Anthony Horowitz - Point Blank

Alex turned around, searching for whoever had fired the shot. ‚What are you doing?' he shouted. ‚You nearly hit me!'

Almost immediately there was a second shot and, just behind it, a whoop of excited laughter. And then Alex realized what was happening: They hadn’t mistaken him for an animal. They were aiming at him for fun.

He dived forward and began to run. The trunks of the trees seemed to press in on him from all sides, threatening to bar his way. The ground underneath was soft from recent rain and dragged at his feet, trying to glue them into place. There was a third explosion. He ducked, feeling the gunshot spray above his head, shredding the foliage.

Anywhere else in the world, this would have been madness. But this was the middle of the English countryside and these were rich, bored teenagers who were used to having things their own way. Somehow, Alex had insulted them. Perhaps it had been the jibe about the wrapping paper. Perhaps it was his refusal to tell Fiona who he really was. But they had decided to teach him a lesson, and they would worry about the consequences later. Did they mean to kill him?

‚We don’t bother with rules in the countryside,' Rufus had said. If Alex was badly wounded—

or even killed—they would somehow get away with it. A dreadful accident. He wasn’t looking where he was going and stepped into the line of fire .

No. That was impossible.

They were trying to scare him—that was all.

Two more shots. A pheasant erupted out of the ground, a ball of spinning feathers, and screamed up into the sky. Alex ran on, his breath rasping in his throat. A thick briar reached out across his chest and tore at his clothes. He still had the gun he had been given, and he used it to beat a way through. A tangle of roots almost sent him sprawling.

‚Alex? Where are you?' The voice belonged to Rufus. It was high-pitched and mocking, coming from the other side of a barrier of leaves. There was another shot, but this one went high over his head. They couldn’t see him. Had he escaped?

No, he hadn’t. Alex came to a stumbling, sweating halt. He had broken out of the woods but he was still hopelessly lost. Worse—he was trapped. He had come to the edge of a wide, filthy lake. The water was a scummy brown and looked almost solid. No ducks or wild birds came anywhere near the surface. The evening sun beat down on it and the smell of decay drifted up.

‚He went that way!'

‚No … through here!'

‚Let’s try the lake.'

Alex heard the voices and knew that he couldn’t let them find him here. He had a sudden image of his body, weighed down with stones, at the bottom of the lake. But that gave him an idea. He had to hide.

He stepped into the water. He would need something to breathe through. He had seen people do this in films. They would lie in the water and breathe through a hollow reed. But there were no reeds here. Apart from grass and thick, slimy algae, nothing was growing at all.

One minute later, Rufus appeared at the edge of the lake, his gun still hooked over his arm.

He stopped and looked around with eyes that knew the forest well. Nothing moved.

‚He must have doubled back,' he said.

The other hunters had gathered behind him. There was tension between them now, a guilty silence. They knew the game had gone too far.

‚Let’s forget him,' one of them said.

‚Yeah…'

‚We’ve taught him a lesson.'

They were in a hurry to get home. As one, they disappeared back the way they had come.

Rufus was left on his own, still clutching his gun, searching for Alex. He took one last look across the water, then turned to follow them.

That was when Alex struck. He had been lying under the water, watching the vague shapes of the teenagers as if through a sheet of thick brown glass. The barrel of the shotgun was in his mouth. The rest of the gun was just above the surface of the lake. He was using the hollow tubes to breathe. Now he rose up—a nightmare creature oozing mud and water, with fury in his eyes.

Rufus heard him but he was too late. Alex swung the shotgun, catching Rufus in the small of the back. Rufus grunted and fell to his knees, his own gun falling out of his hands. Alex picked it up. There were two cartridges in the breech. He snapped the gun shut.

Rufus looked at him, and suddenly all the arrogance had gone and he was just a stupid, frightened teenager, struggling to get to his knees.

‚Alex…' The single word came out as a whimper. It was as if he were seeing Alex for the first time. ‚I’m sorry!' he sniveled. ‚We weren’t really going to hurt you. It was a joke. Fiona put us up to it. We just wanted to scare you. Please…'

Alex paused, breathing heavily. ‚How do I get out of here?' he asked.

‚Just follow the lake around,' Rufus said. ‚There’s a path.'

Rufus was still on his knees. There were tears in his eyes. Alex realized that he was pointing the silver-plated shotgun in his direction. He turned it away, disgusted with himself. This boy wasn’t the enemy. He was nothing.

‚Don’t follow me,' Alex said and began to walk.

‚Please!' Rufus called after him. ‚Can I have my gun back? My mother would kill me if I lost it.'

Alex stopped. He weighed the weapon in his hands, then threw it with all his strength. The handcrafted Italian shotgun spun twice in the dying light, then disappeared with a splash in the middle of the lake. ‚You’re too young to play with guns,' he said.

He walked away, letting the forest swallow him up.

THE TUNNEL

THE MAN SITTING IN THE gold, antique chair turned his head slowly and gazed out the window at the snow-covered slopes of Point Blanc. Dr. Hugo Grief was almost sixty years old with short, white hair and a face that was almost colorless too. His skin was white, his lips vague shadows. Even his tongue was no more than gray. And yet, against this blank background, he wore circular wire glasses with dark red lenses. For him, the entire world would be the color of blood. He had long fingers, the nails beautifully manicured. He was dressed in a dark suit buttoned up to his neck. If there were such a thing as a vampire, it might look very much like Dr. Hugo Grief.

‚I have decided to move the Gemini Project into its last phase,' he said. He spoke with a South African accent, biting into each word before it left his mouth. ‚There can be no further delay.'

‚I understand, Dr. Grief.'

A woman sat opposite Dr. Grief, dressed in tight-fitting spandex with a sweatband around her head. This was Eva Stellenbosch. She had just finished her morning workout—two hours of weight lifting and aerobics—and was still breathing heavily, her huge muscles rising and falling. Mrs. Stellenbosch had a facial structure that wasn’t quite human, with lips curving out far in front of her nose and wisps of bright ginger hair hanging over a high-domed forehead.

She was holding a glass filled with some milky green liquid. Her fingers were thick and stubby.

She had to be careful not to break the glass.

She sipped her drink, then frowned. ‚Are you sure we’re ready?' she asked.

‚We have no choice in the matter. We have had two unsatisfactory results in the last few months. First Ivanov. Then Roscoe in New York. Quite apart from the expense of arranging the terminations, it’s possible that someone may have connected the two deaths.'

‚Possible, but unlikely,' Mrs. Stellenbosch said.

‚The intelligence services are idle and inefficient, it is true. The CIA in America. MI6 in England. Even the KGB. They’re all shadows of what they used to be. But even so, there’s always the chance that one of them might have accidentally stumbled onto something. The sooner we end this phase of the operation, the more chance we have of remaining unnoticed.'