Revenge (16 page)

‘Cal! Winter!' someone called out from the shadows of the trees. A familiar lanky figure loped towards us. I'd recognise that green suit anywhere.

‘Repro!' Winter called, jumping on him in a hug.

‘Let me get my breath. It's a good thing you're all alive!' he puffed. ‘I remembered this was your big fancy night, Cal, and when I heard the explosion I knew it had to have something to do with you lot! So I came running! What happened? Are you all OK? All in one piece?' Repro looked us up and down, pulling and prodding here and there.

Cal covered his ears. ‘The ringing!' he said. ‘It won't stop!'

Ryan leaned towards Cal. ‘It's not your ears. It's your phone,' he said.

Cal pulled his phone out of his jacket. A crack splintered across the glass screen.

‘Who is it?' said Winter. She pulled the phone down so she could see the caller ID.

‘No number,' said Cal, squinting at his phone and rubbing the screen with his shirt.

‘Put it on loudspeaker,' said Winter. ‘Quick!

Cal answered the phone and switched on the loudspeaker. He held it out for all of us to hear.

‘I really didn't want to do that,' the voice said, ‘but you gave me no choice.'

‘Who are you?' Cal demanded.

I stared at my friends, searching for
recognition
in their eyes. The caller sounded familiar somehow, but I couldn't work it out.

‘My name is Elijah Smith, and before you put him in a coma in Coffin Bay, Vulkan Sligo taught me a thing or two about revenge.'

Repro's possum eyes were bewildered, shining huge in the moonlight. He looked at us as if to say,
What's happening now
?

‘Revenge?' I whispered to Winter, beside me. ‘Who is this guy? He sounds like he's just a kid!'

‘Either way,' whispered Winter, looking back at the smoking wreck of City Hall, ‘he's deadly serious.'

Cal's hand shook as he held the phone. ‘I've never heard of you, Elijah,' he said. ‘I don't know what you want with me.'

‘We know there's another bomb,' I interrupted. ‘We saw inside the second sculpture. The second “twin”. It was hollow too, but it was empty. The Semtex bomb had been removed.' Everyone looked at me, questioningly. ‘What have you done with it? Where have you taken the bomb?'

‘Sligo warned me about you, Boges,' Elijah said simply. ‘You know your explosives, and you know how to craft a pretty handy aerial drone. I like your style. But I am also good with
explosives
, electronics …
and
toxins.'

Cal was shaking his head. ‘Who are you?' he shouted. Cal's face was white despite the huge fire behind us.

‘I told you, I'm Elijah Smith.'

‘Your name means nothing to me. Why are you hounding me? You don't need to take down City Hall to catch me!'

The phone line crackled, distorting Elijah's words. But one word came out clearly:
family
.

‘Family? What are you talking about?' Cal asked. ‘You want a stake in the Ormond fortune? Get in line!'

The kid scoffed. ‘I don't care for money,' he said. ‘I want
revenge
. It's
you
I want to destroy, Cal. You took all I had left, and now it's time for me to take something back.'

‘I don't get it! Take back what? If you want me, I'm right here,' cried Cal. ‘Outside City Hall. Where have you taken the other bomb?'

‘Sligo was the one who wanted the world to
witness
your slow, pathetic death on the big screen. He was the one who wanted to—' the monotone voice paused, dramatically, ‘shake the columns of the palace.'

‘The palace?' Winter repeated. ‘City Hall?'

‘I'm after something else,' continued Elijah. ‘I know how to really make you suffer … I gave you thirty days to sweat on it.'

‘What?' said Cal, trying desperately to control his voice. ‘Thirty days?
You
sent me the note? What are you going to do?'

‘You'll soon find out,' said Elijah. ‘My only word of advice, Cal Ormond, before I go and
finish
this …'

Cal clenched the phone hard. ‘Is what?'

A rumbling noise started on the line as Elijah spoke again, ‘… is that at midnight tonight you had better watch out for one big
supernova
.'

The phone line went dead.

‘Supernova?' I repeated. ‘An exploding star? That doesn't make any sense!'

Cal's eyes widened. I heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Exploding star?' he repeated.

‘Do you know what he means?' I asked him.

Cal's face creased in agony. ‘
No
,' he cried. ‘It can't be! He couldn't! But why?'

‘What, Cal? If you know something, tell us! We don't have much time before midnight when that second bomb will go off—wherever it is!'

‘He doesn't care about taking down City Hall!' Cal said.

‘Dude, if you know where he is, we have to go there now!'

‘He's talking about the
Star
!' cried Cal. ‘The cruise ship—the
Sapphire Star
. The second bomb is on the cruise ship! He wants to kill Mum and Gab!'

‘But it's kilometres out to sea already!' I said. I checked my watch and tried to run the
calculations
in my head, estimating the rough position of the ship. ‘No speedboat is going to get us there fast enough! The twin bomb is set to go off at midnight. We only have just over three hours to get out to sea, find the
Sapphire Star
, track down the bomb and disarm it!'

‘But the
Sapphire Star
is enormous!' said Repro, spreading his arms high and wide.

‘But who is this guy and why is he doing this to us?' Cal cried.

Winter was on her feet and running. ‘That doesn't matter right now. Come on!' she shouted to us. ‘I know something that will get us there in time. But we gotta run, come on!'

Repro's fingers moved almost in a blur as he worked on the locks that were keeping the iron gates clamped shut. Old corrugated iron
fencing
surrounded the vast perimeter. What was Winter leading us to? I checked my watch. Two hours, forty-nine minutes to go.

As Repro hunched over, muttering incoherently, he clutched some sort of thin silver instrument
that he worked back and forth at precise angles until we heard the click of the lock releasing. Ryan, Cal and I helped Repro pull the creaking gates open. Winter forced her way through the gap as soon as the opening was wide enough to take her.

‘I hope you know what you're doing, Winter,' said Cal.

‘Trust me,' she called back without turning. ‘Hurry up, we need to get over there,' she said. She pointed to a dark silhouette in the distance—a huge, wooden shed, bolted shut with more thick chains. Repro cracked his fingers wickedly as he loped along beside me. But as we approached the doors, Winter ran left and around the back of the building.

‘Follow me,' she called out.

As she turned the corner, I heard her exclaim, ‘Where's the other one gone?'

When I caught up and reached the clearing beyond the shed I stopped and stared. I could hardly believe what I was seeing, sitting on a green and brown sea of wild grasses.

A helicopter.

A black helicopter, quite a few years old, I guessed. Down its side, shining in the moonlight, read the words
Little Bird 2
. We must have been on one of the Frey properties that had been returned to Winter.

To the right of the helicopter, the grass was flat in two thick lines, like another one had been sitting there until not long ago.

I scanned my eyes over the blades, the fuselage, the skids. It reminded me of a rescue helicopter simulator I'd been practising in after Cal and I had taken up an offer of free helicopter lessons a couple of months ago.

‘Look, I know I've flown a plane before,' said Cal, ‘and I've had a bit of helicopter training, with Boges, but maybe you're forgetting the fact that I crashed the Ormond Orca!'

Winter looked at me, eyebrows raised and hopeful. ‘But you've both had training!'

‘Yeah, but we've never flown a
real
helicopter
ourselves!' I interrupted. ‘We've always had a pilot beside us. I've flown remote-controlled choppers and I've played around in a simulator, but this? This is way more complicated!'

‘Repro?' she asked, impatiently moving her desperate gaze around the circle.

‘Safe-cracker, martial artist, avid reader and collector, yes. Helicopter pilot? Certainly not!'

‘Don't look at me,' said Ryan, before Winter could ask him.

I looked at my watch again. We'd lost another five minutes. We had no more time to waste. My friends were a mess. Cal's eyes were glassy, his
shirt was dripping in sweat. He was panting as he looked at me, desperately, for a solution.

Mrs O and Gab were in serious danger. They were under threat from someone Sligo had called more wicked than himself.

My mind frantically scanned my memory for all that simulator practice and the six flight lessons Cal and I had taken at the airfield.

I took a big gulp. ‘Come on, Cal,' I said, charging towards the aircraft with a massive lump in my throat. ‘How hard can it be?'

The rotors roared, whipping and flattening the grass around us like we were in the centre of an enormous crop circle. There was no time for
pre-flight
checks as Cal and I stared at the controls, hands trembling as we tentatively prepared to take off. Neither of us wanted to be the first to try anything, but Cal finally plucked up the courage and got us moving. As we started
lifting
off the ground, my stomach lurched and a sheet of corrugated iron ripped off the nearby shed and flew into the air, as if snatched by a violent cyclone.

I glanced at my friends. They all looked as terrified as I felt. I took control of the cyclic stick as Cal watched my every move from his
seat on my right, helping as much as he could with the instruments. Winter and Repro looked at each other anxiously. Winter leaned forward and clasped Cal's shoulder. ‘We'll make it,' she told him. ‘I promise.'

Was that a promise
I
could keep? I gulped again, reaching for the collective lever and
scanning
the controls for what move I should make next. I was taunted by the thought of a
petrifying
plunge into the dark ocean, our screams echoing into the dark and empty night.

‘Here we go!'

Like a drunken dragonfly, shaky and unsure, we took off into the sky and headed for the coast.