Endgame (Agent 21) (3 page)

But Zak’s training had taught him never to release more information than was strictly necessary. ‘I’m glad he’s not going anywhere,’ was all he said.

Ern led Zak into the building, through another door that required his palm print to open. Zak noted that he used his left palm this time. Clearly the system was programmed to recognize both of Ern’s hands. The inside of the building was as warehouse-like as the outside – just a huge open space. In the middle, however, was a small metal structure, about the size of a Transit van, with yet another palm-print door. Ern opened it up. It contained nothing but a flight of steps leading into the ground.

Zak followed his guide down the steps. They entered a sterile, brightly lit, hexagonal room. On each of the six sides was a door, and at each door were two armed men – these guys didn’t bother to conceal their MP5s. They all looked suspiciously at Zak, who had the impression that visitors were rare. ‘These doors guard the six most dangerous men in the country,’ Ern said. ‘One way into their cells, one way out. Two armed men per prisoner, guarding every entrance and exit. Everything that goes in and out of these corridors is
rigorously
searched. It’s impossible to deliver an illicit item to any of the six.’

As Ern spoke, Zak happened to be watching one of the guards. He had a brown beard and bushy eyebrows. He glanced down at the floor and then looked quickly up again.

Zak had been trained to recognize the facial expressions of a dishonest man. Had he just seen one? His muscles tensed up as Ern led him to one of the doors – it had a burnished steel number one just above it – and raised his hand to open it. But before he pressed his palm to the pad, he spoke.

‘I don’t know who you are, son. I don’t know why a guy like the Cyclops should ask to see a kid like you, or why the authorities would allow it. But you’ve got five minutes with him, and not a second longer. I don’t trust this guy. Nobody trusts him. I’ll be with you at all times. Don’t get too close to the glass, and for God’s sake don’t accept anything from him. Understood?’

Zak nodded. ‘Understood,’ he said.

Ern put his palm to the pad. The door slid open. Together they walked over the threshold. The door slid closed behind them.

They were in a bunker-like corridor, about twenty metres long and three metres wide. The walls were solid concrete, and there was strip lighting along the ceiling. On the left-hand side, halfway along the corridor, was a floor-to-ceiling clear panel. As Zak stepped forward he saw that this panel was the front wall of a large cell. Here and there were little ventilation holes in the glass, and in the middle, at about head height, was a grille for speaking through.

The cell behind the glass was sparse. A single bed. A desk, piled high with books. A toilet with no seat in the corner. A TV fixed to the wall. And a chair, which was positioned a couple of metres back from the speaker grille.

And on the chair sat Calaca. The Cyclops.

They called him the Cyclops because he only had one eye. The other eye socket was covered with pale skin.

He looked half the man he had been when Zak had last seen him. He had a blanket wrapped around his body and over his head, like a little old man trying to keep warm. His skin, once tanned, was pasty. His good eye was bloodshot and his lips were pale. The name ‘Calaca’ meant ‘skeleton’ in Spanish. Today, he more than lived up to it.

He watched Zak walk towards him with his single eye, and made no attempt to hide the dislike on his face. Zak did his best to look cool, but the truth was that the sight of Calaca made him feel slightly sick, and slightly weak. He knew that the one-eyed man would happily kill him if he got his hands on him. Although the glass looked tough, Zak couldn’t help wondering if it was tough enough.

Ern had remained by the door, leaving Zak to approach the grille by himself. His footsteps echoed against the concrete as he walked, then fell silent.

‘You wanted to see me?’

Calaca remained seated, and said nothing.

‘Here’s the deal,’ Zak said. ‘I don’t know why I’m here, and frankly I don’t care. I’ve got five minutes, and if I think you’re wasting my time, I’ll just walk away now. It’ll be the last you ever see of me.’

A pause. Zak noticed that Calaca seemed to be clenching something in his right fist. He remembered what Ern had said about it being impossible to smuggle anything illicit into one of these cells. His eyes flickered to the left, where the prison warder was standing by the palm-print door.

But then his focus shifted. Calaca was standing up.

Zak felt his pulse thumping.

The one-eyed man moved to the grille. He put his lips very close to it and whispered something. His voice was quiet. Zak couldn’t make it out.

He drew closer to the glass. Calaca spoke again. Zak still couldn’t hear.

He looked at Calaca, whose lip curled into a nasty grin. He held up the forefinger of his left hand and used it to beckon Zak even closer to the glass.

Zak swallowed hard. He was doing his best to hide how on edge he was. But he moved closer, so that his ear was just an inch from the glass.

Calaca spoke for a third time. His voice was louder now, and Zak fully understood every word he said.

‘
If you want to live, hit the floor!
’

Zak’s instincts kicked in. He fell immediately to the floor, winding himself as his body slammed against the concrete. He was aware of Calaca doing the same.

And it wasn’t a second too soon.

The explosion was deafening: a sudden, ear-splitting, destructive blast that came, Zak sensed, from inside the cell. The moments that followed passed in sickening slow motion. There was an enormous shattering of glass, and the ominous sound of cracking concrete. The shock waves from the blast battered Zak’s whole body, as though he was being pummelled by someone’s fist. Hot, acrid smoke filled his lungs as splintered glass rained down over his body.

Then he passed out.

The next sixty seconds were like a dream. Zak teetered on the edge of consciousness. The noise of falling debris sounded deep and low, like a slowed-down recording. He forced his eyes open. All the lights in this underground bunker had shattered. Grit scraped his eyeballs. He closed his eyes again to clear them. When he opened them for a second time, he was aware of someone leaning over him. It was too dark to see clearly, but he knew it had to be Calaca.

Zak felt a burning mass of fear in his chest. How would Calaca kill him? Did he have a gun or a knife? Or would he grab a shard of the broken glass and slit his throat?

Zak knew he should fight. Jolt his body into action. But he found he couldn’t move.

Calaca leaned in closer. His face was only inches from Zak’s. He spoke, but Zak couldn’t understand him; his words sounded slow and distorted. He felt sick. The room started to spin. Calaca grabbed his right hand and put something into it. Then Zak passed out again.

He didn’t know how long he was out. Perhaps another minute. In the depths of his mind he felt as though he was screaming. Agonized, panicked screams. His eyes suddenly pinged open and he realized that the screams were real. They were coming from back along the corridor.

It took a titanic effort for Zak to get to his feet. His knees buckled as he straightened up, and he nearly collapsed again. Almost unconsciously, he stuffed into his pocket the object Calaca had put in his hand. He saw that there was more light in the corridor again now. It came from the direction of the central hexagonal room – and it was from this direction that the screaming was coming. A bloodcurdling sound. Zak turned to look towards it. Smoke and dust obscured his view. He could see that the sliding metal door was half open. It cast a long shadow along the corridor.

Zak groped his way through the dust. The floor was littered with shadowy debris. He picked his way carefully along it, towards the screaming sound. After he had moved five metres, he saw where it was coming from. There was a figure lying across the threshold of the corridor, stopping the sliding metal door from closing. Now that Zak was closer to the light, he could see that it was Ern.

And as he moved another five metres, he could see why Ern was screaming.

The prison warder was clutching his right arm. But the arm was not complete. His right hand had been severed. A catastrophic amount of blood was seeping from the wound and soaking into the sleeve of his uniform.

Zak’s eyes flickered to the palm-print panel by the side of the door. It was smeared with blood. In an instant, he knew what had happened.

Calaca had needed a palm print to escape. So he had helped himself to a palm.

Zak shot forward. All his sluggishness had fallen away. As he moved, he pulled his belt from around his trousers. He knelt down over Ern, whose screaming had now changed to a desperate panting. ‘Can you hear me?’ he asked the prison warder urgently.

‘Y-y-yes . . .’

‘You need to raise your bad arm. I’m going to try to stop the bleeding.’

‘You . . . you helped him escape . . .’ Despite the pain he was obviously in, Ern still managed to sound furious.

Zak didn’t have time to argue with the guy. He needed to stem the bleeding, otherwise Ern had served his last shift. He wrapped his belt just above Ern’s elbow, then pulled it tight. Ern gasped, but was clearly too weak to struggle. As Zak went about his work, he noticed that Ern’s MP5 was missing. Not a good sign. He tightened the belt as hard as he could. With all his strength, he punctured an extra hole through the leather using the buckle. It was a very rudimentary tourniquet, but it was the best he could do until proper medical attention arrived.

Only then did he stand up again and take in the devastation of the hexagonal room.

The remaining doors were all shut, but that didn’t mean anything. Calaca could have freed the other prisoners. In fact, Zak bet that was what had happened – it would cause more chaos, and chaos would make it easier to escape. There were bodies strewn everywhere. Surely Calaca couldn’t have overpowered them all. He couldn’t tell if the guards were dead or alive. But there was no blood, so he figured he couldn’t do anything for them either way. They’d either wake up, or they wouldn’t. His eyes tried to pick out the guard with the brown beard and bushy eyebrows, and he wasn’t surprised to find him missing.

Several of the guards had obviously tried to grab their weapons before they were put down. Their jackets were open and their hands were resting on their MP5s. Zak strode over to the nearest guard and grabbed his firearm.

He heard Ern calling out weakly: ‘That’s not a toy, son!’

Zak turned. With a single, skilled movement he released then re-engaged the weapon’s magazine. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s not.’

His mind turned back to Calaca. He
had
to stop him escaping.

The door that led to the staircase was shut. Zak needed a palm print to get out of there. Ern, despite his terrible state, was the only conscious guard. Zak turned to him. ‘Do you think you can walk?’ he asked.

Ern was white and trembling. Zak wasn’t even sure he’d heard him. There was no time to waste. He bent down and grabbed the huge prison warder under both arms, then hauled him with great difficulty to his feet. He slung Ern’s good arm around his neck and dragged him, shivering and shaking, towards the door. When they were in sight of the palm-print panel, Zak manoeuvred Ern’s good hand against it. The door slid open.

‘You didn’t help him?’ Ern asked.

‘No way,’ Zak said. His voice was fervent, and Ern nodded in acceptance.

‘I think I can walk,’ the jailer said.

Zak let go of his patient. It was a relief to lose the weight. Ern was unsteady on his feet, but managed to climb the stairs after him. Zak flicked off the safety switch of his stolen weapon, then burst out into the warehouse with sweat pouring down his grimy forehead.

The warehouse was empty. No sign of Calaca. But Zak’s sharp eyes quickly picked out a few spots of blood leading to the exit. Perhaps Calaca had been injured in the blast. If so, it would slow him down. He looked over his shoulder. Ern was still coming behind him, but he looked like a ghoul. His eyes were rolling.

‘We have to run!’ Zak barked.

But it was clear that Ern wasn’t running anywhere. His knees crumpled beneath him, and he fell heavily to the floor, unconscious.

At the same time, Zak heard sirens in the distance. He swore under his breath. The emergency services were arriving. The last thing Zak wanted was to become involved with them. They would ask him questions he couldn’t answer. And they would slow him down in his hunt for Calaca . . .

He felt in his pocket for his phone, then cursed again when he remembered he had left it at reception. Instead, he ran over to where Ern was lying and felt inside his jacket. The prison warder had his own iPhone tucked in a pocket. Zak swiped it open. When it requested a fingerprint to access, he touched the thumb of Ern’s good hand to the start button. Seconds later he was dialling a number.

In the time since Zak had become Agent 21, it had been necessary for him to learn many things by heart. One of these was an emergency number that would put him in direct contact with his handler, Michael. It was understood that he should only ever dial this number in emergency situations. Zak reckoned this qualified. The phone only rang once before it was answered.

Zak didn’t wait for a voice. ‘Calaca’s escaped,’ he stated briskly. ‘The police are on their way. I’m stuck inside Incarceration Unit Three B. You need to upload my palm print to the unit’s security system.’

There was barely a pause. ‘Done,’ said a voice at the end. ‘Proceed to Meeting Point Three.’

‘I need to find Calaca!’

‘Negative. Proceed to Meeting Point Three. Do
not
allow the emergency services to question you. Repeat, do
not
—’

‘You need to get medics on site immediately,’ Zak interrupted. There was no time for repetition. ‘Multiple severe casualties.’

There was no more to say. Zak hung up, then threw the phone back down where Ern was lying. He felt himself burning with anger that the Agency didn’t want him to go after Calaca. But he had learned that it was best to follow instructions, because sometimes you don’t know the whole story. He had a feeling that this was one of those times . . .