absolutely no idea that Taylor and Jack were waiting in the wings, ready to make their move.
This move was made with Jack’s usual speed and panache. He ran around the corner and before the guards knew what was happening or could sound the alert his hands had moved with their usual deftness. The last thing the guards saw was a flash of bright steel slicing through the air. The last thing they felt was the sudden sharp pain of stab wounds to their vital organs. The sound of these two dead guards slumping to the ground was the sign for Taylor to show himself and for Jack and him to strip the guards and put on their uniforms.
It was unfortunate that the guards on duty that day weren’t blessed with an excess of height. Taylor and Jack were both tall men and they looked silly wearing their new clothes. Their jacket sleeves finished two inches shy of their wrists, while their trouser hems looked like they’d had a fierce argument with their shoes. Jack, with his muscled physique looked the most ridiculous, threatening to erupt from its confines of his uniform at any moment. Dick hoped that Hargreaves wouldn’t notice these sartorial blunders and in fact, he didn’t. He didn’t even notice the fact that there were guards missing from the first two security posts he hurried through on that floor, or that the third guard was seemingly asleep at his post.
He arrived outside the locked door out of breath. ‘What on earth has Huntley been saying about me?’, he asked with an air of panic in his voice. ‘You said something about the research budget, well I can easily account for the missing funds…’ He glanced at the guards and exclaimed, ‘Wait! That man…’. Then he said, ‘Humphhh…. Humphhh…’
Jack had stepped forward, covering Hargreaves’ mouth with one hand, holding him securely round the chest with the other. The doctor now recognised Jack and Kelvin and since he couldn’t speak, could only express extreme surprise with his eyes.
‘Right’, Dick said. ‘We’re going to release you on the condition that you remain here, speak only in a whisper and follow every one of our orders. If you co-operate you’ll live. If you don’t, then Jack will remove your liver and pancreas and force them down your throat so you suffocate. If you understand say ‘Humphhh’’. Hargreaves made the appropriate noise. Dick nodded to Jack who released his grip on the doctor.
‘First, give me your coat’, ordered Dick.
‘Hold on. That’s not part of the plan’, protested Taylor as Hargreaves hurriedly removed his coat.
‘I know’, said Dick as he began to put it on. ‘It’s just that I’ve always wanted one of these and it seems right and just that I take this one – even if it is a bit snug’. Turning to Hargreaves Dick said, ‘We want you to open the door’.
‘Never’, said Dr. Hargreaves.
‘Shhhhhhhhhh!’, said Taylor.
‘Never’, repeated Dr. Hargreaves again, this time at a quieter level that wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. ‘If I let you in you’ll just destroy the bombs!’
‘Really Dr. Hargreaves’, said Taylor. ‘We thought you’d do better than that. Just think what will happen to you if you don’t do as we say’. Jack silently removed his knife and wiped some remaining blood on the jacket he was wearing.
‘If I don’t do what you say then you’ll kill me’, a defiant Hagreaves replied. ‘And if I do what you say, the Leader will kill me’. With a scientist’s natural logic Dr. Hargreaves summed up the situation perfectly, adding as his conclusion, ‘ Therefore it doesn’t really matter what you do to me’.
Taylor and Dick were slightly taken aback. ‘And if I’m dead how are you going to open the doors? Remember the retina scanner will only recognise myself or the Leader, and I can guarantee that the Leader will never listen to your demands! And here he comes now!’
Taylor, Dick and Jack suddenly looked down the corridor. At the same time Hargreaves decided to try and escape. Predictably, a scientist, even a chief one, was no match for an agile mechanical killing machine. Hargreaves barely reached the corner before Jack grappled him to the ground, then pinned him down by sitting on his chest. Hargreaves tried to scratch Jack’s face, throwing punches at him like a girl. He managed to shout for help just once before Jack stopped him in the quickest way he knew; severing his throat and simultaneously, his carotid artery. Blood shot up into the air and all over Jack, who fulfilled his programming by removing Hargreaves’ organs and stuffing them in his mouth, although the liver kept falling through the gaping hole in his throat and Jack had to keep putting it back. Taylor and Dick witnessed the whole disturbing scene with mixed emotions: horror, fascination and satisfaction. ‘OK Jack’, said Dick, ‘Finish the job’. Then to Taylor, ‘This is the part I just can’t watch’.
Moments later the three men were standing outside the door.
‘Open it please, Jack’. Jack held his hand up to the scanner, gently offering up Dr. Hargreaves’ recently removed eyeball. A few drops of blood splattered on the floor. A thin beam of white light began its scan, moving up and down behind the small screen but no familiar bleep followed.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Dick, with a slight panic in his voice. ‘Why isn’t it working? Try it again!’
Jack held the eyeball in front of the scanner once more, but with no success.
‘Perhaps a removed eyeball won’t work?’ offered Taylor in a slightly panicked voice. ‘Maybe it needs a blood supply’.
‘Great. Just great’, said Dick. ‘Here’s exhibit “a”, the eyeball and over there, ten feet away, is exhibit “b”, the eyeball’s former owner. Note the absence of a blood supply between “a” and “b”’.
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic!’, said Taylor, and just as he did so, the slippery eyeball fell through Jack’s fingers and on to the floor.
It bounced unpredictably a few times causing Taylor and Dick to hop around in an attempt to avoid it. In an unfortunate moment of mis-timing Dick put his left foot back on the ground just as the eyeball rolled under it. There was a squelching sound, the sound only a squashed eyeball could make.
‘Now we’re in trouble’, said Taylor.
Dick looked at the sole of his shoe and wished he hadn’t. He’d rather have stepped in dog shit with the viscosity of tar and the stickiness of superglue.
‘I’ve got an idea’, he said. ‘Jack, get me the other eyeball’.
Jack dutifully went to work and removed Hargreave’s other eyeball, offering it to the scanner exactly as before. The light beam moved up and down the eye, then stopped. After what seemed like an eternity, but which was, in reality, only about a second, there was a confirmatory bleep followed by the reassuring buzz and whirr of the lock.
‘How were we to know it only worked on the right eye?’, asked Dick. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief as he, Dick and Jack entered, Jack dragging Hargreaves’ lifeless and now eyeless body with him.
‘How long do you think it’ll be before Hargreaves is missed?’ asked Taylor.
‘Well’, said Dick. ‘Given Maxx’s probable severe state of anxiety, I’d say, about ten minutes ago. We’ve got to do this fast’.
While Jack used his jacket to try and clean the blood from the floor outside the room Taylor and Dick set to work behind the closed door. All the suitcases were locked so Taylor had to unpick them one by one adding considerable time to the exercise, time that was definitely not on their side.
CHAPTER 33
Insulated from the outside sounds by the heavy door they failed to hear loud shouts and a succession of guns being fired. What they did hear though was the familiar bleep, buzz and whirr of the lock.
‘Jack!’ shouted Dick as the door swung open. ‘What’s wrong?’
Maxx stepped in, closely followed by an entourage of armed security guards and technicians.
‘Jack is wrong’, he said, gesturing with his gun, ‘And you know what? I don’t think he’ll ever be right’.
Facing an assortment of gun barrels, Dick and Taylor decided that discretion was definitely the better part of valour. Holding their hands above their heads they stood up rather sheepishly as if they’d been caught doing something very bad (which is of course exactly what they’d been doing). The door was now wide open and Dick could see Jack lying in a pool of his own hydraulic fluid. There was a smouldering hole in his head and two more in his chest.
‘Arrest these men!’, shouted Maxx in the time-honoured tradition of the cliche. ‘And check for damage!’
Guards and technicians ran into the room all at the same time, which wasn’t really a good idea as there
