He pulled open the flap and there it was—the little pack of circuitry that had been designed to save his life during the bombardment in Swanbourne. And there was the power source too, a straightforward lithium battery, about twice the size of the one that should have been fitted into the watch. Alex eased it out and held it in the palm of his hand as if it were a nugget of pure gold. All he had to do was connect it. He had no screwdriver, no con- ductor, no metal contacts, nothing. Easy!
In the end, he broke two spikes off a nearby shrub and used them as miniature tweezers to pry out some of the wires from inside the heel of the shoe. It seemed to take forever, and as the sun climbed higher, he felt the sweat trickling down his forehead, but he didn’t stop to rest.
Painstakingly, he unstitched the inside of the radio beacon until he had two lengths of wire, each one barely more than an inch long. Did the battery still have any life? He rubbed the wires against it, and to his delight, he was rewarded by a tiny spark. So now all he had to do was connect the battery to the watch, using a couple of peb-bles to keep everything in place. There really was nothing more he could do. He set the battery next to the watch with the wires trailing inside, the two of them feeding
precious electricity into the transmitter, and balanced the entire thing on a rock. After that, he went and lay down in the shadow of a tree. Either the transmitter was working now or it wasn’t. He would find out soon enough.
A few minutes later he was sound asleep.
21
A T T A C K F O R C E
A L E X WA S W O K E N BY the sound of a helicopter. For a moment he was filled with dread, fearing that the Bell UH-1D had returned. If that were the case, he would let them take him. He simply didn’t have in him to fight anymore. There was nothing left with which to fight back.
But squinting into the sun, he saw at once that this was a bigger helicopter with two sets of rotors: a Chinook. And there was a figure already leaning out of the front door.
Blue eyes. Short black hair. A handsome, slightly boy-ish face. It was Ben Daniels.
Alex clambered to his feet as the Chinook landed on a patch of scrubland a short distance away. He went over to it, taking care where he put his bare feet. It would be just his luck to step on a death adder now! Ben stepped out and stared at him.
“So here you are!” he exclaimed, shouting over the noise of the helicopter rotors. “We were getting worried about you!” He shook his head in disbelief. “What on earth are you doing out here? Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story,” Alex said.
“Has it got anything to do with the smoke coming from upriver?” Ben jerked a thumb. “We saw it as we flew in.”
“That used to be a hospital.” Alex couldn’t hide his delight that things were finally going his way. “I’m really glad to see you . . .”
“Mrs. Jones has been frantic. We knew you’d flown to Jakarta, but we lost you after that. She’s got people all over Indonesia, but she sent me to Darwin in case you made it across. I’ve been waiting there for three days, hoping you’d get in touch. You look terrible! Like something the cat dragged in . . .”
“That’s how I feel.” Alex stopped. “What time is it, Ben?” he asked.
Ben was obviously surprised by the question. He looked at his watch. “It’s ten past one. Why do you ask?”
“We have to get moving. We’ve got less than twelve hours.”
“Until what?”
“I’ll tell you on the way . . .”
Alex was feeling a lot better than he had in a long time. He was warm and dry and well fed, and all the dangers of the last few days had slipped away behind him. He was lying on a comfortable bunk in a military compound just outside Darwin, which was where Ben Daniels had brought him earlier that day. He was wearing combat fatigues, the only clothes Ben had been able to find for him. For the last few hours he had been left on his own.
He could see a certain amount of activity outside the window. Soldiers crossing the parade ground, jeeps
S N A K E H E A D
speeding in and out of the main gate. The helicopter was still sitting where it landed. Half an hour ago, a gas truck had pulled up and Alex had watched as refueling began.
He wondered if it was significant. Maybe something was happening at last.
Despite everything, he couldn’t relax completely. It was six thirty, and very soon the sun would be setting, at the same time moving into the alignment with the earth and the moon that Major Yu had been waiting for. At midnight, Royal Blue would be lowered to the seabed and detonated. The devastation would begin.
And what were MI6 or ASIS doing to prevent it?
Alex had explained everything . . . not just to Ben but to a whole posse of Australian army officers. His story was incredible, almost beyond belief, but the strange thing was that not one person in the room had doubted him.
This was, after all, the boy who had dropped in from outer space. Alex supposed that where he was concerned, anything was now considered possible. One of the men was a technical adviser, and he had quickly confirmed what Major Yu had said. It would be possible to manufacture an artificial tsunami. From midnight onward, the fault line would be in the grip of enormous gravitational pressure. Even a relatively small explosion would be enough to trigger a global catastrophe, and Yu had all the power of Royal Blue at his command.
Of course, in one sense Scorpia’s mission had already failed. Thanks to Alex, the intelligence agencies knew
