David Gilman - Blood Sun

Drew had sunk down to the top of his chest; there was no chance of using his arms except to spread them out-to delay the inevitable.

“I dunno, boy. Your pal Maguire. He found out stuff.…”

“What stuff?” Max asked desperately. The sound of the engine was closer; it must be just over the rise of the hill behind them.

“Dunno! Kid! C’mon! Throw me something! Hurry, dammit!”

“What did he find out?”

A beam of light cut through the night sky. Whatever it was coming across the hills wasn’t using its headlights yet, but it had a powerful searchlight. The kind lampers use to hunt foxes.

Drew never thought he would die like this. Not chasing a kid on Dartmoor. Not being swallowed alive. “They don’t tell me things like that! I don’t get the details! Y’understand? Please!” Drew had heard men beg before they died but had never expected to hear a plea for life escape from his own lips.

A part of the hillside moved, its lightsaber beam sweeping across them. Max clambered onto the bike.

“Your mate can save you!” he yelled, hoping the man’s rescue would buy him time. And then he was gone into the night as Drew spluttered a desperate cry.

“No, he won’t! Kid! He won’t! He won’t help me!” But Max had moved quickly and was already out of earshot.

Moments later the Range Rover stopped. Stanton swung the side-mounted searchlight across the landscape. There was no sign of Max Gordon. He brought the beam to bear on the deceptive land. He couldn’t drive any closer, but he could throw Drew a rope and haul him out.

The light settled on his partner. Drew was up to his neck. Gasping.

“Riga, c’mon! Get me outta here!”

Stanton ignored the use of his professional name. It made no difference what anyone called him. He was who he was.

Drew was choking now. The slime was over his chin; his arms reached for the night sky. The beam of light blinded him.

“Pl … ea … se … For God’s … sake …”

Stanton watched the last slurp of foul liquid take the man’s face. His fingers curled in a final desperate clutch at life. And then they, too, slid below the surface.

“Maybe now you’ll stop whining,” Stanton said quietly to himself.

Exeter St. Davids was the mainline station to London Padding-ton. Some of the trains labored for hours from Penzance at the tip of the country. If they were lucky and everything was working as it should, passengers might have had a hot bacon roll and coffee from the buffet car. By the time the train, its tinted windows veiling the dull glow of light from inside the carriages, rolled into Exeter, Max was waiting-and the smell of the cooked food made his mouth water as the carriage glided past.

Thirty minutes earlier he had stood at the ticket desk, aware that a CCTV camera was in the corner. With barely a glance over his shoulder, he kept his back to the cold-eyed lens. There were others at various points on the platform. Max had already stored Sayid’s bike, making sure the padlock and chain were in place. Now all he had to do was mingle with the crowd of commuters.

The train squealed to a halt. Doors opened; a few students, who used the intercity as a local train for a few stops, got out. Doors slammed. The train manager waved to the front of the train, and the driver eased the brakes. Two minutes after arriving, the train was gone.

And so was Max.

Fergus Jackson paced his study. Bob Ridgeway’s MI5 agent would be here any minute, and Mr. Jackson was even more worried than the previous night. Max Gordon was missing. Jackson had assembled the twenty or so boys in the staff room under the watchful eye of the four teachers who had stayed on at the school during half-term.

Sayid Khalif had denied all knowledge of anything Max might have done or where he might have gone. Even Sayid’s mother could not get any information from him. No one knew anything. Limbo. That was where Fergus Jackson felt himself to be. Schoolboy honor and friendship closed doors against the adults who were trying to help one of their own. Although Jackson grudgingly admitted to himself that of all the boys at Dartmoor High, Max Gordon was probably the one who least needed help.

He heard the slick-engined motorbike before he saw it. So did the boys in the staff room. They crowded the windows to see the rider crest the hill over the still-frozen approach road.

“Look at that!” one of the boys said as the rider wobbled at speed, corrected the spin and then opened the throttle again. It was a big, heavy machine, and the slightly built figure looked as though he would have trouble lifting it if it fell. Which probably meant he didn’t lose control too often-an expert rider.

The black-clad figure wore a full-face helmet, and the leathers had creases of red in the gussets. It looked as though flames sneaked from the side vents on his jacket, like a Spitfire’s engine used to spout flame.

Now the rider downshifted, and the sweetly tuned engine idled. He wore a body-hugging backpack that matched his leather gear. Racking the bike onto its stand, he turned and looked directly at the boys’ faces. The smoked Perspex helmet hid the rider’s features.

“That’s awesome,” one of the boys muttered.

“That’s a liquid-cooled, six-hundred-cc, four-cylinder, four-stroke, sixteen-valve engine, giving one hundred twenty-five bhp at thirteen thousand five hundred revs. Zero to sixty in three seconds, zero to a hundred in about six. Top speed one hundred sixty-five miles an hour,” said Baskins, almost drooling.

The rider pulled off the helmet. A purple and crimson head emerged. Jackson was momentarily lost for words. The highlighted tufts of hair were chopped short, there was a stud in the rider’s nose and once the gloves came off to shake his hand, Jackson could see she wore Goth jewelry.

She.

“Charlotte Morgan,” she said, and smiled, extending her hand. “Great place you’ve got here. Roads were rubbish. M5 was terrible. A lorry had slipped its load-took me longer than I thought. Wouldn’t half mind a cuppa.”

She was already pulling a slimline laptop from her backpack and peeling off her leather jacket to reveal a T-shirt hidden by a sweatshirt that sported a Sundance logo. At least, that was what it appeared to be to Mr. Jackson. For all he knew, it could have been an advert for a grunge band.

“Tea. Ah. I have coffee on the go.…”

She smiled. “A cup of tea would be ace.”

“Yes. Of course. Forgive me. I’ll … er …” He reached for the phone, pressed a button and asked if one of the teachers could rustle up a pot of tea from the kitchen. The young woman was keying information into her laptop. She pulled out a file from the backpack and laid a mobile phone on his desk.

He replaced the phone. “You’re not quite what I expected, Charlie.”

“That’s what most people say. I find that helps.”

“Understandably,” he said.

She turned her computer round so he could see the screen. Hash marks crisscrossed it; a small red dot blinked.

He watched as she bent down and ran her fingers under the edge of his desk. She pulled out what looked like a Shreddies square, dropped it on the floor and crushed it under her boot heel.

“Cheap as chips, no pun intended, but effective up to about a couple of Ks.”

“Pun?” Jackson said.

“Microchips,” she said. “The phony guys bugged you.”

Stanton and Drew’s intrusion felt all the more grubby. They’d been eavesdropping! Had he said anything that could have endangered Max?

“OK. Let’s speak to this Max Gordon and see what he can tell us about Danny Maguire,” Charlotte Morgan said.

“Well, Charlie, that’s where we have a problem.”

There was no sign in the frozen snow of anyone using the road that led in and out of Dartmoor High. So Max Gordon must have gone cross-country. To where? It would take at least six hours of hard slog to get to the nearest railway station, which could be either Exeter or Plymouth. Could any of these boys hack that in these conditions ? Morgan wondered.