Snakehead (21 page)

Alex knew there was no point refusing. Although it made him sick, he allowed Tanner and the nurse to give him a thorough examination. They checked his reflexes, probed his eyes, ears, and mouth, weighed and measured him, and took the various samples. At last they let him go.

“You've looked after yourself, Alex,” Tanner said. “For an English immigrant, you're in great shape.” He was obviously pleased. “Your blood type is A positive,” he added. “That's going to be an easy match.”

It was as he was putting his clothes back on that he did it. Tanner was typing something into his computer. The nurse was looking over his shoulder. Alex was pulling on his shoes, leaning against the cart as if to support himself. He allowed one hand to cover the scalpel, then slid it sideways and dropped it into his pants pocket. He would have to walk very carefully for the next few minutes or he'd give himself a nasty cut. He just hoped nobody would notice what he had done.

The nurse looked up and saw that he was dressed. “I'll take you to your room,” she volunteered. “You should have a rest. We'll bring you supper in about an hour.”

The sun had already set. The sky was a deep gray with a streak of red like a fresh wound above the horizon. It had begun to rain, fat drops of water bursting one at a time along the ground.

“There's going to be another storm,” the nurse said. “I'd get tucked up and have an early night if I were you. And remember…stay indoors. The dog's trained not to come into the buildings. I mean, this
is
a medical facility. But remember—take one step outside and he'll go for you…and we don't want you losing too much of that blood of yours, do we? Not at five hundred dollars a pint!”

She left Alex alone in a small room on the ground floor with a bed, a table, and a single fan rotating in the center of the ceiling. In one corner, there was a heavy silver filing cabinet. Alex opened it, but there was nothing inside. A second door led into a small shower room, which also contained a toilet and a sink. Alex slid the scalpel out of his pocket and hid it inside the hanging roll of toilet paper. He didn't know if he would have any use for it, but at least it made him feel better having taken it. Maybe these people weren't quite as clever as they thought.

He went back into the bedroom. A single window looked down to the lake. The Piper Super Cub had gone. Alex had watched it become nothing more than a speck in the sky at the same time as he was being examined.

He sat down on the bed and tried to collect his thoughts. Only the day before he had been in Darwin, congratulating himself on what he had achieved, thinking that his mission was over. And now this! How could he have been so stupid? He wondered what was happening to Ash. He still didn't understand why the two of them had been separated. If Yu knew that Ash was working for ASIS, why hadn't he sent him here too? Alex was filled with a longing to see his godfather again. It made everything even worse being here alone.

About an hour later, the door opened and a second nurse came in carrying a tray. She was dark-haired and slim and would have been pretty except that she had a broken nose that had set badly. She was younger than Charleen but equally welcoming.

“I'm Isabel,” she said. “I'm going to be looking after you. I've got a room just past the stairs, halfway down the corridor, so if you need anything, just yell.”

She set the tray down. Alex's dinner consisted of steak and chips, fruit salad, and a glass of milk, but the sight of the food sickened him. He knew they were only building him up for what lay ahead.

He noticed two pills in a plastic cup. “What are these?” he asked.

“Just something to help you sleep,” Isabel replied. “Some of our patients have difficulty nodding off, especially the first couple of nights. And it's important you get your rest.” She paused at the door. “You're the youngest we've ever had,” she said, as if Alex wanted to know. “Leave the tray outside the door. I'll pick it up later.”

Alex picked at the food. He wasn't hungry, but he knew he had to keep up his strength. Outside, the rain fell more heavily. It was the same tropical rain that he had experienced in Jakarta. He could hear it hammering against the roof and splashing into ever-widening puddles. There was a flicker of lightning, and for a couple of seconds he saw the rain forest, black and impenetrable. It seemed to have moved closer, as if it was trying to swallow him up.

Later, somehow, he slept. He didn't take off any of his clothes. He couldn't bear to. He simply lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the first light of the morning was already slanting in. His clothes felt damp. His muscles ached. He lifted his wrist and examined the watch. The two hands were still set at eleven o'clock.

Almost twenty-four hours had passed since he had called for help. He listened to the world outside. The harsh cry of some sort of bird. The rustle of the grasshoppers. The last drip of the water as it fell from the branches. There was nobody out there. MI6 hadn't arrived yet, and Alex couldn't fool himself any longer. Something had gone wrong. The watch wasn't working. They never were going to come.

T
WO DAYS LATER, IN
the afternoon, the Piper Super Cub returned.

By now, Alex had fallen into a strange mood and one that he could barely understand. It was almost as if he had accepted his fate and could no longer find the strength or even the desire to escape it. He had met the two other women working at the hospital: Nurse Swaine and Nurse Wilcox, who had proudly told him that she would be his anesthetist. Nobody had been unkind to him. In a way, that was what made it all so nightmarish. They were always checking that he had food and water. Would he like something to read? Would he like to listen to some music? Soon, the very sound of their voices made his skin crawl, but he couldn't break free of the feeling that they owned him and always would.

But he hadn't given up completely. He was still searching for a way out of this hideous trap. The river was impossible. There were no boats; nothing that would pass as a boat. He had followed the fence all the way around. There were no gaps, no convenient overhanging branches. He had considered blowing a hole in it. He still had the one coin that Smithers had given him. But the fence was connected to an electrical circuit. The guards would know instantly what he had done, and without a map, a compass, or a machete, Alex doubted he would be able to find a way through the rain forest.

He thought about sending a radio message. He had seen the radio room in the administration building…it was neither locked nor guarded. He soon realized why. The radio transmitter was connected to a numeric keypad. You had to punch in a code to activate it. Major Yu really had thought of everything.

Alex watched as the plane hit the surface of the lake and began a slow, lazy turn toward the jetty. He had been expecting it. Dr. Tanner had told him it would be coming the night before.

“It's your first customer, Alex,” he had said cheerfully. “A man called R. V. Weinberg. You may have heard of him.”

As usual, Alex said nothing.

“He's a reality TV producer from Miami. Very successful. But he's contracted a serious eye disease, and he needs two transplants. So it looks as if we'll be starting with your corneas. We'll operate first thing tomorrow morning.”

Alex examined the American from a distance as he was helped out of the plane. Dr. Tanner had warned him not to approach or try to speak to the “customer.” It was one of the house rules. But looking at him, Alex found himself filled with more hatred than he had ever felt for any human being.

Weinberg was overweight in a soft, flabby way. He had curling gray hair and a face that could have been made of putty, with sagging cheeks and jowls. He was a millionaire, but he dressed shabbily, his gut pressing against his Lacoste shirt. But it wasn't just his appearance that disgusted Alex. It was his selfishness, his complete lack of heart. Tomorrow Alex would be blind. This man would take his sight without thinking about it simply because it was what he wanted and he had the money to pay for it. Major Yu, Dr. Tanner, and the nurses were evil in their own way. But Weinberg, the successful businessman from Miami, made him physically sick.

He waited until the man had disappeared into the house that had been prepared for him, then walked down to the edge of the lake. So this was it. He had just one night to make his escape. After that it really would be impossible.

But the anger that Alex had felt had broken through his sense of helplessness. It had come like a slap in the face, and suddenly he was ready to fight back. These people thought he was helpless. They thought they'd covered everything. But they hadn't noticed the missing scalpel. And there was something even more important that they'd overlooked—despite the fact that it was sitting there right in front of them.

The plane.

The pilot had climbed out, dragging a kit bag with him. It looked as if he was going to stay until Weinberg was ready to leave. Alex had no doubt that the Piper would be incapacitated, the engine closed down and the keys locked away. And Dr. Tanner would be fairly certain that no fourteen-year-old boy knew how to fly.

But that was his mistake—to leave the plane, and everything inside it, moored to the jetty.

Alex examined it, working out the angles, thinking about what lay ahead.

 

They sent Alex to bed at eight thirty, and Nurse Isabel came into the room once he was tucked in. She was carrying two sleeping pills and a little cardboard cup of water.

“I don't want to sleep,” Alex said.

“I know, dear,” Isabel replied. “But Dr. Tanner says you've got to get your rest.” She held out the pills. “It's going to be a big day for you tomorrow,” she went on. “You're going to need your rest.”

Alex hesitated, then took the pills. He threw them into his mouth and swallowed the water.

The nurse smiled at him. “It won't be too bad,” she said. “You'll see.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Or rather, you won't…”

They checked Alex's room an hour later and again at eleven. Both times they saw him lying, utterly still, in bed. In a way, Dr. Tanner was surprised. He had been expecting Alex to try something. After all, Major Yu had warned him to take extreme care with this particular boy, and the fact was that tonight was his last chance. But it sometimes happened that way. It seemed that—despite his reputation—Alex had accepted the hopelessness of his situation and had chosen to find a brief escape in sleep.

Even so, Dr. Tanner was a cautious man. Before he went to bed himself, he called the two guards, Quombi and Jacko, into his office.

“I want the two of you outside the room all night,” he ordered.

The two men looked at each other in dismay. “That's crazy, boss,” Jacko said. “The kid's asleep. He's been asleep for hours.”

“He can still wake up.”

“So he wakes up! Where's he going to go?”

Tanner rubbed his eyes. He liked to get a good night's sleep before he operated, and he was in no mood for a lengthy debate. “I've got my orders from Major Yu,” he snapped. “You want to argue with
him
?” He thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Let's do it this way. Jacko—you take the first shift until four o'clock. Quombi—you take over then. And make sure that dog of yours stays outside the whole time. I just want to be sure that no one goes anywhere tonight. Okay?”

The two men nodded.

“Good. I'll see you tomorrow…”

 

At three thirty that night, Jacko was sitting on the porch of Alex's building, reading a magazine he had read fifty times before. He was in a bad mood. He had passed Alex's window at least a dozen times, listening for the faintest sound. There'd been nothing. It seemed to Jacko that everyone had got themselves into a complete panic about this kid. What was so special about him? He was just one of the many who had passed through the hospital. Some had screamed and cried. Some had tried to buy their way out. All of them had ended the same way.

The last thirty minutes of his watch ticked away. He stood up and stretched. A few yards away, lying on the grass, Spike cocked an ear and growled.

“It's all right, dog,” Jacko said. “I'm going to bed. Quombi will be here soon.”

He belched, stretched a second time, and walked off into the darkness.

Ten minutes later, Quombi took his place. The other man was the younger of the two and had spent almost a third of his life in jail until Dr. Tanner had found him and brought him here. He liked his work at the hospital, especially taunting the patients as they got weaker and weaker. But he was in a bad mood right now. He needed his sleep. And he didn't get paid overtime for working through the night.

As he reached the building, his eye was caught by something glinting in the grass just in front of the door. It was some sort of foreign coin. Quombi didn't even wonder how it had gotten there. Money was money. He walked right over and reached down to pick it up.

He was faintly aware of something falling out of the sky, but he didn't look up quickly enough to see it. The silver filing cabinet could have crushed him, but he was lucky. One corner struck him, a glancing blow on the side of the head. Even so, it was enough to knock him out instantly. Fortunately, it made little sound as it thudded into the soft grass. Quombi fell like an axed tree. The dog got up and whined. It knew that something was wrong, but it had never been trained for this. It went over and sniffed at the motionless figure, then sat on its hind legs and scratched.

On the first-floor balcony, Alex Rider looked down at his handiwork with grim satisfaction.

He had never been asleep. He had palmed the pills and swallowed only water and had been waiting quietly ever since. He had gotten up several times in the night, waiting for Jacko to leave, and had heard the words he had spoken to the dog. That was when he had gotten dressed and set to work.

Carrying the heavy filing cabinet up one flight of stairs had almost been beyond him, and it was probably only desperation that had lent him strength as he clutched it in both arms and balanced it on his knee. The worst part had been making sure the metal frame never banged against the walls or the wooden steps. Nurse Swaine had a room on the ground floor, halfway down the corridor, and the slightest sound might awaken her.

He had dragged it into the bedroom over the front door and, with one last effort, had somehow managed to heave it up onto the balcony rail, balancing it there while he fumbled in his pocket. He had only just been in time. Quombi had made his appearance a few seconds after he had dropped the ten-baht coin that Smithers had given him onto the lawn as bait. From that moment, the trap had been set.

And it had worked. Jacko was in bed. From the sound of it, Nurse Swaine hadn't woken up. Quombi was unconscious. With a bit of luck, he might even have fractured his skull. And the dog hadn't spoiled it all by barking.

The dog was next.

Alex crept back downstairs and went over to the main door. As he appeared, Spike began to growl, its hackles rising and its ugly brown eyes glaring out of the darkness. But—like Dr. Tanner—Nurse Hicks had told him more than she should have. She had said that the dog was trained not to come into the building. The animal was clearly lethal. Even for a pit bull, it was ugly. But it wouldn't harm him so long as he didn't step outside.

“Nice dog,” Alex muttered.

He stretched out his hand. He was holding a piece of steak that he had been given on the first night. It had been kind of Dr. Tanner to warn him that there was a dog. Cut into the meat were the six sleeping pills that he had been given over the last three days. The question was—would the dog take the bait? It didn't move, so Alex threw the meat onto the grass, close to the sprawled-out body of the guard. Spike ran over to it, his stubby tail wagging. He looked down, sniffed, and scooped up the meat greedily, swallowing it without even chewing.

Just as Alex had hoped.

It took ten minutes for the pills to take effect. Alex watched as the dog grew more and more drowsy until finally he collapsed onto one side and lay still, apart from the rise and fall of his stomach. At last things seemed to be going Alex's way. But even so, he stepped outside cautiously, expecting either the dog or his master to wake up at any time. He had no need to worry. He scooped up the coin—it was lying a few inches from the edge of the filing cabinet—and hurried into the night.

There was a soft echo of thunder that trembled through the air like a drum rolling down a hill. It wasn't raining yet, but there was going to be another storm. Good. That was exactly what Alex wanted. He checked left and right. The compound was kept permanently lit by a series of arc lamps. The rest of the hospital staff, the pilot, and the American television producer would all be fast asleep. Alex hesitated for just a few seconds, thinking how wonderful it would be if MI6—perhaps Ben Daniels and a platoon of SAS men—chose this moment to make their appearance. But he knew what wasn't going to happen. It was all up to him.

He hurried toward the jetty. If only he had learned how to fly! He might have been able to get the Piper started up and in minutes he would have been out of here, on his way to freedom. But at fourteen, and despite all the other skills his uncle had taught him, he had been too young for flying lessons. Never mind. The plane was still going to be useful to him—for that was Dr. Tanner's big mistake. The security at the hospital had been thoroughly checked—
but only when the Piper was away
. Right now it was back, and even though he couldn't fly it, the seaplane was still going to help him escape.

He reached the jetty without being seen and crouched in the shadow of the plane, which was sitting on its two floats, rocking gently in the water. There was another rumble of thunder, louder this time, and a few drops of water splashed against Alex's shoulders. The storm was going to break very soon. Alex examined the Piper Super Cub. There were two metal struts on each side, supporting the weight of the cockpit and fuselage. They tapered to a point, where they were bolted into the long, fiberglass floats. Just as he remembered.

Alex reached into his pocket and took out the ten-baht coin again. It was the last one that Smithers had given him, and it occurred to him that all three would have saved his life. He placed it against the larger of the metal struts. He looked up at the sky. There were few stars tonight, the clouds swirling overhead. Behind them, the lightning flickered, white and mauve. Alex had the chewing gum pack in his hand. He waited for the thunder and pressed the switch at exactly the right moment.

There was a flash and a small explosion. Even without the storm, it might not have been heard. But the coin had done its job. One of the struts had been ripped apart. The other had come free. The Piper sagged in the water. Alex lay down on the jetty and pressed his feet against the float, pushing with all his strength. Slowly the float moved away from the main body of the plane. Alex pushed harder. The float came free. The rest of the plane sagged uselessly in the water. Moving more quickly now, Alex grabbed hold of the float and dragged it to the shore.