Alex had been ready for it. He dived down onto the sand. He felt the first hail of bullets pass centimetres over his head—and knew there was no way he could avoid the second.
Drevin groaned.
It was the most terrible sound Alex had ever heard, an animal cry that seemed to come from the very depths of the man’s soul. He looked up, brushing sand out of his eyes. He saw Drevin standing there, quite limp, his eyes staring. Then he looked behind him.
Paul Drevin had come out of the house. He must have heard them talking, and walked round the side of the building just as Drevin had fired. Alex had dived out of the way but Paul hadn’t been so lucky. He had taken the full impact of the bullets, and he was lying on his back, arms and legs spread wide, blood soaking into the sand.
“You…!” Drevin screamed the single word. Then he began to babble. Not in English but Russian. His face was white, twisted in pain and hatred. Tears were seeping out of the corners of his eyes. He pointed the gun at Alex once more. But this time Alex was ready for him.
Before Drevin could pull the trigger, Alex began to roll, spinning over and over, propelling himself towards the house. Bullets kicked up the sand, then slammed into the nearest wall. But Drevin had been caught by surprise. Still rolling, Alex disappeared into the crawl space underneath the house. It was cold and damp here. There might be spiders or scorpions nestling in the foundations. But he was in the dark, out of the range of the bullets. For a moment, he was safe.
Drevin hardly seemed to notice. He fired at the house until the gun clicked uselessly in his hands. It took him a while to realize that he had run out of bullets. Then, with a curse, he threw the gun down and staggered over to his son. Paul wasn’t moving. In the distance, he heard shouting. A buggy was approaching through the rainforest. Drevin turned and ran across the beach towards the waiting plane.
Lying on his stomach, Alex looked out through the gap between the bottom of the house and the sand. He saw Drevin reach the water’s edge and knew that he wasn’t coming back. Slowly, dreading what he was going to find, he crawled back out into the open and went over to Paul.
There was a lot of blood. Alex was certain that the boy was dead, and he was overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness and guilt. But then, to his surprise, Paul opened his eyes. Alex knelt down beside him. Now that he was looking closely he could see that, beneath the blood, the damage might not be as bad as he had feared.
Paul had been shot in the shoulder and the arm but the rest of the bullets must have passed over his head.
“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; the Cessna’s propeller turned uselessly. Alex saw the plane disappear into the
