departed, but chances were he'd left a margin of
error in case the flight was delayed. They might even have until the next
day, but it was dangerous to make that sort of assumption. Whatever the
case, they had a slight breathing space in which to get Darrow
to tell
them where he'd hidden the bomb.

Except that Darrow wasn't telling.

“Can't you just make him?” asked Rich on the flight back
to the desert palace.

The isolated location, now securely in the control of Goddard's
team, was the safest and best place to interrogate the prisoner and make
sure he wouldn't be rescued. Prince Ali might have entire army units loyal
to him, ready to move.

Rich and Jade were sitting opposite Chance and Ardman on a small,
fast jet. Goddard was due to meet them from the landing strip near the
palace, and Goddard would meet them there. Darrow was already on his way
by helicopter, under careful guard courtesy of Chuck White's Secret
Service team.

“
Make
him talk? Oh right,” said Jade.
“So, we're into torture now are we? Remind me—who are the
terrorists here?”

“Well, if it's that or let tens of thousands of people get
blown up…” Rich protested.

Chance watched them argue. “It isn't that simple,
sadly,” he said. “Darrow's been trained to hold out, and
that's all he has to do. He has the luxury of time and we don't.”

Ardman was talking quietly, but urgently, on a mobile phone. He ended
the call and snapped the phone closed. “That's settled,” he
said, with the faintest trace of a smile.

“What?” Rich asked.

“The Professor is already on his way to join us on the fastest
plane the RAF can spare. He agrees that Darrow can't be forced to talk,
and he won't easily be tricked. But the Professor does have an interesting
suggestion.”

Jade had met the Professor before. With his dark beard and saturnine
features, he looked like he had escaped from the ranks of Mephistopheles'
henchmen. But he was actually a stage magician who specialised in
mind-reading. Jade had seen him trick a gunman into telling them exactly
what they wanted, and he'd told Jade some things about herself that she
had no idea how he knew…

“So what's the Professor say we need to do?” she asked.

“Well, as I say, it's an interesting one,” said Ardman.
“The Professor suggests that we should let the bomb go off.”

The Professor had already arrived by the time they got to the desert
palace. A tall man in a dark suit, he was supervising several of Goddard's
team. They seemed to be carrying buckets of rubble through to one of the
rooms.

“We'll keep it round the corner here,” the Professor
told them. “Then it's ready to spread round as we need it. Thank
you.”

He smiled as he saw Jade. “It's Miss Chance. How delightful to
see you again.”

Jade grinned back at him and introduced Rich. The Professor shook his
hand.

“You got everything you need?” asked Ardman.

“Almost. I think the RAF left my stomach behind somewhere over
Kent. But apart from that…” He led Ardman through to one of the
large reception rooms. “I've chosen this room as most suitable.
You're sure the owner won't mind if we mess the place up a bit?” He
sniffed. “Not that you'd notice actually, I think someone else got
here before me. John Chance by the look of it.” He turned to smile
at Chance.

“Let's leave them to it,” said Chance. “I want to
check on Darrow.”

“So what's this Professor bloke up to?” Rich wondered.

“Who knows? It'll be complicated and brilliant, though. Let's
just hope it's brilliant enough to work on Darrow.”

Watching on a monitor with Pete and Alan in the lab, it was soon clear
that Darrow wasn't going to give away any information willingly.

The lab had been converted into an operations room like the one at
Algernon's mansion house in England. Rich and Jade were surprised and
pleased to find Dex Halford helping Pete set things up. Alan was busy at
another computer.

Halford turned down the sound on the monitor showing Chance talking
to Darrow. One of the SAS team who had stormed the palace stood in the
corner of the small room. Still in his black uniform, he was holding an
assault rifle and was obviously ready to step in if Darrow caused any
trouble.

“You think Darrow will talk?” asked Rich.

“Not a hope,” said Halford.

“So what's the Professor planning this time?” Jade
wondered.

“I don't know, but he wants us to set up a video conference
link with some number in the Greater
London area. Near Ealing. Guy called
Mike.”

Rich was interested in the technical stuff, but it left Jade cold.
She left them to it. She was tired and thirsty, but it wasn't easy to
relax knowing that a nuclear bomb might go off at any moment.

The Professor was talking with a group of people in the corridor
outside the room he'd shown Ardman.

“We don't have time for a full rig,” the Professor was
saying. “Ideally we'd build a raised floor and false walls, but time
is rather of the essence.”

“How about we blow the supporting beams?” someone asked.

“Won't the floor just drop out?” someone else said.
“Mind you, that'd be pretty convincing.”

“Well, we don't blow them all, then. Just enough for the floor
to shake.”

The Professor nodded. “Could we do the same with the walls, do
you think? Charges on the other side, enough to shake some plaster
off?”

“Don't see why not,” the man who'd talked about the
floor beams said. “Easy enough, and pretty quick.”

“Then that's what we do. And make sure there are no clocks in
there.”

Jade watched the men working furiously for a few
more minutes—
rigging the furniture in the room with tiny detonators, and fixing devices
on the adjoining walls. When she went downstairs, she found a team in the
room below attaching putty-like plastic explosive to exact points marked
on the ceiling. She had little doubt that something similar must be
happening on the floor of the room above the Professor as well, but she
had no idea why.

They were all still hard at work when she returned from the kitchens
with a pot of coffee and tray of mugs to take down to Rich and the others
in the lab.

Ardman was rubbing his hands together and looking pleased as Jade
passed. He was deep in conversation with the Professor.

“We've taken his watch along with his belt and other
possessions. Oh, and we've slipped a little something into his
tea,” said the Professor, catching sight of Jade and the tray.
“Just enough to disorient him slightly and with luck it'll put him
to sleep. In this heat he has to drink something, even if he thinks we may
have drugged it. But he seems fairly relaxed. When we wake him, he'll have
no idea how long he's been out.”

“Everything else on track?” asked Ardman.

“I was just going to check with Pete whether he'd
got Mike online
yet. I'd like to know how the plate work is going.” The Professor
turned to Jade as she passed. “I hope you've got a spare mug here
for me.”

In the lab, Pete was talking to a man with long, dark hair on one of
the monitor screens.

“I've found a local news crew who are getting me the plate
shots,” the man was saying. He grinned as he saw the Professor
appear beside Pete on his own monitor. “Hi, Guv. How's it
going?”

“Hello, Mike,” said the Professor. “We're all set
at our end. Just waiting for you.”

“Shouldn't be a problem. I've got the elements coming together.
As I was saying, the news crew can give me good enough backgrounds, and
I'll degrade them anyway to look like mobile phone footage or amateur
stuff. Have you thought about EMP, by the way?”

The Professor sighed and muttered something under his breath. Jade
looked at Rich, who just shrugged as if to say, “Don't ask
me.”

“Good point,” said the Professor. “Let's just hope
he doesn't think of that.”

“We'll go to static or something at the end anyway. That might
be enough.”

The Professor nodded. “We're going to let him sleep
for a bit,
but time is getting tight. How long do you need?”

“Longer than we've got. I found some footage of the local
hospital with ambulances and stuff. Got an actor friend to do a
voice-over, which he thinks is for a demo-reel. Which it might be
actually, if I can show it to prospective clients once you're done with
it. I could do with the work. Give me an hour and I'll stream it over to
Pete to sort out.”

The Professor thanked Mike, and Pete ended the call.

“We're all set,” said Pete. “Got a cable link to
the room. So long as your explosives guys don't cut the link or blow up
the TV by mistake we'll be fine.”

“Excellent.” The Professor clapped his hands together.
“Just time for a mug of coffee then, thank you, Jade. Then we'll
blow everything up.”

There was an anxious but expectant hush in the laboratory. Rich and
Jade were sitting at the back of the group watching the main screen. They
had to crane their necks to see over Ardman, Halford, the Professor, Pete
and Alan and several other people including Goddard.

The wide screen showed a good view of the room the Professor's team
had been working on. There was a large wooden desk, with leather captain's
chairs either side. A large LCD television was on one wall, a painting of
a ship at sea on another. A glittering chandelier hung from the ceiling.

As they watched, the door opened and John Chance led Darrow into the
room. He gestured for Darrow to sit one side of the desk while he sat the
other. The SAS guard closed the door and stood in front of it.

“So why the change of scene?” asked Darrow. He leaned
back in the chair, looking totally relaxed.

“I thought maybe after your long sleep, you might be more
amenable.”

“Ah, thumbscrews time, is it?”

“Quite the opposite. I'm authorised to make you an
offer.”

Darrow laughed. “I wasn't asleep that long, and I wasn't born
yesterday.”

“You were asleep for hours,” said Chance. There was a
fleeting look of surprise on Darrow's face, but Chance went on quickly:
“And you might not have been born yesterday, but you let a kid with
a biro get the better of you yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

Chance ignored him. “So, how much do you want? Be realistic,
and you can walk out of here very rich. Just tell us where the bomb is
hidden.”

For a moment, Rich thought Darrow was going to do it, but then he
grinned. “No chance. Or maybe that should be no, Mr Chance.”
He laughed. “When that bomb goes off, I'll be richer than you can
imagine. And Ali won't let you keep me. Once he's in control you'll have
to hand me over. We're still in East Araby and I'm guessing time is
getting a bit tight now. Too late to get me out of the country, I'll
bet.”

Chance's fist slammed down on to the desk. “Damn it, Darrow—
just tell us. Have you any idea how many people will die if you
don't?”

Darrow seemed unfazed. “Pretty good one, yes. And you know
what? I don't care.”

Chance leaned back in his chair as if defeated. “That's it
then. I can't help you. You'll be flown back to the airfield, where we're
going to hand you over to King Hassan's security people. Just pray the
bomb gets you before they start work on you.”

Darrow laughed again, though this time it sounded forced. “That
lot? They're amateurs. And the King
doesn't have the stomach to let them
do a proper job anyway. Plus they'll know the score, and they know their
own fate lies with Ali. They'll want to keep in his good books no matter
what.”

“We'll see.” Chance stood up.

In front of Rich, the Professor was speaking quietly into a mobile
phone. “Yes please, now,” Rich heard him say.

A moment later there was the sound of someone knocking on a door. The
SAS guard opened the door and took a note from the person outside. Without
comment, he walked across and handed it to Chance, who read it.

“He'll be expecting us to try something,” the Professor
explained. “So we will. And you never know he might even fall for
it. Though that will make us look a bit silly after all our other
efforts.”

Chance looked up. “Well, it's academic now. You missed your
opportunity. And I think King Hassan's people will actually be very
pleased to see you.”

“What do you mean?” asked Darrow suspiciously.

“We've found the bomb.”

There was silence for several seconds. Then Chance went on,
“Turns out it wasn't that well hidden at all,
was it. You obviously
didn't expect anyone to go looking for it. You didn't know we'd found out
the bomb existed or maybe you'd have done a better job of hiding it. The
Secret Service has a Nuclear Containment Team on site. They've already
made it safe.”

“It was hidden well enough,” said Darrow. Was it just
the image on the screen, Rich wondered, or did the man look pale?