Snakehead (4 page)

And what about Scooter? What about X-Ray and the others? Had they brought him here on purpose? Alex couldn't believe that. What motive could they have to want him dead? Briefly, he remembered what X-Ray had said in the jeep.
“We've come too far. We should have turned off a mile back.”
And when they'd picked him up at the base, Scooter had said there was a big training exercise on that night. That was why they'd been free for a picnic on the beach. Some picnic! As impossible as it seemed, the four SAS men must have driven to the very edge of the war zone. Alex had managed to wander away from the beach when he was collecting wood and had chosen the worst-possible direction. This was the result—a mixture of bad luck and stupidity. But the two of them were going to get him blown apart.

A rhythmic pounding had begun, perhaps a mile away, a mortar bombarding a target that had to be somewhere close by. As each shell detonated, Alex felt a stabbing pain behind the eyes. The power of the weapons was immense. If this was just a training exercise, he wondered what it must be like to get caught up in a real war.

It was time to go. With the mortars still firing, Alex scrabbled to his feet and began to move, not sure which way he should go, knowing only that he couldn't remain here. There was the scream of something falling through and a great
whumph
as it struck the ground somewhere over to Alex's left. That told him all he needed to know. He headed off to the right.

A crackle of machine-gun fire. Alex thought he heard someone shout, but when he looked around, there was no one there. That was the most unnerving thing, to be in the middle of a battle with not a single one of the combatants actually visible. A tree had caught fire. The entire trunk was wrapped in flames, and there were black-and-crimson shadows leaping all over the ground ahead. Just beyond, Alex caught sight of a wire fence. It wasn't much to aim for, but at least it was man-made. Maybe it defined the perimeter of the war zone and he would be safer on the other side. Alex broke into a run. He could taste blood in his mouth and realized he must have bitten his tongue when the first bomb went off. He felt bruised all over. Vaguely, he wondered if he might be hurt more than he actually knew.

He reached the fence—it was made of barbed wire and carried another sign: DANGER, KEEP OUT. Alex almost smiled. What danger could there possibly be on the other side that was worse than this? As if to answer the question, there were three more explosions no more than a hundred yards behind him. Something hot struck Alex on the back of the neck. Without hesitating, he rolled under the fence, then got up and continued running across the ground on the other side.

He was in a field. There was still no sign of the ocean. He was surrounded by trees on all four sides. He slowed down and tried to take his bearings. His neck hurt. He had been burned by the little fragment of whatever it was that had hit him. He wondered if Scooter and the others were looking for him. He would certainly have a few things to say to them…if he ever got out of here alive.

He continued forward. His foot came down on something small and metallic. He heard—and felt—it click underneath his sole. He stopped. And at the same time, a voice came out of the darkness just behind him.

“Don't move. Don't even move a step…”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure roll underneath the fence. At first he thought it must be Scooter—but he hadn't recognized the voice, and a few seconds later he saw that it was an older man with black, curly hair and the beginnings of a rough beard, dressed in full military gear and carrying an assault rifle. The bombs and the shelling seemed to have faded into the distance. They must have been redirected at a target farther away.

The man loomed up next to him, looking at him with unbelieving eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “How did you get here?”

“What am I standing on?” Alex demanded. Part of him knew the answer. He hadn't dared look down.

“The field is mined,” the man replied briefly. He knelt down. Alex felt the man's hand press gently against his sneaker. Then the man straightened up. His eyes were dark brown and bleak. “You're standing on a mine,” he said.

Alex was almost tempted to laugh. A sense of disbelief shivered through him and he swayed a little, as if he were about to faint.

“Stay exactly as you are!” the man shouted. “Stand up straight. Don't move from side to side. If you release the pressure, you're going to kill both of us.”

“Who are you?” Alex exclaimed. “What's going on here? Why is there a mine?”

“Didn't you see the sign?”

“It just said danger—keep out.”

“What more did you need?” The man shook his head. “You shouldn't be anywhere near here. How did you get here? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“I was brought here.” Alex could feel a cold numbness creeping through his leg. It got worse, the more he thought about what lay beneath his foot. “Can you help me?” he asked.

“Stay still.” The man knelt down a second time. He had produced a flashlight. He shone it on the ground. It seemed to take an age, but then he spoke again. “It's a butterfly,” he said, and there was no emotion in his voice at all. “They call it that because of its shape. It's a Soviet PFM-1, pressure-sensitive blast mine. You're standing on enough high explosive to take your leg off.”

“What's it doing here?” Alex cried. He had to fight the instinct to lift his foot off the deadly thing. His entire body was screaming at him to run away.

“They train us!” the man rasped. “They use these things in Iraq and Indonesia. We have to know how to deal with them. How else are they going to do it?”

“But in the middle of a field…?”

“You shouldn't be here! Who brought you here?” The man straightened up. He was standing very close to Alex, the brown eyes boring into him. “I can't neutralize it,” he muttered. “Even if I had the training, I couldn't risk it in the dark.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I'm going to have to get help.”

“Do you have a radio?”

“If I had a radio, I'd have already used it.” The man laid a hand briefly on Alex's shoulder. “There's something else you need to know,” he said. He was speaking softly. His mouth was next to Alex's ear. “These things have a delay mechanism…a separate fuse that you'll have activated when you stepped on it.”

“You mean—it's going to blow up anyway?”

“In fifteen minutes.”

“How long will it take you to find someone?”

“I'll move as quickly as I can. If you hear a click—you'll feel it under your foot—throw yourself flat onto the ground. It's your only hope. Good luck…”

“Wait…,” Alex began.

But the man had already gone. Alex hadn't even asked him his name.

Alex stood there. He had lost any sense of feeling in his leg, but his shoulder was burning and he was beginning to shiver violently as the shock set in. He forced himself to bring his body back under control, afraid that the slightest movement could bring a hideous end to this ordeal. He could imagine the sudden flash, the pain, his leg separated from his body. And the worst of it was that there was nothing he could do. His foot was glued to the device that was ticking away, even now, beneath him. He looked around. Although he hadn't noticed it before, the mine had been placed on the top of a ridge, the ground sloping away steeply to a ditch at the bottom. Alex tried to work out the distances. If he threw himself sideways, could he reach the ditch before the mine exploded? And if the force of the blast was above him, would he escape the worst of it?

The bombing had stopped. Suddenly everything was very still. Once again Alex experienced the sense of being completely alone, standing like a scarecrow in the middle of an empty field. He wanted to call out but was afraid to, in case he accidentally shifted his body weight. How long had it been since the man had left? Five minutes? Ten? And how accurate was the timer anyway? The mine could go off at any time.

So did he wait? Or did he take his life into his own hands? Alex made his decision.

He took a deep breath, tensing his body, trying to think of the muscles in his legs as coiled springs that could launch him to safety. His right foot was resting on the mine. The left foot was on flat ground. That was the one that would have to do most of the work.
Do it!
Alex had to force himself, knowing that he might be making the worst mistake of his life, that seconds from now he could be crippled, in agony.

He jumped.

At the very last moment he changed his mind but continued anyway, launching himself down the slope with all his strength. He thought he felt the mine shudder very slightly as his foot left it. But it hadn't exploded, at least not in the half second that he had left the ground. Automatically, he crossed his arms in front of his face, to protect himself from the fall—or from the blast. The slope was rushing past him, a dark streak at the corner of his vision. Then he hit the ditch. Water, cold and muddy, splattered into his face. His shoulder hit something hard. Behind him, there was an explosion. The mine. Clumps of earth and torn grass rained down on him. Then nothing. His face was underwater. He pulled his head back, spitting mud. A plume of smoke rose into the night sky. The fuse must have given him three seconds before it detonated the mine. He had taken those three seconds and they had saved him.

He got unsteadily to his feet. Water was dripping out of his hair and down his face. His heart was pounding. He felt drained, exhausted. Briefly he lost his balance, put a hand out to steady himself, and winced as he caught it on the barbed wire fence. But at least he had found his way out of here. He rolled back underneath and tried to work out which way to go. Seconds later, the question was answered for him. He heard the sound of an engine, saw two beams of light cutting through the trees. His name was being called out. He hurried forward and found a track.

The four SAS men were in the jeep. This time X-Ray was driving. They were rolling slowly through the wood, searching for him. Alex saw that they had left the coolers behind. But Sparks had remembered his guitar.

“Alex!” X-Ray slammed on the brakes and at the same time Scooter leapt out of the passenger seat. He looked genuinely concerned, his face white in the glare of the headlights. “Are you okay? Jesus! We completely screwed up. We've got to get out of here. We shouldn't be anywhere near.”

“I told you…,” X-Ray began.

“Not now!” Scooter snapped. He grabbed hold of Alex. “As soon as the bombs went off, I knew what had happened. I looked for you, but we must have got separated. You look terrible, mate. Are you hurt?”

“No.” Alex didn't trust himself to say any more.

“Get in. We'll get you home. I don't know what to say to you. We're complete idiots. We could have gotten you killed.”

This time Alex took the front seat. Scooter climbed in the back with the others, and they set off back down the track and out toward the main road. Alex still wasn't sure what had just happened—how the SAS men had managed to get themselves into this mess. Nor did he care. He allowed the noise of the engine and the cool night air to drift away, and seconds later he was sound asleep.

T
WO DAYS LATER
, A
LEX
had put his experiences at Swanbourne behind him. He was sitting outside a café in Sydney, the opera house on one side, the great stretch of the Harbour Bridge on the other. It was the world's favorite postcard view, and he had seen it many times. But now he was actually in it, eating vanilla-and-strawberry ice cream and watching as the Manly ferry came grinding into the dock, scattering the smaller craft all around it. The sun was beating down and the sky was a dazzling blue. It was hard to believe that he was really here.

And he wasn't alone. Jack had joined him the day before, bleary-eyed with jet lag but awake and bursting with excitement the moment she saw him. It had taken her twenty-six hours to get here, and Alex knew she would have been worrying all the way. Jack was meant to look after him. She hated it when he was away—and this time he had never been farther. From the very start she had made it clear that all she wanted was to get him onto a plane and take him back to London. Yes, it was cold and drizzling there. The English winter had already arrived. Yes, they both deserved a vacation. But it was time to go home.

Jack was also eating ice cream, and although she was twenty-eight, she suddenly looked younger with her untidy red hair, her lopsided smile, and her brightly colored kangaroo T-shirt. More a big sister than a housekeeper. And above all a friend.

“I don't know why it's taking so long,” she was saying. “It's ridiculous. By the time you get back, you'll have missed half the semester.”

“They said they'd have it this afternoon.”

“They should have had it two days ago.”

They were talking about Alex's visa. That morning, Jack had taken a call at the hotel where they were both staying. They had been given an address, a government office in Macquarie Street, just past the old parliament building. The visa would be ready at four o'clock. Alex could pick it up then.

“Could we stay here a couple more days?” Alex asked.

Jack looked at him curiously. “Don't you want to go home?” she asked.

“Yes.” Alex paused. “I suppose so. But at the same time…I'm not quite sure I'm ready to go back to school. I've been thinking about it. I'm sort of worried I'm not going to be able to fit in.”

“Of course you'll fit in, Alex. You've got lots of friends. They've all been missing you. Once you're back, you'll forget any of this stuff ever happened.”

But Alex wasn't so sure. He and Jack had talked about it the evening before. After all he had been through, how could he go back to geography lessons and school lunches and being told off for running too fast down the corridor? The day MI6 had recruited him, they had built a wall between him and his past life, and he wondered if there was now any way back.

“I've hardly been to school this year,” he muttered. “I'm way behind.”

“Maybe we can get Mr. Grey to come over this Christmas break,” Jack suggested. Mr. Grey was the teacher who had given Alex extra tutoring during the summer. “You got along well with him, and he'd soon help you catch up.”

“I don't know, Jack…” Alex looked at the ice cream, melting on his spoon. He wished he could explain how he felt. He didn't want to work for MI6 again. He was sure of that. But at the same time…

“It's three thirty,” Jack said. “We ought to be on our way.”

They got up and made their way along the side of the opera house and up into the botanical gardens—the incredible park that seemed to contain the city rather than the other way around. Looking back at the harbor, the bustle of life below, and the gleaming skyscrapers stretched out behind, Alex wondered how the Australians had managed to get it all so right. It was impossible not to love Sydney, and despite what Jack had said, he knew he wasn't ready to leave.

Together, the two of them made their way up past the gallery of New South Wales and into Macquarie Street, where the parliament building stood, two stories high, an elegant construction of pink and white that somehow reminded Alex of the ice cream he had just eaten. The address they had been given was just beyond, a modern glass block that was presumably filled with minor government offices. The receptionist already had visitor passes waiting for them and directed them to the fourth floor and a room at the end of a corridor.

“I don't know why they couldn't have just put you on a plane and sent you out of here,” Jack grumbled as they left the elevator. “It seems a lot of fuss about nothing.”

There was a door ahead of them. They walked through without knocking and stopped dead in their tracks. There had obviously been some sort of mistake. Wherever they were, this certainly wasn't a visa office.

Two men were talking to each other in what looked like a library, with antique furniture and a Persian rug on a highly polished wooden floor—Alex's immediate impression was that the room didn't belong to the building it was in. A golden Labrador lay curled up on a cushion in front of a fireplace. One of the men was behind a desk. He was the older of the two, wearing a shirt and jacket and no tie. His eyes were concealed behind designer sunglasses. The other man was standing by the window with his arms folded. He was in his late twenties, thin and fair-haired, dressed in an expensive suit.

“Oh…I'm sorry,” Jack began.

“Not at all, Miss Starbright,” the man behind the desk replied. “Please come in.”

“We're looking for the visa office,” Jack said.

“Sit down. I take it Alex is with you? The question may seem odd, but I'm blind.”

“I'm here,” Alex said.

“Who are you?” Jack asked. She and Alex had moved farther into the room. The younger man came over and closed the door behind them.

“My name is Ethan Brooke. My colleague here is Marc Damon. Thank you very much for coming in, Miss Starbright. Do you mind if I call you Jack? Please—take a seat.”

There were two leather chairs in front of the desk. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, Jack sat down. The man called Damon walked across and took a third seat at the side. Next to the fireplace, the dog's tail thumped twice against the wooden floor.

“I know you're in a hurry to get back to London,” Brooke began. “But let me explain why the two of you are here. The fact of the matter is, we need a little help.”

“You want our help?” Jack looked around her. Suddenly it all made sense. “You want Alex.” She spoke the words heavily. She knew now who the men were, or at least what they represented. She had met their type before.

“We'd like to make Alex a proposition,” Brooke agreed.

“Forget it. He's not interested.”

“Won't you at least listen to what we have to say?” Brooke spread his hands. He looked completely reasonable. He could have been a bank manager advising them on their mortgage or a family lawyer about to read a will.

“We want the visa.”

“You'll have it. As soon as I'm done.”

Alex had said nothing. Jack looked at him, then turned to Brooke and Damon with anger in her eyes. “Why can't you people leave him alone?” she demanded.

“Because he's special. In fact, I'd say he's unique. And right now we need him, just for a week or two. But I promise you, Jack. If he's not interested, he can walk out of here. We can have him on a plane tonight. Just give me a minute to explain.”

“Who are you?” Alex asked.

Brooke glanced at Damon. “We work for ASIS,” the younger man replied. “The Australian Secret Intelligence Service.”

“Special Operations?”

“Covert Action. The two are more or less the same. You could say that we're the rough equivalent of the outfit that Alan Blunt runs in London.”

“I've read your file, Alex,” Brooke added. “I have to say, I'm impressed.”

“What do you want me for?” Alex demanded.

“I'll tell you.”

Brooke folded his hands, and to Alex it seemed somehow inevitable, unsurprising, even. It had happened to him six times before. Why not again?

“Have you ever heard the term
snakehead
?” Brooke began. There was silence, so he went on. “All right, let me start by saying that the snakehead groups are without doubt the biggest and most dangerous criminal organizations in the world. Compared to them, the mafia and the triads are amateurs. They have more influence—and they're doing more damage—even than Al Qaeda, but they're not interested in religion. They have no beliefs. All they want is money. That's the bottom line. They're gangsters, but on a huge scale.

“Have you ever bought an illegal DVD? The chances are that it was manufactured and distributed by a snakehead. And the profits they'll have made out of it will have gone straight into one of their other concerns, which you may not find so amusing. Maybe it's drugs or slaves or body parts. You need a new kidney or a heart? The snakeheads operate the biggest market in illegal organs, and they're not fussy about where they get them or even if the donors are deceased. And then there are weapons. In this century alone, there have been at least fifty wars around the world that have used weapons supplied by the snakeheads…shoulder-launched missiles, AK-47s, that sort of thing. Where do you think the terrorists go if they want a bomb or a gun or something nasty and biological that comes in a test tube? Think of it as an international supermarket, Alex. But everything it sells is bad.

“What else can you buy? You name it! Paintings stolen from museums. Diamonds mined illegally using slave labor. Ancient artifacts plundered from Iraq. Elephant's tusks or tiger skin rugs. A few years ago a hundred kids died on the island of Haiti because someone had sold them cough medicine that happened to contain antifreeze. That was a snakehead—and I don't think they offered anyone their money back.

“But the biggest moneymaker for the snakeheads is people smuggling. You probably have no idea how many people there are being smuggled from one country to another all around the world. These are some of the poorest families in the world, desperate to build themselves a new life in the West. Some of them are fleeing hopelessness and starvation. Others are threatened in their own countries with prison and torture.” Brooke paused and looked directly at Alex, fixing him with his sightless eyes. “Half of them are under the age of eighteen,” he said. “About five percent of them are younger than you—and they're traveling on their own. The lucky ones get picked up by the authorities. What happens to the rest of them…you don't want to know.

“Illegal immigration is a huge problem for Australia, and the people smugglers just make it worse. The immigrants want to break in, and the smugglers sell them tickets. Many of them start in Iraq and Afghanistan. They come in boats from Bali, Flores, Lombok, and Jakarta. What's sad is that my country used to welcome immigrants. We were all of us once immigrants ourselves. All of that's changed now—and I have to say, the way we treat these people leaves a lot to be desired. But what can we do? The answer is, we have to stop them from coming. And one of the main ways to do that is to take on the snakeheads face-to-face.

“There's one snakehead in particular. It operates throughout Indonesia, and it's more powerful and more dangerous than any of them. As it happens, we know the name of the man in charge. A certain Major Yu. But that's all we've managed to find out. We don't know what he looks like or where he lives. Twice now, we've tried to infiltrate the organization. We put agents inside, pretending to be customers.”

“What happened to them?” Jack asked.

“They both died.” It was Damon who had answered the question.

“And so now I suppose you're thinking about sending Alex.”

“We have no idea how our agents were uncovered,” Brooke went on. It was as if Jack hadn't spoken. “Somehow this man—Yu—seems to know everything we're doing. Either that, or he's very careful. The trouble is, these gangs operate under a system known as
guanxi.
Basically, it means that everyone knows everyone. They're like a family. And the fact is, a single agent, coming in from outside and operating on his own, is too obvious. We need to get inside the snakehead in a way that is completely original and also above suspicion.”

“A man and a boy,” Damon said.

“We have an agent in Bangkok now. We've set him up as a refugee from Afghanistan planning to be smuggled into Australia. He'll meet with the snakehead and gather names, faces, phone numbers, addresses…anything he can. But he won't be on his own. He'll be traveling with his son.”

“We'll fly you to Bangkok,” Damon continued, speaking directly to Alex. “You'll join our agent there, and the two of you will be passed down the pipeline back here. And here's the deal. As soon as you're back on Australian soil, we'll send you first class direct to England. You won't have to do anything, Alex. But you'll provide perfect cover for our man. He'll get the information we need, and maybe we'll be able to break up Yu's network once and for all.”

“Why Bangkok?” There were a hundred questions Alex could have asked. This was the first one that came to his mind.

“Bangkok is a major center for the sale of false documents,” Damon replied. “In fact, we'd very much like to know who supplies Yu's people with fake passports, export certificates, and the rest of it. And now we have a chance. Our agent was told to wait there until he was contacted. He'll be given the papers he needs, and then he'll continue the journey south.”

There was a brief silence.

Then Jack Starbright shook her head. “All right,” she said. “We've listened to your proposition, Mr. Brooke. Now you can listen to my answer. It's NO! Forget it! You said it yourself. These people are dangerous. Two of your spies have already been killed. There's no way I'm going to allow Alex into that.”

Alex glanced briefly at Jack. She hadn't given him a chance to speak, and he understood why. She had been afraid of what he might say.