Sharp Shot Page 13

  Rich and Jade both ran for the airlock as fast as they could. The inner door had jammed half open, the mechanism damaged by the gunfire.

  The scientists were getting to their feet as Rich and Jade arrived. But Rich was looking at the body of the gunman Chance had just shot. One of the man’s eyebrows ended above the eye, a pale scar curling down his left cheek.

  “The gunman from the farm,” said Jade. “He was with Darrow at Boscombe Heights too.”

  “As we suspected, it was a set-up,” said Chance, joining them. “McCain wanted it to look like he was in real trouble, so I’d help him. Even before he found out I wasn’t there, they’d agreed to stage a pursuit. Then he carried on with it to convince you he was in trouble so you’d get me involved and help him. It must have surprised him a bit when Chuck White’s team joined in as well.”

  As they moved through the lab, examining each workbench and set of apparatus in turn, the scientists gradually became quieter and more serious.

  Rich knew not to touch anything, but before long he was getting bored. Jade and Chance were talking quietly at one end of the large laboratory. She pointed up at a huge window overlooking the room, and Rich guessed that was where she had seen it from originally.

  He turned to walk back and join them. There was nothing here that made much sense to him. OK, he recognised laptop computers and a large shredder. He could understand the containment chamber with its rubber sleeves and gloves extending inside the sealed glass case. There were even Bunsen burners and racks of test tubes like in the school science lab. But Rich had no idea what it was all for.

  As he turned, his foot caught on something sticking out from under the workbench. It gave a metallic clang, and he held his hands up in apology as one of the scientists turned to glare at him.

  Rich looked to see what he’d kicked. It was a metal waste bin. It was strange seeing something so ordinary in the hi-tech environment. He nudged it back under the workbench with his foot and turned to go.

  Then his brain registered what he had seen inside, and he knelt down to grab the bin and pull it back out into the light.

  “Over here!” called Rich. “I think you should see this.”

  He lifted the bin up on to the workbench, careful not to disturb the fragments inside.

  “What is it?” asked Chance, joining him. The two scientists and Jade were close behind.

  “It’s just fragments, something broken,” one of the scientists said. “Junk. Rubbish.”

  Rich shook his head. “It’s pottery. Ceramic. I think it’s the remains of the statue.”

  Dad picked up the bin and upended it, spilling the contents across the workbench. Most of the pieces of dull, brown ceramic were too small to be recognisable. But a large part of a weathered lion’s head stared back up at them from the workbench.

  “Why did they break it?” Jade wondered. She picked up the piece of the head and turned it over, examining it. “Was it an accident, do you think?” She frowned. “It’s not as heavy as I expected, after what you said.”

  One of the scientists was gently teasing several pieces of the shattered statue together like a three-dimensional jigsaw.

  The other pointed to where several pieces joined. “Impact damage. Maybe a hammer.”

  “They deliberately broke it?” said Rich.

  “We’re looking for something about this big,” said the first scientist. He held his hands slightly apart. “Probably made of metal. And…” he glanced at his colleague, who mirrored his grim expression. “And probably lead-lined.”

  “There’s a thing looks like a small thermos flask over there,” said Jade, pointing to one of the other workbenches.

  One of the scientists hurried over, collecting his metal case of equipment on the way.

  “What is it?” asked Chance.

  “I need to know exactly where this statue came from,” said the scientist.

  “Wish we knew,” Rich told him. “We thought it was ancient, but it turns out it was made only recently.”

  The scientist held some of the broken pieces together. “See this smooth area inside? The statue was cast round something else.”

  “There was something inside it?” said Jade.

  “Makes sense,” agreed Chance. “Something hidden. Something heavy.”

  The scientist was nodding. “And we need to know where it came from.” He turned and spread his hands. “This whole place, it’s been cleared out. But there’s enough here to know what it was for.”

  “Which was?” said Rich.

  “It’s a small nuclear facility. Oh, I don’t mean a reactor or anything,” he said, catching sight of Rich’s expression. “I mean it’s for processing small amounts of nuclear material.”

  “But nuclear material is very hard to get hold of, isn’t it?” said Jade. “That’s what all the fuss is with Iran and North Korea and places like that, because they’re trying to make it.”

  “Is that what they were doing here?” asked Rich. “Processing plutonium or something?”

  “No,” said the scientist. “I’m afraid this is the other end of the process.”

  From across the room came an angry clicking sound. The other scientist had opened the metal container Jade had seen, and was holding a device over the open top. He closed the canister up again quickly. He looked pale.

  “I’m guessing it’s not cold coffee, then,” said Jade quietly.

  “This lab,” the first scientist told them, “is for putting together the components of a small nuclear device.”

  “Device? You mean—a bomb?” Rich gasped.

  “I mean a bomb. And for that they needed weapons-grade nuclear material.”

  “But where would they get it?” said Jade.

  It was Chacewho answered. “From a secret Iraqi nuclear installation that was destroyed before the first Gulf War. It was smuggled out by Darrow, hidden inside what looked like an antique statue of a lion. That’s what he’s really been after all this time. Maybe he was in the pay of Saddam Hussein and smuggling out his precious plutonium when we blew up the plant. They obviously had it all ready for him to take. He must have been rather miffed when we left it behind in the desert.”

  “But now he’s got it back,” said Rich. “Now Crown Prince Ali has a nuclear bomb.”

  Chance nodded. “And we have no idea where it is, or what he plans to do with it.”

  16

  The discovery at the lab changed everything. Suddenly Ardman’s team was officially welcomed. King Hassan was informed of their arrival and the situation, but spared some of the details of the attack on his uncle’s desert palace. That same desert palace was now turned into the nerve centre of the operation to search for the missing nuclear device.

  “There’s no sign of Crown Prince Ali,” Ardman explained at a hurried update briefing as soon as he arrived at the palace.

  They were all gathered in what had been an enormous dining room. One of Ardman’s senior staff, a man called Goddard, was now in charge of clearing up the mess Chance’s team had made and of sifting through the debris and searching the palace for any clues as to where the bomb had been taken.

  Pete and Alan had set up their equipment in another reception room, while there seemed to be a never-ending stream of helicopters arriving and leaving from the roof and small jets from the airstrip a quarter of a mile away.

  Rich and Jade were sitting at the back of the briefing. Chance was at the front of the room, together with Dex and a few other men in military uniforms. One of the two scientists was also there, the other still working in the laboratory to piece together exactly what had happened there.

  “King Hassan can’t just denounce his uncle,” Ardman was explaining. “He’s got people he can trust looking for him, but Ali has a lot of support in the military. He could be on any number of army bases or airfields.”

  “With his bomb,” Chance added.

  “Indeed. Now, we have put out pictures of Darrow. Every police station, army base or citizen w
ho watches TV knows he’s a dangerous criminal and with luck someone will have seen him. That may give us some leads.”

  “If he hasn’t already scarpered,” said Goddard from the doorway. He was just back from checking on how his team was doing. “I mean, he’s delivered the statue —so he’s probably taken his dosh and done a runner.”

  Chance shook his head. “I think after the trouble we’ve given him—and he must know by now what’s happened here—Darrow will want to be in at the kill.” He turned to Halford. “What do you think?”

  “I think that’s right,” Dex agreed. “He’s not one to walk away from something before it’s finished. That said, he’ll want to make sure he’s well away from the place the bomb’s going to go off.”

  “If it is,” muttered Rich.

  Ardman heard him. “I’m sorry—what was that?”

  Rich looked down at his feet, embarrassed.

  “No,” Ardman went on, “I want to know. I’m not telling you off for talking in class. We’re in a bit of a fix, to say the least, so if you have a comment I really do want to hear it, Rich.”

  Rich looked up. “I was just wondering if they intend to set off the bomb at all. The threat might be enough for whatever they’re after.”

  “That’s right,” said Jade. “I mean, they can only set it off once. After that, the threat is gone.”

  “It is a nuclear bomb,” Ardman pointed out.

  The scientist stood up, ready to make a point. “True, but from the amount of material we believe they have, it’s relatively small. It could take out a suburb of the capital city, and it would cause lots of collateral damage from the radiation and electromagnetic pulse, but in nuclear terms, she’s a midget. Maybe the threat is greater than the reality.” He shrugged apologetically, and sat down again.

  “No,” said Chance. “I don’t know about Crown Prince Ali, but if Darrow has in effect provided a weapon—any weapon— he’ll want to see it used.”

  There was silence for several moments, then Ardman snapped, “Suggestions?”

  “What’s Ali’s end game? What’s he really want to achieve from all this?” asked Dex. “If we knew that, we could take a stab at how he plans to achieve it.”

  “I think we can assume he wants to stop the elections,” said Ardman. “Ideally, his dream scenario if you like, would be to seize absolute power from his nephew and chuck out the Americans.”

  In the doorway, Goddard was talking quietly into a radio. He raised his hand as he finished the conversation.

  “Yes, Mr Goddard?” Ardman prompted.

  “That was Pete. He thinks they might be on to something. There’s a couple of laptop computers down in the lab. Not much of any use on them, but Alan’s working on the hard discs to see what’s been erased.”

  “And what’s Pete doing?” asked Chance.

  “He’s found a shredder.”

  Rich recalled seeing the shredder in the lab. “How does that help?” he asked.

  “After the Iranians took the US Embassy there, they got students to go through the shredded documents and piece them back together like a jigsaw,” said Ardman. “But it took years. Please tell me Pete has a rather more timely solution to the problem.”

  Goddard shrugged. “Well, sir, you never know.”

  Jade nudged Rich. “Come on, let’s go and see if we can help. This is boring and we’re not going to learn anything new.”

  “Where are we going?” Rich asked as he followed Jade out.

  “You heard Ardman. The Iranians got students to put the shredded documents back together.”

  “So?”

  “So, we’re students, aren’t we?” said Jade.

  They made their way back down to the laboratory.

  “Ardman said it took them years, though,” said Rich. “How long have you got?”

  In the lab, Alan was hard at work at one of the computers that had been left behind. He glanced up as Jade and Rich came in.

  “Good job they didn’t know we were coming,” he said. “Or they’d have taken these with them, or destroyed them completely. Same goes for the remains of that statue and the containment flask. Then we’d have no idea what they’re up to.”

  “You found anything useful so far?” asked Rich.

  Alan shook his head. “Lots of technical stuff about the weapon. Bomb design and emails between Ali and Darrow. Incriminating, but not very helpful.” He settled back into his work.

  Pete had tipped the contents of the shredder out on to the next workbench. He was gently teasing apart the mound of thin strips of paper.

  “Looks like fun,” said Jade.

  “Yeah, terrific. Luckily the shredder doesn’t cross cut as well, so we have all these long strips like fettuccini pasta.”

  “Can we help?” asked Rich.

  “If you can get the strips separated and intact, then I can scan them in. Once I’ve got images of each shredded strip in the computer, I’ve written a program that will try to match them up.”

  “Will it take long?” asked Jade.

  “Probably. The real problem is that there are so many different sheets, some of them double-sided. The program just tries each strip against every other until it finds two that fit together. If we could cut down the number of possible combinations it would be a lot quicker.”

  Rich and Jade set to work at opposite sides of the pile of shredded paper. It was slow, meticulous work to take a strip of paper carefully from the pile without tearing it. Sometimes, several strands were close together, looped through the others in the same way. They tried to keep these together, as it seemed likely they were from the same sheet—or the same few sheets fed through the shredder at the same time.

  Pete took the separated shreds of paper over to a small desktop scanner. This was attached to a computer. Rich could see images of each strand appearing on the screen. The program slowly worked through different combinations, as it tried to match the shape of the torn edges and the printed words. It was obviously going to take a very long time.

  “It’s a shame some of the sheets weren’t a different colour,” Jade complained as she eased another strand of paper from the pile and smoothed it out. “If they’d colour-coded their plans, like using yellow paper for anything really useful and important and blue for stuff that doesn’t matter, then that would speed things up, wouldn’t it?”

  “Certainly would,” agreed Pete.

  “Or if they’d just shredded less stuff,” Rich muttered. He prised apart some of the tightly packed paper as he followed the piece he was trying to get out. It was easy to keep track of the strip of paper he wanted if he angled his head slightly because it caught and reflected the light.

  With the shredded strip finally free, Rich smoothed it out and put it on the end of the workbench ready for Pete to scan.

  He was halfway through recovering another strip when he realised what he had done.

  “Hang on!” he said out loud, hurrying back to the separated strips of paper arranged at the end of the workbench.

  Jade and Pete both heard something in his tone of voice and hurried over. Alan glanced up from his work.

  “What is it?” said Jade.

  “What you said about different coloured paper.” Rich picked up the strip he had just put down with the others. “It was easy to see this strip, because it caught the light. Look—it’s glossy. The rest is just ordinary printer paper, but this is from a sheet that’s different.”

  “Let me see.” Pete took the paper carefully from Rich. “You’re right. This is a coated paper from an inkjet printer. Not that we have any idea if that means it’s more or less important, but at least we can deal with the glossy paper separately from the rest. Should speed things up a lot.”

  They separated the sorted strips into two piles. There were already several glossy shreds of paper, and because it was easy to spot now they’d thought of it, Rich and Jade concentrated on finding more. There were not that many, and most of them were close together—suggesting they
came from a single set of pages.

  Pete scanned in the glossy strips first. The computer was soon assembling them rapidly into just one single large sheet on the computer screen.

  “Looks like a map or a plan,” said Jade. Buildings, roads…Wonder where it is.”

  “I’ll get Dad,” said Rich. “Maybe he’ll have some idea of where this is and if it’s important.”

  It was important, and it was frightening. As soon as he saw it, Chance recognised the plan as a map of a military installation. Comparing the plan with satellite images, it didn’t take long for Pete to find a match. Within the hour, most of the team were leaving the desert palace and heading for the main American airbase in East Araby.

  “Why not just tell the Americans and start a full-scale search?” Jade yelled to Chance over the sound of the helicopter engines.

  “And start a panic as well? There are families based there, and it’s on the outskirts of the capital.”

  “Then evacuate everyone,” said Rich.

  Chance shook his head. “Can’t afford for King Hassan to look like he’s losing control. Any hint of trouble, and the hardliners he’s fought to get on board will insist he postpone the elections. They’d never restage them.”

  “So that’s why Ali has planted the bomb on the US base?” asked Jade. “Just to frighten his brother out of the elections?”

  “No, it’s not that simple.” Chance leaned towards his children. “He’s going to set off the bomb, no question.”

  “But why?” Rich wondered.

  “Think about it. A nuclear explosion on a US airbase where they station Stealth Bombers. What will everyone think happened? They won’t believe that Crown Prince Ali got access to nuclear technology and blew up part of his own capital city.”

  Jade could see what he was getting at. “Everyone will think there was an accident. They’ll think it was an American nuke that went off by accident.”

  “And then?” Chance prompted.