Scorpia Rising (14 page)
Authors: Anthony Horowitz
Tags: #Europe, #Law & Crime, #Family, #Action & Adventure, #Juvenile Fiction, #Orphans & Foster Homes, #General, #People & Places, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Terrorism, #Fiction, #Orphans, #Spies, #Middle East
What to do about Jack? Alex made a resolution. He would talk to her tonight. He would tell her that he would be lost without her and that he needed her as much as he always had. Of course she knew all this, but it was still worth saying. And he didn’t have to spend the whole weekend with Tom. Maybe he could come back on Sunday afternoon and the two of them could go over to Borough Market or something. The thought made Alex feel more comfortable, and he turned his attention back to the first of the triangles. ABC was a right angle . . . ninety degrees. The other two angles couldn’t possibly be the same, so no forty-five degrees here. Cross that one out and move on to the next.
Three desks away, a lean ginger-haired boy named Spencer was aiming a missile at someone in the front row. He was balancing a piece of eraser on a plastic ruler that he was bending back. He released the ruler, catapulting the eraser across the room. It missed the boy in the front row and bounced off the wall. Someone sniggered.
Mr. Donovan had seen him. “If you want to stay in the top group, Spencer, try not to behave like a fifth-grader. Okay?” He sounded more tired than annoyed.
“Yes, sir.”
“Two more minutes. You should have cracked half of them by now.”
Alex was nowhere near. He was suddenly aware that he wasn’t feeling very well. It wasn’t particularly hot in the classroom, but he was sweating. The skin on his forehead and the back of his neck was damp, as if he had caught a fever. There was a pounding in his head and he was almost finding it difficult to breathe. What was wrong with him? It was eleven o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t had lunch yet, so for once the cafeteria couldn’t be blamed. He felt a pain in his chest and realized that his old wound was throbbing like some sort of biological alarm clock that had just gone off. As if it was reminding him . . .
Or warning him.
The man on the roof. Suddenly Alex was back on Liverpool Street, stepping out of the offices of MI6 seconds before a sniper had opened fire with a bullet that had knocked him to the ground, almost killing him. What had he seen—out of the corner of his eye? No. It was impossible. It couldn’t be happening again. Not here. Very slowly, forcing himself not to give anything away, Alex turned his head. He was just a bored schoolboy looking out the window, he told himself. If there really was someone there, if they were focusing on him even now, he mustn’t give them an excuse to fire.
Because the man was a sniper. He had no doubt of it. Why else would he be running with his head down and his shoulders hunched unless he was trying not to be noticed? And what sort of builder carries a long, narrow leather bag across his back? There was no sign of him now, but Alex visualized the shape and the size of the bag and knew with the ice-cold grip of certainty exactly what it must have contained. Not a shovel. Not a drill. Not anything you might use to construct a block of apartments. Anyway, nobody was working there today. This man was there for something else.
And he was still up there somewhere, hiding. Alex looked again, scanning the seemingly empty roof. Yes. There he was, lying flat on his stomach with his head pointing this way. He was partly concealed behind a wall of scaffolding with a plastic sheet hanging in front of him like a flimsy window. Alex couldn’t see the gun, but he could sense it and knew there could be only one target it was aiming at.
There is a sort of telepathy between the hunter and the hunted, between the sniper and his target. Alex couldn’t possibly know when the man was going to fire, but he jerked back instinctively, and it seemed to him that there was a faint tinkle and a thud at exactly that same moment. Right in front of him a gash appeared as if by magic in the surface of his desk, splinters of wood flying upward. Alex stared at the damage. The enormity of what had just happened flooded over him. Someone had taken a shot at him. Someone had tried to kill him. If he had still been leaning forward over his notepad, the bullet would have driven into the top of his head.
“Alex . . . ?” Mr. Donovan had seen the movement, but he hadn’t noticed the tiny, round hole in the window. Even if he had, it would have taken him several more seconds to put it all together. Snipers do not fire into school classrooms—certainly not in England. As far as he could see, Alex had just had some sort of fit. Either that or he had been stung by a wasp. One or two of the other boys were looking around curiously. The diagrams on the whiteboard suddenly seemed a thousand miles away.
“Get down!” Alex didn’t shout, but there could be no mistaking the urgency in his voice. “Someone’s shooting at us.”
“What?”
Alex was already on his feet, backing away from his desk, moving out of the gunman’s sight line before he could fire a second shot. He knew that while he was in the room, he was putting the entire class in danger. Several of the boys around him had stood up, making themselves targets. Some of them had noticed the hole in the window and knew he was telling the truth. Panic was already sweeping through the room.
“Get down!” This time he shouted the words louder, but they still just stood there. Of course, this was Alex Rider. Everyone knew the rumors about him—that he was involved in things that it was better not to talk about. But this situation was just too incredible. It couldn’t be happening.
And then there was a second shot. Tom Harris yelled and spun around, and to Alex’s horror he saw that his best friend had been shot in the arm, that his jacket was torn, and that blood was already seeping through the sleeve.
“Everyone on the floor!” Mr. Donovan had finally taken command, and his order was followed by the crash of upturned desks and chairs as twenty-two boys dived for cover. Tom was the last to react, still in shock, one hand gripping his wound. Alex glanced at the window, knowing that he couldn’t offer himself as a target. But if the man fired again, Tom would be directly in his line of fire. Alex ran three paces and threw himself at his friend, rugby-tackling him to the ground. Tom howled with pain. His face was completely white.
Bells began to clang all over the school. Alex hadn’t seen him do it, but he guessed Mr. Donovan must have hit the fire alarm before taking cover himself. Everyone was huddling together against the side wall. Alex propped Tom up, quickly examining his wound. There was blood everywhere—it was all over Alex’s hands—but he didn’t think his friend had been too badly hurt. A flesh wound only. If Tom had been unlucky, the bullet might just have chipped a bone, but Alex was sure it had gone straight in and out.
“Nobody move!” Mr. Donovan was shouting. “We’re safe here. The police and the fire engines will be on their way.”
Brilliant. The rest of the school would be evacuating into the yard, making themselves perfect targets for the man on the roof. Alex thought of warning the math teacher, trying to explain what had just happened. But then he realized that it didn’t matter. This wasn’t a case of a psychopath with a grudge against kids. The man had come here for him.
And with that thought came a surge of anger so powerful that Alex felt himself almost overwhelmed. He had given up spying. He hadn’t been near MI6 for months. He was just a schoolboy trying to get through the day. But someone thought otherwise. Someone had made the cold-blooded decision to send a man with a gun to kill him and to hurt anyone else who happened to get in the way. Who was it? Was this revenge for something Alex had done in the past? Or was this some new enemy with a plan of his own?
Alex had to know. If the sniper got away today, he would be free to come back tomorrow or the day after. In fact, Alex would be in permanent danger. In the space of a second he had been plunged back into his old life and he didn’t want to be there. He was furious.
“Alex! What do you think you’re doing?”
Alex was already on his feet. Mr. Donovan stared at him, still crouching, afraid to move. “Don’t leave, Alex! You’ve got to stay here!”
But he was too late. Alex had crossed the room and thrown open the door. A second later he had disappeared into the corridor, fighting his way past the rest of the school as they surged down the corridors, following the well-practiced fire drills that would take them outside.
As he burst into the yard, he was already fumbling for his keys, heading for the bike shed. The bells were still ringing. All around him, seven hundred schoolboys were chattering and laughing, looking out for the smoke while their teachers tried to shout them into straight lines. Alex ignored them. He found his bike, unlocked it, and jumped on.
“Alex?” Miss Bedfordshire, the school secretary, had seen him. She tried to wave him down. Alex ignored her. He pushed down and swerved around her and then he was gone, disappearing through the school gates.
8
FLYING LESSON
A SITTING TARGET.
That was how Alex felt. He was cycling slowly around the side of the school right next to the building site where the marksman had been concealed, and he was very aware that the street was empty with only a few parked cars, that there were no witnesses, and that if the sniper was still in place, this time he wouldn’t miss. He could imagine the crosshairs of the scope sweeping across the street, settling first on his shoulders, then on the back of his neck. Perhaps they were already there and one twitch of a finger would send him catapulting over the handlebars and into oblivion.
He jerked his head up toward the rooftop but saw nothing. Alex was gambling on the fact that the man had already made his getaway. He would have heard the school alarms go off and would have assumed that Alex had been evacuated with the rest of his class, that he was lost in the crowd, one uniform among hundreds. Surely that was what he would think. And with the police arriving (Alex could hear them now, the whoop of sirens coming from all four points of the compass, closing in on the school), he wouldn’t want to hang around.
Where was he? Alex had hoped to spot him as he left. But there was nobody in the building site, no sign of any movement on the roof or the ladders leading down. He drew to a halt, resting with one foot against the curb, listening for the sound of an engine. Somewhere, on the other side of the scaffolding and the half-built walls, there was someone in a hurry to get out of here. Where are you? Every police car in the country will be here in a minute. You don’t want to hang around.
Without warning, a car appeared at the top of the road, a silver VW Golf, pulling out of the building site and turning away from where Alex was waiting. He couldn’t see the driver, but he thought, from the shape, that it was a man and he seemed to be alone. It had to be the sniper. Alex pushed off again. Behind him, the alarms were still ringing at Brookland School. He heard the first police cars arrive, the thud of slamming doors, and men’s voices barking out commands. There was no time to lose. Any minute now the roads would be cordoned off. If he was really unlucky, the sniper would get away while he was left behind.
The VW was driving quickly but without breaking the speed limit, as if not wanting to draw attention to itself. Alex pedaled harder to catch up—at the same time making sure he didn’t get too close. It occurred to him that he had done this before, almost a year ago. Then it had been two drug dealers in a Skoda. He had followed them to a houseboat on the Thames, near Putney Bridge. He’d never thought he was going to have to repeat the exercise . . . and this time it was going to be more difficult. The dealers had had no idea who he was. But one look in the mirror and the sniper would certainly recognize him. Alex swung his bike off the road and onto the sidewalk, crouching behind the parked cars to keep out of sight.
London is the slowest-moving city in Europe. Cars drive at an average of twelve miles per hour, and it’s well known that the fastest way to cross the city is on two wheels. As Alex powered up the sidewalk, he remembered his uncle, Ian Rider, complaining as he sat in a jam. “I don’t know why I bother with a BMW six-cylinder turbocharged engine. I might as well drive a horse and buggy.” Alex knew that his bike would have the edge on the VW. He could weave in and out of the traffic. He could ignore the lights. He could cut corners across the sidewalk. Provided they didn’t reach any of the outer motorways, he’d be able to keep up.
The car reached a T-junction and turned left, heading toward the King’s Road. Before it disappeared from sight, Alex memorized its license plate number. The letters spelled out a word—BEG 88. There were plenty of Volkswagens on the London roads and most of them seemed to be silver. It was helpful that this one should have a registration that was so easily memorable. Still on the sidewalk, Alex swung around the corner, narrowly missing a woman pushing a stroller. The Raleigh 160 was perfect for this sort of cycling. It wasn’t too heavy and the 700cc alloy wheels were perfectly balanced, making it easy to manipulate while its twenty-one gears gave him all the speed he could ask for. They were heading west, out of London. The school was already a long way behind.
And then the VW signaled right. Alex looked for the turnoff but there wasn’t one. They were passing a parade of shops with an Esso garage at the end. And that was where the car was heading. Alex swore to himself. He must have been chasing the wrong man! Snipers pulling away from their latest target don’t usually stop to fill up with gas or buy themselves a Twix. Alex stopped for a second time, catching his breath as the VW rolled across the forecourt. He thought about cycling back to Brookland, then decided against it. There would be too many questions to answer. It would be easier just to go home and find Jack.
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