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The more Jimmy heard, the more surprised he was at how disorganised the arrangements were.
“OK, OK,” said Froy with a sigh. “Stop busting my—”
BANG!
The plane gave a massive jolt. Jimmy was hurled to the left and his helmet slammed against the side of the cockpit. He heard both agents yelling through his headset, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The whole plane was violently shaking. Jimmy’s stomach rolled around. Then he heard the first clear words through his earpiece.
“It’s there!” Bligh shouted. His reedy voice came as a shock. Jimmy strained against his strap to see what the man was talking about.
“On your DS!” said Froy urgently. “Your display station!”
Jimmy looked down at the screen in front of him. It was about thirty centimetres square and in full colour. There was a green outline of jagged straight lines surrounded by blue. Jimmy assumed that represented the coastline beneath them. The whole screen was criss-crossed by thin blue and red lines, but it was hard to make anything out because of the furious vibrations of the plane.
“It sprung out of nowhere!” Bligh cried. “They won’t miss next time.” Then Jimmy saw it—first the black aeroplane icon that represented the plane he was sitting in. Then, barely two centimetres away on the screen, the flashing red dot that could only mean trouble.
“They’ve found me!” Jimmy gasped, barely able to get the words out of his throat. “How did they find me?”
“Hold on tight!” Bligh screamed.
For a second Jimmy felt like the plane had disappeared from under him. Every organ inside him was thrown into his throat. Bligh had sent them into a rapid dive.
“You?” said the man suddenly. “Why do you think they’re after you?”
The plane pulled out of the dive with a sudden swoop. The massive reversal of the G-force thrust Jimmy deep into his seat. Blood rushed to his head and it felt like his brain was about to burst.
“I don’t know how they found us,” Froy shouted, peering behind him through the glass. “I’m sorry, Jimmy.” Jimmy looked over as well. With the intense shaking and the limited view, he only caught sight of it for a split-second, but it was enough—the wing tip of another plane. It was behind them, it was fast and it could only be NJ7.
“This is nothing to do with you!” yelled Bligh, still grappling with the controls of the plane.
“It’s NJ7,” Froy replied. “They’re after Jimmy. Look, their plane has a green stripe on the side. That’s their emblem. You Brits are too damn arrogant to do anything in secret, aren’t you, Jimmy?”
Jimmy blanked out the voices. He needed his body to respond to the danger. He closed his eyes, searching for that power inside him. He had to forget that he was terrified—that was only the human part of him, the 38 per cent that was a normal, frightened boy.
“No,” Bligh announced suddenly. “It’s not possible. There’s no way they could know you were on this plane and co-ordinate an attack so quickly. We’re only a few miles outside American airspace. They must have been tracking this plane. They’re not here for you, Jimmy. They’re after me. As soon as we dipped below safe altitude to pick you up, they spotted us easily.”
At last, Jimmy felt a rush up the side of his neck—like a rising flood taking over his brain and energising every muscle. His breathing slowed. The panic in his chest crumpled into a harmless ball. With that, he suddenly had the confidence to take in what Bligh was saying.
“What do you mean?” he yelled, his voice now infused with authority. “Why are they after you? You mentioned your ‘package’ before—what did you mean? What’s your mission?”
There was no response, though Jimmy knew Bligh had heard him. He could see the man’s shoulders tighten.
They surged onwards, back up above the clouds. The vibrations calmed a little and Bligh kept deploying what countermeasures he could. Without even thinking about it, Jimmy knew that first he would send out a hot flare to divert heat-seeking missiles, then chaff—debris that would disrupt any missile that automatically sought the nearest solid objects.
“Can’t we fire back?” Froy shouted.
Jimmy didn’t wait for the pilot to answer. His voice came out low and calm. Inside, he was thrilled at his own conviction.
“This is an Electronic Countermeasures plane, not an attack plane. Our missiles can take out anti-radar artillery systems and surface-to-air missiles on land or on ships over a hundred kilometres away. But we’ve got no way of attacking another plane.”
Now Jimmy turned back to Bligh. His eyes seared into the back of the man’s helmet. “If you want to survive, I need all the information,” he demanded. “You said they must have tracked you. Where from? What were you doing? What was your mission? Tell me NOW!”
The plane rocked again.
“We’re losing control!” Froy screamed, above the rattle of the metal struts. They were barely holding the cabin together.
“OK,” Bligh yelled at last. “You’re right—I need to tell you. But not to survive—to complete the mission.” He frantically punched some keys on his display station. “God, I hope this CPU is still working. Can you see that?”
Jimmy looked at his own screen. Aerial photographs flashed up in front of him, one after the other. Jimmy was amazed at their detail—he knew they must have been taken from thousands of metres up and with the plane travelling at speed.
“This is Neptune’s Shadow,” Bligh announced, rushing to get the words out, “the second-largest oil rig in the world.” His voice shook with the vibrations of the plane, but Jimmy wondered whether it was fear as well. “It’s 250 kilometres off the east coast of England, in the North Sea.”
Jimmy watched the images flash up, faster and faster, desperately trying to hold on to any of them in his head. Still the plane shook and rattled. Jimmy could barely hear what Bligh was saying.
“This is your precious package?” Froy bellowed. He was furious. “This is what was so important you couldn’t divert to pick us up? A damn oil rig?”
“It’s not an oil rig,” Bligh snapped back. “That’s what I found out. And NJ7 will do anything to stop me getting back with this intelligence. Neptune’s Shadow is a secret missile base disguised as a massive oil rig. And these pictures show that its rockets are trained on France. The Brits are preparing a strike on Paris.”
Jimmy felt his gut twisting into a rope.
“Does anybody know about this?” he gasped.
“Just us three and the Government of Great Britain,” replied Bligh. “We’re too far out of range for me to radio it. The only place this information is stored is on the CPU of this aeroplane and inside our heads. And to be honest, it doesn’t look like this plane is going to be around much longer. If something happens…” he paused and cleared his throat. “If we go down…Whoever survives…you have to take this information back to Colonel Keays. He has to know. He has to stop them.”
CRASH!
Suddenly, it felt like being in a toy plane whacked by a sledgehammer. A direct hit. Jimmy was thrown to the side, slamming his head against the wall of the cockpit again. If it hadn’t been for the helmet, his skull would have been crushed.
Then the plane went into tailspin.
04 DEATH SPIRAL (#ulink_884fa4ba-29c4-52db-896b-ed368c487a29)
Jimmy saw every colour blend into every other. The universe whirled around him, like he was trapped in a tumble dryer—one that was falling to earth at over a hundred metres a second.
Only one thing went through his mind—Bligh has lost control. The man was shaking the flight stick frantically and clawing at the switches on the flight panel.
Jimmy looked up, straight ahead out of the cockpit. What he saw numbed the feeling in his entire body. The sea was rushing towards them. Even in the split-second that he stared, the froth on the surface became clearer. He was close enough to see the debris that bobbed on the waves.
Then he looked to the control panel. It was like the most complicated games console in the world. Suddenly, it was as if Jimmy could see through the metal, into the workings of the plane. In a single flash of thought, he could trace the wires behind every button and switch—thousands of them all at once.
“Do exactly what I say!” Jimmy yelled, fighting hard to stop himself blacking out.
“What?” Bligh shouted back in disbelief.
“Kill the engines!” Jimmy ordered. There was such authority in his voice that Bligh did as he was told. The two Pratt and Whitney P450 turbojets fell silent, leaving only the intense scream of the air rushing past the cockpit.
Jimmy’s hands tore at his strap. He unclipped his parachute, heaved it off his back and strapped it round the display station of the empty seat next to him. Then he engaged the seat’s ejector mechanism. Almost instantly, a section of the cockpit screen popped open and the seat was hurled from the plane. Jimmy saw it slam into the wing as it rotated around them. He was relieved that neither Bligh nor Froy had panicked and tried to eject themselves.
“What are you doing?” screamed Bligh.
Jimmy didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled the ripcord on his parachute. The black satin canopy billowed into the sky behind them. The resistance would only slow their fall by a fraction—the ’chute was designed to carry a single human, not a fighter jet. But it would grant them an extra split-second, which could be enough. The canopy behind them would also serve a second purpose.
“Release the internal fuel supply!” Jimmy commanded. Bligh didn’t hesitate. A trail of black liquid streamed behind them, making the plane lighter by the second, and filling the parachute canopy with petroleum fumes.
There was no time to issue another order. Jimmy reached over to the controls himself, flicked the safety cover from the missile switch and jammed his thumb on the orange button.
He didn’t need to take aim. He knew that without a specifically programmed target, the AGM-99 would automatically seek out the largest solid object within its scope. He just hoped that one of the logs in the water would be big enough to register.
A single missile flamed through the sky ahead of them, twisting in the direction of its target. Ten centimetres either side and the missile would have plunged hundreds of metres beneath the waves before exploding. But it hit the log right in the centre. Up came a blast of red and black flame, heating the air immediately around it by hundreds of degrees and igniting the fumes caught in the parachute.
The updraft was enough to push the Growler out of its spiral.
“Now!” Jimmy yelled. Bligh knew exactly what Jimmy meant. That moment he re-ignited the engines. The roar returned. The silk canopy behind them was incinerated instantly and they swooped along the surface of the water.
Jimmy couldn’t help smiling.
“Good flying, kid,” Bligh gasped, lifting them back into the clouds at hundreds of kilometres an hour. “But it’s not over.” He tapped his display unit. The red flashing dot was still on the screen and it was closing in. Jimmy was amazed that the man still sounded so calm.
“We’d better eject,” said Jimmy, constantly manoeuvring the plane so they couldn’t be shot at. “The plane’s damaged and we’re out of fuel. If we’re not hit first, we’ll crash anyway.”
But then Bligh looked across at Froy.
“Froy!” he cried, shaking his CIA colleague by the arm. “He’s unconscious, Jimmy! I’m not ejecting without him.” Bligh reached across to check the other CIA man’s pulse. “Here, you take this.” He unclipped his parachute and passed it back to Jimmy.
Jimmy pulled the straps of the parachute pack over his arms.
“I’ll fasten myself to Froy,” Bligh went on, feeling for one of the hooks on his belt. “I’ll get us both out and I’ll pull the cord on his ’chute.”
Jimmy was about to follow the agent’s instructions, but his hand hesitated over the eject mechanism. He glanced again at the red dot on his screen. Come on, he told himself. Get out of here. But there was a dark force inside him, stopping his muscles going through with action.
“They’ll see me,” Jimmy gasped suddenly. “I can’t jump out. If an NJ7 pilot sees a boy coming out of this plane, the information will get back to Miss Bennett. She’ll know it’s me. The whole operation will be for nothing.”
“Who’s Miss Bennett?”
“She’s the head of NJ7. I can’t let her know I’m still alive.”
“It’s too late for that!” Bligh yelled. “We’ve got to go. I can’t eject until you’ve gone—I’m flying this thing!”
But still Jimmy held back. In his head was a human cry, willing him to eject from the plane. His programming swamped it.
“No,” he announced. “We can get rid of them.”
Determination tensed his face.
“We can’t!” Bligh screamed. “They’ve…”
His voice faded. Jimmy looked up. Through the black grime on the glass, he saw a missile burning towards them. All his muscles seemed to melt in fear.
“Hold Froy!” he screamed.
But Bligh wasn’t moving. The high-pitched whine of the missile grew louder. Jimmy stared at its black point, bearing down on them.
“Come on! I’m wearing your parachute!”
“It’s up to you, Jimmy,” said Bligh quietly. Jimmy could barely hear his voice. “There’s nobody else.” The man turned round and Jimmy saw his face for the first time. His skin was dark and his eyes were commanding. “Get back to Colonel Keays. Tell him about the missile base, Jimmy. Someone has to stop Neptune’s Shadow.”
SMACK!
The missile hit the nose of the Growler. Jimmy felt himself thrust forwards, as if they’d flown into a brick wall. His hands jumped to his face and he squeezed his eyes shut. His helmet smashed the back of Froy’s seat. When he opened his eyes, for a split-second he caught sight of Bligh’s face again. A large shard of glass was sticking out of the agent’s cheek, just below his eye.
“Neptune’s Shadow!” the man bellowed. Jimmy reached out to catch him, but too late.
BOOM!
The plane disintegrated in a massive explosion. Jimmy was thrown into the air. He felt the cold wind and the burning metal blasting into him at the same time. He desperately tried to keep his eyes open, searching for Bligh and Froy. They’re going to die, he told himself. In his panic, he thought he saw them falling through the debris, one with a parachute on his back but unconscious, the other completely helpless.
Neptune’s Shadow! Jimmy heard Bligh’s last words in his ears over and over again, above the din of the air rushing past him as he hurtled down through the atmosphere.
The noise was matched by the turmoil in Jimmy’s head. I could have saved them, he thought. Why did I hesitate? Why did I take his parachute?
Parachute…The word seemed to reawaken Jimmy’s programming. It would never forgot its first priority—to stay alive. While his mind was in chaos, his hands moved calmly and expertly to the ripcord. Even while he wanted to scream, free-falling through the carnage, he could hear a quiet voice in his head counting to ten. Then he felt his arm go tense and suddenly everything changed.
It felt as if his whole body was jerked upwards. The parachute burst open above him. The roar of the wind in his ears changed to the sound of a breeze. Bits of the plane still dropped around him, but soon he was far above them, floating down towards the sea.
05 TERMINAL INTENTION (#ulink_6a0117c3-5eda-5e73-8712-7a663d5748af)
Mitchell Glenthorne stalked through Terminal One of New York’s JFK airport, limping slightly. His shoulders were broad for a thirteen-year-old, but they were hunched over, masking the size and strength in his chest. His face was fixed in a scowl. The inside of his head was nothing but a jumble of silent curses. He was passing the time by running through a list of all the people he wished he could have it out with. It took in most of the people he had ever met, starting with his brother Lenny and his parents.
He thought of Lenny, lying on a slab somewhere in London, being kept alive by NJ7 for experimental purposes. Serves him right, he thought. Mitchell’s parents’ only fault had been to die in a car crash when he was a baby, but now he had reason to doubt these family relationships.
Jimmy Coates, the renegade assassin—the dead renegade assassin, Mitchell corrected in his head—had claimed before he was shot that Mitchell and Jimmy were half-brothers. If that were true, where did that leave Mitchell’s parents and Lenny?
Now wasn’t the time to work it out, so instead he snorted at how ridiculous the idea was. He blocked out the thought that his whole existence was ridiculous. From his appearance, no one would have believed that he was the first 38 per cent human, organic assassin. Or that he’d been called on to enter active service five years before he was due to be fully operational.
He held the image of Jimmy’s face in his imagination a second longer, as if out of some kind of respect for the dead. Actually, it was to give Jimmy a double dose of cursing. Jimmy was the one who had given Mitchell this limp. He’d be walking normally again in no time, but still, every faltering stride gave him another reason to sneer at the memory of Jimmy Coates.
The airport terminal was busy as usual and, as usual, it was saturated with security personnel. Hardly even thinking about it, Mitchell noted their positions and sightlines as he passed each one. After he had made his move, he would have to escape the building. These armed men and women would be in his way.
Next on the list of people he was fed up with was Miss Bennett. She was technically his boss, but always seemed to act like a sarcastic schoolteacher towards him. Instead of praising him for his part in the termination of Jimmy Coates, she had immediately dispatched him to continue his ongoing mission to find and kill Zafi. She hadn’t even given him time for his knee to heal.
And that brought him to Zafi. Mitchell took up a position overlooking the Air France check-in desks, lying in wait for his target. Zafi was the organic assassin designed and built by the French Secret Service twelve years before. That made her almost two years younger than Mitchell, but so far Mitchell had to admit that her speed and ingenuity had got the better of him. But that wasn’t even what he minded the most about her. He could have respected Zafi if she’d acted with the discipline and seriousness that Mitchell always tried to bring to his job. But she never did.
Agency computers had flagged up a last-minute reservation on a transatlantic flight, under the name ‘Michelle Glenthorne’. Mitchell knew that Zafi was taunting him by booking herself a flight in that name. He clenched his fists. As soon as Zafi dared to turn up, no matter what disguise she tried, Mitchell was ready to rip her head off. That’s how annoyed he felt.
Zafi peeked through the curtain of the fitting room of the Ferragamo outlet. The clothes were too fancy for her tastes and they didn’t make anything in her size, but that wasn’t why she was here. As soon as she saw Mitchell she gave a light giggle. She laughed again when she noticed how annoyed he looked, and how hard he was studying the faces of everybody who went anywhere near the Air France check-in desks.
She slipped out of the fitting room and took a pink pashmina scarf to the till. Without looking up, the middle-aged woman behind the desk asked, “How will you pay?”
“Charge it to the Stovorsky account,” Zafi instructed confidently.
