strike must respond … condition red. Over.”
The message was relayed instantly to Headquarters Strike Command at RAF High Wycombe, thirty miles outside London. It took them a few precious seconds to understand what they were being told, and a few more precious seconds to believe it. But in less than a minute, two Tornado GR4 fighter jets were taxiing towards the main runway. Each plane was equipped with Paveway II general-purpose bombs with built-in laser guidance systems and movable tail fins. The pilots were fully trained in low altitude precision attacks. Flying at just over seven hundred miles per hour, they would reach the church in less than five minutes. They would blast the balloon out of the sky.
That was the plan.
Unfortunately, they didn’t have five minutes. This was the first real test for the Joint Rapid Reaction Force that had been created to tackle any major terrorist alert. But everything had happened too quickly. Scorpia had left it to the very last moment before revealing their hand.
By the time the planes got there, it would be too late.
Alex Rider pulled himself up the rope, one hand over the other, keeping a loop between his feet. He had done the same often enough in the school gym, but—he had no need to remind himself—this wasn’t quite the same.
For a start, even when he stopped to rest, he still went up. The balloon was rising steadily. The hot air inside the envelope weighed twenty-one grams per cubic foot. The cooler air of the London sky weighed roughly twenty-eight grams per cubic foot. This was the simple arithmetic that made the balloon fly. And that was exactly what Alex was doing. If he had looked down, he would have seen the ground fifty metres below. He didn’t look down. That was something else that was different from a school gym. If he fell from this height, he would die.
But the platform was less than ten metres above him. He could see the great rectangle, blocking out the sky.
Above it the burner was still blazing, shooting a tongue of flame into the bulging blue and white envelope.
Alex’s shoulders and arms were aching. Worse than that, every movement sent pain shuddering through his bones. His wrists felt as if they were being torn apart. He heard another explosion and a sustained burst of machine-gun fire. He wondered if the SAS were shooting at him. If they had seen the balloon—and they must have—they would want to bring it down, no matter what the cost. What did his own life matter compared with the thousands who would die if the dishes reached one hundred metres?
The thought gave him new strength. If a stray bullet caught him while he was dangling from the rope, he would fall. For more than one reason he needed to be on that platform. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself up.
Sixty-five metres, sixty-six… The balloon was unstoppable. But the distance between Alex and his goal was shortening. There was a third explosion and he risked a glance down. Almost at once he wished he hadn’t. The ground was a long way below. The SAS men were the size of toy soldiers. He could see them taking up their positions in the street that led to the church, preparing to storm the front entrance. Scorpia’s men were in the derelict shops on either side. The explosion that Alex had just heard must have come from a hand grenade.
But the battle meant nothing to him. He had seen something else that filled him with dread. A man was climbing the other rope and there could be no mistaking the white blotches on his face. It was Nile. He was moving slowly, as if out of breath. Alex was surprised by that. He knew how fit and strong Nile was. He could almost see the muscles rippling beneath the man’s shirt as he reached up with one hand. He had to disable the dishes— permanently—before Nile arrived. After that, he wouldn’t stand a chance.
Something struck his hand and he cried out. Alex had still been climbing, even with his eyes fixed on Nile—
and he hadn’t seen that he had at last reached the platform. He had hit his knuckles against the edge of one of the dishes. For a moment he wondered if he could reach out and pull the bloody thing off. Let it fall and smash somewhere below. But he could see at once that the dishes were well secured with metal braces. He would have to find another way.
And first, that meant climbing onto the platform itself. This wasn’t going to be easy—and yet he had to move quickly, giving himself as much time as possible before Nile caught up with him.
He leant backwards and let go of the rope with one hand. His stomach lurched and he thought he was going to fall. But then he lunged and grabbed hold of the edge of the railing that ran all the way around the platform.
With a last effort, he heaved himself up and over, toppling down the other side. He landed awkwardly, banging his knee on the edge of a propane gas cylinder. He let the pain ripple through him as he tried to work out what to do.
He examined the balloon.
There were two propane tanks feeding the burner less than a metre above his head. Thick black tubes made of rubber or plastic connected them, and Alex wondered if he could unfasten them and make the flame go out.
Would the balloon sink? Or would there be enough hot air in the envelope to keep it rising?
He examined the metal boxes that sat, like a complicated stereo system, in the centre of the platform. One box obviously controlled each dish. There was a tangled network of cables joining them all together. Each box had a single, blinking light—currently yellow. The power was on. The dishes were primed. But the terahertz beams hadn’t yet been activated. The fifth box was some sort of master control. It had a window set into the surface, a digital read-out. Seventy-seven … seventy-eight… seventy-nine… Alex watched as the altitude was measured and the balloon moved ever nearer to the point of detonation.
And suddenly he had the answer. Disconnect the dishes. Do it before the platform reached one hundred metres.
Do it before Nile arrived. How much time did he have? Very briefly he considered somehow unfastening the rope that Nile was climbing. But even if it was possible, he would never be able to bring himself to do it, to kill someone in such a cold-blooded way. Anyway, it would take too long. No. The four twinkling lights were his targets. Somehow he had to turn them off.
He got unsteadily to his feet and took a small step, the platform swaying slightly beneath him. For a moment he was afraid. Was the platform even designed to hold his weight? Move too fast and it might tip up and throw him off. He grimaced and edged forward. Apart from the hiss of the gas feeding the flame, the hot-air balloon was absolutely silent. Somewhere inside him, Alex wished he could simply sit back and enjoy the ride. The majestic envelope, soaring into the sky. The views of London. But he had perhaps less than a minute before Nile got there. And how long until the balloon reached the right height?
Eighty-three … eighty-four…
God. It was like being back in Murmansk again. Another digital counter, though that one had been going down, not up, and it had been attached to a nuclear bomb. Why him? Alex fell to his knees and reached out for the first of the cables.
He quickly examined it. It was thick, attached to the master control by a solid-looking socket. He tried
