Scorpia

Maglites and flashbang grenades; and each man was equipped with the same high-powered semiautomatic sub-machine gun, the Heckler & Koch 9mm MP5, the favourite assault weapon of the SAS. As they spread out across the seemingly empty street, they barely looked human. They could have been radio-controlled robots, sent from some future war.
    They knew that the church was their target but this operation was every soldier’s nightmare. Normally, when the SAS go in, they will have been briefed by the police and regular army. They will have access to a huge computer databasegiving them vital information about the building they’re about to attack: the thickness of its walls, the position of windows and doors. If no information is available, they can still produce a three-dimensional computer image by simply inputting whatever details they can see outside. But this time there was nothing. The Church of Forgotten Saints was a blank. And there were only minutes left.
    Their instructions were clear. Find Alex Rider and get him out. Find the dishes and destroy them. But even after everything that had happened, Alan Blunt had made sure they understood their priorities. The dishes mattered more.
    The soldiers had arrived just in time to see the dome open and the balloon start to appear above the church. They were too late. If they had come equipped with Stingers – heat-seeking missiles – they could have brought it down. But this was the middle of London. They were prepared for what was essentially a hostage situation. They hadn’t counted on a full-out war.
    The balloon rose in front of their eyes and they were unable to stop it. They could see at once that they needed to get onto the roof of the oratory, but first they had to reach it. One of the men made a snap decision and shot a 94mm HEAT warhead rocket from a plastic firing tube. The missile looped towards the balloon but fell short, smashing through an upper window and detonatinginside the church. This was the explosion that had given Alex his chance.
    It was the signal for the Scorpia men to show themselves. Suddenly the SAS team found themselves under fire from both sides as a blazing torrent of bullets erupted from the abandoned shops. Somebody threw a grenade. A huge ball of flame and shattered concrete ripped through the air. One of the men was sent flying, his arms and legs limp. He crashed to the ground and lay still.
    The SAS hadn’t been expecting a war, but in seconds they found themselves in the middle of one. They were outnumbered. The church was seemingly impregnable. The balloon was still rising.
    One of the soldiers had dropped to his knee and was talking furiously into his radio transmitter.
    “This is Delta One Three. We have engaged the enemy and are coming under heavy fire. We need immediate back-up. Urgent. Satellite dishes have been located. Request immediate air strike to take them out fast. They are being carried by hot-air balloon over the target area. Repeat, they are in a balloon. We cannot reach them. An air 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 TornadoGR4 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