Agent 21: Codebreaker: Book 3 (6 page)

‘Listen carefully,’ Zak hissed. ‘There are two guards. I’ve disabled one but he won’t stay quiet for long.’

‘What about the Americans? They
are
coming, you know. Tonight.’ He glanced over at his laptop.

Zak chose his words carefully. ‘We’ll deal with the Americans when they turn up.’ He made a point of not using the word ‘if’. ‘Now listen, when we leave your room—’

‘Cell,’ Malcolm corrected him.

‘When we leave your
cell
, we need to hurry back to the kitchens. If we bump into anybody, let me deal with it.’

‘Are you going to kill them?’ Malcolm asked the question as if he was enquiring about the weather.

‘Of course not.’

‘It would be safer to kill them.’ The boy felt in the darkness for his glasses and put them on.

‘I’ve already told you: nobody’s killing anybody. Just stick close, OK?’ Zak saw the boy shrug his agreement in the darkness, then crept with him towards the door. He pressed his ear up against it. No sound, so he slipped the keycard into the slot inside the cell.

Green light.

Very slowly, he opened the door.

The corridor outside was deserted. Zak looked over his shoulder to nod at Malcolm. The boy looked thinner than he had on Michael’s picture. Paler. The unshaved upper lip seemed more pronounced, but his eyes were sharp and wary behind the thick lenses.

‘Let’s go,’ Zak breathed.

They ran down the corridor, Zak taking the lead and Malcolm following a metre behind. As they passed the linen cupboard, there was the muffled sound of grunting and thumping. The warden had clearly regained consciousness and was trying to get out. They ran on past, a little faster now, and their footsteps echoed off the concrete floor and walls of the hospital. Seconds later, Zak was letting them into the dark dining room. They were ten metres from the kitchen when Zak suddenly grabbed hold of Malcolm’s arm again. Malcolm flinched, but clearly managed to control himself when he saw that Zak had one finger pressed up against his lips, and was now pointing in the direction of the kitchen door. There was a strip of bright light at the bottom. Zak had left it in darkness. It meant somebody was in there, and he was pretty sure they weren’t making themselves a cup of cocoa.

Zak peered around in the darkness. To their left was a serving area – a series of hotplates with room behind them to hide. He jabbed one finger in that direction, and Malcolm appeared to get his meaning. He hurried over and hunkered down, out of sight. Zak himself returned to the door through which they’d just entered. He slipped his keycard into the slot, and as the light flickered green he opened the door wide, and left it open. As he headed back towards where Malcolm was hiding, he grabbed the end of one of the tables, lifted it up and then let it crash back down. The noise clattered around the room, excruciatingly loud in the silence. Seconds later he was behind the serving area, crouching down with Malcolm. Zak was short of breath, but he noticed that Malcolm seemed perfectly calm.

It took twenty seconds for the kitchen door to open – Zak didn’t have line of sight, but the light flooded into the dining room and he heard footsteps emerging from the kitchens. Two pairs.

Slowly – very,
very
slowly – he peered out from behind the hiding place.

He only caught a fleeting glance before the kitchen door shut, but it was enough to notice two things. Firstly, these were clearly not hospital wardens. They wore black jeans and black polo necks, not the blue and white uniform of the man Zak had disabled. Secondly, one of them at least – he had slicked-back hair and a flat nose – was carrying a firearm. Light reflected off the dull grey metal of a pistol that this intruder held by his side.

And then they were gone, having slipped through Zak’s decoy open door.

He gave it ten seconds before nodding at Malcolm again. ‘Let’s go,’ he breathed.

After crouching in the darkness, the brightly lit kitchen burned Zak’s eyes. He didn’t let that slow him down as he led Malcolm over to the door by which he had entered the building less than fifteen minutes ago. His mind was turning over as he slid the keycard into the slot. Who were the two armed men he had just seen? The Americans Malcolm had been expecting? If so, Michael had been right. Malcolm really
did
need protecting.

The rain had arrived by the time they stepped outside. Heavy, driving rain that reduced their effective visibility to about five metres. That was fine by Zak – it gave them extra cover – and it didn’t seem to bother his strange companion either. He strode alongside Zak as calmly as if he was going for a country walk while they covered the twenty or so metres to the edge of the car park.

‘How did you know?’ Zak had to shout above the noise of the rain. ‘That people were coming for you?’

Malcolm just gave him a sidelong glance.

‘I saw footage of the bomb on the underground,’ Zak persisted. He looked over his shoulder as he spoke, checking that nobody was following them. ‘You do realize that we need to find the person who did that?’

Malcolm nodded matter-of-factly. ‘They’re cowards, aren’t they, people who plant bombs? I don’t like cowards.’

‘So, you going to tell me what you know?’ They were climbing through the perimeter fence now.

Malcolm started looking around as they reached the pavement. ‘You said you’d help me hide,’ he shouted. His glasses had misted up, and his hair was bedraggled. He was stepping backwards away from Zak.

Zak narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe you should think about that, Malcolm. If people really
are
trying to—’

He didn’t finish.

So many things happened at once. Malcolm turned and ran. He had a lot of speed for such a slight frame, and managed to move a good five or six metres down the pavement before Zak could even make chase. As he ran after him, however, from the corner of his eye he saw something else – a figure on the opposite side of the road. He, or she, wore a black balaclava and leather jacket. But it wasn’t the clothes that grabbed Zak’s attention. It was the gun in the figure’s outstretched arm, following Malcolm as he ran.

Zak increased his speed and dived at Malcolm, rugby-tackling him to the ground just as the sound of a gunshot rang through the noisy air. He knew from the sudden jolt of impact that Malcolm had been hit even before he saw the blood.

They hit the hard concrete of the pavement at the same time and Zak felt something splash in his face. At first he thought he’d landed in a puddle, but then he realized the liquid was too warm for that. Too warm and too red. He looked over in the shooter’s direction, but the faceless figure had disappeared.

Malcolm started to howl. His shirt was soaked red and Zak ripped the buttons open to reveal the boy’s bony, bare chest. The round had entered between his left shoulder and pectoral muscle. By the look of things, it had hit an artery because blood was spurting out of him. The rain washed it away to reveal the entry wound, one centimetre in diameter. Zak felt for an exit wound on Malcolm’s back. Nothing. The round must still be lodged in there.

With that level of blood loss, the screaming didn’t last long. Ten seconds, max, before Malcolm’s eyes started to roll. By now, Zak had pulled his phone from his pocket and punched in his distress code – six-four-eight-two. The enhanced GPS capability of the phone would guide Raf and Gabs directly to his position, but in the meantime, Zak had to concentrate on keeping the other boy alive.

The injury was catastrophic. Zak pressed hard on the wound, trying to stem it, but blood just flowed through his fingertips before being washed away by the torrential rain. He put two fingers to Malcolm’s jugular, feeling for a pulse.

Nothing.

Zak’s training kicked in immediately. In less than a second he was squeezing Malcolm’s nose and administering rescue breaths. Two breaths in all, then Zak placed the heel of his right hand on Malcolm’s ribcage and covered it with his left hand. Thirty chest compressions, short and sharp. Malcolm took a deep breath, and for a moment he almost looked conscious.

‘Hold on!’ Zak roared. ‘Help’s on its way.’

He heard sirens. As he bent down to perform two more rescue breaths, he was aware of activity in the hospital car park. Two police cars. More on the way, by the sound of it, and no prizes for guessing why. Zak cursed. He was supposed to be under the radar. Deniable. If anyone caught up with him, he’d have some explaining to do.

A vehicle crashed through the orange barriers that blocked off The Avenue. Raf and Gabs jumped out of their CR-V the second it came to a halt just a couple of metres away, half on, half off the pavement.

‘What happened?’ Gabs yelled.

‘Gunshot . . . across the road . . .’ He peered through the rain. Two figures were running towards them from the hospital. Thirty metres and closing. Zak could just see their faces. It was the armed men he’d seen in the hospital. ‘Get him into the car!’ he shouted at his Guardian Angels, even as he outstretched his right arm and took aim at the approaching figures.

Zak Darke had never killed a man before, and he didn’t intend to start tonight. Instead, he aimed for the space between the two men’s heads – they were running about a metre apart. The air displacement caused by a round passing so close to them would surely be enough to make them dive for cover. But Zak’s aim would have to be good.

He squeezed the trigger. The stubby barrel of the snubnose sparked in the darkness, and the smell of cordite immediately entered his nostrils. Sure enough, the round missed both of the men, but was enough to send them to ground . . .

‘
Zak! Get in!
’

Zak looked over his shoulder. He just had time to see Malcolm laid out on the back seat, Gabs tending to his wound, before Raf slammed the door shut and took his place behind the wheel. Zak sprinted round the front of the car to the passenger door just as a third gunshot rang out through the rain. The round hit Raf’s side window with a dull thud, but wasn’t enough to shatter the bulletproof glass. Even so, Zak had not yet even pulled the passenger door shut before the CR-V burned away, narrowly avoiding an oncoming police car, whose siren blared loudly before disappearing with a disorientating Doppler effect.

‘What the
hell
happened?’ Raf demanded as he drove.

‘Malcolm tried to run. A gunman on the other side of the road put him down.’

‘You should have been more careful.’

Zak let that pass. He turned to Gabs. ‘Is he going to be OK?’ he asked.

Her face and hands were smeared with Malcolm’s blood, and she was too busy trying to keep him alive. ‘He’s trying to say something,’ she said.

Sure enough, even though Malcolm’s eyes were closed, Zak saw that his lips were moving. He strained his ears to hear what the wounded boy was trying to say. ‘One down,’ Malcolm whispered, a sinister echo of his words back in the cell.
One down, two down, they don’t care
 . . .

But then, an egg cupful of blood spewed from his lips. Malcolm fell silent, and Gabs continued the seemingly impossible business of trying to keep him alive.

16 JUNE

5

HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

THEY HAD GONE
from one hospital to another.

Zak had been here before. After his Mexico mission he had woken up here, and so hadn’t known exactly where it was. Tonight he had been so distracted by the emergency in the back of the CR-V that he hadn’t paid any attention to Raf’s route until they reached Westminster Bridge. At the foot of Big Ben they had turned right onto Victoria Embankment and past the Ministry of Defence, before turning sharply left into an underground car park. Zak supposed he had passed this car park any number of times without really noticing it. Curiously, it contained no cars. At the far end, two large doors were flung wide open. Raf screeched up to them. The moment he came to a halt, Zak saw that six medics had surrounded the car. From that moment on, Malcolm was their responsibility. They had a stretcher waiting for him, and a saline drip, and a defibrillator . . .

Now they were sitting in a stark white corridor outside the operating theatre. ‘Do you think he’s going to be OK?’ Zak asked for the third time.

With the exception of this repeated question, they had barely spoken since they arrived. Raf still appeared angry, and wouldn’t catch Zak’s eyes. Gabs, like Zak himself, was covered in Malcolm’s blood. They looked like extras from a horror movie. The blood had dried into a sticky patina on Zak’s own skin, but he didn’t think about washing it off. There were too many other thoughts coursing through his brain. Not least that it could so easily have been two down, and not just one. Who had shot Malcolm? Was the gunman anything to do with the other two intruders? And how had Malcolm known to expect them in the first place?

‘He’s in the best place,’ Gabs said. ‘It’s a private hospital. The security services use it when they can’t risk patients being treated somewhere public. That’s why you ended up here. They have the best surgeons. Trust me, if anyone can save him, these doctors can.’ She didn’t sound very convinced.

The door opened and a man entered. He was a good deal older than Gabs or Raf, had shoulder-length hair, bright green eyes and brought with him the smell of cherry tobacco. His face was grim.

‘Michael,’ Raf said. He didn’t share Zak’s momentary surprise at their handler’s sudden appearance in the flesh.

There was no small talk. No ‘hello’s or ‘how are you’s. Michael got straight to the point. ‘What happened?’ he demanded.

Zak gave a precise account of his actions. He left nothing out. He’d been debriefed by Michael before, and he knew that the old man would spot any holes or inconsistencies in the story. Once he’d finished, Michael gave a curt nod and silence fell on the corridor once more.

‘I don’t understand how he knew someone was coming for him,’ Zak said after a minute.

Michael sniffed. ‘He broke into the Americans’ systems once. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t do it again and find out whatever he wants. We gave him the internet-connected laptop in the hope that we could work out how he’s doing it. He managed to bypass all our spyware and key-logging programs, of course. If I had to guess, I’d say the shooter was American. They’d probably prefer to talk to him, but in the absence of an agreement with us to send him over there, a dead Malcolm Mann solves a lot of their problems.’