Web of Fire Bind-up (13 page)

She moved the stick slightly and Sam saw that they were turning left past the end tank and moving back onto one of the main paths which led up a ramp to the factory entrance.

‘But how did you get the crew out?' Sam asked. ‘Didn't they put up a fight?'

‘Well, no – not at first anyway,' said Skipper. ‘I shouted, “Drill bomb!” and they were out of there like a couple of greyhounds.'

‘What's a drill bomb?' asked Sam.

‘Oh, it's an explosive device that we use to destroy ants,' explained Skipper. ‘They're cone-shaped with a kind of screw at the pointy end. All it takes is for a soldier to stick one into the ant's underbelly and that's it. End of story. The bomb drills up into the body cavity, blows the whole thing apart and there's not much anyone can do about it. Ant crews are terrified of them.'

She imitated the sound of a drill. ‘Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip, blam! Goodnight, Mr Ant!'

Sam frowned. ‘But you didn't have a drill bomb.'

‘Well, I know that,' said Skipper, ‘and you know that. But the important thing is, they didn't. And the hole I'd made underneath the ant showed up on the damage indicator inside the cockpit, with exactly the sort of damage you'd get if someone had just put a drill bomb there.'

‘Ingenious,' said Sam, impressed. He wondered where she had learned all this stuff.

‘Of course, once they climbed out and saw me, they smelt a rat,' Skipper continued. ‘But by then I had the element of surprise.'

She leant across the instrument panel and eased a small handle forward. Sam saw the display on the speed indicator lengthen and felt himself being pushed back in his seat as they accelerated.

‘So what happened?'

Skipper chuckled. ‘They went swimming,' she said. ‘I hear the water's lovely at this time of year.'

Sam looked up at the screen. There were several ants in front of them now and he could see others moving down the alleyways to their left. Skipper flicked a switch and the screen cut to a rear view showing more ants following behind.

‘Looks as though we're all headed in the same direction,' said Sam as the picture returned to its original view of the way ahead.

‘Mmm.' Skipper sounded worried. ‘Let's see if we can find out what's going on.'

She pressed a button above her head and speakers on either side of the cockpit crackled into life. There was the sound of a man's voice speaking, although it was distorted and hard to hear. Skipper moved one of several slider controls and the static disappeared. The voice could now be heard clearly: ‘
Confirm that Subject A cannot be found and is believed to have left the immediate area. All units to conduct immediate external search of compound. Search now extended to second Subject B, suspected of assisting Subject A. Image now loading for identification…
'

Skipper pressed a green button on the instrument panel and the image of Sam in the small display window was replaced by one of Skipper next to a larvae tank with her hands in the air. Part of Sam's foot was just visible at the edge of the frame.

‘Good action shot,' said Sam, ‘You look a bit serious though.'

Skipper sniggered. ‘Shh! I want to hear what else they're saying.'

‘
… imperative that they are found immediately. The escape of subjects would constitute breach of security at the highest level and any preservation orders that were previously in existence have now been terminated.
'

Sam glanced across at Skipper and saw that her smile had vanished.

‘What was all that about?' he asked. ‘Preservation orders have now been terminated. What does that mean exactly?'

‘It means,' said Skipper, her expression thoughtful in
the red glow from the instruments, ‘that if they catch us, they'll kill us.'

Sam felt the fear returning and the colour drained from his face.

Skipper noticed and put a hand on his arm. ‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘They've got to catch us first.'

They approached a steep ramp leading up to a huge pair of double doors which were being opened to let the ants out into the main compound.

Outside, a grey blanket of cloud hung in the sky above the fields and a curtain of mist and rain was sweeping across the damp airfield. A cold wind wrinkled the surface of the puddles that lay dotted across the tarmac.

Sam counted. They were fourth in a line of ants now, waiting their turn in the queue. He looked to his left and watched scores of mosquito larvae wriggle away from the surface as the ant's shadow moved across the water of their tank.

They shuffled forwards as the first ant moved through the double doors. Two more and they'd be out.

The second ant moved forwards a few steps and then paused.

‘Come on,' said Skipper quietly. ‘Come on.'

Suddenly several soldiers appeared and began pointing excitedly at the line of ants. Sam noticed that they all carried shiny guns with short, stubby barrels.

An armoured car reversed up next to the ant in the doorway and stopped. A panel in the top slid open and a ladder began to extend upwards from it. Two more men
now joined the group by the doors. They appeared to be extremely wet and agitated.

‘Uh oh,' said Skipper. ‘This is not looking good.'

The ladder stopped at the ant's head and two soldiers climbed up. The first used a CRB to create an opening in the head just as Skipper had done, while the second trained his gun on the hole as it appeared. A crewman emerged from the opening and after a brief discussion he disappeared back inside again. The soldiers climbed down the ladder and the ant moved out through the doors.

Sam watched the ant in front of them walk forwards up the ramp and stop next to the ladder. The soldiers climbed onto its head and began opening it up.

‘They're going to check them all,' said Sam anxiously. ‘They're going to check them all and we're next.'

Skipper stuck out her bottom lip and nodded, her blue eyes hard and determined. ‘I think we're going to have to make a run for it,' she said. ‘Are you ready?'

Sam tightened his seat belt. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Go for it.'

Skipper took a deep breath, switched the screen to rear view and pushed the stick back as far as it would go.

Sam was thrown forward against his belt as the ant powered backwards and the image of a larvae tank filled the screen. There was a loud crash as they hit the side of it, followed by a thunderous roar as the thin metal buckled inwards and thousands of gallons of water poured out onto the factory floor. Sam was slammed back into his
seat and as they skidded forward Skipper's fingers danced expertly across the levers and switches. Sam saw the screen return to a front view just as they crashed into the ant in front of them, which crumpled to the ground. A soldier who had been standing on it fell with a thump against the screen, slid off and disappeared into the torrent of water which swept down into the drains, leaving the huge white larvae flapping and twitching on the floor like stranded fish on a beach.

Skipper rammed the lever forward and they accelerated up the ramp, through the double doors and away across the compound. There was the sound of gunfire and a line of bullets ripped through the cockpit just behind Sam's head, missing him by inches and punching four neat exit holes in the roof.

‘Hell's teeth!' shouted Skipper, and pushed the stick to the left. They swerved violently sideways and she switched the screen to rear view again. Sam could see that a group of ants was closing in on them.

A second red light began flashing on the damage-indicator display, accompanied by a loud, intermittent buzzer. ‘What's that?' shouted Sam, pointing at the red light on the lower abdomen, next to the first.

In one smooth, fluid sequence of movements, Skipper unbuckled Sam's belt, pulled the CRB from her pocket, opened a large circular hole in the floor and pushed him through it. Before he even realised what was happening, Sam was falling through the air and bouncing and tumbling across the wet grass, finally
slithering to a halt beneath the dark, looming shape of a large horsefly.

He sat up in time to see Skipper hit the ground and roll over as the ant thundered on towards the perimeter fence with the others close behind it. He saw her run towards him and then there was a blinding white flash followed by the thump of a large explosion. Sam watched in horror as Skipper was blown off her feet, while behind her a sheet of red and orange flame ripped through the ant and tore it apart, hurling white-hot fragments high into the air and gouging a deep, smoking crater into the earth. Then a powerful pressure wave from the explosion hit Sam full in the face, scorching through his hair and blowing him backwards. Something fell down heavily next to him and, turning his face sideways, he saw that it was Skipper. She was on fire.

Struggling to his knees, Sam threw himself on top of her in a desperate attempt to smother the blaze, rolling her over and over in the wet grass until the last of the flames was extinguished.

He heard the shouts of soldiers in the distance and the dull thud of debris falling from the sky. Droplets of rain glistened on blades of grass and, as he gulped the cool morning air deep into his lungs, the smell of damp earth filled his nostrils.

Skipper lay on her back next to him. Her eyes were closed and she wasn't moving.

‘Skipper,' breathed Sam. ‘Skipper, are you OK?'

There was no reply.

Sam's heart was pounding.

‘Skipper,' he repeated more urgently. ‘Skipper, please say something.'

He knelt over her and looked down at her face. She looked as though she was asleep.
No,
thought Sam.
She can't be. Please don't let her be…

He frantically loosened the clothing around her neck and put his head on her chest. If he could just hear a heartbeat, even the faintest one…

Three unexpected little taps on his head made him sit up and he was taken aback to see Skipper's face, wide-eyed and grinning, beneath him.

‘Now that,' she said, ‘is what I call an
explosion
. Fantastic!'

Sam sat back on his haunches and, as Skipper raised herself up on one elbow, he cuffed her lightly around the head with a mixture of relief and exasperation.

‘I thought you'd gone and died on me!' he said.

Skipper sat up and rubbed her head. ‘Nah! Takes more than a drill bomb to finish me off.' Little bits of black ash floated out of her hair. ‘Heck of a bang though, wasn't it? Sorry to push you out like that – but you really don't want to be sitting on top of one of those when they go off.'

Sam took a deep breath and put his hand on her arm. ‘Thanks, Skipper,' he said. ‘That's twice you've saved my life today.'

Skipper looked over his shoulder to where the ants were gathering around the flaming wreckage. Sam followed
her gaze and saw that they were already beginning to fan out towards them.

‘Well, I don't want to worry you,' she said slowly, ‘but I think I'm going to have to make that a hat trick.'

As Skipper helped him into the cockpit, Sam saw that the interior of the horsefly was infinitely more complex than the inside of the ant had been. There were at least twice the number of dials, buttons and screens and the whole cockpit was bathed in a dim green light. As he strapped himself in he noticed that the scramble up the horsefly's leg had brought his arms out in a livid red rash. He made a face and rubbed them against the front of his uniform.

‘Nasty,' said Skipper. She flipped on the external monitors and the whole cockpit brightened as the screens flickered into life to show a 360-degree view of the airfield.

‘Yep, they've spotted us. Don't give up, do they?'

The ants had come together and were rapidly approaching their position en masse.

‘I don't understand why they want us so badly,' said Sam. ‘What did we ever do to them?'

‘Well, let's see,' replied Skipper, her hands moving rapidly across the instrument panel in preparation for take-off. ‘We've wrecked a larvae tank, stolen an expensive CRB, blown up a hi-tech search-and-destroy ant, hijacked a top-of-the-range horsefly, crashed it…'

‘What do you mean, crashed it?' Sam interrupted. ‘We haven't even taken off yet.'

Skipper grinned wryly as she flipped a couple of switches above her head. ‘Well, you know me – I'm a creature of habit. Trouble is, I've got a tendency to laugh at the wrong moment, and my front teeth pop the airbag.'

‘You
are
joking,' said Sam uncertainly, watching the approaching ants on the external monitor. He'd learned not to take anything for granted where Skipper was concerned.

‘Relax,' she said. ‘I could fly one of these things with my eyes shut.'

Sam looked worried. ‘Please don't.'

‘OK. Eyes open it is.' Skipper pushed a glowing red button and Sam heard the low hum of the wings starting up. ‘Right, if we go now, they won't get up in time to catch us.'

‘But all that damage we did,' Sam went on, ‘that's not why they're after us. That happened
because
they were after us. They want us for something else.'

‘Correction,' said Skipper. ‘They want
you
for something else. Not me. They're not interested in me, except for the fact that I'm stopping them getting to you. It's you they want. Now – if you'll just let me concentrate…'

‘But why?' he whispered. ‘Why me?'

‘Good question,' said Skipper as the horsefly lifted up into the air and little puffs of anti-aircraft fire began to explode in the sky around them. ‘I think maybe it's time you met the Commander.'

They had been travelling for several hours now and there were no signs of Vermian aircraft pursuing them. For the first hour or so, Skipper had flown the horsefly at such speed through narrow mountain passes that at first Sam had felt certain they would crash, but after a while he had begun to realise that Skipper was simply an exceptional flier. Even if they had been followed, Sam doubted that any Vermian pilot would have been able to get anywhere near her.