AWOL 2

  Contents

  Title Page

  Books by Andrew Lane

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Copyright

  Extract from AWOL 3: Last Boy Standing

  Andrew Lane

  Copyright

  BOOKS BY ANDREW LANE

  AWOL: Agent Without Licence

  AWOL 2: Last Safe Moment

  Young Sherlock Holmes

  Death Cloud

  Red Leech

  Black Ice

  Fire Storm

  Snake Bite

  Knife Edge

  Stone Cold

  Night Break

  Lost Worlds

  Lost Worlds

  Shadow Creatures

  Crusoe

  Dawn of Spies

  Day of Ice

  Night of Terror

  Dedicated to Amber, Caitlin, Courtney, Beth and Sophie; because the last book was dedicated to the boys …

  And with thanks to Emma Matthewson and Talya Baker, for the phenomenal editing work.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it?’

  Kieron Mellor heard the slight tremor in his voice, and hated himself for it. Why wasn’t he able to cope with this? After what he’d been through recently, it should be a walk in the park.

  That’s what he kept telling himself, but he could feel his heart beating fast in his chest.

  ‘It won’t hurt at all,’ the man in the tattoo-and-piercing parlour said reassuringly. ‘Just a pinprick. Well, two pinpricks. You’ll hardly feel a thing.’

  Kieron looked over the guy’s shoulder at the shoppers passing in the mall. The piercing parlour was small – barely the size of his bedroom. With him, the man sitting on a stool facing him and the woman on the cash register, there was hardly enough room to turn around. Sam – Kieron’s best friend – was waiting outside, leaning on the rail running around the balcony and staring down at the crowded expanse of mall.

  Down below were the shops selling clothes, electronic goods, expensive handbags and furniture. Down below them was the food court. Up here on the top level were the cheaper places – a comic shop, a place that sold New Age figurines and packs of angel cards, a gents’ hairdressers. And the tattoo and piercing parlour.

  The man sitting patiently in front of Kieron wore a tight T-shirt and sported a luxuriant moustache that continued up his cheeks to join his sideburns. He also wore a leather cowboy hat. Tattoos of blue-and-gold fish scales covered his right arm from wrist to shoulder. On his left arm the tattoos were a work in progress: black curves that would be coloured in progressively at some later date. Kieron found himself wondering if the man tattooed himself. Was that even possible? Or did he go to another parlour or get the woman on the till to do it? And why wasn’t it finished yet – had he run out of blue and gold ink?

  ‘So,’ the man said patiently, ‘are we going to do this, or what?’

  Kieron tried to calm his racing thoughts and his racing heart. ‘Yes,’ he said, then, ‘Yes!’ in a louder, firmer voice.

  ‘And just to confirm – you are sixteen, aren’t you? I have to ask. We don’t pierce anyone younger than that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kieron responded. He wasn’t sixteen, but he looked as though he might be. He could see from the man’s expression that he didn’t believe him, but that it didn’t matter. He’d asked, and Kieron had answered.

  ‘Two snakebite piercings: one on each side, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK.’ He reached over and brushed underneath Kieron’s lower lip with something that looked like a wet wipe and smelled of antiseptic. ‘I’m just going to make a couple of marks with a felt-tip pen. They’ll wash off, but I want to make sure I get the piercings symmetrical.’ He swapped the wet wipe for a pen, leaned forward and touched it twice to Kieron’s face where he had wiped. ‘There’s nothing worse than lopsided piercings.’ He looked critically at the placement. ‘Yes, that should do it.’ Putting the pen on a counter by his side, he picked up a device that looked like a small clamp. In fact, it was a small clamp, as Kieron found out when the man quickly fastened it to his lip over one of the marks. Steadying it with one hand, he scooped something else up.

  Kieron closed his eyes and held his breath.

  ‘Try not to flinch,’ the man said. ‘That thing on your lip has two holes in it – one on either side. I’m going to pass the needle through. The needle is attached to a stud. I’ll remove the clamp, then pull the needle out. It’ll leave the stud behind.’ Kieron felt a sharp pain and a tug on his lip as the needle went through, then some fiddling as the man removed the clamp. He braced himself for a sharper pain as the needle was pulled out, but he hardly felt it. Maybe the wet wipe had some anaesthetic on it and it had just kicked in. A dull ache started up as the man leaned back and gazed at his handiwork.

  ‘Perfect. You all right? Not going to faint?’

  Kieron shook his head. He thought he could taste blood, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘Ready for the next one?’

  He nodded. Again the clamp was applied to his lip, but this time he didn’t even feel the needle going in, let alone coming out. As the man replaced the clamp on the counter Kieron touched the studs with his tongue – first left and then right. He felt a slight jolt as the tip of his tongue met the cold metal, like a very small electric shock. Experimentally he moved his lips and waggled his jaw. The studs had gone in higher up, so they didn’t clash unless he deliberately rubbed his lower lip against his teeth.

  ‘Finished. Don’t eat or drink anything for half an hour. Come back in two weeks and I’ll replace the studs with rings. All part of the price. Talking of which, if you could pay the lovely Maria there on your way out – thirty pounds, please.’

  He stood, and moved past Kieron to a small washbasin. Kieron levered himself to his feet, feeling slightly woozy, and stepped over to where Maria already had her hand out expectantly. He fished around in his pocket for the cash he’d painstakingly saved up from the pocket money his mum gave him and handed it across. It was a lot, but he’d wanted these piercings for ages.

  Outside, the cool air hit him. He could feel beads of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked as he approached Sam.

  His friend frowned. ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Don’t muck around. You heard me.’

  Sam smiled. ‘Yeah. Actually they look great. Better than I expected. What do you think your mum’s going to say?’

  ‘The question is, how long is it going to be until she even notices?’ Kieron could hear the bitterness in his voice and hated himself for it.

  ‘She’s still doing overtime?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Every shift she can get. Then she spends the money she makes from the overtime on presents for me because she feels guilty about doing the overtime. What’s that phrase – “vicious circle”? That’s what we’re trapped in.’

  Sam nodded. He glanced at Kieron’s piercings again. ‘My sister told me about some guy she had come into Accident and Emergency. He’d had a piercing just like yours, except he’d already had the studs replaced with rings. Apparently he was eating dinner one night and got the fork caught in one of the rings. In his panic to get it out he ended up tearing his lip open. Nasty.’

  Thoughts of Sam’s sister Courtney made Kieron’s cheeks feel hot. He knew he was blushing, and didn’t want Sam to see. Trying to change the subject, he said, ‘You’re just jealous.
Scare stories aren’t going to put me off.’

  ‘Hey, if you want to desecrate your own body, you go ahead.’

  Kieron bristled. ‘At least I’m desecrating the outside of my body. I’ve seen the amount of highly caffeinated energy drinks you chug every day. Your liver is probably making plans to move out even as we speak.’

  Sam frowned. ‘I think I saw that film. Or did I dream it?’

  Gazing over the edge of the balcony, Kieron said, ‘See down there? That’s where we were sitting a week ago when we saw Bradley Marshall being attacked.’

  Sam nodded. ‘Just think – if we’d been at a different table in the food court, or if we’d decided to go somewhere else or left sooner, we’d never have got involved in all this.’

  All this. Simple to say, but when Kieron thought back over what had happened in that past week he felt his head spin. One week ago he’d been a disaffected teen, watching the world pass him by and thinking about how boring and stale everything was. Now he could say that he’d helped an MI6 agent recover a stolen nuclear weapon and prevented several other nuclear weapons being detonated in cities across the Middle East and India. Well, to be fair, he couldn’t say anything of the sort. He’d been sworn to secrecy by the agent in question, Rebecca Wilson – ‘Bex’, as she liked to be known – and nobody would believe him anyway. Apart from Sam, who’d shared the adventure with him.

  ‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘Bex is flying in to Newcastle later on today. We need to meet her.’

  ‘I still can’t believe you can fly from Mumbai to Newcastle,’ Sam said. ‘I’m having a hard time believing you can fly from anywhere to Newcastle.’

  ‘Technically she had to fly from Mumbai to Delhi first, then catch a connecting flight to Dubai, then another flight to here. She said she wanted to confuse her trail, in case anyone was looking for her. But yeah – there’s loads of flights from Newcastle. You can get to five different places in Lapland, if you want.’

  ‘Brilliant. I’ll remember that, come Christmas. My mum still has this strange desire to take me to see Santa Claus in his grotto in one of the big department stores. I’ll ask her if we can go to Lapland instead.’ Sam frowned. ‘Hey – you didn’t get the piercings to impress Bex, did you? I mean, that would be a little creepy. You’ve never even met her. In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never even seen her.’

  ‘True,’ Kieron said defensively, ‘but with that kit we found when Bradley was kidnapped, I’ve pretty much been seeing everything she sees – at least when she’s wearing her ARCC glasses. I’ve kind of shared her head with her.’

  ‘Now that is creepy,’ Sam said.

  ‘It’s all been very innocent,’ Kieron protested. ‘And no, I didn’t get the piercings to impress her. I don’t feel any need to impress her. I think of her more like a big sister.’

  ‘That’s even creepier,’ Sam said, grimacing. ‘I had to share a bedroom with Courtney when she was living at home. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. Never again.’

  ‘Vietnam-style flashbacks?’

  ‘Post-traumatic stress disorder,’ Sam replied.

  ‘Bex is going to want to see Bradley as soon as possible,’ Kieron said. ‘Is your sister in, or off working? It could get a little awkward otherwise.’

  Sam was silent for a few moments before replying – probably replaying, like Kieron, seeing Bex’s partner Bradley black out in Sam’s sister’s flat, face-planting on the carpet with a heavy thud. He’d recovered quickly, but not before they’d phoned for an ambulance. Ignoring his protests, they’d taken him to the local A & E, giving a fake name so that he couldn’t be identified or tracked later. After an X-ray of his skull, an EEG of his brainwaves and an ECG of the electrical activity of his heart, the doctors had decided that they didn’t know what had happened. ‘Probably as isolated ischemic event,’ one of them said, with the confidence of someone who’d considered all the evidence and come to a difficult conclusion. Kieron had been using the ARCC glasses while the doctor had been talking, and had quickly discovered from the Internet that an isolated ischemic event was just fancy medical talk for a temporary restriction of the blood supply to the brain. Basically, they were describing what had happened but using longer words. Kieron was keen to press for a full MRI scan of Bradley’s skull, but Bradley himself at that point decided to walk out – or stagger out, as he couldn’t quite keep his balance. Kieron and Sam had had little choice but to leave too, to make sure he didn’t fall in front of a bus or something.

  ‘Courtney’s working a twelve-hour shift,’ Sam said eventually. ‘We’ll have the flat to ourselves.’

  ‘That’s good. Courtney might be looking after Bradley, but she still doesn’t know what he really does for a living.’ Kieron probed the right-hand metal stud with his tongue again, fascinated by the feeling of something alien in his mouth. It felt huge – the size of a pea – but he knew that was just the sensitivity of his tongue playing tricks.

  ‘What time is Bex’s flight arriving?’ Sam asked.

  ‘About five o’clock.’ Kieron checked his watch. ‘We’d better get going.’

  Sam smiled at him. ‘What do you think Bex’ll make of the piercings?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t get them to impress her,’ Kieron said quickly.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I got them because I wanted them! No, really, I did!’

  Actually Kieron was feeling more nervous about meeting her than he liked to admit. They had shared so much together in such an intense way, and over such a short time, but he had never seen her face, and in so many ways they were complete strangers to each other.

  ‘Ice-cream shakes first, for old times’ sake?’ Sam said, punching his arm.

  He smiled. ‘Why not?’

  They got their shakes and headed out of the shopping mall and towards Newcastle Central Station. The Metro train to the airport took just under half an hour. They got some strange looks from the other passengers. Apparently two boys, one lanky with facial piercings and one shorter and stockier; both dressed in ripped black jeans and baggy black hoodies; one with dyed black hair hanging in front of his eyes and the other with dyed blue hair of an identical length; both drinking ice-cream shakes through striped straws, were an unusual sight. They certainly didn’t look like typical airport travellers. They looked like what they were – greebs – although almost anyone looking at them would have called them ‘emos’ without realising the gulf of difference between the two tribes.

  ‘Look at them, looking at us,’ Sam said in a low voice. ‘All dressed the same, in their suits and ties and their shiny leather shoes, with their expensive rucksacks that have never seen a mountainside or a forest in their lives. It’s like they’re wearing a uniform.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kieron said, amused that Sam failed to see the inherent irony, ‘thank heavens we’re dressed as individuals.’ What he thought, but didn’t say, was that the only forest they’d seen had been through the window of a bus, and the only time they’d ever seen a real mountain had been on TV.

  At Newcastle Airport they followed the signs to arrivals. Kieron noticed that a couple of security guards tracked them for a while, checking on what they were doing. Sam had noticed it too.

  ‘As if terrorists would dress like us,’ he said dismissively. ‘Stupid!’

  ‘I think it’s more likely they think we’re smuggling drugs,’ Kieron pointed out, ‘or meeting someone who is.’

  ‘That’s just profiling – you can’t target somebody based on appearance! I’m appalled! What about my human rights?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kieron said, ‘you tell them.’ He paused, then added, ‘You haven’t got any of those highly caffeinated energy drinks on you, have you? I only ask in case they decide to strip-search you.’

  ‘Very funny. Not.’

  They stopped to consult a screen, hanging from a pillar, which provided a list of the anticipated arrivals. The next flight from Dubai was on time, landing in half an hour. Ignoring the securi
ty guards who orbited them at range, they settled down on the seating in the arrivals area to wait. Over to one side, the passengers arriving on various aircraft from far-flung destinations emerged, blinking, from an archway and were herded along a fenced-off section of flooring before joining the throng of excited relatives and uniformed chauffeurs waiting to greet them. Some of the relatives held balloons and tiny flags; the chauffeurs had signs with the names of their passengers written in marker pen on them. Like some sort of capitalist obstacle course, the last thing the arriving passengers had to go through was a duty-free area selling various bottles of spirits, perfumes and multi-packs of cigarettes.

  ‘Who designed these seats?’ Sam demanded to know as he squirmed around trying to get comfortable. ‘You can’t lie flat on them – the armrests stop you. I could have done better in TED classes back at school.’

  ‘I think that’s the point,’ Kieron replied. ‘They don’t want people stretched out, dribbling and snoring. Makes the place look untidy.’

  ‘But this is the one place you’d want to do that! If you’ve got a four-hour gap between arriving and departing, what else are you going to do? Sit upright with your arms folded, staring straight ahead?’

  Kieron looked around. ‘I think you’re supposed to buy expensive stuff in the shops to pass the time.’

  About five minutes before Bex’s aircraft landed, he took the ARCC glasses and earpiece out of his pocket and slipped them on. The glasses looked just like anything you could get from an opticians, but the lenses were not only clear glass, they acted as miniature computer screens, projecting information and relaying to the wearer whatever was being seen by the glasses they were linked to – which, in Kieron’s case was Bex. She wouldn’t be wearing them on the flight of course – there were rules about having transmitting equipment switched on when the aircraft was in the air – but he suspected she’d put them on as soon as it landed. He was right – seven minutes later he heard a bell-like chime in his ear and the glasses sprang to life. A rectangular screen, partially transparent, so he could still see the arrivals hall through it, appeared in the centre of his field of vision. It showed the back of an aircraft seat, with a built-in screen displaying a crude world map with a silhouette of an aircraft sitting right over Newcastle. Given the relative scales, the aircraft pretty much obliterated the whole of the UK.