Bring Him Back

24

Ben ran back towards the fence, clutching his carbine. Time was ticking by much, much too fast. He could only hope that the fire hadn’t yet reached the top floor.

Through the gate in the fence; across the open ground towards the main building. Two guards came out of a doorway to his left, saw him and froze. Ben didn’t even hesitate. He levelled the M4 and shot them both before they’d had a chance to go for their weapons.

He sprinted for the main building, retracing his steps. Inside, the smoke was thicker and even more acrid than before. The floor was swirling inch deep in filthy black water, but just as he’d feared, the sprinkler system had been ineffective at stopping the spread of the blaze. Almost every way he tried, fire and smoke blocked his way and forced him to hunt for an alternative route. The power hadn’t shut down yet, but it could at any moment and he didn’t dare risk using the lift to the upper floor, for fear of being trapped inside.

Every moment counted. Each second, the fire was blocking another path. He held onto the rifle, even though he didn’t think he’d need it any more. The remaining guards had all fled the building, as well as the rest of the staff. It was just him and Carl in here now.

As he searched desperately through the smoke for a staircase, he stumbled into a medical theatre. The operating table was on fire. Soon, any gruesome traces of the things that had gone on here would be burnt out of existence. He ran on, battling against the smoke. The heat was scorching. Just as it seemed hopeless, he crashed though another door and his heart jumped at the sight of a stairway leading upwards. He bounded up it, two and three steps at a time.

It was as he reached the top floor that the power system finally melted down, plunging him into darkness. He groped his way along, kicking doors open. One, two, three …‘Carl!’ he yelled. ‘Carl!’

The fourth door was locked, and he instantly knew this was it. He took two steps back and then ran at it with all his might, smashing it open with his shoulder.

The isolation room was barely less like a cell than the cage down below. In the gloom Ben could make out a sink unit, a toilet, a chair pulled up to a bare table. And the iron-framed bed on which Carl was lying completely still.

Ben threw back the thin sheet. He shook the boy by the arm. ‘Carl, can you hear me? Wake up. We have to go.’

Carl stirred. He faintly murmured something, then fell back into his drug-induced unconsciousness. At that moment, Ben hated the men who’d done this to him more than ever. He ripped a strip from the bed sheet, dampened it at the sink and then returned to the bed to prop the limp boy against him and wrap the wet cloth loosely over his nose and mouth to help reduce smoke inhalation. He quickly did the same for himself, tying the torn material behind his neck like a bandana. Then lifted the child from the bed and carried him to the door.

The flames hadn’t yet reached the stairs, but they very soon would. It wouldn’t be long now before the building would either blow up completely or start to collapse in on itself. Ben reached the bottom. The route he’d taken before was blocked by fire, so he took another. The boy was a dead weight in his arms, the carbine slapping against his back as he staggered and stumbled through the building with only the flickering fiery glow to light the way.

Now Ben was lost again, and for an instant he truly believed that they’d never get out. Then he suddenly recognised the dark corridor as the one he’d walked along with Aumeier earlier. That meant the main entrance was just ahead!

He was right. But he hadn’t reckoned on the two guards who were making for the doorway from another direction. He saw them at the same instant they saw him. They all stopped. Ben stared at them, and they stared back. Their faces were blackened from the smoke. Their weapons within quick and easy reach.

One of the guards shook his head. He let his gun slip to the floor and raised his hands as if to say, ‘No more trouble, okay? We only work here’. His colleague did the same. Then they were gone, running outside into the darkness.

Ben emerged from the building and gasped cool air into his raw, aching lungs. They were out. They’d made it.

He was pushing through the side gate in the perimeter fence when the building blew. The rumbling blast split the night with a fireball that rolled high up into the sky and lit the forest for miles around. The explosion’s hot breath scorched Ben’s back as he turned his body round to shield Carl.

Ignoring the pain, he hurried towards the trees. The shadows of the forest seemed to leap and dance in the firelight. He could see no sign of the other children.

Then he spotted them, all except the sleeping Franck, standing in a huddled group at the foot of a huge pine.

Someone was with them.

Someone who had his arm wrapped tightly across Satoko’s throat and a pistol to her temple. The rest of the children looked even more terrified than she did.

‘Hello again,’ the man said, and Ben saw that it was Tommy, the pilot. ‘Stop right where you are. Not another step.’

‘Let her go,’ Ben said. ‘This isn’t your fight.’

‘You don’t think?’ the pilot replied.

‘Everyone else is gone,’ Ben told him. ‘Rascher, the director, is dead. It’s over.’

Tommy smiled, and the fire made his teeth red. ‘Rascher wasn’t the director,’ he said. ‘I just let him use my office now and then. I never did like to be deskbound. More of a high flyer, you might say. Truth is, I’d rather be in the air than do much else.’

‘You—?’

‘That’s right,’ Tommy said, and his smile turned into a grin. ‘I didn’t introduce myself properly. Thomas Holzmann, Senior Executive Vice President of Linden Global. I’m the big cheese around here. Free to come and go, free to stand in for Jürgen if I so choose, or whatever I want. That’s why I never met the real Simonsen — Doc Rascher was in charge of the everyday running of the place, and personnel was his department. But the Indigo Project is my baby, and it always will be.’ He took the pistol muzzle from Satoko’s head and pointed it towards Ben. ‘And I’m afraid I can’t let you take my assets away. They’re unique. Buildings we have plenty more of. Now put the boy down, please.’

Slowly, carefully, Ben crouched and laid Carl on the ground.

‘Step away from him and toss the rifle,’ Holzmann said.

Ben unslung the M4 and threw it away with a clatter.

Holzmann chuckled. ‘I don’t know who the fuck you really are, man, but you came pretty close to pulling it off. Tripped up at the very last hurdle. I almost feel sorry for you.’

‘I’m nobody,’ Ben said.

‘Suits me,’ Holzmann said. ‘I’ll have the engraver put it on your headstone.’ He raised his pistol, took deliberate aim at Ben. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Ben reached behind his hip. He pulled the Glock that Holzmann hadn’t seen tucked into his belt.

The screams of the children were swallowed by the double report of both handguns going off at once.

Ben felt a burning pain in his side. He swayed on his feet. Dropped his gun, put his hand to his shirt and looked at his bloody fingers.

Holzmann smiled.

And his eyes rolled back, his knees buckled under him and he fell dead.

Ben staggered, then righted himself as the children came running and crowded around him. He picked Carl up in his arms. The boy opened his eyes and looked up at him in drowsy recognition.

‘Now you’re going home,’ Ben said.