Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (29 page)

Chapter 70

In the Catalina, Mrs Hathaway heard the burst of gunfire, then the single
shot. She feared something dreadful had happened, which was absolutely true, if
you were one of the parrots or the Anaconda or Pango.

She phoned Giles, immediately. He was an hour away from
Manaus
International,
and he told her all about how he was leading the Daring Dooz rescue mission. Although,
he changed that to ‘organising’ the Daring Dooz rescue mission when he heard
about the recent gunfire.

He told her about the
Hawaii Mars flying boat, and how it would hold
about 170 Daring Doozers, if they got that many, and they would be flying up
river as soon as possible to join her and sort out the bandits.

‘But they're armed to the teeth.’

‘Sorry got to go now, my gourmet baked Alaska is just arriving.’

The first mouthful was delicious, then he thought about the M16s, and the
rest of it tasted like badly sterilised cat food.

*

Back in the long house, Charlie was laying into the bandits like no one
in the long house, including the bandits, had ever heard bandits laid into.

On Pango’s instruction, they had handed
over their arms to Digby, who went into the office and sort of guarded them, while
burning the contract in an ashtray by way of justifying his £500-a-day fee.

Charlie lined the bandits up in front of
the villagers and gave them a right bollocking. Hamish sat in a chair, and though
dazed, was happy to provide a translation for the ex-hostages.

‘So you miserable fuckers thought you
could get away with this poxy, shit-arsed scheme. Fat fuckin’ chance. I have spies
everywhere
. The tart who was screwin’
the government official from the Aerial Reconnaissance Office who passed you
the Black Pool pics was screwin’ my right-hand man - if that ain’t a
contradiction in terms - so we knew about it from the beginnin’.’

‘Jim, my Ealing comedy film consultant
friend, phoned for a chat a few days ago. So I got his co-ordinates. I knew he
was doing this Daring Dooz crap with Mrs Hathaway - my
very best friend in the world
. And then one of my insiders at the
Pentagon, ran a computer check and, fuck me, if this village wasn’t the same
place Pango Gonzales and his Mariachi Band here were planning to take over for this
oil scam.’

Mick and Jim were pretty certain Hamish’s
translation was not embracing all the nuances of Charlie’s rant, but it was
obvious the villagers were all enjoying not having guns pointed at them.

‘Do you fink I didn't know about you toutin’
around for the M16s. For fuck’s sake, it was my Brazilian team who sold you the
kit.
And
you paid over the odds -
and
they have a fault on the triggers,
which makes ‘em go off early - ain’t that right Pango?’

‘Do you fink we didn't see you getting on
the boat? Did you fink we didn't have satellite pics of you trekkin’ through
the jungle to get here? We followed you every step of the fuckin’ way. Because
that’s
what Charlie Sumkins does. Any criminal
activity on the planet, any suggestion of an illegal thought, and I get to know
about it. And if I want to stop a deal, I do. And if I don't want to stop it, I
get a cut. And this is a deal I want to stop. Why?’

The long house was silent. Apart from
the noise of Digby trying to calm himself down by singing snippets from the
Mikado.

‘Why?’ shouted Charlie, over the top of
A Wandering Minstrel I
, ‘because, you threatened
Tallulah Hathaway - she’s like a daughter to me, and I will not have
anythin’
bad happenin’ to her.’

Understandably, he didn't say
why
he wouldn’t have anything bad
happening to her. Neither did he mention how he’d been having sleepless nights
and terrifying dreams since she took up the Daring Dooz challenges.

‘Now I’m a reasonable man,’ said Charlie,
sounding most unreasonable. ‘I’ll take your guns and you can walk back to the
coast, it’s only couple of thousand miles. Think of it as a Charlie Sumkins
adventure holiday.’

Pango nodded to show he accepted the
holiday arrangements, and he his band were herded into the office, where Hamish
and some men from the village, took over the M16s and made sure the bandits got
a rotten night’s sleep.

The rest of the village decide it was
time to party, and once they had decided, there was no stopping.

Mick, Jim and Charlie sat around the
campfire as, fortified by GUA and various herbs that grew in the jungle, the
villagers sang and danced their way into oblivion. Fortunately, Charlie didn't
want to talk about Ealing Comedies. He was more concerned about Mrs Hathaway’s well
being.

‘She had the sat phone when she did a
runner, and I don't know the number,’ said Jim.

‘Pity,’ said Charlie, although, secretly,
he admired people who didn't think twice about leaving their friends in the
lurch.

‘Tell you what Edna,’ said Mick, ‘Charlie
could phone Giles Wotsit.’

‘You mean
Giles poncey-git Montagu-Scott?’ asked
Charlie.

‘Yes,’ said
Jim.

‘I got his
number,’ said Charlie, punching it into a very smart sat phone.

It rang.
Giles answered.

‘Giles, it’s
Charlie Sumkins here, how the hell are you, my friend?’

There was no
reply, just a faint strangled sound.

‘Laryngitis
is it? Murder - if you’ll pardon the expression. Anyway, I was just phoning to
see if you knew how our mutual, Mrs H, was getting on?’

Giles had difficulty speaking, partly
through fear, and partly because he couldn't remember if he’d got his will up
to date.

‘She’s fine,’ he croaked.

‘And what does
that
mean?’

‘She’s well.’

‘And?’

‘And I’m seeing her tomorrow, for a
meeting.’

‘Thank you Giles, and I hope your
laryngitis gets better
soon.’

Giles said
nothing. His laryngitis had staged a comeback.

‘That’s good
enough for me,’ said Charlie to Mick and Jim. ‘Giles might be stupid, but he’s
not stupid enough to try and pull a fast one on Charlie S.’

Charlie walked off and made another
quick call.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I fink I’ve done what
I came to do. I’m off.’

 
‘Off?
When?

‘Any minute now.’

In fact, it was five minutes, before the
helicopter arrived to great acclaim from the villagers, who were well past
midnight.

‘No offence, Charlie,’ said Jim, ‘but
it’s a
police
helicopter!’

‘Look, Jimmy, I have friends in places
so high, you don't even know the places exist. If I tell you they offered me a Chinook,
you’ll get the picture. Oh, and, by the way, look after Digby, he’s a pillock,
but as pillocks go, he’s at the less dangerous end. That’s less dangerous for
him, by the way, not me!
And
when he gave
me a leg up through the floor, he could easily have popped his gonads. And I
appreciate people who risk their health and well-being for the greater good of
Charlie S.’

 
It
seemed the king cobra was now, officially, migraine free.

‘But, as you can see, this is a single-seater,’
continued Charlie, ‘so he’ll have to take his chances with the Dregs - sorry
boys, that’s my pet name for you!’

And with that, Charlie smiled in a
rather intimidating way, crouched down and ran to the helicopter. The police
pilot saluted. It took off, driving the villagers into an even greater, and
even more unnecessary, frenzy of singing, dancing and sexual intercourse.

Chapter 71

Splatter had made a card saying Daring Doozers, which he patiently held
up at
Manaus
International Arrivals. Slowly, one by one, the Daring Doozers appeared and
started to congregate.

They had
various stages of jet lag, but all had the elated expression which you would
expect from young men (and a few women) who had broken the habit of their short
lives to find out what was going on in that place they glimpsed when,
occasionally, they drew back the curtains.

There were
lots of backpacks, woolly bobble hats, ripped jeans and t-shirts with heavy
metal or shoot-em-up video game logos. And, as is only to expected in any large
crowd nowadays, a few Trekkies and someone dressed as Elvis.

When he arrived, Giles felt embarrassed.
If the Daring Doozers had sold all their clothes at inflated prices, they
couldn't have bought his tie, let alone his suit.

Still they had a common goal, and, after
he’d greeted Splatter, he stood on a bench outside the airport building and
welcomed the rest. He signed autographs, told them about the Hawaii Mars, and how
the flight up the Amazon to rescue Mrs Hathaway would be free. His Brazilian
office had also organised complementary t-shirts for everyone. The t-shirts
were dark green with black writing saying Tallulah’s Task Force. Giles took off
his jacket and put one of the t-shirts on. There were loud cheers. The t-shirts
were not very fashionable, but Giles didn't care. This wasn’t an attempt to bond
with the crowd; it was just that he knew what excellent jungle camouflage
they’d provide, if the M16s opened up. Elvis refused a t-shirt, and would have
to take his chances.

When around 150 Darin Doozers had
arrived, specially commissioned coaches took them down to
the
Hidroviaria
do Amazonas Riverboat Terminal
to wait
for the arrival of the Hawaii Mars.

 
The
Hawaii Mars was late. The pilot said something about extra permits and they
could be another eight hours. Giles was pissed off. But the Daring Doozers were
happy to sit around. After all, that’s what they normally did all day.

They were having a fabulous time. They
talked about things that were well outside their normal experience, like the
sun and the wind and the clouds and the river and the trees and the birds and other
people you could actually see a few feet away from you.

Giles phoned Tallulah to give her an
update.

As usual, she got straight to the crux
of the matter.

‘Told them about the automatic weapons
yet?’

‘I’ll tell them when we’re on the plane.’

‘Let me know when you take off.’

Giles knew she was short, to the point
and absolutely right. But how do you tell 150 unarmed dreamers that, though
they greatly outnumbered the bad guys, the bad guys had weapons that can fire up
to 9
50
rounds a minute and are accurate up to about 500 yards.
It doesn't trip off the tongue very easily.

And so it was that, when the magnificent
Hawaii Mars arrived, they jumped happily into the fleet of specially
commissioned rubber dinghies and boarded the aircraft, ready to do whatever
their innocent minds thought they were going to do.

Chapter 72

At the village, there wasn’t much innocence around. During the night, there
had been a terrible fight in the office. The village men were gone, and Pedro
and his bandits were back in control of the weapons.

The first thing Mick knew about it was when Pango walked up to where he
was sleeping, and kicked him awake. Mick found himself looking up at the barrel
of a gun.

‘Nother day, ‘nother deal,’ sneered Pango. ‘Funny how nasty night’s sleep
get you perspectivised.’

 
‘When
this
new deal done. Pango multi-millionaire. Get much protection.
So sod you, Charlie. And anyway, I hate grandparents,
and
old slag giving
auntie Conchita
embroidery lesson
and
dog, who,
anyway, shits in dishwasher. I nothing to lose. But you have. Get fuck up.’

The members of Pango’s team were kicking everyone else awake too. They
assembled the villagers outside the long house then, screaming and shouting, drove
them down to the pier, where they herded everyone right up at the end.

It was a beautiful morning, the air was
fresh and clear - certainly not a description that could be applied to the
cranial contents of Implosion Productions’ finest.

‘Come on,’ said Mick to Jim, ‘you pulled
us out of the crap in Las Vegas.’

Jim was racking his brains, like they’d
never been racked before. Maybe Pango was keen on
Cinemascope
musicals. Jim had seen
Carousel
once, and reckoned he could chat for five minutes on breakthrough
stereo recording techniques. He looked at Pango who was spitting on his trigger
finger to ensure minimum friction during the massacre. Perhaps not.

They both knew this was it - staring
death in the face, with not a single idea of how they were going to save
themselves. All that was left was to scape the very bottom of the very emptiest
barrel they’d ever come across. They turned to Digby.

Digby simply looked petrified, and did what
he always did when the going got rough. He looked down at his wristband, WWDDD
- What
would
Dan Dare Do?

There must have been a hundred tales
where the Mekon on his floating boat thing and a battalion of Treens had Dan
and Digby trapped up the interplanetary equivalent of a back alley. How did
they escape? How did they turn the tables? And most importantly, how did they
come out of it alive? Not surprisingly, given the circumstances, he couldn't
remember a single storyline.

But there was one thing he
did
remember. Dan Dare took risks. Dan Dare improvised. Dan Dare was
daring
.

Before he even realised it, Digby was
pushing quickly through the crowd, until he stood a few feet in front of Pango.

His voice was strong and his oratory
would have done the Old Bailey proud, at least in one of the minor courts.

‘You might kill us,’ said Digby, ‘but I
have every confidence that the law will see you get your just deserts. These noble
people are innocent, and innocence until proven guilty is the golden thread
that runs through the whole of any civilized system of justice.’

He had lifted the ‘golden thread’ bit
from the John Mortimer’s
Rumpole of the Bailey
TV show, but if you were
going to get machine-gunned to death in a few seconds, the last words on your
lips might as well be those of a great writer.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘I will defend these
people with every last drop of my blood, and I’m aware I might be seeing quite
a lot of that in just a few minutes. But these people will survive, and you will
not
prosper, in fact you’ll be damned in hell.’

The villagers, though they were all
shitting themselves, and had no idea what he was talking about, burst into
applause.

‘So, I say to you, follow Charlie
Sumkins advice, walk home and let these people go.’

Pango looked at him for a second or two
before speaking.

‘What that holdin’ up his trousers?’

‘Fucked if I know,’ said a henchman.

‘Right,’ said Pango, seeming satisfied
with the answer, ‘make sure he get it first.’

The bandits arranged themselves - three standing and two kneeling in front
of them - all with their M16s pointed at the villagers, and their new, shortly
to be ex, leader, fearless Solicitor-at-Law, Digby Elton-John.

They cocked their weapons and took aim.

‘OK,’ shouted Pango. ‘Let ‘em have…’

The phrase ‘Let ‘em have it’ isn't very long, and it takes just a split
second to shout the word ‘it’.

However, there has always been a problem shouting ‘it’ clearly and
concisely, with a poison dart stuck in your neck.