Dead on Target (6 page)

"Then we should get moving, before they get suspicious about the hijacking." The Gray Man turned to the Hardys. "Let's get you some gear."

Soon, the Hardys were in an empty office, changing into comfortable black jeans and black zippered jackets. "This stuff looks like it's easy to move in, at least," said Joe. "Wait till you try this on," said Frank, pulling his jacket over the bulk of a bulletproof vest. "It's like wearing a life jacket for underwear." He zipped up the jacket, then turned the handle on the door. It didn't open.

"What the - ?" he said, straining, but the handle didn't turn.

Joe joined him, twisting the handle, pulling it, but it didn't budge. "Hey!" he shouted, banging his fist on the door.

A shadow appeared on the reinforced pebble glass window in the door. Though they couldn't see the face, both Hardys recognized who it was - the Gray Man.

"We'll just keep you here during the raid," the government man said. "You'll be safe and sound, and out of the way of stray bullets."

"Wait a minute!" shouted Frank, but the Gray Man had already headed down the corridor.

The boys looked around their temporary prison, an eight-by-eight-foot office with a desk piled high with papers, two chairs, and no windows. In two steps, Joe was at the desk, grabbing a paperweight from one of the piles. "This looks like our ticket out of here," he said, winding up. With the speed of his best fastball, the paper weight smashed into the window on the door And bounced off.

Joe stared in shock for a second, then recovered the paperweight from the floor. Holding it in his hand, he hammered at the window. He might as well have been tickling it with a flower.

"I need something heavier," Joe said. Tossing the paperweight away, he took one of the chairs and swung it at the window. The chair bounced off, too. "What is this stuff?"

Frank climbed onto the other chair, examining the ceiling.

"Get real, Frank. We'd never fit through the air-system vent."

"I guess you're right. Keep working on the window," Frank said, mouthing the word "bugs." Joe resumed pounding away at the door as Frank moved his chair over to the wall, testing the ceiling tiles with his fingers. Finally, as Joe hit the door extra hard, Frank formed a fist and rammed the tile out of its framework.

Peering into the musty darkness, he smiled, The walls extended only to a hung ceiling, leaving a foot-high passage into the next office!

"You might as well put the chair down and sit on it, Joe," Frank said for the benefit of any unseen listeners. "We're never going to get out of here." He beckoned Joe over, then worked more tiles loose.

Frank climbed into the airspace with a hand from Joe. Balancing himself on the wall (the tiles were too light to support his weight), Frank listened for any sounds from the office next door. Nothing.

But just as he was about to pry up one of the tiles, Frank heard coughing. Someone was in there!

Frank slipped back through the hole, shaking his head to Joe. They moved the chair to the opposite wall, and while Joe whistled loudly, Frank dislodged more tiles. Leaning into the airspace again, he held his breath. If someone was in this office, they were stuck.

But the office remained silent, even when Frank cautiously levered up a ceiling tile. Frank looked down through the opening and saw an empty desk. He quickly worked to enlarge the hole, then crawled through. When Joe joined him seconds later, Frank was already at the door, trying the handle It turned without a problem. Easing the door open, Frank and Joe scanned the corridor. Their eyes darted around, sensitive to the slightest movement. No one was there.

They walked down the corridor, pausing at each intersection, checking out their surroundings before moving.

Joe brought them to a halt when he heard low conversation not far away. The boys looked around a corner and saw a garage filled with a dozen men dressed in the same black clothes the Hardys wore but carrying Sterling submachine guns.

The Gray Man and Edwin Perkins entered through another doorway. Perkins was slipping a pistol into his holster. "Sergeant Morris," he called to a gray-haired veteran, "let's get this show on the road."

"All right," roared the sergeant. "Into the lorry!”

The troops started clambering inside a large, battered panel truck, and the garage door rose with a metallic clatter.

"They're leaving," Frank whispered when all the men were aboard. "Not without us!" Joe responded.

The truck's engine roared to life. Joe sprinted across the garage, leaping onto the rear bumper and wrapping his arm around a pole at the back of the truck. He waved his arm in a silent "Come on!" to Frank. Shaking his head in amazement, Frank grasped a metal projection on the other side just as the truck lurched into motion.

The ride through South London was short. Even so, the Hardys were nearly thrown off several times as the truck jounced over badly paved streets.

The neighborhoods of red brick houses that the truck passed through became seedier and poorer... Frank and Joe saw many stores that had been boarded up. They noticed that signs were written in Arabic letters - Pakistani.

Frank knew that people from all over the old British Empire-from the West Indies, Africa, and Asia-had come to the neighborhood of Brixton. And they'd stayed there. He even saw burned buildings, leftovers from riots. It was easy to see that the Assassins knew what they were doing when they picked Brixton for their safe house.

The truck bounced heavily as it turned onto a cobblestoned street with many of the cobblestones missing or broken. Most of the houses on the dead-end street were just shells, but one dingy three-story building still showed signs of life. At least curtains were flapping in the windows.

Down the block, a group of city construction workers struggled to repair a broken streetlamp. And at the corner a gang of Pakistani workmen tried to renovate a burned-out shop. The only other car on the street was a Post Office van. The mailman was just climbing out.

But everything changed as the truck rolled to a stop right in front of the safe house. The shop windows turned into clouds of tinkling glass shards as the workmen inside-Gurkhas, Nepalese soldiers who joined the British Army-let loose with machine guns. Their covering fire tore into the windows of the upper floors of the safe house.

Machine guns were snatched out of the "construction workers' " toolboxes, too. Even the "mailman" whipped a Sterling from his sack, hosing the ground-floor windows with bullets.

The doors of the lorry flew open, and the attack force pelted out to add to the fire. When the Gray Man saw the unexpected hitchhikers, he froze, pistol in hand, his eyes bulging. "What the - get down, you idiots!"

He leaped to the ground, pulling the Hardys into the cover of the truck. All around them, bullets still flew. : Six men rushed up the front stairs of the safe house with a battering ram, swinging it back even as they ran. The ram smashed into the door, bounced back, and was swung forward again and again. With practiced rhythm, the team kept slamming away.

Finally, the hinges began to give. With a grinding noise, the door cracked, then sagged. The team hurled the ram forward, sending the door crashing in. Unslinging their guns, they covered the front hall of the house. "Nothing moving, sir," the sergeant in charge called as Perkins and his team ran up the stairs.

"No response to our fire, either," Perkins said, peering inside. "Let's go in." Pistols and machine guns poised, they entered the hallway.

The covering fire stopped, as everyone waited tensely to hear what was in store for the raiding team. The minutes straggled by, but the street remained silent. "Getting right spooky, it is," one of the covering gunners muttered.

From inside the house came the sounds of doors being kicked in. Occasionally, one of the raiders would appear at a window, waving an "all clear." Once, a couple of shots rang out, but the sergeant shouted, "False alarm."

Finally, Perkins appeared in the wrecked doorway, his pistol holstered and a frustrated frown on his face. "No one's there!" he said.

The Gray Man headed up the stairs. "Could they be on the roof?" he called.

"Not unless they flew," Perkins replied as Frank and Joe joined them. "There was enough dust on the top floors to grow crops." He stared at the Hardys for a moment. "And what are these two doing here?"

The Gray Man smiled without mirth. "Well, they've arrived just in time for the search."

Since the all clear had been given, the house filled with searchers, from the top to the ground floors. Using plans picked up from the Hall of Records, they even checked for secret passages in the walls.

"This is ridiculous," Perkins groused as they headed down into the cellar of the building. "They can't have disappeared. Our people have seen Assassins going in. They've spotted leaders here. And we've had the building surrounded."

"No windows or anything overlooked?" the Gray Man asked.

"We worked from those plans," Perkins replied testily. "There's no way in or out that wasn't guarded."

"I guess that means they're down here, then." The Gray Man shone his flashlight around the cellar. At one time partitions had been up, but the makeshift walls had all come down. In one corner, they saw the remains of the coal cellar. In another, some crates apparently had been disassembled. Perkins looked at the piles of wood.

"Some of these have armory markings," he said, his voice going hard. "Stolen weapons, probably."

"Looks like they were storing lots of things here," Frank said.

"The question is, how?" said Joe. "And where?"

"Well, the answer may be over here." The Gray Man had been shining his flashlight along the floor. He stopped it in another corner of the cellar. Set in the concrete floor was a heavy wooden trapdoor.

"It certainly does explain everything," the Gray Man said. "My nose told me about it since we were on the stairs. Didn't you catch the earthy smell down here? Turned earth, as if someone had been digging. I'll bet that little addition won't appear on any of your official plans," he said to Perkins.

Perkins stared. "You're saying that they dug an escape tunnel?"

The Gray Man nodded. "A lot of work, but it paid off for them, didn't it?" He knelt by the trapdoor. "This could lead just next door, or to another building entirely. Or they could have cut into the sewer system."

"Wherever it leads, I'm sure it's far from here," Perkins said gloomily.

"There's only one way to find out." The Gray Man reached down and grabbed the ring-pull on the trapdoor.

Something clicked in Frank Hardy's mind, something about the way the Assassins worked. Unconsciously, he'd been expecting it ever since they'd come into the building. But there'd been nothing "Wait a second!" he yelled, running forward. "These guys love bombs! It could be booby - "

The Gray Man had already heaved the door up. He and Frank disappeared in the flash of an explosion!

THE BLAST OF the demolition charges threw Joe Hardy and Perkins to the floor. Immediately, they scrambled to their feet and ran to the two still figures lying by the wrecked trapdoor. "Frank,” Joe managed to choke out, "Not Frank, too."

But as he reached his brother, Frank began to stir, pushing himself up on one arm. "The door shielded me from the worst of the blast. But him-" he mumbled, looking toward the Gray Man. "Was I able to push him far enough away?"

Perkins knelt by the fallen agent, looking very different from the aristocratic pilot Frank and Joe had met at the airfield. His face was covered with dirt, and the beginnings of a bruise showed on his cheek. His expression was serious as he checked for a pulse. "He's still breathing," he said. "Which he wouldn't be if you hadn't pushed him away. But ... " He shook his head. "He's very bad."

"Mr. Perkins'" Sergeant Morris and a private came down the stairs. "Are you all right? The whole house feels like it's going to go!"

From the ceiling overhead came ominous creaking and groaning sounds. The foundation of the century-old house had been severely shaken.

"We've got to get out," Joe's voice cut over the noises. "Give us a hand here."

He helped Frank to his feet as the two soldiers helped Perkins gently pick up the Gray Man. "Up the stairs - hurry'" Perkins shouted.

The creaking in the ceiling became a horrible grinding noise. "Some of the beams must have cracked," Frank muttered as they stumbled up the stairs. Just as they reached the doorway a big section of the first floor sagged, then crashed into the basement, right onto the spot where they'd been standing seconds before.

The entire house then began to sway and to crumple inward. Dozens of hands grabbed Frank and Joe, hustling them away. More helped to move the injured Gray Man.

Frank and Joe stood at the entrance to the dead-end street, watching as the old brick building collapsed completely.

"I'll tell you one thing," Joe said quietly as the roof fell in. "What?" asked Frank. "They'll never call that a safe house again."

By then, fire engines and emergency personnel were arriving. Tender hands bundled the Gray Man aboard an ambulance. "You're coming along, too," said Perkins, leading Frank and Joe to the medical people.

Doctors at the-hospital declared that Frank was merely shaken up. They were much more grim about the Gray Man's condition and immediately wheeled him into surgery. "Come on," said Perkins when he found the Hardys pacing around the waiting room. "What now?" asked Frank.

"I'd say it was time for you two to wash up and get some fresh clothes and maybe some rest. Then perhaps we should get you in to talk with the Chief."

"The Chief" turned out to be Sir Nigel Folliott, head of British Intelligence. Hollywood couldn't have gotten a better actor for the part. Folliott was a man with a mane of ginger hair going silver, and large, handsome features. As Perkins ushered the Hardys into his huge wood paneled, book-lined office, Sir Nigel rose from his old-fashioned teak desk.

"I've been getting regular reports from the hospital on our friend," he said after introductions had been made. "He's remarkably fit for such a nondescript-looking sort. The doctors say he'll pull through." Joe and Frank smiled at that. "However," Sir Nigel went on, "he'll be in hospital for some time. And he's still not conscious. I understand you joined his investigation," - he coughed - "rather informally. So the question is, what do I do with you?"