Deadfall: Agent 21 Read online

Ignore the pain, he told himself. You’re not out of here yet . . .

  3

  EXOTHERMIC

  12.24HRS

  A white Range Rover pulled up outside a two-storey house in Mandela Drive, part of a well-off residential suburb to the south of Jo’burg. This was not the house Raf and Gabs actually wanted – they wanted number 67, which was fifty metres further down the street, but they would cover the final distance by foot.

  First, though, Gabs needed something. She walked round to the back of the Range Rover and opened up the boot. Then she lifted the floor panel to reveal a spare tyre and a bag of tools. She helped herself to a black iron crowbar.

  ‘Go easy on the kid,’ Raf said. ‘Remember, he doesn’t respond to adults. He’s not quite all there in the head.’

  Gabs ignored that. Her jaw was set and her eyes flashed. ‘Ready?’ she asked Raf.

  ‘Ready.’

  Number 67 was at the corner of two streets. There were two entrances to the house – the main one facing onto Mandela Drive, and a side entrance facing onto Cape Road. As soon as they hit the junction, Gabs and Raf peeled away from each other. Raf took the main entrance while Gabs headed for the side.

  The wooden door had a spy hole in it and Gabs wondered if she should step away and hide round the side of the porch. But she decided not to. She reckoned that, when the occupant of this house saw someone he didn’t recognize at the front door, he’d be in a hurry to leave by the side entrance. He wouldn’t be stopping to check if there was somebody else here.

  Gabs gripped the crowbar firmly and listened carefully. A few seconds later, she heard the doorbell ringing.

  Footsteps inside, heading to the front door.

  Then faster footsteps, heading back into the house.

  Towards the side door.

  She heard someone fumbling at the latch – and she raised the crowbar slightly.

  The door opened.

  A figure appeared.

  He was a slight boy. Skinny, even. His brown hair was tousled and looked as if it could do with a wash. He wore square glasses with thick rims which made his eyes look a bit bigger than they really were.

  And he looked scared.

  ‘Hi, Malcolm. I’m Gabs.’

  Malcolm looked panicked. His eyes flickered to the crowbar and he stepped back to slam the door shut. But Gabs was too fast for him. She thrust the crowbar into the gap between the door and the frame to stop it closing, then barged through.

  Gabs was a lot stronger than she looked. As the door swung inwards, it knocked Malcolm to the floor; his glasses fell down his face at an angle and he stared up at her, like a shocked rabbit.

  ‘Don’t kill me,’ he whimpered.

  Gabs ignored that and paused a moment to take in her surroundings. This side entrance led directly into the kitchen-diner. It was spotlessly clean. Boxes of cereal were lined up on the worktop – seven of them, in a precise row. Next to them were seven apples and seven bananas. All neatly arranged.

  The kitchen table was piled high with unopened iMac boxes. Maybe twenty of them. At one end of the table, a computer terminal was plugged in. A long power cable led to the nearest wall, and the screen was filled with code that Gabs couldn’t decipher.

  She sensed Raf entering the room behind her as she looked back down to Malcolm.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here, Malcolm,’ she said briskly. ‘Wonder how many bank accounts you’ve hacked to be able to pay for it.’

  Malcolm shook his head to deny it. ‘My name isn’t Malcolm,’ he gabbled.

  ‘Relax, sweetie,’ Gabs said. ‘If we were going to turn you in, we’d have done it ages ago. And if I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead. If you want to know the truth, our organization has been helping you hide all this time. Now we need your help.’

  Malcolm blinked.

  ‘It’s Zak. He’s gone missing. You’re going to find him. Get up.’ She bent down, grabbed Malcolm’s arm and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Zak?’ Malcolm said. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

  He was a very bad liar.

  ‘How did you hack in to the airport’s security cameras?’ Gabs demanded. ‘Don’t try to deny it, Malcolm, I saw the picture you texted Zak just a couple of hours ago. How did you do it?’

  Malcolm didn’t reply and so, as quick as lightning, she wrapped her free hand around his neck.

  ‘Here’s the problem, sweetie. Nobody else knew Zak was in South Africa. If I decide that you’re behind this, things are going to get very unpleasant for you. Now tell me: how . . . did . . . you . . . do . . . it?’

  Malcolm stuttered as he answered. ‘Th-there’s a police database. It lists all current CCTV installations in South Africa. It’s just a matter of breaking into the relevant servers and decrypting . . .’

  ‘Spare me the details, brainiac. There’s a toy shop called Fun World. Can you hack its systems?’

  ‘I can hack any system,’ the boy replied. He didn’t sound like he was boasting. Just telling the truth.

  ‘Then do it. Now. Before I get angry.’

  Malcolm didn’t move, so Gabs moved her lips up to his ear. ‘You really wouldn’t like me when I’m angry, Malcolm.’

  The terrified kid started nodding furiously, so Gabs let go of his neck and he hurried to the computer terminal. His fingers flew over the keyboard even before he was fully sitting down. Now his face was bathed in the light of the screen.

  Raf and Gabs stood behind him.

  ‘A bit over the top?’ Raf murmured.

  Gabs didn’t reply.

  12.26HRS

  Estimated time till Cruz’s arrival: fourteen minutes.

  And counting.

  Were the guards he’d heard on the opposite side of the other door armed? Most likely. Even if they weren’t, there were at least two of them. Zak couldn’t risk taking them on. He needed to break through the fire exit that he hoped led out onto a main road. But he couldn’t use brute force. If he banged something heavy against the door, it would alert the guards. Besides, he doubted he was strong enough.

  He needed to do something cleverer than that.

  Improvise.

  An idea came to him.

  The science sets were in the same aisle in which he’d woken up. ‘Build your own alarm clock’ kits, ‘My First Electronics Kit’, chemistry sets . . .

  Zak ripped open one of the chemistry-set boxes and examined the contents. He saw a neat row of sealed test tubes, each marked with its contents.

  Bright blue copper sulphate. Useless.

  Deep purple potassium permanganate. Useless.

  Dull grey iron filings. Strips of magnesium. They’d burn brightly, but they were no good for what he had in mind. He put the chemistry set to one side, took a deep breath and tried to remember his school chemistry lessons . . .

  Exothermic reactions: chemical reactions that give off loads of heat. He’d learned about them in class one day, then gone home to learn more on YouTube. He’d seen exothermic reactions capable of melting metal. ‘Don’t try this at home, kids,’ the guy on the video had said as he put his safety goggles on. How had he done it? What had he used?

  It came to him in a flash.

  Etch A Sketches.

  He’d seen piles of them. He ran to the next aisle, nursing his burned wrist as he went and found the Etch A Sketches, eight of them, stacked in boxes, one on top of the other. Gathering them up in his arms, he carried them over to the fire exit and quickly began unboxing them. He stood over one of the units and, with a sharp jab, brought his heel down on the face. The face cracked immediately. Zak wormed his fingers into the crack and pulled the face of the Etch A Sketch away. He had a grey, powdery residue on his fingers.

  Powdered aluminium.

  He dumped it out of the body of the Etch A Sketch, then broke open the remaining units. Two minutes later, all the powdered aluminium was piled by the fire exit. He pressed it up against the rusting base of the door.

  Powdered alumin
ium and iron oxide. The mixture would produce a high-temperature thermite reaction. Hot enough to burn through the door.

  All he needed now was a way to ignite it.

  And he didn’t have one.

  12.31HRS

  Estimated time till Cruz’s arrival: nine minutes.

  Eight minutes.

  Bile rose in Zak’s throat. He either had eight minutes to escape, or eight minutes before he would die.

  Matches would be no good, even if he had any on him. Nor would a cigarette lighter. The thermite mixture needed a sudden blast of intense energy to get it going. He considered the strips of magnesium ribbon from the chemistry set. They might do it, but he had nothing to ignite them with.

  And it wasn’t like he could stroll out and ask the guards for a light.

  Think.

  Improvise.

  Zak ran back along the aisles until he came to the science kits again. He ripped open the box of ‘My First Electronics Kit’ and rummaged through the contents. He found them almost immediately: a small soldering iron with a red handle, and a small coil of solder.

  He grabbed them, then ran along the aisle to collect the other two items he needed: a kids’ handheld torch, and one of the brightly coloured laptops.

  Back at the exit, he got to work.

  There was no time to dismantle the laptop carefully. Zak simply unboxed it and smashed it down on the ground, hoping the noise wouldn’t travel to the far side of the warehouse where the guards were waiting. The outer shell came apart immediately and Zak hurriedly dismantled the machine.

  Inside was the optical drive. A sticky label on the casing told him it was a DVD burner. That was all he needed to know. He smashed the drive down against the ground until its casing started to disintegrate. Seconds later, he was inside, and he immediately found what he was looking for: the small laser diode that was the core component of the burner.

  Moving quickly, he unscrewed the end of the torch and removed the bulb. Then he took the soldering iron over to the power socket and plugged it in.

  Estimated time: five minutes. Sweat trickled down the nape of Zak’s neck. He was cutting this very fine.

  It took thirty seconds for the soldering iron to get up to temperature. The time passed horribly slowly. Zak’s hands trembled as he touched the end of the solder to the wire. It immediately formed a little ball of molten metal, which fell to the concrete floor because of Zak’s shaking hands.

  He took a deep breath, steadied himself, then continued soldering. He needed to fit the laser diode into the bulb socket. Fiddly work at the best of times. Almost impossible when you’re working against the clock, your skin is sweaty and your hands are trembling.

  And you know you’ll be dead in four minutes if you don’t get this right.

  12.38HRS

  Two minutes and counting.

  Zak was done. He pointed the torch away from him and switched it on. A pale pink, pencil-thin beam shot from the torch into the plaster wall of the warehouse. Almost immediately, the plaster started smoking. His makeshift laser was working.

  Zak ran back to the door. He stood about three metres away from the aluminium and iron oxide mixture. Then he shone his laser at the powder.

  Ten seconds.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Come on,’ Zak whispered to himself.

  His hand was shaking again. He slowed his breathing down, then adjusted the focus of the beam so it was a little closer to the door.

  Still nothing.

  A sound from the opposite side of the warehouse. Voices. Speaking English this time.

  ‘He’s lying in the third aisle, Señor Martinez.’ Zak recognized the voice of one of his guards.

  And he recognized the next voice that spoke too.

  ‘Show me.’

  Cruz. He was here.

  ‘Come on,’ Zak breathed again. ‘Come on!’

  It happened suddenly. The thermite mixture ignited like a massive Roman candle firework. Blinding light. And it was hot. Very hot. Zak had to step back three paces and shield his eyes from the intense heat and light. Clouds of acrid smoke billowed up and caught in the back of his throat.

  But it was working. The fire-exit door was buckling as the bottom part melted in the intense heat.

  ‘Il a disparu!’ a voice shouted out, with more than a hint of panic. He’s disappeared!

  ‘Find him,’ Zak heard Cruz shriek. ‘FIND HIM!’

  He had only seconds. Zak heard footsteps running down a nearby aisle. He couldn’t wait any longer.

  The burning of the thermite mixture was beginning to subside.

  Zak ran towards it and gave the door a solid kick about halfway up.

  Movement. But the door remained shut.

  Another kick.

  To his left, Zak could see an African boy running towards him, his eyes fierce and the scars on his cheek plainly visible.

  He was ten metres away, and closing in.

  Zak knew he only had one more chance.

  He ran at the door again and kicked it with all his strength.

  It sprang open.

  The boy was five metres away as Zak jumped over what remained of the thermite mixture.

  In less than a second he was outside.

  As he had suspected, the fire door led out directly onto a busy main road. In either direction, there were two lines of traffic – a weird mixture of rickety old trucks with farm animals in the back, and spanking new BMWs. Zak barely stopped to check his path was clear. He ran across the first two lanes to the concrete central reservation. Several horns sounded, and one truck swerved to miss him. But he made the centre of the road safely, where he turned left and started to spring.

  He looked over his shoulder. The boy with the scarred face was standing there, breathless, staring after him.

  Zak continued to run. About fifteen metres away, he saw a white minibus pulled up on the far side of the road, facing towards him, with a line of three people waiting to board.

  Bush taxi.

  He sprinted across the remaining two lanes of traffic, his lungs burning with exertion. The driver was just about to close the door as he reached it, and he gave Zak a strange look as the boy jumped on board and handed over a fistful of South African rands. He shrugged, accepted the money, then pulled out into the traffic.

  Zak was still standing up as the bush taxi drove back past the warehouse he’d just escaped. But the African boy with the scarred face was no longer there. Someone else had taken his place.

  Cruz looked older than when Zak had last seen him. His dark hair had been cropped short and he had filled out a little so he looked less gangly. But his eyes had lost none of their deadness. They were narrow and expressionless as he watched the bush taxi zoom past.

  Then Zak noticed something else. Cruz’s right hand was hanging by his side. It was holding a handgun.

  And the African boy with the scarred face hadn’t disappeared after all. He was lying at Cruz’s feet.

  Was he dead? Had he been shot?

  Zak couldn’t tell. The bush taxi had moved on and his enemy was out of sight.

  He collapsed into a seat, sweat draining from his body, and ignored the strange looks of the other passengers in the vehicle as he tucked his laser torch into his jacket and allowed the taxi to transport him – if not to safety, then away from the immediate threat.

  13.00HRS

  ‘How long will this take?’ Raf said.

  No answer. Malcolm just continued to type what looked like gobbledegook into the computer.

  ‘Seriously, Gabs,’ Raf said. ‘We’re wasting our time. If none of Michael’s people could do this, there’s no way this kid can even—’

  He stopped.

  The screen had suddenly divided into sixteen segments. Each segment showed a different black-and-white image.

  And each image showed, quite clearly, a different area of the Fun World shop floor.

  ‘How did you—?’ Raf breathed.

  Gabs interrupted him: �
�We need to see footage from 11.10 a.m. this morning. Can you do that?’

  Again, Malcolm started tapping the keyboard, his hands a blur. The images flickered, to be replaced by almost identical pictures, only with customers in different positions. Every two seconds, the images changed as the footage moved forwards in time.

  Gabs found she was holding her breath.

  ‘There!’ she said suddenly, pointing to the bottom left segment of the screen. ‘That’s him.’

  Malcolm enlarged the small image. There was no mistaking Zak, with his newly bleached hair.

  ‘Third floor,’ Malcolm said.

  Almost in response to his words, the black and white Zak looked directly into the camera. Then the picture jumped to a moment a few seconds later. One of the shop assistants was leading him across the room. The scars on his cheeks were perfectly visible.

  ‘Junior,’ Gabs hissed.

  ‘Let’s get back to the shop,’ Raf said, his voice urgent, his face grim. ‘I think I would like a word with our friend with the funny face after all.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Gabs. She kept her eyes on the screen as the camera footage showed a second boy approaching Zak and grabbing his other arm. They disappeared into the mock castle where Raf and Gabs had been just a little while before. ‘I want to see him come out,’ she said.

  She held her breath as they waited for someone to emerge from the castle. Nobody did. Not for a good twenty seconds.

  She almost wished she hadn’t waited. When Zak emerged, he had an arm slung over each of two scar-faced shop assistants. His face was beaten and bloodied and Gabs wasn’t sure whether he was even alive. Her knees buckled. Thankfully Raf was there to hold her up.

  ‘Watch,’ he instructed.

  They kept their eyes on the footage. The boys dragged Zak over to the fire exit. One of them put his hand to the back of Zak’s head and yanked it down brutally. Zak’s legs fell from underneath him and his face slammed on the metal lever. Zak had his back to the camera, so they couldn’t see any blood flow out of his nose. But looking at her fingertips, which were still stained red, Gabs knew that was what had happened.