Ark Angel - Anthony Horowitz [90]
“Alex…” he rasped.
“Don’t move,” Alex said. “I’m really sorry, Paul. This is all my fault. I should never have come here.”
“No. I was wrong…” Paul tried to speak but the effort was too much.
Alex heard the sound of the Cessna’s engine and turned round in time to see the plane moving away from the jetty. Drevin was piloting it. Alex could make out the crazed, distorted face behind the controls. At the same time, a buggy screeched to a halt in front of the house and Ed Shulsky and two men jumped out. Alex was relieved to see that Tamara was with them, still pale but looking stronger than when he had last seen her.
“Alex!” she called out, then stopped, seeing Paul.
Shulsky signalled, and the two men sprinted over to the wounded boy, pulling out medical packs as they ran. “What happened here?” he asked.
“Drevin,” Alex said. “He hit Paul instead of me.”
“How bad is it?” Shulsky addressed one of the two men.
“I think he’s going to be OK,” the man replied, and Alex felt a surge of relief. “He’s lost blood, and we’re going to have to helicopter him out as soon as possible. But he’ll live.”
Shulsky turned to Alex. “We’ve taken control of the island,” he told him. “Drevin’s men didn’t put up much of a fight. But we lost Drevin. Where is he?”
Alex pointed. The Cessna 195 had reached full speed and was rising smoothly out of the water. Bizarrely, impossibly, two canoes had risen up behind it, as if following it out of the sea and into the sky.
“What the—” Shulsky began.
It was the only thing Alex had been able to do in the time he’d had. Using the tow ropes from the waterskiing equipment, he’d tied the canoes to the seaplane’s floats. He had thought about securing the Cessna to the jetty, but Drevin would have spotted that. Part of him had hoped that the plane wouldn’t be able to take off, but he was disappointed. It was already high up, a bizarre sight with the two canoes dangling underneath it. Alex wondered if Drevin had even noticed. Well, whatever happened, it would make the plane easier to spot, and when it landed, with a bit of luck, the canoes might cause it to overturn.
But then Drevin made his last mistake.
Alex would never know what was in the Russian’s mind. Did he think his son was dead? Did he think Alex was to blame? It seemed he had decided to take revenge. The plane swung round and suddenly it was heading back towards them. With no warning, before there was even any sound, the sand leapt up all around them and Alex realized that Drevin was firing at them, using a machine gun mounted somewhere on the plane. The detonations came a moment later. Everyone dived for cover, the two male agents crouching over the injured boy, protecting him with their own bodies. Bullets smashed into the side of the house; wood splintered and one of the great glass windows frosted and cascaded down. The plane roared overhead and continued towards the rainforest. The canoes bumped and twisted just behind.
Drevin had missed them on the first pass but Alex knew they wouldn’t be so lucky on the second. He looked at Shulsky, wondering what the CIA agent was planning to do. They might be able to make it into the house. But what about Paul? Moving him too quickly would kill him.
The plane began to turn. The canoes dipped down. Drevin was directly over the forest. He hadn’t seen the canoes, so had no idea how low they were. There were two trees close to one another. As Alex watched – with a shiver of horror – the canoes collided with the trunks and became stuck between them, caught sideways on.
The plane came to an abrupt halt. It was as if it had anchored itself in mid-air. There was the sound of breaking wood. The canoes had smashed – but so had the floats. In fact, the entire undercarriage of the plane had been torn away, and Drevin was left sitting on thin air, surrounded by half a plane. One moment he had been flying forward. The next he simply rotated ninety degrees and swooped vertically down towards the ground. There was a scream from what was left of the engine;