Snakehead (23 page)

Left and then right, two more power strokes and he was into the rapids. He hadn't had time to pick a line—or to form any strategy for surviving the next section. And this stretch was even worse than the first one had been, with faster water, a bigger slope, rocks that seemed purposely built to impale him or tear him in half.

Even the sniper seemed to hesitate, letting the river do its work for him. “
When in doubt, keep paddling
.” That was another of Ian Rider's instructions, and Alex did just that, swinging the paddle automatically, first on one side, then the other, battling his way through. The helicopter had gone from sight. The spray had wiped it out. Surely that meant they couldn't see him. There was an earsplitting bang, but it wasn't the rifle. The nose of the kayak had slammed into a rock, jerking Alex around in a crazy circle, so that for the next few seconds he found himself traveling down the river backward. He jammed the paddle in, using the current to turn him. His arms were almost torn off by the strain, but the boat came around, then shot forward. All the water in the world fell on him. But then, like before, it was over. He was through.

Ahead of him, the river was wider, and this time the vegetation was set farther back, providing no cover. The kayak was being carried rapidly. In fact, the river seemed to be moving faster and faster. Why? Alex had no time to find an answer. He heard the thudding of the rotors, glanced up, and saw the sniper taking aim. He was so close that Alex could make out the stubble on his chin, the finger closing on the trigger.

There was only one thing he could do, one last trick he could play. It might easily kill him, but Alex was fighting back. He wasn't just going to sit there and let this man gun him down.

The sniper fired. Alex felt the bullet crease the side of his neck, just above his shoulder. He wanted to scream. It was as if someone had purposefully drawn a kitchen knife across his flesh. But at the same exact moment, he took a deep breath, threw himself sideways, jerked up a knee, and turned the kayak upside down.

He wanted the sniper and the helicopter pilot to think that they had gotten him. From the air, all they would be able to see was the upturned hull of the kayak. Alex was dangling beneath, his face and shoulders buffeted by the current, the paddle gripped tightly in his hands. He was still traveling very fast. If he hit a rock, he would be killed. It was as simple as that. But it was either that or a bullet from above.

For Alex, the next minute was the longest of his life. He could feel himself moving, but he could see nothing. When he tried to look, everything was a swirl of dark gray, and the water beat against his eyes. He could hear strange echoes of the river and, far away, the helicopter hovering in the air. His legs were trapped, locked above his head inside the kayak. His heart was pounding. His lungs were beginning to demand fresh air.

But he had to stay underwater. How long would the helicopter follow him before the pilot decided that his work was done? His chest was getting tighter. There were bubbles escaping from his mouth and ears, precious oxygen leaking out of him. He had no idea how long he had been submerged. He felt the kayak hit something, sending a shudder down his spine. This was madness. He was drowning. If he waited much longer, he wouldn't have the strength to flip himself back up.

At last, at the very end of his endurance, on the edge of a blackout, he acted. The move was called the hip snap. Alex curled his face into his body and pushed with the paddle. At the same time, he rolled his hips, forcing the kayak to turn. Everything happened at once. His head and shoulders cleared the surface, water streaming down his face. Daylight burst all around him. The kayak swayed, then righted itself. Gasping, dazed, Alex found himself in the middle of the river, moving faster than ever.

And he was alone. The helicopter had gone. He could hear it fading into the distance behind him. So it had worked. They thought he was dead.

Alex looked ahead of him. And saw that he was.

Now he understood why they had left him. It wouldn't have mattered if he was still alive underneath the kayak because what lay in front of him would kill him anyway. He had reached the Bora Falls.

A straight line that marked the end of the world. The river was rushing over it…hundreds, thousands of gallons. There was a white cloud, a mist hanging over the abyss. And beyond that nothing. He could hear the water thundering down endlessly and knew that there could be no going back. There was no power on earth that could stop him now.

Alex Rider opened his mouth and yelled as the kayak was swept helplessly over the edge.

F
OR A LONG, DRAWN-OUT
second, he hung in space with the roar of the Bora Falls in his ears, the spray in his eyes, and the certain knowledge in his mind that he couldn't possibly survive. The water was like some huge living thing—rushing and exploding over the side of the rock face. And there would be no safe landing. Looking down, Alex saw a boiling cauldron, fifty yards below, waiting to receive him.

There was no time to think, no time to do anything but react instinctively, half remembering lessons taught long ago. Somehow he had to lessen the impact when he hit the surface below. Be aggressive! Don't let the waterfall just take you. At the very last moment, as he began to fall, Alex tensed himself, took a deep breath, and then paddled hard with a single, powerful stroke.

The world tilted.

The roar in his ears was deafening. He was blind. His head was being hammered. He was only aware of his hands, gripping the paddle, the wrists locked, his muscles seizing up.

Lean forward. You don't want to fight the water—you have to go with it. The higher the drop, the more angle you'll need when you hit the bottom. And—he remembered when it was almost to late—turn your head to one side or the impact will smash every bone in your face.

Falling. Half in the water, half in the air. Faster and faster.

Try to aim for the white. That's where there's the most air in the water, and the air will cushion your fall. Don't shout. You have to hold that breath.

How much farther could it be? And how deep was the basin? God—he would be smashed to pieces if he hit a rock. Too late to worry about that now. He closed his eyes. Why watch his own death?

The kayak hit the cauldron nose first and was instantly sucked inside. Alex's legs and stomach took the full force of the impact before the water overwhelmed him. It pounded down on his shoulders, crushing him. His head was thrown back, and he felt the whiplash twist his neck. The paddle was torn free. And then he was floundering, scrabbling desperately with his hands, trying to free himself from the kayak, which was now dragging him into the depths below. His elbow struck a rock, almost breaking the bone. The shock made him release his breath, and he knew he had only seconds to reach the surface. But his legs were trapped. He couldn't pull them free. The kayak was sinking, taking him with it. Using all his strength, he twisted his lower body, and somehow his hips cleared the edge of the kayak. He pulled. First one leg, then the other. He was swallowing water. He no longer knew which way was up and which was down. His feet were free. He lashed out once and then again. The water spun him, throwing him violently from side to side. He couldn't take any more. One last try…

His head and shoulders burst up into the air. He was already far downstream. The Bora Falls were behind him, impossibly high. There was no sign of the kayak. It had surely been smashed to pieces. But as Alex sucked in fresh air, he knew that he had done everything right and that by a miracle he had survived. He had taken on the falls and he had beaten them.

The current had slowed down. Alex's arms and legs were completely limp. All his strength had gone, and the best he could manage was to keep himself afloat, tilting his head back so that his mouth stayed in the air. He felt as if he had swallowed a gallon of water and vaguely wondered about cholera, yellow fever, or whatever else this tropical river might contain. ASIS hadn't bothered giving him any injections before he flew to Bangkok.

How far had he traveled? Dr. Tanner had said that the falls were a mile from the camp but he felt he had gone twice that distance. No sign of the helicopter, though. That was a good thing. They thought he was dead. So they'd leave him alone. He had never felt so weary. The water was now a cushion, and he wanted to lie back and sleep.

Some time later, he found himself lying on a riverbank made up of gravel and sand. He had been washed up without even noticing it and must have nodded off since the sun was now high in the sky. He allowed the warmth to creep into him. As far as he could tell, none of his limbs were broken. His neck and back were bruised and hurting—his spine had taken the full force of the impact—and there were cuts and scratches all over his waist, his hips, and his legs. But he knew he had gotten off lightly. The chances of his surviving the waterfall must have been about fifty to one…but to have done so without a major injury would have been considerably less. He remembered what Ash had told him about his father. The luck of the devil. Well, that was something Alex seemed to have inherited.

Ash.

Reef Island.

The tsunami heading for Western Australia.

For the last few days, Alex had been so worried about himself that he had lost sight of the bigger picture. How long did he have left before Major Yu set off the bomb that was going to have such a devastating effect on the earth's tectonic plates? Was he already too late? Alex forced himself into a sitting position, warming himself in the sun and trying to get life back into his battered frame. At the same time, he worked it out. Yu had spoken of three days. At midnight the earth was going to be in the grip of some sort of gravitational pull and the fault line deep down in the seabed would be at its most vulnerable.

Three days. Alex had spent two of them as a prisoner in the hospital compound. So it was going to happen today! Right now it couldn't be much later than ten or eleven o'clock in the morning. So Alex had only twelve hours to prevent a terrible catastrophe, the murder of eight people on Reef Island and the deaths of thousands more in Australia.

And that was when the complete hopelessness of his situation hit him. It was true that he had managed to escape from the horrific death Major Yu had planned for him. But where was he? Looking around him, Alex saw that he had left the rain forest behind him. He was on the edge of a floodplain with mountains in the far distance, perhaps thirty miles away. He was surrounded by stubby, dwarflike trees that he couldn't name, a few boulders, and some termite mounds. There was a sweet smell—something like moldering wood—in the air. And that was all. If nowhere had a middle, this was it.

There was nothing he could do. Nobody was going to operate on him, but he would die anyway—either from starvation or disease. Assuming, of course, that a saltwater crocodile or a snake didn't get him first. Alex wiped a grimy hand across his face. It seemed to him that from the moment this mission had begun, nothing had gone right. He had never been in control. He cast his mind back to the office in Sydney and Ethan Brooke outlining what he would have to do. He was there to provide cover, that was all. It was going to be easy. Instead of which, he had been thrown into the worst two weeks of his life. God! He should have listened to Jack Starbright!

He looked again at the mountains. It would take him forty-eight hours to reach them at the very least. Too long. And why should he assume anyone lived there? He hadn't seen any roads or houses from the plane. If only he could get in touch with MI6. He glanced at his wrist. Miraculously, despite the battering it had taken, the watch was still in place. The question was—why hadn't it worked? Smithers had built it for him personally. The watch
must
be sending out a signal. So what possible reason could MI6 have to ignore it? Alex remembered his meeting with Mrs. Jones and Ben Daniels—Fox, as he had once been known. Alex couldn't believe that the SAS man would let him down. So what had gone wrong?

He took the watch off and examined it. Although it looked cheap and tacky, like something he might have gotten in a street market in Afghanistan, the watch would have been built to last. The strap must have been strong to survive the journey over the Bora Falls, and Alex guessed the case would be waterproof. The hands were still showing eleven o'clock. Alex turned it over. There was a groove going all the way around the underside. He realized that the back must screw off. He pressed his thumb against it and twisted. The case opened with surprising ease.

The watch contained some complicated microcircuitry that Smithers must have designed and installed. It was completely dry. There was no evidence of any water seeping in. The whole thing was powered by a battery, which should have been sitting in a circular compartment, right in the middle.

But there was no battery. The compartment was empty.

So that was the answer, the reason why his signal hadn't been heard. There had been no signal. But how could it have happened? Smithers had always been on his side. It was completely unlike him to forget something so basic. Alex had to fight back a wave of fury. His whole life snatched away from him simply because of a missing battery!

For a moment, Alex was tempted to fling the watch into the river. He never wanted to see the wretched thing again.

For a long time he didn't move. He let the sun beat down on him, drying out his clothes. A few flies buzzed around his face, but he ignored them. He found himself playing back everything that had happened to him…the waterfall, the flight through the rapids, the moment he had set the hospital ablaze. Had it really all been for nothing? And before that, his dinner with Major Yu, the chase on the
Liberian Star
, the discovery of Royal Blue, the toy warehouse in Jakarta, and the arrival of Kopassus.

No battery!

He remembered his time in Bangkok with Ash and the story he had been told about his father in Malta. That was the only reason he had agreed to all this, to learn something about himself. Had it been worth it? Probably not. The truth was that Ash had disappointed him. His godfather. Alex had hoped he would have been more of a friend, but despite all the time they had spent together, he had never really gotten to know him. Ash was too much of a mystery—and from the very start he had set out to trick Alex. That business on the beach in Perth.

He remembered his first sight of Ash, dressed as a soldier and carrying an assault rifle, looming out of the darkness as Alex stood on a fake mine in the middle of a fake barrage. How could they have done that to him? It had all been a test.

“You weren't in any real danger. We knew exactly where you were all the time.”

That was what Ash had told him that first night at the Peninsula Hotel, sitting out at the swimming pool. Alex remembered it now.

And how had they known?

“There was a beacon inside the heel of one of your sneakers.”

His sneakers.

Alex looked down at them. All the color had faded, and they were ragged, full of holes. Was it possible, what he was thinking? Could it possibly be true? Alex had been given the sneakers when he was on the aircraft carrier that had picked him up when he first landed in Australia. The beacon had been added by Colonel Abbott when he was staying with the SAS in Swanbourne.

He was wearing the same sneakers now.

He had been given a complete change of clothes by Cloudy Webber when she had dressed him as an Afghan—but the shoes hadn't fit him, so she had allowed him to keep his own. He hadn't changed again until his dinner with Major Yu. He had worn the English designer shirt and jeans until he had arrived at the hospital. There had been fresh clothes in his room. But neither Major Yu nor Dr. Tanner had provided him with new footwear. So the beacon that he had been given in Swanbourne must still be on him. It wouldn't be working. It had been designed for short-range use.

But it might be battery-operated.

Alex fought back the surge of excitement. He was too afraid of being disappointed. He leaned down and pulled the sneakers off so that he could examine them. If there was a tracking device, it would have to be buried in one of the heels. There was nowhere else to hide it. Alex turned the shoes over. The soles were made of rubber, and he couldn't see any openings or anything that looked like a secret compartment. He pulled out the insoles. And that was when he found it. It was in the left shoe, directly over the heel: a flap that had been cut into the fabric and then sealed.

It took Alex ten minutes to get it open, using his fingers, his teeth, and a sharp stone from the riverbank. As he worked, he knew that this might all be for nothing. The battery had been there for two weeks. It might be dead. It surely wouldn't fit the transmitter in the watch anyway. But the chances of finding a second battery in the Australian outback had been zero to begin with. Alex found it hard to believe that he had been carrying it all the time.

He pulled open the flap and there it was—the little pack of circuitry that had been designed to save his life during the bombardment in Swanbourne. And there was the power source too, a straightforward lithium battery, about twice the size of the one that should have been fitted into the watch. Alex eased it out and held it in the palm of his hand as if it were a nugget of pure gold. All he had to do was connect it. He had no screwdriver, no conductor, no metal contacts, nothing. Easy!

In the end, he broke two spikes off a nearby shrub and used them as miniature tweezers to pry out some of the wires from inside the heel of the shoe. It seemed to take forever, and as the sun climbed higher, he felt the sweat trickling down his forehead, but he didn't stop to rest. Painstakingly, he unstitched the inside of the radio beacon until he had two lengths of wire, each one barely more than an inch long. Did the battery still have any life? He rubbed the wires against it, and to his delight, he was rewarded by a tiny spark. So now all he had to do was connect the battery to the watch, using a couple of pebbles to keep everything in place. There really was nothing more he could do. He set the battery next to the watch with the wires trailing inside, the two of them feeding precious electricity into the transmitter, and balanced the entire thing on a rock. After that, he went and lay down in the shadow of a tree. Either the transmitter was working now or it wasn't. He would find out soon enough.

A few minutes later he was sound asleep.