Alpha Force: Untouchable Part 10

Alex checked the grid reference. 'Yes, that's the one.'

The two friends switched their torches off. They crept down the hill carefully, working by feel. In the light from the window they could see the six-wheeled ATV and another vehicle, a normal quad. Did the gamekeepers have guests? In the window they could see three figures. It seemed they did.

Alex stopped and sat down. He took the video camera out of his pack and began filming. 'This is the perfect hideaway,' he whispered. 'Miles from any roads. No one's going to stumble across it in the night by accident.'

'Except if they're in a drug-induced haze.'

Alex knew she was joking but he still couldn't get the experience out of his mind. 'It wasn't a haze,' he said. 'It was like being possessed.'

'Do you think Tiff's taken the same thing?'

'No,' muttered Alex. 'She's enjoying it. There's no way you could enjoy what I had.'

The men were still just standing in the room, talking. 'Come on,' growled Alex softly. 'Stop discussing the football and do something weird, like you did the other night.'

A c.h.i.n.k of light appeared about a metre to the left of the window. The door was opening. A figure came out, silhouetted against the golden lamplight. He was tall, heavily built.

'Ah,' muttered Alex. 'We haven't seen you before. Smile for the camera.'

One of the gamekeepers came out, carrying something large and heavy in his arms. Amber squeezed Alex's arm. It was a deer carca.s.s.

The other man came out with another deer carca.s.s. They loaded them onto the six-wheeler. The big man got on the quad and started it. The headlights winked on. Instinctively Amber and Alex ducked, but they were well hidden. One of the gamekeepers went to lock the door, then climbed on the ATV behind the other. The two bikes revved and roared away.

'Is that it?' said Amber.

Alex lowered the camera and switched it off. 'We should have given the camera to Hex and Li.'

'I wonder how Paulo's getting on with Tiff,' said Li.

'I hope he's braced for some deep, meaningful conversations,' said Hex. 'That drug's made her very introspective.'

The sound of a lone vehicle drifted across the night sky. Immediately they focused on the job. The sound came closer and a waft of exhaust fumes drifted over to them. Li spotted a cl.u.s.ter of headlights, bouncing through the sky.

'Two vehicles,' she whispered. 'There was only one before. They've brought a friend.'

The two friends ducked well down in the stream bed. Now they would see what really went on here.

They heard the bikes pull up and the engines stop, but they kept down as low as possible. Their heads were only metres away from the wheels.

The six-wheeler's lights were still on. One of the gamekeepers walked a short way away from it, shining a torch on the ground. The other unclipped some elastic ropes securing the carca.s.ses.

The other bike, a normal quad, had a lone rider. He stood up, silhouetted against the six-wheeler's lights. He was big, very powerfully built, well over six feet tall. Even in silhouette they could see he was dressed differently from the gamekeepers. He wore baggy jeans and a hoodie pulled up so that he looked like he was wearing a shroud. He was powerfully built and the baggy clothes made him look even bigger. City clothes, thought Hex. Not country gear.

When the big man talked, the other two stopped what they were doing and listened attentively. That could only mean one thing.

Li whispered to Hex, 'Those gamekeepers are really scared of this guy.'

One of them put the torch in his mouth, ghoulishly reddening his face. He knelt down and there was a metallic noise; then his face was obscured by a shadow. The big man waited, his face dark under the hood. What were they doing?

The kneeling gamekeeper pulled something out of the ground and went behind it. Down behind it. Li and Hex heard a sound like feet on metal rungs.

A few moments later there was another sound like an engine starting.

Li gripped Hex's arm. It was the sound she had heard in the cave.

A light flooded into the sky from deep in the ground, as though someone had turned a spotlight on. It illuminated the cloud above and the big square trapdoor that the man had opened in the ground. So that's where he had disappeared.

Li and Hex held their breath. Something was buried under the heather.

They heard feet on rungs again. The second gamekeeper was waiting with one of the deer carca.s.ses. Arms reached out from behind the trapdoor and dug into the carca.s.s. Li and Hex caught a glimpse of something blue, bright royal blue, being pulled out of the split where the carca.s.s had been gutted. A small blue drum, about the size of a rugby ball.

The gamekeeper descended out of sight and the big man followed him down. The other gamekeeper dumped the remaining carca.s.s beside the trapdoor, climbed down a few rungs, eased another blue drum out of the carca.s.s, then disappeared.

The light shone into the night sky. It seemed to beckon: Come closer. Come and look. Come closer. Come and look. It seemed wrong to just sit there. It seemed wrong to just sit there.

The two friends heard footsteps coming up the ladder again. The trapdoor was pulled down sharply, extinguishing the light.

Li let out her breath very slowly. 'That sound was what I heard in the cave. It's a generator.'

Hex spoke rapidly, excitedly. 'That's the missing link. That's their factory. And who's that big guy?'

'Should we report back? Or should we stay?'

'I think we'd better stay,' said Hex.

Tiff was lying on the sofa, huddled in a purple blanket. A reading lamp threw a soft pool of light over her blonde hair. Paulo was sitting against the radiator, still watching her.

'I'm sorry,' said Tiff.

The pattern had been the same for the past few hours. She would look like she was going to sleep, then would suddenly start talking, nattering about whatever popped into her b.u.t.terfly brain.

Paulo wished he felt as wide awake as she did. 'Sorry for what?'

'I stole your stash,' said Tiff.

'My what?' said Paulo.

'Your stash. I've seen E before. I know what it looks like.'

Paulo sighed. 'I don't take drugs,' he said. 'And you shouldn't either.'

'What were you doing with that stuff then?' said Tiff. 'I found it in your pocket.'

How much should he tell her? She might say the wrong thing somewhere and ruin their cover. 'I was going to take them to the police,' he explained. At least that was the truth.

The front door banged and then Alex and Amber walked in.

'Are you guys still here?' said Amber. 'I'd have thought you'd be tired by now.'

Paulo yawned forcefully. 'One of us is.'

'Where have you been?' asked Tiff.

'Night orienteering,' said Alex. 'You wouldn't have liked it.'

Tiff checked who had come back. 'Where's Hex? I'm not going to sleep before he gets back.'

'He's coming,' said Amber. 'They went a different way. Paulo, I'll take over if you want.'

Paulo got up and stumbled out. 'Goodnight all.'

Amber settled down on the beanbag next to the radiator. She waved at Alex as he went out.

Tiff looked at Amber somewhat balefully, then put her head down on a cushion, as if trying to get comfortable. The gesture said, I'm not going to talk to you I'm not going to talk to you. Fine, thought Amber. I don't want to talk to you either. In fact maybe she'd get some sleep.

But Tiff started talking again. Her voice was quiet, the hostility gone. 'My mum married again,' she told Amber. 'She doesn't want a kid around. She can't wait to get away on her own with my stepfather.' There was none of the usual sarcasm in her voice. Not even bitterness. Just sadness.

'I'm nothing more than a babysitting problem,' she went on. 'I have to be farmed out, sent on trips and kept occupied. Brainwashed so that I don't want anything. They want a robot, not a daughter. They've no idea who I am. I don't matter.'

Her words stirred powerful memories. Once upon a time Amber had thought the same about her parents. They'd left her behind while they went abroad. She later discovered that they were away on missions, but at the time Amber had thought they didn't want to be bothered with her. 'I know how you feel,' she said quietly.

Tiff shifted and something rolled out of the covers onto the floor. It looked like a fat pen. Amber reached forward to retrieve it but Tiff s.n.a.t.c.hed it back and looked at it thoughtfully. It was a spent glow stick, but Tiff was looking at it as if it was fascinating.

'That's a dead one, Tiff,' said Amber. 'It's not going to come back on.'

Tiff fixed her with a steely look. 'It's a symbol.' She gazed at it and her voice became sad again. 'There are dark places you would never understand. Hex understands, though. He understands what it's like to die.'

Oh dear, thought Amber. We've been through the sensitive phase. Now she's getting morbid. And just when I thought I'd get some sleep.

15.

TRAPDOOR.

Li made almost no noise as she crawled along the ground towards the faint glow of light leaking around the edge of the trapdoor. She was cold and wet but she kept her movements very slow, as though she was stalking it. They had no idea how thick or thin the ground around it was and whether the men below could hear people moving on the surface.

Hex watched her tracer on his palmtop screen. They were going to mark the exact position of the trapdoor so that they could find it later. Since they'd missed it in broad daylight, it was obviously well hidden.

Not far now. Li wondered what was below her hands and feet and this seemingly solid piece of moor. Was it another cave? Or some kind of manmade structure? How big was it?

Her heart thudded as she moved her hands and knees gently towards the square of light. It glinted off a pair of open eyes. She froze, horrified, then realized it was one of the dead deer. She started to move again.

The trapdoor trembled and she heard a metallic sc.r.a.ping. Footsteps, ringing below her hands and knees. Someone was coming up. She'd have to abort.

If she shouted to Hex she'd be heard. She rolled to the side, twisting so that she got as far away from the opening and the bikes as possible. The trapdoor opened, throwing a glow into the sky. She lay still, trying to calm her breathing. Had she gone far enough away? Had Hex got out of sight?

One of the gamekeepers came out, followed by the big man. Both wore pale surgical masks and white papery overalls over their clothes, like radiation suits. They walked towards her, the gamekeeper flashing his torch along the ground. They were coming straight for her.

She rolled again and felt the ground disappear. She was on the edge of the stream bed. She'd have to stay here if she went in they'd hear the splash. She tried to flatten herself into the gra.s.s. The big man's overalls were enormous to fit over his baggy clothes. The gamekeeper looked puny by comparison.

They stopped. Li was less than a metre away from them. She stayed stock-still, hardly daring to breathe.

The big man pulled off his mask and ripped open his suit. He bent over as he stepped out of it and Li saw a flash of his face in the torchlight. His features looked Eastern European and distorted, like a boxer who carried many old injuries. The hooked nose was spread, the eyes were slits; the whole face was dotted with piercings diamonds winked in his nose, his bottom lip, his cheek. As he straightened up, his face slipped into the shadows of his hood. Only the pinpoints of light from the diamonds remained visible, as though he had tiny eyes in the wrong places.

The other man had pulled his mask down around his chin. He put a cigarette between his lips and brought out a lighter. The flame illuminated dark brows, frowning eyes concentrating on the cigarette he was lighting.

Li kept watching. The cigarette caught, his face relaxed and he put the lighter out. But she'd got a good look at his face. She'd be able to identify him.

He put the lighter back in his pocket and took a long, satisfying drag. A strange, chemical smell came off the papery trousers. It reminded Li of the chemistry labs at school.

The big man pa.s.sed his overalls and mask back to the smaller man. 'I don't want any of those green pills,' he said. His voice was quiet, but dangerous.

'What were they?'

'E and ketamine,' said the gamekeeper.

'Yeah, well they're rubbish,' said the big man. 'People take them, they get a bad trip, they don't come back to my dealers. I've got important clients who don't want their heads messed with. You give me just pure Ebenezer, you got it?'

Ebenezer. E. A name for ecstasy.

The gamekeeper nodded.

'You got the capacity? I can go anywhere and get rubbish. You give me good product, OK? I don't want to find you've put rubbish in there because you don't have time.'

'We can do it,' said the gamekeeper. 'We'll be ready for you tomorrow night. Just name a time.'

'You better be ready, brother. You've got my money. I don't like being short-changed.' The man looked the gamekeeper up and down. 'If the guys could see you now dressed like Lord Sprockett.'

Hex was crouching behind the bikes. He saw the man turn away from the gamekeeper and start walking towards him, the torch swinging in his hand.

Hex's blood pressure hit the roof. Which vehicle had the big man come on? The quad or the six-wheeler? The quad, wasn't it?

Hex watched the swing of the man's arms. On the downswing of the torch he rolled swiftly behind the six-wheel ATV.

The big man got on the quad. The engine roared into life; next would be the headlights. Hex flattened himself on the ground as the big man opened the throttle. The wheels pa.s.sed within a metre of his hands.

That just left the other man. And where was Li?

Hex peered up cautiously. The side of the gamekeeper's face was gently illuminated by the light from the open hatch. The end of the cigarette glowed like a coal as the gamekeeper drew in a breath. Smoke curled over the red tip. Well, at least that cigarette made him easy to spot. Hex couldn't see Li at all, but now the other man had gone, there was nothing to distract the gamekeeper from any tiny noise that she might make. How long did it take to smoke a cigarette? Three minutes? Five minutes? Stay hidden, Li, prayed Hex.

The gamekeeper inhaled and stopped. The red tip paused in the air; he held his breath and listened.

Li felt a trickle of sweat pouring down her back. He had seen her.