Read Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 Online
Authors: Chris Ryan
Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2
CONTENTS
About the Book
Sneak on board an enemy ship. Gather information. And then destroy it …
A year ago Zak Darke became Agent 21, working undercover for a shadowy government agency. But for now, training is over. Zak is in seriously deep water.
AGENT 21
Real name
:
Zak Darke
Known pseudonyms
:
Harry Gold
Age
:
14
Date of birth
:
March 27
Parents
:
Al and Janet Darke [DECEASED]
Operational skills
:
Weapons handling, navigation, excellent facility with languages, excellent computer and technical skills.
Previous operations
:
Inserted under cover into the compound of Mexican drug magnate Cesar Martinez Toledo. Befriended target’s son Cruz. Successfully supplied evidence of target’s illegal activities. Successfully guided commando team in to compound. Target eliminated.
AGENT 17
Real name
:
classified
Known pseudonyms
: ‘
Gabriella
’, ‘
Gabs
’
Age
:
26
Operational skills
:
Advanced combat and self-defence, surveillance, tracking.
Currently charged with ongoing training of Agent 21 on remote Scottish island of St Peter’s Crag.
AGENT 16
Real name
:
classified
Known pseudonyms
: ‘
Raphael
’, ‘
Raf
’
Age
:
29
Operational skills
:
Advanced combat and self-defence, sub-aqua, land-vehicle control.
Currently charged with ongoing training of Agent 21 on remote Scottish island of St Peter’s Crag.
‘
MICHAEL
’
Real name
:
classified
Known pseudonyms
: ‘
Mr Bartholomew
’
Age
:
classified
Recruited Agent 21 after death of his parents. Currently his handler. Has links with MI5, but represents a classified government agency.
ADAN RAMIREZ
Also known as
: ‘
Calaca
’
Distinguishing features
:
Right eye missing. Skin grown over eye socket.
Significant information
:
Formerly head of security for Cesar Martinez Toledo. Currently holds same role for Martinez’s son and heir, Cruz. Highly dangerous.
CRUZ MARTINEZ
Age
:
16
Significant information
:
Has succeeded Cesar Martinez as head of largest Mexican drug cartel. Thought to blame Agent 21 for death of father. Highly intelligent. Profile has remained low since coming to power.
1
STRANGER DANGER
Sunday, 16.30 hrs GMT
THERE ARE GOOD
times and bad times to do almost everything in life. Everything, that is, except visit a grave.
Ellie Lewis always walked away from the churchyard of All Hallows in Camden feeling worse than when she arrived, with tears welling up in her eyes. She had to keep blinking and swallowing hard to keep them at bay. She was fifteen now, and shouldn’t be crying in public. But somehow she couldn’t stop herself visiting. Once a week – twice, sometimes – she wandered past the sheltered porch at the front of the church, through the tombstones to a quiet corner of the churchyard. Here, under an old oak tree and ten metres from the nearest grave, was a narrow mound of earth, the length of a body. And at the head end, a plain stone with two words engraved upon it:
ZAK DARKE
.
All the other gravestones in the churchyard contained more information than this. Date of birth and date of death at the very least. And according to their stones, the deceased were sadly missed or always in somebody’s hearts. They would rest in peace.
But not Zak Darke’s. Ellie remembered the argument well. Her mum and dad had been Zak’s guardians after his parents died, but they had never really liked him. Never really wanted him there. When the time had come to decide which words would be carved on his headstone, they’d been stubborn. ‘Each letter costs an extra seventeen pounds fifty, Ellie. We’re not
made
of money, you know …’ And so they hadn’t even bothered with his full name, Zachary. It was much cheaper to keep it simple.
Her cousin’s grave was not well tended. The mound of soil had only really begun to settle about nine months after the burial. Now, little tufts of grass were sprouting from it. In the summer months, Ellie would collect wild flowers and lay them over the grave. But they soon died and now the soil was covered with these withered posies. Ellie didn’t have the heart to remove them. Nobody else was going to bring flowers, after all.
It was cold today. Ellie had woken to see a hard frost covering the front lawn of 63 Acacia Drive, and it hadn’t disappeared all day. Now it was half-past four
and it was almost fully dark as she stomped through the graveyard, her breath steaming and the cold making her fingertips sting. A priest walked out of the church and stood in the porch. As Ellie passed him, she sneezed.
‘You should be in the warm, dearie,’ the priest said.
Ellie just smiled at him and hurried on. In less than a minute she had made her usual way through the graveyard and was standing at Zak’s final resting place.
Ellie still remembered the awful day he had disappeared. The police said he’d disturbed an intruder robbing their house. For weeks, Ellie hadn’t believed them. Neither she nor her mum and dad had heard anything that night, for a start. How could all that have happened without one of them being woken? And then there had been the weird thing Zak had said to her just the day before.
Something’s about to happen. Don’t ask me what. I want you to know I’ll be safe
.
She’d kept quiet about that, but for the longest time she’d expected Zak to reappear at any moment and offer a perfectly reasonable excuse for his disappearance. But then they’d found the corpse. A thirteen-year-old boy. Mutilated. Unrecognizable. Lying in muddy water in a ditch in Hertfordshire. Mum and Dad had tried to keep the details from her, but they couldn’t stop her reading the papers. The police could only identify the remains by taking a DNA
sample. The sample confirmed the body was Zak’s.
The thought of it made the tears flood up in Ellie’s eyes again. She missed him.
Really
missed him. She turned away from his frosty grave, wrapped her school coat more tightly around herself and stumbled back through the graveyard. Maybe, she thought to herself as she held back the tears, she should come here less often.
Because there are good times and bad times to do almost everything in life. Everything, that is, except visit a grave.
All Hallows Church was situated alongside Camden Road, a busy main street where there was always a lot of traffic. From here to 63 Acacia Drive was about a fifteen-minute walk, but Ellie didn’t want to go home. Her mum and dad would be watching TV and she felt like being by herself. So instead, she walked to the centre of Camden and through the doors of Burger King. Katy Perry was playing quietly in the background. Ellie immediately saw several kids from her school gathered around a table along the left-hand wall. They were laughing loudly at something. She pretended not to see them and walked up to the counter. ‘Diet Coke, please,’ she asked the young man who was serving. ‘Regular.’
‘Very sensible, if I may say so.’
It wasn’t the guy at the counter who had spoken, but somebody behind Ellie. She turned round to see a rather shabby old man. He had grey, shoulder-length hair, piercing green eyes and a stoop to his shoulders. He smelled strongly of tobacco.
‘Too much sugar is very bad for you. Rots the teeth.’
‘Er, right …’ Ellie murmured as she removed some change from her purse and handed it over to the young man, who was looking at this old guy like he was some sort of nutter. ‘Thanks for the advice.’ She took her Coke and looked around for a table.
The raised area on the other side of the restaurant was almost empty. Most of the tables were covered with the debris of other diners’ meals, but that didn’t matter to Ellie. She just didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Couldn’t trust her voice not to wobble. There were two used cups on the table she selected, a little puddle of spilled drink – chocolate milkshake, maybe – and an empty cheeseburger wrapper, still greasy. Ellie took a sip of her Diet Coke. She saw with relief that the weird old guy had sat five tables away and wasn’t paying her any attention.
Absent-mindedly, Ellie folded the cheeseburger wrapper in half, then half again, and then in half for a third time. She remembered Zak telling her once that you could never fold a piece of paper in half more than
seven times, no matter how big it was. He was clever about stuff like that. Ellie was on the fifth fold when she realized a man had approached her table.