Deadfall: Agent 21 Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Agent 21 Briefing Document

  Map

  PART ONE

  1. Fun World

  2. The Worm and the Stone

  3. Exothermic

  4. Hack Attack

  5. The Dark Continent

  6. Hop and Pop

  PART TWO

  7. Smiler

  8. Tiny Tears

  9. All Creatures Great and Small

  10. Prusik

  11. Latifah

  12. Deadfall

  13. Buried

  14. Eavesdropping

  15. Break Out

  16. Break In

  17. Know Your Enemy

  18. Vodun

  PART THREE

  19. Banjul

  20. The Coup

  21. Smiler’s Choice

  22. Spitfire

  23. $2,346,625

  24. Exit

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Chris Ryan

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Deep in the African jungle, an army of child soldiers strengthens its troops. Scars on the boys’ faces mark their allegiance, for life.

  Meanwhile shadowy agent Zak Darke is tracking their movements, hunting the source of a huge international criminal operation. But he may have underestimated their commander. By the time Zak realizes the danger he’s in, will it be too late?

  He’s going to need every ounce of his training to survive Deadfall.

  AGENT 21: BRIEFING DOCUMENT

  AGENT 21

  Real name: Zak Darke

  Known pseudonyms: Harry Gold, Jason Cole

  Age: 15

  Date of birth: March 27

  Parents: Al and Janet Darke [DECEASED]

  Operational skills: Weapons handling, navigation, excellent facility with languages, excellent computer and technical skills. Trained in codebreaking.

  Previous operations:

  (1) Inserted under cover into the compound of Mexican drug magnate Cesar Martinez Toledo. Befriended target’s son Cruz. Successfully supplied evidence of target’s illegal activities. Successfully guided commando team in to compound. Target eliminated.

  (2) Inserted into Angola to place explosive device on suspected terrorist ship, the MV Mercantile. Vessel destroyed, Agent 21 extracted.

  (3) To extract skilled person from secure hospital site and work alongside same; also inserted undercover alongside suspect. Mission to eliminate bomb threats to both civilians and major targets in the UK. Successful outcome.

  AGENT 17

  Real name: classified

  Known pseudonyms: ‘Gabriella’, ‘Gabs’

  Age: 27

  Operational skills: Advanced combat and self-defence, surveillance, tracking.

  Currently charged with ongoing training of Agent 21 on remote Scottish island of St Peter’s Crag.

  AGENT 16

  Real name: classified

  Known pseudonyms: ‘Raphael’, ‘Raf’

  Age: 30

  Operational skills: Advanced combat and self-defence, sub-aqua, land-vehicle control.

  Currently charged with ongoing training of Agent 21 on remote Scottish island of St Peter’s Crag.

  ‘MICHAEL’

  Real name: classified

  Known pseudonyms: ‘Mr Bartholomew’

  Age: classified

  Recruited Agent 21 after death of his parents. Currently his handler. Has links with MI5, but represents a classified government agency.

  CRUZ MARTINEZ (Presumed Dead)

  Age: 17

  Significant information: Succeeded Cesar Martinez as head of largest Mexican drug cartel. Thought to blame Agent 21 for death of father. Highly intelligent. Profile remained low since coming to power. Thought to have drowned during sinking of MV Mercantile.

  MALCOLM MANN

  Age: 14

  Significant information: Borderline autistic computer hacker. Known to have cracked the security of a number of intelligence agencies. Has provided help to Agent 21 in the past. Currently living off the grid in Johannesburg, South Africa.

  PART ONE

  1

  FUN WORLD

  JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA. SATURDAY. 11.00HRS

  There had been a thin layer of frost on the ice-cold bottle of Coke. Beads of condensation ran down the glass.

  Just like the bead of sweat that ran down the side of Zak’s face.

  This should be an easy op. Why, then, did he feel so on edge?

  He hadn’t touched his drink. He was too busy looking through the window of the café.

  Zak could only half see his reflection, but it still surprised him. In another time and place, he might have thought he looked stupid. Not now. This new appearance had a purpose. His hair had been dyed blond and cut scruffily short. He had put in a set of blue contact lenses. Fake tan had darkened his skin. With his bright red baseball cap on the table in front of him, he looked like a surfer dude. Not a teenage boy who spent all his time living on a windswept island off the coast of Scotland.

  Amazing how easy it was to change the way you look.

  He glanced across the table at Gabs. His Guardian Angel always managed to appear a little bit glamorous, even when she was in disguise. Today you could only see strands of her blonde hair tumbling down below the edge of a peaked beret. She wore a T-shirt with a sparkling Rolling Stones logo. In front of her was a half-drunk cappuccino.

  ‘You should take a sip of your Coke, sweetie,’ she murmured. ‘If anyone’s watching . . .’

  ‘Nobody’s watching.’

  ‘Zak!’

  Gabs’s voice was suddenly severe. Zak flushed. He knew better than that. If Zak – or Raf, or Gabs, or anyone he’d met in the time his ordinary life had become extraordinary, and he’d gone from being Zak Darke to Agent 21 – was conducting surveillance on someone in this café, would they notice him?

  Not a chance.

  And it worked both ways.

  A single sweep of the café told him that any one of a number of people could have eyes-on. The waiter wiping down the coffee machine behind the bar. The tired mum with two kids eating ice cream at the next table. The waitress who had served them . . .

  He gave Gabs an apologetic nod and took a pull on his Coke.

  Then he stared out of the window again.

  They were staking out a toy shop called Fun World. Four storeys high, and wide enough for six separate window displays. Each window was painted with a large picture of a clown’s face. They were supposed to look happy, but they just freaked Zak out – he almost felt as if they were staring straight at him, and he had to suppress a shudder.

  Once, when he was much younger, Zak’s mum and dad had taken him to the huge London toy shop, Hamleys, to see Father Christmas. Fun World was similar in size, but nowhere near as busy.

  Bottom line: this place gave him the creeps. It didn’t look much fun at all.

  Which kind of figured.

  Because it wasn’t like Agent 21 and his Guardian Angels had been sent to South Africa to go shopping for toys.

  ‘You think he’s in there?’ Zak asked.

  ‘Cruz?’

  Zak nodded. Of course Cruz. Cruz Martinez, his former friend turned Mexican drug lord. Cruz Martinez, whose father had ordered the deaths of Zak’s own parents, and had taken a round from Gabs’s gun for his trouble. Cruz Martinez, who he’d last seen falling from a sinking ship into a stormy sea. Who everyone had insisted was dead, even though Zak knew in his heart he was still alive. Whose very name caused Zak’s flesh to grow cold.

  Whom intelligence operators had spotted three times in the past month visiti
ng this very toy shop.

  And nobody thought he was there to buy teddy bears.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Zak. ‘Cruz.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Gabs said. ‘Saturday morning and everything. I don’t think he’d rock up when it’s busy.’

  ‘It’s not that busy,’ Zak observed.

  Gabs shrugged. ‘Not a lot of money in this part of the world for buying toys.’ She looked through the window of the café. ‘There’s Raf,’ she breathed.

  She was right. Raf had suddenly appeared. He was standing outside the main door of Fun World, and had removed his lightweight linen jacket and slung it over his shoulder. That was the signal. It meant he’d staked out the surrounding area and hadn’t seen anything suspicious.

  The op was a go.

  Gabs drained her coffee cup and motioned at Zak to do the same. ‘Remember,’ she said to him. ‘This is surveillance, nothing more. Understood?’

  ‘This is surveillance, nothing more.’

  Zak’s handler Michael had used those exact words during their briefing session just two days ago on the bleak island of St Peter’s Crag that was now his home.

  ‘You’re the only one who’s been inside the Martinez inner circle. All you have to do is determine if anybody you saw during your time in Mexico is working at Fun World.’

  ‘Surely they have security cameras in the store,’ Zak had said. ‘Can’t you just hack in to those? I can look at the pictures, tell you if there’s anyone I recognize. That would be safer, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Much safer. Unfortunately, all the CCTV images are encrypted and uploaded to a server elsewhere. We’ve had our best people on it. They can’t even locate the Fun World server, let alone decrypt the images. The only way we’re going to do this is by putting you on the ground. Now listen, Zak: if you recognize anyone, do not – repeat do not – try to apprehend them. Leave that to the experts. You just need to look like a kid in a toy shop. It’s the only reason you’re there.’

  ‘Understood,’ Zak said.

  Even though he’d just downed his Coke, his mouth felt dry. It was always like this in the moments before an op. A mixture of excitement and fear. You could get addicted to it. Zak already had.

  He reached out to grab his phone. An important device. If he was in trouble, all he needed to do was type a code – 6482 – and Raf and Gabs would receive the distress call and be there in seconds.

  As he picked up the phone, it vibrated. A single buzz. The screen lit up and Zak and Gabs exchanged a glance. Only four people knew this number: Zak himself, Gabs, Raf and Michael back in London.

  He picked it up and swiped the screen.

  His eyes widened. It was a picture message. The black and white image was grainy – it looked like a still from a CCTV image. But there was no doubt of what it showed: Zak, a bag slung over his shoulder, walking through customs at Johannesburg O.R. Tambo airport. That had been two hours ago.

  Beneath the picture were the words: Welcome to South Africa. Malcolm.

  Zak’s eyes narrowed. He showed the screen to Gabs.

  ‘Malcolm? How on earth did he know we were here?’ she said.

  The cogs in Zak’s brain were already working overtime. Malcolm was a highly intelligent computer hacker who had helped Zak during his last mission in London. A weird guy, but brilliant. The authorities wanted to keep him under lock and key, but Malcolm had escaped their clutches with Zak’s help. Zak and his Guardian Angels were the only people who knew the hacker was living off the grid in South Africa, and they’d kept quiet about it. The guy deserved a break.

  Zak was quite convinced that there wasn’t a computer system Malcolm couldn’t break into. That included airport security, and here was the proof.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ he muttered.

  ‘What does?’ Gabs said.

  ‘If I know Malcolm, he’ll have hacked into the airport’s systems and will be running facial recognition software on anyone who comes through. A kind of early-warning system, in case anybody’s coming to get him.’

  Gabs thought about that for a moment. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘We should abort.’ She raised one sleeve to her mouth, ready to speak into the hidden comms microphone wirelessly linked to Raf’s hidden earpiece.

  Like lightning, Zak grabbed Gabs’s wrist and lowered it back to the table. He understood her panic. They were supposed to be off the radar and it looked like they’d been compromised. But Zak didn’t see it that way. Malcolm was an odd-bod, no question. Not the kind of guy you’d want to be stuck in a lift with. But he was OK with Zak. This was just his strange way of saying hi.

  ‘I trust Malcolm,’ he said. ‘It’ll be fine. And anyway, maybe we could turn this to our advantage.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If Malcolm can hack airport security, he can hack the CCTV in a toy shop. I know Michael said he’d put his best people on it, but I bet none of them are as good as Malcolm. We know where he lives.’ Zak tapped his phone to bring up an address. ‘Number sixty-seven Mandela Drive. It’s nearby. Why don’t we just ask him?’ He looked over at Fun World. ‘It’s safer than walking straight into the lion’s den.’

  A moment’s pause. Then Gabs shook her head. ‘We have our orders,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this over and done with.’

  She left a bank note on the table – both Zak and Gabs had a pocketful of cash, just in case – then they both stood up and left the café.

  The brutal African heat hit Zak like a hammer as he stepped out into the street. So did the noise of the busy road. Car engines, horns, people shouting at each other. They waited for a gap in the traffic, then crossed. Neither of them spoke to or even acknowledged Raf. And Zak didn’t give Gabs any word of farewell. He simply peeled off and entered Fun World, leaving her to take up her position outside.

  Time check: 11.13hrs.

  The first thing Zak heard was the music being piped round the shop. It was soft but frenetic – the sort of thing you’d hear in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Music that begged you to have fun. He zoned it out and concentrated on his surroundings.

  He estimated that there were fifty customers on the ground floor. Half of them adults, half children. And there were ten shop assistants, each wearing a smart red blazer. One of them was juggling with four balls. Another was demonstrating a small, remote-controlled helicopter.

  One side of Fun World’s ground floor was devoted to teddy bears. Tiny ones, huge ones, and every size in between. There was nothing menacing about them, but like the clown pictures, they chilled Zak. For a moment he stood statue-still, and thought back to his briefing session . . .

  ‘Watch this,’ Michael had said, handing him an iPad. Zak had tapped the screen and a video clip had started playing. There was no sound, and the camerawork was juddering. It appeared to have been taken in an area of jungle – Zak could see thick, lush vegetation in the background. But the focus of the picture was a flight case on the ground, wide open, containing perhaps 200 cuddly elephants.

  A hand appeared on screen. It held a scalpel, which it used to cut open one of these elephants, up to its breast, under the head and along its trunk. The hand folded the soft toy inside out, to reveal a plastic bag filled with a white powder.

  ‘Cocaine,’ Michael had said. ‘Very high quality. Stashes of drugs like this have been popping up all over Asia, and a fair few in Europe too. It’s not a bad hiding place, the guts of a soft toy . . .’

  ‘Not a bad hiding place,’ Zak muttered to himself. Then he shook his head. Surely none of the toys on display would be hiding any cocaine. He watched a little South African girl holding a Hello Kitty up to her mum, who shook her head and firmly put it back.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’

  Zak blinked. A shop assistant was standing in front of him. He was young, probably no older than sixteen, and had a name badge on his red jacket: ‘Junior’. His skin was black, and his hair twisted into scalp-tight dreadlocks. Each of his cheeks ha
d a thin, pale scar rising from the corner of his mouth to his ear.

  Like a smile.

  Zak didn’t recognize the face. He relaxed slightly. ‘Harry Potter wands,’ he said. ‘Do you sell them?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Third floor. Shall I show you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, mate. I’ll find them. Told my sister I’d get her a Hermione one.’

  Zak cursed inwardly. Keep a lie simple. The less information you give someone, the fewer holes they can pick in it . . .

  Junior looked puzzled. ‘Who is Hermione?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s . . . Never mind. Thanks for your help, mate.’ Zak nodded at the shop assistant and headed towards the escalators at the centre of the shop. As the moving stairs carried him towards the first floor, he looked back down over the ground floor. The shop assistant with the weird scar was now nowhere to be seen.

  He circled the first floor. There were fewer customers here, Zak realized, as he stepped past Xboxes and PlayStations and through a section of video-game cartridges. Every time he saw one of the shop assistants in their smart red blazers, he took a mental snapshot of their face. None of them rang any bells.

  Second floor. Jigsaw puzzles and board games. He saw one kid drawing a house using an Etch A Sketch and felt a sudden pang as he remembered doing the same thing with his dad.

  Keep your mind on the job, he told himself.

  To his ten o’clock, in the far corner of the store, he saw a ceiling-mounted CCTV camera. A red light was flashing next to it. Was it Zak’s imagination, or had he just noticed a tiny movement of the lens?

  CCTV cameras move all the time, he told himself. Relax. You’re nearly done. Another couple of hours, you’ll be on a plane out of here.

  Third floor. It was practically deserted. He walked past Lord of the Rings figurines, and models of characters he didn’t even recognize.

  ‘Harry Potter this way, sir!’

  Zak flinched and turned suddenly. Junior had appeared from nowhere and was now standing right next to him. He grinned and nodded. ‘This way, sir. This way.’