Sharp Shot (16 page)

“You call that well hidden? A child could have found it.
Probably it was a child who did find it—like one who got the better of
you.”

Darrow tilted his head slightly to one side. Then he nodded and very
slowly started to clap his hands. “Very good. And this is the bit
where I say something like ‘Gosh, and I never thought you'd look in the
base commander's waste bin,' is it?” He shook his head and laughed.
“Oldest trick in the book.”

Chance stood up again. “Well, we had to try,” he
admitted.

In the laboratory, Ardman tapped Alan on the shoulder. “Have
them check the base commander's waste bin anyway,” he said.
“Just in case. Mr Darrow does have rather a warped sense of
humour.”

Alan nodded and reached for a phone.

“And do you think now is the moment?” Ardman asked the
Professor.

“As good a time as any,” the Professor said. He stood up
and loosened his tie. “I'll just prepare for my big moment. Yes
please, Pete—whenever you're ready.”

“My pleasure,” Pete said. He pulled a keyboard towards
him. “Three, two, one, zero.” As he finished speaking, he
pressed the Enter key.

And the whole building shook, as if it had been hit by a nuclear
blast. A moment later, there was a colossal
boom
.

The whole room shuddered. Plaster fell from the walls. The glass beads
of the chandelier were jangling together. The painting fell, frame
splitting as it hit the floor. Darrow's chair shook so much it looked like
it might fall apart. One leg of the desk collapsed, papers sliding across
the surface as the whole thing tipped.

“Is it that time already?” said Darrow as the sound and
the vibration subsided.

Chance stared open-mouthed at him.

“You inhuman monster,” he finally spat out. “You
actually let it happen!” He looked as if he was about to reach
across the desk and haul Darrow bodily from his chair, but at that moment
the door opened and the Professor hurried in past the SAS guard. His shirt
was
untucked and his tie was at an angle. His face was smeared with dirt.
There was plaster dust stuck in his dark beard. The corridor outside was
strewn with rubble.

“Oh my God,” the Professor. “So many people…It's
all over the news.”

Chance grabbed a remote control from the desk and turned on the TV
mounted on the wall. The picture was breaking up, the sound distorted, but
it showed the scene at the capital.

The distinctive skyline of East Araby's capital city was ragged and
torn. Behind it, from the direction of the US airbase, a huge mushroom
cloud was rising into the dusty sky. The footage was shaky and
low-definition. The BBC World News banner was splashed across the bottom
of the screen.

“We're just getting these images from our reporter's mobile
phone,” the announcer was saying. “It certainly looks like a
major incident. We can switch now to live coverage from the East Araby
News Network.”

The picture broke up, and when it reformed again it showed ambulances
and fire engines speeding along a highway. Again, in the background, the
mushroom cloud continued to billow upwards into the sky.

“We don't have sound,” the announcer said, “but
obviously the East Araby authorities are mobilising all their emergency
services. We are still waiting for news of whether Air Force One had left
East Araby or if the President is still in the city. There is also no news
yet of King Hassan, though Crown Prince Ali has announced he will be
making an official statement shortly.”

The picture cut back to more mobile phone footage of the explosion.
The image held for a few moments, then broke up into static and white
noise.

Chance turned off the television and hurled the remote control away.

“What have you done?” he hissed at Darrow. “How
many have you killed?”

“I'm just the messenger,” said Darrow. He sounded as
smug as ever, but he was looking shaken.

“How can you just sit there?” the Professor said.
“We had people on that base, and in the city. Good people. Never
mind the thousands of civilians.” He suddenly grabbed Darrow by the
front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. “And you just sit
there!”

Darrow tried to shake free, but the Professor was pushing him back
down into the chair anyway. “You
didn't even have the decency to hit
a military target,
did you?” he shouted.

“What do you mean?”

“You saw where that cloud was.”

“It was the airbase,” said Chance. “Has to
be.”

“You think so? Because I don't. He didn't even dare go to the
base, did he?”

“That is where we found him,” said Chance.

“A decoy then!” The Professor was ranting now, breathing
heavily and clenching his fists. “That cloud was over the
residential area. The hospital, schools, children's playgrounds. That was
your target wasn't it?!” He grabbed Darrow again and pushed him to
the ground. “You piece of dirt! Is that all you're good for—
killing the sick and the kids? Is it?!”

“The bomb was on the base,” Darrow told him, wiping a
smear of blood from his mouth. “That was the point.”

“Never! We'd have found it. You knew that, you couldn't take
the risk. You weren't man enough. So where did you leave it? A litter bin
in the park, was it?”

The Professor advanced threateningly at Darrow, who was still lying
on the floor. He pushed himself
backwards, watching the man warily.
“It was on the
base,” he repeated.

“A school canteen, maybe?”

“On the base.”

“Under some old woman's bed in the hospital? I bet that was
it.” He took a swift step towards Darrow, drawing his leg back to
kick him hard.

“It was on the airbase!”

“No. You couldn't hide it from us. You're not clever enough,
for that—not for anything more than blowing up little kids and old
women. We searched every inch of that base, and it wasn't there. So where
was it? Hospital? School? Bus station?”

“On the base,” insisted Darrow. “In one of the
hangers. You'll know soon enough.”

“No we won't, because we searched the hangers. It was in the
school, wasn't it? The nursery school three blocks from the base.”

“In the hanger.”

“Liar!” The Professor pulled out a handgun and trained
it on Darrow, his hand shaking. “You'll die a liar and a
coward.”

“It was in the hanger, where you'd never find it.”

The shot ripped into the marble floor close to
Darrow's head. “We'd
have found it!”

“Not inside the engine housing of a B-2 Stealth Bomber, you
wouldn't!”

The Professor froze, suddenly incredibly calm. “No,” he
said quietly. “We probably wouldn't.” He turned to Chance.
“I reckon that was about two minutes, don't you?”

“Not bad,” agreed Chance.

Darrow stared up at them, the confusion on his face gradually giving
way to fury. He leaped to his feet and hurled himself at the Professor.

The Professor didn't move or blink. He just let the SAS man from the
doorway hammer his shoulder into Darrow and send him sprawling.

“You know,” said the Professor. “I did worry you
might realise about the EMP. But it seems you're not as good as we feared
after all. A bit pathetic really.” Then he turned away, and he and
Chance left the room.

Ardman put down his phone. “Chuck White has passed that on to
the Nuclear Containment Team. So, problem solved—hopefully.”

“We still need to round up Crown Prince Ali and his
cohorts,” said Halford.

“Shouldn't be too tricky now their plan has failed. And King
Hassan will have the evidence he needs to move openly against them. Prince
Ali can't play the popularity card after it gets out that he was willing
to murder thousands of his own people. I imagine his military support is
already evaporating.”

The Professor and John Chance arrived, obviously pleased with how
things had gone.

“I wasn't sure he would tell us,” admitted Chance,
“but the news footage was pretty convincing.”

“Oh, Mike knows his stuff. Even in a hurry, he's the
best.”

“Who
is
this Mike guy?” asked Jade.

“He works in the film industry,” the Professor
explained. “Film and TV, actually. He has a small company that does
special effects. They make models, fly spaceships, recreate historic
events and natural disasters, blow things up—as you saw. That was a
combination of video footage, of the real airbase and city, with some
computer animation and digital painting for the damaged buildings added
and a film of a controlled explosion Mike arranged. A much smaller
explosion than it looked, obviously, but when it's combined with the other
visual elements, then
degraded to look like it was shot on a mobile
phone…Combine that with shaking the room and knocking a bit of plaster
off the walls and ceiling and, well, the effect is quite
startling.”

“It convinced me,” Rich agreed. “And I
knew
it was all a fake.”

“We did worry he'd work it out,” said Chance.

“EMP,” said Rich.

The Professor smiled. “Exactly.”

He and Chance went to talk to Ardman, leaving Jade and Rich alone at
the back of the lab.

“So what's this EMP thing?” Jade asked Rich.

“I didn't realise before. It's an Electro-Magnetic Pulse. When
a nuclear bomb goes off, it knocks out all the electronic equipment in the
area.”

Jade nodded. “So the news camera and mobile phone shouldn't
have been working.”

“That's right.”

“Lucky Darrow didn't spot that.”

“Lucky should be our middle name,” said Rich. As he
spoke, he glanced at the main screen set up on one of the lab workbenches.

“What is it?” Jade asked, seeing his expression. She
turned to look.

The screen was still showing the room where their father had
interrogated Darrow, and where the SAS man should have been keeping Darrow
under guard. The heavy door was locked from the outside, so even if Darrow
somehow managed to immobilise the guard there was absolutely no way he
could get out.

Until now.

“Oh my God,” said Rich. “Not so lucky.”

He and Jade ran for the door, shouting urgently to Chance.

Darrow was beaten. He knew there was no way he could hope to overpower
the guard, and that even if he
did
he couldn't go
anywhere. He could try to shoot out the lock on the door, but there would
be other guards outside. His choice was between going out in a blaze of
glory, or waiting to see what justice had to offer.

Maybe he could force them to repatriate him to Britain and serve a
prison sentence there. But more likely the Americans would want him and he
would disappear for ever into some prison camp that didn't officially
exist. But even that was preferable to facing trial—or
not
facing trial—in East Araby.

Then fate played its hand, and suddenly Darrow's options were very
different.

The floor was covered with heavy, marble tiles. Crown Prince Ali had
demanded nothing but the very best from his builders. The floor was
specially reinforced so it could take the tremendous weight of the marble.

But that was before the Professor's team had blown out some of the
joists to make the room shake as if caught at the edge of a nuclear blast.

The first clue Darrow had that something was wrong was when the floor
shifted slightly under his feet. He glanced at the SAS man standing by the
door. Close to the wall, the effect was less noticeable and the guard just
stared back at Darrow.

Trying to look casual, Darrow slumped down as heavily as he could in
the nearest chair. Again he felt the floor move. More marked now, the
guard seemed to have realised something was amiss. Darrow knew he had to
act quickly.

He jumped to his feet, making a point of stretching and groaning as
if sore from his exertions. He then leaned forward and rested his hands on
the edge of the heavy wooden desk. It rocked slightly as he put his
weight
on it, one of the legs having been blown off earlier.

Then, with an almighty effort, Darrow gripped the side of the desk
and heaved. The desk lifted, turned, toppled, and Darrow leaped backwards.
The guard gave a shout of surprise and stepped forward.

But it was too late. The weight of the desk hitting the weakened
floor was enough to break through the remaining, damaged floor supports.
The centre of the room collapsed. Marble tiles slid and fell. The desk
crashed through to the room below leaving a ragged hole.

The guard staggered forwards, off balance as the floor tilted and
bucked. Darrow paused only to kick viciously at the man and knock him
down. Then, grabbing the guard's assault rifle, he leaped into the hole
left by the desk.

Moments later, the door crashed open and Chance ran in. He skidded to
a halt, almost losing his balance on the broken floor. Rich and Jade were
close behind him. Chance held out his arms to keep them back, as a burst
of automatic fire hammered through the hole in the floor and shattered the
chandelier.

In the room below, Darrow landed painfully on a pile of rubble. His
ankle twisted under him, but he ignored the pain. He let off a burst of
gunfire in case the guard had recovered and was trying to follow him. Then
he hurried to the door, out into the corridor, and he was running for the
stairs, ignoring the pain in his ankle. He knew the layout of the desert
palace from several visits, and he knew the only ways out were the
airstrip
—too far away—and the helicopter pad on the roof.

Whatever Chance and Ardman and their colleagues thought, Darrow still
had a job to do…