The Arctic Incident (4 page)

The softnose technique involved placing an inhibitor on a blaster, which allowed a laser to travel at slower speeds, actually penetrating the target. Initially developed for mining purposes, they were quickly adapted by some greedy weapons manufacturer.

The softnoses were just as quickly outlawed, for the obvious reason that these weapons were designed to kill, and not to incapacitate. Now and then one found its way into the hands of a gang member. But this did not look like an isolated case. This looked like somebody was planning something big.

“You know what the worrisome thing about this is?” said Foaly.

“No,” said Root with deceptive calmness. “Do tell me what the worrisome thing is.”

Foaly turned the gun around. “The way this weapon has been adapted to take a human battery. Very clever. There’s no way a goblin figured this out on his own.”

“But why adapt the softnoses?” asked the commander. “Why not just use the old solar cells?”

“Those solar cells are very rare. They’re worth their weight in gold. Antiques dealers use them to power all sorts of old gadgets. And it would be impossible to build a power-cell factory of any kind without my sensors picking up emissions. Much simpler just to steal them from the humans.”

Root lit one of his trademark fungal cigars. “Tell me that’s it. Tell me there’s nothing else.”

Holly’s gaze flickered to the rear of the hangar. Root caught the glance and pressed past the crates to the makeshift shuttle in the docking bay. The commander climbed into the craft.

“And what the hell is this, Foaly?”

The centaur ran a hand along the ship’s hull.

“It’s amazing. Unbelievable. They put a shuttle together from junk. I’m surprised this thing gets off the ground.”

The commander bit down hard on his fungus cigar. “When you’re finished admiring the goblins, Foaly, maybe you can explain how the B’wa Kell got a hold of this stuff. I thought all outdated shuttle technology was supposed to be destroyed.”

“That’s what I thought. I retired some of this stuff myself. This starboard booster used to be in E1, until Captain Short blew it out last year. I remember signing the destruct order.”

Root spared a second to shoot Holly a withering glance.

“So now we have shuttle parts escaping the recycling smelters as well as softnose lasers. Find out how this shuttle got here. Take it apart, piece by piece. I want every strand of wire lasered for prints and DNA. Feed all the serial numbers into the mainframe, see if there are any common denominators.”

Foaly nodded. “Good idea. I’ll get someone on it.”

“No, Foaly, you get on it. This is priority. So give your conspiracy theories a rest for a few days, and find me the inside fairy who’s selling this junk.”

“But, Julius,” protested Foaly. “That’s grunt work.”

Root took a step closer. “One, don’t call me Julius, civilian. And two, I’d say it was more like donkey work.”

Foaly noticed the vein pulsing in the commander’s temple.

“Point taken,” he said, removing a handheld computer from his belt. “
I’ll
get right on it.”

“You do that. Now, Captain Short, what is our B’wa Kell prisoner saying?”

Holly shrugged. “Nothing much, still unconscious. He’ll be coughing soot for a month as soon he wakes up. Anyway, you know how the B’wa Kell works, the soldiers aren’t told anything. This guy is just a grunt. It’s a pity the Book forbids using the
mesmer
on other fairies.”

“Hmm,” said Root, his face glowing redder than a baboon’s behind. “An even greater pity the Atlantis Convention outlawed truth drugs. Otherwise we could pump this convict full of serum until he sang like a drunken Mud Man.”

The commander took several deep breaths to calm down before his heart popped.

“Right now, we need to find out where these batteries came from, and if there are any more in the Lower Elements.”

Holly took a breath. “I have a theory, sir.”

“Don’t tell me,” groaned Root. “Artemis Fowl, right?”

“Who else could it be? I knew he’d be back. I knew it.”

“You know the rules, Holly. He beat us last year. Game over. That’s what the Book says.”

“Yes, sir, but that was a different game. New game, new rules. If Fowl is supplying power cells to the B’wa Kell, the least we can do is check it out.”

Root considered it. If Fowl was behind this, things could get very complicated very fast.

“I don’t like the idea of interrogating Fowl on his turf. But we can’t bring him down here. The pressure underground would kill him.”

Holly disagreed. “Not if we keep him in a secure environment. The city is equalized. So are the shuttles.”

“Okay, go,” the commander said at last. “Bring him in for a little chat. Bring the big one, too.”

“Butler?”

“Yes, Butler.” Root paused. “But remember, we’re going to run a few scans, Holly, that’s it. I don’t want you using this as an opportunity to settle a score.”

“No, sir. Strictly business.”

“Do I have your word on that?”

“Yes, sir. I guarantee it.”

Root ground the cigar butt beneath his heel.

“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt today, not even Artemis Fowl.”

“Understood.”

“Well,” added the commander. “Not unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

CHAPTER 3

Butler had been in Artemis Fowl’s service since the moment of the boy’s birth. He had spent the first night of his charge’s life standing guard on the Sisters of Mercy maternity ward. For over a decade, Butler had been teacher, mentor, and protector to the young heir. The pair had never been separated for more than a week, until now. It shouldn’t bother him, he knew that. A bodyguard should never become emotionally attached to his charge: it affects his judgment. But in his private moments, Butler couldn’t help thinking of the Fowl heir as the younger brother he had never had.

Butler parked the Bentley Arnage Red Label on the College Avenue. If anything, the Eurasian manservant had bulked up since midterm. With Artemis in boarding school, he was spending a lot more time in the gym. Truth be told, Butler was bored pumping iron, but the college authorities absolutely refused to allow him a bunk in Artemis’s room. And when the gardener had discovered the bodyguard’s hideout just off the seventeenth green, they had banned him from the school grounds altogether.

Artemis slipped through the school’s gate, Dr. Po’s comments still in his thoughts.

“Problems, sir?” said Butler, noticing his employer’s sour expression.

Artemis ducked into the Bentley’s wine-colored leather interior, selecting a bottle of still water from the bar.

“Hardly, Butler. Just another quack spouting psychobabble.”

Butler kept his voice level. “Should I have a word with him?”

“Never mind him now. What news of the
Fowl Star
?”

“We got an e-mail at the manor this morning. It’s an MPG.”

Artemis scowled. He could not access MPG video files on his mobile phone.

Butler pulled a portable computer from the glove compartment.

“I thought you might be anxious to see the file, so I downloaded it onto this.”

He passed the computer over his shoulder. Artemis activated the compact machine, folding out the flat color screen. At first he thought the battery was dead, then realized he was looking at a field of snow. White on white, with only the faintest shadows to indicate dips and drumlins.

Artemis felt the uneasiness rolling in his gut. Funny how such an innocent image could be so foreboding.

The camera panned upward, revealing a dull twilight sky. Then a black hunched object, in the distance. A rhythmic crunching issued through the compact speakers as the cameraman advanced through the snow. The object grew clearer. It was a man sitting on, no,
tied to
, a chair. The ice clinked in Artemis’s glass. His hands were shaking.

The man was dressed in the rags of a once fine suit. Scars branded the prisoner’s face like lightning bolts, and one leg appeared to be missing. It was difficult to tell. Artemis’s breath was jumpy now, like a marathon runner’s.

There was a sign around the man’s neck. Cardboard and twine. On the sign was scrawled in thick black letters:
Zdravstvutye syn
. The camera zoomed in on the message for several seconds, then went blank.

“Is that all?”

Butler nodded.“Just the man, and the sign. That’s it.”

“Zdravstvutye syn,”
muttered Artemis, his accent flawless. Since his father’s disappearance, he had been teaching himself the language.

“Should I translate for you?” asked Butler, also a Russian speaker. His accent, however, was not quite so sophisticated.

He had picked it up during a five-year stint with an espionage unit in the late eighties.

“No, I know what it means,” replied his young employer. “
Zdravstvutye syn:
Hello, son.”

Butler pulled the Bentley onto the divided highway. No one spoke for several minutes. Eventually Butler had to ask.

“Do you think it’s him, Artemis? Could that man be your father?”

Artemis rewound the MPG, freezing it on the mysterious man’s face. He touched the display, sending rainbow distortions across the screen.

“I think so, Butler. But the picture quality is too poor. I can’t be certain.”

Butler understood the emotions battering his young charge. He, too, had lost someone aboard the
Fowl Star
. His uncle, the major, had been assigned to Artemis’s father on that fateful trip. Unfortunately, the major’s body had turned up in the Tchersky morgue.

Artemis regained his composure. “I must pursue this, Butler.”

“You know what’s coming next, of course?”

“Yes. A ransom demand. This is merely the teaser, to get my attention. I need to cash in some of the People’s gold. Contact Lars in Zurich, immediately.”

Butler accelerated into the fast lane.

“Master Artemis, I have had some experience in these matters.”

Artemis did not interrupt. Butler’s career before his current charge’s birth had been varied, to say the least.

“The pattern with kidnappers is to eliminate all witnesses. Then they will generally try to eliminate each other, to avoid splitting the ransom.”

“Your point being?”

“My point being that paying a ransom in no way guarantees your father’s safety. If indeed that man is your father. It is quite possible that the kidnappers will take your money and then kill all of us.”

Artemis studied the camera screen. “You’re right, of course. I will have to devise a plan.”

Butler swallowed. He remembered the last plan. It had almost gotten them all killed, and could have plunged the planet into an interspecies war. Butler was a man who didn’t scare easily, but the spark in Artemis Fowl’s eyes was enough to send a shiver crackling down his spine.

Captain Holly Short had decided to work a double shift and proceed directly to the surface. She paused only for a nutri-bar and an energy shake before hopping on the first shuttle to the terminal at Tara.

One of Tara’s officials was not making her journey any easier. The head of security was annoyed that Captain Short had not only put all chute traffic on hold to take a priority pod from E1, but then proceeded to commandeer an entire shuttle for the return journey.

“Why don’t you check your system again?” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m sure the authorization from Police Plaza has arrived by now.”

The truculent gnome consulted his handheld computer. “No, ma’am. I ain’t got nuthin’.”

“Look, Mister . . .”

“Commandant Terryl.”

“
Commandant
Terryl. I’m on an important mission here. National security. I need you to keep the arrivals hall completely clear for the next couple of hours.”

Terryl made a great show of almost collapsing. “The next coupla hours! Are you crazy, girly? I got three shuttles comin’ in from Atlantis. What’m I s’posed to tell ’em? Tour’s off ’cause of some LEP secret shenanigans? This is high season. I can’t just shut things down. No way, no how.”

Holly shrugged. “Fine. You just let all your tourists catch sight of the two humans I’m bringing down here. There’ll be a riot. I guarantee it.”

“Two humans?” said the head of security. “Inside the terminal? Are you nuts?”

Holly was running out of patience, and time.

“Do you see this?” she demanded, pointing to the insignia on her helmet. “I’m LEP. A captain. No rent-a-cop gnome is going to stand in the way of my orders.”

Terryl drew himself up to his full height, which was a little more than two feet.

“Yeah, I heard of you. The crazy girly captain. Caused quite a stir up here last year, didn’t you. My tax ingots gonna be payin’ for that little screw-up for quite some time.”

“Just ask Central, you bureaucratic idiot.”

“Call me what you want, Missy. We have our rules here, and without confirmation from below, ain’t nothing I can do to change ’em. ’Specially not fer some gun-totin’ girly with an attitude problem.”

“Well, get on the blower to Police Plaza then!”

Terryl sniffed. “The magma flares have just started actin’ up. It’s hard to get a line. Maybe I’ll try again after my rounds. Just you take yourself a seat in the departure lounge.”

Holly’s hand strayed toward her buzz baton.

“You know what you’re doing, don’t you?”

“What?” croaked the gnome.

“You’re obstructing an LEP operation.”

“I ain’t obstructin’ nuthin’—”

“And as such, it is in my power to remove said obstruction using any force that I deem necessary.”

“Don’t you threaten me, Missy.”

Holly drew the baton, twirling it expertly. “I’m not threatening you. I’m just informing you of police procedure. If you continue to obstruct me, I remove the obstruction, in this case you, and proceed to the next in command.”

Terryl was unconvinced. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Holly grinned. “I’m the crazy girly captain. Remember?”

The gnome considered it. It was unlikely the officer would buzz him, but then again, with female elves, who knew?

“Okay,” he said, printing off a sheet on the computer. “This is a twenty-four-hour visa. But if you’re not back here in that time, I’ll have you taken into custody on your return. Then I’ll be the one making the threats.”

Holly snatched the sheet. “Whatever. Now, remember make sure the arrival dock is clear when I get back.”

Artemis was bouncing ideas off Butler, a technique he often used when trying to come up with a plan. After all, if anybody was an expert on covert operations, it was his bodyguard.

“We can’t trace the MPG?”

“No, Artemis. I tried. They put a decay virus in with the e-mail, I only barely managed to get the film on disk before the original disintegrated.”

“What about the MPG itself? Could we get a geographical fix from the stars?”

Butler smiled. Young Master Artemis was starting to think like a soldier.

“No luck. I sent a shot to a friend of mine in NASA. He didn’t even bother putting it into the computer—not enough definition.”

Artemis was silent for a minute.

“How fast can we get to Russia?”

Butler drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On how we go, legal or illegal.”

“Which is quicker?”

Butler laughed, something you didn’t hear very often. “Illegal is usually faster. Either way is going to be pretty slow. We can’t go by air, that’s for sure. The Mafiya is going to have foot soldiers at every airstrip.”

“Are we sure it’s the Mafiya?”

Butler glanced in the rearview mirror. “I’m afraid so. All kidnappings go through the Mafiya. Even if an ordinary criminal managed to abduct your father, he would have to hand him over.”

Artemis nodded. “That’s what I thought. So we will have to travel by sea, and that will take a week at the very least. We could really use some help with transport. Something the Mafiya won’t expect. How’s our ID situation?”

“No problem. I thought we’d go native. Russians arouse less suspicion in Russia. I have passports and visas.”

“
Good.
What is our cover?”

“What about Stefan Bashkir and his Uncle Constantin?”

“Perfect. The chess prodigy and his chaperone.”

They had used this cover many times before on previous search missions. Once a checkpoint official, himself a chess grandmaster, had doubted their story, until Artemis beat him in six moves. Artemis’s technique had since become known as the Bashkir Maneuver.

“How soon can we leave?”

“Almost immediately. Mrs. Fowl and Juliet are in Nice this week. That gives us eight days. We can e-mail the school, make up some excuse.”

“I daresay Saint Bartleby’s will be glad to be rid of me for a while.”

“We could go straight to the airport from Fowl Manor, the Lear jet is stocked. At least we can fly as far as Scandinavia, and we can try to pick up a boat from there. I just have to pick up a few things at the manor first.”

Artemis could imagine exactly the kind of
things
his manservant wished to pick up. Dangerous things. “Good. The sooner the better. We’ve got to find these people before they know we’re looking. We can monitor e-mail as we go.”

Butler took the exit for Fowl Manor.

“You know, Artemis,” he said, glancing in the mirror. “We’re going up against the Russian Mafiya. I’ve had dealings with these people before. They don’t negotiate. This could get bloody. If we take these gangsters on, people are going to get hurt. Most likely us.”

Artemis nodded absently, watching his own reflection in the window. He needed a plan. Something audacious and brilliant. Something that had never been attempted before. Artemis was not unduly worried on that front. His brain had never let him down before.

The fairy shuttleport at Tara was an impressive operation. Thirty thousand cubic feet of terminal concealed beneath an overgrown hillock in the middle of the McGraney farm.

For centuries the McGraneys had respected the fairy fort’s boundaries, and for centuries they had enjoyed exceptional good luck. Illnesses mysteriously cleared up overnight, priceless art treasures popped up with incredible regularity, and mad cow disease seemed to avoid their herds altogether.

Having solved her visa problem, Holly finally made her way to the security door and slipped through the holographic camouflage. She had managed to secure a set of Koboi DoubleDex for the trip. The rig ran on a satellite-bounced solar battery, and employed a revolutionary wing design. There were two sets, or decks; one fixed, for gliding, and a smaller set for maneuverability. Holly had been dying to try the DoubleDex out, but only a few rigs had made their way across from Koboi Labs. Foaly was reluctant to let them out because he hadn’t designed them. Professional envy. Holly had taken advantage of his absence from the lab to swipe a set from the rack.

She soared fifty feet above the ground, allowing unfiltered surface air to fill her lungs. Though laden with pollutants, it was still sweeter than the recycled tunnel variety. For several minutes she enjoyed the experience, before turning her concentration to the mission at hand: how to abduct Artemis Fowl.

Not from his home, Fowl Manor, that was for certain. Legally, she put herself on very shaky ground by entering a dwelling without permission. Even though, technically, Fowl had invited her in by kidnapping her last year. Not many lawyers would take your case on the basis of that defense. Anyway the manor was a virtual fortress and had already seen off an entire LEPretrieval team. Why should she fare any better?