Code Name Firestorm (11 page)

“Widow,” said Chopper calmly.

“I’m live,” said Widow. She swung herself out of the lorry’s cab. Leaping from lorry to car and back again, she spun a broad web between the two,
its threads thinner than a human hair but stronger than steel cable. Seconds later, once the car was firmly tethered to the lorry, she swung back into the cab again. “Web binding completed.”

Blackwater hadn’t spotted what Widow had done. All he knew was that as the lorry moved, so did his car. His rusty hatchback was no match for the enormous power of the lorry.

“Take him off the road,” said Chopper.

Nero sent instructions into the lorry’s computer. The vehicle began to drift to the left.

Blackwater was panicking. “Hey!” he screamed at the non-existent lorry driver. “You maniac! You’re going to hit me if you’re not careful! Oi!”

He pressed the car’s brake pedal, but as he did so the car lurched violently. It was tied to the lorry so securely that the lorry simply dragged it along.

In the lorry’s cab, Nero’s millisecond-by-millisecond driving compensated for the drag of the car. The hatchback bumped and bashed against the side of the lorry. The signal jammer bounced off the seat beside Blackwater. It clattered around until it hit the gear stick and broke apart.

“What’s going on?” screamed Blackwater. “Stop! Stop!”

Nero gradually guided the lorry off the motorway onto the hard shoulder, dragging the car along with it. Clouds of grit flew up around the wheels. The car scraped across the ground and one of its tyres burst with a deafening bang.

The lorry continued to steer left. It drove off the hard shoulder onto the grass beyond, rumbling over the bumpy surface. Blackwater’s car did the same.

At last, the lorry came to a halt. The car, its right side badly dented, juddered until its engine cut out.

Blackwater leaned across the passenger seat and scrambled through the glove compartment. “Something’s going on… This is
them
… They’ve tracked me down, somehow… Well, they’ll be sorry! They’ll be sorry!”

He found a smartphone he’d hidden underneath a stack of computer printouts. He sat up in his seat again, tapping gleefully at the phone, chuckling to himself.

He stopped mid-tap. The smile dropped
from his face. Perched on the car’s steering wheel were a butterfly, a spider, a scorpion, a dragonfly, a mosquito and a centipede. The human and the robots gazed silently at each other for a moment.

“You?” gasped Blackwater. “How?” His smile returned. “You’re too late!”

He raised the smartphone up in front of them. A large round button on its screen glowed red. “Now, all that data goes public. It uploads to the internet. It’s bye bye, peace and harmony, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

He pressed the button. An error message appeared:

He pressed the button again. And again. Then he bashed the smartphone against the steering wheel until it smashed into half a dozen pieces. He buried his face in his hands, and yelled angrily at the top of his voice.

Hercules appeared on the headrest beside Blackwater.

“The stolen data is completely wiped off the USB stick?” said Chopper.

“I bombarded it with magnetic radiation about two minutes ago,” said Hercules. “Sirena’s directions were perfect. I tunnelled in a direct line through two laptops, and there it was.”

“You’re welcome,” said Sirena.

“Message sent to SWARM HQ,” said Nero. “Agent K will be here to arrest Blackwater shortly.”

“Sabre,” said Chopper.

The mosquito buzzed in mid-air for a moment. Blackwater looked up, scowling with rage. He was just in time to see Sabre dart forward and inject a memory-wiping pellet into his neck.

Blackwater yelped, and slapped a hand to his neck. Sabre darted forward again, and injected a freezer sting into the other side. Blackwater yelped again, then toppled over sideways.

“He won’t remember us at all,” said Chopper. “SWARM remains secret.”

CHAPTER TEN

The following day, in the laboratory at SWARM HQ, Queen Bee brought her team up to date. The robots were all in their metallic nests, raised above the workbench. The residue from the garage explosion had been cleaned off them, and they were recharging their power cells.

“Drake’s safely under lock and key, then?” said Alfred Berners.

Queen Bee nodded. “And Blackwater too. MI6 have been able to assure the world that their data is secure again. Mind you, there are a number of governments who want to ask them some
awkward questions, but I think we can leave that to them.”

“Why did Drake do it?” said Simon Turing. “What was he hoping to gain?”

“He was ruthless and ambitious,” said Queen Bee. “But he’d also, in the past, made errors and enemies. He’d even been made to look a fool by this department, don’t forget. He wasn’t exactly thought of as MI5’s finest, but he badly wanted to get ahead. He wanted to get promoted to a better job, and above all he wanted to be thought of as a hero.”

“So he cooked up a plot to make himself look good,” said Simon.

“Exactly,” said Queen Bee. “He found someone on MI5’s watch list, someone with a grudge who might be turned into a terrorist.”

“Blackwater,” said Simon.

“Drake erased records to allow Blackwater to remain hidden, and supplied him with secret MI5 equipment, and information about MI6, in order to help him create a serious threat. He thought he could easily control Blackwater. He underestimated Blackwater’s determination and
his intelligence. Drake thought he could allow Blackwater to set his plan in motion, then sweep in and arrest him at the critical moment, before any major harm was done.”

“So that he would look like the most brilliant secret-service agent ever, the genius who’d cracked the world-shattering Firestorm case,” said Simon.

“Drake didn’t really think Blackwater would get a chance to release that MI6 data,” said Queen Bee. “He genuinely thought he could contain the situation. He was wrong. That’s why he was so keen to take charge of the investigation. He thought he’d be given it automatically and never realized it might end up in our laps! He made some disastrous mistakes.”

“Sad, really,” said Alfred. “Blackwater’s case is a sad one too.”

“Yes, I think you’re right,” said Queen Bee. “It seems he was driving off to hide out in the countryside, for when the bombs started dropping. From some secret hideout in the middle of nowhere, he thought he could dangle the threat of World War III over the government.
Although, I can’t imagine it would have been for long, can you?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Simon. “Did he seriously want to cause a war?”

“Sense was the last thing on his mind,” shrugged Queen Bee. “He was raging against the world. I’m not sure he knew what he wanted himself, deep down.”

“Well,” said Professor Miller, “one thing we do know. Drake and Blackwater both underestimated each other.”

“That’s true,” said Nero, from the workbench. “And they both underestimated SWARM too.”

The interrogation room at MI5 was small and grey. A single dim light was set flat into the high ceiling. Ex-agent Morris Drake sat at a small table, leaning back in his chair, staring defiantly at the man opposite him. This man was tall and thin – a professional interrogator.

“There’s no way out of this, Drake,” he said softly. “Your only chance is to make a full
confession, and face the consequences.”

“Prison?” grunted Drake. “Disgrace? No, I’ll give that a miss.”

“You can’t. You know you can’t.”

Drake leaned forward. Shadows lengthened down his face. “Yes, I can. I know about certain … foreign projects. Things you’re going to want to know about too.”

The interrogator shifted uncomfortably. “What … things?”

“Things that are coming,” said Drake in a whisper. “Dangerous things.”

Simon is the award-winning author of the
Saxby Smart
and
Jeremy Brown
series. Simon’s ultimate dream is to go the moon, but in the meantime, he lives in Warwick with his wife and children. He writes in a tiny room, not much bigger than a wardrobe, which is crammed with books, pieces of paper and empty chocolate bar wrappers. His hobbies include fixing old computers and wishing he had more hobbies.

www.simoncheshire.co.uk

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The SWARM team uncover a sinister underworld and a deadly poison that is about to be unleashed. Can they foil the criminal’s evil plan before the world is changed forever?