Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer [77]
“Yessir. On my way.”
Holly selected a blackout suit from the rack, pulling it on over her jumpsuit. As per training, she checked the gauge before tugging the vulcanized cowl. A dip in pressure would indicate a rip, which could prove fatal in the long term.
Root lined up the insertion team at the perimeter. The remains of Retrieval One were about as eager to insert themselves into the manor as they would be to juggle Atlantean stink balloons.
“You’re certain the big one is gone?”
“Yes, Captain Kelp. He’s gone, one way or another.”
Trouble wasn’t convinced. “Because that’s one mean human. I think he has magic of his own.”
Corporal Grub giggled, and got an immediate clip on the ear for himself. He muttered something about telling Mommy and quickly strapped on his helmet.
Root felt his complexion redden. “Let’s move out. Your mission is to locate and recover the bullion. Watch for booby traps. I didn’t trust Fowl when he was alive, and I definitely don’t trust him now that he’s dead.”
The words “booby traps” got everyone’s attention. The idea of a Bouncing Betty anti-personnel mine exploding at head height was enough to dispel any nonchalance in the troops. No one built weapons of cruelty like the Mud Men.
As the junior Recon officer, Holly was on point. And even though there weren’t supposed to be any hostiles in the manor, she found her gun hand automatically straying to the Neutrino 2000.
The mansion was eerily quiet, with only the fizzle of the last few solinium flares to alleviate the stillness. Death was there too, in the silence. The manor was a cradle of death. Holly could smell it. Behind those medieval walls lay the bodies of a million insects, and under its floors the cooling corpses of spiders and mice.
They approached the doorway tentatively. Holly swept the area with an X-ray scanner. Nothing under the flagstones but dirt, and a nest of dead money-spiders.
“Clear,” she said into her microphone. “I’m going in. Foaly, have you got your ears on?”
“I’m right there with you, darlin’,” replied the centaur. “Unless you step on a land mine, in which case I’m way back in the Operations Room.”
“Are you getting any thermals?”
“Not after a blue-rinse. We have residual heat signatures all over the place. Mostly solinium flares. It won’t calm down for a couple of days.”
“But no radiation, right?”
“That’s right.”
Root snorted in disbelief. Over the headsets it sounded like an elephant sneezing.
“It looks like we’re going to have to sweep this house the old-fashioned way,” he grumbled.
“Make it quick,” advised Foaly. “I give it five minutes tops before Fowl Manor rejoins the world at large.”
Holly stepped through what used to be the doorway. The chandelier swung gently from the concussive force of the missile’s detonation, but otherwise everything was as she remembered it.
“The gold is downstairs. In my cell.”
Nobody answered. Not in words. Someone did manage a retch. Right into the microphone. Holly spun around. Trouble was doubled over, clutching his stomach.
“I don’ feel so good,” he groaned. A tad unnecessarily, considering the pool of vomit all over his boots.
Corporal Grub took a breath, possibly to utter a sentence containing the word Mommy. What came out was a jet of concentrated bile. Unfortunately Grub didn’t have the opportunity to open his visor before the illness struck. It was not a pretty sight.
“Ugh,” said Holly, pressing the corporal’s visor-release button. A tsunami of regurgitated rations flooded over Grub’s blackout suit.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Root, elbowing past the brothers. He didn’t get very far. One step over the threshold and he was throwing up with the rest of them.
Holly pointed her helmet-cam at the stricken officers.
“What the hell is going on here, Foaly?”
“I’m searching. Hold on.”
Holly could hear computer keys being punched furiously.
“Okay. Sudden vomiting. Spatial nausea . . . Oh no.”
“What?” asked Holly. But she already knew. Maybe she always had.
“It’s the magic,” blurted Foaly, words