Joe Craig - Jimmy Coates - Sabotage

Jimmy Coates is dead. If NJ7 finds out he isn’t, they’re going to kill him.

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollinschildrensbooks.co.uk

FIRST EDITION

Copyright © Joseph Craig 2007

Joseph Craig asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007232864

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 9780007343591

Version: 2019-01-17

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

JIMMY COATES: SABOTAGE

Eight Years Previously

01 EXILE

02 PROTECTED OR HUNTED?

03 NEPTUNE’S SHADOW

04 DEATH SPIRAL

05 TERMINAL INTENTION

06 SUSPICION

07 SUSHI FOR ONE

08 HAPPY RETURNS

09 KOLAPORTID

10 SHADOW IN THE CROWD

11 CITIZENS AGAIN

12 MOVIE NIGHT

13 HOW TO CONTROL A COUNTRY

14 IT CAN BE DONE

15 SYNPERCO

16 FEEDING THE FISH

17 NEPTUNE’S WELCOME

18 THE WRONG SABOTEUR

19 THE WRONG INSTINCT

20 OFFSHORE SHUFFLE

21 NEPTUNE’S VOLCANO

22 BLACK DEATH

23 OUT OF THE FRYING PAN …

24 NEWS FROM AUNTIE

25 PROMISES KEPT

26 CHASING GHOSTS

27 SPIT AND DUST

28 FLOOR 57

29 THE ILLUSION OF POISON

30 A LITTLE WAR

31 MR PIGGY GOES TO SCHOOL

32 ABSEILING ONLINE

33 FLYING A FLAG

34 FINDING VIGGO

35 BLACK WIDOWS

36 PROMISES BROKEN

37 NOBODY’S ASSET

38 SOMEONE YOU NEED

About The Author

Also by Joe Craig

About the Publisher

Twelve black dots crept through the night sky. They were only visible because the North Sea was relatively calm that night and the lights of the oil rig reflected off the water. In the wind, the night manager’s tie blustered round his beard. He pulled his suit jacket tighter, but it was too small to cross over the front of his considerable stomach.

“Are they…?” he gasped. His words were lost beneath the constant pounding of the rig’s machinery.

“I think they’re helicopters, sir!” shouted a burly man next to him. “Do you know anything about this?”

The night manager shook his head and just caught his hard hat before it slipped off. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the horizon and the twelve silhouettes, moving like a pack of airborne panthers through the clouds. His mouth gaped in horror.

“Pack your belongings!” he yelled. “Tell everyone!”

“What?”

“They’re coming here! Don’t you see?” The night manager grabbed his colleague by the collar of his fluorescent work jacket. “I thought we’d be safe. I didn’t believe they would actually ever do it! But they’re coming!”

With that, he turned and ran as hard as he could back to his office, panting heavily. By the time he reached the office door, twelve helicopters were hovering over the rig. Their drone was as powerful as the thrashing noise of the rig. The night manager watched, a crunching panic in his heart.

From each chopper dropped twelve ropes, making the sky a grid of black lines. Then down each rope slid a black figure. The curve of each man’s back was interrupted by the solid horizontal line of his machine gun. The night manager collapsed against his office door.

Seconds later, a giant man loomed over him. He hitched his machine gun behind his back, pulled off his balaclava and held out a hand. His face looked like a veil of skin had been stretched over a construction of iron scaffolding.

“Get up!” he ordered. “I’m the commanding officer of this SAS unit. This oil rig is now the property of the British Government and temporarily under my supervision. Instruct your staff that you will all be leaving at 07:00, when a new workforce will arrive to take over.”

At last the night manager gathered the strength to slap the soldier’s hand away.

“You can’t do this!” he screamed. “This rig is owned by a private company! You’re stealing it!”

“I’m nationalising it.”

“Is that what the Government calls stealing now?”

The soldier dug his heel into the night manager’s beard and pushed him all the way to the floor. “So call the police,” he grunted.

He stepped over the night manager into the office, looking down his nose at the shelves of exotic ornaments that had obviously been collected from all over the world. He ran his finger along the edge of a checked board, covered in an arrangement of shiny black and white stones.

“Don’t touch that!” the night manager pleaded, sitting up against the door. “Please! I’m in the middle of a game.”

“A game? Looks like a bunch of stones to me.”

“Yes, yes, but it’s a Padukp’an board. An ancient Chinese game.”

“Paduk-what?”

“Padukp’an.” The night manager was panting even harder now and constantly wiping sweat from his face. The soldier thought for a moment, then announced,

“I like this. I’m keeping it.”

“What?” the night manager squealed. “You can’t! It’s mine!”

The soldier took a seat behind the desk. “The rig is the British Government’s,” he declared, “and that game is now mine.”

“But you don’t even know how to play!”

“I’ll teach myself,” said the SAS man. “Now get out of my office.”

When you know the British Secret Service wants you dead, it’s hard to relax. But Jimmy Coates was forcing himself to try. Every second that passed, every mile he was driven away from New York, it became a tiny bit easier. No hand burst through the window of the car to grab him. No sirens pierced the quiet drone of the road. He had really done it. He had fooled NJ7, the top-secret British intelligence agency. They thought he was dead.

According to NJ7 files, Jimmy Coates—the boy their scientists had genetically designed to grow into a killer—had been terminated by machine-gun fire and his body lost in New York’s East River. They could call off the search. Jimmy didn’t want to let himself smile. Not yet. He wasn’t far enough away.

“Welcome to Blackfoot Airbase,” announced Agent Froy, the CIA man who had grasped Jimmy by the shoulder to lift him out of the East River a few hours before.