Endgame (Agent 21) (26 page)

Ricky followed his gaze. He could barely see ten metres ahead of him, let alone see the stars.

‘Sorry, mate,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think anyone’s seen the stars in these parts for months—’

‘Shhhh . . .’ Zak interrupted him. His face was screwed up even harder. ‘Polaris,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘He taught me how to find Polaris – the North Star.’ He clicked his fingers suddenly. ‘I think Raf was trying to tell us that we need to get to the north of the island.’

‘Are you sure?’

Zak thought for a moment. Then he said, quite confidently: ‘I’m sure. Where’s the GPS?’

Ricky held it up. The screen showed them as a little blue dot, halfway between the land masses of Little and Big Diomede. They were almost directly due east of Big Diomede, which meant they had to circle it in an anticlockwise direction.

Suddenly, from a westerly direction, they heard shouting, and the barking of dogs. It was very distant, as if it was being carried towards them on the wind. ‘We need to move,’ Ricky whispered. ‘You know how to’ – he pointed at the huskies and their reins – ‘
do
this?’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Zak said. He shook the huskies’ leash hard. Ricky felt himself slam back in the seat of the sledge as they immediately surged forward. The air was suddenly filled with the hissing sound of the sled’s blades over the ice. The wind bit harder into Ricky’s face as they hurtled into the darkness. He looked over his shoulder only once, and just saw the three dead bodies receding into the distance.

They travelled in breathless silence. Even the huskies were quiet, now that they were running again. Ricky clutched the GPS unit in his frozen hands. Occasionally he looked wildly around. His skin was prickling – he had the uneasy sensation that they were being watched, or chased – but he saw nothing other than the frozen darkness. After ten nervous minutes, he nudged Zak and pointed in a north-westerly direction – the GPS was telling him that they needed to change course if they wanted to reach the north of the island.

Twenty minutes passed. Ricky felt his body temperature lowering. He sensed Zak shivering too. He checked the GPS. There was no way of telling from their dark, monotonous surroundings where they were, but the screen told Ricky they were now almost directly due north of Big Diomede. From this position, he could see what looked like a track marked on the map of the island. It headed south from the northern edge, and seemed to be the only way onto the island from this northern coast.

‘Stop!’ he shouted at Zak. Zak pulled the reins sharply and the huskies, their breath steaming, quickly obeyed the order to halt.

‘What is it?’ Zak said.

Ricky showed him the map on the GPS screen. ‘I can’t see any other way of getting onto the island from this direction,’ he said.

Zak narrowed his eyes, then nodded his head. ‘We’ll get within a hundred metres,’ he said, ‘then we’ll leave the huskies. They stayed put when Cruz got off them – I think they’re trained to wait. If we can get Raf and Gabs back to them, maybe . . .’ His voice trailed off. Ricky didn’t feel the need to observe that it was a long shot. But he didn’t have any better plan.

Zak flicked the reins again. As the huskies moved off, he pulled the left-hand rein and they swerved in that direction. Two minutes later, at a word from Ricky, he yanked them to a halt again. Both boys jumped off the sledge. The huskies’ breath steamed heavily in the cold air, and they pawed nervously at the ice. But they didn’t move. At least, not yet.

‘How long do you reckon they’ll stay?’ Ricky asked.

‘I don’t know. Probably not that long when it’s so cold. We haven’t got much time. I don’t think we can risk the torch. Cup your hand over the GPS screen so it doesn’t glow . . .’

They struck out in a southerly direction, following the blinking blue dot on the GPS unit, their faces screwed up against the bitter elements. Ricky’s legs were weak with exhaustion, his mind spinning with the horror of what had happened in the last hour. But he kept surging forward, jaw clenched, teeth gritted, until finally he saw the island emerging ahead of them from the darkness.

There were lights along the coastline. Five. Maybe six. Hard to tell, since they were moving around. ‘Men with torches?’ Ricky suggested as they took a moment to watch them.

Zak nodded. ‘The coastline’s guarded,’ he said tensely. And then, almost to himself: ‘Why did Raf tell us to come this way?’

Ricky almost pointed out that Raf had told them nothing of the sort. He’d merely given them a rather obscure message. But Zak had already started marching forward, and Ricky wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand being out here on the ice. He followed.

They were no more than thirty metres from the shoreline when Zak stopped again. They crouched down and recce’d the scene in front of them.

The path they’d seen on the map was more of a valley between two small, rocky hills. ‘I think the men with torches are patrolling that valley,’ Ricky said. ‘What do you think?’

Zak had a slightly faraway look in his eyes. ‘
That means you have to stay on the right side of the track . . .
’ he muttered.

‘Eh?’

‘It’s what Raf said, remember? Stay on the right side of the track. We thought he was just delirious, but I think he was trying to tell us something else. I think he was telling us something about the terrain we’re about to hit.’

‘But how would he know?’

‘He speaks Russian. He probably overheard someone talking about it. We need to approach in single file,’ he said. ‘We’re less obvious that way, and if anyone starts firing on us, we’re not so spread out as a target. And we need to be very quiet. It’s hard to predict how sound will travel in this wind.’

Ricky swallowed hard. The idea of being fired on by five Russian soldiers was not one he relished. He didn’t like to admit it to himself, but he was pleased when Zak took the lead . . .

They kept five metres apart, and within thirty seconds they’d hit the island. The nearest of the torches was about thirty metres away. Its operator seemed to be concentrating his beam up and down the valley, but it wasn’t strong enough to light them up just yet. The terrain was rocky and the rocks were sharp, ice-covered and slippery. Ricky and Zak crawled over them very carefully, Ricky wincing as a shard of rock almost pierced his skin. They could hear people shouting to each other in the distance, but it sounded like Russian and Ricky couldn’t understand them.

They moved forward five slow metres, struggling painfully over the treacherous rocks.

Ten.

‘We can’t go on,’ Ricky breathed. ‘We’ll crawl right into those guards.’

But Zak didn’t seem to be listening. He didn’t even seem to be watching the guards. He was looking off to the right-hand side of the track, his eyes searching . . . ‘Look!’ he hissed suddenly.

He pointed to their right. Ricky blinked. At first he couldn’t see anything. Then he realized what Zak was pointing at. Leading away from the ravine, at a thirty-degree bearing, was a tiny track, so narrow you’d have missed it if you weren’t looking for it. There was no sign of men with torches along that rough path.

Stay on the right side of the track.

Could that have been what Raf had meant?

– You don’t have much choice
, said the voice in Ricky’s head.
If you keep going in the other direction, they’ll catch you, no question.

It looked like Zak had already come to the same conclusion. He had started to scramble away from the main ravine, up along the new path. Ricky crawled after him – to stand up straight would make them too visible to the men with torches. They moved slowly. Ricky’s limbs were almost totally numb now with the cold and he had to force them into action.

Five minutes passed. The shouting faded away. As Ricky looked back over his shoulder, he could no longer see the glow of the torches. Everything was black. They could do nothing but continue to follow this tiny, rough path, and hope that it led somewhere that they wanted to go.

They were heading more steeply uphill. When Ricky finally caught sight of the brow, it was about twenty-five metres in the distance. He felt as though the sweat was freezing on his forehead.

– Is it just me
, said the voice in his head,
or is it getting brighter?

Ricky blinked heavily. He looked around. There was no doubt about it. There was a faint glow. The light seemed to be coming from beyond the crest of the hill, which was suddenly more distinct – a craggy black line twenty metres beyond them.

‘Zak,’ Ricky hissed.

‘I know,’ said his companion. ‘Keep going.’

They upped their pace – still crawling, but with a new purpose. They covered the distance to the brow of the hill in thirty seconds. The light was very bright now. For a moment they lay flat on the ground, catching their breath. Then, together, they pushed themselves up a fraction, so that they could see the terrain beyond.

Ricky’s eyes widened at what he saw.

It was a military base, situated in what looked like an immense crater, surrounded by high, rocky cliffs. In the centre was a helicopter landing zone. Zak counted three choppers dotted around it. Two of them looked like personnel carriers of some kind. The third was plainly an attack helicopter. It had a sleek body, and guns on either side. The kind of kit that you
really
don’t want on your tail. Despite the late hour, the whole base was alive with activity: trucks skirted the landing zone, and there were about thirty armed, uniformed soldiers milling around the area.

Surrounding the LZ were a number of large, square buildings: eight on the far, southern side of the base, eight on the northern side, closest to Zak and Ricky. Each of the buildings had a number and letter painted on the roof. Those on the nearest side were marked 1A, 1B, 1C . . . all the way to 1H. On the far side, they were marked from 2A to 2H. As Zak and Ricky watched, the large, wide doors of the building marked 2C slid open. Bright light burst from inside and a small truck emerged, pulling another attack helicopter out onto the landing zone.

‘Aircraft hangars,’ Zak breathed. And then his eyes widened for a moment. ‘What was it Gabs said?’ he whispered urgently.

A look of dawning realization had crossed Ricky’s face too. ‘
Be careful of hangers-on
. Something like that.’

‘No,’ Zak said. ‘What were the
exact
words?’ He closed his eyes, and tried to replay that horrible video in his head. He saw Gabs’s bruised face and her shivering body. And he heard her weak, trembling voice.
Be careful . . . of hangers-on, eh, sweetie.
His eyes widened even more. ‘Come with me,’ he hissed. He clambered a few metres back down the hill, Ricky following. Casting around, he saw a flat patch of rock, covered with an icy, frosty layer. He pulled off his glove and, with one fingernail, scratched some words into the ice:

Hangers-on, eh?

‘You see what she’s saying?’ Zak said, barely able to keep a note of excitement from his voice.

Ricky nodded and made a small hissing sound under his breath. With his own finger, he drew two vertical lines in the ice:

Hangers | on, e | h?

‘They’re in Hangar One-H,’ Ricky whispered. ‘Their messages have been leading us here all along.’

‘You bet,’ Zak answered. He crawled back to the crest of the hill. Hangar 1H was at the end of the line of hangars on the near side of the base. Zak and Ricky moved further along the ridge, about forty metres, until it was directly opposite them. Distance: fifty metres as the crow flies, but the hillside looked rocky and hazardous. ‘The hangar will be guarded,’ Zak told Ricky, who had crawled up beside him again. ‘We’re going to need a diversion.’

‘Again?’ Ricky asked, a bit sourly.

Zak furrowed his brow, thinking his way carefully through the next few minutes. They could only see the back end of the hangar, where there was clearly no entrance. In order to make a plan they needed to know how many guards there were at the unseen entrance. Impossible from this vantage point. But then . . .

‘We’ve got eyes on the inside,’ he breathed.

‘What?’ Ricky asked.

‘Follow me,’ Zak said. ‘Keep very low. If I raise my hand, hit the ground.’

‘Care to tell me what we’re doing?’

Zak gave him a sharp look. ‘Rescue mission,’ he said shortly. ‘What else?’

Without another word, Zak rolled over the crest of the hill to reduce the chance of revealing himself along the ridge. When he was a couple of metres over the brow, he saw Ricky doing the same. He crouched low and started crawling down the hillside.

It was treacherous underfoot. Several times his boots slipped on the rocky, icy slope, and his body thwacked hard against the hillside. He tried to keep one eye on the military base down below, but the lower they went, the more the hangars on the near side of the LZ blocked their view. As they got closer, however, they could hear increased sounds from the base: the roaring of engines, and people calling to each other in Russian. They were halfway down when a sudden burst of shouting hit Zak’s ears. He immediately raised his right hand. He and Ricky dropped to the ground. Not a second too soon. From somewhere, a floodlight shone across the hillside, moving quickly from west to east. It missed them only by a matter of metres.

Zak found himself breathing and sweating heavily, despite the cold. They stayed flat on the ground, not moving, for a full two minutes before setting off again.

It took fifteen minutes to reach the bottom of the hill. Zak’s every sense was on high alert. They were now positioned just twenty metres from Hangar 1H. To their left was Hangar 1G. There was the noise of some kind of engine from inside that one, but so far as they could tell from here, 1H was quiet.

They crept forward. Zak’s skin was prickling. A Russian soldier could appear behind these hangars at any moment. And if that happened, it would be game over . . .

It was with a deep sigh of relief that they reached the back of Hangar 1H. Zak felt it carefully. The building was cheaply made – this back wall was a thin sheet of corrugated iron. Good. That meant it would be resonant enough. He stepped back slightly and then, very gently, started tapping on the metal wall.