Stormbreaker Read online

  He had to find somewhere to hide. But he was in the middle of a field and there was nowhere – apart from the grass itself. Desperately, he fought through it, the blades scratching at his face, half-blinding him as he tried to find his way back to the main path. He needed other people. Whoever had sent these machines (and now he remembered Mr Grin talking on his mobile phone), they couldn’t kill him if there were witnesses around.

  But there was no one, and they were coming for him again … together this time. Alex could hear the engines, whining in unison, coming up fast behind him. Still running, he glanced over his shoulder and saw them, one on each side, seemingly about to overtake him. It was only the glint of the sun and the sight of the grass slicing itself in half that revealed the horrible truth. The two cyclists had stretched a length of cheese-wire between them.

  Alex threw himself head-first, landing flat on his stomach. The cheese-wire whipped over him. If he had still been standing up, it would have cut him in half.

  The quad bikes separated, arcing away from each other. At least that meant they must have dropped the wire. Alex had twisted his knee in the last fall and he knew it was only a matter of time before they cornered him and finished him off. Half-limping, he ran forward, searching for somewhere to hide or something to defend himself with. Apart from some money, he had nothing in his pockets, not even a penknife. The engines were distant now, but he knew they would be closing in again at any moment. And what would it be next time? More cheese-wire? Or something worse?

  It was worse. Much worse. There was the roar of an engine and then a billowing cloud of red fire exploded over the grass, blazing it to a crisp. Alex felt it singe his shoulders, yelled and threw himself to one side. One of the riders was carrying a flame-thrower! He had just aimed a bolt of fire eight metres long, meaning to burn Alex alive. And he had almost succeeded. Alex was saved only by the narrow ditch he’d landed in. He hadn’t even seen it until he had thudded to the ground, into the damp soil, the jet of flame licking at the air just above him. It had been close. There was a horrible smell: his own hair. The fire had singed the ends.

  Choking, his face streaked with dirt and sweat, he clambered out of the ditch and ran blindly forward. He had no idea where he was going any more. He only knew that in a few seconds the quad would be back. He had taken about ten paces before he realized he had reached the edge of the field. There was a warning sign and an electrified fence stretching as far as he could see. But for the buzzing sound the fence was making, he would have run right into it. The fence was almost invisible, and the quad bikers, moving fast towards him, would be unable to hear the warning sound over their own engines…

  He stopped and turned round. About fifty metres away from him, the grass was being flattened by the still invisible quad as it made its next charge. But this time Alex waited. He stood there, balancing on the heels of his feet, like a matador. Twenty metres, ten… Now he was staring straight into the goggles of the rider, saw the man’s uneven teeth as he smiled, still gripping the flame-thrower. The quad smashed down the last barrier of grass and leapt on to him … except that Alex was no longer there. He had dived to one side and, too late, the driver saw the fence and rocketed on, straight into it. The man screamed as the wire caught him around the neck, almost garrotting him. The bike twisted in mid-air, then crashed down. The man fell into the grass and lay still.

  He had torn the fence out of the ground. Alex ran over to the man and examined him. For a moment he thought it might be Yassen, but it was a younger man, dark-haired, ugly. Alex had never seen him before. The man was unconscious but still breathing. The flame-thrower lay, extinguished, on the ground beside him. Behind him, he heard the other bike, some distance away but closing. Whoever these people were, they had tried to run him down, cut him in half and incinerate him. He had to find a way out before they got really serious.

  He ran over to the abandoned quad, which had come to rest lying on its side. He heaved it up again, jumped on to the seat and pressed the starter. The engine sprang into life. At least there were no gears to worry about. Alex twisted the accelerator and gripped the handlebars as the machine jolted him forward.

  And now he was slicing through the grass, which became a green blur as the quad carried him back towards the footpath. He couldn’t hear the other bike but hoped that the rider would have no idea what had happened and so wouldn’t be following him. His bones rattled as the quad hit a rut and bounced upwards. He had to be careful. Lose his concentration for a second and he would be on his back.

  He cut through another green curtain and savagely pulled on the handlebars to bring himself round. He had found the footpath – and also the edge of the cliff. Just three metres more and he would have launched himself into space and down to the rocks below. For a few seconds he sat where he was, the engine idling. That was when the other quad appeared. Somehow the second rider must have guessed what had happened. He had reached the footpath and was facing Alex, about two hundred metres away. Something glinted in his hand, resting on the handlebar. He was carrying a gun.

  Alex looked back the way he had walked. It was no good. The path was too narrow. By the time he had turned the quad round, the armed man would have reached him. One shot and it would all be over. Could he go back into the grass? No, for the same reason. He had to move forward, even if that meant heading for a straight-on collision with the other quad.

  Why not? Maybe there was no other way.

  The man gunned his engine and spurted forward. Alex did the same. Now the two of them were racing towards each other down a narrow path, a bank of earth and rock suddenly rising up to form a barrier on one side and the edge of the cliff on the other. There wasn’t enough room for them to pass. They could stop or they could crash … but if they were going to stop they had to do it in the next ten seconds.

  The quads were getting closer and closer, moving faster all the time. The man couldn’t shoot him now, not without losing control. Far below, the waves glittered silver, breaking against the rocks. The edge of the cliff flashed by. The noise of the other quad filled Alex’s ears. The wind rushed into him, hammering at his chest and face. It was like the old-fashioned game of chicken. One of them had to stop. One of them had to get out of the way.

  Three, two, one…

  It was the enemy who finally broke. He was less than five metres away, so close that Alex could make out the perspiration on his forehead. Just when it seemed that a crash was inevitable, he twisted his quad and swerved off the path, up on to the embankment. At the same time, he tried to fire his gun. But he was too late. His quad was slanting, tipping over on to just two of its wheels, and the shot went wild. The man yelled out. Firing the gun had caused him to lose what little control he had left. He fought with the quad, trying to bring it back on to four wheels. It hit a rock and bounced upwards, landed briefly on the footpath, then continued over the edge of the cliff.

  Alex had felt the machine rush past him, but he had seen little more than a blur. He had shuddered to a halt and turned round just in time to watch the other quad fly into the air. The man, still screaming, had managed to separate himself from the bike on the way down, but the two of them hit the water at the same moment. The quad sank a few seconds before the man.

  Who had sent him? It was Nadia Vole who had suggested the walk, but it was Mr Grin who had actually seen him leave. Mr Grin had given the order – he was sure of it.

  Alex took the quad all the way to the end of the path. The sun was still shining as he walked down into the little fishing village, but he couldn’t enjoy it. He was angry with himself because he knew he’d made too many mistakes.

  He should have been dead now, he knew. Only luck and a low-voltage electric fence had managed to keep him alive.

  DOZMARY MINE

  Alex walked through Port Tallon, past the Fisherman’s Arms public house and up the cobbled street towards the library. It was the middle of the afternoon but the village seemed to be asleep; the boats bobbing in the harbour
, the streets and pavements empty. A few seagulls wheeled lazily over the rooftops, uttering the usual mournful cries. The air smelled of salt and dead fish.

  The library was red-bricked, Victorian, sitting self-importantly at the top of a hill. Alex pushed open the heavy swing-door and went into a room with a tiled, chessboard floor and about fifty shelves fanning out from a central reception area. Six or seven people were sitting at tables, working. A man in a thickly knitted jersey was reading Fisherman’s Week. Alex went over to the reception desk. There was the inevitable sign – SILENCE PLEASE. Beneath it a smiling, round-faced woman sat reading Crime and Punishment.

  “Can I help you?” Despite the sign, she had such a loud voice that everyone looked up when she spoke.

  “Yes…”

  Alex had come here because of a chance remark made by Herod Sayle. He had been talking about Ian Rider. Spent half his time in the village. In the port, the post office, the library. Alex had already seen the post office, another old-fashioned building near the port. He didn’t think he’d learn anything there. But the library? Maybe Rider had come here looking for information. Maybe the librarian would remember him.

  “I had a friend staying in the village,” Alex said. “I was wondering if he came here. His name’s Ian Rider.”

  “Rider with an I or a Y? I don’t think we have any Riders at all.” The woman tapped a few keys on her computer, then shook her head. “No.”

  “He was staying at Sayle Enterprises,” Alex said. “He was about forty, thin, fair hair. He drove a BMW.”

  “Oh yes.” The librarian smiled. “He did come here a couple of times. A nice man. Very polite. I knew he didn’t come from around here. He was looking for a book—”

  “Do you remember which book?”

  “Of course I do. I can’t always remember faces, but I never forget a book. He was interested in viruses.”

  “Viruses?”

  “Yes. That’s what I said. He wanted some information…”

  A computer virus! This might change everything. A computer virus was the perfect act of sabotage: invisible and instantaneous. A single blip written into the software and every single piece of information in the Stormbreaker software could be destroyed at any time. But Herod Sayle couldn’t possibly want to damage his own creation. That would make no sense at all. So maybe Alex had been wrong about him from the very start. Maybe Sayle had no idea what was really going on.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t help him,” the librarian continued. “This is only a small library and our grant’s been cut for the third year running.” She sighed. “Anyway, he said he’d get some books sent down from London. He told me he had a box at the post office…”

  That made sense too. Ian Rider wouldn’t have wanted information sent to Sayle Enterprises, where it could be intercepted.

  “Was that the last time you saw him?” Alex asked.

  “No. He came back about a week later. He must have got what he wanted because this time he wasn’t looking for books about viruses. He was interested in local affairs.”

  “What sort of local affairs?”

  “Cornish local history. Shelf CL.” She pointed. “He spent an afternoon looking in one of the books and then he left. He hasn’t been back since then, which is a shame. I was rather hoping he’d join the library. It would be nice to have a new member.”

  Local history. That wasn’t going to help him. Alex thanked the librarian and made for the door. His hand was just reaching out for the handle when he remembered.

  CL 475/19.

  He reached into his pocket and took out the square of paper he had found in his bedroom. Sure enough, the letters were the same. CL. They weren’t showing a grid reference. CL was the label on a book!

  Alex went over to the shelf the librarian had shown him. Books grow old faster when they’re not being read and the ones gathered here were long past retirement, leaning tiredly against one another for support. CL 475/19 – the number was printed on the spine – was called Dozmary: The Story of Cornwall’s Oldest Mine.

  He carried it over to a table, opened it and quickly skimmed through it, wondering why a history of Cornish tin should have been of interest to Ian Rider. The story it told was a familiar one.

  The mine had been owned by the Dozmary family for eleven generations. In the nineteenth century there had been four hundred mines in Cornwall. By the early nineteen nineties there were only three. Dozmary was still one of them. The price of tin had collapsed and the mine itself was almost exhausted, but there was no other work in the area and the family had continued running it even though the mine was quickly exhausting them. In 1991, Sir Rupert Dozmary, the last owner, had quietly slipped away and blown his brains out. He was buried in the local churchyard in a coffin made, it was said, of tin.

  His children had closed down the mine, selling the land above it to Sayle Enterprises. The mine itself was sealed off, with several of the tunnels now underwater.

  The book contained a number of old black and white photographs: pit ponies and old-fashioned lanterns. Groups of figures standing with axes and lunch boxes. Now all of them would be under the ground themselves. Flicking through the pages, Alex came to a map showing the layout of the tunnels at the time when the mine was closed.

  It was hard to be sure of the scale, but there was a labyrinth of shafts, tunnels and railway lines running for miles underground. Go down into the utter blackness of the underground and you’d be lost instantly. Had Ian Rider made his way into Dozmary? If so, what had he found?

  Alex remembered the corridor at the foot of the metal staircase. The dark brown, unfinished walls and the light bulbs hanging on their wires had reminded him of something, and suddenly he knew what it was. The corridor must be nothing more than one of the tunnels from the old mine! Suppose Ian Rider had also gone down the staircase. Like Alex, he had been confronted with the locked metal door and had been determined to find his way past it. But he had recognized the corridor for what it was – and that was why he had come back to the library. He had found a book on the Dozmary Mine – this book. The map had shown him a way to the other side of the door.

  And he had made a note of it!

  Alex took out the diagram that Ian Rider had drawn and laid it on the page, on top of the printed map. Holding the two sheets together, he held them up to the light.

  This was what he saw.

  The lines that Rider had drawn on the sheet fitted exactly over the shafts and tunnels of the mine, showing the way through. Alex was certain of it. If he could find the entrance to Dozmary, he could follow the map through to the other side of the metal door.

  Ten minutes later he left the library with a photocopy of the page. He went down to the harbour and found one of those maritime stores that seem to sell anything and everything. Here he bought himself a powerful torch, a jersey, a length of rope and a box of chalk.

  Then he climbed back into the hills.

  Back on the quad, Alex raced across the cliff tops with the sun already sinking in the west. Ahead of him he could see the single chimney and crumbling tower that he hoped would mark the entrance to the Kerneweck Shaft, which took its name from the ancient language of Cornwall. According to the map, this was where he should begin. At least the quad had made his life easier. It would have taken him an hour to reach it on foot.

  He was running out of time and he knew it. Already the Stormbreakers would have begun leaving the plant, and in less than twenty-four hours the Prime Minister would be activating them. If the software really had been bugged with some sort of virus, what would happen? Some sort of humiliation for both Sayle and the British Government? Or worse?

  And how did a computer bug tie in with what he had seen the night before? Whatever the submarine had been delivering at the jetty, it hadn’t been computer software. The silver boxes had been too large. And you don’t shoot a man for dropping a diskette.

  Alex parked the quad next to the tower and went in through an arched doorway. At first he though
t he must have made some sort of mistake. The building looked more like a ruined church than the entrance to a mine. Other people had been here before him. There were a few crumpled beer cans and old crisp packets on the floor and the usual graffiti on the walls. JRH WAS HERE. NICK LOVES CASS. Visitors leaving the worst parts of themselves behind in fluorescent paint.

  His foot came down on something that clanged and he saw that he was standing on a metal trapdoor, set into the concrete floor. Grass and weeds were sprouting round the edges, but putting his hand against the crack he could feel a draught of air rising from below. This must be the entrance to the shaft.

  The trapdoor was bolted down with a heavy padlock, several centimetres thick. Alex swore under his breath. He had left the zit cream back in his room. The cream would have eaten through the bolt in seconds, but he didn’t have the time to go all the way back to Sayle Enterprises to get it. He knelt down and shook the padlock in frustration. To his surprise, it swung open in his hand. Somebody had been here before him. Ian Rider – it had to be. He must have managed to unlock it, and hadn’t fully closed it again so that it would be ready when he came back.

  Alex pulled the padlock out and grabbed hold of the trapdoor. It took all his strength to pull it up and as he did so, a blast of cold air hit him in the face. The trapdoor clanged back and he found himself looking into a black hole that stretched further than the daylight could reach. Alex shone his torch into the hole. The beam went about fifty metres, but the shaft went further. He found a pebble and dropped it in. At least ten seconds passed before the pebble rattled against something far below.

  A rusty ladder ran down the side of the shaft. Alex checked that the quad was out of sight, then looped the rope over his shoulder and shoved the torch into his belt. He didn’t enjoy climbing into the hole. The metal rungs were ice-cold against his hands, and his shoulders had barely sunk beneath the level of the ground before the light was blotted out and he felt himself being sucked into a darkness so total that he couldn’t even be sure he had eyes. But he couldn’t climb and hold on to the torch. He just had to feel his way, a hand then a foot, descending further and ever further until at last his heel struck the ground and he knew he had reached the bottom of the Kerneweck Shaft.