Ark Angel - Anthony Horowitz [89]
He reached the side of the building and pressed himself against the wall, keeping out of sight. The terrace where he had eaten breakfast with Drevin and Paul was directly above him. A wooden staircase curved up from the beach and Alex was just considering whether he could risk climbing it to look in through the window, when Drevin appeared round the side of the house, an attaché case in one hand, an automatic pistol in the other.
He saw Alex and stopped. “Alex Rider!” he exclaimed. His eyes were curiously empty. In the last few hours he seemed to have shrunk. “Why did you come back?”
Alex shrugged. “I forgot to say thanks for having me.”
“I am glad to see you one last time. I wonder what it was that brought you and me together. Was it fate? Was it destiny?”
“I think it was Alan Blunt.”
“MI6? Well, they’ve failed. Gabriel 7 will reach Ark Angel; it can’t be stopped. The bomb will explode and Washington will be destroyed, along with all the evidence against me.”
“They don’t need any evidence against you now,” Alex said. “They all know you’re mad.”
“Yes. It will be necessary for me to disappear. But it will be easy. A man with my wealth, with my contacts…”
“The world’s too small for someone like you to hide.”
“We’ll see.” Drevin raised the gun. “But one thing is certain. We won’t meet again.”
He fired.
Alex had been ready for it. He dived down onto the sand. He felt the first hail of bullets pass centimetres over his head – and knew there was no way he could avoid the second.
Drevin groaned.
It was the most terrible sound Alex had ever heard, an animal cry that seemed to come from the very depths of the man’s soul. He looked up, brushing sand out of his eyes. He saw Drevin standing there, quite limp, his eyes staring. Then he looked behind him.
Paul Drevin had come out of the house. He must have heard them talking, and walked round the side of the building just as Drevin had fired. Alex had dived out of the way but Paul hadn’t been so lucky. He had taken the full impact of the bullets, and he was lying on his back, arms and legs spread wide, blood soaking into the sand.
“You…!” Drevin screamed the single word. Then he began to babble. Not in English but Russian. His face was white, twisted in pain and hatred. Tears were seeping out of the corners of his eyes. He pointed the gun at Alex once more. But this time Alex was ready for him.
Before Drevin could pull the trigger, Alex began to roll, spinning over and over, propelling himself towards the house. Bullets kicked up the sand, then slammed into the nearest wall. But Drevin had been caught by surprise. Still rolling, Alex disappeared into the crawl space underneath the house. It was cold and damp here. There might be spiders or scorpions nestling in the foundations. But he was in the dark, out of the range of the bullets. For a moment, he was safe.
Drevin hardly seemed to notice. He fired at the house until the gun clicked uselessly in his hands. It took him a while to realize that he had run out of bullets. Then, with a curse, he threw the gun down and staggered over to his son. Paul wasn’t moving. In the distance, he heard shouting. A buggy was approaching through the rainforest. Drevin turned and ran across the beach towards the waiting plane.
Lying on his stomach, Alex looked out through the gap between the bottom of the house and the sand. He saw Drevin reach the water’s edge and knew that he wasn’t coming back. Slowly, dreading what he was going to find, he crawled back out into the open and went over to Paul.
There was a lot of blood. Alex was certain that the boy was dead, and he was overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness and guilt. But then, to his surprise, Paul opened his eyes. Alex knelt down beside him. Now that he was looking closely he could see that, beneath the blood, the damage might not be as bad as he had feared. Paul had been shot in the shoulder and the