Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [23]
“Fine,” grunted Root through gritted teeth. “Just get on with it, will you.”
“All right. Don’t get your ears in a knot.” Foaly skipped several minutes of tape. “Now. Here’s the interesting bit. . . . Nice smooth landing, hangs up the wings. Holly takes off the helmet.”
“Against regulations,” interjected Root. “LEP officers must never remove—”
“LEP officers must never remove their headgear above ground, unless said headgear is defective,” completed Foaly. “Yes, Commander, we all know what the handbook says. But are you trying to tell me that you never sneaked a breath of air after a few hours in the sky?”
“No,” admitted Root. “What are you? Her fairy godmother or something? Get to the important part!”
Foaly smirked behind his hand. Driving up Root’s blood pressure was one of the few perks of the job. No one else would dare to do it. That was because everybody else was replaceable. Not Foaly. He’d built the system from scratch, and if anyone else even tried to boot it up, a hidden virus would bring it crashing about their pointy ears.
“The important part. Here we are. Look. Suddenly Holly drops the helmet. It must land lens down, because we lose, picture. We’ve still got sound though, so I’ll bring that up.”
Foaly boosted the audio signal, filtering out background noise.
“Not great quality. The mike is in the camera. So that was nose down in the dirt too.”
“Nice peashooter,” said a voice. Definitely human. Deep too. That usually meant big.
Root raised an eyebrow. “Peashooter?”
“Slang for gun.”
“Oh.” Then the importance of that simple statement struck him. “She drew her weapon.”
“Just wait. It gets worse.”
“I don’t suppose you would consider peaceful surrender?” said a second voice. Just listening to it gave the commander shivers. “No,” continued the voice. “I suppose not.”
“This is bad,” said Root, his face uncharacteristically pale. “This feels like a setup. These two goons were waiting. How is that possible?”
Holly’s voice came through the speaker then, typically brazen in the face of danger. The commander sighed. At least she was alive. It was more bad news, though, as the parties exchanged threats, and the second human displayed an uncommon knowledge of fairy affairs.
“He knows about the Ritual!”
“Here’s the worst bit.”
Root’s jaw dropped. “The worst bit?”
Holly’s voice again. This time layered with the mesmer.
“Now she has them,” crowed Root.
But apparently not. Not only did the mesmer prove ineffective, but the mysterious pair seemed to find it amusing.
“That’s all there is from Holly,” noted Foaly. “One of the Mud People messes around with the camera for a bit and then we lose everything.”
Root rubbed the creases between his eyes. “Not much to go on. No visual, not even a name. We can’t really be a hundred percent sure that we have a situation.”
“You want proof?” asked Foaly, rewinding the tape. “I’ll give you proof.”
He ran the available video.
“Now, watch this. I’m going to slow it right down. One frame per second.”
Root leaned in close to the screen, close enough to see the pixels.
“Captain Short comes in for a landing. She takes off her helmet. Bends down, presumably to pick up an acorn, and . . . there!”
Foaly jabbed the pause button, freezing the picture completely. “See anything unusual?”
The commander felt his ulcer churn into overdrive.
Something had appeared in the top right-hand corner of the frame. At first glance it seemed like a shaft of light, but light from what or reflected from what?
“Can you blow that up?”
“No problem.”
Foaly cut to the relevant area, increasing it by four hundred percent. The light expanded to fill the screen.
“Oh no,” breathed Root.
There on the monitor before them, in frozen suspension, was a hypodermic dart. There could be no doubt. Captain Holly Short was missing in action. Most probably dead, but at the very least held captive by a hostile force.
“Tell me we still have the locator.”