Crocodile Tears - Anthony Horowitz [67]
The bus had yet to move. The guards were hammering at the door now, using the stocks of their machine guns to finish the job. There was a brief pause and then an explosion, louder than anything that had gone before. Hopefully the bus driver would hear it. He would have to stop and find out what was going on! Alex was crouching with his hands over his ears. He felt the blast sear across his forearms and the top of his head and looked up just in time to see the chimney topple like a felled tree, the metal close to the base grinding in protest as it was torn apart.
It crashed down, but even as it fell, Alex saw that his plan couldn’t work. The chimney was too short to reach the building opposite. It had fallen sideways, smashing into the low wall. The wall acted as a fulcrum, tearing the metal skin a second time. The chimney ended up tilting down toward the main driveway. What had been its top end was now about thirty feet above the road.
The door, meanwhile, had finally collapsed, blown off its frame from one last blast of machine-gun fire. Half a dozen men rushed out onto the roof.
The bus was now moving, slowly picking up speed, roaring toward the gate as if desperate to get out of here. In a few seconds, it would pass directly beneath Alex.
One of the guards saw him and shouted. Alex stood where he was. The guard took aim.
As the bus drew closer, Alex sprinted forward, as if determined to throw himself off the side of the building. The guard fired. Bullets skidded across the roof of the building, ripping up the asphalt.
The chimney had been sliced open by the edge of the wall. It had almost broken in half. If it had, it would have fallen down to the road, blocking the bus. But it was being held in place by a small section of the metal skin, resting on the wall and acting like a hinge. Alex dived headfirst into the opening. The chimney was just big enough for him with his backpack still strapped to his shoulders. It was like being inside a slide at a swimming pool. The round silver surface offered no resistance and Alex shot down.
In the end, it was all about timing. If he had hit the road, he would have died. If he had started too soon, he might have missed the bus and been run over by it. But Alex had timed it perfectly. He shot out of what had once been the top of the chimney at the exact moment that the bus passed beneath him. For a brief second, he saw the roof, a yellow blur rushing past. He had only about fifteen feet to fall, but he knew that the impact was going to be painful.
It was worse than he imagined. The breath was smashed out of him. His neck and his spine almost separated. He was sure he had broken several of his ribs. He rolled, spinning toward the edge. If he kept rolling and fell off, he would be left behind after all and it would all have been for nothing.
Alex stretched out his arms and legs, spread-eagling himself, doing everything he could to stay in contact with the roof. He wondered why the driver hadn’t stopped, but perhaps he hadn’t heard anything above the noise of the engine.
The bus reached the security gate and passed through without slowing down. Then it was outside the complex, accelerating across Salisbury Plain.
Alex stayed where he was, battered and exhausted. He allowed the cold air to wash over him. Every part of him was in pain. Something was trickling against his chest and for a horrible moment he thought he had been shot. But it wasn’t blood. The test tube had smashed. Smithers would just have to use whatever liquid he could separate from the fiber of Alex’s jacket. Surely there would be enough of it to analyze.
Meanwhile, he couldn’t travel all the way back to London on the roof.
Just before they reached the main road, Alex crawled over to the edge and lowered the top half of his body so that he was hanging, upside down, outside the window where he had been sitting. He was lucky. Tom Harris saw him, his eyes widening in disbelief. Alex made a sign with one hand. Tom nodded.
About one minute later, the bus stopped and Tom got out. Alex watched him rush behind a tree